Tuesday, August 22, 2006
On the road again
I'll be in Chicago tomorrow morning through Sunday for the SPJ National Convention and Journalism Conference. In between set-up, reports to the board, moderating two panels, running a committee meeting, attending committee chairs meeting, hallway conversations, talking membership, talking freelance, talking volunteering and leadership, receptions, happy hours and banquets, I'll try to squeeze in a few posts. With any luck, I can make it to the Newberry Library book fair.
Wise words on editing
"I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil." — Truman Capote
"All writing is a process of elimination." — Martha Albrand
"There is no great writing, only great rewriting." — Justice Brandeis
"I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter." — Blaise Pascal
"When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart." — Mark Twain
"All writing is a process of elimination." — Martha Albrand
"There is no great writing, only great rewriting." — Justice Brandeis
"I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter." — Blaise Pascal
"When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart." — Mark Twain
Monday, August 21, 2006
Monday odds and ends
Advice to a budding writer
We were in Columbus yesterday for my nephew Charlie's baptism when my 10-year-old nephew Todd told me about a story he wrote that got published by his school district last year. He's always been a bright and curious child, using bigger words than most kids his age. He asked if he could send his story to me to read. Absolutely, I told him. Being the diligent young man he is, the story was waiting in my e-mail when I got home last night.
Here was my response to him about "Snappy the Wolf":
Dear Todd,
What a wonderful story! I like your character, Snappy. He's a very noble creature. You have a very good message in your story about protecting our forests. And you do such a good job of describing the place where Snappy lives. That means you have something that all writers need—keen observation skills. You see the tiniest details, like how the light streams through in the morning, or what a thunderstorm looks and sounds like or how a cave can be a place of refuge, and make the reader see those details in his or her own mind.
I hope you keep writing and I hope you keep sending me your stories. Do you have a journal you can use to write down ideas? It's good to have and I always carry one with me. Sometimes I'll just write down something I see, like a color or sometimes I'll describe a smell, like the way the air smells after a summer rain. When I'm writing, sometimes I'll refer back to my journal to help me describe things. Sometimes I just write about what I'm thinking and that may give me an idea about a story.
A very important part about being a good writer is reading. Make sure you continue to read different kinds of things such as newspapers, magazines and books that interest you so you can learn how others write well.
I'm so glad you remembered to send me your story. Have a great first week of school and I'll talk to you soon. Keep writing!
Love,
Aunt Wendy
On this date...The Writer's Almanac
On this day in 1858, the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates began in Illinois. Slavery was once again becoming a big issue in America after a quiet forty years since the Missouri Compromise, which banned slavery in territories north of the 36°30' latitude. But in 1858, there was argument about whether slavery should be allowed in Kansas and Nebraska, and the Republican Party had been formed largely to keep slavery out of the western territories.
When Lincoln received the Republican nomination to run against democrat Stephen A. Douglas for the Illinois senate, he said, referring to the question of slavery "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Douglas called Lincoln a radical, and Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of seven debates around Illinois. Each debate lasted three hours. Crowds in the thousands turned out, and newspapers covered the story across the country. Douglas won the election, but during the debates Lincoln had forced him into a position that alienated southern Democrats. Meanwhile, Lincoln won national fame as an eloquent speaker, and when he faced Douglas again in the 1860 presidential race, Lincoln was victorious, becoming the first Republican to be elected to the White House.
Friday night lights in Alaska
An interesting look at the gridiron in today's LA Times.
We were in Columbus yesterday for my nephew Charlie's baptism when my 10-year-old nephew Todd told me about a story he wrote that got published by his school district last year. He's always been a bright and curious child, using bigger words than most kids his age. He asked if he could send his story to me to read. Absolutely, I told him. Being the diligent young man he is, the story was waiting in my e-mail when I got home last night.
Here was my response to him about "Snappy the Wolf":
Dear Todd,
What a wonderful story! I like your character, Snappy. He's a very noble creature. You have a very good message in your story about protecting our forests. And you do such a good job of describing the place where Snappy lives. That means you have something that all writers need—keen observation skills. You see the tiniest details, like how the light streams through in the morning, or what a thunderstorm looks and sounds like or how a cave can be a place of refuge, and make the reader see those details in his or her own mind.
I hope you keep writing and I hope you keep sending me your stories. Do you have a journal you can use to write down ideas? It's good to have and I always carry one with me. Sometimes I'll just write down something I see, like a color or sometimes I'll describe a smell, like the way the air smells after a summer rain. When I'm writing, sometimes I'll refer back to my journal to help me describe things. Sometimes I just write about what I'm thinking and that may give me an idea about a story.
A very important part about being a good writer is reading. Make sure you continue to read different kinds of things such as newspapers, magazines and books that interest you so you can learn how others write well.
I'm so glad you remembered to send me your story. Have a great first week of school and I'll talk to you soon. Keep writing!
Love,
Aunt Wendy
On this date...The Writer's Almanac
On this day in 1858, the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates began in Illinois. Slavery was once again becoming a big issue in America after a quiet forty years since the Missouri Compromise, which banned slavery in territories north of the 36°30' latitude. But in 1858, there was argument about whether slavery should be allowed in Kansas and Nebraska, and the Republican Party had been formed largely to keep slavery out of the western territories.
When Lincoln received the Republican nomination to run against democrat Stephen A. Douglas for the Illinois senate, he said, referring to the question of slavery "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Douglas called Lincoln a radical, and Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of seven debates around Illinois. Each debate lasted three hours. Crowds in the thousands turned out, and newspapers covered the story across the country. Douglas won the election, but during the debates Lincoln had forced him into a position that alienated southern Democrats. Meanwhile, Lincoln won national fame as an eloquent speaker, and when he faced Douglas again in the 1860 presidential race, Lincoln was victorious, becoming the first Republican to be elected to the White House.
Friday night lights in Alaska
An interesting look at the gridiron in today's LA Times.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
What dreams may come
In the days prior to the start of a new school year, my dreams are always fraught with the bizarre, the forgotten, the humiliating. etc. My mom used to have the "we overslept and missed the bus on the first day of school" dream every year. The same can be said for my dreams prior to leaving town for a big convention or conference. That those two events are overlapping this week is enough to turn me into a zombie.
This morning I awoke after having a dream about not being able to find my work clothes for the conference. I was in sweat pants (which I never wear) and hadn't showered and I was supposed to be dressed in a suit for a reception. Decided that today I'm going to get some of my clothes together even though I don't leave until very early Wednesday morning.
Yesterday morning, I awoke pre-dawn after dreaming the middle school had changed Patrick's teachers (who are incredible this year) to a cross between a nasally school secretary and baby-talking preschool teacher. I grabbed his schedule, tacked to his bulletin board, and was relieved to see that nothing had changed from earlier in the summer.
Since tomorrow we're off to Columbus for my nephew Charlie's christening, today is all about getting last-minute school stuff together and getting organized for my trip. There's only one cure for such sleeplessness: lists. Once I start crossing things off those lists, the dreams dissipate. First up is the most important one detailing all homefront events next week, including:
Ryan's first football scrimmage
Michael's open house
Patrick's football practice
Trip to Costco to buy lunch stuff
Ryan's eighth-grade pool party
PSR sign-ups
Pick up mom at airport Sunday morning
Danny is such a trooper. Don't know how I'd do this without a supportive spouse. Surely I'd never sleep.
This morning I awoke after having a dream about not being able to find my work clothes for the conference. I was in sweat pants (which I never wear) and hadn't showered and I was supposed to be dressed in a suit for a reception. Decided that today I'm going to get some of my clothes together even though I don't leave until very early Wednesday morning.
Yesterday morning, I awoke pre-dawn after dreaming the middle school had changed Patrick's teachers (who are incredible this year) to a cross between a nasally school secretary and baby-talking preschool teacher. I grabbed his schedule, tacked to his bulletin board, and was relieved to see that nothing had changed from earlier in the summer.
Since tomorrow we're off to Columbus for my nephew Charlie's christening, today is all about getting last-minute school stuff together and getting organized for my trip. There's only one cure for such sleeplessness: lists. Once I start crossing things off those lists, the dreams dissipate. First up is the most important one detailing all homefront events next week, including:
Ryan's first football scrimmage
Michael's open house
Patrick's football practice
Trip to Costco to buy lunch stuff
Ryan's eighth-grade pool party
PSR sign-ups
Pick up mom at airport Sunday morning
Danny is such a trooper. Don't know how I'd do this without a supportive spouse. Surely I'd never sleep.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Meet Jill in Behind the URL
My good pal Jill Zimon is this week's Behind the URL on BFD. Be sure to take a peek and then stop by her site and wish her a belated happy birthday!
Cheers, my friend! I'll miss you in Chicago.
Cheers, my friend! I'll miss you in Chicago.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Finding courage on a coaster
How do you give courage to a child?
That was the only thought in my head as the young college girl checked that the bar was locked into place in my lap. As I looked over at Patrick standing on the outside, my heart was breaking for my middle son.
Moments earlier as we stood in line for the Blue Streak, his first roller coaster, I could see his heart beating out of his skinny chest. His lips were white and while most kids laughed and joked in line, Patrick was deadly serious, not once cracking a smile.
Nothing I could say would ease his mind. "Cedar Point could never stay in business if people got hurt." "Do you know how many tests they run before these coasters even open?" In fact, I tease him that he has a war waging in mind, but that’s in fact what happens.
“Can I fall out of this coaster?”
“What if it breaks down on the track?”
“What if it leaves the track?”
“Has anyone died on this coaster?”
He doesn’t verbalize any of this, but I see it going on behind his beautiful green eyes. I want to swallow his fear and never let it surface in him again. But I can’t take it from him because it’s part of who he is.
As he and I prepared to get into our seat, he started crying and panicking.
“Mom, let me out! Let me out! I can’t do this! Let me out!”
And so I let him pass through and walk to the exit ramp. Maybe he thought I would join him, but I stayed put. A few cars behind me, Danny and Ryan were ready for the first ride of the day.
As the train pulled away I looked at him with my most compassionate, “but I would have kept you safe” look. He immediately put his head down.
I don’t remember much of that very short ride, except that I’m pretty sure my back will never be the same from getting jostled so violently. I was thinking what a long day it would be at Cedar Point if we couldn’t convince Patrick to ride.
We had surprised the boys that day. While Michael was having a sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa’s we took the older two to Cedar Point. But as the train pulled back into the loading area I saw him standing in front of the Blue Streak sign with his T-shirt pulled from the neck over his face.
The neckline of his T-shirt was soaked from tears. He was ashamed and embarrassed by his fear.
“Patrick, I know you’re scared,” said Danny, “but we’re here all day. I want you to promise me you’ll try one coaster. You might like it, but you’ll never know unless you try. If you don’t like it, you won’t have to ride.”
Patrick was crying, something he does easily still at nearly 12, and said he wanted to ride but he was just so scared. But he promised his Dad he’d give one a try.
As we headed toward the Millennium (because Ryan was chomping at the bit to ride the big ones), we passed the little Wildcat. “I can ride this one,” Patrick said, suddenly brightening up.
“Well, okay,” Danny said. “This looks good. We’ll all go.”
Ryan rolled his eyes a bit, but was willing to wait a little while longer for the Millennium in order to help his brother overcome his fear.
As we waited, Patrick seemed to grow more excited—and nervous. I saw him eyeing the intricate web of steel holding this contraption together. And I can guess the kinds of things that were going through his mind.
But he rode with me next to him. And though I occasionally heard him start to panic, he seemed to free his mind enough to enjoy. As we hobbled off, he was all animated and excited and said he loved the coaster. And so it was on to the next one.
The Mine Ride was lame and stopped twice during the run, which irritated both boys. And so we decided to try the Mean Streak. We stood in line under the wooden coaster, which fortunately meant Patrick really couldn’t see its size. We had a plan, however. He and I would look at each other going up the hill.
It wasn’t the speed of the hills and turns that frightened him. It was the slow high crawl up the first hill. The anticipation of what’s to come. As we climbed higher he noticed the blue of Lake Erie and how pretty it looked. And then we plunged to speeds he’d not yet experienced. At one point, he put his head down and said he was going to be sick. But then he looked up and found he was actually enjoying himself.
It was then that I realized that he had to find courage within. I would never be able to give it to him no matter how hard I willed it. That saddens me in a way that makes me feel inept as a mother. But as one who also is internally driven, I’m proud of his ability to conquer that monster.
After that, it was smooth sailing on the Gemini and the Magnum. He knew his limits and the Millennium would never be in the cards for him.
While Ryan and I went to wait forever in the Millennium line, Patrick told his Dad there was one ride he needed to conquer. They rode the Blue Streak six times that evening.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Monitor begins Jill Carroll's story
Don’t miss Part 1 of Jill Carroll’s story in today’s Christian Science Monitor. Here’s an excerpt:
They took me upstairs to the master bedroom. Within a few minutes an interpreter arrived, and an interrogation began.
They wanted to know my name, the name of my newspaper, my religion, how much my computer was worth, did it have a device to signal the government or military, if I or anyone in my family drank alcohol, how many American reporters were in Baghdad, did I know reporters from other countries, and myriad other questions.
Then, in a slightly gravelly voice, the interpreter explained the situation.
"You are our sister. We have no problem with you. Our problem is with your government. We just need to keep you for some time. We want women freed from Abu Ghraib prison. Maybe four or five women. We want to ask your government for this," the interpreter said. (At the time, it was reported that 10 Iraqi women were among 14,000 Iraqis being held by coalition forces on suspicion of insurgent activity.)
"You are to stay in this room. And this window, don't put one hand on this window," he continued. "I have a place underground. It is very dark and small, and cold, and if you put one hand on this window, we will put you there. Some of my friends said we should put you there, but I said, 'No she is a woman.' Women are very important in Islam."
They took me upstairs to the master bedroom. Within a few minutes an interpreter arrived, and an interrogation began.
They wanted to know my name, the name of my newspaper, my religion, how much my computer was worth, did it have a device to signal the government or military, if I or anyone in my family drank alcohol, how many American reporters were in Baghdad, did I know reporters from other countries, and myriad other questions.
Then, in a slightly gravelly voice, the interpreter explained the situation.
"You are our sister. We have no problem with you. Our problem is with your government. We just need to keep you for some time. We want women freed from Abu Ghraib prison. Maybe four or five women. We want to ask your government for this," the interpreter said. (At the time, it was reported that 10 Iraqi women were among 14,000 Iraqis being held by coalition forces on suspicion of insurgent activity.)
"You are to stay in this room. And this window, don't put one hand on this window," he continued. "I have a place underground. It is very dark and small, and cold, and if you put one hand on this window, we will put you there. Some of my friends said we should put you there, but I said, 'No she is a woman.' Women are very important in Islam."
