I received another speeding ticket yesterday — my third this month. These are tickets issued by the city’s new robo speed-trap cameras, strategically placed along roads you’d never think would have speed traps. The offending speeds are 38 MPH in a 20 MPH zone or 41 in a 30 MPH zone. Miniscule speeds on roads you’d swear were 35 MPH zones at least.

If I have pulled in 3 tickets in a month — and I’m no drag-racer — you can bet that just about every driver in the city is getting a ticket once a month, if not every week. You’d think everybody would be up in arms but the city is smart about it: the speeding violations cost a flat $40 and don’t go on your record (i.e., you don’t get “points”). As a result, most speeders won’t protest the violation. They’ll pay the fine and shrug it off as a nusiance.


I’m happy the city’s getting rich suddenly, though I’m not convinced any of the money will be put to good use because it seems city governments are doomed by their own bureaucracy and scattered incompetence. Certainly, this doesn’t help relations between citizens and their government. Buying a bunch of robo-radar traps is like buying into slot machines. It’s a dirty business that generates little good will. There are plenty of reported abuses, like the case of the guy who was fined at random because the photo in the ticket was too dark to read so, apparently, somebody took a wild guess about the identity of the speeder. It took the alleged speeder 7 months to get the violation cleared (if you don’t pay your fine, you can’t renew your license). After that ordeal, he said he would register his car in another state.

Incerasingly, our world is monitored by cameras but it’s not because of the new fear of terrorism. The proliferation of automated cameras is the product, mostly, of budget cut-backs. The age-old fear of the robot has come to pass in the most mundane way: state and local governments simply don’t have the money to hire and train people to do the jobs that have been given over to robotic cameras. For example, there are some toll roads you can’t drive without a prepaid toll-pass that automatically feeds your fee to the camera toll-reader. The end result of this automation is that we get fees, fines, and tickets at every turn but there’s no way to get a refund if there’s a mistake. It’s just too much of a hassle. And good luck trying to get anybody on the phone.

Sad to say, this is about the diminishing quality of life in America. As our nation becomes a poorer one, our governments are getting less generous and less tolerant. And, because we don’t have the resources to come up with better solutions, we are resorting to short-cuts and easy answers that sloppily address the questions of the day. How can your township make more money? Up its surveillance of daily traffic! This might make more money for local government but now, when you or I drive a quiet city street, we may do so ill at ease and a little irritated, wary of being watched and worried that tomorrow or the next day we’ll get an unwelcome notice in the mail.

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Today I made a mistake I’ve never made in my 21 years of teaching. Before I tell you how it went, let me give you some background. These past few years, I’ve been worried about what seems to be a new breed of students. Demographers call them the “millennials.” Generally, they’re characterized as thoroughly pampered, underprepared, and naively over-confident, a combination that guarantees their disappointment in the real world and, more to my point, makes them difficult to teach. They seem to need a lot more care and cultivation than their predecessors. Apparently, they’ve been encouraged to think that they are wonderful no matter what they do or don’t do; and this often comes crashing in on their heads in college, where teachers are less inclined to lie and pamper. The height of irony is that the baby boomers, the most iconoclastic generation, has produced this generation of most conformist and coddled children. Still, I love them and love to teach them.


That’s why, this year I decided to redouble my effort at fine-tuning my teaching to address these students’ needs. Does that mean I want to coddle them? No, I do not. But I can’t teach them if I can’t reach them. So I’m making time for more one-on-one conferences and, like a high school teacher, I review the syllabus every class — something I vowed I’d never do. And I repeat, again and again, the aims and objectives of every class. And I appeal to their self-interest in more pointed ways, viz.: you want power, don’t you? If you write well, you gain power: you influence people, you make things happen. Oh, and one more thing: I ask all of my students to write me a letter about themselves, which they email to me a couple of days before the semester starts. This pulls them in more quickly and perhaps makes them more receptive to teaching.

