Chris Jones is an Esquire mag writer who won a National Magazine Award last night. Here is the interview on U of Montana's website. He will be a writer in residence there.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
You Are Not Your Fame & Fortune
Dear Gentle Readers, Writers & Colleagues,
As you work in this sometimes-troubling, nearing-the-end time of the semester, consider the words of a 9th Century Zen master, Lin-Chi:
------
When hungry, eat your rice;
when tired, close your eyes.
Fools may laugh at me,
but wise men [and wise women] will know what I mean.
------
Write well.
Revise well.
Think as deeply as you are able.
Think radical and exciting thoughts about who you are and who you are becoming.
You are not and never were your grade in a class.
You are not your fame or fortune.
You are not the job or internship or award you may long for and may or may not receive.
You are so much more.
Do not be confused.
Pay attention to Rainer Maria Rilke who, in "The Man Watching," reminds us:
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
As you work in this sometimes-troubling, nearing-the-end time of the semester, consider the words of a 9th Century Zen master, Lin-Chi:
------
When hungry, eat your rice;
when tired, close your eyes.
Fools may laugh at me,
but wise men [and wise women] will know what I mean.
------
Write well.
Revise well.
Think as deeply as you are able.
Think radical and exciting thoughts about who you are and who you are becoming.
You are not and never were your grade in a class.
You are not your fame or fortune.
You are not the job or internship or award you may long for and may or may not receive.
You are so much more.
Do not be confused.
Pay attention to Rainer Maria Rilke who, in "The Man Watching," reminds us:
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Poems
Dear Learners,
Below I copied a portion of a note I had sent to a student who once was working feverishly to complete a project. I thought some of you might benefit from reading some of my response and the two poems here.
------
You mention that you have short-comings. We all do. That's what thickens the
plot.
Otherwise we would be something other than human.
To share those short-comings is also a human necessity under the Big Tent of Journalism as I see it. And there are things that are kept private, too. Finding the right balance is the trick that I seek constantly.
Know that this project-- with its revelations of humanity, past and present, forces you to grapple in enlightening and educational ways with your private truths and falsehoods and your public ones, too.
In that process, we professors grapple with our own truths and falsehoods as
well.
To that end, I offer two poems I like.
I thought about these when I re-read your note and when I thought about your work and the issue of control: who has it, who wants it, who does not want it, and why, and what is BEYOND control, in another sphere from it, in the land of meaningful Story, based on the time-honored verities and based on the things we can see, hear, taste, touch & smell, and, yes, photograph and record.
POEM ONE.
Antonio Machado untitled poem, translated from Spanish by Robert
Bly.
And he was the demon of my dreams, the most handsome
Of all angels. His victorious eyes
Blazed like steel,
And the flames that fell
From his torch like drops
Lit up the deep dungeon of the soul.
"Will you go with me?"
"No, never! Tombs
And dead bodies frighten me."
But his iron hand took mine.
"You will go with me"...And in my dream I walked
Blinded by his red torch.
In the dungeon I heard the sound of chains
And the stirrings of beasts that were in cages.
POEM TWO.
The Man Watching by Rainer Rilke, translated by Bly.
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
Below I copied a portion of a note I had sent to a student who once was working feverishly to complete a project. I thought some of you might benefit from reading some of my response and the two poems here.
------
You mention that you have short-comings. We all do. That's what thickens the
plot.
Otherwise we would be something other than human.
To share those short-comings is also a human necessity under the Big Tent of Journalism as I see it. And there are things that are kept private, too. Finding the right balance is the trick that I seek constantly.
Know that this project-- with its revelations of humanity, past and present, forces you to grapple in enlightening and educational ways with your private truths and falsehoods and your public ones, too.
In that process, we professors grapple with our own truths and falsehoods as
well.
To that end, I offer two poems I like.
I thought about these when I re-read your note and when I thought about your work and the issue of control: who has it, who wants it, who does not want it, and why, and what is BEYOND control, in another sphere from it, in the land of meaningful Story, based on the time-honored verities and based on the things we can see, hear, taste, touch & smell, and, yes, photograph and record.
POEM ONE.
Antonio Machado untitled poem, translated from Spanish by Robert
Bly.
And he was the demon of my dreams, the most handsome
Of all angels. His victorious eyes
Blazed like steel,
And the flames that fell
From his torch like drops
Lit up the deep dungeon of the soul.
"Will you go with me?"
"No, never! Tombs
And dead bodies frighten me."
But his iron hand took mine.
"You will go with me"...And in my dream I walked
Blinded by his red torch.
In the dungeon I heard the sound of chains
And the stirrings of beasts that were in cages.
POEM TWO.
The Man Watching by Rainer Rilke, translated by Bly.
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Pros and Cons of Human Tragedy is Journalism
The New York Times
Wednesday, April 15 2009
Roberta Smith
Art Review
One Image of Agony Resonates In Two Lives
Wednesday, April 15 2009
Roberta Smith
Art Review
One Image of Agony Resonates In Two Lives
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
The Unexpected Voice, Eyes, and Camera of Katrina Survivors
Here is an excerpt and link of NYT story that discusses "TROUBLE THE WATER," a documentary about Hurricane Katrina. Pay attention to the line below:
"They let their subject take them to the unexpected."
