The Letter That Started It All

 I've spent the past two days cleaning out my apartment and getting ready for the big move back to Dallas.

For those of you still unaware, I've been fortunate enough to land a copywriting/contributing editor position for a company and its two magazines in Dallas. It's a job that seemed to come solely as a stroke of luck (thank you, Journalism Gods!).

In the midst of it all, I ran across an old folder that contains nearly every piece of great journalism I've read and a lot of the stuff from my very early days. I found the letter that initially helped spark my interest into actually pursuing an education and career in the evil journalism field. It came from a former professor of mine, Bill Lodge, who had spent 26 years at The Dallas Morning News before he accepted a buyout package when The News was in a period of serious layoffs.

Bill was an adjunct professor at North Lake College for two years, I believe, before he moved to Louisiana for a job at The Baton Rouge Advocate. Even today, I fully credit him as the one who got me in this business. He remains one of my dearest friends and my strongest mentor to this day.

This is the email Bill sent me in the summer of 2007 right after I had completed my Intro to Mass Comm class that spring semester. I had planned on the spring semester being my last semester at North Lake and I was well on my way out the door to Sam Houston State where I figured I might follow the journalism path. I had an apartment ready to go and classes picked for the fall semester.

But Bill changed all that.


"Good Young People,

I hope to recruit each of you to my Journalism 2311 class this fall at North Lake College. This is a news-gathering and news-writing course, and I believe each of you would do well in it. I also believe you would enjoy the course because 90 percent of your grade would be eight articles you would write for the campus newspaper over the course of four months. You could write more if you wish, but the requirement is two per month. Often, these stories need not to be more than 350 words. If you wished, though, you would be allowed to write more than that in some cases.

In this course, you would learn how to write for a news publication, gather information, interview subjects, locate records. Some days, you would have classroom instruction. Other days, you would be free to work on your stories at the newspaper office, Room A-260. On several occasions, you would be visited in class by people who work for The Dallas Morning News, The Dallas Business Journal, and, I hope, area television stations and alternative weeklies.

You would know your editor for all of your campus news stories. That would be me. Three of you have taken my mass communications class. I know each of you would do well in Journalism 2311, which will be taught M-W-F from 1:30 p.m. to 2:20 p.m. Even if you decide not to begin a career in journalism, this course still would help you with writing in other disciplines.

A couple of you have extensive experience writing for college newspapers. I believe both of you would enjoy the course, learn much from talking with the professionals who visit our class and have fun with the stories you would write for the News-Register.

If you're planning a career in communications or simply looking for an interesting elective, I hope you'll consider this class. At  any rate, I wish you all good luck with whatever path you choose. I have enjoyed talking with each of you in the past."


I can't say what it was about the email that exactly made me decide to stay and cancel my plans for Sam Houston. It's definitely not the best pitch to get an out-the-door college student with other plans to remain at a community college for another year, but it worked.

I do think, though, that a big part of it was that it was so sincere and that Bill was genuinely writing that he wanted us to stay and help us get better, and it wasn't just a pitch so that he could have more numbers in his JOUR 2311 class––which I now know wasn't the case because the class ended up being a total of three people by the end of the semester.

If Bill hadn't sent that email, I would have transferred to Sam Houston and who knows how my career would have turned out. Maybe I would have still ended up in the same places with the same opportunities, but almost surely not. I'd almost be willing to bet that I'd still be stuck in a frustrating restaurant job, still in college, trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with my life. But Bill prevented all that with his short, 358-word letter.

And for that I'll always be grateful.

Dear Tiger Woods

[Ed. note: This is the transcribed message left on Tiger Woods' answering machine at 3:32 a.m. on July 21.]

Hey, Tiger,

It's your loyal fans here. Sorry to be calling so late, but we haven't been able to sleep. We've been thinking a lot lately and things just aren't the same as they've been for the past 15 years. And frankly, we are fed up with your shit.

The past year and a half has been like a bad relationship to us: you've promised that you were going to change, saying that you got away from your roots and teachings and that it's time to get back to your true self. We listened as you lied, promising that you would make a comeback and all would be OK.

