“An Effort to Understand” by David Murray

It may be the most idealistic definition of communication I’ve ever seen: “With sincere intent and real imagination,” writes David Murray, “all human beings can understand one another.”  

Murray is the editor of Vital Speeches of the Day. He’s the force behind the Professional Speechwriters Association. He leads the Executive Communications Council. He blogs, usually daily, at Writing Boots. He’s spent more than three decades in the communications business; I first met him when he was editor of Speechwriter’s Newsletter, back in the dark ages before social media, web sites, smart phonies, Amazon, and Google. 

 

He’s also politically blue. But he’s an unusual blue, one who believes that the politically red might actually be worth talking with. And thus his new book, An Effort to Understand: Hearing One Another (and Ourselves) in a Nation Cracked in Half.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

David Murray’s “Raised by Mad Men”

Advertising experienced a creative revolution in the 1960s, and Thomas Murray and Carol Callaway was part of it.

Who was Thomas Murray? The man who first called orange juice “O.J.” for the Florida Citrus Commission. Who was Carol Callaway? The woman who joined Murray's ad agency and who brought a social conscience with her.

Among a lot of other things.

They met at the Campbell-Ewald advertising agency in Detroit. He was 44; she was 29. They eventually married and became the parents of David Murray, writer, author, editor of Vital Speeches of the Day and co-author of the moving memoir Tell My Sons. To recognize the role his parents played in American advertising, Murray had written a short e-book, Raised By Mad Men: The Son of a Real Life Advertising Mad Man (and Mad Woman) Reveals Who These People Really Were - and How they Raised Us All.

His father might have objected to being called a “Mad Man” – the reference to the hit television series “Mad Men” starring Jon Hamm as Don Draper. But as Murray points out, many elements of Draper’s fictional career could have been lifted from his father’s working life.

Written in journalistic style, Raised by Mad Men is a factual account of the careers of two people who made a large impact on advertising and popular culture. The writing style means it is less a memoir by the author and more a straightforward news feature account, which makes it less personal and more compelling.  

Their lives mattered, and their work mattered, and not only to Murray the son but also to Murray the writer. What they said in the ads they wrote and the campaigns they developed were important for a reason that seems almost quaint and old-fashioned today: “Words mattered to these people,” Murray says. It wasn’t only about image and “impressions,” that standard of advertising and marketing that rule so much of our current world.

Words mattered; language mattered. And Murray tells a short but powerful story about how and why that shaped his parents and, ultimately, himself.

Photograph: Actor David Naughton in a Dr. Pepper ad in the 1970s, who sang “I’m a pepper, he’s a pepper, she’s a pepper, we’re a pepper, wouldn’t you like to be a pepper, too?” The Dr. Pepper campaign was one of many developed by the Campbell-Ewald agency.

Poetry at Work

It started about a year ago. I was talking with (emailing, actually) L.L. Barkat, editor of Tweetspeak Poetry, about the column I write for the online publication, and she said, “I think we need a book.”

Oh, my goodness.

The contract was signed, mailed and received. Then came the work.

I know where I was when I wrote the first draft of the introduction – on a plane to San Antonio, for a kind of communications retreat at Laity Lodge. I know where I was when I wrote the rest of it – sitting right here at my computer. And I know where I was when my editor, Ann Kroeker, shouted with glee when I sent the text that I had found and verified the final footnote – I was sitting in the stacks on a footstool in the Webster Groves Public Library, about 10 minutes from my home in neighboring Kirkwood (my fourth library visit of the day trying to find the book).

So what is this book?

Poetry at Work.

What is it about?

Poetry. And work. And how I learned that poetry is inherently a part of work.

Even in PowerPoint presentations. And job interviews. And layoffs. And crises.

What I didn’t know was how people might react. Once the manuscript was edited, off it went for possible recommendations. That was a scary moment.

Poet David Malone read it and said some really cool things. David Murray, editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, a friend from almost 25 years, said some unbelievable things. Scott Edward Anderson wrote an incredible foreword (Scott blogs at The Green Skeptic).

This was different from writing my two novels. The novels never actually seemed like work, although they represent years of effort.

Poetry at Work was work. Rather intense at times. Really intense.

The result – well, you’ll have to read it (I hope).

It comes together as a whole piece – a whole piece of a life.

Related:

The Poetry at Work page at Tweetspeak Poetry

Saturday Good Reads: Tell My Sons

I’ve known David Murray for about two decades. I first met him when he was editor of Speechwriter’s Newsletter for Ragan Communications, and I met him in person in Washington, D.C., at the Speechwriters Conference at the Mayflower Hotel.

By any definition today, David and I should not even be speaking to each other. We sit on opposite sides of the great divide in American politics – he leans hard to the liberal side, and I don’t. He lives in Chicago, where the cemeteries used to vote but no longer have any need to. I no longer write speeches for my day-to-day job (I do occasionally freelance, though), and he’s editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, which in speechwriting circles is the top of the heap.

But we are friends, and we respect each other, bound by a mutual love for words and well-written (and well-spoken) speeches. David taught me that liberals love their children just as much as conservatives do, that family is important, that doing good and fine work is what you do because who really wants to be known for anything else.

That David and I are friends proves that civility is still possible in America. Even if he has weird politics.

On Wednesday, David posted an article on his blog about a book he’s co-authored with Lt. Col. Mark Weber of the Minnesota National Guard. I had no idea he was doing something like this. The book is entitled Tell My Sons, and it is about what a dying father wants his sons to know.

Lt. Col. Mark Weber is dying of cancer. And David has helped write his story.

The video below is of Weber and his son singing “Tell My Father” at a banquet in St. Paul, Minnesota. It’s a Civil War era song, and when I watched it I completely lost it.

I bought the book. It’s available through Amazon Kindle now and will be available in print later in December. I watched the video again. And I watched it again.

I thank my friend David Murray for doing the good work of helping write this book.