The New York Times
Monday, March 31, 2008
By Manohla Dargis
EXCERPT:
At that point some filmmakers might have packed it in. For whatever reason-it's easy to imagine that laboring alongside Mr. [Michael] Moore requires enormous patience-they stuck around Louisiana and did the most important thing any filmmaker working in either fiction or nonfiction can do: They let their subject take them to the unexpected. In this case the unexpected was embodied by two residents of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, an aspiring musician named Kimberly Roberts. Read More
"They let their subject take them to the unexpected."
The New York Times
Monday, March 31, 2008
By Manohla Dargis
EXCERPT:
At that point some filmmakers might have packed it in. For whatever reason-it's easy to imagine that laboring alongside Mr. [Michael] Moore requires enormous patience-they stuck around Louisiana and did the most important thing any filmmaker working in either fiction or nonfiction can do: They let their subject take them to the unexpected. In this case the unexpected was embodied by two residents of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, an aspiring musician named Kimberly Roberts. Read More
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The Power of Focus: Watch the Tar Heels. Watch the Tigers.
As students and as teacher, we each have some similar lessons to learn.
A key one is focus. Don Murray highlights FOCUS as a key element in his template of the writing process.
Focus allows completion to happen.
I read a Hannah Karp story this weekend, March 31, 2009, in the Wall Street Journal, about Idan Ravin who is training NBA basketball players such as Denver Nuggets player Carmelo Anthony.
Headline:
Meet Idan, the Hoops Whisperer
How a Former Lawyer With No Basketball Experience Became the NBA's Hottest New Trainer
He uses unorthodox methods, including throwing tennis balls at his clients while they dribble down the court. He has them try to run from one baseline to the other and only dribble twice.
Excerpt from story:
Mr. Ravin's goal is to create so much chaos and stress on a player during workouts that the physical game becomes less cerebral and more automatic. He uses a combination of humbling psychological tactics and exhausting, unorthodox and sometimes spontaneous drills. He's been known to fire tennis balls at players while they're dribbling or make them stare straight ahead while dribbling two balls in each hand in uneven rhythms and walking from side to side.
In one particularly exhausting drill, Mr. Ravin throws 25 balls, one at a time, in different directions. The player's job is to catch them after only one bounce and then shoot.
One day this summer, as Mr. Anthony's 15-month-old son Kiyan sat in a stroller nearby, Mr. Ravin put the one-time All-Star through a drill called the "full court lay-up," in which Mr. Anthony had to run from one baseline to the other while making only two dribbles. Mr. Ravin times every drill and never hesitates to let a player know how much faster another superstar client completed it. "He knows exactly how to get into [players'] heads -- especially mine," says Mr. Anthony.
-----------
I thought about the tennis balls, all of you and what you are trying to accomplish, and then thought about this quote from former UNC basketball coach Dean Smith.
BEWARE OF THE LURE OF THE BARKING DOG
“Dr. Phog Allen, my college coach [at Kansas], said: ‘The postman doesn’t stop for every dog that barks. He’d never get his mail delivered.’ ”
---Dean Smith of UNC Chapel Hill in speaking of how to handle critics. He ranks as the number three college basketball coach with the most wins (879).
I also was reading something this weekend from management guru Peter Drucker. He said the key focus question to ask is not what are you doing, but what have you STOPPED doing.
Your power will increase when you focus. You can get immense satisfaction when you complete assignments. You can complete these best by ignoring the Tennis Balls, or to use another example, the Barking Dogs around you.
David Allen talks about the idea of becoming a "COMPLETIONIST."
I sent out a book chapter draft last week. About five weeks had passed from the original deadline. I felt badly about the delay. But I had been in communication with my editor about the delays. And it felt great to complete this phase of the project.
Last night I watched my beloved UNC men's basketball team win the NCAA championship. Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington, Tyler Hansborough. They've got focus. For that matter, the losing Michigan State team had incredible focus to make it to the championship game. The Mizzou Tigers men's basketball team also is learning focus under the leadership of Coach Mike Anderson, the co-winner of 2009 Coach of the Year. Anderson has transformed a lackluster team into "the fastest 40 minutes of basketball." That kind of basketball demands practice. And focus.
How do you focus?
What helps you to focus? How do you ignore the barking dogs, the tennis balls coming at you? How do you distinguish what matters and what does not matter?
BH, who is still learning the focus lesson
A key one is focus. Don Murray highlights FOCUS as a key element in his template of the writing process.
Focus allows completion to happen.
I read a Hannah Karp story this weekend, March 31, 2009, in the Wall Street Journal, about Idan Ravin who is training NBA basketball players such as Denver Nuggets player Carmelo Anthony.
