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Grace Notes 14: On the Move Again

Grace, dwarfed by Jamestown’s buffalo statue

After 26 years and six pulpits, Jim left the ministry to teach philosophy. In the fall of 1962, he went (alone) to Jamestown College in North Dakota. My brother moved our mother and me into a little rental house in Memphis before heading off to college.

Grace’s letters that autumn speak mostly of her writing and its deadlines. Then: On Thanksgiving, out of the blue, Jim calls to say that he is coming to Memphis for Christmas. Also, he has applied for a house on campus for the next year; he wants us to join him. In a letter to a friend, Grace writes: “What am I going to do? I honestly do not know.”

After Jim’s holiday visit, she writes to my sister (now at Oxford) that we “had a very happy Christmas on the whole and it was good to have a family again — both Geneva and I felt we were more complete.” At the tail end of the very next note to her, Grace says: “We are planning to move to North Dakota some time next summer.”

What was her thinking? In a zigzagging letter to Grandmother, she puzzles it out: “It is almost impossible to work out a livable arrangement unless both people involved work on it together. At least that is my feeling about it. I am fully aware that many women have adapted themselves to an existence which may be similar to mine, but the fact that I could not do it seems to me an indication that I can’t because I do not believe that is what life is for me. Some things Jim said while in Memphis for Christmas indicate there is still the same thinking in his dealings with me which has prevailed, perhaps always: ‘Now, when you come up there, you have to be like those women up there — they LOVE their husbands, they are not the kind of women that do a lot of other things — they really love their husbands.’”

So why did she decide to go? “I’d rather be married than not married. I miss the completeness of a family. I miss Jim in many, many ways, and I have a genuine, deep affection for him when he is in his more attractive, normal, outgoing relation to me.” It would be interesting to live on a campus. She wants now 15-year-old me “to have a normal family life” for a few more years. Plus, it’s difficult “to have poise and courage” in the situation she is currently in.

She returns to the challenges: She’s read an article in Christianity Today about illnesses afflicting ministers — with symptoms of depletion, discouragement, bitterness — saying they usually involve unresolved inner conflicts. She tells her mother that the fact that she thinks any real solutions lie “in something that has happened to Jim and can’t be corrected without a miracle or treatment he would never agree to leaves me with a sick, chilled feeling.” She is “going back into something with my eyes open knowing it will demand more than I perhaps have the ability or courage to give and yet at the same time, aware that the alternative — of making a new life for myself without him, working, and trying to help Geneva and A. to adjust to this unfortunate situation — is not what I want, either.”

The only right decision is to go, she says, but with no false chin-up attitude that will crumble at first sign of failure. She concludes the letter to her mother: “Let me have your reactions. But please don’t be Pollyannish or too soothing. Life still has much meaning, I have more faith than I have ever had, but I believe my insight into myself and into life’s deepest possibilities enables me to look it straight in the face and not try to varnish things over with a good-spirits tonic.”

Atypically, Grace has kept her mother’s response. Grandmother is “glad you are trying hard to work things out. Just keep on groping, and if writing it down helps — and I feel it does — send it on to me. I think the big trouble with both of you is hurt pride and resentment, and the fact that Jim is so darn sure he is right about everything.” Also: “You know a woman can let a man think he’s boss when he really isn’t. Funny thing, but some people used to say I was the boss. Guess it was because poor Daddy had so much trouble, he had to lean on me. I had to be strong.”

In April 1963, Grace again writes her mother, saying that she has “finished my second set of publications! It is quite an emotional let-down and I am sort of at loose ends and yet glad to be able to do a few other things. Geneva is happy that I am acting like a mother again and able to take up skirts, mend, and iron a few things when she is in a jam.”

My set of Grace’s Sunday School publications

As for the upcoming move, “I really have no idea what the future holds for me in this entirely new church, state, life. I suppose this is a place where I shall have to let my faith in God and his plan for my life take over and hope that I can accept what comes and that something new and different and exciting and challenging will come. I like to think of it as an experience, but at times I feel rather sick to think of how different my life will be from anything I have known.”

We move to Jamestown. A letter from January 1964 notes that “before Christmas, Geneva had been a bit nostalgic about former Christmases when more family and friends were around, and when the tree was piled high with gifts from church members and friends and it took hours to open them.” But this Christmas brought its own pleasures. My brother took the bus up from Nashville. Grace whipped up her Yuletide traditions: a coconut cake, a white and dark fruit cake, chocolate fudge cookies, lemon cookies, fruit peel, panettone. She roasted a pheasant a neighbor had given us and two wild ducks Dad had shot.

