Worry building...on deadline

I begin Columbia journalism school in 11 days.

"You must be really excited," people say. I nod my head and smile because that's the answer they expect and I'm a people pleaser. The truth is that I am a heap of nerves. I'm more nervous than my first day of kindergarten, first day of high school, first day of chemo, first day of college and any day in a church combined.

I've been getting a lot of e-mails from the staff at the school. All of them have a common message that resonates something like this: prepare to throw your life away and work harder than you ever have.

I got a refreshing e-mail from a gal who will be a classmate of mine at the school--although she is a full-timer and I'm a part-timer. She found a list of survival advice compiled by some students. Their advice made me more nervous, but some of it was worth a laugh. This was my absolute favorite among the tips:

"Wake up every morning and tell yourself that you are God's gift to journalism."

Pompous? Maybe. A morsel of self-encouragement? Absolutely.

Here are other selections from the list that made me a) laugh or b) want to shit my pants and go running home to mommy with tears streaming down my fat cheeks.

1) Schedule your time more carefully than you ever have. My chief obstacle to success at Columbia was not having budgeted adequate time to report & write my stories. Overcoming this was probably the most difficult lesson I learned in the J-school.

2) You don't know what you're doing. Face it, move on and learn from it.

3) Take a stress management course during the year. You'll need it.

4) When RW1 professors ask for volunteers to cover breaking news or take on an extra assignment, always TAKE IT, no matter what kind of excuses/schedule conflicts are running through your mind; it's a priceless experience and even if your story isn't award-winning, this may be your last chance to fail and not have to deal with catastrophic consequences.

5) If you are a full timer, befriend part-time students. (Note from Adam: Wow, nobody would have befriended a commuter at New Paltz!)

6) In your class there will be at least one student who seems to know exactly what he or she is doing. That student will have a breakdown before the first master's deadline.

7) Rest assured that your friends will understand if you don't call them for 10 months.

8) If you're having a difficult time writing, drink vodka....it burns clean. Wine will turn your brain to cement. (LOVE THIS!)

I want to say a few things about this list before I go to work and have a heart attack (it is deadline day today, you know). At the risk of having Jess Pasko yell at me, I feel like most of these were written by women. I have never used the phrases "stressed out" or "have a breakdown" in my life and I know very few men who have. We call is "kill-self mode." Just ask about every person at Stevens about kill-self mode and they will tell you it is a mindset you learn to love.

On that note, I'm going to go drink some vodka and start writing my life away.

AB

Making business decisions before buying the farm

I always skip the business section when I read the New York Times. There is something about the word "business" that seems exclusionary to me. Either you're part of the crowd and you understand the game, or you're on the outside looking in at the numbers and the jargon. My taste is to remain ignorant on the outside.

But there is one thing I understand about the business world. People who own businesses have to make hard decisions and they pay dearly when making the wrong ones. (See Ken Lay, Martha Stewart, and eventually Leslie Moonves, for instance.)

The same goes for the newspaper industry, where hard decisions can bear a great story, ruin an edition, or affect circulation. I think my newspaper is at one of those points in its history where a hard choice must be made and the effects of that choice could determine the success or failure of the paper.

Our lone columnist is an 85-year-old farmer whose farming stories, conservationalist viewpoints, political ramblings, and oddball tales have appeared in the paper for about 50 years. He's somewhat of a famed man in the community. Everyone knows his name and, from reading his column, everyone is vicariously part of his life. It is estimated that hundreds, if not thousands, of people purchase our paper just to read his column. He's almost like Rick Reilly in a pair of crap-covered denim overalls.

But in the past two years he has begun to go blind. Being born before the computer generation, he always wrote his columns by hand on yellow legal paper. About two months ago his vision deteriorated to a point that his columns became illegible and he is now dictating them to an office assistant whose first language is Italian. His columns don't read well anymore, they sound staccato and the flow is gone. They sound like they are written by a woman whose second language is English because they are written by a woman whose second language is English. His columns have turned from semi-well-written hick tales to utter piffle.

