There was plenty to talk about Thursday when a bunch of Courant expatriates and refugees got together for drinks and veal scallopine at Luce restaurant in Middletown.
It is always good to see longtime Courant people — some might even say “institutions” — such as Charlie Morse and Dennie Williams alongside casualties in the recent waves of layoffs.
The lucky ones where those who stayed out of the line of fire of my camera. Here is the guest list off the top of my head:
Theresa Barger (thanks to her and Paul Marks for helping organize the gig); Robin Stansbury, Mike Greenwood and Karen Guzman, John Moran, Matt Lubanko, Dan Uhlinger, Marge Ruschau, Charlie Stannard, Mike McCune, Karen Wagner, John Ward, Mike Kodas, Shana Sureck, Steve Courtney, Steve Wilder, Jack Sopko, Jack Atzinger, Tom Twitchell, Dennie, Charlie, Larry Smith, Valerie Finholm, Donna Ploss, Joan Dumaine, Tim Cain, Bill Nagler, Brooke Martin, Claude Albert. (If I forgot anyone, my apologies.)
There was plenty of yakking about the Courant’s new direction and management, as you can imagine; but the gathering also inspired a few of us to wonder if a Refugee Picnic might be fun to organize for this summer. Anyone who is interested in helping push this project forward should let me know. We can put together a committee, maybe.
On to the pix (click to view):
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- Steve Wilder, Jack Sopko and Jack Atzinger
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- Tom Twitchell, Bill Nagler and Brooke Martin
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- John Moran, Claude Albert, Dan Uhlinger
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- John Ward, Steve Courtney, Mike McCune
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- Karen Guzman and Mike Greenwood
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It’s good to see all these good people. We could use every one of you in the newsroom. It’s hard to believe such good, talented and dedicated people have been cast off.
I wish I could have hoisted one with you all, or at least told a few inappropriate stories.
All the best to everyone.
David, on behalf of us all, you’re very kind to say that.
The next gathering could be held at the popular Auberge de Jehan Cottard (down the street from Luce in Middletown). As many of the refugees plunge into poverty, they could network with the plongeurs in the restaurant’s kitchen. It’s certainly one career option for laid off reporters, editors, letterpress printers, hand compositors, hot-metal typesetting machine operators, print platform managers, managing editors in the process of reinvention, etc. The skills are translatable (with some adept tweaking of resumes), and newspaper workers, in the age of the downsized newsroom, might find themselves surprisingly at home in the filthy kitchen of Auberge de Jehan Cottard:
As Eric Blair (a forgotten author whose gloomy, self-pitying works are available for free through Google) wrote:
I think one should start by saying that a plongeur is one of the slaves of the modern world. Not that there is any need to whine over him, for he is better off than many manual workers, but still, he is no freer than if he were bought and sold. … He is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack… [they have] been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible. If plongeurs thought at all, they would long ago have formed a labor union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.
Work as plongeurs could be our last best hope in this tight job market:
When our money came to an end I stopped looking for work, and was another day without food. I did not believe that the Auberge de Jehan Cottard was really going to open, and I could see no other prospect, but I was too lazy to do anything but lie in bed. Then the luck changed abruptly. At night, at about ten o’clock, I heard an eager shout from the street. I got up and went to the window. Bobbie was there, waving her stick and beaming. Before speaking, she dragged a bent loaf from her pocket and threw it up to me.
“Mon ami, mon cher ami, we’re saved! What do you think?”
“Surely you haven’t got a job!”
“At the Hotel X, on Asylum Street — one hundred dollars a week, and food. I have been working there today. How I have eaten!
Speaking of Eric Blair, he might have become something other than a plongeur if his novel hadn’t been rejected by an incompetent editor (named Eliot) at Faber and Faber.