Management matters
For three days last week, a pile of work on my office desk notwithstanding, I was engaged in a fabulously interactive and valuable training session, called A Guide to Managing at Duke. Through this, I learned much about leadership styles and learning differences and management responsibilities — I even played a habitually tardy employee brought to tears by family health issues in a role-playing session meant to teach us about empathy and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
During the workshop, I thought back on the various management challenges I’ve encountered in the last 20 years, such as addressing an employee’s alcoholism or whistleblowing a supervisor’s abusive behavior. I also remembered the key instances when my own managers hauled me to the task, teaching me valuable lessons about procrastination and editing a story into shape.
An email midweek, sadly, made me recall another event.
Word came to me that Audrey Chapman, a writer and journalist who briefly worked with me at the ill-fated PlanetKnowHow Web startup, died at the young age of 42. (Read her obituary.)
It was my task, as Audrey’s nominal supervisor, to let her go when it became clear the company was running out of money.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, quivering from nervousness. “I won’t be far behind.” After she left, I saw her only once more, running through Cleveland’s Little Italy. By then, I, too, had been laid off.
Being a manager is a challenging job, the workshop reinforced. But the job can also be highly rewarding when done right, when people come together as a team, share a common goal, communicate clearly and constantly, succeed.
I returned to my desk today, to a long list of to-do items — a newspaper to edit, a newsletter to inaugurate, a blog-based website to launch — but also to a fantastic team working together on all those projects.
evening on 07/21/08 in "Observations" |
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When old friends call
Our DHS Class of 1988 reunion last month was well attended, but a few of my good friends from high school weren’t able to join us. Some friends we didn’t know how to contact.
Khaled Khan was one of the out-of-touch classmates and friends. No longer. This morning, the phone rang, a voice asked, “Do you know who this is?” and we were off on a long conversation.
Khaled was a great friend in high school, a soccer teammate and weekend (fellow teetotling) companion. After graduation, we borrowed my dad’s car and drove west to Colorado, where we visited my Boulder relatives, zoomed down a Breckenridge alpine slide, pretended to be cowboys and paid an artist to draw a caricature.
We also camped in Rocky Mountain National Park.
One afternoon, we set out for a hike up a mountain. On our way up, we noticed puma tracks, and recalled a warning we’d read somewhere that a mountaintop in the afternoon is a good place to be struck by lightning. We reached the summit as the sun was setting and the wind picking up, which is why I’m hunched between the rocks in this picture:
We hurried down the mountain, slipping on ice, dropping and breaking our one flashlight in a cold stream, thinking we were hearing wolves howl. The night was dark, and we were spooked, so naturally we talked about religion, me about my plan to be a priest, Khaled about his Muslim faith. I’ve been on much more strenuous and dangerous hikes (along windswept ridges in Hawaii, and to the lip of a live volcano in Vanuatu), but that Colorado experience is the one that I’ve recalled time and again.
A day or two after that frightful hike, our money running out, we pulled into Estes Park, with no place to stay but plans to leave at first light for our drive back to Illinois.
“Let’s just sleep in the car,” we decided. On the phone to my mother, I nonchalantly mentioned said plan. “But I’ll let the police know so we don’t get into trouble,” I added.
When I walked into the police station, the officer on duty looked up. “Are you Anton?” he asked. “Call your mother.”
Mortified, I went to the pay phone, placed a collect call home, and was instructed by my mother to call a DeKalb High classmate of my aunt’s, a man who happened to own a small hotel in Estes Park.
The next morning, we began a 20-hour straight-through drive home.
late evening on 07/12/08 in "Places" |
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Who's counting?
“Dad, how many times have we been to that restaurant?” Malia asked as we drove past the P.F. Chang’s China Bistro near Southpoint.
“One time. Maybe we should go back,” I answered.
“We’ve been there once, and once isn’t enough,” she said.
early evening on 07/06/08 in "Restaurants" |
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Popovers
Saturday, after we’d been to the Durham Farmers Market to get honey from Little Tree Farm, cinnamon rolls from Angels Nest Bakery, tomatoes from Sunny Slope Greenhouses and blueberries from Lyon Farms, Malia accompanied me to the Chapel Hill Mall to purchase a popover pan (at KitchenWorks). Tonight we put it to the test.
The result: six gloriously warm popovers that we enjoyed with my homemade strawberry jam and the honey.
If you really want to know about popovers, and see a photo by a real photographer, click over to Michael Ruhlman’s post, Flour, egg, milk.
early evening on 06/30/08 in "Tastings" |
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My Letters
After dinner tonight, Malia disappeared into the office bedroom to make something for her camp counselor.