He's been trying to persuade the editor, publisher, and owner of my paper--all the same man--to allow him to stop writing. But the editor realizes the bulk of his circulation exists because of the farmer's column. Circulation, in an editor's head, is directly proporational to advertising bucks. If the columnist leaves and the readers leave the advertisers won't be far behind.

The sad part is that he might have no choice. Our column writer has recently been in the hospital with kidney failure, heart trouble and water in his lungs. It's sad but inevitable--our column writer might be approaching his last days.

His passing would present a bevy of hard questions for the editor of the paper. Does he reprint old columns that don't have a timely element in them? Does he try to find a new column writer who can hold onto the World War II generation that makes up the bulk of our readers? How does he prevent slumps in circulation?

But I think that all of these questions miss the target. The most important question is this. How will my paper change to appeal to the next generation of readers?

Finding a new, young and exciting columnist is a solution, but it cannot be the only solution. The paper is designed like it was made on slab of graph paper and does not include any of the edgy designs, cleverly cropped images, graphs, charts and other things that newspapers have incorporated into their pages to make the news more readable and accessible. My newspaper's website looks like the one I made about hot chicks in bikinis when I was 15 years old. Our paper doesn't expand to fit more news, it only expands to fit more advertisements, so when there is a lot of news in a week some of the news gets excluded from the paper and then becomes, for lack of a better term, old news for next week's edition.

There are a lot of things working in my paper's disfavor and the sad part is that my editor does not have the conviction or ability to fix any of them. He will not make the wrong decision because he refuses to make decisions at all. He's happy with the way the paper is--drab, ugly, outdated.

But when the old farmer-turned-columnist buys the farm the editor won't be able to duck these issues any longer. Senior citizens comprise the bulk of our readership and as they approach the winter of their lives the paper is bound to lost its foundation.

Making some hard business choices is the only way my paper can save itself from future peril. After all, you can't depend on an old farmer forever.

# # #
AB

Not in your schedule? Bullshit.

I'm pondering the next topic I'd like to write about for Coping with Cancer Magazine. The last time I wrote was about golf and how it can help cancer patients who aren't physically capable of running, throwing, lifting, and doing the other things that normal require. My premise was that golf was a good way to get outside, mostly clothed, walk around and get some exercise...even if you can't hit the ball anywhere near the green.

I think my next piece might be about the different ways a person can volunteer. I have been a part of three fundraisers during my time--the marathon, the bachelor auction(which is coming up next week), and a penny social raffle-type event. But have you ever stopped to think of all the different ways a person can contribute to a cause that has affected a loved-one, friend, family member, or acquaintance? Fundraising opportunities range from the drastically involved to the quick-and-simple.

The marathon is a good example of painstakingly involved. Buying equipment, running 40-50 miles each week, traveling, soliciting, sweating, cramping--the marathon, no pun intended, was not a walk in the park.

But this year I have also done the simple things. I went to Mardi Gras last year and really loved the jazz cafes in New Orleans. The people, or the majority of them, were very friendly and welcoming. When Hurricane Katrina huffed, puffed, and blew their houses down, I donated $50 to the Red Cross. In yesterday's paper I learned that the Red Cross didn't do such a good job, but it was the thought that counted. I liked the area, felt bad for the people, and did what I could to give a helping gift.

But my idea for my next magazine piece isn't just to explore the different kinds of fundraising and talk about how varied and interesting they are. My focus is shaping to be that anyone who says they don't have time to help others is full of shit. How long does it take to write a check?

You know that night of the week when you typically eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's while watching American Idol's enthralling ballads? Why not use that night to go to a penny social, or sell yourself at my bachelor auction.

The point is this. Instead of killing yourself with fatty ice cream, you'll be helping someone else and, at the same time, helping yourself. Volunteering or donating will give you goosepimples, I guarantee it.

And, to the surprise of many, you might have a little bit of fun in the process.

(Note: The Leukemia-Lymphoma Society Bachelor Auction, with emcee Adam R. Bosch, is April 27 at 7 p.m. The event is held at Coughlan's pub and restaurant in White Plains, N.Y. See you there!)