Headline:
Meet Idan, the Hoops Whisperer
How a Former Lawyer With No Basketball Experience Became the NBA's Hottest New Trainer
He uses unorthodox methods, including throwing tennis balls at his clients while they dribble down the court. He has them try to run from one baseline to the other and only dribble twice.
Excerpt from story:
Mr. Ravin's goal is to create so much chaos and stress on a player during workouts that the physical game becomes less cerebral and more automatic. He uses a combination of humbling psychological tactics and exhausting, unorthodox and sometimes spontaneous drills. He's been known to fire tennis balls at players while they're dribbling or make them stare straight ahead while dribbling two balls in each hand in uneven rhythms and walking from side to side.
In one particularly exhausting drill, Mr. Ravin throws 25 balls, one at a time, in different directions. The player's job is to catch them after only one bounce and then shoot.
One day this summer, as Mr. Anthony's 15-month-old son Kiyan sat in a stroller nearby, Mr. Ravin put the one-time All-Star through a drill called the "full court lay-up," in which Mr. Anthony had to run from one baseline to the other while making only two dribbles. Mr. Ravin times every drill and never hesitates to let a player know how much faster another superstar client completed it. "He knows exactly how to get into [players'] heads -- especially mine," says Mr. Anthony.
-----------
I thought about the tennis balls, all of you and what you are trying to accomplish, and then thought about this quote from former UNC basketball coach Dean Smith.
BEWARE OF THE LURE OF THE BARKING DOG
“Dr. Phog Allen, my college coach [at Kansas], said: ‘The postman doesn’t stop for every dog that barks. He’d never get his mail delivered.’ ”
---Dean Smith of UNC Chapel Hill in speaking of how to handle critics. He ranks as the number three college basketball coach with the most wins (879).
I also was reading something this weekend from management guru Peter Drucker. He said the key focus question to ask is not what are you doing, but what have you STOPPED doing.
Your power will increase when you focus. You can get immense satisfaction when you complete assignments. You can complete these best by ignoring the Tennis Balls, or to use another example, the Barking Dogs around you.
David Allen talks about the idea of becoming a "COMPLETIONIST."
I sent out a book chapter draft last week. About five weeks had passed from the original deadline. I felt badly about the delay. But I had been in communication with my editor about the delays. And it felt great to complete this phase of the project.
Last night I watched my beloved UNC men's basketball team win the NCAA championship. Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington, Tyler Hansborough. They've got focus. For that matter, the losing Michigan State team had incredible focus to make it to the championship game. The Mizzou Tigers men's basketball team also is learning focus under the leadership of Coach Mike Anderson, the co-winner of 2009 Coach of the Year. Anderson has transformed a lackluster team into "the fastest 40 minutes of basketball." That kind of basketball demands practice. And focus.
How do you focus?
What helps you to focus? How do you ignore the barking dogs, the tennis balls coming at you? How do you distinguish what matters and what does not matter?
BH, who is still learning the focus lesson
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
What Writers Can Learn from the Purdie Shuffle
Voice. Attitude. Focus.
These are a few of the things that the larger than life drummer, Bernard Purdie or Pretty Purdie, has to teach us as writers. You can hear his work on more than 4,000 sound recordings, including those of Steely Dan, Led Zeppelin, and Death Cab for Cutie.
See the quote below from Death Cab Cutie drummer Jason McGerr.
Think about the elements that make your writer's voice distinctive.
How does that voice merge with the voice that any individual story demands?
To what degree does your voice indicate that you are "completely in charge?"
Study this New York Times story by David Segal and learn all that you can, including Segal's own approach to the story.
The New York Times
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
C5
"It doesn't matter how much I practice, I will never play that shuffle like Purdie," Mr. McGerr said. "It's because he has an attitude that seems to come through every time. He always sounds like he's completely in charge."
Full Article
These are a few of the things that the larger than life drummer, Bernard Purdie or Pretty Purdie, has to teach us as writers. You can hear his work on more than 4,000 sound recordings, including those of Steely Dan, Led Zeppelin, and Death Cab for Cutie.
See the quote below from Death Cab Cutie drummer Jason McGerr.
Think about the elements that make your writer's voice distinctive.
How does that voice merge with the voice that any individual story demands?
To what degree does your voice indicate that you are "completely in charge?"
Study this New York Times story by David Segal and learn all that you can, including Segal's own approach to the story.
The New York Times
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
C5
"It doesn't matter how much I practice, I will never play that shuffle like Purdie," Mr. McGerr said. "It's because he has an attitude that seems to come through every time. He always sounds like he's completely in charge."
Full Article
Wordle Identifies Patterns. Helps With Revision
Here is a note from Jessica Huang: Wordle is a toy which takes a bunch of text and changes it into a word cloud that highlights the words we use the most. Pretty cool. And also an interesting way to look at revising.
Usain Bolt, Relaxed but Focused
"I didn't know I was going to run so fast. But I came out to be a
champion, and I was. I just tried to stay relaxed. I'm always
relaxing. That's the way to go so fast: relax and just focus."