The Jamestown letters tell of blizzards, of our fox terrier Sheba sinking deep into snowbanks, of minus 24 temperatures. Their campus social life is “interesting and varied.” Jim’s book, “A Contemporary Christian Philosophy of Religion,” sent to publisher after publisher over the years, is at last accepted for publication. Grace writes of A’s academic successes; she is “staggered with honor that such a person is kin to me.” Illustrations for her book arrive: She says the drawings of Jesus are “too pretty” and wants “to superimpose a forceful, strong rugged Rouault on them.” She is reading James Baldwin and finding him “a perceptive and richly rewarding writer.”

Throughout her North Dakota letters, Grace makes clear her growing affection for what she calls “The Great Northwest.” She writes of the broad and somewhat bleak prairieland, the vastness, the sweep, the bright coldness of this section of our country and the sincerity and friendliness in the hearts of the people.

Before the end of the school year, Jim has taken a new position. The three of us would be moving again — to a small town in North Carolina. I’d already been to two high schools. I asked Dad to promise that we would stay two years so I could graduate from the next one.

Commencement speeches, Leadership, Uncategorized

It’s commencement season, and this was my message: “LEAD your own life.”

 

(This is a slightly edited version of the address I had the honor of delivering at North Carolina’s St. Andrews University.)

 

Good morning.

I want to thank President Baldasare for having me here today.

I want to add my thanks, too, to the faculty and administration of this wonderful university, who have made the fine education that we celebrate today possible. I want to salute the parents and grandparents, the brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and dear friends who are here to witness this momentous occasion. And, finally, the most important thing I have to say:

CONGRATULATIONS to all you freshly minted graduates of St. Andrews University! Hooray!!! Job well done! You’ve done so much hard work to get to the place where you sit today.

This is a very moving moment for me. I find myself these days in the midst of milestones: our younger daughter got married two weeks ago today. We will be celebrating my mother-in-law’s 90th birthday next month, in Charlotte. And our older daughter is due to deliver our first grandchild in July.

Equally moving to me is this: I am here, on this beautiful campus, where both of my parents taught. I got to party last night with friends I first made half a

LHS66

century ago, friends with whom I graduated from Laurinburg High School. On this campus, my brother taught me to drive a stick shift, bucking around the parking lot that was then behind the Vardell Building. And it was in that building, by the way, that I took piano lessons. (I became a pretty good driver, but not much of a pianist.)

So, this is a very powerful place for me. And today is a very powerful moment. I was deeply honored to be invited to give your commencement address, and I wanted very much to find something real and meaningful to say to you. So, amidst all these milestones, I’ve been thinking a lot about life, and how it is shaped, and what shapes it. And that’s what I want to talk to you about: The role you play in shaping your life.

In other words, I want to talk to you about LEADING your life. You know, much of the time, life leads YOU. And this is truer now than ever. My field, journalism, has surely shown me that. The constant wealth of information available, whenever and wherever you are, is an addictive distraction. Virtually every field is like journalism, in that change is coming unbelievably quickly – technological change, social change. All our lives, now, are affected by fast-paced change, happening constantly all around us.

It’s easy to get carried along in the rapids.

Continue reading It’s commencement season, and this was my message: “LEAD your own life.” →

Now, please don’t mistake me. I am not griping about change, and I don’t fear it. I think this is, for the most part, an enormously promising and hopeful period. This moment, when you are coming of age and launching into adulthood, is a wonderfully interesting one. Along with unsettlement, it offers boundless promise for a better, more just, more richly connected, world.

So when I say I want you to LEAD your life, rather than have it lead you, I don’t for a moment mean that you shouldn’t expect change, or embrace the unknown, that you shouldn’t be open to serendipity, or be light on your feet. The connections that social media allow us are so rich. Today’s entertainment menu is so remarkably fresh and diverse. Sure, we all need to be smart about the choices we make. But WHAT a wondrous world this is, one that we should embrace with gusto.

Still, amidst all this stimulation, amidst all of these ways that life is leading US, what I want you to think about – no, what I want you to commit to here today — is this: To establish some goals, to set some parameters, for how you want to lead your life. When YOU look back in fifty years, what do you want to see? When you reach my ripe age, what is it that you hope gives you reason to say: “I did that well.”