Generally, it’s more work keeping the fires stoked in the second semester. Our winter break is short and students return already a bit bruised and jaded. But this semester I was readier than ever: I’d done all my prep work and had had all of my material down. I’d spent most of the break writing an online text book for a new class I’m teaching, about publishing and editing. So today, the first day of spring classes, I was doing well. Walking to my last class of the day, in fact, I was congratulating myself on having started this semester with more good will and careful preparation than I had in many years.

My last class of the day, publishing and editing, is a lab class. I’ve been teaching in the university’s media lab for four years. No big deal. But today, as the hour neared, I was puzzled. Nobody was showing up. Then, right at class time, one student did. He introduced himself. i invited him to sit at the computer next to me. After he checked his email, he said, “Oh, no — have I made a mistake? Class was at 3:00.” It was now 4:35. I felt my face burn with the realization that, for the first time ever, I had missed a class. Missed it by a mile. Every department has a professor who does this routinely: the feckless, marginally competent oldster who miraculously has managed to keep his job despite his laughable reputation. But I’m NOT that guy. I’m Mr. Reliable. I’m the guy who gets things done, the guy who follows through. But not today. No, right here, right now, I was, I am, that Mr. Clueless.


Later, Jill tried to make me feel better by reminding me of other lapses I’ve made when overworked, like the time I showed up for a radio interview a day early (that’s more my style). Buy I’m NOT overworked. I’m not distracted. I wasn’t unprepared. And I didn’t forget. I just assumed that this lab class, like the six others I’d taught, was scheduled for 4:30 PM. Was that hubris? Ironically, it appears that my chair was trying to do me a favor by scheduling the class earlier in the day.


Years ago, a mistake like this would have freaked me out; I mean, I’d be due for a week of sleepless nights. I’ve learned that in making mistakes, there’s not much to be learned from dwelling on it or picking at it like a scab. I sent a note to the students. It was a funny note and an authoritative note — you can’t let something like this shake you. It’s like discovering your fly is down while you’re making a speech. Just zip it up and carry on. So I’m carrying on.


But here’s the rub. In order to teach well and exact as much work from students as possible, you can’t make a big mistake like this. Now, the advantage is theirs. Whether consciously or not, they know it and they will use it. In short: I OWE them. So I have to make the best of it and take what comes and hope that I teach so hard and so well that these gentle souls will forget all about this first day, when — unbeknownest to them –I was in my office eagerly prepping for a class I would not get to teach.

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You may recall that last spring I awoke with the realization that I needed to buy a Sprinter van, convert it into a camper, then tour the nation to promote my new book, From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story. The van is nearing completion. And my publisher and I are working feverishly to book a 66-city tour. That’s what you can do if you are barn-storming a book tour in a camper van: go anywhere and stop anywhere. There are limits, of course. I mean, I’ve got to get back home eventually because I do have a wife, a job, and responsibilities. As it is, I’ll be on the road for 4 months straight. It’s kind of daunting. And the set-up for this thing is mind-boggling. The publisher has given me a dedicated media liaison who does all of the groundwork. Her work and mine combined amount to 8 hours a day, every day. This will go on for months.

You might wonder why it’s so time-consuming. Here’s our strategy: 1) we target the best-bet indie book store in a particular town, then we query the local historic and preservaiton socieites in that town to co-sponsor the reading. The historic/preservation socieites have been really enthusiastic about my visit because, as a licensed home-inspector and a hard-core Do-it-yourselfer, I am offering a lot of value for free: workshops, talks, slide-shows about my experience restoring our big old house and other stuff relating to restoration etc. Jill and I have been building our expertise on YouTube through how-to videos. And we run the Houselove website, which has a national readership. In other words, the book represents a convergence of other efforts and interests, which now all come into play.

2) Once we enlist the partnership of the local historic/preservation society in a particular town, we tell the targeted book store that we have local support. You’d be surprised how many book stores don’t think this is enough. Some want to know if I have family or friends in that town and ask for even more guarantees. You’d think it’d be a no-brainer to book me — and my general-readership book — in a small store when we’re offering so much (see items that follow). We enlisted the partnership of TWO historic societies for a proposed reading at Powell’s in Portland, Oregon, and still Powell’s rejected us. They said we would not draw enough.

