Changing the story
This is the seventh "Out of Ink" personal essay published at marshallnews.com.
This post originally was originally written for The Marshall Democrat-News.
I won’t be in the newsroom Friday afternoon, I have a century to celebrate.
The matriarch of my mother’s family turns 100 this week. 100
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That’s as far as I got with that post. I started writing it shortly after the new year and intended to finish it before my Aunt Kitty celebrated her 100th birthday on Jan. 20, 2012.
Even though the first 25 words don’t allude to it, I had planned to research Saline County buildings and legends. In honor of my aunt’s centennial, I wanted to prove she was sharper than a century-old story on yellowing pages and sturdier than an antiqued building.
As my deadlines began to pile in early January, I worried I wouldn’t actually finish the centennial blog post. That document sat in our “To Be Edited” folder. Untouched.
The Friday before her birthday, the 25 words glared back at me. The blinking text bar mocked me with every pulse. With each movement the bar seemed to say “get-it-done-girl.” I still hadn’t gone to the genealogy room in the Marshall Public Library, nor had I successfully turned this remarkable St. Louis-based woman into something worth publishing in Saline County. I had seven days though, certainly, I’d finish it. I closed the document and returned to the news.
I never finished the blog post.
Five days before her 100th birthday, I wrote my aunt’s eulogy instead.
Two weeks before her centennial, my aunt took a tumble. We were going to have to buy her sunglasses for her birthday. A lump with more colors than Funfetti cake wasn’t going to match the beige three-piece birthday outfit. My mom said Aunt Kitty maintained her spirits though, feisty as always.
The same Friday afternoon that text bar terrorized me, I contemplated a journey home. I thought I might be the pick-me-up Aunt Kitty needed to get out of the hospital and back into her assisted living facility–shiner and all, she had a birthday party to attend in a week.
Christmas 2007 Marshall Democrat-News reporter Maggie Menderski's Aunt Kitty, front and center, is just days away from her 96th birthday. She's pictured with her great-great nieces and nephews back, Andrew, Molly and Maggie. Front, Maggie's older brother Jim.
“You know you’re going to go,” my editor told me, as I tried to talk myself out of driving all the way back to St. Louis. The holidays had forced me home four times in the past six weeks. Driving up Interstate 70 seemed silly when I’d be returning the following weekend for her birthday party.
To no one’s surprise, I drove home.
My Aunt Kitty died just hours after my arrival, and I had the privilege of holding her hand as she passed.
As the writer of the family, once my aunt finished her 99th year in good health, everyone expected me to compose an article dubbing her a centenarian. Before she passed, I’d promised myself I’d finish something, whether it be for my “Out of Ink” blog or the article the community newspaper in St. Louis had requested. I would write something.
That Saturday, I sat in a regal funeral home writing something. An obituary.
After the funeral, I returned to the newsroom to find “AUNT KITTY’S 100TH BIRTHDAY” in big bold letters on my desk calendar. In my desk drawer, I found a yellow Post-it with my aunt’s address scribbled on it. Some people take smoke breaks, I used to take a few spare moments in my day to write my aunt. Lately, I’ve been drawing instead. Fortunately, the newsroom has embraced my coping mechanism. I drew our agriculture reporter a picture of her horse, and a few swift motions turned our news clerk into Super Girl. As I worked through my daily duties, the “To Be Edited” folder mocked me with this very file. I’d started a story, and I’d never finished it.
A few weeks ago my editor reminded me that sometimes the story changes as you write it. Sometimes you have to make adjustments to a work-in-progress to cope with reality. This is true in journalism, and this is true in life.
I never truly tied this remarkable St. Louis-based woman to Saline County, beyond that there’s a Marshall-based reporter who misses her a lot.
Forgive me for not writing the story I’d originally wanted to tell you, it changed before it was done.
If home is where the heart is, then my home is in my car.
