The Best Job Is One You Love
When I was an impressionable young woman, I believed the wise old man who told me that’s it’s a lucky fate to love your job, because you’ll spend a lot of your life doing it.
Achieving that happiness takes stepping in the right direction as well as luck, newspaperman Joe Akers advised, though there is no recipe for the correct proportions.
I’ve met some happy people this week, and a couple I hope will find their happiness right here at Bay Weekly.
As you see in our staff box, a new pair has joined the Bay Weekly team.
Our new staff writer and calendar editor is Ashley Brotherton, who got on the elevator to this destination at Anne Arundel Community College and climbed a few floors at the University of Maryland School of Journalism. She lives in Calvert, went to school in Anne Arundel and has worked in both counties, so she fits my bill for a person who knows her way around our part of Chesapeake Country.
New to the sales staff is Kay Corcoran-Hart, who lives in North Beach and has also worked in both counties.
Both women are energized by getting out and meeting people, and we’re off to a happy start.
Diana Beechener, meanwhile, who thrives on writing movie reviews, is never happier than when she rouses contrary opinion, as she did this week. Her July 5 review of Ted provoked a long and obscenity-laden rant left anonymously on our answering machine.
According to the guy who loved Ted, “Seth MacFarlane took Beechener to prom, banged her, left dog poo on her door and never called again.”
Sort of makes her point, doesn’t he? But he doesn’t get paid for his opinions.
This week’s feature story, on Calvert Marine Museum’s Sharkfest, introduced me to a couple more people who love their work. David Moyer, the museum’s new curator of estuarine biology, gets the daily fun hanging out with live animals.
“Working directly with hands-on animal care is interesting, complex, complicated, intriguing,” says Moyer, who’s in charge of the care and feeding of the museum’s menagerie, which ranges from thousands of comb jellies to fish, amphibians, reptiles, skates, rays, sharks and a pair of otters. “It’s not documented science. There’s a lot of mystery still involved.”
Moyer got on his career elevator as an educator with a bachelors degree in biology who got very interested in animal care, volunteered and eventually worked his way into a full-time paid position. That, he says, is “typical” in his field.
Moyer’s colleague Stephen Godfrey, curator of paleontology, spends his time in mysteries millions of years old, helping the museum “recreate this prehistoric environment.”
Getting paid for digging up old stuff and imagining stories around it is sort of a hands-on version of being a reporter, so it’s no wonder it sounds swell to me.
A lot of schooling took Godfrey to where he’s at, but behind that was his love for the work he’s climbed his way into — and the imagination to see himself doing it.
Here’s a Job Needing Love
What about your job as a citizen of the United States of America?
The Fourth of July brings big splashes of light and noise and lots of feel-good proclamations. But after the fireworks die in the sky, do we remember that we help govern the nation?
We are, after all, the represented in a representative government. The people we elect — if we bother to vote — govern on our behalf. If we don’t tell them what we think, hope and expect, we leave them free to represent a very small constituency: their own opinion, reinforced by the vocal few.
If you love the environment, the just-released Maryland League of Conservation Voters scorecard for this year’s General Assembly is a wake-up call that it’s time to report for duty.
The average grade for the 16 lawmakers who live in Anne Arundel County is 51. Grades ranged from 100 (Dels. Busch and Sophocleus and Sen. DeGrange) to 0 (Sens. Simonaire and Reilly). Nine scored 40 or below; seven 57 or above. See the full results at http://bit.ly/Mjgufh.
The six lawmakers representing Calvert averaged 52. Dels. James Proctor and Joseph Valario, who represent only a bit of Dunkirk, each scored 100. Sen. Roy Dyson, who lives in St. Mary’s and represents southern Calvert, scored 0. Calvert residents Sen. Mike Miller scored 75; Dels. Tony O’Donnell scored 18 and Mark Fischer 20.
If those scores aren’t good enough for you, it’s your job to explain why.
Find the phone numbers of lawmakers’ district offices by calling 800-492-7122.