Life sucks sometimes

I was once a real manager, office and everything. I once had to lay people off. I'd known each of the people since I was a kid. It was the worst thing I've had to do in my career.

Today the guy who replaced me had to do the same thing. He had to let an old friend go. He also had to lay off someone he hired, someone who was really good at her job. The layoff had nothing to do with the quality of his management or the relative health of the business he works for, in this case a small daily newspaper.

Daily newspapers are a mess right now. Part of it is the economy, part of it the changing tastes in media consumption. A unacknowledged part of it is corporate greed. Most of these businesses do make money, pretty good money in many cases. But not enough for the corporations that own them. You wouldn't know that these papers are profitable from the way this story gets covered. Nor would you know it from what these papers actually look like. There are not very many people employed to put them out. Hence, there is not a lot of stuff in them anymore.

It makes me sick to watch and read. My hometown deserves better. My family used to own the paper. Since we sold it a decade ago has been disappearing like Monty Python's Black Knight, one chunk at a time.

What I would do for a bailout of my own, a big lottery win, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

On boredom

I've been sitting around nursing a flu for a few days now. 

It's one of the clingy viruses that started in my throat and radiated to other places. Usually chest and nose. I trudged to work for four days last week, in progressively declining health. By Wednesday night I was left essentially voiceless, a problem for a radio editor. 

So I've been sitting around a fair bit.

I've been one to lament not being sick on days when I didn't want to be at the office. But when the "gift" comes along, the problem is that you're sick. You don't feel like doing anything. It is hard to enjoy ill health when you're ill. I've read a bit, but concentration is a hassle. Watched some TV, but there isn't a whole lot worth watching (although Holmes on Homes never disappoints with its parade of renovation horrors and heroic rescues). I dozed through a baseball game yesterday and ended up watching a fair bit of a CFL game on Friday night when a  coughing jag wouldn't let up and I decided to spare Q the periodic bedquakes. As it was she slept through it all, but I wasn't sure at the time. I just kept coughing until I couldn't cough anymore and went back to bed. Cheaper than Benalyn, but it takes more time to work.

I'm trying to count the blessings. It's warm out, so I can wear shorts and a T-shirt rather than having to bundle up against a winter chill. It's moist, so my sore throat is not made worse by low humidity. If I want to test my legs, I can walk five minutes to the grocery store. I've also been able to listen to the radio a fair bit. Gordon Pinsent is a perfect host for the extended audio obit called The Late Show. I heard it this morning. I'm not sure if it has a late-evening broadcast too, but it ought to. There is nothing like hearing about the truncated lives of others to put your own woes into perspective. 

On that theme, I read an amazing piece in the NYT Magazine this morning by the paper's media writer David Carr. It turns out he was once a crackhead and drunk too. His memoir of life in the gutter is another "but for the grace of God go I" moment that makes me feel a bit less sorry for myself as hack up another lungful of ick.

I'm full of caffeine and a bit of energy at the moment. It will soon give way to the afternoon dead-zone, which is exacerbated by the virus. That cotton-headed feeling where you can't decide whether or not to flake out on the couch or retire to the bedroom or stay upright in a chair.

The world is a lot smaller right now. 

With the Mexicans

We took in another TFC game a couple of weeks ago, Pachuca the opponents.

I've seen Pachuca play three times now and they've never lost. Beat Pumas 1-0 in the Liguilla in 2006, then Chivas 1-0 in 2007 Clausura, now TFC on penalties.

It was an interesting game. For once the home team had more fans than the visitors, although the visitors were in full voice. We had a knot of lads sitting near us in green, red and white and they were in full voice, delightfully quick and self-deprecating. True charmers as Mexicans are. An interesting contrast to the blunderbuss humour of the increasingly-drunk Canadians who they bested time and again in the rhetorical sweeps. 

The football was fair to middling. FC played an experimental squad. Pachuca had some of its stars on display. Bruno Marioni and Christian Gimenez were the guys I was watching (both Argentine) and Marioni missed a couple of sitters in the first half.

What struck me most in the first 45 was how the visitor played the ground game. Short, quick passes, constant ball support, seldom playing themselves into blind alleys and corners where possession was given away cheaply. It could have been 4-0 at the half.

