Catching Up With Jim Evans

By Karen Bernick

Last fall, my husband, Dan, and daughter, Hope, and I spent an afternoon catching up with Dr. James Evans and his wife, Marlene, at their home near Philo, Ill. One thing is for sure: Even though Jim retired in 1995 as the head of the University of Illinois' (U of I) Office of Agricultural Communications and Education, he hasn't lost an ounce of enthusiasm for our industry.

Jim pours several hours each week into volunteering for the U of I's Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC), which he co-founded in 1981. The ACDC holds a special collection of literature pertaining to issues and happenings in agricultural communications. Currently, the collection has more than 31,000 documents representing 170 countries.

Documents are gathered by volunteer "eyes and ears" throughout the world: from trade magazines, academic periodicals, newsletters, books and other media. Several personal collections, contributed by researchers, journalists and others, are also included.

All ACDC documents have two distinct dimensions, explains Jim. First, they are tied to some aspect of agriculture. "The agriculture side is very broad - and includes anything along the food, fiber, natural resources continuum," he says.

The other component is human communications. "It can deal with face-to-face, group, mass media or the latest information technologies, such as blogging," Jim says. "A lot of the material deals with decision-making, attitudes, interest levels, intentions - all those things that go on in our minds to guide what we do and how we interact."

Jim edits a semi-monthly newsletter to highlight new additions to the collection. "A lot of people are finding literature in there they are not finding anywhere else," he says. Although the exact number of users is hard to pinpoint, ACDC had 2 million Web page requests from 90 countries in 2006.

To learn more, visit http://web.library.uiuc.edu/asp/agx/acdc/newsfeed.html.

Note: Besides collecting literature, Jim has also been creating it. At Marlene's insistence, Jim showed us a copy of "Marking the Land," a book he co-edited with an Australian colleague. The book, colorfully illustrated by photographs, is filled with one-liners, stories and bits of wisdom reflecting Australian bush life. "Marking the Land" earned five stars from the Midwest Book Review and is available on Amazon.com.

We also learned first hand why Jim is an Illinois popcorn champion, carrying on his dad's tradition of growing popcorn. With help from friends and relatives, including daughter Dena Schumacher's nearby family, the Evanses raise and market white, yellow and red varieties, planting about a half acre each year. Their Walker's Prairie Harvest brand is yummy and it routinely earns top marks at the Illinois State Fair.

Excerpts from "Marking the Land: A collection of Australian Bush Wisdom and Humour" edited by Brian Dibble and Jim Evans, with photography by Richard Woldendorp. (hardcover, November 2005, University of Western Australia Press, on sale on Amazon.com $16.17)

The right to poke a man's camp-fire is only earned after close friendship.

The wider the brim, the smaller the property.

You can't sit on a fence forever.

Fate is only waiting to do the right thing.

Karen Bernick is a freelance writer based in Long Grove, Iowa. She frequently contributes to National Hog Farmer, Corn and Soybean Digest and Living the Country Life magazines. Her husband, Dan, is a fellow AAEAer and senior writer in corporate communications at John Deere.

On The Way To Serendipity

By Fred Myers

I hope you saw Steve Croft's recent interview with Will Smith on CBS's "60 Minutes."

As you might expect, it covered the highlights of Smith's rise from the beginning as an unknown rapper to becoming one of Hollywood's most valuable properties. Smith handled the interview comfortably, confidently and always with a light touch. Clearly, he was enjoying himself.

Oh sure, any viewer could rationalize his attitude by saying it wouldn't be difficult for them either if they had Smith's money, his professional market value and a mansion in the rolling countryside within easy reach of Los Angeles. Not only that, Smith has a beautiful and talented wife and two children. Indeed, his marriage is considered one of the most solid and potentially enduring in an environment long recognized as a cesspool of social instability.

No one, however, could honestly wave it all away with the usual claim that luck has been responsible for Smith "having it all." Smith began with talent. Lots of it. Despite that, he could have easily been run over by a fast moving train of some kind, not at all uncommon in Hollywood. Yet, he was able to sprint fast enough to hop aboard and was strong enough to hold on.

That train didn't come down the music track, either. Rather, it suddenly barreled out of nowhere in the form of a new, untried and untested TV sitcom series. Smith didn't know if he could act. Neither did anyone else. But he plunged into the challenge with amazing intensity and enthusiasm firmly backstopped with long hours and unrelenting hard work. And as they say, the rest is history.

All of that did much to explain how Smith has been able to make all of this come about. After all, the Universal Law doesn't provide for such goodies without just cause. Yet, I felt sure there had to be something else, something subtle yet vital to Smith's achievements that had yet to be revealed. And I was right.

During the interview's final moments, Smith said with a smile, "I'm having a great time with my life." And I could tell it was coming straight from the heart. Everyone watching was hearing the real Will Smith, someone with attributes potentially no different from yours and mine.

That's when I realized I had just received an early Christmas present, a launching pad for my New Year thoughts about how we all might improve ourselves through new and different ways.

I don't mean attempting the generally unsuccessful ritual of making and attempting to keep New Years' resolutions. Rather, something disarmingly simple we can wrap our arms around to tweak, overhaul or maybe completely change what we are doing or have always done. How Smith views his life could very well be that something.

It's easy for you to accept this as the usual old-year-ending and new-year-beginning time when you are most likely to beat yourself up with everything you believe you have done wrong. The job you didn't take. The person you should have married. The big opportunity you missed. The money you should have received. The kind of life you surely deserve.

That's the rationale many people use to band-aid their wounds or to hide the scars of things gone wrong while attempting to lurch unsteadily into another year.

But it's not that simple. Nor should it be.

Back in 1982, I thought it might be helpful to assess how we as journalists in agriculture were viewing what was happening to us in terms of our jobs, our future and our profession. Agriculture was going through unprecedented convulsions and everyone including we in the ag press were hoping we somehow could manage to pull through.

Every question on the survey I conducted among all AAEA members was of the essay type because I believed it was important to uncover the why as well as the what.

More than half the members bared their souls, vented their frustrations and laid blame on whomever or whatever they believed was responsible. I shared their often desperate and gut wrenching remarks with everyone through The ByLine and at the annual meeting.

Bringing all that negativity into the open could have made things worse. Instead, it served as a turning point, a good time to shake loose of the past and begin looking to the future.

In the 25 years since then, we have become more wizened and hardened to business realities. It's no longer nearly as much a matter of claiming violated innocence or things gone wrong. Rather, the landscape has tilted in the direction of knowing when and how to grab the fast moving train of opportunity. And there is one in agriculture just as there is in all the world of information and communication.

As has been the case with Will Smith, you may set yourself up to be forced to do something you have never done before, to reach into the most distant recesses of your being to make it happen or to discover talent you didn't know you had.

Remember: Smith was in music before he was in acting. He was in acting before he became the success he has become. And he became a success because he defined life as he believes it should be.

It makes no difference where you find yourself in this new year of 2008, with a magazine, in an advertising / public relations agency, disseminating information for an organization or serving as a freelance provider.

Wherever you are and no matter what you are doing, you are in the best position you have ever been in your life to take chances, to latch onto something larger than your talent can seemingly accommodate, to do more for others and to learn more about yourself.

Although doing these things may well take you into alien territory, it's there you will find your reward, discovering you have caused the reason you can say with a smile, "I'm having a great time with my life."

Fred Myers, an AAEA member for more than 45 years, lives in Florence, AL. Fred has had a lifelong interest in professional development. He can be reached at writerfred@aol.com.