I’m the kind of girl who refers to her car as “he” and her co-worker’s baby as “it.”
Driving the streets of small-town Missouri.
Gunner’s mom brought him to the office one afternoon, and I gawked awkwardly at the bundle in the bassinet. I bluntly refuse to hold babies. Yet friends and family have watched in terror, as I stroke my car’s Tinker Bell steering wheel cover and call the Oldsmobile a “good boy.”
I’ve always had an intimate relationship with my car. I paid hard-earned cash for the beauty at age 20. Someone once told me not to name a puppy unless you intend to keep it. Just days after the purchase, I affectionately named him Sean. He’ll never go back to pound, he’ll be with me until he dies.
My junior year of college, Sean and I spent two months together losing our way in Kansas City. My senior year he drove me through the backwoods of Columbia, as I tried to sort out my life. He brought me to my St. Louis base whenever I needed a taste of home, and he helped me fly when the time came to leave college and start my first job.
To me, that car is the perfect combination of familiarity and freedom.
An old flame once asked why things didn’t work out with us. I told him I’d never love any man as much as I love my career and my car.
Several months later, I’m just starting to comprehend the accuracy of that statement.
Now that I’ve plopped down in rural Missouri for that career thing I’ve always dreamed about, some days the only comfortable and familiar place I have is my car. I sleep in a bright yellow and lime green bedroom. While my Missouri School of Journalism diploma hangs on the wall, it rests just above a border of skateboards. This room was never intended for me, and while I’ve grown comfortable here — it’s not home.
Each day I drive past farms and combines, and I daydream of my city of concrete three hours east. Sure, the inside of the local Applebee’s looks just like every other Applebee’s across the country, including the one near my parents’ home in St. Louis. But the cornfield that sits near it might as well be the rocky surface of Mars.
When I first moved here, friendly faces were nearly as skimp as high-rise buildings. My cell phone always had an eager ex-roommate, parent or sassy gay friend on the other end offering shreds of encouragement laced with a constant “come back” theme. While they tried, my car often provided more comfort.
When I shook my fist at the sky and wondered why I’d ended up in rural Missouri, Sean made sure my radio dialed into Rascal Flatt’s “Won’t Let Go.” When a sour source left me disheartened, my roadly companion blared Bombshell’s “Fight Like a Girl.” Less than two months into my career, my college boyfriend and I split. I suddenly lost the comfort of a regularly scheduled nighttime phone call, a good friend and the last two years of my life. Yet, Sean never deserted me. My favorite boy ensured “Love Done Gone” climbed to the top of the country music charts, and he played it for me daily.
My father, a mechanical perfectionist, has often mocked me for the cleanliness of my car. He sees my backseat full of shoes, reporter’s notebooks and spare clothing as a disgrace to the automotive industry. I see it as necessary. Some people joke they live out of their car, and I almost wish I could. The dusty gray interior is the only familiar space I have in the whole county. I moved to Marshall with two carloads of amenities and minimal furniture. The bed I sleep in is not my own, the dresser I use will stay here when I leave.
As a journalist, my life will always be uncertain. I intend to follow the job. While a boy or my family may not be able to travel with me, thank God my car will. Until the last sputter of his engine, I’ll always have that familiar space.
News to me
Maggie and the news clerk (the wonderful, amazing and charming Bretta) volunteering for the company car show.
This time last year, I’d already started applying for jobs. While I scribbled off applications to places as far as California and as close as St. Louis, I never really thought about what my first job would look like. I imagined I’d write, but I never really planned for the slew of oddities and additional tasks. After seven months on the job, I’ve finally come to terms with most of the things I’ve listed below. Some transitions have been smoother than others.
- Not only do I carry a camera everywhere I go, I’ve had nearly as many photos published as stories.
- Someone actually ran one of those photos on the cover of magazine.
- The news staff has dubbed me the office grammar authority.