TFC was less fluid. Robert missed Amado Guevera's support. Attacks fizzled on the flanks as the midfielders were unable to support the forwards, the backs not backing up the middies. Ball support, the essence of the modern game just as puck support is what makes a good hockey team sing. 

It struck me afterward that a full-up FC would have had its hands full with a side like Pachuca, the gap between the best Mexican teams and the middle-of-the-pack MLS sides is still visible. 

Give it time. We'll get there.

Warm

About 15 years ago I spent a winter in Montreal. It was really, really cold. After that I thought I was done with winter. I got over it and ended up spending six in Ottawa. Not much difference there. Winter seemed manageable.

I never considered myself a warm-weather person. I have memories of sweating myself to sleep in a second-floor apartment on Queen West in Toronto in the middle of the summer. No escape from the thick, stagnant air. I hated it. I've gone to movies to escape the mid-summer heat. I've taken rides in air conditioned cars for a break. 

This morning I walked out of the office to grab a coffee and there was a damp chill in the air. It was probably 20 degrees out, but cloudy and that off-the-lake breeze that is surprisingly brisk. I kind of shuddered a bit. The mere hint of cool sends me back three months to shorter days and longer sleeves. 

The one thing I like about the change of seasons is that the one you're in prepares you for the one that follows. You're ready for spring, you're ready for summer, you're ready for fall and more-or-less OK with the onset of winter. 

What I notice now is that my tolerance for the low-light, low-temp extremes from December to March is a lot lower and my thirst for heat and humidity is much higher. Readiness for the new season does not mean acceptance of its full duration.

The other day I was walking home along Queen East in a dark, long-sleeved dress shirt, feeling the heat against my back and grateful for the sweat trickling down between my shoulder blades. I want the warmth. I want the green. I want the light. I am not ready for a change.

Pain

I'm sitting here flipping between a couple of ballgames and game six of the NBA Finals. I like to see championships won. There is something about the "last game" that makes it special, one of those shared moments. 

I was feeling the same way yesterday as I watched the end of the US Open. I'm not much of a golf fan but I do enjoy seeing Tiger Woods play. He's like Gretzky to me, one of those athletes who is a category-killer. He draws in the casual fan because he is so good, so dominant, so capable of things that others just can't do. What made his OT win so interesting to me was that he was golfing on a bad knee. Whenever I've golfed it's my back that kills me afterwards, my knees usually survive OK. But I have not had chronic knee problems or three surgeries, one a just a couple of months ago. The TV guys were really good at showing how Tiger's left knee was woven into the mechanics of his swing and how the pain he was clearly enduring was effecting it. The winces, especially in the third round, looked real. 

As the holes went by, it got me thinking about pain, the physical variety, and what we put up with for our sports. 

After eight months of basketball, what are the genetic freaks on the Celtics and Lakers carrying around tonight? Hips, knees, backs, toes? I was watching a bit of the France-Italy game this afternoon and it occurred to me that some of those players out there, the guys who play top-flight club football, plus Champions League, plus for their country; will be approaching seventy or eight matches this season. That has to take its toll.

Then, of course, there is the rest of us. 

I learned an important lesson about pain 15 years ago. I was 30 then, and reading a copy of Esquire. The story I remember was about being a jock in your 40s. I don't remember a lot of the detail of the piece, but I do remember this piece of advice: take your anti-inflammatories BEFORE you work out, not afterwards. That rule has worked for me ever since. And it speaks to the reality of the aging athlete: it isn't about preventing pain, it is about managing it. 

Throughout my life I have played sports. Mostly team sports, a few years of really bad tennis and many summers sailing. Now I mostly run, with some soccer, hockey and softball thrown in for variety. 

At my age, I cannot play any of them without paying for it in some way afterwards. When I run, my knees and hips get sore. Hockey? My back. Soccer? Quads, knees, feet. Even softball has left me sore, these days it's a wonky knee that doesn't respond well to stopping and starting. When I am training for a marathon, I simply resign myself to the fact I will be sore a lot. If I play a hockey tournament, I can count on needing three or four days to fully recover. 

