Hello Everyone,
As you all know, last week was a busy one for all the wrong reasons. I won’t repeat the entire announcement that I issued, but I just want to reiterate that there were both server and email service issues that were unrelated. The server issues caused the magazine to be sent in a random fashion, missing many readers. I resent the magazine twice more; once on Tuesday and again on Thursday. Some of you wrote to inform me that you received the magazine three times. Others have written that they have yet to receive it at all. To those who found repeats in their inbox, I really appreciate your patience. To those who have yet to receive it, please check your spam or junk mail folders as the magazine may have ended up there.
Concerning the email problems, it seems that the spam filtering that has been implemented is too restrictive and was causing emails sent by readers to be either tagged as spam or simply deleted altogether. Obviously, this will be unacceptable. As a result, our new email address is editor@matildaziegler.com and is run through a Gmail interface and controlled by our technology consultant. Problems should be few and far in between from now on.
I also want to apologize to those of you who sent in emails on Thursday afternoon and Friday. Unfortunately, I left the office early on Thursday because I was not feeling well, and spent all day Friday with a 103 degree fever. Not exactly the way I wanted to spend my birthday, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. It seems that I came down with some odd 48 hour bug that left me just about as quick as it came. Hopefully in leaving me, it didn’t end up going to someone else.
Recently, I’ve been receiving a few emails asking for me to give a little more information about myself. Since I’ve already told you how I spent my birthday, I figured I would continue on a little bit more. This recent, fever-filled birthday was my twenty fifth and the first time that a Friday the 13th has ever been an unlucky day for me. It seems there’s a first time for everything, I guess. I am sighted, though I do wear glasses in certain circumstances, mainly driving at night and especially driving at night when it’s raining. Managing this magazine marks two firsts for me: the first time managing a publication, and the first time I’ve worked with the visually impaired in any capacity. In next week’s issue I will go into my experience with the magazine in more detail in an article I’ve been working on called “From the Outside Looking In.”
When I initially graduated high school, I wanted to go into accounting. It was more of a desire to do what my father did than actually knowing what path I wanted to take. I saw that he was successful, I knew that I wanted to be successful, so it made sense at the time. I’ve come to learn that no college freshman has any idea what they want to do in school or in life. Asking them that question is akin to asking them what their favorite kind of pizza is. Their answer will change day to day, and depends on where they’re buying it from.
I became immediately aware that accounting was not for me. The class was far too early in the morning, the teacher far too cheerful (almost eerily so) for that hour, and the material was the polar opposite of stimulating. I knew that if this was going to be my career, I would not enjoy it.
After I dropped accounting as my major, I floated around from topic to topic, trying to find the best fit. I considered philosophy, after taking a very good course witha great professor, but I decided that the only thing I could become witha philosophy degree was a professor, or at the very least, a well-spoken street performer who would stimulate the minds of the people passing by with rhetoric about the existence of ethics and truth or have a one man debate about Descartes’s famous “I think, therefore I am” pronouncement. Neither position seemed to suit me.
I next decided that meteorology would be fun. I remembered studying weather patterns in high school and I always enjoyed watching the weather channel and predicting what would happen based on the Doppler radar pictures. Unfortunately, the University of Connecticut did not have a program for that major, so that dream fizzled out as fast as a passing thunderstorm.
I then considered another love of mine: the outdoors. Namely, landscaping. My father had worked me to the bone in our yard, teaching me how to construct everything from plant beds to a highly complex three tier coy pond and water garden that he and I designed and built together. By the time I was older, I grew to appreciate it and thought that it might be fun to design other people’s outdoor living spaces. This idea died quickly as well, though. It turns out that I’m a terrible artist, and landscape design requires quite a bit of drawing. My father and I always drew with our shovels, creating as we went along. In the real world, I guess it just doesn’t work that way.
Landscape design led me to another consideration, though. While I may not be a good artist, I do know how to work a shovel and, better yet, can teach others how to work a shovel well. That’s when turf management came into the light. I envisioned taking care of some of the country’s most beautiful golf courses, watching my work and the work of my team on television as professionals teed off and made game-winning putts on the grass I so painstakingly cared for. This actually almost became my path, and the only thing that stopped me was a meeting with my student advisor.
I remember that meeting well. She looked at the courses I had taken, which was kind of like looking at one of those paintings done by artists who dip tennis balls in different colored paint and hurl them at a canvas. Everything was scattered and nothing made much sense. I was on my way to a major in nothing with a minor in half a dozen different subjects. I needed guidance badly. After looking over my transcript, she said to me, “Ross, what are you good at?” It wasn’t in a patronizing tone, either, which wouldn’t have surprised me. She just wanted me to focus my attention on one thing. I thought for a moment, looking up at her as if I was being timed and that my answer needed to come quickly. “Well, the only award I’ve ever won for something that I completed on my own was for a poem that I wrote in high school in my creative writing class. I won $75. I guess I’d have to say I’m pretty good in English.” In retrospect, someone well versed in the English language probably should have ended that statement with, “I’ve done fairly well in most of my English courses,” but it seemed to satisfy her and we moved on.
“Well, why haven’t you considered becoming an English major?” she asked. I told her that I liked the subject but that I did not want to become a teacher. She let out a brief laugh and reached into her desk to retrieve a sheet of paper. By the way she grabbed it, I could tell that she had reached there more than just a few times before. It was like Wyatt Earp reaching for his Peacemaker. She presented me with a green sheet of paper with “What you can do with an English major” printed across the top. From there, it listed countless professions in nearly every field imaginable and I was surprised that it could be a springboard to so many lucrative jobs. I was faced with a choice: become an English major, or groom and prune some golf course somewhere. At that point, the choice was easy; English it was.
While my diploma doesn’t reflect it, my more detailed major was English with a focus on creative writing and poetry and literature analysis. I minored in history. Much to the chagrin of many of my professors, I cannot tell you what a past participle is or why, even if it sounds correct, you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. It’s not that they failed to teach it to me, it’s just that I was too busy paying attention to what the words meant, rather than why they were placed in the sentence the way they were. It’s why I can tell you what is going on in any passage of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” or the significance of each different wine presented in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” This trait upset some professors, until the essays were passed in and they discovered that I actually did know what I was talking about.
Becoming an English major was probably the best choice I’ve made for myself so far. It made me a better writer and a well-rounded person, intellectually speaking. It also landed me this job, which has been fantastic. In all of those jobs that were listed on my advisor’s little green sheet, “Magazine Editor” may have been there, but it wasn’t one I would have ever thought that I’d have and I feel incredibly lucky because of it.
I hope that my little story wasn’t too long-winded, but I wanted to give you all a little bit of a glimpse into part of what made me who I am today.
I hope you all have a great week. Take care, and thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Ross Hammond, Editor