Friday, November 25, 2016

A THANKSGIVING TALE: IN A TIME WHEN WE NEED LOVE AND PEACE TO TRUMP BIGOTRY AND HATE

ESSAY OF HOPE PARTS 1 & 2 PUT TOGETHER FOR SHARING
(in response to popular demand)

What I am thankful for this year:

Friendship, kindness, understanding, compassion, making amends.

I have thought about sharing this story for ages.

But the time seems right.

Bear with me.

More than a quarter century ago, I made the leap from obscure editorial assistant, fresh out of journalism school kid, to full-time pop music critic at a major newspaper.

I replaced the friend of the paper's TV & radio critic.

I was talented, but was very young, not very confident, not from the city I was working in and maybe overly sensitive.

The TV-radio guy was very talented, darn near as young as me, very confident, from the city the major newspaper was located in and very brash at the time.

He threw me more than a few digs, even though I barely knew him...and ironically, had a working friendship with his new bride -- because we both toiled in the same suburban bureau for the big paper.

I ended up moving on from the pop music critic life and stuck with the paper in beats more suited for my ability and married life as a caregiver to a wonderful wife who uses a wheelchair for mobility.

The more polished TV-Radio critic moved to another City awhile after a very public and ugly incident involving crude radio personalities and out of bounds comments they made about his wife.

Fast forward 25 years and I'm in a blue period, getting over the death of my father - a 40-year newspaperman in the Ohio town I grew up in -- and feeling down over a bout of pain my wife was going through long after a major surgery.

I thought about my old paper and the grudge I held against the brash critic that threw his muttered digs at me in the newsroom hallways.

I found his contact info online and vented....and vented...and vented.

I told him how unkind his cuts were....and really went so far off the deep end that I said nasty things about him (only I was now around age 50 and should have been able to maturely share without stooping to that low level.)

I pushed the send button and felt there was a 99% chance that I had written the note only for my own therapeutic reasons. The person I emailed to would either never reply or zap back a terse "get over it, whiny jackass" email.

A couple days passed...I re-immersed in life and....and the phone rang while I was at a client’s office.

I almost ignored it, since it was an unfamiliar number on my cell -- most likely a telemarketer ignoring the do not call list.
Despite my trepidation, I answered the phone.
And it was my youthful big city journalism era nemesis -- the TV-radio critic.

And he wasn't snotty at all.

He was warm, kind, like a long lost brother...or college roommate to reconnect with.

We never were close at all, obviously.
But suddenly, two men in their 50s, still married to their wonderful wives, were bonded like we had been best friends for ages.

The critic was certainly apologetic, but the call wasn't about that at all.

It was about men, learning to care, learning to prioritize, learning to grow beyond youthful pettiness.

We ended up talking about wars and peace. Betrayals and redemption. Of triumphs and tragedies experienced by mutual friends from the newspaper we crossed paths at -- the Columbus Dispatch.

We are both busy people. He's a leading sports columnist, a brilliant and passionate writer.

I work in marketing communications for urban design and town planning -- an outgrowth of the beat I settled into after leaving the late night and work in a fishbowl life of an arts critic back.

But we talked for nearly an hour. I didn't want to hang up the phone.
Movies have been based on less heartwarming events, adapted from stories less ironic and amazing than the long and winding road that led to our mobile phone bonding session.
We became Facebook friends.  Maybe that's corny, but it is the format of modern communication.

I took great joy when he liked or commented on some aspect of my life.

I shared some of his insightful posts -- on sports and life -- with my friends.

We both weathered the 2016 presidential election (and were not happy with the results).

We shared stories of diversity, what both of us still believe is the backbone of America.

Now, bigotry, misogyny, race baiting, hatred, prejudice, anti-Semitism, outright attacks on peaceful practitioners of the Muslim faith and mockery dehumanizing people with disabilities is embraced by the elected leader of the free world.
It seems, in the same month as the election, very appropriate to give thanks for the opportunity to get to know...to really know...the true big heart and essence of my new friend.

I thought long and hard about keeping his identity anonymous in this essay.....at least to all but fellow alums of the Dispatch newspaper or those obsessed enough to look up who was the TV-Radio critic in the late 1980s there.

But I'm going to share the name, because I have great admiration, respect and yes, I'll say it, even love for the person who was big enough to read my email, take stock in what I said and reach out to me with a warmth and kindness that seems so rare in these days of anger, bile and bellicose online posts.

My "new" friend is David Jones.

He’s an acclaimed columnist for PennLive.com

He's married to the former Ana Al-Khouri.

They have a family.

David is one of the good guys.

Big hearted.

Honest and open.

For the bond we created about a year ago -- and the darn near Hollywood feel good story forged from the bizarre and initially rocky road that brought us together -- I am thankful for.

This is my Thanksgiving story.

Thank you David.

May you and your family feel the same warmth, love and joy that I am feeling as I share this story.

Happy Thanskgiving

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