Usain Bolt, after setting the new world record of running 100 meters,
at 9.69 seconds, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2008.
champion, and I was. I just tried to stay relaxed. I'm always
relaxing. That's the way to go so fast: relax and just focus."
Usain Bolt, after setting the new world record of running 100 meters,
at 9.69 seconds, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2008.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Clarity and Purpose=Project Completion
Here are some powerful ideas that can help us work and live with more vitality, clarity, and purpose:
1. On the door frame outside his workroom, [writer William Styron] tacked a piece of cardboard with a quotation from Flaubert written on it:
“Be regular and orderly in your life, like a good bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
2. “A task left undone remains undone in two places - at the actual location of the task, and inside your head. Incomplete tasks in your head consume the energy of your attention as they gnaw at your conscience. They siphon off a little more of your personal power every time you delay. No need to be a perfectionist, that’s debilitating in an imperfect world, but it’s good to be a ‘completionist’. If you start it, finish it - or forget it.”
– Brahma Kumaris, quote courtesy of David Allen
1. On the door frame outside his workroom, [writer William Styron] tacked a piece of cardboard with a quotation from Flaubert written on it:
“Be regular and orderly in your life, like a good bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
2. “A task left undone remains undone in two places - at the actual location of the task, and inside your head. Incomplete tasks in your head consume the energy of your attention as they gnaw at your conscience. They siphon off a little more of your personal power every time you delay. No need to be a perfectionist, that’s debilitating in an imperfect world, but it’s good to be a ‘completionist’. If you start it, finish it - or forget it.”
– Brahma Kumaris, quote courtesy of David Allen
Friday, March 13, 2009
A Note About Balance
Here is an email I got today from David Allen, who thinks deeply about Getting Things Done. See davidco.com
He says this:
[Balance is tough enough when you are aware of all your goals, values, projects, and commitments. But it’s impossible if you don’t revisit the whole game consistently.
"The affairs of life embrace a multitude of interests, and he who reasons in any one of them, without consulting the rest, is a visionary unsuited to control the business of the world." – James Fenimore Cooper]
So this reminds us to spend an hour or two each week--I do it on Friday or Saturday mornings usually--reviewing all of our projects.
This time is not spent DOING the projects. It is spent going over the project list, adding to or subtracting from the list, of what is important and what needs to get done in the short term, medium term, and long term. It is spent thinking about the discrete parts of the project and what are the Next Steps.
Keep a notepad, virtual or otherwise, close by. Your mind will remind of things undone. You can also keep a list of the items you can do in two minutes or less. And you can schedule a time to tackle a batch of those. It can be SO SATISFYING to complete quickly some of those tasks. Set a timer. See if you can finish some of them in two minutes. You will become more aware of what can be done quickly and what cannot. You will see how you may or may not misjudge time.
In the end, you will get more accomplished of what you want to accomplish.
If you have other ideas about how to get things done, share them with comments here, in class or with your small group.
BH
He says this:
[Balance is tough enough when you are aware of all your goals, values, projects, and commitments. But it’s impossible if you don’t revisit the whole game consistently.
"The affairs of life embrace a multitude of interests, and he who reasons in any one of them, without consulting the rest, is a visionary unsuited to control the business of the world." – James Fenimore Cooper]
So this reminds us to spend an hour or two each week--I do it on Friday or Saturday mornings usually--reviewing all of our projects.
This time is not spent DOING the projects. It is spent going over the project list, adding to or subtracting from the list, of what is important and what needs to get done in the short term, medium term, and long term. It is spent thinking about the discrete parts of the project and what are the Next Steps.
Keep a notepad, virtual or otherwise, close by. Your mind will remind of things undone. You can also keep a list of the items you can do in two minutes or less. And you can schedule a time to tackle a batch of those. It can be SO SATISFYING to complete quickly some of those tasks. Set a timer. See if you can finish some of them in two minutes. You will become more aware of what can be done quickly and what cannot. You will see how you may or may not misjudge time.
In the end, you will get more accomplished of what you want to accomplish.
If you have other ideas about how to get things done, share them with comments here, in class or with your small group.
BH
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Profile of a Man Near This Life's End
This Feb. 28, 2009 narrative profile in the Los Angeles Times by Thomas Curwen has many remarkable qualities. Those of you serious about reporting and writing profiles will read it and study it. You may not be able to access the story now because it has been archived and you need to register for LAT, subscribe or pay for the story. Or you probably can access it through a Mizzou database.
In the meantime, you can read the top here:
HEADLINE:
Waiting for death, alone and unafraid
Edwin Shneidman knows what the end will be: You're driving down a road in the desert, and the engine suddenly stops.
By Thomas Curwen
February 28, 2009
The silence of night never lasts long. It ends somewhere in the 5 o'clock hour with the purring of the heater and distant strains of Sam Cooke.
Edwin Shneidman looks at the clock -- an hour and a half since turning off the TV and closing his eyes.
"Mrs. Wiggles," he shouts. He knows that that's not her name, but he likes the joke.