Certain things in life need attending to. This requires conscious decisions. This demands stepping occasionally out of the maelstrom to be MINDFUL about how you are spending your time. It is having goals in mind that keeps your life pointed in the direction you want it to go. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I think he put it this way – talking specifically about the long arc – in order to acknowledge the many, many injustices along the way, while stressing that what matters is what happens over the broad sweep of time. That is how life works: It is the arc, over the long term, that determines the shape of your life, more even than the dramatic twists and turns that life takes along the way.

Every life has its ups and downs, its tragedies and joys, its obstacles and serendipities. My message is surely not that you can CONTROL your life. But you can shape it. And in order to shape it, (in order to LEAD it), you have to DECIDE where you want it to go. And to keep it headed there, you have to check in with yourself, now and then, to see if you’re living up to your commitment to yourself.

So, let me ask you graduates two things. Can you identify your priorities? And, if so, are you are in fact investing your time, your energy and your emotions IN those priorities?

Most of us would say that love is a priority. Is it for you? Are you paying attention to those you love? Are you thinking about what your family members need — or simply would dearly love to have — from you? What your friends are hoping for? Are you making powerful commitments to those whom you love most? Loving people well takes time, and energy and thought.

Or, how about your goals as a citizen, a member of society? Do you, for example, hope to make community a central commitment? Are you aiming to do what you can to make this nation more just? To make your local schools better? To make the streets safer?

Or maybe it’s environmental concerns that drive you. Food safety, or climate change; energy self-sufficiency or water scarcity. Whatever your passion as a citizen of this fast-changing world, note it, and commit to it, and check in regularly to see whether you are following through.

Another commitment to consider is keeping your spirit healthy. Are you being true to your faith, whatever it may be? Are you taking time out to pray, or to meditate, to relish the outdoors, or whatever it is that nourishes YOUR spirit and makes you a kinder, more loving person, one who awakens happiness in others through smiles or small courtesies? Do you take time to laugh, to read a poem, to dance?

And how about your physical well-being? Are you eating right, and feeding your loves ones well? Are you exercising, sleeping, avoiding excesses, caring for yourself?

And then of course there is your work, an essential part of life in so many ways, and hugely time-consuming. How will you determine if what you are doing is right for you? What kind of contribution do you most want to make? Are you doing the best you can at whatever it is that you HAVE to do – because, of course, we don’t always get to choose.

Your touchstones may be different – no they WILL be different — from mine. That’s as it should be. But whatever they are, your last St. Andrews assignment is to think about what’s important to you. Determine the goals that will enable you to LEAD your life. Write them down. Commit them to memory. And then commit to checking in with yourself regularly to see how you’re doing.

Now, I imagine that, to some of you at least, this may seem unnecessarily prescriptive. You don’t HAVE to do it, of course. Your life will unspool without it. You’ll be happy and sad, you’ll fail and succeed. But in the absence of clear goals and a commitment to head toward them, the arc of your life will be directed more and more by happenstance, determined more and more by other people. There will be a widening divergence between where you had hoped to go – if you had thought about it – and where your unexamined actions are taking you.

You’ve got this one lovely chance to do it right. Why not be the leader in your own life?

Of course there’s no test on this last lesson at your beloved alma mater, no exam to determine how well you’ve done it. Life provides the test. And if you are conscious of how you want yours to look, if you are intentional about the direction in which you are moving, if you are mindful about monitoring how it’s going – well, I promise you this: You’ll end up being amazed at how many of your hopes have been realized.

I am grateful, for so many reasons, to be here with you on this memorable day. And prime among those reasons is this: In crafting my message to you, I have reminded myself of what I think is important. Like you, I’m beginning a new stage of life, stepping out on unfamiliar terrain. I’m brand new at not working full-time. Come to think of it: This is the first day of the rest of my life! (a statement required at all commencement ceremonies). So excuse me while I go figure out what my new markers are, and how I’m going to ensure that my commitments to myself come true. So that when I really grow old, I can look back and say: That’s the kind of life I hoped to live.

So, now: Congratulations to you all! And remember: the future IS in your hands!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leadership, Newspapers

Abramson and Sulzberger: The Two Who Couldn’t Tango

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The reasons for Jill Abramson’s firing as editor of The New York Times are no doubt many and complex. But one thing is clear: the editor-publisher relationship failed, spectacularly.

