Football Great Tom Bettis Recounts Storied Career

Just when I thought I would never meet a real celebrity at The Solana, a premier senior living community that hired me in 2010 to provide PR support, along came Tom Bettis.  And even though he had earned  Super Bowl rings and World Championship rings–one for every finger, he is smart enough to know his family is his greatest treasure.  But Bettis loves to talk about Vince Lombardi and his years with the Green Bay Packers.  “Vince took a talented but undisciplined team and turned is around,”  said Bettis.  “One day after a particularly bad performance in training camp, coach took us all into a meeting room and pointed to the podium.  “Gentlemen,” he said.  “This is a football.”

Football Great Tom Bettis

The harder you work, the luckier you get

Public Relations counselors are a strange breed. We want to guide our clients in making the right moves (when to distribute a news release, where to distribute, how to distribute) but we don’t want to make ALL the decisions and many times the client is right, especially one as marketing savvy as Spencer Clements, president of William Cole, Inc., golf club and resort management.

Recently he told me exactly how he wanted an article to look about Traditions Club www.traditionsclub.com
in the most important vehicle for his target audience. It sounded like an ad!

I was at first skeptical, then I was cocky…oh, sure, I had met that editor; I have a working relationship with him. But he turned out to be she; a new editor. Oh, no! But actually she was more accessible, more amenable to using our material, so the client got exactly the article he wanted published in the newspaper he most desired.

 As I told my food PR friend Paula Murphy when she said she got “lucky”–the photo for a small Q&A was split off and became the cover photo of Flavor in the coveted, thinning HOUSTON CHRONICLE.  Oh, sure, Paula. Lucky. What I’ve learned in this business is the harder you work, the luckier you get.

And here’s the promised blog recipe as my prolific basil bush is calling to me:  BASIL PESTO (makes about 3/4 cup) Ingredients: 1/4 cup pine nuts or walnuts, 8 medium garlic cloves, coarsely chopped, 4 cups packed fresh basil leaves, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon salt. 

1.  In a small dry skillet, toast the nuts over moderate heat, shaking the pan, until lightly browned, about 5 min.  Cool. 2.  In a food processor, finely choped the garlic.  Add the nuts and basil and pulse until finely chopped, scrapping down the sides as necessary.  With the processsor on, add the oil in a steady stream until incorporated.  This blog pesto can be refrigerated, covered, for up to 1 week or freeze. Serve over pasta or broiled fish or chicken.  ##

Close Encounters of a Literary Kind

Doesn’t that sound intriguing? A whole lot sexier than The Mayborn? A highlight of my summer was The Mayborn Nonfiction Literary conference my alma mater, the University of North Texas Journalism School, hosts in Grapevine each July. My wordsmith husband, fortunately, is just as charmed to spend a weekend listening to authors talk about their writing process. When people start a talk with “10 rules” and you can get all of them written down, good for you. But I’ll just share a few. ~In dialogue, never use a word other than “said.” He didn’t “declare” or “yell”–don’t even try to think up other ways to say said.
~If it sounds like writing, re-write it.
~Remember you are telling a story; just tell it.
~To write about business you must listen for the real story; simplify institutional language; use the power of revelation and surprise. That was shared by Robert Blau with Bloomberg who said “you can earn an MBA from just listening to hallway conversations” there. He also said violence in America has shifted to Wall Street. He writes about what players said vs. what they did. Often times the story of financial meltdown is not a story about numbers, it is a story about greed. Two books he recommended: Too Big to Fail and The Big Short. Blau looked like such a gentle fellow.  Who knew he was author of “The Cop Shop:  True Crime on the Streets of Chicago,” a memoir of his years as a police reporter.   From the police beat to a series about the dissolution of Lehman Brothers.  Maybe not such a stretch.

Reading that Blau is married to Leah Eskin, a food columnist for the Chicago Tribune, makes me hungry.  Here is a recipe from one of my “best cooker friends” Kathryn Kent.  It is so easy you’ll think you ordered in.

Portobello Pizzas (for two, or you may be able to eat them both)

Bake at 450 degrees

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 clove garlic, chopped

2 large portabello mushroom caps, wipe clean with damp towel

12 ounces mozzarella cheese, sliced or grated

10 fresh basil leaves

2 fresh tomatoes, sliced

oregano (opt)

Combine oil and garlic in a small bowl and rub the mushroom caps on all sides with the mixture.  Place the caps, top side down, in a circle on an oiled baking sheet (STOP!  Cover with foil first then spray with oil for quick clean-up).

Season caps with salt and pepper.  Arrange the cheese, basil and tomato slices alternately in a circle on top of the mushroom caps. Sprinkle with oregano, if using.  Nice to add:  cooked ground sausage if you have some in the freezer.  Bake about 15 minutes at 450 degrees; cheese should be melted and you should be able to cut through the pizza with a knife and fork. 

You may never go back to traditional pizza again.  Who needs the carbs? ##