“She finds trouble wherever she goes,” my younger brother said of me back in the 1980’s. It was meant as a compliment. At least I chose to take it as such. He said this after I had led (or participated in–I can’t recall for sure) a walkout of reporters at the East Bay weekly paper, The Montclarion. It was the right thing to do. The publisher who owned the paper had fired the editor for running a perfectly good, well-researched article accusing the Emeryville police chief (who happened to be a friend of the publisher) of gambling the city’s money at a local card club. What were we supposed to do? Allow  the publisher, without objecting, to ignore the public’s right to know? So we had a meeting and decided to walk out, believing that all the local media outlets would cheer us on. Which they did. Until it was clear that he would fire us en masse, and some of them could have our jobs. Oh well. I only regretted losing that job for a few years. (I got over it last year.)

My brother was right. I did seem to be wherever trouble brewed. Prior to my dream job reporting for the Montclarion, I worked for a small business consulting firm in marketing. But I was always trying to convince the boss to let me write a newsletter for them. So he finally relented. He asked me to write an internal bulletin about the company to hype the company for employees. He was a real salesman, and was intent on selling franchise prototypes of his company to anyone who would buy one. They were, in fact, selling like hotcakes. (Perhaps more like Gamestop shares last week, if you’ve been following.) Anyway, as I watched these franchises selling far and wide across California as he gave his spiel in one city after another, I realized we were going to be hard-pressed to teach all these folks how to make their purchases profitable. So I wrote the front page story of the bulletin, starting with the line, “The MTC is going to have to do some fast dancing to keep up with the speed at which Michael can sell these franchises.” I thought it was a great opening. He didn’t. He called me into his office and gave me hell. I started looking for a new career shortly thereafter.

And even before that, when I was in college marching against the Viet Nam war, my photo was on the front page of the Michigan Daily, causing my father to disown me. I had my work cut out for me, trying to get back into his good graces so I could finish college, and also convincing him that he, in fact, had taught me to speak out for what I believed in. Eventually he came around and became outspoken about the lies we were told.

At the end of my junior year of high school I was ready to step into the job of editor of next year’s yearbook. I’d worked hard the previous three years to earn that position and everyone expected it would be mine. So when the faculty advisor walked into our yearbook office to introduce a boy to our staff, a boy we all knew, a boy who he said would be a great editor-in-chief for next year’s yearbook, I was not having it. I fought loud and hard to retain my position. Remember, this was 1964. It was considered much more important for a boy to have something like “editor” on his resume for college than it was for a girl. But my father had taught me to fight for what was by rights mine. I could be whatever I wanted (as long as I didn’t beat the boys at bowling) if I worked hard for it, he’d said. So I made my case. I wasn’t settling for the booby prize of some minor editorship. But I did end up having to negotiate a co-editorship. Which didn’t turn out to be too bad. We created a great yearbook, we both got into good colleges, and we fell in love.

So I guess my troublemaking goes way back. Have I mellowed with age? Probably not. I march and speak out– in smaller venues, perhaps– but once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker, I guess.