Calling McCall's

One of the benefits of working at Random House was that every June or July we would receive this stapled set of about ten pages with three columns of tiny print, single-spaced and double-sided that looked like the pages of a phone book but the paper wasn't tissue-thin and instead of names, addresses and phone numbers, the listings were of book titles.  

Books, books, and more books — must've been 1000 titles on that list —  the list that was delivered to each and every one of us by the mail guy who came down the aisles with his rolling cart cubicle-by-cubicle and deposited mail onto our desktops.  [I remember the buzz when after much corporate angst and deliberation, finally the first females were hired to do this entry-level job.]  The best part about that list?   You got to choose ten book titles and get them for FREE!  While it wasn't a raise or a cash bonus (we were making about $8 -9,000 a year) it was what we all loved and could never have enough of — BOOKS.  It was the Random House way of saying thank you to its employees and we loved them for it.

Everyone scoured those lists for days and days trying to decide what to get. Circling one, then another, then changing our minds because we'd found something better.  I think they were in alphabetical order and not grouped by genre, so unless you actually knew the book, there was no way to know what was what without looking the title up in the Random House book catalogue.  It was the 70s. IBM Selectric typewriters were the high tech of the day.  No one had a computer so finding information took time. But it was so much fun.  Don't waste any of your choices on paperbacks.  Look for the expensive coffee-table over-sized specialty books that would look great in your apartment.  Find books you could give for gifts.  People poured over those lists the way I imagined children in the 1900s searched through the Sears catalogue for their Christmas and birthday presents.

Step-by-step picture instructions

One book I was sure I wanted was The New McCall's Cook Book. If I was going to have one, it had to be McCall's because it incorporated ten+ "McCall's Cooking School"recipes.  Lifted from their monthly women's magazine, "The Cooking School" featured a step-by-step recipe on a two-page spread with detailed photographs that showed you what you were supposed to be doing. Color photos in a cookbook were a novel feature at the time and a way to hook buyers.

Another marketing stroke of genius was that you could get the NEW McCall's Cook Book in four different colors.  Someone had come up with the idea that women would love to have their cookbook match their kitchen decor so you could get this cookbook in yellow, red, green or blue. Genius! Now at the time I was single, living in an 800-square foot studio apartment with no natural light, but I did have a great little kitchen, with light wood cabinets, Formica countertop, wall-oven and all.  But the kitchen I imagined I would have one day was this very modern red,black and stainless steel kitchen with one of those refrigerators with glass-front see-through doors, and so — the red-covered McCall's cookbook was for me!

Come October — when you least expected it — the mail guy would come, rolling down the aisles with his book cart stacked high with large shrink-wrapped bundles of books. Your list would be on top showing through the plastic.  By then you'd forgotten about the books, forgotten what you'd chosen.  It was this huge exciting gift to unwrap — it was Christmas in October!  

Of all the books I got that way, there is only one that I still have and remember. 

My cookbooks proudly displayed — on the bookcase I designed to fill 3 inches of unused space
behind my kitchen door.  My sweet husband took my sketch and had it built for me as a surprise!

It was and is my go-to cookbook. Though I have cookbooks galore — plus the Internet to search for the millions of recipes available for every possible dish you'd want to make, still that McCall's cookbook never fails me.

The other night when I wanted to make coleslaw (and I am very picky about coleslaw) I searched for an Ina Garten recipe and then a few others but not satisfied, back I went — to my forty-year-old, food-stained, falling apart, red-covers held together with a large rubber band cookbook and happily found two recipes for coleslaw that I combined in a way that suited both my tastes and the ingredients I had on hand.

This coleslaw is going to be a satisfying creamy crunchy complement to those country-style ribs I'm making.    Wanna come for dinner?

