Remembering Clif Garboden Monday, April 4, 2011
A self-portrait of Clif at a rally just after the Kent State and Jackson State shootings.
This morning, nearly two weeks into what should be spring here in New York's Southern Tier, a vicious thunderstorm is rumbling and howling as it pastes a sideways deluge into the countryside. Remarkably, the rain isn't melting the snow. It's stayed on the roof and continues to cover much of the yard. Apparently the savage winter of 2010-2011 is leaving something to remember it by -- permanent snow. Thank goodness for orange golfballs.
Even if the snow does fail to melt, I'll remember this past winter more for what it took than what it left. On February 10, it took my friend, frequent editor, mentor, fellow country boy and commiserant Clif Garboden.
Were I truly writing about this past winter, the sarcastic and hyperbolic open to this essay would have met his approval. He had a bluesman's ability to carry on by creating beauty from the lousiest of circumstances. Combine this with a journalistic nose for truth, a master photographer's eye for detail and an editorial genius for providing information in accessible, sensible and powerful order, and wrap it up in a fantastic, precise and prolific writer and you at least begin to have an idea of the Clif Garboden I knew.
I never knew anything close to all of him. You see, there was always more to him than he made available because he didn't spend a lot of time tooting his own horn -- which he could probably do, as well, since his musical skills helped pay his freight at Boston University. Because of his modesty, he always had some new amazing thing to share in his matter of fact, droll and perfect fashion.
Last summer Clif visited our then snowless home and regaled us with tales of an amazing and sometimes terrifying childhood during which he occasionally had to dodge gunfire for the sin of playing on the slag-heaps of his surprisingly rural hometown just outside of Pittsburgh. Wow!
His early days as a moving target in an impoverished community, where he saw the corrosive influence of ignorance work in concert with the excesses of capitalism to result in compound agony and despair, made young Garboden an instant true believer in the nascent alternative press and the various political movements it promoted and covered. He first worked at the BU student paper and then at Boston's Real Paper and Phoenix before settling in at just the Phoenix for a 35-year run. (He also wrote a column for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.)
Over time, Clif became the Phoenix's human superstructure. He held the place together and held the place up. He was a discreet legend by the time we crossed paths 20 or so years ago. The late Caroline Knapp and Dan Kennedy edited me early on (and performed their own sorts of miracles in the process) but eventually I landed in Clif's lap. As a couple of guys who managed to make livings while still clinging to the principles of our young adulthood, we clicked right away. That we both considered the truth as the best source of humor did nothing to hamper our association. He was never pithier or more truthfully hilarious than in this piece, written at a grim moment a few years back.
Clif guided me through the difficult transition from writing the spoken word to crafting prose. He made it clear that he considered my opinions and ideas worthy of the Phoenix readership. I responded to his faith and encouragement by taking writing more seriously. The rest was a matter of editing and he was a phenomenal editor.
I'd zap a piece to Clif and he'd give it the once-over and voilà , the ship stood up in the bottle. He could turn around a piece of copy faster than any editor I have ever known. Something that took me weeks to overcomplicate would return from Clif in less than an hour, precise and punched-up. By comparing my drafts to Clif's edits, I learned how to become a better writer.
Clif's one shortcoming was excessive humility. He was a master of ducking out just when it was time to take a bow. He'd rather accomplish something new than admire his previous handiwork.
But he accomplished so much that was praiseworthy. To the alternative press, he was a latter day Harriet Tubman, who helped liberate generations of journalists from mainstream enslavement (and he also taught them how to be less compliant slaves if and when they made their way into the mainstream media.) There is no way to conduct a reliable census of how many stragglers and strugglers he counseled through their early days in journalism. Let's just say more than a lot of them survived and they are everywhere.
Once you'd graduated from Clif's tutelage, the only time he'd ask a favor was when he was trying to find an opportunity for yet another of his charges. He also went out of his way to protect his brood. Once a copywriter tried to switch a reference I'd made about a "VA hospital." to "Virginia hospital." When I pointed it out, Clif quickly made the repair. He then wrote back to assure me that the copywriter possessed great promise and was worn from overwork when the mistake was made. Over the next few years he sent me links to some fine writing by this person. This went on until I began to seek out the "Virginian's" work on my own. Instead of having a funny story about a daft literalist, I ended up with an appreciation for a hard worker because Clif Garboden made an extended effort to salvage that person's good name with me.
It's sinful that the few people who were technically his bosses at the Phoenix (he certainly never had a master) failed to properly appreciate him -- except when they needed any and everything done. This went on until they let him go from the paper in May of 2009. Too little has been said of this unforgivable act. There has been a respectful silence about it since Clif's death but the respect seems to protect those who could have let this apostle of alternative journalism spend the final 21 months of his life continuing his work as the essential cog at the Phoenix.