I know times are hard. But short of signing an affidavit swearing that we’ll bring a tour-bus load of supporters, what more can we do? And what are the skittish book stores doing on that particular night if they’re not bringing in, say, David Sedaris? All we’re asking is that they give us some space, put the event on their calendar, and send the word around. We’ll do the rest. In the case of Portland, we are going to create an event for the two historic societies and, chances are, we’ll get more press than we would for a book store reading. But my preference is to anchor these in indie book stores because I believe in indie book stores. We writers can help — or try to help — indie book stores, but the indie stores have to be willing to give us a chance.

3) Once we have the historic/preservation societies partnered with the book store, we go to the local press to see if we can get a book review. Then we go to local radio and TV to set up an interview the day-of or the day before. Believe it or not, getting on local morning TV talk shows is not difficult because they’re always scrambling for material, especially if the topic — like old house restoration — has local appeal. Next, we search out the local book clubs and see if we can get them interested.

4) Then we post the event in the local media outlets and calendars. All told, this booking/PR process takes at least a month to work through for each city. And this has to be done at least 3 months in advance for every city. And we’re doing 66 cities. It begs the question: who has time for this? The answer is simple: NOBODY! I certainly couldn’t do it without my dedicated media liaison. And this kind of effort really doesn’t make sense for every book. It will work best for the general-readership book. From Animal House to Our House is a good fit because it has a love story and an HGTV/TOH angle and a David Vs. Goliath inspirational angle and an Animal House angle. I don’t know that I’ll ever have another book that hits as many targets. And, frankly, that’s a relief because it makes my head swim to think of doing this again.

5) Other promotional gambits involve my writing articles for old house magazines like Victorian Homes, present at DIY shows, and give talks at preservation conferences. Further, it helps to get home-town press interestedin the story with interviews and photoshoots. We have a magazine photographer coming over tomorrow for an all-day shoot. Local interest has worked well in my case: look for articles in the Urbanite, Baltimore magazine, and maybe an excerpt in Style. Then an appearance on Dan Roderick’s mid-day talk show on Feb. 2 (from 1-2:00 PM). And more, I hope.

In sum, the idea is to bring all of these forces together so that word-of-mouth carries the name of your book far and wide. Notice that I haven’t mentioned book reviews? Book reviews are the wild card in this game. For an indie-press book, you can never tell who will consider it worth a review. And that’s the primary advantage of having a big-press book: the big magazines and newspapers are much more likey to pick it up.

As for the 66-city tour, mine may be the last of its kind. The world is transitioning to something else when it comes to book promotion, although none of us knows quite that that something might be. I’ve heard people tout the podcast or the video-cast or the guest blog as the way to go, but can any of these virtual efforts truly replace the power and gratification of a face-to-face meeting with readers in a town you’ve traveled to for the express purpose of making something good happen when a writer meeds curious strangers?

If you’re interested in camper van conversions, here’s a video link to my latest installment on that project.

If you want to see the shape of the 66-city tour thus far, click here.

If you still haven’t seen the FROM ANIMAL HOUSE TO OUR HOUSE video trailer, you really must.

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Last week, Jill and I adopted a cat that was supposedly seven years old. Abandoned or lost, he had been out-of-doors for as long as a year. He was very underweight, his coat dull and matted. But he was in good spirits and very sociable. We didn’t want a kitten because we didn’t feel like dealing with kitten antics. And kittens are something of a gamble. With an older cat, you can see what you’re getting. Or so it seems.


This cat — we’ve named him Newton — was so calm and affectionate, we took him home that day. He didn’t mind the car ride and calmly watched the traffic. He seemed copasetic with everything — our dogs, our other cat, our routine. He found the litter box right away and later when he couldn’t make it to the basement, where the box is, he did his business in the bath tub. He slept with us from the first night. None of that I’m-in-hiding-for-five-days-in-a-closet-till-the-coast-seems-clear stuff for him. When he’s hungry, he paws at our knees. The minute we pick him up, he purrs.



