Leaving aside this second half of life epiphany, and looking back, I simply loved the class. Being 15 years old and writing for a publication that was read by a thousand or so people was a marvelous experience. I just wish at the time someone had told us that if we stayed in it for a career, we would eventually be, just dumb. Might have led a few of my friends down a different path.
Here's how I finally decided:
I'm finishing off a book by David McCullough about the Wright brothers. It is hugely entertaining history - as the author always produces. When McCullough writes: "They had done it." I can hear him speaking. After Orville and Wilbur flew a winged machine powered by a gasoline engine at Kitty Hawk four times in one afternoon, they genuinely had made history. And no one, least of all the mainstream press, reported on it.
Not even when they both returned to Dayton and Huffman Prairie in Ohio and began perfecting their machine. The press paid them no attention as they buzzed for months over a neighbor's pastureland. Years later when the editor of the local newspaper was asked why they had not noticed the Wrights and their flying machine, he responded: "I guess we were just plain dumb."
Last Sunday I watched Face the Nation with the usual cast of opinionators - and the subject of Brexit came up. Here is a quote from New York Times Magazine chief national correspondent Mark Leibovich:
"I also think that there's several months -- or four or five months now that are going to pass in which fallout is going to be experienced in 401(k)s, you know, at least on the global stage where this becomes less of an abstraction and more of a reality that people are going to be voting on."
He uses the word fallout - as in your 401k is going to lose money because of Brexit.
Today is day six after the Brexit votes were counted and the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq have all recovered the week's losses. They could and probably will, of course, drop below last thursday's levels. But concluding that they will crash and why that will happen is simply impossible - even for a guy who is a chief at anything or anywhere - including the NY Times.
Dumb.
Previously in that same show, we were introduced by the host to Anthony Salvanto - CBS News director of elections. Seriously, that is exactly the title CBS' official transcript provided.
Sometimes a title is so preposterous, you can't think of a word to descibe why CBS chooses to call him that. I'll do it.
Dumb.
They were dumb in Ben Franklin's day. Dumb in Dayton, 1904. And dumb at CBS today. If I flew my airplane with the average reporter's skill level, we would crash every other flight and land at the wrong airport the other times.
