No Fear of Flying

Like Barbara Szala and many of you I sometimes feel I spend half of my life at 37,000 feet flying to client meetings. I have no fear of flying; my sole anxiety has to do with the airport itself, the mob scene and unending hassle. More about that in a bit.

For those of you who have never visited Kill Devil Hill in North Carolina, the site of the Wright Brothers historic flight in 1903, I urge you to do so if the chance ever arises.  What wonder has transpired in the century of aviation!  While I wasn’t there the day the brothers and their flimsy aircraft flew into history, I have experienced countless take offs and landings in my own time.  Do you remember your own first airplane trip?  Bet it was exciting for you just as it was for so many others and me.

My very first airplane trip took place back in 1951 during the Korean War. You have seen photographs and film footage of stoic paratroopers sitting side by side against the stark no-frills fuselage of a DC 3. You get the picture. In my particular case there were two tremendous differences: one, we were NOT going into combat and two, we passengers on board were so young and unknowing that we were oblivious to danger on a worn out charter plane. Even more important we were able to get out of the Deep South Army training camps to make it home for Christmas with our families. The old saying “youth is wasted on the young” really meant “we didn’t know what we didn’t know”.  In any case we made it north to New York’s Idlewild airport (now much enlarged as JFK International) in one piece. We returned south by train on New Year’s Eve.

My earlier flying experiences were certainly more lively than the near endless decades of droning along at 37,000 feet as a business flier. Nothing beat being an artillery spotter sitting behind the pilot of a L15 with just a belt across my lap and open sides to the left and right watching howitzer shells that looked as big as boxcars whistle past. Nonetheless there was a certain gentility to civilian flying, now long gone, that brings a smile to my face. Men dressed in business suits back then and the ladies wore gloves and hats for trips on the magic carpet. Still I do prefer the casual dress code of these times if we can somehow keep “causal” this side of outright nudity, at least in business class. Good times did roll here and there. I was aboard an Air Canada flight when they celebrated their 50^th Anniversary. Those Canucks knew how to throw a party!

These are tough economic times for one and all, including the airlines. As is the case elsewhere a few professionals are now doing the jobs where many employees once covered the same bases.  By and large these men and women of the airlines are courteous and efficient in their attempts to bring a bit of sanity to the mad mad world of modern-day air travel. We can make our own journeys easier by understanding the multiple pressures on them and giving them our support.

Tennis Noise

The ancient saying “Silence is Golden” still applies. Anyone who watched the Australian Women’s Singles Tennis Championship can attest to that.  Maria Sharapova, the gorgeous Russian tennis star and television ad millionaire, was pitted against her hard-hitting countrywoman Victoria Azarenka in a battle of shrieking and grunting that could shatter glass. Their on-court noise wore on the nerves of all in the stadium or watching the match via television. I spent 40 years officiating at matches and consider this high-pitched yelling as demeaning to the game. As commentators pointed out time and again, tennis management will have to address this loud noise distraction sooner or later.  Hopefully sooner.

Sporting events consistently top the ratings charts. A big part of keeping the interest in sports coverage has been the addition of former sports heroes to the commentary teams.

One of the advantages of having lived through generations of sports commentators is remembering yesterday's great athletes who moved into the broadcast booth. The immortal Red “The Galloping Ghost” Grange was one such. When he joined NBC to comment on football he was teamed up with Lindsey Nelson. The duo got off to a shaky start when Red failed to get Nelson's first name correct (Grange kept calling him “Linsley” instead of Lindsey)  To make it even more painful Red used the incorrect name abundantly during their coverage.  It was like he was hitting Nelson in the center of his forehead with a hammer.  Some duos had great success, others not so much.

Each year the “Boob in the Booth” Award goes to the biggest dunderhead in sports commentary. And once again Phil Simms of CBS Sports has won hands down. The philosophy of network sports leadership seems to be combining an inept former jock like Simms with a front runner like Jim Nance. (Likewise Verne Lindquist, who has been around the gridiron since the first football was hiked, is weighed down with Gary Danielson.)  Even Nance can't bail Simms out. Phil's style is to say things like “I agree with you, Jim” and then go droning on to nowhere. If he would just buy into “silence is golden” and let Nance fly mostly solo, all would be right again in the football world. Offsetting the idiocy of some commentating duos there is occasional brilliance. A good example here is the teaming of Joe Buck, one of the very best of the best, with Troy Aikman. The two of them show audiences how it should be done.

