Transcription of Becki Smith and Tim Sample for the show Graduation #143
Lisa: In the studio with me today, we have 2 individuals that I believe we could describe as the royalty of Maine Media. One of them is Becki Smith. She is the former executive producer of 207, and Bill Greene’s Maine. She’s an adjunct professor of writing at the Southern Maine Community College and is also the author of Starting Out: Life Lessons for Graduates, book that compiles advice from successful professionals that are out in New England.
One of these professionals we have here in the studio, Tim Sample, a widely acknowledged humorist who is a correspondent for CBS news Sunday Morning where he produced postcards for Maine segments. Thanks for coming in.
Tim: Thank you.
Becki: Our pleasure
Lisa: It is very interesting to me, especially because I have a daughter. I have a son who graduated from high school and now I have a daughter who’s graduating, actually from high school. As a parent sending a child out to the world, and I know both of you have been that parent, it’s kind of an interesting time. You want to fill them full of advice and send them out there.
Becki: You also want to hold on to them.
Lisa: You also want to hold on to them. Right.
Becki: I think that Eleanor Clivens, who is a cookbook author and a frequent guest on 207. She’s an older lady, but she’s wonderful. She gave me the best advice when my son was exactly at the point where your children are. I was lamenting, it was like August and he was heading off to NYU in a couple weeks. I was just lamenting that he wasn’t going to be around and I was going to miss him and on and on. I think she just really got tired of me and finally said, but you really don’t want him to be living at home with you when he’s 40, do you? It just hit me and I thought, well, kind of, but not really. I learned to let go of Will.
Lisa: Yes and you did in a really great way. You actually brought in the copy of the book that you gave him when he graduated from Tisch at NYU and you called it Dust Never Settles.
Becki: Right.
Lisa: This was a collaboration. This is a compilation of all these amazing things people have said over time for graduates.
Becki: Yes. The book came about when I was searching for a gift. I asked him what he want for your graduation and he said, I want a new laptop. My heart kind of sank because we had a graveyard of technology in our basement. I just though in 2 years that computer’s going to end up down in the basement, too and then 20 years from now, he won’t even remember what I gave him for his graduation. I wanted to create something really special for him. One night I sat down at midnight and sent out a 100 emails to friends that I had made through the shows and titled it Favor and simply asked people if they would be willing, all of whom had successful paths to share a little bit of advice for him.
Within a week, I had 90 responses. The Dust Never Settles comes from actually Don Campbell’s entry. It was relevant because whenever I would go to the dorm room at NYU, Jake would look at me and say, where does all the dust come from. Not realizing he wasn’t cleaning. As it turns out, Dust Never Settles is also the title of Don Campbell’s new CD. We’re really in sync there.
Lisa: I do like the fact that in this original book, all of these are actually addressed to Jake. The beginning of each page it says Jake and then it goes on to give the advice.
Becki: I think that’s what made the book so special is that because when you do a show like 207 over 10 years, we had frequent guest contributors that came regularly. We followed people’s stories as their lives grew, but at the same time, they got to know me. We became friends over the course of time. They had heard me yak about Jake for a number of years, too. They felt like they knew him and they actually did write to him. I think that’s what made it so personal.
Lisa: I’m going to have Tim read what he wrote to Jake because I like it. I actually like a lot of the intersections. It’s a very main entry.
Tim: It goes something, but not exactly like this. Life lessons learned along the way. First of all, let me congratulate you on completing a marvelous college career and extend my best wishes as you embark upon the next phase of your life. I’ve been asked to pass along some quote, words of wisdom based on my own experience. I’m more than happy to oblige since it is my belief that in real life, experience is the best teacher. Here’s just one memorable example of a personal life changing experience, which I hope will find helpful and instructive. I sure did. In 1976, I was 25 years old, working very hard to establish myself in the entertainment business.
I got a big break when I was offered a gig as the opening act for Noel Paul Stookey, Paul of Peter, Paul and Mary. The first show went so well that I was hired to do several more and over the next 2 years, we became good friends. 1978, I moved to Blue Hill and began working full time at Noel’s company, New World Media. We continued to perform together. Noel even produced a 5 song music album for me. I was convinced that it was just a matter of time, weeks, days before I became a big star in the music business.