Sitting in another room, Pauline Dupuy turns down the CD player and puts her Bible and crossword aside. She stands and walks down the hall into his room.
"My knee hurts."
"Would you like a pain pill?"
"Yes."
"Tramadol or Vicodin?"
"I don't care."
He lies on the side of the bed, sleepy, unshaven, his hair mussed. He never asked to live to be 90, to see the breadth of his life diminished, the allure of the world fallen further out of reach. He is ready to die.
All his life he has studied this moment -- from those who killed themselves and those who tried, from philosophers and colleagues, students and intimates -- and its lessons hold no real surprise.
Today will be the same as yesterday, the same as tomorrow, every day a waiting and a hoping for a good death, a death without suffering.
He lives alone but for the company of caregivers in the house that he and his wife bought more than 50 years ago, alone to consider the meaning of his life and the niche he has secured for himself in the memory of the world.
"Good morning."
He looks up. Vernette Elijio greets him with a smile and rubs the top of his head. It's 7 a.m., the changing of the guard. She will be with him for the next 12 hours. Dressed in a long white sleep shirt, he looks like a character from Dickens. She helps him on with his plaid robe, and he shuffles to the chair at the side of the bed.
In the meantime, you can read the top here:
HEADLINE:
Waiting for death, alone and unafraid
Edwin Shneidman knows what the end will be: You're driving down a road in the desert, and the engine suddenly stops.
By Thomas Curwen
February 28, 2009
The silence of night never lasts long. It ends somewhere in the 5 o'clock hour with the purring of the heater and distant strains of Sam Cooke.
Edwin Shneidman looks at the clock -- an hour and a half since turning off the TV and closing his eyes.
"Mrs. Wiggles," he shouts. He knows that that's not her name, but he likes the joke.
Sitting in another room, Pauline Dupuy turns down the CD player and puts her Bible and crossword aside. She stands and walks down the hall into his room.
"My knee hurts."
"Would you like a pain pill?"
"Yes."
"Tramadol or Vicodin?"
"I don't care."
He lies on the side of the bed, sleepy, unshaven, his hair mussed. He never asked to live to be 90, to see the breadth of his life diminished, the allure of the world fallen further out of reach. He is ready to die.
All his life he has studied this moment -- from those who killed themselves and those who tried, from philosophers and colleagues, students and intimates -- and its lessons hold no real surprise.
Today will be the same as yesterday, the same as tomorrow, every day a waiting and a hoping for a good death, a death without suffering.
He lives alone but for the company of caregivers in the house that he and his wife bought more than 50 years ago, alone to consider the meaning of his life and the niche he has secured for himself in the memory of the world.
"Good morning."
He looks up. Vernette Elijio greets him with a smile and rubs the top of his head. It's 7 a.m., the changing of the guard. She will be with him for the next 12 hours. Dressed in a long white sleep shirt, he looks like a character from Dickens. She helps him on with his plaid robe, and he shuffles to the chair at the side of the bed.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Chapter excerpt from The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb (P 327)
I entered my consulting-room and found a gentleman seated by the table. He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed, with a soft cloth cap which he had laid down upon my books. Round one of his hands he had a handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all over the bloodstains. He was young, not more than five-and-twenty, I should say, with a strong, masculine face; but he was exceedingly pale and gave me the impression of a man who was suffering from some strong agitation, which it took all his strength of mind to control.
"I am sorry to knock you up so early, Doctor," said he, "but I have had a very serious accident during the night. I came in by train this morning, and on inquiring at Paddington as to where I might find a doctor, a worthy fellow very kindly escorted me here. I gave the maid a card, but I see that she has left it upon the side-table."
I took it up and glanced at it. "Mr. Victor Hatherley, hydraulic engineer, 16A, Victoria Street (3d floor)." That was the name, style, and abode of my morning visitor. "I regret that I have kept you waiting," said I, sitting down in my library-chair. "You are fresh from a night journey, I understand, which is in itself a monotonous occupation."
"Oh, my night could not be called monotonous," said he, and laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical instincts rose up against that laugh.
"Stop it!" I cried; "pull yourself together!" and I poured out some water from a carafe.
It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very weary and pale-looking.
"I have been making a fool of myself," he gasped.
"Not at all. Drink this." I dashed some brandy into the water, and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks.
"That's better!" said he. "And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be."
He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from the roots.
"Good heavens!" I cried, "this is a terrible injury. It must have bled considerably."
Chapter excerpt from The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb (P 327)
I entered my consulting-room and found a gentleman seated by the table. He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed, with a soft cloth cap which he had laid down upon my books. Round one of his hands he had a handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all over the bloodstains. He was young, not more than five-and-twenty, I should say, with a strong, masculine face; but he was exceedingly pale and gave me the impression of a man who was suffering from some strong agitation, which it took all his strength of mind to control.
"I am sorry to knock you up so early, Doctor," said he, "but I have had a very serious accident during the night. I came in by train this morning, and on inquiring at Paddington as to where I might find a doctor, a worthy fellow very kindly escorted me here. I gave the maid a card, but I see that she has left it upon the side-table."
