Five knickknacks that have followed me from job to job and office to office for the last 20 years

I'm always interested to see how people who work in offices (at their place of business or remotely at home) decorate their desks, cabinets and bookshelves.

Photos are most common, it seems, and for good reason. I have a photo of Terry and me on my desk that I look at often and that serves to remind me why I do what I do 40-50 hours a week for the Materion Corporation.

But beyond the pics of kids, spouses and significant others, there are other little bits of office decor I always find fascinating. They provide some insight into what people value, what they do with their free time, and in general what their personalities are like.

I have worked in an office setting since 1988, if you want to call newspaper newsrooms "office settings." They are unlike traditional business offices in that they're generally loud, sometimes frenetic, and usually filled with what could most politely be described as irreverent conversation. I worked in newsrooms from '88 to '96 before moving into more genteel offices.

Since 2002 I've had something like 10 different offices at six companies. Each time I've switched jobs or undergone an office move, there is a core set of items I've smothered in bubble wrap and carried from place to place. They have stayed with me for most or all of these past two decades, and I can't imagine an office without them.

Draw whatever conclusions you will about me from these longtime office knickknacks:

The Laughing Buddha

In December 2005, I spent two full weeks in China meeting with journalists to pitch story ideas on behalf of the clients I represented as a vice president at Cleveland public relations firm Dix & Eaton. I picked this up at a Shanghai market for what I'm sure was a criminally low price, as the dollar was particularly strong against the Chinese yuan at the time. There's something about him that makes me happy, and I've always made a point of putting him in parts of my office where I'm sure to see him.

The Mexican Porcupine

Speaking of Dix & Eaton, about a year and a half after I joined the firm, we moved from Downtown Cleveland's Erieview Tower maybe a half-mile away to the 200 Public Square building. As people were cleaning out their Erieview offices, there was a table where you could discard stuff you didn't want to take with you, just in case others might be interested in it. This little guy was placed on that table (by whom I don't know) and I snatched him up for no other reason than I thought he was cool. A few of the toothpick quills have broken over the years, but he's still going strong and watches me all day long as I work.

The Globe

I always wanted a globe, and one Christmas Terry gave me this little beauty. It serves no practical purpose, but then again, what true knickknack does? Actually I take that back. In 2019, a day before we were scheduled to fly to Australia for a cruise, I spun the globe to North America then spun it to Australia, and it was the first time I realized how truly distant the two continents are from one another. It made the 15-hour flight from Los Angeles to Sydney a little more understandable, so I guess the globe provided some benefit in that one instance.

The Puck

I am an ardent fan of the National Hockey League's Ottawa Senators. Have been since they came back into the league (following a 70-year absence) in the early 90s. I think I bought this puck and cheap plastic display case in Niagara Falls when I took one of our kids there way back when. It's a good conversation piece when someone asks the valid question, "How does a lifelong Clevelander become a fan of the Ottawa Senators?"

The Appalachian Trail Rock

Some years ago, my neighbor Tim did some hiking on portions of the Appalachian Trail. Knowing that a through-hike of the trail is a likely-never-to-happen bucket list item of mine, he very graciously brought back a rock for me, just so I could have a little piece of the 2,150-mile pathway I would love to traverse at some point before I get too old. I always thought that was really nice of him, and it serves as a reminder that we all need to have dreams.

I've carried these nine books with me from job to job for the last 20 years

It can sound pretentious to call your job a "craft," but I do consider the writing portion of my vocation to be just that.

Whatever your personal craft may be, you should never stop trying to get better at it. I plan to be working toward clearer, more concise writing up until the day I die (well, maybe I'll take that day off...but not the day before).

There was a time when it was imperative for writers to keep a set of reference books at their desk. A dictionary and thesaurus were de rigueur, of course, but depending on the focus of your writing, there were others on the required reading list.

One was a stylebook, such as the Associated Press Stylebook pictured here. Stylebooks tell you everything from whether to hyphenate certain words to how you abbreviate the states to which nouns are capitalized and which are not. And everything in between.

You'll also find a book of quotations on my shelf, as well as Plotnik's "The Elements of Editing" and the densely populated "Macmillan Handbook of English," 1960 edition.

Here's the thing: These books, or at least most of the information they contain, can be found online -- in most cases quite easily. Technically, I don't need the physical books whenever I have easy access to Google.

But I keep them for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I still love the feeling of cracking open a book to get to whatever I'm looking for (just as I still love reading an actual newspaper). They have traveled with me from workplace to workplace over the past two decades, starting at the Cleveland Clinic and moving on to Dix & Eaton, The Cleveland Foundation, OneCommunity, Vitamix, and now Goodyear.

There are memories wrapped up in these books. A few I associate with particular work projects, maybe a script or press release of which I was proud. Others take me back to my newspaper days, when the whole idea of writing for money was new and exciting, and I wanted so badly to be good at it.

There's also this: As much as I love and embrace technology, I also believe books hearken back to a time when the written word was more revered and the library card catalog meant something. They represent a pathway to knowledge and experiences otherwise unattainable for most of us, even online.

Books are, in my mind, the genteel medium. And at age 51, I'm just old enough to appreciate that.

(By the way, the slim brown volume tucked between the AP Stylebook and the Macmillan Handbook is "The Word: An Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing." So good. Oh man, so good.)

We mark the passing of time through anniversaries...good and bad

Dates stick in my head, so it's never a problem, for example, when I have to recount the various jobs I've had and the precise start and end dates for each.

I can rattle those off no problem. Even though it's probably sufficient to say I started at Dix & Eaton in "December 2002," I'm always very specific. It was December 2nd, 2002. My last day at The Cleveland Foundation? Why, that was February 1st, 2011 (a Tuesday).

Today is one of those job-related anniversaries. On this day in 1997, I started as managing editor of Urology Times magazine. As I always like to point out, this is and was a real publication, and it was such an interesting and fulfilling job. I was only there for a little more than two years before I accepted my first PR position at The Cleveland Clinic, but without Urology Times, that Cleveland Clinic job likely wouldn't have happened.

So in that sense, May 12th is a good day.

Unfortunately, it's overshadowed by another May 12th date. On May 12th, 2009, as I was brushing my teeth in preparation for a trip to the dentist, we received a call from my brother telling us that my sister Judi had suddenly, shockingly, passed away.

She was only 56, just five years older than I am now. And she was Judi, the oldest sibling and driving force of our family. She organized things. She laughed and smiled. She made everyone happier.

And then...she was just gone. In many ways, we still haven't recovered.

Every May 12th for the rest of my life, I will think about that day and the days that followed. It was just stunned sadness, and it lasted for a very long time.

It never really ended, I suppose.

Still, we move on, because there's nothing else to do. Days like this come and go on the calendar, and as we get older, connected to each one is a memory, a milestone, and a set of emotions.

Some are good. Some aren't.

On balance, this one is an "aren't."