"Recover" is really the important word here. I remember being sore after playing soccer when I was 20-years-old, but it never lasted long, a few hours. I remember some back pain from hockey, but it would go away pretty quickly, usually overnight, even well into my 30s. I recovered quickly, and I could go out and do it again.

About six years ago I took up running more seriously. Over time I added miles. I started running marathons. I have nine under my belt now and I don't intend to stop. At points (last fall for instance) I have been in tremendous condition. I have managed to attain and maintain a level of fitness I haven't had since my mid-20s. I'm 30 pounds lighter than at my peak in late 2001. So it would take a lot, I mean A LOT, to give up the fitness, the three inches on my waist and the two suit sizes. 

But Christ, do I get sore now. When I run I feel it in my knees, sometimes my lower back. My rule is no Advil for any run less than an hour (Advil works best for me, but kills my stomach). But these days it doesn't take as much to make me sore. The pain I feel when I run isn't the kind that yells at me to stop. I would pay attention to that. It's the kind that nags. It tells that I am going to feel it when I stop. That is what bugs me. 

The pain you feel when you compete is the earned variety. You can mask it in the service of performance (Aleve gets me through a marathon, Advil a soccer or hockey tournament), and there is a good pain that comes when the game or race is over. Post-marathon pain is especially sweet. Finishing 26.2 miles is an accomplishment. Period. Three or four days of shredded quads are a badge of honour, not a medical emergency. 

But it's the other pain I have trouble with, the kind that is asking me some tough questions. Can I keep on doing this? Is this really good for me? Should I slow down? 

There is no cure for aging. I seem to have hit a wall of sorts in the last six months or so. I am staying sore longer. I have lost flexibility. I notice my performance decays if I miss a few days on the road. You can't win! Take a break from the grind to let your body recover and your body starts to revert to couch potato status. Not fair. 

I simply can't keep on doing the things I like to do without doing some things that help my body recover. I don't take enough hot baths, or cold ones either. I don't ice my knees frequently enough. I should try yoga for runners. I should get more massages. I should stretch more. I should probably do more strength training. I should remember to take my glucosamine three times a day EVERY day. And the occasional Advil would help too. 

The last thing? I have to remember. When I'm moaning at my aches and pain, I have to remember how good it feels to run well, to score a goal, to make a good pass. How good it feels to push my body past its comfort zone. How good it feels to find the runner's high.

The pain is a pain, and it is part of being active as you get older. Nobody is immune. But it isn't the end of the world, or the end of game or the race. It's just what you live with. 

Nostalgia or remembering?

Last week I went to a birthday party for a radio show.

World Report turned 40, sort of. CBC Radio's main morning newscast first went on the air as The World at Eight back in the early spring of 1968, and added editions at 6 and 7 a.m. sometime in the late-1970s (I think).

The party was a low-key affair, very Radio. There were newspaper clips documenting the program's history, snapshots taken by staff over the years and the people, working and retired, who put the program to air. 

I actually ran the show for a brief period in the mid-1990s, and worked as an editor on it for during my first few years at the CBC. It's where I cut my teeth in Radio and I have a great fondness for that time in my life, if not for the horrible hours working on a morning newscast requires. 

There was a short audio presentation, a bit of a "greatest hits" package of stories that aired on the program over the years. It was a short history of major events: MLK's assassination, the October Crisis, repatriating the Constitution, the Challenger explosion, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Referendum Number Two. All worthy signposts of late-20th century Canada and the world. 

And there were a few speeches. 

Inevitably, the speeches focus on the people we worked with. Characters. Events were the backdrop for the people with whom we shared early morning misery. Afterall, we were not where the news was happening. We were packaging it. So it makes perfect sense to focus on the people we worked with rather than the stories we were well distanced from. 

Such is the difference between editors and reporters. When you get a group of reporters together, they will talk about colleagues, but they will also talk about stories; what they're working on, trips they've taken or preparing for. The guts of the reporting business. Go drinking with editors and the subjects tend to be more limited; colleagues, the mechanics of getting a program to air ("Did you hear the first three items were missing because of a computer crash?" etc.), moaning about shifts, bosses, missed opportunities.