I took it up and glanced at it. "Mr. Victor Hatherley, hydraulic engineer, 16A, Victoria Street (3d floor)." That was the name, style, and abode of my morning visitor. "I regret that I have kept you waiting," said I, sitting down in my library-chair. "You are fresh from a night journey, I understand, which is in itself a monotonous occupation."
"Oh, my night could not be called monotonous," said he, and laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical instincts rose up against that laugh.
"Stop it!" I cried; "pull yourself together!" and I poured out some water from a carafe.
It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very weary and pale-looking.
"I have been making a fool of myself," he gasped.
"Not at all. Drink this." I dashed some brandy into the water, and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks.
"That's better!" said he. "And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be."
He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from the roots.
"Good heavens!" I cried, "this is a terrible injury. It must have bled considerably."
Writing about Writers: Flannery O'Connor
By Joy Williams
FLANNERY A Life of Flannery O'Connor. By Brad Gooch. Illustrated. 448 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $30.
In Sunday, March 1, 2009, NYT Book Review, writer Joy Williams writes about the new book on the quirky and amazing Flannery O'Connor.
Here is the lead. What can you learn about writing from reading this?
Flannery. She liked to drink Coca-Cola mixed with coffee. She gave her mother, Regina, a mule for Mother’s Day. She went to bed at 9 and said she was always glad to get there. After Kennedy’s assassination she said: “I am sad about the president. But I like the new one.” As a child she sewed outfits for her chickens and wanted to be a cartoonist.
Here is the ending. What can you learn about writing from reading this?
Flannery. When asked why she wrote, she replied, “Because I’m good at it.” She found sickness “more instructive than a long trip to Europe.” She was buried the day after she died. Robert Giroux sent a copy of “Wise Blood” to Evelyn Waugh hoping for a blurb, and Waugh replied, “The best I can say is: ‘If this really is the unaided work of a young lady, it is a remarkable product.’ ” One should pretty much ignore her own pronouncements on her art, though in her last years she increasingly endeavored to explain her intentions. She was an anagogical writer, of that there is no doubt. The civil rights movement interested her not at all. When she received a request to stage one of her stories, she wrote, “The only thing I would positively object to would be somebody turning one of my colored idiots into a hero.” Her kinship, she believed, was with Hawthorne. She also described herself as being “13th-century.” She is reported to have had beautiful blue eyes.
FLANNERY A Life of Flannery O'Connor. By Brad Gooch. Illustrated. 448 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $30.
In Sunday, March 1, 2009, NYT Book Review, writer Joy Williams writes about the new book on the quirky and amazing Flannery O'Connor.
Here is the lead. What can you learn about writing from reading this?
Flannery. She liked to drink Coca-Cola mixed with coffee. She gave her mother, Regina, a mule for Mother’s Day. She went to bed at 9 and said she was always glad to get there. After Kennedy’s assassination she said: “I am sad about the president. But I like the new one.” As a child she sewed outfits for her chickens and wanted to be a cartoonist.
Here is the ending. What can you learn about writing from reading this?
Flannery. When asked why she wrote, she replied, “Because I’m good at it.” She found sickness “more instructive than a long trip to Europe.” She was buried the day after she died. Robert Giroux sent a copy of “Wise Blood” to Evelyn Waugh hoping for a blurb, and Waugh replied, “The best I can say is: ‘If this really is the unaided work of a young lady, it is a remarkable product.’ ” One should pretty much ignore her own pronouncements on her art, though in her last years she increasingly endeavored to explain her intentions. She was an anagogical writer, of that there is no doubt. The civil rights movement interested her not at all. When she received a request to stage one of her stories, she wrote, “The only thing I would positively object to would be somebody turning one of my colored idiots into a hero.” Her kinship, she believed, was with Hawthorne. She also described herself as being “13th-century.” She is reported to have had beautiful blue eyes.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
CheckPoints
By John McPhee
The New Yorker (p. 56)
February 9, 2009
(Excerpt)
ABSTRACT: PERSONAL HISTORY about the writer’s experiences with fact-checking. Sara Lippincott retired as an editor at this magazine in the early nineteen-nineties, having worked in The New Yorker’s fact-checking department from 1966 until 1982. She had a passion for science. In 1973, a long piece of the writer’s called “The Curve of Binding Energy” received her full-time attention for three or four weeks and needed every minute of it. Explaining her work to an audience at a journalism school, Sara once said, “Each word in the piece that has even a shred of fact clinging to it is scrutinized, and, if passed, given the checker’s imprimatur, which consists of a tiny pencil tick.” The writer describes a paragraph from his sixty-thousand-word piece—which was about weapons-grade nuclear material in private industry and what terrorists might do with it—which presented Sara with a certain degree of difficulty. Physicist John A. Wheeler had told the writer about a Japanese weapon balloon landing on a nuclear reactor at the Hanford Engineer Works, in the winter of 1944 or 45. If Wheeler’s story were true, it would make it into print. If unverifiable, it would be deleted. Sara’s telephone calls ricocheted all over the U.S. Hanford Engineer Works, of the Manhattan Project, was so secret that the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t know about it. Sara finally located a site manager who confirmed that the balloon had landed on a high-tension line carrying power to the reactor. The fix was made and the piece ran. Sometimes a mistake is introduced during the checking process. This has happened to the writer only once—and nearly thirty years ago. The piece, called “Basin and Range,” was the first in a series of long pieces on geology. Mentions current fact-checker Joshua Hersh. Sara, who checked the “Basin” piece, told the writer that he was wrong about the Adriatic Plate, that it is not moving north but southwest. Eldridge Moores had apparently confirmed it. After the piece was published, the writer called Moores, who said that it was in fact the Aegean Plate, not the Adriatic, that was moving southwest. Any error is everlasting. Mentions Time and Atlantic. After an error gets into The New Yorker, heat-seeking missiles rise off the earth and home in on the author, the fact-checker, and the editor. In the comfortable knowledge that the fact-checking department is going to sweep up behind him, the writer likes to guess at certain names and numbers early on. Mentions Willy Bemis and the Illinois River. Describes the process of fact-checking a piece the writer wrote in 2003 about tracing John and Henry Thoreau’s upstream journey. Mentions Henry Moore’s “Oval with Points.” The writer describes checking parts of a book he was writing in 2002. The task took him three months. Mentions William Penn, Cotton Mather, and Joseph Seccombe.