Asbestos and toxins and cancer, oh my!

As most of you probably know by now, I was accepted to Columbia University last week. Yup, they're going to let me past the security gate to study journalism...Ivy League style.

(Note: Something about the Ivy League pigeon-hole makes people think about sweater vests and hair parted to one side. Maybe I'm just crazy, but the term Ivy League makes me think of Wrigley Field.)

Studying at Columbia is going to take an excess of everything I have--time, effort, money, commitment, ability--and the work has already begun. The fine folks at Columbia suggested in my acceptance packet that I begin preparing myself for school, and for learning New York City, by reading the New York Times every day. Hectic schedule aside, I have found the time to sit down for about an hour each day and read the A and B sections at the very least. Those first two slices of the paper cover international, national, and New York news. Oh, and a little of New Jersey, but my eighth-grade teacher called that state "the armpit of the nation" and I've disregarded its importance ever since.

I've learned a lot of things since beginning my lover's quarrel with the paper that never ends. There's a revolution in Chad, Italy has election problems too, New York police buildings are having the same space issues as the ones in my coverage area, The Queen Mary 2 sailed into Brooklyn, and, as one columnist quipped, "If brains were elastic, George Bush would not have enough to make suspenders for a mouse."

But an article in Friday's edition caught my eye and has since occupied much of my thought. A police officer died from a lung infection that was caused by dust at ground zero. According to the article, the coroner and many doctors claim that life-threatening illnesses are developing in many who inhaled the air-born dust created by the collapse of the twin towers.

The most interesting part was the claim by one doctor that asbestos, toxins and other carcinogens floating in the air after 9/11 could not only cause cancer in people who inhaled them, but expedite the cancer cell multiplication process. The doctor said that carcinogens usually take years to cause cancer in humans, but that the combination of toxins from 9/11 could have expedited the process--especially for people with blood cancer.

I could not help but wonder if my blood cancer was caused by the dust that washed over my Hoboken dorm room in the days that followed the terrorist attacks. Mike and I had a double-bladed window fan that blew air into our room. The window screen near the blades was clogged with dust and dirt. That same dust was found in thicker-than-average layers on our desks and dressers.

I'm not trying to join the growing group of conspiracy theorists--these people who get sick and then find outlandish reasons for it. I just happened upon a newspaper piece the reignited within me the same questions that all cancer patients and ill-stricken people ask. "Why me?" Or, "How did this happen?" Unfortunately, we still haven't found any answers to these troubling questions.

While trying to make some sense of my medical mystery, I thought of all the factors that pressed against me in my late teens. I had a bout of mononeucleosis the summer before I entered college. Some medical researchers theorize that mono can increase the likelihood of young men developing blood cancers. Could the dust have been the final ingredient in my cancer cauldron? Did the ratio of different particulates in the air allow my cancer to develop in nine months instead of the normal germination time?

I doubt that doctors or researchers will ever know fully whether the destruction dust sped the cancer process, and if they ever do prove it I don't expect any money or recognition from anyone. I thought that I might call doctors who were referenced in the Times article and offer my tumor, which is still stored in St. Luke's hospital, for their study. Maybe in the future their research could save the lives of another policeman, firefighter, ambulance worker, office assistant, or innocent passer-by. And maybe it could provide something that the whole cancer community yearns for.

A few simple answers.

The Man that Made the Whole Town Proud

A lot of people have been asking me how the newspaper biz is going. Some have requested to see some writing and I know others would read if it was made convenient for them. So here is a piece I finished this morning that will appear in the annual Wallkill Valley Almanac. It is the only piece of writing that will grace the almanac's pages.

The man that made the whole town proud…
By Adam Bosch

If you call Walden home or sojourn to the village every now and again, it is likely that Colonel Thomas Wilson Bradley has influenced your stay.