Home Economics - Part Two

That night in 1977 as I ate my lunch leftovers of exquisite Chinese food (a very big change from the Chinese we'd been eating in those days) leftovers from the sophisticated Soho restaurant (the beginning of the food revolution in cuisine) I wondered whether I'd lost the big opportunity.  It was a big step up.  It was a jump in pay, in position, in total project management.  I really wanted the job.  I might not have asked for it but now that I'd been courted I wanted the chance to produce a textbook for the first time.  Could I do it?  I supposed but still — it was both scary and exhilarating and now I'd blown it.

I thought it over and tried to think if I'd have done it differently — not taken the food home but every time I came around to the same thing: I just couldn't have allowed that food ("that perfectly good food," as my father would say) to be thrown away. It went against the grain.  No matter how it looked, doing anything else wouldn't be me.  And if they were thinking of hiring me, they needed to know who I was.  Still, not being asked was gong to hurt.

I went in to work subdued. I knew people would be asking me all day.  I got in to my cubicle and buckled down to my IBM Selectric 3 and then, the phone rang.  

It was Mike offering me the job!  I hung up the phone smiling.  I sat with the news a few minutes and then went to whisper to my friends all over the office.   Before long, I thought to call Dick Lidz, the guy who'd recommended me for the job.  I'd been working on a series of twelve career-education paperback books Dick's company was producing for Random House. Adventures in the World of Work was a compilation of job interviews with all the people involved in delivering a product or a service (Who Puts the Plane in the Air?  Who Puts the Blue in the Jeans?). It was gonna be a great set of books and it was going to be my last job at Random House.

"Dick!  Just wanted to thank you.  Butterick offered me the job."

"I know, that's great!"  he replied, "You really WOW-ed them — they had alotta questions and you had the answers. AND — " he lowered his voice and said in a confidential tone, "John and Mike were really happy you could hold your liquor."

"What about Marsha?  She kept pointing out and didn't seem too happy I wasn't a teacher or a home economist."

"Now, shes a stumper.  She wasn't keen on you at all until she came back from your lunch and told Mike, 'She did what a home economist would do.'  Whadaya think that was?"

So. I got the job because I drank three straight Scotches and took the doggy bag from lunch.

Pancetta and all...

When I took that pancetta from the lunch with Marge, I don't know whether I had my father and his depression-mentality thrift in my head, or the more current and pressing fact that having left my job our home economics would be greatly changed. 

But the next day when I was reheating the vegetarian slice of Marge's pizza, I got out that pancetta, sprinkled it on top of the cheese, arugula, and tomatoes and reheated that piece.  As I bit into that delicious leftover, I realized that  — for the most part — being who I am, acting the way I believe, has served me well and if I was going to have any success in his new chapter of my career, maybe — maybe I'd better keep on doing what I do and hope for the best.


  

Home Economics

This half of what I brought home.
I ate the other piece!

My friend Marge treated me to a delicious belated birthday lunch where we shared a handmade pizza of tomatoes, mozzarella, basil pesto, arugula (and prosciutto for me) and a lovely salad of spinach, goat cheese, walnuts (pancetta on the side for me) in balsamic vinaigrette.  We talked, shared sadnesses, laughed (that during lunch she'd wondered why I had a nice little spoon and she didn't and then remembered why!) and given that I'm starting a new venture — she gave great advice. When it was time to go there was a nice piece of pizza (from her half) which she graciously urged me to take.  When I got the take-out container I looked up and said, "I'm going to take this pancetta home.  It'll be great on another salad," and while Marge smiled me on, I thought back to a job interview I went to in I977.

It was a step up the editorial ladder at another company, Butterick Publishing. They were young upstarts to book publishing.  Though they'd started in 1867 they were a pattern company and I was interviewing for a job to supervise the production of their first textbook.  Random House founded in 1925, more than 50 years after Butterick, was the more established giant.

