TeamReedBlog.2020

I’ve been toying with the idea of retiring from my professional PR career for a while now and have been cutting back for more than a year. It’s remarkably hard to step away when you have clients who you love, who you trust, who work to make the world a better place and who seem to hold you in the same high regard.  It was a different century when I made my first two hard work-related decisions. The first was to leave the newspaper that had welcomed me into journalism long before I had any right to be there to go to another. The second was to leave journalism for the “dark side” of the notebook and try my hand at public relations. Each transition led to many wonderful things and made me a believer that change is usually good. I was 15 when I officially joined the workforce, which meant I had to get some sort of waiver to avoid child labor laws. I don’t count babysitting or the three days I earned a paycheck detasseling corn (a rite of passage in rural Indiana but not good for shor...

Today's offering comes from the desk of Amy Tokash, who was spring cleaning and came across some photos that have been gathering dust there for more than 20 years. She shared them with the Captain and me. It elicited this gem:  " I was looking at those pictures Amer sent. Man. That one of you on the top of that car? I see what I saw in you." I totally remember the chicken limo and the fun we had with that. It started with us -  Amy, Lynda, Annmarie and I  - taking turns  driving around town in the Chicken Limo .  Back then, you drove the car. In the current iteration, they apparently have a driver, which to be fair is probably less of a liability risk. When we hired it, the car was already ancient with sagging seats that we had to put pillows in for some of us to see over the dash. We had the windows down, probably to overcome the stench of vomit that was surely deep in the seats and upholstery.   The car was unwieldy and the bushes between the our house an...

One short weekend in the Big Apple does not a real New Yorker make, but when Ali spied a rat in the subway, we decided we had earned our NYC bona fides. In what we hope is the first of many girl trips for the Reeds of Maine, Indiana and Florida, Ali, Jen and I met up in New York for part of the back end of Alison's Spring Break. It's a testament to Alison's thirst for good food, fun and travel that she gave us some of her time, but neither Jen nor I care about why she agreed to hang out with us. We're just glad she did. Me most of all because I've been plagued lately with leg pain that I'm hoping isn't another fake hip knocking on my door. The pain has found a friend in a nagging pain and numbness in a couple toes on my other foot and the pad of that foot. So between the leg and the foot, I can be bit of a mess. I learned this week that I have a neuroma in that foot, aka an inflamed nerve, which might have been exacerbated by the cute boots I wore to the air...

I'm reading this book: "Who Cooked the Last Supper?  The Women’s History of the World, " by Rosalind Miles. I can't say that I love it.  I may be a lone voice in the wilderness here. Goodreads give the book 4/5 stars and Libby recommended it to me.  I have great respect for Miles' research and for putting forth a position I've long held: that you can't fully trust tradition and history because our notion of history is limited to what the survivors said it was. It's like eye-witness accounts in criminal prosecutions: eye witnesses rarely get all the facts straight. You don't have to have to be a historian to know that most of the historical documents that survived were things recorded by men. Men who were either rich or had rich patrons. What of the stories of the women, the poor, the schmucks who lived hand-to-mouth but probably had some amazing stories? Ever notice how so many pieces of fiction rely on the protagonist falling into money somehow? ...

  Jeff and I are celebrating our 27th wedding anniversary today about 1,000 miles apart.  He gets 75-degree-Orlando. I get 23 degrees in Indy. We’re not fighting or separated on purpose. For the first time in the nearly six years she’s been a college student (4 at Purdue and 1.5/5 at UCF) she called asking if one of us could come down because she was “feeling like death.” It came at a good time for Jeff. He’d been helping her with her project to add an ACLU chapter to the university and he currently doesn’t have a consulting contract. I have a busy work month with a client event that should be my swan song. So, it was he who caught a flight down. Instead of death (thank goodness) Alison has mono and the ‘flu. She is medicated and recovering. Day One, her father ordered her to bed, started in on her mountain of laundry and made her Ramen soup. Day Two, she got into the doctor and got sent back to bed while he got her meds. Then, he got (undiagnosed) flu. Day Three, he was ...

Our nearly annual New Year's Eve gathering was another fun time with great friends and even some family this year. Highlight include NOT killing Kate, welcoming new people and a celebration of some new recipes that will definitely be on the menu next year. Lowlights include ALMOST killing Kate, sickness and travel kept some great people from our midst and a soup that took a lot of time (and accidentally ended up on at least two people)  that wasn't really worth the trouble. (Shoulda had the pasta instead...) "Don't kill Kate" is the first rule of my Book Club, which celebrated its 19th year this year without killing our dear friend Kate, who has a severe peanut allergy. For NYE, we thought we'd spread the word well that peanuts and anything made in a facility that includes peanuts in its manufacturing was verboten. One guest missed the memo, and we totally missed the dish when it was placed on the table.  Happily, Kate had enjoyed a bit of time prior to this i...

When a death trap of a rental car and a lap full of dog vomit doesn't derail your vacation, you know you've had a good one. Team Reed will count 2024 as yet another epic trip to Vacationland. It started with a couple days in the Old Port where the Captain and I braved the single digits to shop, sample and sip before meeting the rest of the elder Reed clan at DiMillo's and then the Portland Symphony Orchestra. We picked Ali up on Sunday and traveled north to Jen and Peter's temporary digs on Oak Pond. We'd rented a Jeep Gladiator because we'd recently ended up with a truck as our rental car and Jeff liked driving it. We learned the hard way that this pickup-like vehicle is not meant for cold weather.  We were on the interstate, about a third of the way into the trip when we experienced the " Jeep Death Wobble " which feels like you're driving down a rutted, gravel road at top speed. The jarring will shake your teeth loose, and when it comes out of ...