At both the time of his "lay off" and death, top level Phoenix bosses made sure to include the term "pain in the ass" in insincere tributes. At least we finally learned where they house their teensy consciences. Despite their damning with faint insults, they NEVER had a better or more valuable employee at the paper. On that lousy day in May, they'd red-painted themselves into a corner. Rather than engage one of their own platinum parachutes, they canned a first-round Hall of Fame writer, columnist, editor and photographer. They couldn't have chosen a worse, if you'll forgive the term, alternative.
At the time those bosses assured the rest of the staff (because he'd tentatively agreed to write an occasional review for short dough and zero benefits) that Clif would remain a "part of the Phoenix family." This announcement arrived in an electronic memo headlined "Some Good News." Clif hadn't even left the building and already his skill as a headline composer was sorely missed.
In a brilliant email he sent me right after the graceless lowering of the boom, Clif hilariously responded to the "good news"
headline: by writing, "Yeah, right, the part [of the family] that lives under a bridge out by the edge of the swamp."
As an ultimate act of cowardice, the bosses didn't announce Clif's termination but instead allowed word to leak while he was suffering through his last few weeks of servitude. In the same email to me, he likened the experience to being "trapped in the final panel of a Dilbert cartoon." And so one of his last duties at the Phoenix was to explain his getting fucked over to dozens of fellow employees. Clif ended up comforting and reassuring these folks, even though he was the guy who'd just been told he didn't make the traveling squad for the last elevator out of a caved-in mineshaft.
After receiving the email I asked Clif if it would be OK with him for me to torch the Phoenix for its betrayal of him after 35 years of exemplary duty. He asked me to refrain because he felt things were already going to be tough enough for the beloved colleagues he left behind. That selfless act was quintessential Clif. He was even more selfless as he twice fought cancer, padding the blow for the rest of us with his remarkable wit and deft candor.
On February 11, Mr. Garboden was in the hospital getting examined so it could be determined how to best to fight a recurrence of cancer that he'd battled into a several year remission. Before they could even begin to organize a strategy, Clif contracted pneumonia and was gone. Granted he was quite sick and may not have won this round with the most obscene "C" word of all but the swiftness of his departure was as downright mean as anything this relentless insult of a winter has dumped upon us.
I'll have more to say about Clif at his memorial service at the Friend's Meeting House in Framingham, Ma. at 2 PM on Saturday, April 9. I'll try my best to find appropriate words but would do a lot better were Clif Garboden still available to snip, cut, reorder and spiff up my remarks. I offer my deepest and most heartfelt condolences to his wife Susannah and his children Molly and Philip. He always glowed with love when he spoke of them. Their loss is incalculable. Their husband and father was the greatest. I will never forget him and always miss him.
Even if the snow does fail to melt, I'll remember this past winter more for what it took than what it left. On February 10, it took my friend, frequent editor, mentor, fellow country boy and commiserant Clif Garboden.
Were I truly writing about this past winter, the sarcastic and hyperbolic open to this essay would have met his approval. He had a bluesman's ability to carry on by creating beauty from the lousiest of circumstances. Combine this with a journalistic nose for truth, a master photographer's eye for detail and an editorial genius for providing information in accessible, sensible and powerful order, and wrap it up in a fantastic, precise and prolific writer and you at least begin to have an idea of the Clif Garboden I knew.
I never knew anything close to all of him. You see, there was always more to him than he made available because he didn't spend a lot of time tooting his own horn -- which he could probably do, as well, since his musical skills helped pay his freight at Boston University. Because of his modesty, he always had some new amazing thing to share in his matter of fact, droll and perfect fashion.
Last summer Clif visited our then snowless home and regaled us with tales of an amazing and sometimes terrifying childhood during which he occasionally had to dodge gunfire for the sin of playing on the slag-heaps of his surprisingly rural hometown just outside of Pittsburgh. Wow!
His early days as a moving target in an impoverished community, where he saw the corrosive influence of ignorance work in concert with the excesses of capitalism to result in compound agony and despair, made young Garboden an instant true believer in the nascent alternative press and the various political movements it promoted and covered. He first worked at the BU student paper and then at Boston's Real Paper and Phoenix before settling in at just the Phoenix for a 35-year run. (He also wrote a column for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.)
Over time, Clif became the Phoenix's human superstructure. He held the place together and held the place up. He was a discreet legend by the time we crossed paths 20 or so years ago. The late Caroline Knapp and Dan Kennedy edited me early on (and performed their own sorts of miracles in the process) but eventually I landed in Clif's lap. As a couple of guys who managed to make livings while still clinging to the principles of our young adulthood, we clicked right away. That we both considered the truth as the best source of humor did nothing to hamper our association. He was never pithier or more truthfully hilarious than in this piece, written at a grim moment a few years back.
