Dear Kim (Age 21),

You’re in your junior year now and are thinking about looking for an internship in publishing. I don’t want to discourage you, but I have some advice that will prepare you for the reality of working in a large publishing house.

1) The big six houses are corporations. Accept the reality that there is paperwork, mundane procedures, and it is a desk job. Wear comfortable shoes and bring deodorant to the office because you will spend the summer hiking up and down stairs fetching manuscripts from the one functioning printer (which will be a different printer every day).

2) You might feel the pressure of being easily replaced due to the competitive nature of publishing. This might cause you to take on more work or to stay extra hours. Have the courage to tell your employer your limits. Never give your employer your personal email address. Anticipate wanting to throw your smart phone away so you won’t feel pressured to answer a work email received at 10AM on a Saturday.

3) Don’t expect to make a lot of money. Remember you are working because you love the printed word and discovering great stories. Work for your passion, not for money.

4) Accept that you will spend a lot of time behind a computer. To busy your hands while staring at the monitor, you will eat too much chocolate and your co-worker’s bag of salt-water taffy, so expect to gain some weight.

5) Ask questions. Introduce yourself to your coworkers and to save yourself from awkward silences, remember their names. Even if they work in sales or marketing, ask questions. Never stop learning. Knowledge is your paycheck.

6) Keep in touch with your employer after the internship ends. Don’t be shy about asking for referrals. Let them know what you’re up to. They will be less likely to forget you and more likely to remember that you are looking for a job.

7) Ask questions during the interview. Research the company beforehand. Ask specifics about their books (you should already know what they are). If you need it, as for a travel/lunch stipend during the interview. Some employers don’t even think to offer this or know what it is. They don’t know you need it unless you ask.

8) Apply for internships EARLY. Publishing houses fill summer internship positions in January/February (sometimes earlier). This advice might save you from the soul crushing monotony that was my first internship (the only one I could find still accepting applications).

9) Apply for jobs LATE and make sure you live in New York. Jobs fill up within 2-3 days. They won’t wait for you to move to New York and publishing primarily exists here. Maybe you can move back to the country later in life.

10) For all the things you have to accept now, remember that if you work hard, someday you might be in a position where you can change those things for the better. Publishing is radically changing. You can be a part of that change if you learn how it works, which will give you ideas on how it can be improved.

Yes, Kim (Age 21), you still will want to work in publishing even after two less than amazing internships. Our internship now is the best one we’ve ever had. It’s not without it’s challenges, though. After a year of interning, you will have learned that you want to work for a small, flexible company (the large companies are frustrating inefficient in this digital age). You even dream about being your own boss. You will have also learned that you don’t want to live in Manhattan and slow walking tourists are your pet peeve.

Wishing You Hope and Courage,

Kim (Age 22)

~Kim Naples, FCRH, 2013

Listening to the Smiths

Khan has small, nugget-sized teeth with big gums like crushed velvet, and when he opens his mouth to speak, I always have visions of this one kid at summer camp who refused to eat his corn on the cob unless it was smothered in ketchup. Khan’s parents named him after Genghis, so you would think he would have an overbearing personality, but he’s actually shy, almost reticent by nature.

I used to see him simper along Nassau Avenue like he was really in no hurry to get anywhere. Sometimes he would eat Salisbury steak TV dinners out on his fire escape, and I’d wonder if he bought Salisbury steak because it was so cheap, or if it was because his teeth were too small to tear into anything meatier. I never really paid too much attention to him until he started walking though the neighborhood holding hands with Lila.

Lila has a smooth, burnt sugar complexion that shimmers with a metallic sheen in the sun. She has a swivel to her hips like the first half of a hula-hoop twist. She places one foot forward, leans into the invisible plastic curve, and just at the point where you would flip the hoop to the other side, she swings the other one around with a graceful flip. Rumor has it she had some sort of accident a while ago and hasn’t been the same since. Her words slur together when she speaks, each one slamming into the next to create one long, guttural gurgle that only Khan seems to understand. He just holds her hand and laughs at what I guess are the appropriate places and feeds her salt-water taffy and sunflower seeds as they walk.

I’ve seen them sitting in McGolrick Park, resting on the graffiti-stained benches, and I’ve watched as he’s taken a hesitant lick of her scarred neck as if tasting her to make sure she is real. Once its confirmed, he traces his puffy lips along a tire-tread shaped scar that runs down her back, smoothing away the puckered, taut skin with tiny nibbles. And as he grooms her hair with his simian-like fingers, I imagine him touching mine and I shiver.

