MizB...AGING VIEWS FROM THE TOWER

MizB is a single, 67-year-old, born-and-bred New Yorker, raised in the Bronx and (primarily) Brooklyn by her White/Jewish mother and Black (West Indian)/Episcopalian father; she steadfastly considers herself biracial. She is an Old School Liberal who participated in the major human rights movements of her time: Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, anti-Vietnam War, and Gay Rights. She is greatly distressed by the stupidity, rigidity and meanness of contemporary politics. She is a secular Jew and a spiritual appreciator of the life and cosmic mysteries for which we have no answers. She is an ordained Interfaith Minister of Spiritual Counseling as well as a certified Professional Tarot Reader. She has no sense of connection to animals, nature or children. She hugely dislikes the majority of communications technology and social media that have taken over the world's hearts, capacity to think, and to use language effectively. She is an unrepentant cigarette smoker (makes her own) and is not ashamed of being fat! She loves actual paper books, 60s folk music, rock'n'roll, and folk/rock, detective fiction, really old movies, public television, smart stand-up comedy, and great food of all kinds. She is passionate about language and hates the way it is being increasingly degraded, devalued, and replaced with symbols and acronyms. MizB is a nice woman with a wonderful sense of humor, but an admitted curmudgeon - and with every passing year, she finds herself changing in profound and multiple ways.

MizB spent over 40 years as a p.r./ business communications writer, editor and campaign strategist. In the course of her 11-year freelance business, as well as prior senior staff positions with p.r., media and publishing companies, her beat was arts & entertainment, TV (primarily PBS and HBO), civil society, non-profit, special events, and the early developments of New Media in the 90s. She is the co-author of “Something Pressing: A Guide to Public Relations For the Video & Filmmaker” (© Media Alliance, Inc.); wrote the press materials that launched The Discovery Channel online; and was an Instructor of Public Relations Writing at NYU’s School of Continuing Studies. Among the scores of celebrities, businesspeople, TV/film producers, and journalists she interviewed, MizB is most proud of the fact that both Jim Lehrer and Walter Cronkite said she did an excellent job, and Nelson Mandela, for whom she wrote a short speech, made very few changes to her copy.