Clif guided me through the difficult transition from writing the spoken word to crafting prose. He made it clear that he considered my opinions and ideas worthy of the Phoenix readership. I responded to his faith and encouragement by taking writing more seriously. The rest was a matter of editing and he was a phenomenal editor.
I'd zap a piece to Clif and he'd give it the once-over and voilà , the ship stood up in the bottle. He could turn around a piece of copy faster than any editor I have ever known. Something that took me weeks to overcomplicate would return from Clif in less than an hour, precise and punched-up. By comparing my drafts to Clif's edits, I learned how to become a better writer.
But he accomplished so much that was praiseworthy. To the alternative press, he was a latter day Harriet Tubman, who helped liberate generations of journalists from mainstream enslavement (and he also taught them how to be less compliant slaves if and when they made their way into the mainstream media.) There is no way to conduct a reliable census of how many stragglers and strugglers he counseled through their early days in journalism. Let's just say more than a lot of them survived and they are everywhere.
Once you'd graduated from Clif's tutelage, the only time he'd ask a favor was when he was trying to find an opportunity for yet another of his charges. He also went out of his way to protect his brood. Once a copywriter tried to switch a reference I'd made about a "VA hospital." to "Virginia hospital." When I pointed it out, Clif quickly made the repair. He then wrote back to assure me that the copywriter possessed great promise and was worn from overwork when the mistake was made. Over the next few years he sent me links to some fine writing by this person. This went on until I began to seek out the "Virginian's" work on my own. Instead of having a funny story about a daft literalist, I ended up with an appreciation for a hard worker because Clif Garboden made an extended effort to salvage that person's good name with me.
It's sinful that the few people who were technically his bosses at the Phoenix (he certainly never had a master) failed to properly appreciate him -- except when they needed any and everything done. This went on until they let him go from the paper in May of 2009. Too little has been said of this unforgivable act. There has been a respectful silence about it since Clif's death but the respect seems to protect those who could have let this apostle of alternative journalism spend the final 21 months of his life continuing his work as the essential cog at the Phoenix.
At both the time of his "lay off" and death, top level Phoenix bosses made sure to include the term "pain in the ass" in insincere tributes. At least we finally learned where they house their teensy consciences. Despite their damning with faint insults, they NEVER had a better or more valuable employee at the paper. On that lousy day in May, they'd red-painted themselves into a corner. Rather than engage one of their own platinum parachutes, they canned a first-round Hall of Fame writer, columnist, editor and photographer. They couldn't have chosen a worse, if you'll forgive the term, alternative.
At the time those bosses assured the rest of the staff (because he'd tentatively agreed to write an occasional review for short dough and zero benefits) that Clif would remain a "part of the Phoenix family." This announcement arrived in an electronic memo headlined "Some Good News." Clif hadn't even left the building and already his skill as a headline composer was sorely missed.
In a brilliant email he sent me right after the graceless lowering of the boom, Clif hilariously responded to the "good news"
As an ultimate act of cowardice, the bosses didn't announce Clif's termination but instead allowed word to leak while he was suffering through his last few weeks of servitude. In the same email to me, he likened the experience to being "trapped in the final panel of a Dilbert cartoon." And so one of his last duties at the Phoenix was to explain his getting fucked over to dozens of fellow employees. Clif ended up comforting and reassuring these folks, even though he was the guy who'd just been told he didn't make the traveling squad for the last elevator out of a caved-in mineshaft.
After receiving the email I asked Clif if it would be OK with him for me to torch the Phoenix for its betrayal of him after 35 years of exemplary duty. He asked me to refrain because he felt things were already going to be tough enough for the beloved colleagues he left behind. That selfless act was quintessential Clif. He was even more selfless as he twice fought cancer, padding the blow for the rest of us with his remarkable wit and deft candor.
On February 11, Mr. Garboden was in the hospital getting examined so it could be determined how to best to fight a recurrence of cancer that he'd battled into a several year remission. Before they could even begin to organize a strategy, Clif contracted pneumonia and was gone. Granted he was quite sick and may not have won this round with the most obscene "C" word of all but the swiftness of his departure was as downright mean as anything this relentless insult of a winter has dumped upon us.
I'll have more to say about Clif at his memorial service at the Friend's Meeting House in Framingham, Ma. at 2 PM on Saturday, April 9. I'll try my best to find appropriate words but would do a lot better were Clif Garboden still available to snip, cut, reorder and spiff up my remarks. I offer my deepest and most heartfelt condolences to his wife Susannah and his children Molly and Philip. He always glowed with love when he spoke of them. Their loss is incalculable. Their husband and father was the greatest. I will never forget him and always miss him.