And we took the bait. We wanted to believe.

We know that what you've gone through the past year and a half has been rough––you were caught in a major cheating scandal, lost your wife, your swing coach bolted, some of your major endorsement deals were dropped, Nike cut a big chunk of its deal, your career is in shambles and you can't stay healthy. But to add to the whirlwind, you split with the one person who could arguably be one of the last saving graces for your career, your caddy, Stevie Williams.

We were skeptical when Williams first took the bag of Adam Scott in this year's U.S. Open, of course, but we tried to write it off as you weren't playing and Williams just wanted to caddy. And, yeah, so what Williams grabbed Scott's bag again at the British Open, big deal, right?! You weren't there either, so it was OK, although the fear in the back of our minds told us otherwise.

But now you pull this shit of dumping Stevie, citing another "change" when all the others have obviously worked out so well. Cut the bullshit, Tiger, we know it's just another pawn move in your drastic downfall.

*Sighs*

So go on and keep telling yourself all is well in Tigerland, where you are truly getting back to yourself and that once your knee and achilles heals and your swing changes take effect and you find a new caddy and another great swing coach that you'll be back to the prominent force you once were.

But us fans, we are calling your bluff, we're sick of the abuse.

*Click*

My (not-so-major) discovery

Surely I'm not the last person on earth to have heard of Mumford & Sons.

Surely, in the heart of Africa, there's a tribe hidden in the depths of the jungle that the tune of "Little Lion Man" has yet to reach.

But I'm not so sure.

It wasn't until a few days ago that I stumbled across the likes of Mumford & Sons, almost solely by mistake. I'm a bit ashamed of myself, honestly. How is it that this band that's been around since December 2007 has yet to fill my iPod with all its glory and greatness? I wish I had an answer.

Surely there must be some mistake, I assumed. I tend to think I keep a close ear to the new music coming out on a fairly consistent basis and at least have an idea of who the new talent is. So when I heard "Little Lion Man" the first time from this band I've never heard of, I was sure that I had found the next big thing that, what I thought, only a select group of people had heard. The song took me back to middle school and to my first relationship when I didn't ask my girlfriend to the school dance, which turned out to be a deal breaker. I was crushed.

"Weep for yourself, my man, you'll never be what is in your heart. Weep Little Lion Man, you're not as brave as you were at the start."

"But it was not your fault but mine, and it was your heart on the line. I really fucked it up this time, didn't I, my dear?"

My inner 12-year-old was tucked up in his room again, heartbroken, swearing to never leave and to never love again. I took straight to YouTube to find this little showcase of talent and see what other greatness it brought to the table. What I found I can't say I was entirely happy with. "Little Lion Man" had more than 24 million views. Other songs, "Awake My Soul," "Thistle and Weeds," "The Cave," all peaked in the upward hundred of thousand views.

I was irked with my total obliviousness to this band. Why hadn't any of my friends sent Mumford & Sons my way? Why hadn't, through the course of the many YouTube videos, did a recommendation for this band not present itself? I wanted to hate myself. I wanted to hate this band for alluding me for so many years. But I couldn't. The music that played through my speakers was so packed with emotion and feeling, and with each new song played came a small dose of nostalgia.

I was back at the dance I didn't ask my seventh-grade girlfriend to, sitting lonely at a table, silhouetted against the glass, watching as she danced with another boy.

Me and my inner heartbroken 12 year old are going to go listen to "Little Lion Man" again.

Design: NBA Finals

I was cleaning out my flash drive this morning when I came across a mock design I put together back in December. It was shortly after the Miami Heat beat the Chicago Bulls and the NBA Finals was set against the Dallas Mavericks and the Heat.

When I designed it I was still under the impression that there was no way the Mavs were going to put together four wins against the three-headed beast of the Heat, and I would have undoubtedly bet a year's pay that would have been the case. But looking back on it now, 2 of 3 of my headlines were hinting at a Mavs win (Big German promises revenge; LeBron scared of making it to the Finals). So, maybe that was my inner MFFL that had been locked up for so many years trying to tell me these Mavs were the real deal.