This whole interview thing was new to me.  I'd been happily at Random House for over four years, but things were changing and in some ways falling apart.  The paperback series I was working on and loved (Choices for Tomorrow comparing differing viewpoints on controversial issues of the day: individual's right to privacy vs society's need to know, changing roles of men and women) was cancelled. In GALLEYS. (If you're too young to know what those are, look up "galley proof.") I was heartbroken.  It was such a great series for high schoolers.  One day, without warning the three top management guys (two I loved) were fired at 9 am, out by noon.  Management had changed and I wasn't thrilled with the abrupt implementation of a different direction. So when I was approached, when someone recommended me, I decided to go.

The folks at Butterick had been looking for someone for seven months. They wanted a home economist, who was a teacher, and an editor. I didn't have two out of three. Still they wanted to see me and already it had been a very weird experience. The first interview was with Mike, a guy running the division.  He seemed placidly pleasant but almost a dodo.  The interview was a breeze.  Then Mike called me to come back for lunch and an interview with the guy running the company, John "Scales". I agreed.  A friend called to tip me off that he was a stress interviewer.  

"What's a stress interviewer?" I asked.

"A guy that's gonna try to knock you off your game.  Someone who will want to trip you up."

Well, that disturbed me.  That actually pissed me off. Trying to make you uncomfortable when already you were uncomfortable because it was an interview?  GEEZ. That sounded nasty.  AND none of these guys were the editor I'd be directly reporting to...a woman.  So I went into the interview annoyed and cocky.  They wanted ME.  I didn't go to them for a job — they came to ME. I was gonna show those guys.

Well, it was some interview. Butterick was in a really hip, up-and-coming neighborhood called Soho (remember this was the seventies) I had to take the subway way downtown to Spring and Sixth.  I was brought into the office by the first guy who interviewed me.  I sat down.

"SO," he started out, "instead of me asking you a lot of questions and you asking me a lot of questions, why don't you just tell me about yourself?" he asked as he relaxed back in his rolling chair with a cigarette.

"Where do you want me to begin and how straight do you want it?" I volleyed back.

He sat up, leaned toward the desk, put his cigarette in the ashtray and said with a startled look on his tanned Greenwich, Connecticut tennis-playing face, "Start anywhere you want and as straight as you want, straight from the shoulder."

"I started working in my parents' drycleaners at the age of eight..." and I continued on non-stop for ten minutes until I worked my way up to the present and Random House.

The whole time he kept looking at me, looking at me and staring at me, but not asking anything.  Just listening.  When I stopped finally, Mister Big Shot shot a look at Mike and grabbing his coat announced, "Let's go to lunch."

The restaurant was a dark, clubby, tavern-type place with those dark wooden clunky Captain's chairs and white tablecloths. The waiter approached.

"What would you like to drink?" John asked me.

"Are we drink-drinking or are we having beer and wine?" I deadpanned determined not to let this guy throw me.

"Have anything you like," he instructed and I ordered a Dewar's on the rocks with a twist. [Think Mad Men days in Manhattan.]  Liquor was a part of one's daily diet.  Dewar's was my daytime Scotch. At night, I drank Johnny Walker Red.  That lunch I had three straight Scotches in the span of less than two hours.  The asked questions, I answered.  John did most of the talking.  Mike smiled and stayed silent.  When I left them to take the subway back uptown to Random House, I suddenly felt very light-headed.  The whir of the train, the rush of the people, climbing the steps to emerge into sunlight once again and hike my way over to 50th & Third, quite simply I was plastered.  

The elevator whisked me up to the fifth floor where I stumbled into my cubicle and could not stop giggling.  It was after two and there was no way I was getting any work done.  Everyone could hear me laughing and came over to my cubicle to try and quiet me down long enough to hold out until I could safely leave.  At four, Mike called and said he wanted me to have lunch with the editor I'd be working for: Marsha McCormick. Could I meet her next week?  After I hung up I thought: Did I have the job?  It was an odd way to put it before I'd completed the interview process.  What if this woman didn't like me? Didn't she have a say?

