Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Dad, you have no idea*

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My dad used to tell a story about his silver-haired steel-executive father visiting the big office Dad got when they made him creative director of the Detroit ad agency, Campbell-Ewald.

"Bud," said the old man, gaping in astonishment that pleased and pained my dad for the rest of his life. "Are you this good?"

Dad's gone now, but sometimes I imagine him looking around my little home office, strewn with my papers and kid's toys and empty cans, coffee cups and granola bar wrappers, and asking: "Bud, are you this bad?"

* Yes, I do realize I've been talking about my parents even more than usual here. Maybe it's the time of year—my mom died on Thanksgiving, 1990, and dad departed January 2009. I often say I don't miss them because they're still here, but maybe that's a load of bullshit.

There’ll be lots of drinking in heaven

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Last night in bed in Vanity Fair, I read Christopher Hitchens' typically astonishingly convincing contrarian  argument that Jackie Kennedy was only classy to the classless. "I am once again visited with that vague feeling that the lovely widow has actually rather lowered the tone," he said. And this morning I see that he, like she, is dead.

“Writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that—or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation—is worth it to me,” Hitchens said after being diagnosed with throat cancer. He said he had no regrets because it was “impossible for me to imagine having my life without going to those parties, without having those late nights, without that second bottle.”

And though he was quite clear about not believing in heaven, I will allow myself to hope.