One day on the bus my neighbor, Mrs. Kaminski, whispered to me that she heard Lila had been hit by a garbage truck, dragged for three blocks, and had ended up in a coma for a year. “That girl was living right there at that Home for Retards for a year and three days until she snapped out of it with a jolt when Khan started mopping by her feet,” she said.  “It was like he yelled her name at the top of his lungs, but really he hadn’t said a thing,” Mrs. Kaminski shrugged. “That’s what they say anyway.”

I’ve seen some people in the neighborhood be openly cruel to Lila. My friend, Byron, for instance, has been known to whistle “Girlfriend in a Coma” by The Smiths when she walks by. One time he even whipped out a harmonica and tried to play the tune when she passed, but he started laughing so hard he began to choke and wheeze. I told him that if he didn’t watch out karma was going to get him, and if the day ever came when he found the woman of his dreams, something horrible might happen to her. Personally, I think it’s his fate to stay single and lonely forever. I don’t know what fate has in store for me.

Last night I stood on the sidewalk and watched the two of them through Khan’s window. He carefully painted each of her tiny toenails as red as a cherry tomato and then popped it into his mouth when he was sure it was dry. I wondered what it would be like to have a man do that for me. Did the varnish taste as bitter as it smelled? Or did her skin change its alchemy? I could see him training her to speak, coaxing her tongue as a snake charmer would a cobra. Of course, the first word out of her mouth was Khan. I mouthed it with her.

--Laura Smith Terry, GSAS, 2014

Courage to Take Control

It goes without saying that a journey can exist in many forms. It can be literal or figurative, long or short, physical or mental. A journey can have a clear beginning and a definite end, or it can be ongoing and meandering with splintering paths and endless diversions. But most often, it is a messy combination of all of these elements and one rife with decisions and emotion.

That combination, along with the history, pain, courage, hope, hard work and pride of the men there, is what is encountered after spending time at the Doe Fund’s Harlem Center for Opportunity in New York City. If given the opportunity to visit and meet the men there, the word “journey” will take on an entirely new meaning for you after only a few short hours. The histories of the men in the program run the gamut, from homelessness and unemployment, to addiction and incarceration, and their individual stories are as numerous as they are diverse. But what they have in common is the desire and courage to take a different path, one of integrity and change, and to take back control of their lives.

The Doe Fund’s website explains the program in detail and describes exactly what they do (www.doe.org). While it is tempting to try to summarize their mission by simply saying, “They change lives,” that rephrasing would not be entirely accurate, since The Doe Fund’s mission is not to change a man’s life for him, but to give him the tools to change his own life. Or more succinctly put by them- they provide a hand up, not a handout.

For to be in control of one’s own journey, to have agency over one’s decisions, and to feel pride about one’s life is all anyone has ever wanted, and it is a basic human right that everyone deserves. So no matter the journey these men have been on prior to their enrollment, they are able to leave there with a newly calibrated compass and their hands on the reins to guide themselves down a new path of their own choosing. 

How much are we actually in control of our journey? Under what circumstances do we feel powerless or powerful? What would it take for us to find the courage to make a life-altering change?

~Laura Smith Terry, GSAS, 2014

Marvin the Miraculous

Growing up in New York City, homelessness was always there. I couldn't understand what separated the people who miraculously had homes from those who didn't seem to share that privilege, or why some people we took care of, while others we stepped over like bundles of garbage. There was one homeless man with a sign that said, “Please feed Marvin the Miraculous and give him a good life,” who lived on our West Village block. I would give him food, and he would tell me stories about his life in the circus. 

After my kindergarten teacher spoke about the importance of helping people, I remember telling her that I agreed, and this was why Marvin lived with us. Sure, I knew it was a lie, but the problem was that I couldn’t see why it wasn’t true. If there was a man without a home right outside our door, why didn’t we give him one? Perhaps George McDonald asked himself this very same question before founding the Doe Fund in 1985, an organization that gives the homeless, addicted, and recently incarcerated jobs, housing, education, and, yes, the good life that Marvin wanted. 