When I met her the next week, Marsha was polite and reserved, conservatively dressed and very civil.  Immediately I knewwe weren't cut from the same cloth.  Still she was trying to engage and be open and I was trying to answer her many,many questions.  We went to a Chinese restaurant that was in a renovated sewing machine factory and it was the beginning of exposed duct work  reconditioned old wooden floors and high, high ceilings. I remember the waiter bringing what used to preface every meal in a Chinese restaurant, the bowl with the fried noodles and duck sauce to dunk them in.  These were really unusual they were cotton-candy-colored pink, blue, yellow, green and white Styrofoam chips these were the only things I had a chance to eat.  I spent so much time talking and responding that before I knew it the lunch was over, Marsha had finished and I hadn't begun.  The waiter approached.

"We're not going to let him throw this away are we?" I asked.

"Whatever you want," Marsha replied, looking at me with a question on her face.

"I'll take this to go" I told the waiter and said to her "I'll have it for dinner." After we'd said our goodbyes, bag-in-hand I headed back uptown, back to the office, back to my cubicle.

Everyone knew I'd been interviewing.  People were covering for me when I had to leave, so once I was back, people crowded into my cubby.  As I was describing Marsha and what she asked, and what I answered, someone looked at the bag on my desk.

"What's that?"

"My lunch."

"Whadaya mean your lunch?" one person asked.

Someone else asked, "You got a doggy bag?" 

"Well, yeah. I never got to eat my lunch, so I asked to take it home."

The crowd erupted. 

                    "You did WHAT?"    "You asked to take the FOOD?"    "Oh my God! I cannot believe you did that!"                  
  "GEEZ, are you CRAZY?"

"What is the problem?" I yelled out to stop their barrage, "we've all DONE IT!  What's the BIG DEAL?"

It got really quiet.

"Not on an interview" someone explained and they all drifted away — back to their own cubicles, heads downcast — convinced I had just blown all chances of getting the job.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Reciprocating Receipts

I am sitting here in the car cleaning out my pocketbook for what seems to be the umpteenth time.  I'm finding crumpled up bills, among crumpled up receipts, mixed in with expired coupons, frequent film-goer cards, and business cards of that person I meant to email. Less than two months ago, my friend Linda went through this pocketbook mess doing the same thing.  I feel guilty because the mess is my fault.  Along with the receipts galore are paperclips, rubber bands, cough drops, restaurant mints and cellophane-wrapped toothpicks — all things — I might need one day things that I cannot just throw away because throwing away ANYTHING would make my father turn over in his grave.  

The other day on the kitchen counter by the microwave (another great dumping ground that is forever piling up and forever needing to be cleaned off) I saw this small curlicue of silver and gold ribbon that had come off a package.  I looked at it and thought, ”Why am I saving that ridiculously little piece of ribbon?  THROW IT AWAY.” And so I did.  But last night, I was wrapping a double-pack of Degree “Black Dress” deodorant as a gift to my friend Susan. (OK I know it sounds crazy, but in Manhattan that deodorant costs $7.85 for 2.5 oz and this was the exact same thing but TWO of them for $5.50 in my local Big Lots!) it was tricky to wrap and that ribbon would have been the perfect thing to tie at the top — as soon as I’d pushed myself to throw out that ribbon, within the week I needed it.

This reinforces my absolute abhorrence to throw away anything.  Growing up in a “depression-mentality” family it’s hard enough, but whenever I do get rid of something, inevitably I need it.