The New Yorker (p. 56)
February 9, 2009
(Excerpt)
ABSTRACT: PERSONAL HISTORY about the writer’s experiences with fact-checking. Sara Lippincott retired as an editor at this magazine in the early nineteen-nineties, having worked in The New Yorker’s fact-checking department from 1966 until 1982. She had a passion for science. In 1973, a long piece of the writer’s called “The Curve of Binding Energy” received her full-time attention for three or four weeks and needed every minute of it. Explaining her work to an audience at a journalism school, Sara once said, “Each word in the piece that has even a shred of fact clinging to it is scrutinized, and, if passed, given the checker’s imprimatur, which consists of a tiny pencil tick.” The writer describes a paragraph from his sixty-thousand-word piece—which was about weapons-grade nuclear material in private industry and what terrorists might do with it—which presented Sara with a certain degree of difficulty. Physicist John A. Wheeler had told the writer about a Japanese weapon balloon landing on a nuclear reactor at the Hanford Engineer Works, in the winter of 1944 or 45. If Wheeler’s story were true, it would make it into print. If unverifiable, it would be deleted. Sara’s telephone calls ricocheted all over the U.S. Hanford Engineer Works, of the Manhattan Project, was so secret that the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t know about it. Sara finally located a site manager who confirmed that the balloon had landed on a high-tension line carrying power to the reactor. The fix was made and the piece ran. Sometimes a mistake is introduced during the checking process. This has happened to the writer only once—and nearly thirty years ago. The piece, called “Basin and Range,” was the first in a series of long pieces on geology. Mentions current fact-checker Joshua Hersh. Sara, who checked the “Basin” piece, told the writer that he was wrong about the Adriatic Plate, that it is not moving north but southwest. Eldridge Moores had apparently confirmed it. After the piece was published, the writer called Moores, who said that it was in fact the Aegean Plate, not the Adriatic, that was moving southwest. Any error is everlasting. Mentions Time and Atlantic. After an error gets into The New Yorker, heat-seeking missiles rise off the earth and home in on the author, the fact-checker, and the editor. In the comfortable knowledge that the fact-checking department is going to sweep up behind him, the writer likes to guess at certain names and numbers early on. Mentions Willy Bemis and the Illinois River. Describes the process of fact-checking a piece the writer wrote in 2003 about tracing John and Henry Thoreau’s upstream journey. Mentions Henry Moore’s “Oval with Points.” The writer describes checking parts of a book he was writing in 2002. The task took him three months. Mentions William Penn, Cotton Mather, and Joseph Seccombe.
The Power of an Artist's Notebook, Memories
Meditating on modernism
By Pierre Bonnard
The Economist
February 7, 2009
(Excerpt)
Much of the work on view was produced after 1926, when Bonnard and his model, muse and wife, Marthe, moved into "Le Bosguet," an unimposing villa above Cannes. But the many bowls and baskets of luscious-looking peaches and cherries, the plates of cakes and the roses in jugs are not the careful arrangements one would expect a still-life artist to create. The reason for this is that Bonnard did not paint from life. What we see are his memories. To help him recall images that captivated him, the artist always carried a small pocket diary. On its ruled pages he made pencil sketches. Whether his inspiration was a person, an animal, plants or the corner of a room, though, light was his main prey. To help him capture it, he jotted down notes about weather and colours. In one of the four notebooks on display, for example, the words pluvieux froid (rainy, cold) are scrawled across the top of a page.