- I miss having a higher grammar authority. I long for those phone calls from the Columbia Missourian copy desk “Hi, this is [insert random copy student here] at the Missourian. I’ve got your story in front of me, and it was a really great read BUT…”
- I proudly displayed the most expensive piece of paper I own on the lime green skateboard shelf above my bed. This shelf matches the skateboard boarder and highlighter yellow and green walls in my bedroom. I rent a room in a woman’s home, and this cozy bungalow once belonged to an 8-year-old child.
- I cover the Saline County Historical Preservation Committee. My editor is the chairman. I have to report on my editor. Awkward.
- Jeans are acceptable in my newsroom, and boots are encouraged. I finally learned this after sacrificing many of my favorite shoes to rural Missouri gravel roads and farmland.
- Not only do I do layouts, I’m actively participating in my paper’s redesign.
- I spent Christmas and Thanksgiving with my family, and New Years Eve with my friends. What do you know? On holidays news does stop in community journalism.
- After two years of unpaid reporting experiences, someone finally started dumping money in my checking account for writing. Whoa.
Things you won’t find on my resume, part 1
I’ve littered my resume and portfolio with journalistic experience and achievements, but I’ve yet to find room for those special skills editors, publishers and bosses never seem to ask about — or care about. There’s always more to the journalist than the resume implies, and on rare occasions that more comes in handy in the newsroom.
Community journalism fuels my newspaper. We print everything from meeting minutes discussing teas and crumpets to letters from Santa Claus. Our small market has an equally small staff, and consequently, we lack a few key players in the journalism process. Our news staff of six may be missing copy editors, photographers and designers, but the proofing, designing and photographing still happens. We collectively do everything.
I fumble with a camera.
I cling to my AP Stylebook and dictionary.
I curse at Quark.
But my resume will tell you that, even if it omits the words “fumble,” “cling” and “curse” and replaces them with “proficient,” “intermediate” and “expert.”
At the dawn of the new year, the news staff discussed potential changes to the paper. We’ve considered trying new typography, running photos larger, placing homespun content on the inside pages as well as altering how we present our weather section. While the magazine design and visual communication classes I took at Mizzou have fueled some of the design updates, so has my experience as an art camp counselor. In an effort to incorporate even more community elements in the paper, we may begin running children’s illustrations in our weather box.
So, we needed some prototypes, and fortunately this mediocre wanna-be artist was up to the challenge. Could I use nothing more than a black marker, and create shrinkable weather renderings?
See for yourself:
WIND
SUNNY
THUNDERSTORM
TORNADO!
My artistic abilities (or lack there of) may not fit on my resume, but they certainly came in handy today. Maybe eventually my pirouettes, office chair acrobatics and balloon-bouquet abilities will as well.
An Arrow Rock Carol
My most recent project has generated a surplus of commentary from the community. The detailed, passionate (and somewhat howler-like) responses from these townsfolk only confirms my belief that this story needed to be told. It took a month of footwork, but I’m exceptionally pleased with the final product.
When I started reporting this fire department story, I realized I couldn’t just write about the issue. I needed to explain where the department started, the organization’s present financial limitations as well as the most recent conflict threatening its future. As I focused on the fire department’s past, present and future, it reminded me of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” Unfortunately, I didn’t have three ghosts to guide me through my reporting. However, I was blessed with a group of passionate sources and community members. Each has striven to improve and maintain their community, and each was a joy to work with.
Hey family—just in case you forgot—I’m a journalist.
With my salary and time commitments, what did you expect?
A big thank you to the Democrat-News for providing the wrapping paper for my Christmas gifts.
I don’t think The Marshall Democrat-News has ever looked so glamorous.
My grown-up Christmas list
For the first time in more than a decade, I wrote a letter to Santa.
Not kidding. I sat down at Macy's, and I wrote to Santa.
This year, I didn’t ask for a Magic Copier or Princess Wishing Star. (You know those toys kids think they can’t live without? Circa age 6 and 8, those were mine.)
