BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS
Miami Herald, The (FL)
When Joel Achenbach strutted into my office this morning--he never simply walks in, or knocks, he struts--I experienced a tumult of confused emotions. 1. Dread. I knew that Achenbach's materialization meant that all the pressing concerns of the day would have to wait in order to have a long Achenbachian conversation about anything from the nature of a vacuum in deep space (dense, packed with energy, unpredictable--see Why Things Are), to the minutiae of Achenbach's personal life--which has precisely the same characteristics as a vacuum in deep space.
September 23, 1990
Author: TOM SHRODER Herald Tropic Editor
2. Pleasure. There is little I would rather do--especially when the alternative is working--than debate arcane questions of metaphysics and human behavior with Achenbach.
3. Instant nostalgia. Acute regret. Something akin to grief. I'm talking about that sharp, overwhelming pang--the instant recognition that you are experiencing something that has long been part of your life, and which, even as it happens, has slipped irretrievably into the past. In exactly one hour, Achenbach--busting deadline wide open as always--will finish what he is doing and leave. He won't be coming back.
"That's the last time you will ever strut into my office," I pointed out.
"Do I strut?" Achenbach said. "I do strut, don't I? It's actually a mixture of fear and arrogance."
Whatever it is that powers Achenbach's attitude--a combination of childlike awe and penetrating insight--Tropic is going to miss it. In his five years as a staff writer, that attitude has enabled Achenbach to rip through the impenetrable fog surrounding dull but important issues--issues like the workings of Wall Street, the budget deficit, and the Social Security crisis--to expose the obscure truths with startling wit and clarity. No subject is too big or obscure for Achenbach to wrestle down to Earth. Consider the Why Things Are question immediately to the left--"Why does the universe exist?"--in which Achenbach defines an astrophysicist as "a type of creature that due to random mutation has evolved from a normal human being."
I might be suicidal over Achenbach's departure for The Washington Post, except for three things.
1. He is going to continue producing the Why Things Are column for Tropic each week, following a three-week vacation that will begin Oct. 7.
2. There is one more cover story so imponderably huge that Achenbach is still working on it even after leaving our employ. It's something about the future of mankind, and you'll read about it first here, sometime in the future.
3. Achenbach will be replaced by not one, but two new Tropic staffers, both of whom will bring wonderful talent to the magazine:
Meg Laughlin who has been writing for Tropic for the past five years in her "spare time"--she's been a professor at Miami-Dade Community College--will finally get to see what she can do full time. And if you have been following Laughlin's stories--her most recent was about a scandal at a local elementary school--that is an exciting possibility.
Liz Balmaseda has been working for The Herald's Living section for two years, before which she did a stint in Tropic and wrote what is still the definitive piece on the new generation of Miami-born Cubans. Balmaseda herself was born in Cuba and raised in Miami. She joined The Herald a decade ago, then took a year and a half to cover the Nicaraguan civil war for Newsweek.
See Joel, it took two staffers to replace you. (The lad needs that kind of encouragement now and then. Fuel for the strut.)