“These are my letters,” she said when she emerged, holding this sheet of paper:
early evening on 06/30/08 in "Family" |
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Loose bits
I find myself having to muster the mental and physical energy to blog, but here’s a jumble of items and thoughts and observations from the last month or so:
Erin’s disappeared to study for the bar exam, staying at a friend’s house so she can concentrate on not washing dishes and mopping floors and folding clothes and ministering to children. I’m doing more of that while she’s gone — and, no, I haven’t yet read the NYTimes Magazine article about co-parenting equality, When Mom and Dad Share It All — but I was glad to see Erin come home last night and briefly today.
I had to miss The Monti storytelling night this week. I realize I never blogged about attending The Monti in May, a delightful couple of hours and six intriguing stories. Jeff Polish is creating an amazing initiative, and I hope I can collaborate with him soon.
After eight years with cell phones, and very few minutes ever spoken on my phones, I’ve hit a tipping point: I’m so busy that I have far less time to use e-mail to communicate with family and friends, and I’ve discovered that an earphone connected to my cellphone or the Bluetooth connection to the Sentra’s radio allow me call more people more often.
I’ve been updating DeKalb88.com over the last few days, posting pictures of the reunion and, today, the slideshow that my buddy Rob Deemer prepared for the dinner presentation. Rob’s an in-demand composer of classical and jazz music, and I’m thinking of commissioning him to write a theme for me, the mistersugar montage, perhaps.
In the mail today, a thoughtful and handwritten card from Kevin Hale, a developer at Wufoo.com thanking me for being a loyal customer (I use Wufoo for the registration and feedback forms for BlogTogether, DeKalb88 and Duke Medicine). Previously, Wufoo sent me a holiday card, and this company is still the only one — of online or off-line companies — that’s ever bothered to personalize its gratitude for my business. Thank you, Wufoo.
My aunt and uncle and cousins are visiting this weekend, up from South Carolina to check out the schools and jobs and homes of the Triangle. And, a few paragraphs ago, a call from Erin’s brother, Tim, who’s in Durham this weekend with his family; they live in Charlotte, but we rarely see them, so we’ll try to juggle lunch with them tomorrow.
The July issue of Inside Duke Medicine is online here.
DHS '88 reunion
I’m back from a weekend trip to DeKalb, Illinois for the 20th anniversary reunion of the DeKalb High School Class of 1988. It was a fabulous set of events, and I’m overwhelmed with all the conversations I had with my old friends and classmates. Pictures and a longer post to come (after I dig myself out from under a mountain of tasks and work assignments).
Run, Alice, run
I stepped out of the kitchen tonight to see sports on the television, and as Maria Mutola won her 16th straight 800-meters race at the annual Prefontaine Classic, I recognized the runner behind her: Alice Schmidt.
Alice graduated from the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where I taught her how to make Web pages in the J-50 lab class.
early evening on 06/08/08 in "" |
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Cleveland connections
On The Splendid Table last week (May 31, 2008 show), Raleigh writer and friend Scott Huler reported from Cleveland about the story behind the feuding Stadium Mustard and Ballpark Mustard.
My good friend Richard Gildenmeister is to be honored June 26th by the Cleveland Arts Prize for his 55+ years of selling books and promoting writers in Northern Ohio. One of the writers he’s promoted is also being honored that night— Michael Ruhlman (who I brought to Durham last fall for the BlogTogether food blogging dinner) and chef Michael Symon will share an award.
I checked in with Dennis Dooley, my editor-mentor at Northern Ohio Live, about the Arts Prize (I’d nominated Richard six years ago, when Dennis was a member of the jury), and learned that he’s looking forward to retiring as a writer-for-hire so he can get to some of his own writing projects. Dennis co-edited a book about Superman, Superman at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend. Dennis taught me a valuable lesson about writing and editing one afternoon at Live when we sat down to rewrite a feature article that just wasn’t ready for print.
Brian K. Vaughan, another Live connection (he was an intern with me one summer), is rocketing to well-deserved fame and glory — he’s writing the television show Lost these days, and just sold a screenplay that he’ll help produce into a film about a modern-day knights of the roundtable.
early evening on 06/08/08 in "" |
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Have fun storming the castle
My father just drove off to the airport, where he’ll start his return journey to his home in Hawaii.
“I miss my daddy already,” I said to Erin and the girls as we stood in the driveway, watching his car disappear.
“But you’re a grownup already,” said Anna.
“Grownups can miss their daddies, too,” said Erin.
early morning on 05/31/08 in "" |
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