He bequeathed the land where your son or daughter played a ball game. You might have sent a letter in the post office he bargained for. He funded half of the municipal building where you pay your taxes and conduct your government. Your checking account might be at the bank he helped establish. You are holding a piece of his legacy every time you borrow a book from the library.

Upon his death in 1920, the execution of Bradley’s will essentially built the landmark institutions in Walden as we know them. One New York City newspaperman quipped that Bradley’s will was “the will that made the whole town happy.”

But what about his life? Who was Colonel Thomas W. Bradley and why is his fingerprint set so deeply in Walden?

Bradley was born in Yorkshire, England in 1844. He arrived in Walden 12 years later, the son of a knife factory president. Young Bradley “worked the bench” at the factory, shining and grinding knives on large wheels that were powered by the flow of the Wallkill River. The New York Knife Factory sat on the bank of the river from the current-day Veterans’ Memorial Bridge to the falls. The six-story building was formerly a cotton factory and was the largest producer of cutlery in the world.

While knife-shaping was hard work, life in Walden was prosperous and easy compared to the rough current of national politics. Bradley was 17 years old when the South seceded from the union and the first shots of the Civil War were fired in Virginia. In 1862 he enlisted in the Orange Blossoms, an Orange County company that still exists today, as a private in the 124th regiment of the Union Army.

Bradley was promoted quickly during his Army tenure, rising from private to major in three short years. These years would shape his character and define him as a fearless patriot.

His most celebrated act of heroism occurred during the battle at Chancellorsville in May 1863. Half of Bradley’s regiment was killed or wounded during the battle, but the dwindling stock of ammunition might have been worse news. Confederate fire was ceaseless and daunting. Shells exploded nearby and rifle-shots whispered danger as they whizzed by the ears of those left standing. The Union Army needed ammunition to survive the pressing Confederates, but the only stock lay 500 yards away between the lines and beyond a heap of dead mules.

Someone had to run and retrieve it amidst shots, shell and canister.

Bradley volunteered. He darted across the field and fetched all the ammunition he could carry in his young arms. Thomas Hart, a lieutenant in his regiment described the scene as Bradley returned with the stock.

“At the hottest part of the return, Bradley was seen to turn, and, facing the enemy’s line, rapidly walked backward. Being questioned later in regard to this, he replied, ‘I felt sure of getting hit, and wanted the stroke in front instead of in my back.’”

He would receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award given in the United States, for his bravery at Chancellorsville. After that battle, Bradley was wounded in the battles of Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Boydton Plank Road.

Bradley returned to Walden on June 3, 1865, and settled into a community-involved life that would become his legacy as we know it.

He went back to work at the knife company as a salesman and soon married
Josephine Denniston. The couple, along with their adopted daughter Louise, lived in a house that still stands on Ulster Avenue.

Bradley assumed greater responsibility at the New York Knife Company when his father died a few years after his return from war. Under Bradley’s leadership, the knife company expanded and prospered for a while. It was called the “Sheffield of America,” a reference to a steel town famous for its knives in England where Bradley lived as a boy. The knife company drove the village—if the knife company prospered, Walden prospered.

Bradley’s responsibilities at the factory were matched by his increasing contributions to public life. The Walden Savings Bank opened in 1872 and Bradley was its first vice president. During that time he was also the president of the Walden National Bank and an original trustee of the Columbus Trust Company in Newburgh. Bradley also delved into politics as a member of the New York State Assembly in 1875 and 1876.

It was around this time that life became a bit tougher in Walden. The import of German knives affected the American market. German knives were cheaper and they undercut the success of Walden’s knife company. Bradley maneuvered the company through the tough times. While he lost all of his money vested in the knife company, Bradley struggled to keep the business viable. He lessened the work week to four days and took out a $100,000 loan to continue paying the wages of his workers.

Luckily for Walden, there was a saving grace on the national scene. In 1897 William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryant to become the 25th president of the United States. It was said that McKinley established America as a world power and the media as an important entity in the county. His was the first inaugural address to be captured on a movie camera, he annexed Hawaii as the 50th state, and created the White House pressroom.