Friday, August 11, 2006
Devil of a good story
I’m late to this book, but I found the two interwoven tales in Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City so compellingly crafted that it read more like a novel than a work of painstakingly researched nonfiction.
Seemed a fitting glimpse into the collective psyche of Chicago, a city not wholly unlike Cleveland in its Midwestern sensibility. Larson’s story begins aboard the R.M.S. Olympic, part of the White Star Line, on April 14, 1912. Daniel Burnham, an architect and the man behind the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, is reminiscing about the feat that was the World’s Fair.
Larson spins the yarn from Chicago’s rally and fight with Easterners to get the fair in the first place, the trials of pulling the White City together with some of the greatest minds in architecture in such a short period of time, the need to out-Eiffel the Eiffel Tower of the Paris World Exposition a few years earlier and the push to attract bigger numbers of attendees.
Interspersed throughout is a parallel and riveting tale about a charmingly mad doctor who seduced and later killed probably hundreds of young women who had come to Chicago seeking excitement of the Fair and the big city. How he managed to avoid detection by police for so long, and how he managed to build his “castle” of doom (complete with gas chamber and kiln) without any construction workers knowing what he was doing was ghastly. And that he made money from off his victims not only through insurance fraud, but also by selling their cadavers or parts of their bodies to medical schools for research compounds his macabre nature.
That the two worlds collided at the same time seems both expected and unnatural. For a while one wonders why the two stories are juxtaposed. While the two main characters—Burnham and Dr. H.H. Holmes—never cross paths, their worlds do collide at Jackson Park.
The details of both stories are rich—we see how Holmes spun his evil through a complex network of lies, charm, blue-eyed seduction and hubris through the careful archiving of letters, newspaper accounts, police accounts and even Holmes’ own prison memoir.
And we wonder at the extraordinary will and effort that brought about the World’s Fair and its lasting achievements. What a joy it must have been to research and write this book.
New stuff at the fair:
Shredded Wheat
Cracker Jack
The Ferris Wheel
The Midway
Notables who spoke:
Jane Addams
Woodrow Wilson
Clarence Darrow
Susan B. Anthony
Frederick Douglas
Samuel Gompers
Enjoyed performances by:
Harry Houdini
Scott Joplin
Buffalo Bill Cody
Others influenced by the fair or events surrounding the fair:
Frank Lloyd Wright
Elias Disney, father of Walt
L. Frank Baum
Long-term effects:
City Beautiful movement (Cleveland, San Francisco, Fort World, Atlantic City, St. Louis)
Creation of The Mall in Washington, D.C.
Columbus Day (Oct. 12) as a federal holiday
Chicago’s Miracle Mile and ribbon of lakefront parks
New York’s Flat Iron Building
Back to flight jitters
After a lifelong fear, I’ve recently acclimated myself to flying on a regular basis. No longer do I hold my breath on takeoff or landing, nor do I feel compelled to tense at every bump in the flight. It's like getting in the car or riding a bus. My hubby and I have perfected the timing of the drop-off and pick up to the point where I can check my bag (if I’m checking one), scoot through security and get to my gate just in time for boarding call.
Sure we could be pushing it with timing and possible security delays, but I hate sitting idly in airports. So far, our system has worked.
This summer has been lovely in that I’ve spent most of it at home, working early mornings and still finding time to spend some afternoons playing with the kids. But this week marks the shift as we all start to gear up for the school year and return to routine.
My summer ends with a trip to Chicago for the SPJ National Convention and Journalism Conference. That trip is quickly followed by two more in September to Atlanta and Indianapolis.
Just when I’ve gotten comfortable about flying, there’s the threat of terror attacks. Who knows what will happen in the next two weeks before I leave, but suffice it to say I considered driving to Chicago.
But then I think: Why should I change my travel plans? I mean, I have a hugely busy schedule during my five days in Chicago – nonstop meetings, panels, etc. My flight there gets me into Chicago by 8 a.m. And my flight home gets me back to Cleveland by 10 a.m. I need to be home as early as possible since the kids start school the next day. If I drove, I’d lose that entire Sunday with them.
So, I guess I’ll clean out my big traveling purse – you know, lose the several tubes of hand cream and the travel-sized tube of Crest – to comply with the new restrictions. And I won’t get my grande Starbucks coffee of the day with room for cream for the plane ride and I won’t bring my giant bottle of water. (Thank God Chicago is such a short flight! I hate being without water for any period of time.)
My biggest concern yesterday was that I be able to bring my cell phone and laptop since I’ll be working on these trips. Thankfully, those are allowable. And I planned to bring my iPod Nano (since I have one of my own now) even though I probably won’t use it on the plane. (I prefer to read.) But now I look at using it in public differently. Who knew such things as an iPod or key fob could be used for destruction?
Maybe I'll go back to the rosary.
Sure we could be pushing it with timing and possible security delays, but I hate sitting idly in airports. So far, our system has worked.
This summer has been lovely in that I’ve spent most of it at home, working early mornings and still finding time to spend some afternoons playing with the kids. But this week marks the shift as we all start to gear up for the school year and return to routine.
My summer ends with a trip to Chicago for the SPJ National Convention and Journalism Conference. That trip is quickly followed by two more in September to Atlanta and Indianapolis.
Just when I’ve gotten comfortable about flying, there’s the threat of terror attacks. Who knows what will happen in the next two weeks before I leave, but suffice it to say I considered driving to Chicago.
But then I think: Why should I change my travel plans? I mean, I have a hugely busy schedule during my five days in Chicago – nonstop meetings, panels, etc. My flight there gets me into Chicago by 8 a.m. And my flight home gets me back to Cleveland by 10 a.m. I need to be home as early as possible since the kids start school the next day. If I drove, I’d lose that entire Sunday with them.
So, I guess I’ll clean out my big traveling purse – you know, lose the several tubes of hand cream and the travel-sized tube of Crest – to comply with the new restrictions. And I won’t get my grande Starbucks coffee of the day with room for cream for the plane ride and I won’t bring my giant bottle of water. (Thank God Chicago is such a short flight! I hate being without water for any period of time.)
My biggest concern yesterday was that I be able to bring my cell phone and laptop since I’ll be working on these trips. Thankfully, those are allowable. And I planned to bring my iPod Nano (since I have one of my own now) even though I probably won’t use it on the plane. (I prefer to read.) But now I look at using it in public differently. Who knew such things as an iPod or key fob could be used for destruction?
Maybe I'll go back to the rosary.
How the terrorism story is played
Different reports from two of today's U.S. national papers and two British papers on the thwarted terrorist plot. Emphasis is added. Think it interesting that the U.S. papers do not mention the intent of detonating bombs over U.S. cities. Kind of an important detail to omit. Loss of life over the Atlantic is one thing; a bomb exploding in a jetliner over a major U.S. city raises the potential for devastation even higher.
The New York Times:
LONDON, Aug. 10 — The British authorities said Thursday that they had thwarted an advanced terrorist plot to blow up airplanes flying from Britain to the United States using liquid explosives that would have escaped airport security.
The officials said they had arrested 24 men, all British-born Muslims, who planned to carry the liquids in drink bottles and combine them into explosive cocktails to commit mass murder aboard as many as 10 flights high over the Atlantic.
The Guardian:
When the jets were in midair over American cities, they planned to combine the explosives and detonate them using an electric charge from an iPod, the security services believe. BA flights were among the targets. US officials said the bombers had been seeking to hit New York, Washington, San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles. Other airlines targeted were thought to be United, American and Continental.
Washington Post:
"It's fair to say they were aiming for multiple flights, and some of the exact data of who they would deploy, and how many might be in one deployment, are somewhat ambiguous," said Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. "There were different data sets about their intentions over time that evolved over the period of time that we were following this. It did seem in more recent days to have centered upon carriers that had direct, nonstop flights between the U.K. and U.S.
"The real focus was to blow up airliners and the people on them," he added.
The Times of London:
Meetings of the Government’s Cobra emergency unit were told that the first wave of bombings was to have targeted five aircraft leaving British airports in the next few days. The destinations, US officials said, were New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles. The plotters are said to have studied the timetables of three US airlines: American, Continental and United.
Security sources said that a second wave of attacks had been considered, with as many as 12 aircraft to be attacked.
Surveillance on internet traffic between the suspected terrorists indicated that they had considered setting off their devices simultaneously in mid-Atlantic but had also discussed trying to blow up the aircraft as they circled above the destination cities. The aim was to cause maximum death and destruction in the air and on American soil.
The New York Times:
LONDON, Aug. 10 — The British authorities said Thursday that they had thwarted an advanced terrorist plot to blow up airplanes flying from Britain to the United States using liquid explosives that would have escaped airport security.
The officials said they had arrested 24 men, all British-born Muslims, who planned to carry the liquids in drink bottles and combine them into explosive cocktails to commit mass murder aboard as many as 10 flights high over the Atlantic.
The Guardian:
When the jets were in midair over American cities, they planned to combine the explosives and detonate them using an electric charge from an iPod, the security services believe. BA flights were among the targets. US officials said the bombers had been seeking to hit New York, Washington, San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles. Other airlines targeted were thought to be United, American and Continental.
Washington Post:
"It's fair to say they were aiming for multiple flights, and some of the exact data of who they would deploy, and how many might be in one deployment, are somewhat ambiguous," said Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. "There were different data sets about their intentions over time that evolved over the period of time that we were following this. It did seem in more recent days to have centered upon carriers that had direct, nonstop flights between the U.K. and U.S.
"The real focus was to blow up airliners and the people on them," he added.
The Times of London:
Meetings of the Government’s Cobra emergency unit were told that the first wave of bombings was to have targeted five aircraft leaving British airports in the next few days. The destinations, US officials said, were New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles. The plotters are said to have studied the timetables of three US airlines: American, Continental and United.
Security sources said that a second wave of attacks had been considered, with as many as 12 aircraft to be attacked.
Surveillance on internet traffic between the suspected terrorists indicated that they had considered setting off their devices simultaneously in mid-Atlantic but had also discussed trying to blow up the aircraft as they circled above the destination cities. The aim was to cause maximum death and destruction in the air and on American soil.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
The Tooth Fairy forgot
Mikey came shuffling downstairs early this morning with his head hung low, his lower lip protruding and carrying a Ziploc baggy.
"Hey bud, you're up awful early this morning," I said.
He held up the bag. "The Tooth Fairy forgot."
Oh crap! I felt about as big as the tiny little tooth in that baggy. How did I forget? I've been out of the Tooth Fairy habit for a while. But he was so excited yesterday. I should've remembered.
Thing is, in the summertime we all seem to go to bed at the same time, so I'm not able to complete the transaction at night. So this Tooth Fairy usually does her business in the early hours of the morning.
But I forgot, plain and simple. And he was devastated.
Being a 7-year-old, I marveled at his plausible explanation for the oversight.
"It's that stupid headboard. The baggy fell behind my bed and she couldn't see it down there," he said in earnest.
"Do you think, Mikey? Maybe we should tape it to the headboard tonight so it doesn't fall behind your bed," I said.
"Yeah, maybe that will work. But what if she's not strong enough to pull the tape?" he asked.
"Well then she can just open the baggy and get the tooth out," I said.
He seemed satisfied with that answer. And so I breathed a little sigh of relief and have put a Post-It on my nightstand that reads, "TF." Think we may up the ante on this tooth to $1.
"Hey bud, you're up awful early this morning," I said.
He held up the bag. "The Tooth Fairy forgot."
Oh crap! I felt about as big as the tiny little tooth in that baggy. How did I forget? I've been out of the Tooth Fairy habit for a while. But he was so excited yesterday. I should've remembered.
Thing is, in the summertime we all seem to go to bed at the same time, so I'm not able to complete the transaction at night. So this Tooth Fairy usually does her business in the early hours of the morning.
But I forgot, plain and simple. And he was devastated.
Being a 7-year-old, I marveled at his plausible explanation for the oversight.
"It's that stupid headboard. The baggy fell behind my bed and she couldn't see it down there," he said in earnest.
"Do you think, Mikey? Maybe we should tape it to the headboard tonight so it doesn't fall behind your bed," I said.
"Yeah, maybe that will work. But what if she's not strong enough to pull the tape?" he asked.
"Well then she can just open the baggy and get the tooth out," I said.
He seemed satisfied with that answer. And so I breathed a little sigh of relief and have put a Post-It on my nightstand that reads, "TF." Think we may up the ante on this tooth to $1.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Poetry in the morning
I have a new morning ritual, thanks to my friend, Cathy. The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor now sets my creative day. I look forward to listening with my first cup of coffee every morning. So many interesting little tidbits in this short podcast featuring literary facts and a poem of the day. Today's poem is a downer called "Afraid So" by Jeanne Marie Beaumont.
Today marks the founding of the Smithsonian Institution in 1846, with money from a British man who had never set foot in the U.S. Curiously, we still don't know why he gave his money to us. He never even corresponded with anyone here.
This also marks the publication date of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. It was off to a slow start, however, taking five years to sell the first 2,000 copies.
And today is the birthday of P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins. She once said: "Mary Poppins is both a joy and a curse to me as a writer. As a writer you can feel awfully imprisoned, because people, having had so much of one thing, want you always to go on doing more of the same."
Today marks the founding of the Smithsonian Institution in 1846, with money from a British man who had never set foot in the U.S. Curiously, we still don't know why he gave his money to us. He never even corresponded with anyone here.
This also marks the publication date of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. It was off to a slow start, however, taking five years to sell the first 2,000 copies.
And today is the birthday of P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins. She once said: "Mary Poppins is both a joy and a curse to me as a writer. As a writer you can feel awfully imprisoned, because people, having had so much of one thing, want you always to go on doing more of the same."
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
The legacy of Marlin and Jacques
My household is a bit sleep-deprived this week. Why? Shark Week on The Discovery Channel. That’s right, we’ve watched virtual sharks, learned about the ones best suited for adapting to global warming, watched a group of lunatic filmmakers attempt to prove whether or not sharks respond in the way the Great White of Jaws' films did and we learned about Dirty Jobs – Jobs That Bite.
I make light of their fascination, but I have to say it brought me back to my childhood when our entire family would gather on Sunday nights around our one tiny television to watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
There on our black-and-white television was this white-haired old man with a high-pitched voice who would wrestle anacondas in South America and struggle to save a cheetah in Africa. (View some of the classic videos to jog your memory of Marlin Perkins.)
Before there was Animal Planet’s Jeff Corwin or Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin there was this lovely man who roamed the planet bringing wildlife to our television screens. An even larger world opened to us once we got our first color television. Wild Kingdom and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau brought the oceans and the animal kingdom into our five-channel world.
