Member Profiles

A little bit about me:

I’m a multi-Emmy-Award-winning producer for ABC News/ Good Morning America – and a proud member of the Silurians! Prior to ABC, I spent eight years globe-trotting for CNN, as both a reporter and producer (and for a few months, as an anchor). Postings included Atlanta, New York, Berlin, and Istanbul. My favorite (and most challenging) assignment for CNN: helping the network launch a sister-network, CNN-Turk, in Istanbul in the wake of 1999′s devastating earthquake. My favorite assignment for ABC: covering the death of Pope John Paul II in Rome (followed closely by covering the Oscars on a couple of different occasions; who doesn’t like spending time backstage in ‘Winners’ Circle’?). My favorite production in life: my three beautiful sons, ages 4, 2, and just-turned-one. They forever keep me on my toes and push me, on a daily basis, to be a better writer, producer, and appreciator of this fabulously interesting city — and world! — in which we live.

Pithy profile of Ken Crowe aka Kenneth C. Crowe

Four days a week, Monday through Thursday, I work on a novel. The masterpiece in progress is called THE ABSCONDER. The inspiration came from an incident in my boyhood when two young fellows from the neighborhood, Woodside, and a third from somewhere else in the city, were convicted of a robbery/murder. The Woodsiders went to the chair; the kid from elsewhere got off with just 28 years in prison. THE ABSCONDER is about the one who escaped the death penalty.

In my retirement, I have become an indie-author, what used to be called self-published. In the old days, the self-published were exploited by Vanity Publishers for big bucks. Now indie-authors put their books up as freebies or for sale on the internet via sites such as Kindle, Amazon or Smashwords.

Along with the writing, I do my own editing, formatting, and book covers.

Developing the minimal computer skilled needed was one side effect of my years as a journalist at Newsday

Ignorance Is Not Bliss

A product of London’s East End (where multitudes of Jewish immigrants, fleeing the terror of anti-Semitism in Russia and Eastern Europe, settled to find safety and freedom), I never succumbed to delusions of grandeur. I had no cause to, as my first glimpse in the mirror unkindly advised me. I was plump, poor, plain, and pimply. No redeeming features and very shy. I only spoke when spoken to, having discovered at an early age that one learns more by listening than by talking.

Nevertheless, I managed to wend my way through childhood in pretty good shape (for the shape I was in), when my world, and the world of millions, collapsed. WWII was declared. For me, that meant a cessation of education. We were evacuated from London to safer areas when the blitz began, virtually going from pillar to post. I barely attended school during those way years. At the war’s end, I enrolled at Pittman’s Secretarial School, developed skills in shorthand and typing and, by 15½, was part of the work force. One of my first “stops” was the London Daily Mirror.

Throughout, I was extremely self-conscious, due to my lack of education. This sad state continued, until I met Sol Summer, an American, whom I married. I emigrated here in 1955.

The first massive shock that my fragile emotional system sustained, was that all the American women I met, both socially and professionally, were college graduates. The only degrees I had were those awarded to me at Pittman’s for speed in shorthand, and excellence in typing. My inferiority complex ballooned to the size of a dirigible.

Now, try this on for size: during lunch at out apartment, discussion turned to books. One of the guests—Marilyn, with an IQ on par with the national debt—sought my opinion on Dr. Zhivago. I was baffled. Why on earth inject a question based on a doctor in the midst of a highbrow chinwag about books? It had to be a trick. Marilyn had a vicious tendency of going for the jugular of people she felt were beneath her. So I decided to cross my fingers, pray a bluff it out. “I don’t know anything about him,” I remarked as casually as I could. “I go to Dr. Sasson.” A triumphant glint ignited in Marilyn’s eyes. Obviously, I had made a colossal ass of myself. At which point, Sol, as usual, raced to my rescue. “Oh, that British sense of humor,” he roared, “It gets me every time.” In my own defense, I must add that very few at that time were familiar with the Boris Pasternak classic, and very few were fortunate enough to obtain a pirated copy.

Eventually, I came to the reluctant conclusion that there was no way I could take a crash course on being brilliant, and hoped that I’d be accepted the way I was, minus the pimples…