McKinley also knew how to take care of his friends, as he offered Bradley a job at the White House as commissioner of pensions. McKinley and Bradley met during the civil war and became fast friends. McKinley was a commissary sergeant in a nearby regiment.

Bradley turned down the offer to work in Washington, opting to stay in Walden where the knife company and his workers needed him. Bradley explained the situation to McKinley.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” McKinley asked.

“Raise the tariffs on German knives,” Bradley said.

The favor was done. The tariff rose and so did the New York Knife Company’s profits. Bradley regained the money he had lost during the reign of cheap German knives and even made a profit. The McKinley monument was erected on the corner of East Main Street and Ulster Avenue in the village as a way to pay homage to the president. Its inscription reads, “McKINLEY ERECTED BY THE WORKINGMEN OF WALDEN.”

The statue was made by Henry H. Kitson, an artisan from Massachusetts. Letters between Bradley and Kitson reveal an elaborate unveiling ceremony that included parades. The date of the ceremony was changed several times according to their correspondence, within which we learn that Bradley was a jovial man who cared about his friends and fellow villagers. During one of Kitson’s troubling times, Bradley reaches to his English heritage for a pep talk.

“Cheer up!” he writes. “I like that old English expression ‘Cheer up!’”

Bradley sold his interest in the knife factory in 1903, but continued his service to Walden and to the United States. He was a United States congressman from 1903 to 1913. He fought for the rights of American workers, serving on the board of pensions and arguing for a fair wage scale.

Even when considering national issues, he never forgot Walden. While in congress, Bradley bargained a deal that established money to build the post office in Walden. We still drop our mail at it today.

The early 1900s were packed with projects in Walden that were orchestrated by Bradley. In 1902 he established the Rock Hill fire company on the west side that would later be renamed in his memory. The government building in Municipal Square was built in 1915 and designed to the specifications in his will after he died. Bradley matched every dollar contributed by the public with money of his own to build the three-story brick building.

The library moved there in 1916 and was affectionately named for his wife and daughter. His daughter, Louise, began a library club with Willis C. Stevens in 1896. Each member contributed money to buy books and exchanged them among the others in the group. By 1901 the club had accumulated 500 volumes. Bradley donated 500 more when he died. The Josephine-Louise library boasts over 32,000 books and other reference materials today.

Bradley Park lies on land that was bequeathed by Bradley to the village for the purpose of building a park.

Bradley erected two additional monuments—“The Standard Bearer” in Goshen and “The Volunteer” in the Wallkill Valley Cemetery, which honors the memory of Company H of the 124th New York Volunteer Regiment. Bradley, his wife and daughter, are buried near the monument at the peak of the highest hill in the cemetery.

Walden carried great affection for its favorite son, who was called “Colonel Tom” by men and women of the village. When he died—fittingly on Memorial Day 1920—hundreds of villagers watched and cried as he was buried in the Wallkill Valley Cemetery.

His legacy lives in Walden because of the will that made the whole town happy. But on that late spring day in 1920, hundreds mourned the man that made the whole town proud.

# # #
Note: Information in this piece was found through interviews with local historian Marcus Millspaugh, research in the Josephine-Louse Library and New York Historical Society, and a prior piece written by Millspaugh and fellow historian Joe Devine. All of their contributions were greatly appreciated.

Wow, long time, no write

I have been without internet for almost five months, so it was quite shocking when I came to my blog and saw I hadn't posted anything new since my graduation day. Jeeze. So much has happened since then it is hard to recount. But like any simpleton, third-grader, or brain-damaged amature boxer, I know the quickest way to say a lot and keep order is in a numbered list.

1) Graduation was great. It rained and the keynote speaker used the podium as his political soapbox, but I still enjoyed it. I was the first Bosch to graduate with a college degree and I'm proud of that.

2) I quite my job at J. Crew just before graduation because I assumed that I could find a decent job quickly. What's the saying about people who assume? What did Kanye West say degrees were good for? Ass out of you and me. Keeping you warm. Jobs were coming slower than a porn star hopped-up on blue genies.