As soon we got him home, however, we realized that he wasn’t simply underfed. He was, he is, an old cat. Much older than seven. After a couple of days, we realized something else: he’s ailing. So we took him to the vet. And, sure enough, Newton’s kidneys are going. This is common in old cats.


The vet praised us for taking on such an old cat. She estimates that Newton is ten. We grant that he may even be twelve. After she got the test results, the vet said, “You could take him back,” suggesting we’d gotten a bad bargain. True, we did not want an old cat, and especially one that needed hospice care. But, no, we’re not taking Newton back. He’s a great cat. Besides, he’s got nowhere to go.


Every day, Jill and I look at Newton sleeping nearby, then we exchange a sad smile and exclaim, “Poor Newton — he’s so old!” Then we think, Isn’t that just like life, to sneak in a sucker punch when you’re not looking?



Newton still has his appetite and now he’s on a special diet. When he stops eating, we’ll know that his time has come. That could be another month or a another year. We dread the day we’ll have to take Newton in, but we can’t regret giving him a home. Every evening, he sits between Jill and me when we watch TV. To look as us together, you’d think he’s been our cat for all these years. He’s adapted so quickly and easily, tolerating even the dogs’ nosy tail-end sniffs, it’s as though he knows he’s got to make the most of his time. We’re falling in love with him, of course. I tell Jill that this is not an occasion for sadness. We cannot let this break our hearts — because we’re giving Newton a grand time and enjoying his company immensely. And, in showing him all the good that love can do, why shouldn’t we celebrate?

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Cheetah, Tarzan’s chimpanzee sidekick, died today at the age of 80. Yes, it’s remarkable that a chimp could live to be that old. But more remarkable is Cheetah’s legacy. Bear with me. Cheetah was the first famous friendly ape. He introduced generations of children to the notion that 1) animals can be our allies, 2) our primate cousins are bright and should be given some consideration, even respect, and 3) we can love a creature that isn’t quite human and isn’t quite animal. In many respects, Cheetah was one step away from ET and R2-D2.


We Baby Boomers grew up watching Tarzan movies on Saturday morning TV. When we played “Tarzan” in our back yards, many of us took the role of Cheetah and channeled the wild, monkey-smart side of our selves. This helped us become more empathetic. It made many of us into animal lovers. Ultimately, playing Cheetah embued some of us with the kind of humane optimism and feeling that gave rise to PETA and other animal rescue societies. If most people today find chimps and their brethren cute, Cheetah — and his many successors in film — was instrumental in shaping their perception.


It wasn’t always so. With the discovery of the “new world” in the early days of exploration (1500-1700s), monkeys fascinated Westerners, who brought them back as curios. But the great apes, like chimps and orangutans, were always considered suspect. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), features a killer orangutan, for instance. Never mind that you would be hard-pressed to rouse the ire of any orangutan (a thoroughly peaceable tribe), unless, say, you stole its banana. When white explorers disovered gorillas in “darkest Africa,” in 1847, these apes were considered to be man-killers, based solely on their fierce appearance. It is but a short hop from this early perception to the 1933’s film King Kong, the sad tale of a giant ape taken captive and ill-used by Westerners.


As sympathetic as King Kong was to the great ape, the movie nonetheless perpetuated the myth that apes are killers — a myth that movie makers exploited fully in a spate of killer-gorilla films of the 1940s and 50s, like White Pongo (1945) and Bride of the Gorilla (1951 — starring Raymond Burr of “Perry Mason” fame). Cheetah’s kind and humorous example stood in opposition to all of this. Cheetah often saved the day, braving great danger (lions!) to carry his message home. Cheetah was always good for a smile and a friendly pat of your hand.


It is rumored that, in real life, Cheetah was something of an asshole. So it is, and has been, with many Hollywood stars. It is rumored too that this incredibly long-lived chimp was not the real Cheetah. No matter. Whether this now-dead chimp was the true Cheetah or a pretender, we acknowledge today that Cheetah is gone. In doing so, we acknowledge that Cheetah made a different, helping us humans think more kindly of our extended primate family and, in turn, of all creatures who, from distance, look not quite like us.

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