You cn't please everyone

 

I do my best to avoid controversy with this column. But in over 60-plus years of writing, it is impossible to stay completely out of trouble. Now it’s confession time:

--In 1964 my publisher wrote an editorial against me when I sided with the city of Dover, Del., after It refused residents’ request to widen a street. That’s OK—he wrote editorials denouncing his wife too!

--I only heard the expression “Stop the Presses!” Once in my career. It wasn’t my doing, but the Pittsburgh Press dropped a line out of a recipe. Now that is serious!

--Once I wrote “Continued on Page 4” in editing a front-page Press story in 1966, and it was really continued on Page  11. My editor told me, “Mike, 40,000 people are going to be mad at you!” I quit shortly afterward.

--I announced the wrong date for a nuclear test in a  Las Vegas story for The Associated Press in 1966. Coincidentally, I had an interview with the local atomic energy director the same day, and it kept getting interrupted by phone calls from confused news media.

--I called the FBI after I opened the mail at the San Francisco bureau and found a threat from the notorious Weathermen in 1970. But I ignored the second letter I opened, a death threat against the visiting prime minister of Japan. “This is just some nut,” I decided. But others found the note later and got the FBI hoppping again.

--The Carter administration got upset when I wrote in Washington that Americans were not keeping up with inflation in 1978. They sent one of their experts to “educate” me. But I was right!

--In a report on Appalachia in 1984, I wrote that I had seen “people with corn-cob pipes.”. A U.S. News & World Report reader insisted I made that up because that never happens. I think he was right-I felt bad about it. Fake news!

--We got sued for a derogatory article about Vietnam veterans that I excerpted for a “Publisher’s Memo” that I wrote in the publisher’s name. But since it had his name on it, he had to testify in court in 1985, Avoided that one!

--I got dozens of angry phone calls at Satellite Orbit magazine when we dropped the TV listings for a religious channel in 1991. Apparently we were the only publication that listed them.

--But sometimes there was vindication. I wrote that the EPA was going to to impose tough sanctions on Philadelphia because of its air pollution. The Philadelphia Inquirer published an article saying I was wrong. My boss stood by me. But several weeks later, the sanctions were handed down. A loyal reader of the Kiplinger Letter in Philadelphia faxed me the true story. “Doan was right!” He wrote.  Yay!!!

--Drawing by Ron Miller

 

 

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Southside's link with Spain

Fourteen young women spent their junior year of college in Madrid in 1963-64. Now, as senior ladies, many of them have  gotten together four  times in Cluster Springs in the last 25 years.

Eight  of “Las Chicas,” as they call themselves, met in March at classmate Pickett Craddock’s home, Oak Grove Bed and Breakfast.

A highlight of the women’s visit is a regular trip to Paco’s Spanish tapas restaurant in South Boston. Before opening his establishment in 2024, Paco Arrocha catered several of their dinners. Now they dine at his restaurant at least twice on each visit, conversing with him and his staff in the language they learned 62 years ago.

This time Arrocha found a video with scenes from 1960s Spain on YouTube and posted them on the restaurant’s TV screen.

“I think he is excited to have us there because we speak Spanish and of our experiences in Spain,” says Sara Jane Hartman of New York.  “It is so wonderful to feel so genuinely welcomed, and the food is genuinely Spanish.”

One of the Chicas is Meredith Carter Patterson, who grew up with Craddock in Halifax County. She lives now in Burlington,N.C.

““ When we get together it is so special becausenobody else understand how wonderful that year was for us,” she says. “As American students, we were given special treatment by wonderful teachers.”

 

Both Patterson  and Craddock attended Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., where the program was led by their teacher Dorothy Mulberry. This teacher also visited Oak Grove at one of their reunions.

How did Craddock get involved in the program? “I majored in Spanish just so I could go to Spain,” she says.

The 14 young women  stayed at residents’ homes, learning about Spanish culture from professors and picking up the language too. Julie Rawson of Vancouver, Wash., still communicates with one family that hosted her all those years ago.

Several became Spanish teachers. Craddock did not, but the Spanish was useful in arranging an adoption from Honduras and conversing with a foster child from Guatemala and one foster child’s parents.

I attended most breakfasts and one dinner with the group myself, and I played the piano while they sang  an old Spanish song that had no sheet music.

I did enjoy some of our conversations, but I don’t have the appetite for talking that they have. I marvel at how they can all converse  for hours on end for several days. I suspect that the bond they formed over this novel experience was a very strong one.

Viva las chicas!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arming myself for combat

It’s almost time to prepare for battle against dangerous intruders. These aggressive invaders are trying to destroy our way of life. They’re not the Viet Cong, the Taliban nor Al-Qaeda. They are  bamboo stalks!

On our Cluster Springs property, my wife, Pickett, is the creator. She plants bulbs and seeds that lead to beautiful flowers. I am the destroyer, the marauder challenging overhanging branches and expanding bushes too big for their britches.

About 100 years ago, one of Pickett’s ancestors planted a small patch of bamboo, thinking it would be a pretty addition to the farm. It spread quickly, and now it takes up 5 of our 400 acres. I’ll admit it looks nice, but it would double or triple in size if we left for a year and never cut anything back.

So it is my task to take clippers and cut down every new stalk I see. Frequently I come back from the battle with war wounds: cuts from the thorns from other plants it hides behind.

 Do my attacks kill the bamboo? No. I can’t cut that deep. It just keeps it from growing enough to spread further through an underground network of roots. If I keep the stalks from sprouting leaves, it drains them of energy.

The invasion is the worst in May, when bamboo pops up seemingly overnight. The ones I missed are the easiest to spot the next winter, when their leaves are the only green things amidst the bare trees.

Some years ago, a distant bamboo society came to inspect the huge strand, but they couldn’t take our bamboo with them. People have suggested getting pandas, but that’s quite impractical. They wouldn’t get along with our dogs anyway. Maybe there is a way to poison the bamboo, but Pickett is opposed to pesticides.

A few weeks ago she found someone who can eradicate the bamboo with a process called forestry mulching,  but at a high cost. Then  I thought, “What? A huge bare spot outside our kitchen window? It would take months, years, for trees to replace it. Leave it there!

So I guess I will lead an infantry attack on bamboo until I am no longer physically able. Here is a a secret that I will share with you: I actually enjoy it!