Why write more when my home page
will distract you from the real me.
E-mail me here: (written out to reduce spam) ben(at-sign)benpollock(dot)com
I watch Mad Men religiously. Of all the plot points, the least should be the main one, the secret identity of its lead, Don Draper. Most of the other characters don’t know, but the audience got the gist from the get-go. It became a non-issue for me after reflecting on the opening scene of the […]
My first “President’s Column” for columnists.com. Thank you for electing me president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Didn’t you hear? I have not published a running column since Sept. 16, 2001. Instead I’ve written at www.benpollock.com/brick for nearly seven years. After the first year, the water warms up. Blogging is how I’ve coped […]
BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Sunday, July 11, 2010 — Indiana University feels bigger than my hometown’s University of Arkansas. Yep, 1,933 acres versus 345 acres. It has a journalism school not a department, a music school not a department. It is a handsome forested campus, full of sculptures (even a huge Calder) and fountains. Come October it […]
BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Saturday night, July 10, 2010 — The learnin’ part of the Saturday portion of the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists ended at noon, unless you’re a columnist (published or not). The usual field trip either can be written about or learned from. Lunch and and tour this time were […]
BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Friday, July 9, 2010 — “Get Schooled” was the columnists’ theme this year, our conference hosted at a university for the first time, Indiana. Appropriately, our informal welcome Thursday night was at one of the town’s oldest college hang-outs, Nick’s Pub. The meat of a conference like this is made up of lectures […]
BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Wednesday, July 7, 2010 — It was a travel day, where I wouldn’t normally post anything, but some one-sheets in the airport terminal surprised me. A college or visitors’ bureau — I forgot which and couldn’t find it again on the return to the airport on Monday, July 12 — mentioned it was […]