Around that time, Noel was also producing another young singer-songwriter named David Malek. In the summer of 1979, Noel, David and I were scheduled to perform a big series of concerts with several other singer-songwriters. During the break in rehearsals the day before the first show, Noel took me aside and told me that he thought there were too many singer-songwriters on the bill and that since I had a real talent for making people laugh, I should leave my guitar backstage and emcee the show doing a series of 5 minute comedy bits in between the other acts.
This was a watershed moment. Should I change my act or insist on doing my music? I decided that since Noel was the only person I knew with several gold and platinum selling albums, Grammy Awards, etcetera, perhaps he knew more about show business than I did. It was the right choice. I was very successful that night, went on to do more comedy bits for the rest of the tour. About a year later Noel produced my first album of Maine humor and the rest, as they say, is history.
Lisa: I love that because it does say, you may start in one place and end up in a different one and that’s okay.
Tim: Gradually you find connections with human beings and the right thing at the right time. That’s what life teaches. What I love about this book and what I loved about the idea was this is not theoretical advice. Becky didn’t ask us, the folks who contributed, to theorize and speculate. She asked people to share from experience. They’re all talking very matter of factly. I remember Don, Don opened for me. I though he was more than 20 or something. He was playing banjo. You see these lives that have played out and had these impacts and connections. What better gift to give a young man starting out with dreams and goals than a kind of a road map from real people.
Becki: It is indeed. I’d say I collected a village of people, who actually created a path for Jake to follow and now for other graduates to follow. I’m very grateful to people because they could have easily just sent some very placating words of advice, but they didn’t. Don Campbell, for example, I cried when I read his because he sent me the note and he said … And I knew this, that his 15 year old nephew, was killed by a drunk driver on the Maine Turnpike. He said I am writing to Jake what I would have said to Cooper on his graduation. That’s very personal. That’s very generous gift, more than anything. Other people wrote their life stories, other people sent funny lists, other people sent calls to action, but they really came from the heart. They weren’t just plain words of wisdom. You can’t help but be grateful.
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Lisa: What I really love about all of this is, with our radio show we have our audio producer John McCain, who’s also a musician. We have Kelly Clinton who does our online work, but there’s an entire team that makes this all possible. Everybody is so important. The producing of the show isn’t just about the voices that come across the microphone. Everybody is crafting something to make it really powerful and you do that with 207.
Becki: Absolutely.
Lisa: You’re doing it again with this book.
Becki: Very nice analogy because when I gave remarks at the book launch, that’s exactly what I said. When you produce a show, every person from the engineer to the audio guide, to the director, to the guest, to the host, everyone is a piece of the puzzle. Everyone is equally important to the success of a show. The same in raising a child, everyone that child meets is important to his or her success. From the lady that cut Jake’s hair for 20 years, to his grandmother, to anybody that crossed paths. His pastor, they all play a role. Then to collect a group of people, like I said, to sort of become a village, was a very cool way to end that career in a way.
Lisa: I know that Don Campbell had a lot to say in his words to Jake. We won’t have you read all of them, but maybe you could read some of them for us.
Becki: Sure, sure. As I said, he would have sent this to Cooper, he said who would have graduated from Cheverus the same year that Jake graduated from NYU. He said that these are some words that I think you’ll find useful. Always laugh but only at your own expense. Never find laughter in another person’s pain. Accept that life is a kind of a roller coaster with turns you might not expect. Knowing this just helps. Hold the door for people and don’t wait for a thank you. You don’t need that. Remember dust never settles. It’s so true. Sleep on big decisions, but take risks when you feel confident in your gut. Enjoy the nobility of paying off debts and thank the lender.
Remember that every living thing is here for a reason. Try to be at least 15 minutes early always. Don’t sweat the small stuff. If you look closely most stuff is small. Be generous to those you believe in, forgiving to those who don’t know any better. Celebrate your every victory and remember to also celebrate the victories of those you love. This was one of my favorites because I never knew this and I’ve used it repeatedly. When assembling something, it’s righty tighty, lefty loosey. Remember Robert Frost and once in a while, take the road less traveled by. Finally, always listen to your mother. Very good advice, I might add.