One of the underrated things in operations like the one I work in is institutional memory. Experience is valued up to a point, but if an older, more expensive employee can be pensioned off in the interest of the bottom line, he's out the door. Oftentimes the experienced end up as cranks too, which tends to undermine the value of memory in a workplace. The last thing you want to face everyday is a know-it-all who has seen it all. 

I remember being at a retirement party 18 years ago for Rex Loring, one of the original hosts of World Report. Rex was an amazing performer. He could take badly written crap and make it sound like poetry on the air. He also had that voice of authority that is not so sought after now, but was a comfort to awake to. When he retired, the Big Bosses came down to toast his departure. The crowd spanned the generations: from pups like me in their 20s, through to people whose careers began after the Second World War when Radio was still king. A smart person would have grabbed a tape recorder and started interviewing the greybeards. They carried the memory of decades in the life of the Radio news service. That didn't happen, which is too bad. While the "history" of the program is recorded in the newscasts in the Archives, the history of the newsroom is oral, passed down from generation to generation, and usually embellished in the telling. 

Friday's party got me thinking about something else; how experience is sometimes seen as an impediment to change. People with experience (cranks or not) have seen things before, they remember what worked, what failed and what disrupted. They ask uncomfortable questions of Deciders whose worth is measured by their ability to change the things they manage. Sometimes the experienced end up as roadkill, like old Mr. Fezziwig, who chose not to sell out to the Vested Interests and found himself run out of business by Scrooge and Marley. But sometimes they are right. Things were working just fine, now they are screwed up. But the change happens and a great victory is declared. 

World Report is based on a pretty simple premise. It tells people what happened overnight and what is going on right now. It tries to answer the question, "Is it OK to get out of bed?" Delivering on that premise is a lot more complicated, and the way it is done has evolved considerably over the four decades the show has been on the air. We seldom put a phoned-in item on the radio now. We've long since abandoned quarter-inch tape. The language we use on the air is more modern and colloquial. The omniscient "Voice of Authority" has given way to something more conversational. The stories attempt to more on the lives of the decidees rather than the deciders. The show has adapted to its time as times have changed.

The show has adapted just like we do as we mark the years. We know that pal pictured in the wide-legged jeans and permed hair in 1978 is still the same person who is in front of us today in middle age. He's just packaged a bit differently. We're different, we're the same. We've evolved, we're true to ourselves.

Finally!

Manchester United is the only truly winning team I have ever cheered for. I can thank Robert Poole. 

Robert was a friend who moved to England in Grade Four and came back to Canada two years later with an accent and as a rabid Man U supporter. At first we teased him about his new affection, but when he showed me his incredible scrapbook of United memorabilia: pictures, articles, cards etc, and I got the story of the Busby Babes, the Best years, the fall to Division Two and the quick return to the top flight, I was hooked. 

Ever since I have followed United's fortunes as closely as I could from this side of the pond. The closest I ever got to seeing them play was seeing United old boys Jimmy Nichol and Jimmy Greenhoff playing for the Toronto Blizzard. A trip to Old Trafford is on my life list.

 

Since Alex Ferguson arrived to manage the side 21 years ago, the trophies have rolled in. Leagues, Cups, Doubles, The Treble of 99. And today, another Double; the Premiership and Champions League. I thought United was full measure for the win, the game really should have been done at half time, but Petr Cech made sure it wasn't. It is ironic that John Terry ended up being the goat during penalties, since he saved Chelsea's bacon in extra time when he cleared Ryan Giggs' poke off the line. 

The most significant thing for me in today's victory is that this is the first time I have been on the winning side of a penalty shootout. My memories of these things are foul: Italy 1990, Euros 1996, France 1998: Stuart Pierce, Gareth Southgate. "God must be a German," was the appalled reaction of a colleague after we watched Germany knock out England in 1996 at Wembley. (I'd missed England do the same to Spain a few days earlier.)

I'll admit I couldn't watch John Terry today. By the time I turned the TV back on, it was over and my side had won. The shootout just kills me, but when I saw the guys in red jumping up and down, I joined them, and I was relieved. 

Thanks old Bobby, it's good to cheer for a winner.