Luckily I didn't make that bet.

Looking back on the design as a whole today, I'm still happy with how it turned out. It has a few errors in it or things I would like to change (See: Scoreboard in the Rangers-Yankees story; Lebron's mugshot; all the copy is one column; the Mavs-Heat preview box could be way cooler, something like a gradient with blue and red), but overall, it's pretty clean.

Before Sun's Wake

This is just a small short story I've been working on. Critique as you please, if you so choose to do so.


Before Sun's Wake


It was the morning of July 14, a Tuesday, when the phenomenon first took place. It was a strange occurrence, unlike any morning any of the townsfolk had experienced before. The I-75, which is usually log jammed at 7:30 each morning, found its lanes bare, no car to be found.

Families, instead of racing out the door to get the kids to school, parents to work, laid in bed, relaxed; the children, rather than sitting and waiting for the morning school bell to ring, slept or raced for their TVs to see if weekday cartoons were as good as their weekend counterparts. But even the TV channels nestled in the peace, airing those colorful rainbow bars, as if to say, "Get away! Enjoy this! Welcome this occurrence."

It was a strange sight, to stare out a window and see the event being held.  The morning birds that chirped their morning hymns from the rooftops and power lines kept silent; the neighborhood dogs, always barking at the children walking to school, didn't budge from their houses. Even the trash that littered the streets didn't dare move.

No one dared step outside their door and be the one to disturb the much welcomed peace. A stranger walking into town would believe all the townsfolk had planned this event. But it was all an act of nature which no one could understand. Some of the townsfolk panicked, unsure if the wrong step, a small peep or a slightly loud breath would disturb what was going on.

In the days that followed, the people of Lane resumed their busy schedules and acted as if the entire incident never happened, as if it were merely a collective dream by the townsfolk. It wasn't until the following Sunday when Pastor Lee of the town church spoke out about the phenomenon. He called it an act of God, telling us that God was trying to slow down our lives, and that we should take it as the first sign of his return. "There will be many more events to come," he said. "But we should not fear them."

Just day's after the pastor's sermon, the people had nearly forgotten all together that the strange event occurred. Mothers returned to scurrying the kids together and off to school before the morning bell, and fathers left before sun's wake to put in a full day's work. It was a process we had grown accustom to all our lives, and while the period of peace was welcomed, lives were to be lived and money to be made.

And then it happened again.

Exactly three months later, a peaceful (cloud) made its way over Lane once more. But the confusion from its first settling never came, and residents that panicked now welcomed its second coming. And still, no one dared to disturb the phenomenon or ask why it had blessed us a second time.

As the next day came and passed, whispers traveled through the town, and, amazingly, a changed shifted in the town. No longer were the residents of Lane in such a hurry. The I-75 was no longer a traffic-filled mess, mothers spent more time with their children, fathers, rather than out the door before the waking of the sun to put in a full day saw their children off to school and were home in time for ball games as the moon overtook the sun. Although there were two more events in the following weeks, the town started to become more at peace on its own without the help of the phenomenon.

After each passing, the word spread of the town's peace and we realized the town's population was slowly on the rise. Out-of-towners of all ages, race and sex, looking to find the peace we had all come to love, arrived one by one, car by car, filling house by house.

And so the town grew, and the peace was shared. But with the increased population came shopping centers, restaurants and malls and supermarkets all looking to supply our town's increased demand.

With that, the peace was disturbed.

For the first time in nearly a year, the phenomenon returned. And the citizens who had experienced it countless times before were well away. But it was the town's new inhabitants that disturbed the peace; the ones who came to town looking for what we all cherished, but ignored it when it showed itself.

They packed the I-75 with their cars––horns blaring, blood boiling––racing to locations that only breed stress. Mothers screamed for children to leave for school, as fathers had already left before sun's wake. And so the peace that we had all come to love was destroyed.

And we have never heard from it again.