When we visited their Harlem Ready, Willing & Able location the other day, we saw a place that gave men, who had all given up hope at one point, job skills, a home, and a position within their community they could be proud of. I was finally in a place that treated the homeless not only as people, but also as hardworking citizens who could make a difference, and one day even help other men entering the program. Almost all the employees are graduates themselves, a fact that many of the trainees pointed out to us, telling us proudly that they would hold positions of leadership in the program someday––and as we listened to them talk about how transformative the experience had been, there was no doubt in our minds.

Their tales of radical change might have sounded like fairytales if I didn’t see concrete signs of their accomplishments everywhere. They’re out in my city every day in their blue suits cleaning the streets, or “pushing the bucket,” as they call it, a phrase that holds an almost mystical quality for them, maybe because they know they can push it to wherever it is in life they want to be. The Doe Fund places its graduates in new jobs every day and, from the look it, will continue to do so for a long, long time. Marvin would be proud. 

If there was a man without a home right outside our door, why didn’t we give him one?

~Caroline Hagood, GSAS, 2016

The Baggage We Carry

I sat across from Gilbert at the lunch The Doe Fund arranged for us at their Harlem facility. At first, I was intimidated by him. He had a long scar running from his left cheekbone to his jaw. A small crucifix hung from a stud in his nose. Yet, as we talked I started to notice the softness in him. His eyes were quick and intense behind his gold-rimmed glasses. They focused on me as I spoke, as if ours was the only conversation happening in the busy lunchroom. His eyebrows furrowed and his mouth tightened when he talked because he was so serious about every word that came out of his mouth. And every word he said glowed with wisdom and positivity.

Despite our very different backgrounds, we had one very important thing in common. We both have estranged, alcoholic fathers. In the rooms of Al-Anon I have heard that addiction does not discriminate based on age, race, class, or gender. For the first time, I saw the evidence of that saying. I am a young, middle class white woman in her senior year at a private university. Gil is a middle-aged Puerto Rican man who has known homelessness. He was released from jail in September and had life on parole. He was addicted to heroin. Yet, despite these differences, we had so much in common. As he put it, we have “Baggage that you carry around in your heart and in your head. No one can see it. No one can see the pain you are going through, and you really have to get comfortable with someone before you can share it.” 

Dealing with a father and two brothers with addiction, I asked him what made him want to change. He said, “To be honest with you, it’s when the pleasure becomes pain. At that point, you either embrace change or change embraces you.” He also told me what inspires someone to start doing drugs. “It comes from self-hatred. You hate who you are and the place where you are at. So, you turn to drugs because they make you feel good. They make you feel like who you want to be. But that feeling doesn’t last and then there is only pain.” He told me that what was true for him was probably true for his father and mine. For Gil, he was incapable of being affectionate. He didn’t have the tools to deal with life, so he “hit the streets thinking that would make me feel better. But we both know that’s bullshit because the streets change nothing.”

I told him that part of my healing and recovery is making the distinction between my father and his disease. My father loves me, but the addiction doesn’t. He is not able to be the father I want him to be because he is a sick man. Remembering that helps me heal from growing up in his house. Gil nodded in the way only someone who truly understands can. Then he said, “Never stop loving your father. Never stop talking to him and telling him that you love him and you miss him. Remember those memories of him when you were a little girl? The good ones. Remember those because he remembers them too.” Gil also found God when he was in prison and joined the seminary school there. He told me to never stop believing that God can change us. He promised me that if I kept believing in change for my father and kept my arms open to him, he would eventually change. “I promise you,” Gil said, “If you just keep sending him those thoughts, one will just hit him one day, and he will have had enough. You never know when something you say will hit him.” He told me to never give up hope.

This was extremely moving to hear, not just from an addict and fellow child of an alcoholic, but from a man who had seen the worst life has to offer, yet never lost hope. He came to The Doe Fund right out of prison. He did his turn pushing the bucket. Now he works on Coney Island as part of the Hurricane Sandy relief. When he graduates from the program, he wants to get involved in church ministry. He wants to work with young adults telling them his story, so they won’t make the same mistakes. Gil is the kind of man that comes to The Doe Fund. He attributed all the great things that have happened since his release from prison to the program and his faith. The Doe Fund truly changes lives––and not only those of the graduates, but also those of the community members that come in contact with them, like me. Two hours at The Doe Fund changed my life; imagine what the graduates can do with nine to twelve months.

~Kim Naples, FCRH, 2013