3) I finally got a job at John Wiley & Sons, a publishing company where I would be the publisher's assistant. Ironically, it was located in Hoboken, N.J., my old college town and a city that I love. The job was a different story. I didin't love that quite as much. I was told that I would be copy editing manuscritps and I thought that would hold me over fine until I could find a newspaper job that suited me better. WRONG! They never fulfilled my job description, forcing me to become a Xerox and UPS expert. Fuck that. I quit after one-and-a-half months. But....

4) I found a new job during one of my last days at Wiley--a job that proved to be an even greater coincidence. The Wallkill Valley Times, a small weekly paper that reported on my high school basketball glory days, was seeking a general assignment reporter. I was hired right away. Young, local, willing to work for beans...I was the perfect fit for the paper. Although the pay and the hours suck harder than Richard Simmons in the men's locker room at Gold's Gym, I still love my work. Reporting is everything I thought it would be and I'm happy I chose it as my career path. Pick up the paper sometime. My stories aren't hard to find, they litter the front page every week. Some people ask if I'm the only one who writes for the paper. I might as well be.

5) Oh, let me back up for a second. After graduation and before getting a job at Wiley, I had the best time of my life when Erin and I went to Ireland. I haven't seen a more beautiful place in my life. We stayed in Dublin, which was nice. The people were friendly, the castles were old, the food was...Italian? Yes, the Italians even took over cuisine on the Emerald Isle. But my favorite part was the mountains. I've never seen green rolling hills covered in grasses quite that beautiful. The glacial lakes are still and calm. It looks like they are on video and someone hit the pause button. We were taken to the field were Braveheart was filmed and I had to take a photo. Yes, I have a photo of an empty field in my album, but it means something to me. It's the best movie ever. I'd also say Ireland is where I fell in love with Erin. Erin is Gaelic for Ireland afterall. Yea, I'm a sap for saying that, what are you gonna do about it?

6) Keeping with the relationship theme, Erin and I moved into our own place together about five months ago. Somehow we've found a way to live on the cheap, but look a lot better. TV I bought in college, big bed from her room, kitchen table from her house, $4,000 worth of computer equipment from my house, satellite radio, two DVD players, enough clothes to allay the lack of rags in Somolia, and furniture from IKEA. I cook. She cleans. We both do the laundry. It's a nice split, a nice situation. I haven't been happier. I love coming home to a place that is ours and I sleep better at night. I feel bad for her having to sleep with me, I rip ass at night and it smells like a skunk fell in week-old trash. But she still loves me. I'm honest, is that a crime?

That's a decent recap. For those of you expecting better writing, try next time. I wanted to do this thing quick and efficient. Right now I am looking for new jobs. I've outgrown the Wallkill Valley Times and I need a place where I can do more meaningful journalism on a daily basis. Reporting on cub scouts, senior citizens and local government is nice, but like any sugar-coated job it makes you ill after too long. Gotta move up and out.

I'll have a more entertaining topic the next time I write. Something more opinionated and funny. Yea, I know what you assclowns like.

Glad to be back on the internet, keep reading.

-AB

Directions to the post-graduation party

Here are some simple directions for everyone.

Take the Thruway to exit 17, Newburgh. After paying the newly increased toll, bear right onto Rt. 300 and stay in the right lane. After driving 500 ft. you will approach Rt. 84 EAST, get on 84 EAST for about two exits until you get to the exit for RT. 9W. Make a right off of the Rt. 9W exit and then a left at the traffic light (there is a gas station on the corner and it is a double left). At the next light you will be at the intersection with Powell Ave., which is where Mt. Saint Mary's college is located. Make a right onto Powell Ave. Then make your first right onto Castle Avenue. Then make your first left onto City Terrace North and you are there.

It may sound complicated, but once you are off of Rt. 84 the house is no more than 1 mile away. It is quite short and simple.

You will be able to find the house easily, my mother will have posted a gaudy sign or several embarassing balloons. If anyone has problems, call me on my cell phone, 845 591 7462.

See you there,

Adam