Years ago while in California I treated myself to a bracelet made out of typewriter keys. It was fabulous and quirky and even had a “back space” key which was darling as I am old enough to know what a backspace key was and had even used a typewriter.  A REAL typewriter.  A manual one.  In 8^th grade when all the girls had to take Typing while the boys took Industrial Arts.  That was before the age of electric typewriters.  The massive and astonishing IBM Selectric a wonder to behold.  The day I started at Random House and was taken to my cubicle there sat that tan machine — very heavy, very impressive, I thought the future had arrived.  It was SO fast it was so solid! Instead of little arms with a letter on each end there was a metal ball that spun around to imprint the letter you struck.  Every typewriter came with "Courier" but you were allowed to order one extra ball in the typeface of your choice! I'm pretty sure if I choose "Century Schoolbook," but whatever it was, you felt SO cool being able to change the font!

officemuseum.com

And then, amazingly one day we were told we were all getting NEW electric typewriters. The IBM Selectric 3 with, get ready, a self-correcting key!  This new improvement was going to make life incredibly easy.  IF you made a mistake (which inevitably you did about a hundred times a day) all you had to do was press this special key (with an X if I remember correctly) and it would backspace  and whiteout  your mistaken letter!  When those typewriters arrived, I swear we all sat at our desks and just mis-typed so we could see that correction key in action.

mytypewriter.com

Back to the bracelet…I loved that bracelet and wore it everyday until about a month later when one of the keys fell off.  I was horrified and glad that I heard it and had the key. So I tried super-gluing it that night and it held for awhile and then, unbelievably another key fell off and then another when I wasn't looking so I took the bracelet off and started looking for the receipt because I couldn't remember exactly where I bought that bracelet, what quaint little store in which northern California town, and here I was back on the East Coast .  I was so frustrated and mad at myself because I knew, I KNEW I kept that receipt but where?

After awhile I just gave up and had that wonderful bracelet in a zip-lock snack bag laid to rest in a desk drawer.  Then months ago when I was tackling yet another stack of the papers that seem to accumulate and multiple overnight while I’m sleeping and there, there in the midst of tiny little crumpled receipts  was the missing one Mrs Dalloway’s Literary & GardenArts Bookstore, Berkeley California, $60. I cannot believe I paid $60 for a bracelet in 2006.  Well, not one to be deterred by a mere six years, I wrote Mrs Dalloway’s and sent them my bracelet the fallen keys and a copy of the receipt, told them I’d been looking for that receipt for years and pleaded with them to fix my bracelet and even if they couldn't to return it because I wanted that backspace key. I didn't have much hope but I wanted to believe in the kindness of strangers.

Now that I’m leaving my job of the past 4+ years I've been trying to clean out my files and bookshelves and desk and there in one of the drawers I found the note I’d written to Mrs Dalloway’s; I’d completely forgotten about the bracelet so I called the phone number on the receipt and said I’d sent my bracelet months ago and not heard a thing…and after an apologetic response this flurry of email exchanges took place:

Apologies for not writing back to you immediately upon receipt of your letter with accompanying bracelet which you purchased in 2006. Had you contacted us right away there might have been something we could do. At this point it is very doubtful, but as it happens I am going to see the maker next week (have not seen her in months, in fact), and ask her for a special favor for you. I make no promises, but I will try. The first generation of these bracelets had a lot of problems like this; now she makes them differently and the keys don't fall off.

Stay tuned & Best New Year's Wishes,Marion

A week later:

The maker is going to re-build your bracelet. Stay tuned.

And then two weeks later, in the mail came a small package from “Nancy” with a note saying all was fixed. I am once again in receipt of my bracelet.

You are welcome. Nancy is a dear, and she went out of her way for both of us.  Wear it in good health. Marion 

And I will.  "Back Spacer" and all —  —  — 

See How They Grow

Everyone said NOT to do it.

    “It never works out when friends work together.”

    “It’ll be the end of the friendship…”

    “I wouldn’t risk it.”

    “Well, you can kiss that friendship goodbye!”  

were some of the things people said to me, trying to be helpful, but I couldn't imagine that Barbara and I couldn’t work together.  In many ways we were opposite in terms of skillset:

• She was detailed-oriented and while I certainly cared about the details, I wanted to worry about the big picture. 

• She was methodical, organized and extremely self-disciplined; I was scattered and would hopscotch my way through tasks. 

• She was level and controlled while I was an emotional roller coaster.

We seemed a perfect match.

