Alexander Cockburn, Becky Grant, and CounterPunch Board President Joseph Paff.

You might not believe a 24-year-old could run CounterPunch’s business office, but Alexander Cockburn believed I could, and hired me close to three decades ago to be the Miss Moneypenny… the Janine Melnitz… the Pepper Potts of CounterPunch. Working for Alex was a joy but not without frustrations. I had to convince him of the importance of running a proper business: setting up proper bookkeeping, getting our non-profit documents in order, and building a proper way to manage subscriptions. 

We debated the pros and cons of a card catalog vs. a database, argued about recording expenses, and lots of particulars, but soon the office was up and running in Petrolia in his garage-cum-CounterPunch headquarters, with the walls furnished with his library. He wasn’t exactly an organized fellow (he could scarcely keep his shirt buttoned correctly), but he knew exactly where he’d find any book he was referencing on those shelves. In tuna season, the CounterPunch phone was coated with fatty albacore residue. The floors were always littered with hay coated in horse manure he tracked in from his beloved Aggie’s stable. Two giant Balinese baskets took up considerable real estate in the office: one for garbage and one for documents to save for his records. They were identical, and the contents of both usually ended up in the same place: the local dump. I fished subscribers’ checks and important mail out of the depths on many occasions. Our original notification of 501(c)(3) status had a giant coffee ring decorating it. 

When I arrived in the office in the morning, I was likely to find an empty wine bottle as an unlabeled jug of white gas, or perhaps compost tea for his roses. Does it age me if I say, “Those were the good old days?”… I hope so, because three decades........

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