Lisa: It’s pretty wonderful to me that your son went to NYU and went to Tisch, coming from Maine. It’s actually interesting that Tim is here. Tim Sample, we’ve all known Tim Sample for years and years and years as somebody who’s made his way up in the ranks of humorous, but it’s not a straightforward path for artists and performers coming out of Maine. It takes a lot of courage and it takes a leap of faith. It’s interesting that your son decided that this was going to be the path that he would take.
Becki: It was something he always wanted to do. He used to set up his mechanical Godzillas on our bed and take the video camera when he was 5 and make little movies with Godzilla on my bed. When he was in 8th grade, he made a film that won the Maine student film festival and I think from that point on he was just on his path. He knew what he wanted to do, he stayed focused and he’s never veered from it. There’s no plan B for him. I think that helped. It helped to have a very supportive family. Someone’s got to have your back. He has very good professors at NYU, several of whom he still is connected to, still sees every other day.
He has a great network in New York to help him on his way. It was one of his professors who said to me after graduation, you need to know this child is never going to be in a corporate environment with a 9 to 5 job. It’s always going to be up and down, up and down because that’s just the path of someone in this business. Don’t feel bad when the check from the company isn’t coming on a weekly basis because that isn’t how it’s going to work for him.
Tim: I have to just add that from my own experience and observing the experience of others, Maine is an amazingly supportive place for creative individual. It’s the state of Steve King and Louise Nevelson and on and on and George Mitchell. These people who carved their own path in a variety of different things, but the idea in Maine, I’ve said this for years, people think Mainers are backwards. Mainers are very open-minded but we don’t broke fools gladly. If you go to somebody who’s been making lobster traps with lathing for 10 generations and your new way of doing it out of wire is demonstrably better, they’ll change in 5 minutes.
If it’s just some variation on the theme that’s not particularly better than what they’re already doing, forget about it. If you have an original idea, an original thought, I’ve always said, when I started out in Maine and I was a kid. I was in my 20’s, I went to art school here. I created a calendar and I’d knock on doors and gift shops. I just say hi, I’m Tim, I do this thing, I like this. People hear the story over and over again. If that have been New York City, I’ll took very quickly but Porches was the ankle where Mecca is now. I was literally out on the street. I was 21 or 22, I’ve been in art school, I’ve created a line of greeting cards, I had it printed out the little print shop. I was selling them on the street, it sounds like dickens but it’s really true.
Out on the street. Some people, for a buck, would buy some gift cards. Then somebody said you ought to go inside and ask them if they want to sell them in the store. I thought, why not. I walked in and within a couple hours, I was talking to Bob Porches and we’re up in his office and he liked them and they bought them. That’s a story that you hear people in Maine tell stories like that. If you have integrity, if you’re straight up, you’re not trying to scam anybody, you just want to get a leg up. If you try to list all the people, Steve King or Noel Stookey. Many, many other people have helped.
I was at Steve’s house 20 something years ago and he gives in a [inaudible 51:11], read a few page out of this, make a tape, send it to this guy and I ended up narrating the best selling book on tape in America for a few weeks back in the summer of 91. That doesn’t always happen. There’s a lot of urban environments we have to go through chance. You got to know somebody who knows somebody. It doesn’t always work this way. A lot of what Becky is talking about, a lot of what her son has experienced is you get this idea growing up in Maine that there’s possibilities.
You do have to work hard, but you’re not always shut out because you come from a little town at Western County or you don’t have a lot of formal education. Maine is elemently pragmatic. We don’t want to know your philosophy. We want to know do you have jumper cables and will you stop? We don’t really care about your religion, your philosophy, your sexual orientation, we just want to know, are you in this with us or not? That spirit infuses the Maine way of life. I think kids rightly believe, yeah, I got to have something going on, but I’ll get a hearing. The worst part is when you go, I didn’t call Charles Kuralt, he called me. How did that happen? I have no idea. The worst part is when you know you’ve got something and you can’t get in the door. In Maine, most folks, you can get in the door.