I was tackling a huge project I’d never done before, creating a textbook from scratch and though the concept, editorial plan and table of contents were all created and approved by experts in the field, still it was going to be almost two years from plan to product.  I’d been bold in fighting to create and control this product; didn't want to be saddled with an outside company (again) that I couldn't control and would spend more time cleaning up after than I would developing. And my concept had been well-received  by the outside team of authorities they’d brought in to be questioned for two days by a market-research team the division had hired.  I’d only been in the company for 18 months and it was only the second textbook they were attempting.  So while I’d convinced the higher-ups, now that push was coming to shove, I was scared.  Barbara was a known quantity; she made me feel secure and most important, I couldn't imagine anyone I could trust more to follow-through and get the job done.  

I couldn't find a logo since
the company is now defunct

It was the first time anyone was attempting a managed textbook in the high school child development market. Normally textbooks were written by one author, someone who was a known expert in the field. But a managed text was one where you created the book through market research (What were the up and coming trends? New topics?) and a competitive analysis (How were the existing books weak?  What did the book have to have to beat the competition? ) and then you hired writers to write the copy. Not the “experts” because while they might be expert in the field, it didn't mean they were great writers, had the time to write an entire book, or had a sense of how to write a book with national appeal.  Our book was going to have consulting editors — known names in the field who would review the manuscript for accuracy — but they wouldn't write a word.  That was up to us.

We dove in full steam ahead.  Barbara made lists of everyone we’d need to hire freelance, wrote job descriptions, interviewed and reviewed writing samples of the writers.  We interviewed designer after designer until we found Leon, a guy older than we were who seemed like a good fit.  She plotted out timelines with delivery dates and deadlines from manuscript to galleys to proofs to finished product. Her meticulously hand-drawn color-coded charts on graph paper were taped around her office like an eye=level border of geometric wallpaper.  She drove me and the team of 21 by those charts.

There were glitches of course. One night we had to get hundreds of pages of manuscript out to readers and the copier wouldn't work; it was after 5 pm and no hope of getting it repaired until morning. I went riding the elevator until I found someone going up to their office and begged to use their copy machine — the guy laughed, let me in, and we met our deadline.  

A more serious glitch came earlier when we started getting copy from the team of writers and realized that the different chapters didn’t sound as if they were written by the same person — and of course they weren't! While we’d carefully chosen our team of writers based on the samples they’d submitted, we never thought to test them by asking them to rewrite their material to the style we'd finally settled on.  It was a mistake of huge proportions.  The entire timeline of the book was in jeopardy.  From every wall in Barbara’s office, those multicolored charts with their carefully drawn lines stared down at us disapprovingly.

We solved the terrible problem by hiring a master copyeditor, Kendra Crossen, who — in addition to copyediting (checking the grammar, spelling, consistency of formatting), had to rewrite the copy to make it flow as if from one voice. And she did.

During that year and a half, we did have one huge fight. I don’t remember what it was about but to Barbara’s credit, she insisted we face the conflict head on until it was resolved.  That was another great thing about her personal style and how she conducted herself in business — she never let anything fester.

When it came time to find a title we were up against a host of books that had been in the market for decades; in fact they were so popular that teachers referred to them not by the title, but by the author's name:  “I use the Hurlock.” or “We use Draper and Draper.”

But all the titles: Understanding Child Growth and Development, Caring for Children, Child Development, Understanding and Guiding Young Children —  sounded alike and boring.

It was Barbara who said, “What about See How They Grow?” and her words sailed into the room like a breath of fresh air.

The marketing and sales folks argued vociferously against it. The title didn't say what the book was about and it didn’t sound like anything else on the market — but that was precisely what made it perfect.  We weren't a text like any other at the time: our book went beyond the school-age child (8-12) to include adolescent development (the age of the audience who would be reading it); our book coupled the typical ages and stages of growth & development with caregiving — not just the physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development of the child but what was it like to take care of a two-year old who was fighting, biting and saying “no.”  We had parenting pages which made the reader think about caring for, guiding, and disciplining a child — not an easy job as any parent knows.  We were going into a market where everybody already had the product and we didn't have "name" authors!  It would take a lot to get educators to buy this book. Standing out, sounding different was exactly what was needed.

