This was supposed to have been my 500th column, but time and scheduling got away from me.
This adventure began in January 2015 after a particularly egregious HOA meeting when I sent Candy a screed on the loony-ness of my HOA. Candy being Candy, immediately replied wanting to publish the inner dirt. When I woke up the next day, I thought about burning bridges (my own) and asked her if perhaps we could try something more regular and less “shoot myself in the foot”. She agreed to a trial run.
What I didn’t know until much later was that behind the scenes, Candy and executive editor Joanna England were very wary about a putz like me. After all, I have no journalism degree or seeming writing experience. Could I write my way out of a paper bag? It’s been over 500 columns and I’m sure that some days they still wonder what the hell they got themselves into. (Editor’s note: This is accurate.)
Of course I had written before. In a college writing class we were given an assignment to go outdoors, enjoy the spring weather, find a tree to sit under, and write whatever we felt like. I thought it was nonsense and went back to my dorm room to write a suicide letter. I slipped it under the teacher’s door and skipped the next class (teenage schmuckery). I got an “A” and it was read as one of the best papers at the end of the term. During the anonymous reading people gasped and murmured about who might be missing.
Another time, I wrote a review for my college paper of a A Streetcar Named Desire that I titled The Streetcar that Maimed Desire, where I questioned whether the costume designer’s greatest task was thumbing through a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog.
In a copywriting class, I wrote a “brochure” for the school’s English campus that began “… is a great white elephant granting easy credits to the wealthy and academically lame.” I got another “A” because I was one of the few who didn’t plagiarize from the existing brochures.
During my early professional career (after failed interviews to write copy for women’s underwear and promote Ringling Brothers), I found a niche writing internal newsletters with the same tart phrasing you’ve come to expect. The greatest compliment I got was from a secretary who told me she’d never cared what the company did until my newsletter made her laugh and she learned through osmosis.
In my “day job” I continue to write technical documents with a decided corporate-ese bent, occasionally squeezing in a ribald remark, especially when I’m speaking to a room full of people.
Regardless of the venue, my goal is to impart information that’s sometimes complex and/or uncomfortable in a way that is easy to understand and fun to read.
Architecture and Design
Growing up in Chicago, architecture was water-cooler conversation – it’s an architecture town that birthed the high-rise. I know the thrill of experiencing architectural greatness, be it the Frank Lloyd Wright home of childhood friends or standing with my back to a skyscraper and looking up at engineering mastery. My series “Why Can’t Dallas Have Nice Things” tries to impart the world of architecture on a city that lost its way since the greatness of its 1980s skyline (much to the chagrin of local architects).
My friends might have lived in Frank Lloyd Wright, but I grew up in a middle-class, post-WWII Georgian tract home that my mother decorated in reproduction Early American. All that was missing was a spinning wheel. But I was reading looking at the pictures in Architectural Digest and various international design magazines as they filtered through the high school library. This resulted in bigger design eyes than checkbook and led me into renovation.
My first house had been a college rental house for decades, filled with leaks and cockroaches. I spent two weeks cleaning, scraping floors, painting and bug bombing it before I moved in. I’ve gutted every home I’ve owned.
I’ve expanded my writing to include various development and political issues that have made me a few enemies that I wear like a Boy Scout’s merit badges. I firmly believe you’re judged by who likes you as much as who hates you. Council Member Philip Kingston’s comment on a recent story made me howl with laughter (and want to print T-shirts).
“[Jon Anderson] is an idiot and a liar. He has conflicts of interest on stories he writes. I don’t know why any editor has anything to do with him.”
People have commented that I seem have it in for present and past politicians. Not true. I’m not a Dallas native so I have no historic axe to grind. I don’t secretly blame Laura Miller for the Cowboys because I wasn’t here and I really don’t care. I only judge on what I see during public meetings and what I read. I don’t love ‘em or hate ‘em until I have a reason.
More often that you’d imagine, I hear privately, “You’re right, we F-ed that up.”
Equally enjoyable are commenters who hate on my writing but who almost always lack facts to back up their snipe. Most often people who call me a liar are just ticked off by an inconvenient truth. When someone is right and I’m wrong, I’m happy to admit it and make a correction. Getting a story right is more important than my ego.
I realize this may be sounding like a swan song, but it’s not. I’m hoping to be here for another 500 columns, but more importantly, I’m hoping you’re here, too. If I felt I was just whistling into the wind, I’d stop whistling. I do this for fun, but also because readers find it of value – like an aging porn star, I’ll go when it stops being either.
Thank you all.
Remember: High-rises, HOAs and renovation are my beat. But I also appreciate modern and historical architecture balanced against the YIMBY movement. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, the National Association of Real Estate Editors recognized my writing with three Bronze (2016, 2017, 2018) and two Silver (2016, 2017) awards. Have a story to tell or a marriage proposal to make? Shoot me an email [email protected]. Be sure to look for me on Facebook and Twitter. You won’t find me, but you’re welcome to look.