This classic journalistic partnership, when it works, is like a good marriage. Full of successes and challenges, warmth and tension, it requires constant open communication and full-hearted dedication on the part of both parties. Also loyalty. A good editor ensures that the publisher is never blindsided.  A good publisher ensures sufficient editorial independence to do good journalism. And a newsroom relies on believing that the two have confidence in one another.  The successful combinations are legendary: Punch and Abe, Katharine and Ben. (I learned how essential this partnership is when I was fortunate enough, as editor of the Des Moines Register, to work with publisher Charlie Edwards.)

What happened in this case, according to the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., is that his editor, Abramson, had to leave because of her management style. But, really: Editors are famed for being difficult.  Every journalist has stories about newsroom leaders throwing fits – or, better, potted plants. Hot tempers, arrogance, polarization:  these have practically been job requirements for editors.  I’m not saying this is a good thing.  I’m saying that it’s striking that we’d become sensitive to the unpleasantness only when a woman makes it to the top.

Actually, though, there IS cause for newsrooms to be even unhappier today than usual.  They are being made to change (though not quickly enough), and change is difficult. So, if it has always been true that newsrooms were fertile ground for anyone seeking anonymous gripes, it is even truer now. Indeed, my word to wise publishers would be to be wary today of the universally loved editor.  He’s probably not doing what you need him to do.

Of course, the editor does have a managerial responsibility to the publisher: To ensure that the staff is doing good work.  In this, Abramson seems to have succeeded. Her “management style” became a firing offense only because the editor-publisher relationship was broken.

Continue reading Abramson and Sulzberger: The Two Who Couldn’t Tango →

Similarly with another, more serious issue cited in the aftermath of the firing: pay equity. If Abramson was in fact paid less than her predecessors and perhaps even her deputies, this is indeed a worrisome matter — and one that an editor and publisher with confidence in one another would have been determined to work out.  That she hired a lawyer to represent her in this matter shows just how deeply dysfunctional the publisher-editor relationship had become.

Then there are the reports of conflicts over business issues.  When Mark Thompson was hired as chief executive in 2012, the already existing challenges of leading journalism through the dangerous shoals of business experimentation grew even more complex. Remember that newspapers are strange enterprises in that they have as a central element a unit whose behavior may, when it is at its best, be inimical to the financial fortunes of the business. Add in the fact that far-reaching innovation is now essential to the very existence of these endangered species.  Imagine the tensions that arise naturally, then, if the main business executive and the main editorial executive are both doing their jobs. Only a publisher (and chairman of the board) in open communication with each, confident of both, could make this work.

What’s striking to me in this regard is the story of the effort to hire the Guardian’s Janine Gibson as an additional managing editor.  This seems to have caught Managing Editor Dean Baquet by (understandably unpleasant) surprise.  But both Thompson and Sulzberger had met with Gibson as well as Abramson, and apparently were involved in the effort to hire her.  Had the publisher and editor never discussed how this matter would be presented to the managing editor? This is believable only in the utter absence of communication that a failed relationship implies.

Finally, of course: the gender question. It isn’t news that the newsroom culture is proudly male. Women have long struggled to figure out how to thrive in it. So it’s no wonder that Sulzberger’s vague assertion about management style opened the door to outrage. Imagine Abe Rosenthal hiring a coach to help him with his management style! Imagine if Abramson had been the one to slam her hand against the newsroom wall, as Baquet reportedly did after a disagreement with her (with no apparent dint to his reputation for being unfailingly polite and amiable).

I am happy about one side effect of this sad affair, and that is the outpouring of powerful pieces by women documenting the challenges facing women in journalism – and showing how meaningful it was for women in the Times newsroom to have a woman at the top. See, for example, Amanda Hess, Rebecca Traister, Ann Friedman, Susan Glasser and Rachel Sklar. With any luck, these beautifully crafted and deeply felt pieces will be helpful to the next person who decides to “give a woman a chance.”

It is said that Sulzberger was torn when he named Abramson editor, thinking perhaps he should have picked Baquet instead. Of all the unknowables here, this one rings especially true. It would explain why these two key relationships — publisher-editor, and editor-managing editor – were doomed.  In the end, Abramson may have felt very much as if she were standing between two people who just wanted her gone.

(Full disclosure: I know Sulzberger, Abramson and Baquet, and admire them all.)