We added a subtitle: Concepts in Child Development and Parenting. When the book finally was published, two years after its start, seeing that book was exhilarating. Against all odds, with no actual experience in producing a book from concept to finish, together we’d done it. But management in the company had changed and I was on the way out, of the company and eventually educational publishing.

After moving south I returned to K-12 education and was in someone’s office at the state Department of Public Instruction when I saw our book on the shelf. With a big grin erupting on my face I reached for that smooth white volume, loving the feel of it in my hands. In the passing years, See How They Grow had been bought and sold from one now-defunct company to another. As I leafed through to the copyright page I saw that our names were gone.  Even though we’d given birth (to what always felt like my first child), we were no longer identified.

Never earning a penny in royalties, in some ways I felt rich. Thirty-one years after See How They Grow made its presence in the world, we not only had tangible evidence of what we'd created together, mother and midwife Barbara are still great and loving friends. [Happy Birthday Barbara!]

At Random

I learned the word “chutzpah” after living in New York but it was something I always had.  It surfaced whenever I felt unsure.  In college, when I needed to find a part-time job, the woman I was baby-sitting for said she’d get me an interview for an editorial position at Random House.  Random House.  It sounded so important.  It sounded wonderful. I imagined someone asking: "Where do you work?"  "I work at Random House." While I loved books and the sound of it all, I wasn't sure what qualifications I had to offer or what I would actually do at a publishing house.  “Anything they ask,” she replied.

Getting ready for the interview, I imagined I'd be sitting across from an older, graying-at-the-temples, pin-striped-suit, wing-tip-shoes kinda guy.  Those types were familiar to me — they usually wanted to protect me so I wasn't nervous.  But I got nervous when I was facing the brown afro and beard, plaid flannel shirt, brown suede-fringed vest and jeans of a 30-something Jewish guy in an office with a huge arch and a red wall filled with a display of over-sized Eschers!

“So,” he said plunking his work boots atop his desk, “tell me, what’re you looking for?”

“Well," I stumbled, "I don’t know exactly.  You see I’m putting myself through college and babysitting’s not enough — I was hoping to find some kind of part-time job…” I trailed off weakly.

“In the School Division, we develop educational materials for the K-12 market in reading, language arts, and social studies, though K-8 is our predominant focus.  We produce basal series, textbooks, multi-media learning units and filmstrip programs in all those areas — does that sound interesting to you?”

I had no idea what a “basal-series” was — the only basal I knew was a cell-carcinoma.  “I love teaching and learning. I always thought I’d be a teacher some day but now I’m not so sure.”

He started shuffling through some papers in his hand while he talked.  “Well," he said a bit distractedly, "how about  you start here as an editorial assistant, say 10,15,20 hours a week — whatever you can swing with your schedule.”

“You’re offering me a JOB?” I asked in shocked disbelief, the energy draining from my body.

He looked up from his papers.  “Well, yeah.  Don’t you want one?”

“Well, I don’t know if I can do the job you have in mind." I was waffling.  "I mean my grammar’s not that good — ”

“Whaddaya mean your ‘grammar’s not that good’?” he said sitting up in his chair.

“Well, I mean I know when something’s not right and usually I can fix it, but I’m just not certain why it’s wrong.”

“Well you can learn can’t you?” he asked incredulously leaning forward over his desk.

“Well, yes but — well, I’d hate to disappoint anyone...why don’t we try it out for six weeks? That way you can see if I’m good for you and I can see if this works for me.”

Steve Brown leaned back staring at me with a blank look on his face. I don’t think he quite knew what to say but he gave me the job.

