Shun the phrase "This Stage of Life"

For reasons I don't fully understand, my Columbia University journalism school class has remained close for decades now. Maybe it's because we graduated in an era of "sensitive training," when on our own we organized a three-day weekend to learn to listen to each other. (After all, isn't listening what journalists are supposed to be good at?)
Maybe it's because we've had a list serve run by the same dedicated class member all these years.
Or because, every five years at reunion time, the same lovely couple hosts all of us at their New York apartment and we reconnect.
When one of us lost his health and then his job, the class stepped in to network and find him a new position.  When one of us, author Larry Leamer, announced that he had a play opening in New York based on the life of Rose Kennedy, some 40 of us flocked into the city to go to the opening of Rose.
So, of course, now that I have a book just published, I thought I'd share my good news with my J-School class.
Along with dozens of cheers and congrats --and book purchases (thank you!) -- came this note from a classmate,   Inderjit Badhwar. Indy, as we called him back in the day, has had an illustrious career as editor of the India Times and other international publications. Currently he's editor in chief of India Legal.
I had made the mistake of saying in my class email that it was fun to have a new career "at this stage of life."

Indy was indignant:

"Stage of Life" Dotty? duh! what a defeatist sentiment after you prove that life's the biggest stage on which nothing alive can be 'staged'. It does not age. There is no chronological progression. I've observed this as an editor and a novelist. I saw this most lucidly in the last two months when I met and dined and stayed with Michael March in Prague where he conducts the International Writers Festival featuring Nobel Laureates (this time [John Maxwell] Coetzee."

Indy then went on to remind me of others in our class, all climbing new heights at this so-called "stage," including  Jim and Jill Gabbe, who did a "magnum opus documentary on India/China, "To the Mountaintops." 

To that list, here are a few (not all) other classmates still very much engaged in a stage that doesn't age:  David Gumpert may well be the nation's expert on raw milk, having written three books on the issue of "food rights," and the government's efforts to regulate choice. Connie Bruck continues her award-winning writing in the New Yorker magazine and elsewhere.  And there are so many other who continue to leave their mark on the world...Michele Montas, Don Ringe.
Among many others, all still very much on the stage. Thanks, Indy for ribbing me.

Speaking out on "Food Liberty" -- David Gumpert

In the first interview I did for this blog last fall, the former director of the Upper Merion Recreation Department, told me, with great delight, that he’d been  “unHatched.”  As a public employee, under the Hatch Act, David Broida had not been allowed to engage in politics. Now, he is thrilled to be able to speak out politically and raise money for President Obama.
 I, too, felt liberated leaving my journalism job. Each year, I had to sign a code of ethics, promising  not to engage in any activity that would create a conflict of interest with my work – or even the appearance of one.

But a recent freelance assignment – dissecting the Romney and Obama Medicare plans   – made me realize that I am still not really free to speak out.  Not if I want to continue as a fact-seeking reporter, trying to be as objective as possible.

Business writer and author David Gumpert has also wrestled with this issue of voice and conviction.  He spent most of his career attempting to be incisive but neutral, first as a reporter for publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and Inc. magazine,  and later as the owner of a publishing company specializing in business content.  Then he was touched by an act of injustice, as he saw it, and became so impassioned, that he’s now  a national advocate for his issue, quoted in such places as the  New Yorker.  

After so many years in journalism, advocacy is a mantle David wears uncomfortably but he feels his cause goes to the heart of what America is all about.  Free choice and a free market.

Photo by Kathryn Niflis Johnson

His issue?  Raw milk.

How could raw milk  be controversial? you might ask. But both sides of the debate feel that they are absolutely in the right.  I’m going to oversimplify:

On one side, the government –with all its powers of regulation, enforcement and arrest -- has the duty to protect the public from illness and death from unpasteurized products. Just as passionate are the raw milk folks.  Both buyers and sellers believe in the potential benefits of cleanly produced raw (unpasteurized) milk as a more nutritional product, that might even help prevent such conditions as asthma. And they believe in their right to be producers and consumers of it.

 Little did David know that a war was raging over the issue when he stumbled on  a small online post in 2006.  “The Michigan Department of Agriculture had conducted a sting operation against a farmer in Michigan, stopped him on the highway, confiscated his raw milk and other stuff he was bringing to a cooperative in Ann Arbor.  Then two weeks later, it happened to a farmer in California.  The state Department of Agriculture came and shut his farm down.”

“People were outraged,” Gumpert said, of the outpouring on his health blog, the Complete Patient.  

Since then, he’s written about confrontations involving custom slaughtered meat, pastured eggs that don’t necessarily meet all the regulations about refrigeration—“foods that the government is trying hard to keep off the market and restrict more and more,” he said.

David has also argued against efforts in cities such as Philadelphia and New York to ban sugared soft drinks.

“I don’t drink soft drinks and I don’t serve them to my family, but I don’t think we should ban them,” he said. “We should educate people. No matter what the food, we shouldn’t be banning foods…“We should decide what food we should put into our bodies.”

 “I think it’s real important that we keep those rights, and that people who are producing the food have the ability to produce this food. Otherwise we’re going to be in a situation where our only choice is this overly sterilized food. I really believe that.”

 David Gumpert, the journalist, continues to write books and report on his blog.  David Gumpert, the advocate, quietly helps farmer groups deal with the media. He’s uncomfortable but determined.

“I’ve become like an activist in this food rights movement, which is a totally unexpected and new turn for me,” he said.  

At 65, he could be spending more time reading, riding his bike and traveling, which he loves.  But, he says, in words echoed often on this blog,  “I want to do something beneficial, something that could be helpful to others.”

In the same spirit, minions of the  “unHatched, ” such as David Broida, along with others with the newly found freedom of time, are pouring their energy into the upcoming election – on one side or the other.

Because of what they believe is right.