Looking back through some of the classic video footage, I can’t help but wonder whether some of the activities were a little nutty and barbaric. What were they going to do with a “bagged” anaconda? Questions, I was always asking questions.
It was through this show that I first saw a flock of pink flamingos stretch across a sun-glinted river in Africa or realized the thickness of a lion’s mane as it ran across the Serengetti. How could you appreciate a gazelle’s quickness unless you could observe it in Technicolor across your screen or smell the elephants slapping dirt on their backs to keep cool and sense the danger of killer snakes in the water?
The oceans had always represented fear to me probably more from their size and my own ineptness as a swimmer, but also from what is hidden in their waters. Jacques Cousteau showed me the beauty and grace of the ocean as well as its tempests. I still yearn for yearly refreshment of the ocean. Early on these shows engendered in me the naturalist and fed my wanderlust. But more than anything I wanted firsthand experiences—not to wrestle anacondas, mind you, but to see things for myself, to observe and record.
Wild Kingdom—still on at 7 p.m. Sunday nights on Animal Planet—may have pioneered the format, but today there are great deal more channels and shows bringing the wild kingdom home.
However, television alone didn't feed my appetite. Stacks of National Geographic magazines also nourished my curiosity with terrific writing and reporting that leapt off the page and an appreciation of fine photography. I remain hopelessly inept and perpetually in wonder of the photographer’s eye.
I’m not sure what vocations will call my three boys. Right now they are boys interested in the blood-and-guts awe factor of sharks. With any luck, some of the larger messages about caring for our oceans and life on this planet will stay with them. I hope so because even now, in their boyish way, they seem to appreciate the beauty of the wild.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Working on my Web site
When I first left the comforts of full-time employment two-and-a-half years ago, I thought about launching a Web site. But I wasn't sure what to include, how to organize, how I wanted it to function, etc. I'm glad I waited because now I'm pretty definite about what I want.
Coming soon is www.wendyahoke.com. Creative Ink is taken as a domain name, so after wracking my brain for clever site names, it was my wise hubby's suggestion to just use my byline. I've registered the domain and my good pal and designer Brian Willse, who will be designing, suggested I also register wendyhoke.com in case folks miss the middle initial.
WHAT I WANT:
Simplicity Is it me or do writers have some pretty complicated and overwhelming sites? I want people to find the basics and find them quickly—home, bio, articles, books, blog, news, contact.
Professional I can't stand Web sites that look as if a 10-year-old constructed them, all junky and cluttered and amaeteurish. That's why I've opted NOT to use iWeb or any of that homemade software. Writing is a business not a hobby for me and I want my site to reflect that I'm a professional who gets paid to write. Here and here are a couple of writer sites I like as models, not necessarily for design but for navigation, content and simplicity.
Archive My bookshelves, closet and basement comprise my morgue of articles. It's overwhelming to me to fathom properly archiving all my work. So I'm creating a virtual space that allows me to showcase my most recent and best work. Since my pitching focuses primarily on national publications these days, I find many editors ask if I have a site where they can see my work. Time is of the essence now.
Business cards As in, I need to order more business cards. But I didn't want to do so without incorporating my Web site and blog.
The blog I've had some trouble this summer keeping up with my blogging activities. I believe if Creative Ink is part of my Web site I'll be more purposeful in posting since it will also be used as a marketing tool.
Content management I want to be able to handle administration to update frequently. I'm constantly writing new stuff and I want to make sure new articles are posted. Plus, I'm including a news page with information about any speaking engagements, etc.
Expansion possibilities Down the line I'd like to offer a newsletter or some such method of communicating to subscribers.
WHAT I NEED
• Should the tone be personal (as in About Me and My Web Site, blah, blah) or should it be third-person (About Wendy, etc.)? Bear in mind that I'm striving for professional. My copy currently reflects how my bio is written, which is third person.
• Does anyone have suggestions on how to highlight work no longer available online? (18 months worth of PD articles?) And don't say scan, because newsprint looks like crap when scanned.
• Does it make sense to organize articles by topics or by publication? Within the topics or pubs they will be listed chronologically.
• Do I put a welcome message on home page or simply put up my navigation? Are welcome messages too hokey?
Of course I welcome any and all suggestions.
Coming soon is www.wendyahoke.com. Creative Ink is taken as a domain name, so after wracking my brain for clever site names, it was my wise hubby's suggestion to just use my byline. I've registered the domain and my good pal and designer Brian Willse, who will be designing, suggested I also register wendyhoke.com in case folks miss the middle initial.
WHAT I WANT:
Simplicity Is it me or do writers have some pretty complicated and overwhelming sites? I want people to find the basics and find them quickly—home, bio, articles, books, blog, news, contact.
Professional I can't stand Web sites that look as if a 10-year-old constructed them, all junky and cluttered and amaeteurish. That's why I've opted NOT to use iWeb or any of that homemade software. Writing is a business not a hobby for me and I want my site to reflect that I'm a professional who gets paid to write. Here and here are a couple of writer sites I like as models, not necessarily for design but for navigation, content and simplicity.
Archive My bookshelves, closet and basement comprise my morgue of articles. It's overwhelming to me to fathom properly archiving all my work. So I'm creating a virtual space that allows me to showcase my most recent and best work. Since my pitching focuses primarily on national publications these days, I find many editors ask if I have a site where they can see my work. Time is of the essence now.
Business cards As in, I need to order more business cards. But I didn't want to do so without incorporating my Web site and blog.
The blog I've had some trouble this summer keeping up with my blogging activities. I believe if Creative Ink is part of my Web site I'll be more purposeful in posting since it will also be used as a marketing tool.
Content management I want to be able to handle administration to update frequently. I'm constantly writing new stuff and I want to make sure new articles are posted. Plus, I'm including a news page with information about any speaking engagements, etc.
Expansion possibilities Down the line I'd like to offer a newsletter or some such method of communicating to subscribers.
WHAT I NEED
• Should the tone be personal (as in About Me and My Web Site, blah, blah) or should it be third-person (About Wendy, etc.)? Bear in mind that I'm striving for professional. My copy currently reflects how my bio is written, which is third person.
• Does anyone have suggestions on how to highlight work no longer available online? (18 months worth of PD articles?) And don't say scan, because newsprint looks like crap when scanned.
• Does it make sense to organize articles by topics or by publication? Within the topics or pubs they will be listed chronologically.
• Do I put a welcome message on home page or simply put up my navigation? Are welcome messages too hokey?
Of course I welcome any and all suggestions.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Behind the URL is up
Jerry Ritcey of Red Wheelbarrow is this week's Behind the URL on Brewed Fresh Daily. Check it out here.
This is my favorite line:
I think we all need more time to have adventures that may make good anecdotes, as that is the most fun to read, as well as write.
Indeed, Jerry.
This is my favorite line:
I think we all need more time to have adventures that may make good anecdotes, as that is the most fun to read, as well as write.
Indeed, Jerry.
Much-needed elixir
"You’re in the book", read the subject line of an e-mail received two days before Christmas. Connie Schultz had just received the final page proofs of Life Happens from Random House and saw the column about a harried mother of three had indeed made the final cut.
She confessed to allowing herself to get excited about the book and sent me a link to the book jacket. It took my breath away for a moment as sheer joy and terror co-mingled in the same cup. Book tours, TV interviews, speeches. Eeek! She would do well, of that I had no doubt. The sheer joy and terror was my own at imagining myself in her place.
Six months later I’m a bit tardy as I walk into the Oberlin Public Library. It was standing room only and I found my friend and writing pal Cathy propped against the wall. I join her as Connie tears up after reading the column about her dad and his lunch pail. “I get so emotional lately when I read my columns,” she said later. Her life is very different from her days as a columnist and it’s obvious she misses it.
She quickly regains control and proceeds to spend the next hour entertaining the crowd of mostly gray-haired folks with tales from her writing life and from the campaign trail. She is a natural, so relaxed and confident and funny. Her columns take on new life when she reads them in her animated voice. Words pop into my head like pacing, timing, dramatic effect.
I feel small and inadequate in her presence.
While waiting in the book-signing line, I thumb through the pages of “Life Happens.” And there I am, on page 114. Me, my name, my blog.
As I read the thirty-eight-year-old mother’s blog entry, I could almost see a younger version of myself float by, like the Ghost of Mommy Past.
It doesn’t take long for me to feel not inadequate, but blessed to have the connection to someone willing to share her expertise as a writer and her insecurities and joys as a woman and mother.
Connie asks hard questions of me. What kind of writer do I want to be? What kind of writing do I want to do? What am I afraid of? Over a year ago she told me that my voice was important, she encouraged me to use it more forcefully. Sometimes I succeed; more often I cower back into my familiar place of fear.
As she readies her Sharpie before each signing she says, “Tell me about yourself,” and the men and women standing in line share a story that I’m guessing would help her come up with an original inscription. “Brilliant,” I thought, and tuck that morsel away for “someday.”
She doesn’t ask me that question. Instead, she looks at me as if she can see the frailties and insecurities I try so desperately to mask and writes exactly what I need to hear.
Last night I read through most of her book. I flipped back to the Acknowledgements page and was stunned at the number of people named there. Writing is such hard work that it’s nearly impossible to go it alone. She’s fortunate to have so many people providing feedback, nurturing her writing and encouraging her forward. That’s harder to achieve as an independent writer. Those people aren’t in the next cubicle; we have to go out and find them.
I found Connie — or maybe we found each other. She is the kind of challenging, encouraging, nurturing model I need. For now she’s busy with husband Sherrod Brown’s Senate Campaign. I know that. But I look forward to when the campaign is over and we can talk more about writing and mothering and being a modern woman and all those things that nourish the female soul.
Until that time, I’m refreshed by her energy and confidence. Thank you, Connie for seeing through me and providing the proper dose of writerly elixir. I am buoyed … for now.
She confessed to allowing herself to get excited about the book and sent me a link to the book jacket. It took my breath away for a moment as sheer joy and terror co-mingled in the same cup. Book tours, TV interviews, speeches. Eeek! She would do well, of that I had no doubt. The sheer joy and terror was my own at imagining myself in her place.
Six months later I’m a bit tardy as I walk into the Oberlin Public Library. It was standing room only and I found my friend and writing pal Cathy propped against the wall. I join her as Connie tears up after reading the column about her dad and his lunch pail. “I get so emotional lately when I read my columns,” she said later. Her life is very different from her days as a columnist and it’s obvious she misses it.
She quickly regains control and proceeds to spend the next hour entertaining the crowd of mostly gray-haired folks with tales from her writing life and from the campaign trail. She is a natural, so relaxed and confident and funny. Her columns take on new life when she reads them in her animated voice. Words pop into my head like pacing, timing, dramatic effect.
I feel small and inadequate in her presence.
While waiting in the book-signing line, I thumb through the pages of “Life Happens.” And there I am, on page 114. Me, my name, my blog.
As I read the thirty-eight-year-old mother’s blog entry, I could almost see a younger version of myself float by, like the Ghost of Mommy Past.
It doesn’t take long for me to feel not inadequate, but blessed to have the connection to someone willing to share her expertise as a writer and her insecurities and joys as a woman and mother.
Connie asks hard questions of me. What kind of writer do I want to be? What kind of writing do I want to do? What am I afraid of? Over a year ago she told me that my voice was important, she encouraged me to use it more forcefully. Sometimes I succeed; more often I cower back into my familiar place of fear.
As she readies her Sharpie before each signing she says, “Tell me about yourself,” and the men and women standing in line share a story that I’m guessing would help her come up with an original inscription. “Brilliant,” I thought, and tuck that morsel away for “someday.”
She doesn’t ask me that question. Instead, she looks at me as if she can see the frailties and insecurities I try so desperately to mask and writes exactly what I need to hear.
Last night I read through most of her book. I flipped back to the Acknowledgements page and was stunned at the number of people named there. Writing is such hard work that it’s nearly impossible to go it alone. She’s fortunate to have so many people providing feedback, nurturing her writing and encouraging her forward. That’s harder to achieve as an independent writer. Those people aren’t in the next cubicle; we have to go out and find them.
I found Connie — or maybe we found each other. She is the kind of challenging, encouraging, nurturing model I need. For now she’s busy with husband Sherrod Brown’s Senate Campaign. I know that. But I look forward to when the campaign is over and we can talk more about writing and mothering and being a modern woman and all those things that nourish the female soul.
Until that time, I’m refreshed by her energy and confidence. Thank you, Connie for seeing through me and providing the proper dose of writerly elixir. I am buoyed … for now.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
New blog is a marvel
What a wonderful writerly mid-week treat! One of my favorite Cleveland writers is now blogging. Kristin Ohlson is now blogging at Book of Marvels. Here's an excerpt from her first post explaining the name.
When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Richard Halliburton's Book of Marvels. It had a section for Wonders of the New World (which included the Golden Gate bridge, something I'd been driven over many times) and Wonders of the Old World, which included (I think) The Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Queen Zenobia's desert city. The old wonders made me mad with desire and probably changed forever what I thought I'd be and see in the world.
Kristin is the author of Stalking the Divine, a beautiful book that follows the cloistered Poor Clares, but also follows her own spiritual journey back to the Catholic faith.
When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Richard Halliburton's Book of Marvels. It had a section for Wonders of the New World (which included the Golden Gate bridge, something I'd been driven over many times) and Wonders of the Old World, which included (I think) The Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Queen Zenobia's desert city. The old wonders made me mad with desire and probably changed forever what I thought I'd be and see in the world.
Kristin is the author of Stalking the Divine, a beautiful book that follows the cloistered Poor Clares, but also follows her own spiritual journey back to the Catholic faith.
Do you know Jack?
There’s little in the way of good media criticism found in our national media, save for Slate’s Jack Shafer. He is maestro, not to mention just pure fun to read. Take his latest Press Box for example.
Shafer has crafted a witty letter to Jared Kushner, the new and very young owner of the New York Observer. He reminds him of the Observer’s strength in covering the press, New York politics and real estate and its general good looks, including the peachy newsprint.
But he also warns him that he has to be willing throw his cash around to get and keep great reporting talent to beat the competition on its strength areas, and at designers to keep it looking great. He laments the Observer’s inability to capitalize in any lasting commercial sense on Candace Bushnell’s, “Sex and the City” fame and so offers this: “If you want to be New York's power book but don't cover sex in all its permutations, you're not in the game.”
Channeling Charles Foster Kane he advises the young Kushner to find his Rosebud. If he hasn’t one, make one up. You know, add to the intrigue of a wealthy young man joining New York’s media elite. As Shafer notes, we still don’t know his reasons for buying the paper.