I asked him for a challenge.
While I’ve covered some highly endearing small-town Christmas pageants this month, I miss the thrill of enterprise reporting and the intensity of the Missouri School of Journalism. Even if Santa can’t slip a challenge under my Christmas tree, perhaps I can create one myself. My resolution for 2012 is to incorporate more serious journalism into my life as a community journalist.
For those of you that don't remember the magic copier, it looked like this.
So while Santa processed my request in the mailroom at the North Pole, I started Christmas shopping. For the first time since high school, I actually had money to buy presents for my friends and family. Oddly enough, even with the cash in hand, I wished I could give them more. My friend may enjoy the scarf I knitted her, but I wish I could give her peace of mind about the upcoming year. I gave another friend a giant picture of the Cardinals winning the World Series, but I’d rather have given him the boost he needs to finish up his degree.
Challenges. Confidence. Peace of mind. My grown-up Christmas list, and lately, it just keeps growing.
Merry Christmas.
Slowing down
This post originally published at marshallnews.com.
Maggie and Bryan, New Years Eve 2010.
Last Christmas Eve, my friend Bryan and I tucked ourselves into a pew near an elegant Nativity scene, as hundreds of people clad in red and green filed in the seats around us. The midnight ceremony began with a deep, booming voice proclaiming the lineage of Christ. Brilliant poinsettias lined the alter, as the archbishop processed in behind a rendering of the Christ child. For Bryan, this elaborate display at the St. Louis Basilica ignited a Christmas spirit, and in a way, he was right. I won’t deny the Christmássy feeling.
But he hadn’t seen Christmas like I had earlier that afternoon.
Mere hours before, I’d attended Christmas Eve mass with my mother. We shuffled through the doors of St. Bernadette’s Catholic Church, a quaint parish on Jefferson Barracks Military Post near my parents’ home in South St. Louis County. As expected, ten minutes before Christmas Eve mass, an overflowing congregation filled the church. With no room to sit or stand, Father let a handful of us sit in the abandoned choir loft.
I witnessed two different kinds of spirit that Christmas. At the Basilica, I saw the glory of the holiday exemplified with elaborate decorations, detailed ceremony and symbolism. But at St. Bernadette’s, I saw a humanistic kind of beauty, as my mother and I joined an intimate crowd in that dusty choir loft.
This is the sixth "Out of Ink" personal essay published at marshallnews.com.
Above the congregation, we formed our own little community. One man cleared off a bench for an elderly woman, and a child peered over the edge, eager to see the Christ child in the manger.
As a Mizzou senior, my Christmas holidays were stifled by winter finals and last-minute, online Christmas shopping. When the holidays become systematic, sometimes, the meaning behind them can too. While sitting in that loft, I felt a holiday magic I hadn’t known since the days of waiting for Santa and pasting paper Marys and Josephs to cardboard stables.
My mother says there’s beauty in simplicity. While her words of wisdom rarely penetrate my own ego, sometimes, I slow down enough to listen to her.
There’s a certain appeal to city life, but I cannot deny a pleasant, humbleness to my new rural Missouri home–even if I occasionally overlook it. As a former suburbanite, sometimes small-town charm overwhelms me.
When I complain in the office about the town keeping tabs on everything from my out-of-town visitors (“who was the nice looking boy with the black hair?”) to my hair cut (“I saw you walk to the courthouse today, your new haircut looks fantastic”), my small-town tutor/mentor/friend/confidant/co-worker/sympathizer/The Marshall Democrat-NewsAgriculture Reporter Marcia Gorrell reminds me of the advantages of city-less living.
“People here help each other,” she often tells me. As someone who moved to Marshall after growing up in suburbia, just like I did, she eagerly helps me find peace with my decision to leave home and move to rural Missouri. She, like my mother, sees the beauty in the small things.
Sometimes as a 20-something, I have trouble seeing it.
