From Crayons and Perfume to Smartboard Jungle-Finale

But besides English class and writing for the school newspapers, high school sucked. I ended up going to Queens College and majoring in mass communications. I had my own radio show on WQMC and wrote for the QC Quad. I got to take liberal arts courses that I was interested in. Sociology. Psychology. Political science. History. Urban Studies.  Anthropology. Acting. Media. I did not have to bother with boring crap that I knew was useless. (Sorry, but for me that would include any kind of advanced math or science courses). Again, I met professors who cared. There was Sue D., a fellow cat enthusiast who was a real attorney and taught two of my favorite courses in Freedom of Speech and Media, Law and Ethics. (Is there such a thing as ethics in media?) Sue was a beautiful soft-spoken long-haired red head, who became a friend and mentor. There was also Dr. Harry L., a jovial sociology professor who I took for Sociology 101 and a sociology course in blues, jazz and rock and roll. Dr. L. also mentored me in my two independent study courses—one was on the history and evolution of top forty radio and the other was on the evolution of hero worship in sports, with the emphasis on baseball.  Again, I was having the time of my life, interning at WCBS-FM, our local oldies radio station, working alongside radio legends like Cousin Brucie Morrow, Ron Lundy and Bob Shannon, who were all so incredibly nice to me and encouraged me to pursue my passions. 

Happy times at Queens College!

Not just a radio station...more like a religion to me. Happiest times ever were interning here!

 

It was funny. Even back in college, I was not into what was new at the time—like Madonna, Boy George or George Michael. Nope. My radio show would feature the Monkees, Beatles, Hollies and all the hits from the sixties and seventies. Dr. L. joked, “You are an old soul. You have the musical tastes of a forty year old.” True.

It was so cool. What other college kid had the Bob Shannon of WCBS-FM help her write a college paper on early rock and roller Louis Jordan? What other college kid got to sit in the living room of Cousin Brucie’s Greenwich Village flat while he personally gave her the history of top forty radio and explain his special relationship with fans? I was very lucky to have so many special mentors.

I got to meet the Beav back in college when I could never take no for an answer!

Here is another college memory of a pop culture fan with passion. Back in the mid 1980’s, our local Channel 5 began running reruns of the 50’s sitcom, Leave it to Beaver. I literally became obsessed with the show! I had never seen it before. It was never broadcast in NYC when I was younger. Just found it extremely warm and fuzzy. In fact, I wrote some bizarre script for my college screenwriting class where I spun Beaver and his brother Wally through time.-from the sixties through the 80’s and put them on different TV. shows including Late Night with David Letterman. Totally kooky and in retrospect, probably not very well written. I was lucky to end up with an A- for the course. One day, the Beav, Jerry Mathers was on the Regis show, promoting work he was doing with March of Dimes and the new Still the Beaver series. I was like, Oh my God! The Beav is in town. I have to meet him! Back then, you try telling me what I wanted to do was stupid. That would have given me even more ammunition to go for it.

So I called up Channel Seven and asked them to put me in touch with Mr. Mathers. “We’re not supposed to do that,” a publicist told me. I begged and pleaded. So finally, I got the number of  a March of Dimes publicist who told me that the Beav was going to be at a local medical center. She gave me the time and place. It was a rainy day. I was soaking wet. Somehow I tracked him down. He was not expecting to see me and there I was dripping wet with my notebook and tape recorder. My hair was frizzed to the max from the rain. Yet he took pity and sat with me for nearly an hour, fielding questions. I took a few pictures with him and did get the interview published in the QC Quad (the Queens College newspaper).

Spent some time as a baseball reporter but so much more interested in the human-personal aspect than the actual game itself.

When I graduated college, I began pursuing my journalism career. My first real paying job was as a baseball dictationist in the sports department of the Associated Press. That was in 1989. I was a huge Mets fan and actually got to do some baseball writing and work on the actual baseball box scores that ended up in the newspapers everyday. The hours sucked. Twelve hour shifts. I worked nights until at least 1 a.m. and sometimes until 3:00 a.m. Weekends. One day I was in the middle of my shift and just took off my headset, put it down and walked away. I proved to myself that I could do it—be a woman in a predominantly male dominated field. I worked at the AP for about six months. But a little light bulb went off. This was not really what I wanted to do. Baseball was cool. However, when I wrote about it, it was more about the people and heart of the game, rather than the game itself. I would talk to the players about their struggles to make it, who their heroes were when they were growing up and what it was like for them to be role models to kids. I’d talk to them about their own families and personal hobbies and interests. One of my favorite stories was writing about a minor league baseball player who spent nearly ten years in the minor leagues, hanging on to his dreams. I spent time with his wife and daughter. Great people. I was thrilled when he finally got called up.

So I realized I was not really a sports reporter as much as I was a human-interest reporter. The stuff I liked writing about had really nothing to do with the technical aspects of the game. Besides, I would get really sad when a couple of my favorite players would get traded, released or move on to another team.  Too attached. Move on. I had to. In a good year, I earned about $3,000-$4,000 from my baseball features in local newspapers and some magazines (including Baseball Digest, Sport, Beckett Sports Card publications & Baseball America). You can’t exactly earn a living like that. So mom suggested, “Become a teacher!” Eww, I thought. Couldn’t wait to get the hell out of school. I spent twelve years there. I am not even sure that I like kids all that much. Why would I want to do that? But okay. I’ll give it a shot. I can still write on the side. After school. Weekends. Summers. It seemed like a decent plan.

So in the summer of 1990, I began volunteering at the local YMCA and taking some transition classes I needed. Since I was not an education major as an undergraduate, there were four courses I had to take before I could pursue my masters in education. In the fall, I began student teaching and continuing with the transition courses. So I was on my way.