In addition to crafting well-reported columns and criticisms, Shafer has a great knack for pulling what could be rambling bits of information together into a succinct graph, such as this brief look at the ownership of vanity press.
As a vanity press mogul, you join a bag of mixed nuts. There's real estate's revenge on journalism, Mortimer Zuckerman, who runs (into the ground) U.S. News & World Report and the Daily News; Philip Anschutz litters driveways with his free daily Examiners in D.C., S.F., and Baltimore; and Bruce Wasserstein extends his claim to being the toughest guy in the room with the American Lawyer and New York. David Bradley conducts etiquette lessons at the National Journal and the Atlantic; Martin Peretz makes the world safe for Israel at the New Republic; and convicted felon Rev. Sun Myung Moon is at this moment preparing us all for the rapture, Korean-style, with the Washington Times and UPI.
He’s one of the few columnists I have bookmarked because of the instructional value to his columns. He has a disdain for thinly reported anything, but particularly trend stories. Although he can artfully rip a trend story to shreds, he also provides tips about how to take the reporting even further. His reporting on the lack of reporting in these stories reveals how easily reporters and editors can fall prey to the latest trend. His push to limit use of anonymous sources has had an impact in national reporting and, perhaps as a result, in some local reporting. He points to Pulitzer Prize-winner Dana Priest of the Washington Post as someone who does a great job of using anonymous sources with specificity that gives her reporting credibility.
All of this is just one very big introduction to my latest profile in Quill magazine, which features Shafer. I’m not sure you can access unless you’re a member, so I’ve copied it below. When I get a little more time, I’ll provide a few outtakes. Wonder what he thinks of Ana Marie Cox being named Washington editor of Time.com? Read on and you’ll see what I mean.
Ten: Jack Shafer, Slate press critic By Wendy A. Hoke
Jack Shafer has been called everything from a school monitor to one end of a Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robot. But the self-professed news junkie tackles media criticism like a scientist, encouraging more skepticism, specificity and data in reporting.
Q: How did you get into journalism?
I studied communication, English and mathematics at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. I would’ve been a math major, but I was working hard to get As and Bs, and math majors didn’t have to work hard for those grades. I have no doubts that I could turn really good writers into B students in calculus. The two thought processes are not alien. In proving mathematics, you’re building a case step by step. If you flub up a step, people will call you out. I think that’s true in journalism as well, though I don’t think I could turn math majors into journalists.
I got into journalism as a freelancer in Los Angeles when I started freelancing for alternative weeklies and a political magazine called the Libertarian Review. The minute I had any success, I left the country to travel. When I came back I went to Inquiry, which is now defunct and that’s what brought me to Washington, D.C. When I started writing, I realized I had something to say that I didn’t think anyone else was saying.
Q: How did you become a media critic?
Inquiry magazine folded in 1984. So I was freelancing, writing a lot about drugs. Some of my first best stories were revisionist accounts of the war on drugs. In the summer of ’85, I became editor of the alternative weekly Washington City Paper. I tried to hire someone as press critic, but no one would do it because they thought it would end their chance at working at The Washington Post. I had no aspirations to work at The Post so I decided to be the press critic. (The Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive now owns Slate.)
Q: Slate just passed a milestone — 10 years on the Web. What’s the biggest change (if any) that you’ve noticed in traditional media’s view toward new media?
I don’t think there was ever a group prejudice against online journalism. I think from the beginning established media judged fairly what people were doing in this new medium. In the summer of ’96 when Slate launched, washingtonpost.com also launched. It’s not as if we were a decade ahead.
Q: What prompted you to join Slate?
Mike Kinsley was one of the only persons I wanted to work for. I was a year into an editorship at SF Weekly when the opportunity arose. Working for Mike and playing around with new media proved irresistible.
Q: Describe your writing process. How many papers, blogs, magazines etc. do you read in a day (and in what formats) and how do you formulate your columns?
I read three dailies in newsprint — Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today. I read the New York Times online and look at both newsweeklies. I graze the monthlies and read the political weeklies. I watch BBC World News twice a day. I’m a big fan of (the blog) Boing Boing and have RSS feeds for a lot of topics of interest such as methamphetamine. There’s nothing special about my news appetite; it’s just a big one.
Q: You often back many of your criticisms with your own sometimes-extensive reporting. How much time do you spend reporting for your columns?
It’s deceptive on drug stuff because I’ve been writing about this beat for so long it’s just stuff I know. For example, (a recent) pharm party piece (on teens partying with pharmaceuticals) I think I wrote the day I read the piece in USA Today.
Other stories may be on a backburner, and I may be gathering string for months. Like every reporter, I triage what I have going at any given moment. I wrote a piece yesterday about an alleged $48 billion in ID fraud costs. I had already researched and reported out the ID theft story based on a New York Times piece, but then read a well-done piece in Business Week and followed up with another column.
One of biggest things I worked on was a two-part magazine-style feature on the movie "Good Night and Good Luck." In that piece I congratulated the creators of that movie on capturing the look, tone and feel of the era, but also at having distorted history to make their political point. I saw that as press criticism because I went back to the historical documents to report even though it was a movie review. I’m as proud of that as anything.
Q: What column has garnered the biggest backlash from colleagues?
The most hostile response was when I wrote about a friend, Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette. I said she was squandering her talent with a-- f---ing jokes. Only in recent months has she been a little friendlier, but that really ended the friendship. How much of a break should friends get? I’d be lying if I said I never cut a friend a break, but it’s not that big a break.
(New York Times reporter) Peter Landesman told (blogger) Daniel Radosh he’d have me fired the next day (after criticism of Landesman’s article on sexual slavery appeared in the Jan. 25, 2004 New York Times Magazine). I think he’s the only person to threaten to have me fired.
Q: You tend to be critical of trend stories. Why? And what are some of your other journalistic pet peeves?
Whenever a civilian reads a news story about something he knows a lot about, he’s appalled at the thinness. I try to approach every story with skepticism I think a civilian expert would have. Whenever you write a trend story, show me the data. Don’t show me the press release. Show me some demonstrable uptick in usage or occurrence. Where there is no data, it doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a story. Some are anecdotal stories, but that doesn’t always make it a trend.
I do like to write good stuff, too, like a piece about David Von Drehle’s 1989 Hurricane Hugo coverage and how it defies cliché and an appreciation of Marjorie Williams as a profile writer after her death.
Writers are the people I’m beating up on, but surely the editor bears some blame, particularly in the handling of the Duke rape story and the New York Times WMD coverage.
I’ve been gratified by the way the press turned around on the issue of anonymous sources; at least they’re paying lip service to reducing them. (Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter) Dana Priest is a good example of how to use anonymous sources. When she’s breaking stories like the CIA black prisons, she says this is who I’m interviewing without naming names. There’s a specificity to her reporting that makes it hard for government officials to knock it down.
Q: What is the role of a media critic in society?
To satisfy his editor. Seriously, I wouldn’t want to define it too narrowly. Is Jon Stewart not a media critic? He makes a point with humor, but he’s sending up the news media as well as people in news. The Onion is another journal of media criticism.
Q: What advice do you have for young journalists?
Be skeptical. I’m surprised at the lack of skepticism for our own stories, because we’re always skeptical of others. People don’t really seem to ask hard enough questions. You can’t teach skepticism. If it’s not part of your character, then it’s very hard to acquire.
Good journalism is like good science and should produce reproducible results. Science is my inspiration when I’m writing my pieces and building in links. That’s why I’m so critical of insider anonymous sources. It’s much easier to believe a story if you give great specificity.
Shafer has crafted a witty letter to Jared Kushner, the new and very young owner of the New York Observer. He reminds him of the Observer’s strength in covering the press, New York politics and real estate and its general good looks, including the peachy newsprint.
But he also warns him that he has to be willing throw his cash around to get and keep great reporting talent to beat the competition on its strength areas, and at designers to keep it looking great. He laments the Observer’s inability to capitalize in any lasting commercial sense on Candace Bushnell’s, “Sex and the City” fame and so offers this: “If you want to be New York's power book but don't cover sex in all its permutations, you're not in the game.”
Channeling Charles Foster Kane he advises the young Kushner to find his Rosebud. If he hasn’t one, make one up. You know, add to the intrigue of a wealthy young man joining New York’s media elite. As Shafer notes, we still don’t know his reasons for buying the paper.
In addition to crafting well-reported columns and criticisms, Shafer has a great knack for pulling what could be rambling bits of information together into a succinct graph, such as this brief look at the ownership of vanity press.
As a vanity press mogul, you join a bag of mixed nuts. There's real estate's revenge on journalism, Mortimer Zuckerman, who runs (into the ground) U.S. News & World Report and the Daily News; Philip Anschutz litters driveways with his free daily Examiners in D.C., S.F., and Baltimore; and Bruce Wasserstein extends his claim to being the toughest guy in the room with the American Lawyer and New York. David Bradley conducts etiquette lessons at the National Journal and the Atlantic; Martin Peretz makes the world safe for Israel at the New Republic; and convicted felon Rev. Sun Myung Moon is at this moment preparing us all for the rapture, Korean-style, with the Washington Times and UPI.
He’s one of the few columnists I have bookmarked because of the instructional value to his columns. He has a disdain for thinly reported anything, but particularly trend stories. Although he can artfully rip a trend story to shreds, he also provides tips about how to take the reporting even further. His reporting on the lack of reporting in these stories reveals how easily reporters and editors can fall prey to the latest trend. His push to limit use of anonymous sources has had an impact in national reporting and, perhaps as a result, in some local reporting. He points to Pulitzer Prize-winner Dana Priest of the Washington Post as someone who does a great job of using anonymous sources with specificity that gives her reporting credibility.
All of this is just one very big introduction to my latest profile in Quill magazine, which features Shafer. I’m not sure you can access unless you’re a member, so I’ve copied it below. When I get a little more time, I’ll provide a few outtakes. Wonder what he thinks of Ana Marie Cox being named Washington editor of Time.com? Read on and you’ll see what I mean.
Ten: Jack Shafer, Slate press critic By Wendy A. Hoke
Jack Shafer has been called everything from a school monitor to one end of a Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robot. But the self-professed news junkie tackles media criticism like a scientist, encouraging more skepticism, specificity and data in reporting.
Q: How did you get into journalism?
I studied communication, English and mathematics at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. I would’ve been a math major, but I was working hard to get As and Bs, and math majors didn’t have to work hard for those grades. I have no doubts that I could turn really good writers into B students in calculus. The two thought processes are not alien. In proving mathematics, you’re building a case step by step. If you flub up a step, people will call you out. I think that’s true in journalism as well, though I don’t think I could turn math majors into journalists.
I got into journalism as a freelancer in Los Angeles when I started freelancing for alternative weeklies and a political magazine called the Libertarian Review. The minute I had any success, I left the country to travel. When I came back I went to Inquiry, which is now defunct and that’s what brought me to Washington, D.C. When I started writing, I realized I had something to say that I didn’t think anyone else was saying.
Q: How did you become a media critic?
Inquiry magazine folded in 1984. So I was freelancing, writing a lot about drugs. Some of my first best stories were revisionist accounts of the war on drugs. In the summer of ’85, I became editor of the alternative weekly Washington City Paper. I tried to hire someone as press critic, but no one would do it because they thought it would end their chance at working at The Washington Post. I had no aspirations to work at The Post so I decided to be the press critic. (The Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive now owns Slate.)
Q: Slate just passed a milestone — 10 years on the Web. What’s the biggest change (if any) that you’ve noticed in traditional media’s view toward new media?
I don’t think there was ever a group prejudice against online journalism. I think from the beginning established media judged fairly what people were doing in this new medium. In the summer of ’96 when Slate launched, washingtonpost.com also launched. It’s not as if we were a decade ahead.
Q: What prompted you to join Slate?
Mike Kinsley was one of the only persons I wanted to work for. I was a year into an editorship at SF Weekly when the opportunity arose. Working for Mike and playing around with new media proved irresistible.
Q: Describe your writing process. How many papers, blogs, magazines etc. do you read in a day (and in what formats) and how do you formulate your columns?
I read three dailies in newsprint — Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today. I read the New York Times online and look at both newsweeklies. I graze the monthlies and read the political weeklies. I watch BBC World News twice a day. I’m a big fan of (the blog) Boing Boing and have RSS feeds for a lot of topics of interest such as methamphetamine. There’s nothing special about my news appetite; it’s just a big one.
Q: You often back many of your criticisms with your own sometimes-extensive reporting. How much time do you spend reporting for your columns?
It’s deceptive on drug stuff because I’ve been writing about this beat for so long it’s just stuff I know. For example, (a recent) pharm party piece (on teens partying with pharmaceuticals) I think I wrote the day I read the piece in USA Today.
Other stories may be on a backburner, and I may be gathering string for months. Like every reporter, I triage what I have going at any given moment. I wrote a piece yesterday about an alleged $48 billion in ID fraud costs. I had already researched and reported out the ID theft story based on a New York Times piece, but then read a well-done piece in Business Week and followed up with another column.
One of biggest things I worked on was a two-part magazine-style feature on the movie "Good Night and Good Luck." In that piece I congratulated the creators of that movie on capturing the look, tone and feel of the era, but also at having distorted history to make their political point. I saw that as press criticism because I went back to the historical documents to report even though it was a movie review. I’m as proud of that as anything.
Q: What column has garnered the biggest backlash from colleagues?
The most hostile response was when I wrote about a friend, Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette. I said she was squandering her talent with a-- f---ing jokes. Only in recent months has she been a little friendlier, but that really ended the friendship. How much of a break should friends get? I’d be lying if I said I never cut a friend a break, but it’s not that big a break.
(New York Times reporter) Peter Landesman told (blogger) Daniel Radosh he’d have me fired the next day (after criticism of Landesman’s article on sexual slavery appeared in the Jan. 25, 2004 New York Times Magazine). I think he’s the only person to threaten to have me fired.
Q: You tend to be critical of trend stories. Why? And what are some of your other journalistic pet peeves?
Whenever a civilian reads a news story about something he knows a lot about, he’s appalled at the thinness. I try to approach every story with skepticism I think a civilian expert would have. Whenever you write a trend story, show me the data. Don’t show me the press release. Show me some demonstrable uptick in usage or occurrence. Where there is no data, it doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a story. Some are anecdotal stories, but that doesn’t always make it a trend.
I do like to write good stuff, too, like a piece about David Von Drehle’s 1989 Hurricane Hugo coverage and how it defies cliché and an appreciation of Marjorie Williams as a profile writer after her death.
Writers are the people I’m beating up on, but surely the editor bears some blame, particularly in the handling of the Duke rape story and the New York Times WMD coverage.