I loved, loved, loved working at Random House, “the house that Bennett Cerf built.” It was a treasure trove of everything I’d hoped Manhattan would be for me.   After working in a drycleaners most of my young life, streaming into a skyscraper on 50^th and Third, filled with floor-to-ceiling window-filled offices with executives and row after row after row of books, was a dream.  Minions of worker-bees crammed into elevators to ride up to their cubicles with IBM Selectric typewriters and our wonderful reference books to read and refer to — the Chicago Manual of Style, Roget’s Thesaurus, and the Random House College Dictionary.  

One of the projects I was assigned to was a copyright renewal for the Random House School Dictionary. It required a minimum of 10% updating before the copyright could be changed.  I was instructed to look at the front and back matter and only make changes there.  At first, I did just what I was told.

But then, my new training kicked in and I started thinking about what I was working on.  Things were changing.  The country was becoming more sensitive to the growing diversity within our schools. The word "multi-cultural" was surfacing. We worker-bees were being trained to do a “sex-ethnic count” on whatever manuscript landed on our desks.  How many males? How many females? How many Native Americans [a change from American Indians], African-Americans [or should they be Black-Americans?], Asians [did this include people from India?], Hispanics [Latino/a were not yet in common usage] ?”  I started looking in to the body of the dictionary, looking at the words and their definitions and — to my surprise — I couldn't find “Mexican-American,” “Hispanic,” or “Chicano.”

Thinking about all those schoolchildren who wouldn't see in their dictionary the terms that others used to refer to them upset me. I went to see Steve.
“Steve, there are words missing from the dictionary that we have to add.”

"Excuse me?"

"We need to include the words Chicano, Mexican-American, and Hispanic as part of this revision. I can’t imagine that we’d do a revision and not add these words.”

“Are you crazy? Do you have any idea of the costs you’re talking about incurring? You add one new entry and it changes pages and pages of type! Entire sections would have to be reset — at minimum! What're you thinking?  We can’t spend that kind of money on this revision!”

“These words are MISSING from the DICTIONARY, Steve! We HAVE to. Think of those kids — how can we NOT?”

Steve just shook his head angrily and shooed me away with his hand.

I left his office tears streaming down my face.  I couldn’t go back to my cubicle (no privacy) so I ran to Lee Kosmac’s office in Marketing because I knew she’d let me hide there and I knew she’d listen to what I had to say. Even though I was in overalls and saddle shoes and not yet out of college, she always treated me as a person of value. Still crying, I told her what happened.

“You can’t argue with him about doing what’s right. The only way to convince him is to show how it effects him in the wallet. How is it hurting their bottom line? How are they losing out financially by not doing this? That’s the way to get through to him, not because it’s right, but because it’s costing the company money.”

"But that's wrong." I looked up pleadingly, hoping she would see it as I did.

"Not in business, honey." she said soothingly.

I took a deep breath.  “How can I do that? I don't know how to do that.”

“Well, I’d start by seeing how our competition, Macmillan and Harcourt Brace — who are outselling us — are doing, and if they include those words in their dictionaries.” 

I checked the five top-selling school dictionaries for those words.  I called the Texas Book Depository (one and the same) to get the sales figures for each of our competitors’ books. I worked on a memo that Lee guided and reviewed to spell out how much we were losing in sales. I went to the boss.

Steve read the memo with his cowboy boots propped on his desk. He looked up at me, scratched his Afro-ed head and said, “So, we’re losing sales?”

“All of Texas,” I replied.

“And you think it’s because of these words?” he asked.

“Well, it can’t help.  Look at the student population.  I can get you figures on the percentage of Hispanic kids in the system if you...“

“I think you’ve gotten me enough,” he smiled, and the next thing I knew, editors more knowledgeable than me were working on the revision of the Random House School Dictionary.

With Lee’s generous mentoring I won that battle and used the lesson she taught me to win many future battles throughout my career: in business, money matters.

Looking back, I should've told Steve we needed to include the word “chutzpah” in that edition.