'Oh, What Mischief Pen Can Make'

On June 17, 1981, I spent the day in Columbus, Ohio, the state capital, following State Senator Paul Pfeifer (R-Bucyrus) around the State House. My newspaper, the now-defunct Bellevue Gazette, sent me there to profile the senator whose district included most of our circulation area. I still know little about politics and government, and it shows in the story I wrote and that my paper published the following day, Thursday, June 18. I remember working late in the newsroom after driving back from Columbus to Bellevue – about 100 miles due north -- so the story could run the following day on the front page with this headline: 

“A day with Senator Pfeifer

Meetings, lobbying, red tape”  

 

A reader has scanned the story and sent me a copy. I always steel myself when reading something I wrote long ago. Infelicities pile up. I had no formal training in journalism so I relied on common sense and what little experience I had already accumulated as a reporter. The story is clear and orderly and doesn’t go on too long. It’s also a little dull and shows my ignorance of what I was witnessing. Pfeifer was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was hearing testimony on a bill authorizing the Ohio Building Authority to issue revenue bonds for the construction of new prisons. Most of the lobbying and deal-making was lost on me. I captured some of the atmosphere:

 

“Pfeifer, his legislative aide and a senate clerk eat lunch on the lawn in front of the State House. Hundreds of state employees eat bag lunches and lie in the sun for an hour on the grass along Broad St. [AP style: “Street” should be spelled out when no address is included. The Gazette subscribed to UPI.] A bluegrass band picks out ‘Rocky Top’ from a stage erected on the lawn.”

 

Little failures along the way, mostly weak word choices, sting. I see an inexplicable grammar error: “Back in his office, Pfeifer slumps in his chair, looking a little wilted. The sharp creases in his white shirt has [!] softened. The senator stares out his window at the tall neon sign proclaiming the Columbus Dispatch.” The next paragraphs conclude the story:

 

“Calls pour in: the Associated Press, Cleveland Mayor Voinovich’s office, a friend from Bucyrus.

 

“‘It’s just the beginning,’ he mutters. ‘We’ll be here til [sic] 11.’”

 

It could have been even worse. Today I would never use “mutters.” Keep it simple: “says.” And I would use the past tense throughout. Walter de la Mare, of all people, would have understood. In the Spring 1953 of The Virginia Quarterly Review he published “Second Thoughts””:

 

“Gone the promise, pains, and care—

All I’d seemed to squander here!

Now I read what then I writ

Even sense has forsaken it.

 

“Whither must my heart have flown,

Leaving head to drudge alone?

Whither can my wits have strayed

To let such lifeless things be said?

 

“Oh, what mischief pen can make,

Scribbling on for scribbling's sake!

How such vanity condone—

Peacock shimmering in the sun!—

The Muse (if ever present) gone.”

 

De la Mare was born 150 years ago on this date, April 25, in 1873. It’s my brother’s birthday: Happy sixty-eighth, Ken.