Pie flies sky high for science

...a dispatch from bewilderness

In the last few years, we landed a spacecraft on a comet, found a way to mass-produce pancreatic cells, sequenced the first spider genomes, birthed the world’s first baby from a womb transplant, and powered buses with poop.

Also in the last few years, I lost three inches due to broken bones in spine and now look up to everyone. Plus my brain broke and could not be fixed. But there was lots of good news, too. For example, Derby, a dog, ran on prosthetic legs.

Those are real stories that really happened. So are: *Pie Flies Sky High for Science, *Man Hammers 38 Nails with His Head in Pursuit of World Record and *Maker of Durex Condoms Also Owns Baby Food Brand. I swear, content is real, though headlines are mine.

I used to make headlines, rather write headlines when I worked in media. I learned a lot in those years. For example, *how to stay calm, *parent perfectly in the event of apocalypse and *cook hot dogs in Pringles cans.

You also get road tests, problem solvers, secret weapons, easy upgrades, guilt-free desserts, guilt-free health and fitness tips, holidays without the hassle, and every beauty tip you need, unless you want to look your age.

In other words, media was and is located at the intersection of inspiration and desperation, deadlines and dreams. It sifts, shifts, shapes, frames, and sells the s—t out of anything and everything we can cook up, or someone else can.

I started working at Time in 1972. I was a token female “professional” among hordes of preppy males. I was also the only woman on quite a few floors who didn’t make coffee as part of her job. All the guys in my position had a wife, a nanny, and 2.3 kids. The nanny made meals and took care of the wife and the kids.

While they lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, I lived over a cab garage in a crappy, crumbling structure in a crumbling neighborhood with no trace of college grads.

Then I became a ghost. I mean, a parttime freelance ghostwriter. This was before Macs and PCs and laptops and smart phones, email or internet. We used typewriters and dinosaurs still roamed the earth. Computers were kept in ice-cold rooms the size of a stadium. When we made a mistake, we didn’t hit the “delete” button. It had not yet been devised.