I’ve been gratified by the way the press turned around on the issue of anonymous sources; at least they’re paying lip service to reducing them. (Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter) Dana Priest is a good example of how to use anonymous sources. When she’s breaking stories like the CIA black prisons, she says this is who I’m interviewing without naming names. There’s a specificity to her reporting that makes it hard for government officials to knock it down.
Q: What is the role of a media critic in society?
To satisfy his editor. Seriously, I wouldn’t want to define it too narrowly. Is Jon Stewart not a media critic? He makes a point with humor, but he’s sending up the news media as well as people in news. The Onion is another journal of media criticism.
Q: What advice do you have for young journalists?
Be skeptical. I’m surprised at the lack of skepticism for our own stories, because we’re always skeptical of others. People don’t really seem to ask hard enough questions. You can’t teach skepticism. If it’s not part of your character, then it’s very hard to acquire.
Good journalism is like good science and should produce reproducible results. Science is my inspiration when I’m writing my pieces and building in links. That’s why I’m so critical of insider anonymous sources. It’s much easier to believe a story if you give great specificity.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
History in the Cathedral
My latest UB story takes an up-close look at the Mortuary Chapel in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. I love doing this behind-the-scenes pieces. Just good fun. Here's a little taste:
History fills cathedral chapel
By Wendy A. Hoke
CLEVELAND-In the early 1990s, a well-dressed man walked through the wrought-iron gates of the Mortuary Chapel on the north side of the transept in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. He walked out with the encased bones of St. Christina, an early Christian martyr and one of the only complete saintly skeleton relics in the United States.
Fortunately, the box of bones was quickly found sitting in a church parking lot, undamaged. Today, the remains of St. Christina are safely tucked under the chapel’s altar, encased in bulletproof glass and surrounded by the burial vaults of six former bishops.
The Mortuary Chapel is the final resting place for Archbishops Joseph Schrembs and Edward F. Hoban and Bishops Amadeus Rappe, Richard Gilmour, Ignatius F. Horstmann, John P. Farrelly, Clarence G. Issenman and Auxiliary Bishop John R. Hagan.
This small, but ornate sacred space tells the story of its inhabitants, their Catholic faith and, through them, the history of the diocese.
Read more online.
History fills cathedral chapel
By Wendy A. Hoke
CLEVELAND-In the early 1990s, a well-dressed man walked through the wrought-iron gates of the Mortuary Chapel on the north side of the transept in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. He walked out with the encased bones of St. Christina, an early Christian martyr and one of the only complete saintly skeleton relics in the United States.
Fortunately, the box of bones was quickly found sitting in a church parking lot, undamaged. Today, the remains of St. Christina are safely tucked under the chapel’s altar, encased in bulletproof glass and surrounded by the burial vaults of six former bishops.
The Mortuary Chapel is the final resting place for Archbishops Joseph Schrembs and Edward F. Hoban and Bishops Amadeus Rappe, Richard Gilmour, Ignatius F. Horstmann, John P. Farrelly, Clarence G. Issenman and Auxiliary Bishop John R. Hagan.
This small, but ornate sacred space tells the story of its inhabitants, their Catholic faith and, through them, the history of the diocese.
Read more online.
Wilting
There are cold-weather people and hot-weather people and these past few days have convinced me that I am most assuredly a cold-weather person. Dear God it's hot!
We took the boys to the pool for a bit late yesterday afternoon. (What else is there to do but close up in A/C or swim?) Although we spent much of the time in the water, it was still scorching. "I'm frying like a toasted cheeser," said Ryan in an homage to Hamm in the movie, "The Sandlot." Even the pool water was not nearly refreshing enough having baked in the sun for so many days.
I came home and did something I've not done since high school. After getting cleaned up I laid on my bed for just a minute and was out cold. I woke up for a bit at 9:30 and then went right back to bed at 10. I had trouble pulling myself out of bed at 8:15 this morning. That's the effect this heat produces in me. I'm visibly wilting in the heat.
Don't get me wrong, I hate freezing cold just as much as the next Clevelander, but I'd rather feel invigorated by the cold than fuzzy and lethargic from heat. This afternoon will not involve a trip to the pool, but rather to Dick's Sporting Goods to buy backpacks and football cleats. Ahh, now fall is something I can get energized about.
As my Dad always says: "This, too, shall pass."
We took the boys to the pool for a bit late yesterday afternoon. (What else is there to do but close up in A/C or swim?) Although we spent much of the time in the water, it was still scorching. "I'm frying like a toasted cheeser," said Ryan in an homage to Hamm in the movie, "The Sandlot." Even the pool water was not nearly refreshing enough having baked in the sun for so many days.
I came home and did something I've not done since high school. After getting cleaned up I laid on my bed for just a minute and was out cold. I woke up for a bit at 9:30 and then went right back to bed at 10. I had trouble pulling myself out of bed at 8:15 this morning. That's the effect this heat produces in me. I'm visibly wilting in the heat.
Don't get me wrong, I hate freezing cold just as much as the next Clevelander, but I'd rather feel invigorated by the cold than fuzzy and lethargic from heat. This afternoon will not involve a trip to the pool, but rather to Dick's Sporting Goods to buy backpacks and football cleats. Ahh, now fall is something I can get energized about.
As my Dad always says: "This, too, shall pass."
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Small-town press
While most of the country’s bigger newspapers groan about loss of ad revenue, declining readership and circulation woes, there’s a segment of the industry experiencing a boom of sorts – the small-town community newspaper.
Proof of that is found in great little story in today’s LA Times. It details the efforts of the tiny town of Atwater, Minn., at running its own weekly newspaper.
Once a thriving agricultural town, Atwater began to gray (literally) as its young people headed toward the big cities. But today the town has rallied with a librarian/photographer, teachers, an editor and local businessmen pulling together to cover the town (population 1,047).
It’s almost cliché to say reporters dream of retiring from a big newsroom to edit or publish a small community newspaper. There’s a reason for that: It’s a chance to apply your expertise on a small scale in a way to matters to people. Small community papers will cover the small electrical fire, the high school football scores and the changes in the church service schedule.
Community newspapers are the essence of local news. And in these days of shrinking newspapers, local news appears to be what readers want. Reading this story reminded me of the days before secure newsrooms when anyone would wander in off the streets, whether it was the local gadfly, the homeless or the crazy conspiracy theorist with his latest tale.
Every day, people stop by to gab and gossip in the newsroom — three desks, two computers and a coffee maker set up in an old butcher shop. Over the months, residents also left envelopes stuffed with donations, mostly in dollar bills and personal checks, totaling more than $20,000. The money, which has kept the paper financially afloat, has continued to pour in since the broadsheet published its first issue in October.
What's happening in Atwater is reflective of one of the newspaper industry's few bright spots — a slow but steady rise in small suburban and rural newspapers. In the 1960s, there were about 5,500 weekly community newspapers in the U.S., according to Brian Steffens, executive director of the National Newspaper Assn. Today, there are more than 8,000; more than one-fourth have a circulation of 1,500 or less.
The Managing Editor of The Wiregrass Farmer in Ashburn, Ga., about 75 miles south of Macon, e-mailed me recently in response to an SPJ awareness campaign, saying that what works for the dailies doesn’t work for his 2,800-circulation weekly. And yet while daily circ declines, his is growing. “One of us is doing something right,” he wrote.
Proof of that is found in great little story in today’s LA Times. It details the efforts of the tiny town of Atwater, Minn., at running its own weekly newspaper.
Once a thriving agricultural town, Atwater began to gray (literally) as its young people headed toward the big cities. But today the town has rallied with a librarian/photographer, teachers, an editor and local businessmen pulling together to cover the town (population 1,047).
It’s almost cliché to say reporters dream of retiring from a big newsroom to edit or publish a small community newspaper. There’s a reason for that: It’s a chance to apply your expertise on a small scale in a way to matters to people. Small community papers will cover the small electrical fire, the high school football scores and the changes in the church service schedule.
Community newspapers are the essence of local news. And in these days of shrinking newspapers, local news appears to be what readers want. Reading this story reminded me of the days before secure newsrooms when anyone would wander in off the streets, whether it was the local gadfly, the homeless or the crazy conspiracy theorist with his latest tale.
Every day, people stop by to gab and gossip in the newsroom — three desks, two computers and a coffee maker set up in an old butcher shop. Over the months, residents also left envelopes stuffed with donations, mostly in dollar bills and personal checks, totaling more than $20,000. The money, which has kept the paper financially afloat, has continued to pour in since the broadsheet published its first issue in October.
What's happening in Atwater is reflective of one of the newspaper industry's few bright spots — a slow but steady rise in small suburban and rural newspapers. In the 1960s, there were about 5,500 weekly community newspapers in the U.S., according to Brian Steffens, executive director of the National Newspaper Assn. Today, there are more than 8,000; more than one-fourth have a circulation of 1,500 or less.
The Managing Editor of The Wiregrass Farmer in Ashburn, Ga., about 75 miles south of Macon, e-mailed me recently in response to an SPJ awareness campaign, saying that what works for the dailies doesn’t work for his 2,800-circulation weekly. And yet while daily circ declines, his is growing. “One of us is doing something right,” he wrote.
Starting the writing day
Many writers have told me that they have built up mnemonic devices to start them off on each day's writing task. Hemingway once told me he sharpened twenty pencils; Willa Cather that she read a passage from the Bible (not from piety, she was quick to add, but to get in touch with fine prose; she also regretted that she had formed this habit, for the prose rhythms of 1611 were not those she was in search of). My springboard has always been long walks. I drink a great deal, but I do not associate it with writing. — Thornton Wilder
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Everyone has a story
This month's Columbia Journalism Review has a great cover article on StoryCorps the innovative project designed to capture the stories of ordinary people and archive them at the Library of Congress.
You may have heard some of the excerpts on NPR. Kiera Butler writes about the potency of these stories while visiting a Mobile Booth in New Orleans French Quarter. The brainchild of David Isay, he started StoryCorps because he believed that "most people had something not only worth saying, but worth preserving," writes Butler.
"StoryCorps tells people they matter and they won't be forgotten," he says.
Capturing stories has been on my mind a lot lately. A week ago I was helping my grandmother with some landscaping and took some time to go through my grandfather's old trunks. I'd write more about that here, but I'm working on an essay about what I found. Suffice to say that he managed to document so much of his life -- his early fascination with the progress of aviation, the developments of World War II, his writings as a star student at Lincoln High School, his service as an engineer in the U.S. Coast Guard, his misplaced optimism as a city councilman.
There's a rich treasure of information about him in those trunks and I plan to spend a lot of time in the coming months digging through it all. But I also realized that at 84, I need to get my grandmother's stories down. My thought was to record her just talking about growing up in the Depression, living as a wife and mother through the uncertainty of World War II, the value of female friends over a lifetime, the heartache and joy of motherhood and grandmotherhood, outliving the love of your life...
Gram has this melodic voice that she puts to good use as a member of the St. Bartholomew parish choir. I can't hear "How Great Thou Art" without hearing her voice. I realized that I don't want to ever lose that voice, so I'd like to capture her on tape talking about her life, telling her story in her own words.
I have so much guilt about not spending more time with her. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't think I should just pop over. She understands and prefaces every conversation with, "I know you're a busy woman." I hate that she feels that way about me because she is way to important in my life to be relegated to a "to do" list.
But now I have another reason to visit. Michael has recently become attached to her and it was through my Grandpa and his trunk. He's the one who keeps asking me if I'm going to write about Grandpa. Anyway, Mikey came out in Grandpa's Coast Guard hat and ironically wore it in the same jaunty fashion my Grandpa did. It made me, Gram and my mom smile. Last weekend Mikey had a sleepover at my parents and part of the weekend included a trip to Gram's to try on Grandpa's "suit" as he calls it and get some pictures.
Gram was only too happy to get that heavy wool suit out of the closet where it has been for decades. And being the sweet woman she is, she also had the patience to answer a 7-year-olds many questions about a Great-Grandpa he never met.
Saving the region
Bridget Ginley of Erie.Effusion is this week’s “Behind the URL” at BFD.
It was posted later than usual because I got distracted this morning reading comments of this post in response to PD’s Quiet Crisis series on state of economic development organizations. Aside from a few tangents that added little to the discussion, it was an interesting look at activity vs. action, action vs. inaction, old guard vs. new thinkers, outside economic development vs. inside economic development, lawyers vs. entrepreneurs, establishment vs. entrepreneurs, nonprofits and for profits, taxpayer money, state and federal money, technology transfer. Oh heck, if you’ve got an hour to spare, read through the comments. Props to George Nemeth for providing the forum, to Henry Gomez, Becky Gaylord and Sandra Livingston for the original reporting in the PD and to Valdis Krebs for getting the conversation started.
My two cents? Having once served as editor of COSE Update magazine I can tell you that waiting or relying on the Greater Cleveland Partnership to make anything good happen in this town is a waste of energy. Here’s how the collective psyche over there thinks:
The new airport runway is going to save the region.
Saving NASA Glenn with save the region.
Electing Jane Campbell as mayor will save the region.
Team NEO will save the region.
JumpStart will save the region only if we put our sticky fingers all over it.
A new convention center will save the region.
Casino gambling is the key to saving the region.
You get the drift. They have no idea what will save the region.
It was posted later than usual because I got distracted this morning reading comments of this post in response to PD’s Quiet Crisis series on state of economic development organizations. Aside from a few tangents that added little to the discussion, it was an interesting look at activity vs. action, action vs. inaction, old guard vs. new thinkers, outside economic development vs. inside economic development, lawyers vs. entrepreneurs, establishment vs. entrepreneurs, nonprofits and for profits, taxpayer money, state and federal money, technology transfer. Oh heck, if you’ve got an hour to spare, read through the comments. Props to George Nemeth for providing the forum, to Henry Gomez, Becky Gaylord and Sandra Livingston for the original reporting in the PD and to Valdis Krebs for getting the conversation started.
My two cents? Having once served as editor of COSE Update magazine I can tell you that waiting or relying on the Greater Cleveland Partnership to make anything good happen in this town is a waste of energy. Here’s how the collective psyche over there thinks:
The new airport runway is going to save the region.
Saving NASA Glenn with save the region.
Electing Jane Campbell as mayor will save the region.
Team NEO will save the region.
JumpStart will save the region only if we put our sticky fingers all over it.
A new convention center will save the region.
Casino gambling is the key to saving the region.
You get the drift. They have no idea what will save the region.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
It's Wednesday...
...and that means it's time for another installment of Behind the URL on Brewed Fresh Daily. Don't miss today's profile of MaryBeth Matthews of Street Smarts.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Cliffhanger in Spillane obit
My favorite line from the obit of mystery writer Mickey Spillane in today's WAPO:
He also carried on a long epistolary flirtation with Ayn Rand, an admirer of his writing.