An advantage of old age (perhaps the only one) is that you can recall the greats of other eras.  And trust me, there were some true giants - commentators like Mel Allen, Red Barber, and (who could ever forget him?)  Bill Stern. Stern brought great excitement to his narration, and did not hesitate to make it up along the way.  Typical was his breathless call of a pass interception where he followed the runner (we'll call him “Smith”) all the way down the field.  As Smith was ready to cross the goal line for a touchdown, someone passed a note to Bill saying that Jones, not Smith, was actually the ball carrier. Without missing a beat Stern simply said “Smith laterals the ball to Jones who scores!!!!  Such shenanigans were possible on radio but not in the television age.  More famous is the Bill Stern story about a gloomy man looking out the second story window of a mansion during the Civil War.  The tall bearded figure, observing Union soldiers sitting around listlessly on the lawn below decided to create a game for them to play and ease their idle hours. Then Stern intoned in somber dramatic voice “the sport he invented was called baseball...and that man was Abraham Lincoln.”

Maybe Simms isn't so bad after all.

It Never Ends

Barbara Szala and In-Person believe that communicating competently is right up there with putting food on the table and having a roof over our heads. Imagine what it would be like if you couldn’t call out for help, share your thinking with others, weren’t able to say “I love you’ to a dear one?

Those of us with a professional responsibility to convey our thoughts effectively know it is a never-ending chore to communicate well in every situation. For many of us communicating through the written word keeps us bent over computer screens hoping a guardian angel will swoop down, dance on the keys and make sense of our copy. There’s no wiggle room for writers because the permanency of print lets the sometimes good, more often fair, and the occasionally boring live on forever. Most of us do try hard every time out even though we know there is just no such thing as batting 1000. We are enrolled in a very tough school with plenty of homework. Beyond reviewing our own efforts we have to read the work of competitors and pay close attention to the positive or negative comments we get from our peers. I learned long ago that feedback was critical to any communicator wanting to improve. If you are thin-skinned about criticism it’s best to go work in the library putting books away.

All of which raises the question of why should YOU care since you’re not writing The Great American Novel? The short answer is just because. Just because you want to be considered a person worth considering, someone of intelligence, well-mannered and all other good things that come with being taken seriously as a person. The way you communicate says it all. So do your own homework, know what is expected, refine your vocabulary and speaking skills, observe the style of leaders, constantly raise the bar for yourself. Of course if you don’t have aspirations in that direction, simply fold this paper and take a nap. The writer’s discipline has a direct parallel to your own life, no matter what you are doing personally and professionally. This is especially true if you are a model for children and other young ones in your realm of influence. The solid “Reading, Writing and Arithmetic” that served prior generations and society so well are long gone, replaced by dumbed-down statements like “Me and my girlfriend are going to the movies”. Such examples abound. Putting self before others has replaced being other-directed, AND on top of that, using “me” where “I” should be is rampant. Correct usage of the English language is a hallmark of an educated person, right?  

Nothing is more grating to the human ear that hearing a speaker repeatedly use fillers or non-words like “ah”, “y’know” and “like a” in conversation. If you want to hear idiocy in action just listen to the sports interviews on radio or television and count the number of times an interviewee uses “y’know”. Your palms will begin to sweat.  September a year ago was a particularly outstanding month for athletic activity with tennis closing out, baseball in full swing and football starting up. The sports interviews, tennis in particular, were weighed down with tons of “y’knows.” It was certainly charming to hear young Melanie Oudan screaming “ohmigod, I’m going to try, y’know, to play my very best for, y’know, myself and for the, y’know, great crowd there today”. Melanie was just 17 however and when she is decades older we will expect a lot more efficiency from her. Chris Evert, a true champion on the court never did get the junk out of her delivery and today remains incapable of delivering a simple sentence without “y’know”. None of us is perfect, but all of us have to do a better job with our primary language.

And there’s no y’know about that.