Hardscrabble Times

My old friend and former employer when I was at Sport and Fitness Publishing, John Winsor, recently gave the commencement address at the University of Colorado journalism school. The subject was “Dare to Fail,” and the talk was interesting in terms of the world that both new and longtime journalist face.

John’s speech made me remember that I, along with my buddy Andrew Lahana, actually founded the tradition of a J-school graduation ceremony at CU.

It’s actually an amusing story . . . Our friends in the business school had their own commencement and there was no such tradition in the J-school. We thought we’d show them how to hold a graduation — we’d get Jimmy Buffett to give our commencement address in Mackey Hall. Now there was someone who’d really done something with his journalism degree! He’d just played a concert that semester in the new CU Events Center and so we figured no problem getting him to speak to our graduating class. So we went through the channels, sent letters, made phone calls, etc. . . . and we waited. And waited.

Finally one day Russ Shain, who was the J-school dean, called us into his office and brought up that we had the entire class looking forward to this ceremony, but we had no speaker lined up. Andrew and I had never considered a back-up plan. The reality, Russ said, is that Jimmy Buffett was not coming. But Russ had connections, and so soon it was announced that WIlliam Hornby, who was some major figure at the Denver Post at the time, would be giving the commencement address.

Still, Andrew and I had to give the introduction, which I wrote and peppered with quotes from Buffett songs. Nobody got it, but we had dared to fail and today the J-school still holds a ceremony each semester. Twenty-seven years later I have former employers giving the commencement address.

A Hardscrabble Times survey of leading economic indicators paints a fairly grim picture.

It started with a comment to this site a couple weeks ago asking “how’s that ‘hope and change’ working out for ya?”

I’m not sure at this point blaming anyone for this country’s economic woes is useful, much less blaming someone who politically inherited this situation. Economists now agree we have been in a recession since last December. We are where we are, and it doesn’t really matter how we got here.

Still, I’ve heard the stories and I have my own . . .

My college roommate who owns a small business in Denver has had to fire himself and take a position back in the corporate world in order that some of his employees may stay on their jobs.

In the Wet Mountain Tribune last week a man is pictured with a sign hanging from his neck advertising that he is a veteran and needs work.

An area veterinarian is struggling to make payroll.

A neighbor fears we are on the verge of social collapse because of the continuing loss of jobs.

One friend who manages a small ranch in Northern New Mexico drove to Colorado to buy hay. His hay supplier asked him to take a few horses home with him, then when he declined offered 150 bales of hay if he would just take the horses. My friend didn’t take the bait.

And this doesn’t count the ongoing whinings of my friends in real estate.

“The economy”  — it seems everywhere I turn everyone’s talking about this bogeyman as if it is something that really exists. Sure, I know things are tough — I lost a job myself in this past year. But it’s to the point I’m starting to wonder how much of the problem has become psychological, almost a form of mass hysteria that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And how much of this is the machination of corporate America and its media lapdogs (NPR, Fox, CNN, etc.) which would like nothing better than a workforce that fears for its jobs, willing to take pay cuts and work harder and longer hours for less pay?

Perhaps “the economy” is another example of why we should not believe everything we think.

The sun sets behind the stormy backdrop of the Sangre de Cristo range. Click on the photo for a larger view.