He also carried on a long epistolary flirtation with Ayn Rand, an admirer of his writing.
My bipolar coiffure
I have a love-hate relationship with my hair. I’m smart enough to recognize that the quantity and thickness of my hair is a good thing. But when it comes to styling … well, let’s just say I’ve got Attention Deficit Disorder.
There are women I know, good friends of mine in fact, who have had the same hairstyle for more than a decade. Not me. I need to mix it up a bit. Can’t be wed to any one style for too long without itching to change.
Sometimes the need grows out of finances – as in I don’t have the money required for upkeep of a short ’do. Other times it’s out of sheer laziness that I’ve allowed my hair to grow. “Has it really been six months since I had a haircut?”
I guess I could consider myself lucky because my tresses are naturally wavy and that affords me a little built-in versatility. Do I wear it straight? Or curly? And when it’s longer, as it is now: Do I wear it up? Or down?
I’ve let my hair go now for quite a spell more out of forgetfulness to schedule an appointment than anything else. By the time I thought of calling to schedule a hair appointment, summer was upon us. And summer affords a certain ease with longer hair that I can let go curly at the pool or wherever.
And so…my hair is a curly mop of shoulder-length hair, not that many have seen its actual length because in this heat I pull it all back into a ponytail because I can’t stand to have hair on the back of my neck or in my face.
One of my girlfriends asked if I trim my own ends when I go for long spells without a haircut. The answer is no. I never put scissors to my own hair (brings back memories of a bad hair experience in college). I just let it go, split ends and all.
But I’ve reach maximum frustration with the old coiffure. ‘Tis time for a change. I love to change styles—frequently. It’s been a lifelong thing for me, as evidenced by school photos. One year long, one year short, next year long, next year short. I suppose I’m fortunate in that I don’t have curls incapable of being tamed into a smooth ’do (except in this humidity). And I don’t have poker straight hair lacking bend without the assistance of a curling iron (which I’ve not owned since high school).
I like change and I like it to be noticeable. And when I decide I want to make a hair change, I don’t like to wait six weeks to get in to see my stylist. Imagine my jubilation when I called last week to try to get in before I head to Chicago later this summer when the receptionist said my stylist was available this Thursday. A week! I could get in to see her in only a week!
So of course I’ve talked of nothing else to my girlfriends. “Have I mentioned I’m finally getting my hair cut this week?”
Until recently, I’d gone to the same stylist for 15 years. She knew that when I came in and said, “Let’s cut,” I didn’t mean a quarter-inch at a time. No sir, when I make up my mind to go short again, I mean to see a difference. But she’s now owner of the salon I patronize and has cut back on her cutting hours. So I’ve found another I like who, I think, appreciates my willingness to experiment.
My hubby, who contrary to most men loves my hair short probably more than long (“because I can see your face”), also wants to see a difference, particularly given the expense of my haircuts. “Did you get it cut?” he’ll ask. (I reminded him how good he has it because he has only sons.)
I also remind him that my decision to cut my hair once again will require more frequent trips to the salon, hence more cash spent on the wife. But, as a wise friend of his recently said, “If it makes her feel good, it’s worth the money.”
Of course this haircut is only the first stop at the salon. Mon Dieu am I in need of a highlight! That will have to wait until next pay period. Wouldn’t want to put the old fella into cardiac arrest when he looks at the bank statement.
“You spent how much at Bella Capelli?!”
There are women I know, good friends of mine in fact, who have had the same hairstyle for more than a decade. Not me. I need to mix it up a bit. Can’t be wed to any one style for too long without itching to change.
Sometimes the need grows out of finances – as in I don’t have the money required for upkeep of a short ’do. Other times it’s out of sheer laziness that I’ve allowed my hair to grow. “Has it really been six months since I had a haircut?”
I guess I could consider myself lucky because my tresses are naturally wavy and that affords me a little built-in versatility. Do I wear it straight? Or curly? And when it’s longer, as it is now: Do I wear it up? Or down?
I’ve let my hair go now for quite a spell more out of forgetfulness to schedule an appointment than anything else. By the time I thought of calling to schedule a hair appointment, summer was upon us. And summer affords a certain ease with longer hair that I can let go curly at the pool or wherever.
And so…my hair is a curly mop of shoulder-length hair, not that many have seen its actual length because in this heat I pull it all back into a ponytail because I can’t stand to have hair on the back of my neck or in my face.
One of my girlfriends asked if I trim my own ends when I go for long spells without a haircut. The answer is no. I never put scissors to my own hair (brings back memories of a bad hair experience in college). I just let it go, split ends and all.
But I’ve reach maximum frustration with the old coiffure. ‘Tis time for a change. I love to change styles—frequently. It’s been a lifelong thing for me, as evidenced by school photos. One year long, one year short, next year long, next year short. I suppose I’m fortunate in that I don’t have curls incapable of being tamed into a smooth ’do (except in this humidity). And I don’t have poker straight hair lacking bend without the assistance of a curling iron (which I’ve not owned since high school).
I like change and I like it to be noticeable. And when I decide I want to make a hair change, I don’t like to wait six weeks to get in to see my stylist. Imagine my jubilation when I called last week to try to get in before I head to Chicago later this summer when the receptionist said my stylist was available this Thursday. A week! I could get in to see her in only a week!
So of course I’ve talked of nothing else to my girlfriends. “Have I mentioned I’m finally getting my hair cut this week?”
Until recently, I’d gone to the same stylist for 15 years. She knew that when I came in and said, “Let’s cut,” I didn’t mean a quarter-inch at a time. No sir, when I make up my mind to go short again, I mean to see a difference. But she’s now owner of the salon I patronize and has cut back on her cutting hours. So I’ve found another I like who, I think, appreciates my willingness to experiment.
My hubby, who contrary to most men loves my hair short probably more than long (“because I can see your face”), also wants to see a difference, particularly given the expense of my haircuts. “Did you get it cut?” he’ll ask. (I reminded him how good he has it because he has only sons.)
I also remind him that my decision to cut my hair once again will require more frequent trips to the salon, hence more cash spent on the wife. But, as a wise friend of his recently said, “If it makes her feel good, it’s worth the money.”
Of course this haircut is only the first stop at the salon. Mon Dieu am I in need of a highlight! That will have to wait until next pay period. Wouldn’t want to put the old fella into cardiac arrest when he looks at the bank statement.
“You spent how much at Bella Capelli?!”
Monday, July 17, 2006
The secret is no secret
Freelance writing remains a mystery for many. What do we do all day and what is the secret? I found the best answer yet from Christopher Johnston, a fellow freelance writer and panelist at this year's Imagination Writers' Workshop and Conference at CSU.
Chris's answer was: "The secret of freelance writing is that there is no secret.
We get up every morning and go to our desks and research story ideas and pitch them to editors and write and revise articles. Be forewarned, the question, "What are you working on?" could elicit a rather lengthy response.
Chris' larger point to the audience of primarily creative writers was that successfully managing a solo writing career in which you get paid means viewing yourself as a business in which you are the sales and marketing department, accounting, editorial and janitor all rolled into one person.
It's not easy, but for the self-starter, multitasker personality, it can be particularly rewarding. Freelancing is the business of ideas and a writer's capacity to execute those ideas in the form of a story. It requires just as much professionalism as any other business--and perhaps more because there are many others to whom editors can turn.
Someday I'd like to see a panel of freelancers talking about their biggest mistakes and how they overcame them. I've had "less than" moments that I struggle to explain and that still wake me at night, filling me with self-doubt. But as a good friend once told me: There's a point when self-doubt becomes paralyzing and is no longer useful to the writer. That's when it's time to move on and get back to work.
While Googling...
Just because I never know where a Google search will take me, I thought I'd share this link to William Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech in December 1950. Here's a brief excerpt to tantalize, your motivational speech of the week:
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things.
…
The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
Chris's answer was: "The secret of freelance writing is that there is no secret.
We get up every morning and go to our desks and research story ideas and pitch them to editors and write and revise articles. Be forewarned, the question, "What are you working on?" could elicit a rather lengthy response.
Chris' larger point to the audience of primarily creative writers was that successfully managing a solo writing career in which you get paid means viewing yourself as a business in which you are the sales and marketing department, accounting, editorial and janitor all rolled into one person.
It's not easy, but for the self-starter, multitasker personality, it can be particularly rewarding. Freelancing is the business of ideas and a writer's capacity to execute those ideas in the form of a story. It requires just as much professionalism as any other business--and perhaps more because there are many others to whom editors can turn.
Someday I'd like to see a panel of freelancers talking about their biggest mistakes and how they overcame them. I've had "less than" moments that I struggle to explain and that still wake me at night, filling me with self-doubt. But as a good friend once told me: There's a point when self-doubt becomes paralyzing and is no longer useful to the writer. That's when it's time to move on and get back to work.
While Googling...
Just because I never know where a Google search will take me, I thought I'd share this link to William Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech in December 1950. Here's a brief excerpt to tantalize, your motivational speech of the week:
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things.
…
The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Mid-afternoon companion
Riley hates thunder. Since I've been freed of my office with wireless, I've taken to working for long stretches in my living room. Thunder and fireworks used to not phase my pup, but after the Fourth of July weekend, she's been a little skittish. So I let her move from keeping my feet toasty in the A/C to my side on the couch.
She kinda blends in, doesn't she?
Behind the URL on BFD
The latest Behind the URL is posted on BFD. Read all about Adam Harvey.
Send me an e-mail if you're interested in being profiled.
Send me an e-mail if you're interested in being profiled.
Reading the final stretch
There's a magical point in good books when a writer has sufficiently hooked me into the story that I can do nothing else but finish the story. A few minutes ago I just finished John Irving's "A Widow for One Year." At 537 pages, I thought it would take me a while to read. But last night I reached the point of no return, plowing through the final 200 pages.
This wasn't a literary masterpiece, nor is it Irving's greatest work. I'd say "A Prayer for Owen Meany" holds that distinction. Throughout the story I kept thinking of how little I liked the main characters. Ruth Cole was a hardened woman, a writer of some note though I can't say the subject of her novels sounded appealing to me. Leary of people in general and stubborn in her unwillingness to see how her real life played out in her novels, she wanted certain things for herself, but seemed for a while utterly ineffectual at righting her course.
Eddie O'Hare seemed doomed to be a bumbling 16-year-old forever, with a perpetual hard on for the older woman who seduced him as a boy. His only moments of grace came when he assisted old women after Ruth had publicly reduced them to nothing. Ted Cole was a letch of a man and not much better as a father to Ruth. Hannah Grant was his female alter ego and hardly the ideal best friend to Ruth since she had to keep one eye on her wandering, predatory friend, destined to repeatedly let her down.
And then there is Marion Cole, Ruth's mother so overcome with grief from the tragic death of her two sons before Ruth's birth and the emotional vacuum of a loveless marriage, that she leaves her 4-year-old daughter for fear that her grief would be contagious and that in loving her she would risk losing her. It's hard to find much emotional attachment to Marion. She makes periodic appearances throughout the story and yet her presence or non-presence looms over everyone in the novel. Yet as a mother I can identify with certain vulnerabilities, certain unspeakable and unthinkable fears that Marion embodies.
There were parts of this novel that seemed to veer off into the ludicrous. Having never written a novel, it seems to have taken an extraordinary amount of words to set up Ruth's ultimate love. In the middle of the book as we're getting extraneous, detailed views of Amsterdam's red-light district, it almost feels as if the wheels have come off the narrative. Only later does it become apparent that Ruth's devastating experience there is what changes her outlook and ultimately the course of her life.
She softens, she learns to love, she becomes a mother, she loses and then she finds the love she's always wanted. Just think it could have been accomplished in fewer pages.
Before she becomes likeable as a woman, I was drawn to Ruth the writer. I liked reading how a plot line for new book would form in her mind and how she would test it and develop it mentally before ever committing a word to the page. How her brain would wander around the characters and the idea, bringing in certain details, discarding others. One assumes this is how Irving begins his writing process since he writes of it so intimately. If not, then he does a good job of faking it.
What ultimately hooked me in Irving's story is the power to change our lives for the better. I'm a firm believer in second chances, in redemption and in the human capacity for forgiveness.
This wasn't a literary masterpiece, nor is it Irving's greatest work. I'd say "A Prayer for Owen Meany" holds that distinction. Throughout the story I kept thinking of how little I liked the main characters. Ruth Cole was a hardened woman, a writer of some note though I can't say the subject of her novels sounded appealing to me. Leary of people in general and stubborn in her unwillingness to see how her real life played out in her novels, she wanted certain things for herself, but seemed for a while utterly ineffectual at righting her course.
Eddie O'Hare seemed doomed to be a bumbling 16-year-old forever, with a perpetual hard on for the older woman who seduced him as a boy. His only moments of grace came when he assisted old women after Ruth had publicly reduced them to nothing. Ted Cole was a letch of a man and not much better as a father to Ruth. Hannah Grant was his female alter ego and hardly the ideal best friend to Ruth since she had to keep one eye on her wandering, predatory friend, destined to repeatedly let her down.
And then there is Marion Cole, Ruth's mother so overcome with grief from the tragic death of her two sons before Ruth's birth and the emotional vacuum of a loveless marriage, that she leaves her 4-year-old daughter for fear that her grief would be contagious and that in loving her she would risk losing her. It's hard to find much emotional attachment to Marion. She makes periodic appearances throughout the story and yet her presence or non-presence looms over everyone in the novel. Yet as a mother I can identify with certain vulnerabilities, certain unspeakable and unthinkable fears that Marion embodies.
There were parts of this novel that seemed to veer off into the ludicrous. Having never written a novel, it seems to have taken an extraordinary amount of words to set up Ruth's ultimate love. In the middle of the book as we're getting extraneous, detailed views of Amsterdam's red-light district, it almost feels as if the wheels have come off the narrative. Only later does it become apparent that Ruth's devastating experience there is what changes her outlook and ultimately the course of her life.
She softens, she learns to love, she becomes a mother, she loses and then she finds the love she's always wanted. Just think it could have been accomplished in fewer pages.
Before she becomes likeable as a woman, I was drawn to Ruth the writer. I liked reading how a plot line for new book would form in her mind and how she would test it and develop it mentally before ever committing a word to the page. How her brain would wander around the characters and the idea, bringing in certain details, discarding others. One assumes this is how Irving begins his writing process since he writes of it so intimately. If not, then he does a good job of faking it.
What ultimately hooked me in Irving's story is the power to change our lives for the better. I'm a firm believer in second chances, in redemption and in the human capacity for forgiveness.