Becki: Yeah. That’s one advice I give to. I supervise a lot of interns through the course and they come to me and they say, I want to work at NBC. I’m like, okay. How are you going to do that? I don’t know. My mom knows Brian Williams, but I don’t want to ask. I’m like, ask. It’s okay. It’s okay to use your network to get in the door. You still have to walk though that open door. You still have to prove yourself on the other side. Don’t be afraid to use everything you’ve got to get to where you want to be. Once you’re there and you proved yourself, it doesn’t matter how you got there. I think that that’s a real Maine thing, that you can ask in Maine and people will, I think, help.
Tim: He had this experience. People are coming and going through the show and they’re real flesh and blood people. It’s startling when you meet people …
Becky: It is.
Tim: That you see on TV. The first time I did Good Morning America long time ago, David Hartman was hosting with Charlie Gibson later on. [inaudible 53:43] He gets out of the limo. I go, I know that guy. Then you realize that they’re people and that it’s okay.
Becki: Yes, yes.
Tim: You be yourself and you be substantive. Most people, there are a few bad apples, but most of the time, I think that you probably have found this too, Becky. Folks that have been successful, who have been able to see their dreams and their goals and their visions reach fruition have a sense of gratitude, appreciation and every once in a while somebody is just a horse’s butt, but that’s rare. Most of the time, people recognize in others what they needed nurturing in themselves. They’ve got some mentors that helped them. Cap Weinburger used to bump into down at Southwest Harbor. He was like how you doing, Tim?
Becki: It’s a good point, Tim. It’s a good point. When I took 207, Steve Paxton was general manager then, one of things is said is, if I do this job, it’s going to be a 60 hour week job, but I’ve got a son who’s in middle school and I need some flexibility because I don’t want to not be there for him. He said fine, you can bring him anywhere you want. Bring him to the studio, bring him on shoots, I don’t care as long as you’ve got the job done. I did and because I knew that Jake wanted to follow this path, I thought it was really important for him to meet successful people. Some of them in his field, some not. I didn’t want him to end up enthralled by celebrity because I wanted him to see that people who got to that point were real people who worked hard. It wasn’t overnight and I think he learned a lot from that.
Lisa: I am very grateful that both of you took the time to come in here and be in our humble digs and record the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour with us today. As I said, I think part of my quiet tune today is just in my awe that I’m sitting here with the 2 of you, who clearly have done so many great things in your own lives. I’m going to finish out, I like Robert Shetterly, he’s an artist. I’m not sure everybody who’s listening will know exactly who he is. He was a pretty great artist. Pretty well known.
Tim: Wonderful stuff.
Lisa: I’ll leave with this quote from your book Starting Out: Life Lessons for Graduates, which of course Becki Smith, you have put out there. We must all rise to the requirements of our time even when it is not the challenge we would like to confront. James Baldwin said, people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction. Our task is not to shy from that reality and where we are now is both a real and a mythic moment in human history. It’s mythic in the sense that it’s the kind of situation we loved experiencing vicariously in the Lord of the Rings or the Darth Vader series. Now it’s upon us and it’s harder than we could have imagined. Grim, yes, but the only way though is enjoy and in love, determination and courage. The same values we have always admired, but never needed so much. One for all and all for one.
I really believe that this is the reason that you’re both here today sharing this with us. I encourage people to look up the work of humorous Tim Sample. Also to buy the book Starting Out: Life Lessons for Graduates by Becki Smith, which is put out by Islandport Press. You’ve been great guests and thanks so much for bringing this light into the world.
Becki: Thank you, Lisa, for having us.
Tim: Thank you, Becki, for asking me to tag along. It’s fun. It’s really fun. Great book.
Becki: Thank you, Tim. Thank you for contributing to it.
Lisa: You’ve been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Show #143, “Graduation.” Our guests have included Genevieve Morgan, Tim Sample and Becki Smith. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit doctorlisa.org. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facbook page. Follow me on Twitter and on Instagram as bountifulone. We love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows.
Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, I hope that you have enjoyed our graduation show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day and happy graduation day to my daughter Abigail, Yarmouth High School, class of 2014. To all graduates who are enjoying this graduation season, including my brothers John and Bryan, who are graduating from law school and from graduate school. May you all have a bountiful life.
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