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[Traditional bio]
S AN
FRANCISCO -- My love affair with The Written Word. It all started when I
was a bowl-haired runt of a six-year-old perched with a book
on the steps of my parents' small rental house on a large lake in the
Midwestern
U.S. Reading, reading, reading. It was all I would do. Then one
 day
I discovered it was fun to string sentences together of my own, first in
kid's-eye-view fictions and later in grade-school reports on the history of volcanoes
and why red was my favorite color. Words were like musical
notes and I liked the dance you could
make them do. Their cadence. Their rhythm. The sounds they made when you read
your words aloud.
I learned how to compose my first term papers on my
great-grandfather's
Underwood Five. Nothing like hearing
the whack of the steel keys from that wrought-iron monster against its black
cylinder clothed in the Really Good
Paper. Fast forward
to high school when I was anointed the top English geek. Most of
my friends were overachievers with a combined affinity for literature,
distance running and the discounted "mistakes" they'd sell us cheap at the local
Dairy Queen. We actually threw a birthday party once for
Eugene
 Ionesco,
the late godfather of the absurd. And to think we never got laid. On the school
newspaper
I learned to justify the breaking news I'd report from the cafeteria or the pep
rally on a
dirt-brown IBM Selectric using a mathematical formula that helped you line the
copy up just so. Ah, to be published.
In college I
studied print journalism while editing the
campus paper and covering
university labor disputes, campus protests and even a couple murders (including,
sadly,
that of my own Shakespeare professor). I went on to become a cub reporter at my
hometown daily.
I wrote about crime, the courts, urban sprawl,
local schools, city politics, even sewers. Talked my editor into letting me turn a trip to
Russia into a front-page series on a changing world (didn't hurt that it was
about the same time that Boris Yeltsin was shouting Svoboda! while standing atop a Moscow city bus).
 Had
a great time. Won some awards. Made great friends. I was ready for a
break about the time I did a jailhouse interview with a serial killer who'd
taken the lives of three young girls. Sad. Spooky. Cruel. Enough. Gave up the
whole thing to become a pastry chef. Making people smile for a living.
Grand. But then that's another tale for another day...
For the last
dozen or so years I've been helping people and companies tell their own stories.
Food, wine, healthcare, nonprofit, science, tech, government, music, you name it. Even some
bullshit internet startups (but then who in San Francisco hasn't?). So many
clients
I'm starting to lose track.
That's why I had to make out a
list.
 What have I learned on this
journey? Times
change and the way we share information evolves, but one thing will always hold
true: words matter. Whether you're a kid writing a book report, a CEO
asking taxpayers for a bailout or a chef trying to describe
the best bouillabaisse you've ever ingested., what you have to say is judged according to the
language you use to say it. Not always fair, but that's just the way it is.
Choose your words well. Ones that you mean. And write them down.
Or better yet,
have me do it for you.
Tim Hart, Principal
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