Friday, July 07, 2006
The passing of Judge John M. Manos
I was saddened to read in this morning's paper that long-time U.S. District Judge John M. Manos passed away.
He was a remarkable person who I had the privilege of interviewing in 2003 for a Spotlight profile in Case Alumni magazine. I remember telling the editor at the time that he had enough stories to fill a book. What a fascinating project that would have been.
That he was still on the bench at the time of his death didn't surprise me. As he told me then:
"I’m going to keep going until I die,” he says, adding that a survey by a national association of judges found that judges who quit, engaging in no other work, died within two years.
“I enjoy the courtroom and I enjoy the cases. It keeps me alive,” he says.
We spoke for nearly an hour while he was at his home recovering from surgery. I could easily see how legions of law students fell under his spell. His stories, his passion for the law and his consummate preparation made him a singular force on the federal bench. And yet he was willing to share what he knew and that's what made him legendary.
He was a model for perseverance, attending law school at night so he could continue supporting his family with his day job as an engineer. Not one to rest on his laurels, he maintained a prodigious caseload even in his later years.
But perhaps he is most remembered for his commitment to his family and to helping young lawyers. As his son-in-law Patrick McLaughlin was quoted as saying, "The bottom line is that they just don't make many like him anymore."
He was a remarkable person who I had the privilege of interviewing in 2003 for a Spotlight profile in Case Alumni magazine. I remember telling the editor at the time that he had enough stories to fill a book. What a fascinating project that would have been.
That he was still on the bench at the time of his death didn't surprise me. As he told me then:
"I’m going to keep going until I die,” he says, adding that a survey by a national association of judges found that judges who quit, engaging in no other work, died within two years.
“I enjoy the courtroom and I enjoy the cases. It keeps me alive,” he says.
We spoke for nearly an hour while he was at his home recovering from surgery. I could easily see how legions of law students fell under his spell. His stories, his passion for the law and his consummate preparation made him a singular force on the federal bench. And yet he was willing to share what he knew and that's what made him legendary.
He was a model for perseverance, attending law school at night so he could continue supporting his family with his day job as an engineer. Not one to rest on his laurels, he maintained a prodigious caseload even in his later years.
But perhaps he is most remembered for his commitment to his family and to helping young lawyers. As his son-in-law Patrick McLaughlin was quoted as saying, "The bottom line is that they just don't make many like him anymore."
Hannah Allam is latest Quill profile
Hannah Allam, Cairo Bureau Chief for Knight-Ridder, is the latest Ten profile in Quill magazine. Allam served nearly two years as the Baghdad Bureau Chief and is now a one-woman bureau in Cairo.
Next up is Jack Shafer, press critic at Slate.
Next up is Jack Shafer, press critic at Slate.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Update on CYO post
It seems last paragraph about the Bay Football Camp prompted a phone call to Coach Gary Sherwood. Here's an udpate and clarification from him.
UPDATE FROM COACH SHERWOOD: It’s a program for Bay kids. It's a tiny district and it needs all the players it can get. "Our approach is to get kids involved in the game of football and if we can get them to stay and play in our football program that's great," says Sherwood.
UPDATE FROM COACH SHERWOOD: It’s a program for Bay kids. It's a tiny district and it needs all the players it can get. "Our approach is to get kids involved in the game of football and if we can get them to stay and play in our football program that's great," says Sherwood.
A summer's day...
Could there be a more beautiful day than today? If only summer could be like this every day...
I should be at the pool with the boys, but deadlines are looming. Instead, I'll take my laptop on the patio to finish pruning my story. Besides, there is a quiet joy found in sitting still that cannot be had at the municipal pool.
I should be at the pool with the boys, but deadlines are looming. Instead, I'll take my laptop on the patio to finish pruning my story. Besides, there is a quiet joy found in sitting still that cannot be had at the municipal pool.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Willing to write off our right to know?
New Yorker Editor David Remnick weighs in on the absurd, but not unprecedented, behavior of the Bush White House attacks on New York Times.
The Bush Administration can’t really believe that these newspaper stories have undermined the battle against Al Qaeda; what’s more, it knows that over the decades papers like the Times have kept many stories and countless particulars secret when editors saw that it was in the interest of national security and military safety to do so. The Times banking story disclosed no leads, named no targets. To say that it risked lives is like saying that an article revealing that cops tap phones to monitor the activities of the Mafia is a gift to the Five Families of New York.
For all its faults and all my quibbles with both its coverage and operations, The New York Times is in the unique position of being able to cover or uncover what Americans should know about the action and inaction of our federal government. But I worry that in this climate we've all but ceded our right to know in the interest of safeguarding our country. If we give up all the freedoms that made us the United States of America, doesn't that mean we've let terrorism win?
Here's one Minneapolis writer who urges us to be thankful that the Times and the Washington Post and the New Yorker and the Atlantic and countless journalists who are independent and affiliated are working to secure the foundation of our democracy.
From Monday's Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Adam Platt: Rather than demonize the Times, be thankful that it's doing its job
On this Independence Day, a great newspaper needs and deserves our support.
Adam Platt
Happy Independence Day. In between grilling, lawn mowing and fireworks watching, take a few minutes to secure your right to know what your government is doing, a cornerstone of our freedom. The best way I can think of doing so in today's America is to go out and buy a copy of the New York Times. Or subscribe. But one way or another, pay for it, regularly.
Right now, more than any other nongovernmental entity (and most governmental ones, where whistle-blowers are punished, scientists are muzzled and the public is regularly lied to), the NYT protects America's freedom. I'm embarrassed to admit that I let my Times subscription lapse because I had no time to read it. You may be in the same boat. So give it to a local library.
Because whether you or I are informed or not, America needs the Times on the beat. It sets the table for our national discussion, puts second thoughts in the minds of public sector liars and abusers of power, and empowers the rest of the American media.
Currently the Times is taking major pummeling from the White House, the conservative media and many Americans for publishing details of the international cooperative called SWIFT, which has facilitated U.S. scrutiny of global financial transactions in the name of preventing terrorism. Last year, the Times exposed the government's vast antiterrorist electronic eavesdropping program, which was operating, in the opinion of many Republicans and most Democrats, outside the law with no oversight.
Before you pigeonhole me as a limousine liberal, I am personally inclined to give the White House the benefit of the doubt on these programs, even though they are inevitably prone to abuse by an overzealous, secrecy-mad administration. Such is the nature of the threats the nation faces. And I am willing to grant the Times' critics that the SWIFT revelations were merely that. There was no implication of illegality or wrongdoing. Gratuitous? To some. The truth, to me.
What I am not willing to cede is my right to know that these programs exist, nor my elected representatives' right to scrutinize them. In the United States we elect a president, not a king (not that you'd know that these days).
The Times, for its efforts, has been accused of all but treason in many quarters. (OK, Ann Coulter calls it treason.) What is most chilling is that so many Americans are willing to write off their fundamental right to know what our government does. This, despite repeated evidence from administration after administration, Republican and Democrat, that the White House is prone to make its own rules, lie to the public, and duck accountability.
What renders the administration's outrage at the Times so hollow is that it has acknowledged since 9/11 that it is using every technique at its disposal to monitor terrorists' communications and impede their fundraising. If Al-Qaida were capable of pulling off 9/11, did it take the NYT to clue it in to the fact that its phone conversations, e-mail communications and financial transactions were subject to electronic scrutiny?
For those who think I am being too easy on the Times, remember that SWIFT has its own website (swift.com), describing its capabilities and expertise. (White House flak Tony Snow: "I am absolutely sure [the terrorists] didn't know about SWIFT.")
Ironically, it is not the cries of treason that could most readily neuter the Times. It's the accelerating consolidation of the newspaper industry, which has led dozens of privately held family-owned newspapers to regrettably sell to publicly traded conglomerates that are under pressure to bring more to the bottom line.
Just this summer, Knight Ridder passed into history and Tribune Co. went into play. They were and are quite profitable, but not as profitable as some media businesses that invest less in a public service mission. And there is talk that the Times, publicly traded but family controlled, is not meeting Wall Street's expectations.
The Times (and its wire service, which appears in the Star Tribune and virtually all other North American newspapers) is uniquely influential due to its sense of mission and global resources. But a Times with margins that met those of the most profitable media businesses would not be so. And if the company were put into play like Knight Ridder, it might fall under an owner without the stomach for fending off accusations of treason.
So this Independence Day, don't just read the Times online for free, skim its columnists in these pages, or merely discuss it at your pool party. Pay for it. Safeguard its future and our freedom.
Adam Platt is a Minneapolis writer.
The Bush Administration can’t really believe that these newspaper stories have undermined the battle against Al Qaeda; what’s more, it knows that over the decades papers like the Times have kept many stories and countless particulars secret when editors saw that it was in the interest of national security and military safety to do so. The Times banking story disclosed no leads, named no targets. To say that it risked lives is like saying that an article revealing that cops tap phones to monitor the activities of the Mafia is a gift to the Five Families of New York.
For all its faults and all my quibbles with both its coverage and operations, The New York Times is in the unique position of being able to cover or uncover what Americans should know about the action and inaction of our federal government. But I worry that in this climate we've all but ceded our right to know in the interest of safeguarding our country. If we give up all the freedoms that made us the United States of America, doesn't that mean we've let terrorism win?
Here's one Minneapolis writer who urges us to be thankful that the Times and the Washington Post and the New Yorker and the Atlantic and countless journalists who are independent and affiliated are working to secure the foundation of our democracy.
From Monday's Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Adam Platt: Rather than demonize the Times, be thankful that it's doing its job
On this Independence Day, a great newspaper needs and deserves our support.
Adam Platt
Happy Independence Day. In between grilling, lawn mowing and fireworks watching, take a few minutes to secure your right to know what your government is doing, a cornerstone of our freedom. The best way I can think of doing so in today's America is to go out and buy a copy of the New York Times. Or subscribe. But one way or another, pay for it, regularly.
Right now, more than any other nongovernmental entity (and most governmental ones, where whistle-blowers are punished, scientists are muzzled and the public is regularly lied to), the NYT protects America's freedom. I'm embarrassed to admit that I let my Times subscription lapse because I had no time to read it. You may be in the same boat. So give it to a local library.
Because whether you or I are informed or not, America needs the Times on the beat. It sets the table for our national discussion, puts second thoughts in the minds of public sector liars and abusers of power, and empowers the rest of the American media.
Currently the Times is taking major pummeling from the White House, the conservative media and many Americans for publishing details of the international cooperative called SWIFT, which has facilitated U.S. scrutiny of global financial transactions in the name of preventing terrorism. Last year, the Times exposed the government's vast antiterrorist electronic eavesdropping program, which was operating, in the opinion of many Republicans and most Democrats, outside the law with no oversight.
Before you pigeonhole me as a limousine liberal, I am personally inclined to give the White House the benefit of the doubt on these programs, even though they are inevitably prone to abuse by an overzealous, secrecy-mad administration. Such is the nature of the threats the nation faces. And I am willing to grant the Times' critics that the SWIFT revelations were merely that. There was no implication of illegality or wrongdoing. Gratuitous? To some. The truth, to me.
What I am not willing to cede is my right to know that these programs exist, nor my elected representatives' right to scrutinize them. In the United States we elect a president, not a king (not that you'd know that these days).
The Times, for its efforts, has been accused of all but treason in many quarters. (OK, Ann Coulter calls it treason.) What is most chilling is that so many Americans are willing to write off their fundamental right to know what our government does. This, despite repeated evidence from administration after administration, Republican and Democrat, that the White House is prone to make its own rules, lie to the public, and duck accountability.
What renders the administration's outrage at the Times so hollow is that it has acknowledged since 9/11 that it is using every technique at its disposal to monitor terrorists' communications and impede their fundraising. If Al-Qaida were capable of pulling off 9/11, did it take the NYT to clue it in to the fact that its phone conversations, e-mail communications and financial transactions were subject to electronic scrutiny?
For those who think I am being too easy on the Times, remember that SWIFT has its own website (swift.com), describing its capabilities and expertise. (White House flak Tony Snow: "I am absolutely sure [the terrorists] didn't know about SWIFT.")
Ironically, it is not the cries of treason that could most readily neuter the Times. It's the accelerating consolidation of the newspaper industry, which has led dozens of privately held family-owned newspapers to regrettably sell to publicly traded conglomerates that are under pressure to bring more to the bottom line.
Just this summer, Knight Ridder passed into history and Tribune Co. went into play. They were and are quite profitable, but not as profitable as some media businesses that invest less in a public service mission. And there is talk that the Times, publicly traded but family controlled, is not meeting Wall Street's expectations.
The Times (and its wire service, which appears in the Star Tribune and virtually all other North American newspapers) is uniquely influential due to its sense of mission and global resources. But a Times with margins that met those of the most profitable media businesses would not be so. And if the company were put into play like Knight Ridder, it might fall under an owner without the stomach for fending off accusations of treason.
So this Independence Day, don't just read the Times online for free, skim its columnists in these pages, or merely discuss it at your pool party. Pay for it. Safeguard its future and our freedom.
Adam Platt is a Minneapolis writer.
Monday, July 03, 2006
An Irish odyssey begins
Next summer my husband and I plan to spend a week in Ireland. It's something we've talked about doing since we were 23. At the time we agreed that the summer of our 40th birthdays would be a good time to go. Alas, that time is nearly upon us. Danny turns 40 in December and I turn 40 next September. It's also a celebration of our 15th wedding anniversary, which is actually in about a month.
Why Ireland?
It was one place my husband, not bitten by wanderlust as I am, agreed to visit. And I am wooed by its passionate people, infectious in their personalities, tough and yet loving, lyrical in both written and spoken word. Plus there's an austere quietness about the landscape that I find compelling.
Being the careful trip planner that I am, I've been on the e-mail list for Irish tourism board for a while now and I'm seeing all kinds of great deals. The good news is that I think we can make this trip for less than originally budgeted. Here's what we'd like to do. If you've been and have suggestions or good links to visit, please send them along:
We plan to stay in one location throughout our visit and drive to various sites, etc. Our thought was to rent a cottage in a small town (possibly Galway) and become immersed in the local culture. You know, visit the pubs, attend the churches, walk the country lanes. But of course we'd also like to see the sites -- namely Dublin, Cliffs of Moher (though Danny does have a thing with heights) and County Clare, where his McGee relatives are from.
I'd like to visit the literary sites -- Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw and particularly W.B. Yeats. I want to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College, St. Patrick's Cathedral and Corcomroe Abbey, home of the Cistercians, also known as the Trappists, the order to which Thomas Merton belonged.