Maggie enjoying snow — a very rare occurrence. December 2007.
But just like I witnessed the Christmas spirit that day above the congregation at St. Bernadette’s, I found it here in Marshall during the first snow of the year.
Furious at the unplowed roads and the lack of salt thrown on my street, I left my house that morning in a wintery rage. With one swift turn, driving exactly how my father taught me not to, my car flung out and my wheels spun rapidly before halting on the side of the road.
I stood beside my car and stomped angrily in the unplowed snow. I pulled out my cell phone, hoping someone at the office could help me pull my car out of this mess.
This mess, that surely never would have happened on properly salted city streets.
But before I could dial the number, a truck pulled up next to my little mishap. With extreme kindness and utter patience, two strangers helped push me out of the ditch, as Marcia’s refrain played in my head. “People here help each other.” Back home, the first passing city car never would have stopped for me. Also, had my car pirouetted across a busy street, I would have smashed into much more than a curb.
Before I drove off, one of the strangers kindly suggested I “slow down.”
The young man probably meant I should stop driving like a teenager, or that I should avoid frantically stringing my words together.
Perhaps though, I needed a seasonal reminder.
I have a new dent near the front driver’s-side wheel of my car — A constant, bleeding reminder of a poor situation turned into something almost endearing.
The more I think about it, the more that ugly ding in my car looks more Christmássy to me than the ding-dong of a hundred Basilica church bells.
This Christmas, whether you’re at work or home, a Basilica or a dining room, a city or a town, a large family gathering or alone with your dog, I urge you to slow down and find the beauty of the season.
Merry Christmas.
Checking my status
Silly me. I thought a resume packed with internships, a full-time reporting gig and a Mizzou J-degree classified me as a true journalist. A big thank you to Stuff Journalist Like for clearing up this little discrepancy. Unfortunately, I have a long way to go before I earn true journalism status. Here’s how I measured up to their “what it takes to be a journalist” checklist.
✔Written a 15-inch story in 30 minutes ✔Corrected a loved one’s grammar in a greeting card ❒Own your own police scanner ❒Eat in your car more often than you do at a table ❒Gotten fired/laid off for no good reason ✔Forgotten what it’s like to have the weekend off ✔Can no longer read a newspaper without scanning for typos and errors ✔Learned that being told to “fuck off “ and “go to hell” is part of the job ❒Woke in a cold sweat thinking you forgot to change the date on A1 ✔Spend your down time coming up with the perfect lede ❒Slept in your car and not because you were too drunk to drive home ✔Found that fine line between harassment and persistence ❒If you needed bail, the first person you would call would be your editor ✔You analyze city council meetings the way sportscasters break down Monday night football ✔You think it’s normal to work 16 hours a day for 8 hours pay ❒Have conducted a phone interview while completely naked ✔Can write an entire interview on a cocktail napkin ✔Threatened to quit over an editorial decision ✔You couldn’t imagine doing anything else Looks like Mizzou’s J-school failed me on a few crucial points. Oh well, it’s something to strive for…Clause I’m royal
Lately, my editor has joked about changing my byline from “Maggie Menderski/Staff Writer” to “Maggie Menderski/Grammar Queen.” With such a small news staff (and a lack of a copy editor), I edit the front and back page each day. I find the dangling modifiers, plug in hyphens and call out the clauses by name.
And, I drive the news staff nuts.
My purple editing pen and I have started a newsroom trend. The terms “edit” and “proof” have become synonymous with a rendition of my name.
Well when the time came for our ag reporter to publish her yearly Agriculture magazine, the Grammar Queen accepted a 60-page challenge. After three rounds of maggifying edits, the ag reporter took drastic measures.
One afternoon I found this hanging above my desk.
"Goodbie Crool Werldd"
Apparently, the pen couldn’t handle the stress of maggification. Well, it died for a good cause. This is the first time I’ve popped up as an editor in a masthead. See below.