And I'd like to visit the Aran Islands, though I've promised my boys that I will not outfit them all with Irish sweaters for the next Christmas card.
Why Ireland?
It was one place my husband, not bitten by wanderlust as I am, agreed to visit. And I am wooed by its passionate people, infectious in their personalities, tough and yet loving, lyrical in both written and spoken word. Plus there's an austere quietness about the landscape that I find compelling.
Being the careful trip planner that I am, I've been on the e-mail list for Irish tourism board for a while now and I'm seeing all kinds of great deals. The good news is that I think we can make this trip for less than originally budgeted. Here's what we'd like to do. If you've been and have suggestions or good links to visit, please send them along:
We plan to stay in one location throughout our visit and drive to various sites, etc. Our thought was to rent a cottage in a small town (possibly Galway) and become immersed in the local culture. You know, visit the pubs, attend the churches, walk the country lanes. But of course we'd also like to see the sites -- namely Dublin, Cliffs of Moher (though Danny does have a thing with heights) and County Clare, where his McGee relatives are from.
I'd like to visit the literary sites -- Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw and particularly W.B. Yeats. I want to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College, St. Patrick's Cathedral and Corcomroe Abbey, home of the Cistercians, also known as the Trappists, the order to which Thomas Merton belonged.
And I'd like to visit the Aran Islands, though I've promised my boys that I will not outfit them all with Irish sweaters for the next Christmas card.
"The Management Myth"
UPDATE: From today's LA Times, Charles Kesler weighs in on why government is not a business.
I’ve long been skeptical of the MBA because I think it’s not applied usefully in business. How many businesspeople have alphabet soup behind their name and yet lack basic common sense? I find it a travesty to encourage young undergraduates to continue immediately on to graduate school when they have not one scintilla of experience, context or perspective in which to place their new education.
For example, How could a 24-year-old with limited business experience know that management is all about people?
And so it was with great pleasure that I read this piece by Matthew Stewart in the June issue of The Atlantic Monthly. He writes:
During the seven years that I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber expressions. Those who saw through my disguise assumed I made up for my youth with a fabulous education in management. They were wrong about that. I don’t have an M.B.A. I have a doctoral degree in philosophy—nineteenth-century German philosophy, to be precise. Before I took a job telling managers of large corporations things that they arguably should have known already, my work experience was limited to part-time gigs tutoring surly undergraduates in the ways of Hegel and Nietzsche and to a handful of summer jobs, mostly in the less appetizing ends of the fast-food industry.
The strange thing about my utter lack of education in management was that it didn’t seem to matter. As a principal and founding partner of a consulting firm that eventually grew to 600 employees, I interviewed, hired, and worked alongside hundreds of business-school graduates, and the impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like “out-of-the-box thinking,” “win-win situation,” and “core competencies.” When it came to picking teammates, I generally held out higher hopes for those individuals who had used their university years to learn about something other than business administration.
Something other than business. If I had the money and the time, I’d go back to school and audit courses to learn about things that interest me — history of the Middle East, links between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, how women writers of the early 20th century plied their craft…. In the absence of being able to afford formal education, I turn to the written word—both classic and current—for inspiration and knowledge.
(When my sons' wonder how I know some bit of info or history, I always respond with, "Because I read a lot.")
Rousseau and Shakespeare are every bit as relevant to the dilemmas faced by managers in their quest for productivity as any of the management literature.
Stewart gives a brief intro to management theory and its inherent flaws and concludes:
The recognition that management theory is a sadly neglected subdiscipline of philosophy began with an experience of déjà vu. As I plowed through my shelfload of bad management books, I beheld a discipline that consists mainly of unverifiable propositions and cryptic anecdotes, is rarely if ever held accountable, and produces an inordinate number of catastrophically bad writers. It was all too familiar. There are, however, at least two crucial differences between philosophers and their wayward cousins. The first and most important is that philosophers are much better at knowing what they don’t know. The second is money. In a sense, management theory is what happens to philosophers when you pay them too much.
Stewart’s theory boils down to three things:
• Expand the domain of your analysis!
• Hire people with greater diversity of experience!
• Remember the three Cs: Communication, Communication, Communication! Remember Plato: it’s all about dialogue!
I’ve long been skeptical of the MBA because I think it’s not applied usefully in business. How many businesspeople have alphabet soup behind their name and yet lack basic common sense? I find it a travesty to encourage young undergraduates to continue immediately on to graduate school when they have not one scintilla of experience, context or perspective in which to place their new education.
For example, How could a 24-year-old with limited business experience know that management is all about people?
And so it was with great pleasure that I read this piece by Matthew Stewart in the June issue of The Atlantic Monthly. He writes:
During the seven years that I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber expressions. Those who saw through my disguise assumed I made up for my youth with a fabulous education in management. They were wrong about that. I don’t have an M.B.A. I have a doctoral degree in philosophy—nineteenth-century German philosophy, to be precise. Before I took a job telling managers of large corporations things that they arguably should have known already, my work experience was limited to part-time gigs tutoring surly undergraduates in the ways of Hegel and Nietzsche and to a handful of summer jobs, mostly in the less appetizing ends of the fast-food industry.
The strange thing about my utter lack of education in management was that it didn’t seem to matter. As a principal and founding partner of a consulting firm that eventually grew to 600 employees, I interviewed, hired, and worked alongside hundreds of business-school graduates, and the impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like “out-of-the-box thinking,” “win-win situation,” and “core competencies.” When it came to picking teammates, I generally held out higher hopes for those individuals who had used their university years to learn about something other than business administration.
Something other than business. If I had the money and the time, I’d go back to school and audit courses to learn about things that interest me — history of the Middle East, links between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, how women writers of the early 20th century plied their craft…. In the absence of being able to afford formal education, I turn to the written word—both classic and current—for inspiration and knowledge.
(When my sons' wonder how I know some bit of info or history, I always respond with, "Because I read a lot.")
Rousseau and Shakespeare are every bit as relevant to the dilemmas faced by managers in their quest for productivity as any of the management literature.
Stewart gives a brief intro to management theory and its inherent flaws and concludes:
The recognition that management theory is a sadly neglected subdiscipline of philosophy began with an experience of déjà vu. As I plowed through my shelfload of bad management books, I beheld a discipline that consists mainly of unverifiable propositions and cryptic anecdotes, is rarely if ever held accountable, and produces an inordinate number of catastrophically bad writers. It was all too familiar. There are, however, at least two crucial differences between philosophers and their wayward cousins. The first and most important is that philosophers are much better at knowing what they don’t know. The second is money. In a sense, management theory is what happens to philosophers when you pay them too much.
Stewart’s theory boils down to three things:
• Expand the domain of your analysis!
• Hire people with greater diversity of experience!
• Remember the three Cs: Communication, Communication, Communication! Remember Plato: it’s all about dialogue!
Friday, June 30, 2006
The Merton article
Here's the text of my award-winning Merton article. Big thanks to Dennis Sadowski at the Catholic Universe Bulletin for indulging my interest in the subject, and to Ann Augherton, managing editor of The Catholic Herald in Arlington for running a slightly different version of this story.
Thomas Merton: Leading us toward the contemplative life
By Wendy A. Hoke
Catholic Universe Bulletin
Nov. 18, 2005
He was only 53 when he died, and had only been a Catholic for 30 of those years, but Thomas Merton found a way to touch the contemplative within all of us.
Most Merton scholars agree it was his transparent yet imperfect search for grace, his introspective, powerful writing, and his interest in the ecumenical that calls people of all faiths to his work.
His writings are often found in today’s religious literature, regardless of faith orientation. Many believe he is a good contemporary example for Catholics. But he will not be part of the new official American Catholic Catechism because for some he was too contemporary, too imperfect.
For the struggling and the searching, however, he has been a welcome voice for nearly 60 years.
First published in 1948, his autobiography “The Seven Storey Mountain” became a bestseller at a time when religious works were not included on the New York Times Bestseller list. Worldwide, his autobiography has sold multiple millions of copies, having been in continuous publication. His body of work has been translated into 29 languages, including Indonesian, Turkish and Croatian.
Merton’s international reach goes beyond publishing. His writing is the touchstone for interfaith discussions, a form of literary advocacy for social justice and peace and the very embodiment of his quest for the divine while struggling with being human.
“It’s not anything immensely new, but Merton has interpreted the spirituality of the Catholic Church in a way people can understand and with some depth to it,” said Paul Pearson, director of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Ky.
He was an ordinary man struggling with his own spiritual life, but his willingness to share that struggle so openly mirrors our own.
How does a monk manage to capture contemporary life? Because he brought with him significant life experiences. Merton was born in the 20th century, lived through war and was educated in different religions. Before converting to Catholicism, he lived a Bohemian New York lifestyle. “He had an enormously broad vision of society and the world even within the confines of the monastery,” said Pearson.
“He felt that being a Christian, even being a monk, you have to be engaged and educated about what’s going on so you can have a response—either in an active or contemplative way,” said Erlinda Paguio, president of the International Thomas Merton Society (ITMS), also based in Louisville. He was honest and open in his search for God, in his search to become whole.
Merton’s legacy
Educated at Columbia University, Merton could tap into the well of the intellectual and the ordinary person, said Ursuline Sister Donna Kristoff, president of the Cleveland chapter of the ITMS. “He read Joyce and Sartre and he understood the 20th century politically and culturally,” she said. He did that through a network of friendships and vast correspondence that kept him very well informed.
But being removed from the world also gave him a wider perspective and a bit of distance for observing everything from the Vietnam War to Civil Rights movement.
Merton, who is not without his detractors because of his humanity, has been referred to as a lapsed monk primarily because at the end of his life he was engaged in dialogue with Eastern and Western monks.
Pearson believes he was simply living what Vatican II suggested—talking to others about their faith while firmly rooted in your own. That’s what his writing shows when he died tragically on Dec. 10, 1968 in a Bangkok hotel room, having been accidentally electrocuted.
Sister Donna Kristoff remembers picking up a thin book with a burlap cover while a senior in high school. It was Merton’s “Seeds of Contemplation.” “I remember reading it in an hour and thinking how beautiful it was.”
She entered the convent the following September, but was not exposed to him there. An art teacher, she eventually wrote a paper on Merton and icons. “He had a gift for translating a lot of ancient traditions into modern language. He was pious and austere, but he also showed there was a human person behind the contemplative,” she said.
And he left room for people to find their own way toward contemplation.
Finding Merton
“People come to Merton through all sorts of rooms,” said Jonathan Montaldo, former director of the Merton Center and editor of the recently published “A Year with Thomas Merton.” Many are drawn to the spiritual Merton, others are interested in his insights into Buddhism, others love his photography and many love his literature, he said.
By tapping into the primary sources—the desert fathers and mothers and mystics—he revived the early church writings and built on that wisdom, making connections to the wisdom of Zen and hermit history, Sister Kristoff said.
Regardless of how he is discovered, his impact is lasting. “Merton’s ability to leap forward to communicate to new generations amazes me,” said Montaldo.
Sister Kristoff agreed. “He opened the avenue of contemplative prayer for the ordinary person, a movement that has experienced renewal in the church,” she said.
Merton recognizes that spirituality is not an ideal situation. It’s filled with both light and shadow. “Merton’s talent is that he wrote in order to find God in his own experience, not in someone else’s,” said Montaldo.
Contemplation, Merton believed, is for everyone and he was criticized for that belief. But that was also his gift.
“Merton recognized the face of God in everything. He knew it theoretically and experientially and that’s why his writing has authenticity and power, and why he continues to be read,” said Pat O’Connell, editor of the Merton Seasonal and professor of theology and English at Gannon University.
“He doesn’t pontificate answers from some elevated eminence. The fact that he’s flawed and admits it makes him so much more meaningful,” said O’Connell. “He is Catholic with a small c and big C. He’s very faithful to the religion and someone who saw that religion as a way to open up to the universality of all humanity.”
Monsignor William H. Shannon became editor of his five volumes of letters and said Merton helped him to realize, “Contemplative life is human reality, not just monastic reality,” he said.
Some of his work could even be considered prophetic. “Last year we saw publication of ‘Peace in Post-Christian Era,’ which was banned in 1962,” said Pearson. “Though we are no longer talking about the Cold War you can substitute terror or Iraq for communism because the overall picture hasn’t changed.”
“Like any good writer, he speaks to you in different ways at different times,” said Shannon. “He was a born writer. Fortunately, he had an Abbott who recognized and encouraged him in his writing.”
Many Merton scholars believe that he did not want to become a myth for children at American parochial schools. He did not want to be an idol or guru with a following. But his contemporary messages seem more important today than ever before.
“Merton's writing … is a source of unity, a bridge for Catholics and all spiritual seekers to cross over and find a common ground in the search for God through their ordinary lives,” said Montaldo.
Sidebar
Pilgrimage to Bellarmine
The Thomas Merton Center is an archive based at Bellarmine University, a small, liberal arts Catholic College in Louisville, Ky., near the Abbey of Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery where Merton lived.
Though there are also collections at Harvard University and St. Bonaventure, Bellarmine remains the official repository. Started by Merton in 1963 when it was suggested he find a home to deposit his many manuscripts, the Merton Center is currently home to 50,000 items including photos, drawings, calligraphy, manuscripts and journals. There are 20,000 letters of correspondence with 2,100 individuals. It contains 260 doctoral and master’s theses and 1,400 photographs.
The center’s mission is to preserve and collect materials related to Merton’s life and work. Just this year, it acquired 14 calligraphies and some more letters, according to Paul Pearson, director of the center.
“We’ve reached the point where all manuscript material has been published. But we’re never quite sure because something new may come to light,” he said.
Merton was a prolific letter-writer and the center has entire sets of correspondence from some individuals. It also contains large exchanges with his publishers, with Dorothy Day, a Muslim scholar in Pakistan and with Latin American poets.
The center is open to public from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Visit www.merton.org for more information.
The local chapter of the International Thomas Merton Society meets at 7:30 p.m. the third Tuesday of every month from September through May at Ursuline College Mother House.
T. Williams on dullness
“I don’t believe in dullness. I believe in passion and wonder and excitement. I believe in people having a storm in their hearts, a great big furious storm that sweeps all trivialities away like scraps of paper or dead leaves.”
— from Tennessee Williams’ Mister Paradise
— from Tennessee Williams’ Mister Paradise
New and improved SPJ.org
I invite you to visit the new and improved SPJ.org, which launched today. When I took on the new part-time position on May 1, this redesign was well underway. My role was to help make sure that resources for members, chapters and leaders were up to par and easy to navigate.
So take it for ride, see what SPJ has been working on and please consider joining our ranks.
So take it for ride, see what SPJ has been working on and please consider joining our ranks.
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