There was nothing of the romantic arists in a garret about Bonnard. He appeared to live a bourgeois life. His studio was a smallish upstairs bedroom; it didn't even have an easel. He would just cut off lengths of canvas and tack them to the wall. When a picture was finished, he cropped off any remaining blank canvas.
By Pierre Bonnard
The Economist
February 7, 2009
(Excerpt)
Much of the work on view was produced after 1926, when Bonnard and his model, muse and wife, Marthe, moved into "Le Bosguet," an unimposing villa above Cannes. But the many bowls and baskets of luscious-looking peaches and cherries, the plates of cakes and the roses in jugs are not the careful arrangements one would expect a still-life artist to create. The reason for this is that Bonnard did not paint from life. What we see are his memories. To help him recall images that captivated him, the artist always carried a small pocket diary. On its ruled pages he made pencil sketches. Whether his inspiration was a person, an animal, plants or the corner of a room, though, light was his main prey. To help him capture it, he jotted down notes about weather and colours. In one of the four notebooks on display, for example, the words pluvieux froid (rainy, cold) are scrawled across the top of a page.
There was nothing of the romantic arists in a garret about Bonnard. He appeared to live a bourgeois life. His studio was a smallish upstairs bedroom; it didn't even have an easel. He would just cut off lengths of canvas and tack them to the wall. When a picture was finished, he cropped off any remaining blank canvas.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Michael Lewis as Your Reporting and Writing Teacher
Cover story in NYT Sunday Magazine by Michael Lewis can teach you much, including about story structure and story selection. In the same way that Lewis looked at the anonymous left tackle from Ole Miss, he now considers NBA player Shane Battier, the undervalued star of the Houston Rockets and former stand-out at Duke University.
BH
BH
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Walking the Edge
"This is the country of Muhammad Ali, Hector Camacho, Sugar Ray Leonard and Michael Jordan. [Audiences] pay a lot of money, and they want to see somebody out there walking the line, walking the edge."
-Michael Flatley, dancer
LAT
26 March 1997
Question: How are you walking the edge--effectively--with your reporting, writing, revising & publishing?
BH
-Michael Flatley, dancer
LAT
26 March 1997
Question: How are you walking the edge--effectively--with your reporting, writing, revising & publishing?
BH
Greening the Ghetto
The New Yorker
Jan. 12, 2009
Can a remedy serve for both global warming and poverty?
By Elizabeth Kolbert
This is an excerpt from Greening the Ghetto about Van Jones, founder and president of Green for All.
The modern environmental movement is sometimes said to have begun in the eighteen-nineties, when John Muir founded the Sierra Club, and sometimes in the nineteen-sixties, when Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring.” Muir and Carson saw themselves fighting narrow, private interests on behalf of the public in the broadest possible sense-all people, including those who had not been born. But stop by a meeting of any of the major environmental groups, and you will see that the broad American public has yet to join up. Chances are that most of the attendees will be white, and the few who aren’t will be affluent and middle-aged. A 2006 study commissioned by Earthjustic, a nonprofit environmental law group, found that the “ecological base”-defined as Americans who report the environment as being central to their concerns-is “nearly ninety percent white, mostly college-educated, higher-income, and over thirty-five.”
“Your goal has to be to get the greenest solutions to the poorest people,” Jones told me. “That’s the only goal that’s morally compelling enough to generate enough energy to pull this transition off. The challenge is making this an everybody movement, so your main icons are Joe Six-Pack-Joe the Plumber-becoming Joe the Solar guy, or that kid on the street corner putting down his handgun, picking up a caulk gun."
Jan. 12, 2009
Can a remedy serve for both global warming and poverty?
By Elizabeth Kolbert
This is an excerpt from Greening the Ghetto about Van Jones, founder and president of Green for All.
The modern environmental movement is sometimes said to have begun in the eighteen-nineties, when John Muir founded the Sierra Club, and sometimes in the nineteen-sixties, when Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring.” Muir and Carson saw themselves fighting narrow, private interests on behalf of the public in the broadest possible sense-all people, including those who had not been born. But stop by a meeting of any of the major environmental groups, and you will see that the broad American public has yet to join up. Chances are that most of the attendees will be white, and the few who aren’t will be affluent and middle-aged. A 2006 study commissioned by Earthjustic, a nonprofit environmental law group, found that the “ecological base”-defined as Americans who report the environment as being central to their concerns-is “nearly ninety percent white, mostly college-educated, higher-income, and over thirty-five.”
“Your goal has to be to get the greenest solutions to the poorest people,” Jones told me. “That’s the only goal that’s morally compelling enough to generate enough energy to pull this transition off. The challenge is making this an everybody movement, so your main icons are Joe Six-Pack-Joe the Plumber-becoming Joe the Solar guy, or that kid on the street corner putting down his handgun, picking up a caulk gun."
Introduction to David Allen & GTD
Dear Collaborators in Exceptional Learning,
For about four years I have been following the advice of David Allen about how to get things done--GTD, as he calls it.
I still have much to learn.
My wife and I last year went to his day-long workshop in Chicago and found it helpful. He has smart ideas--what he calls advanced common sense--about how to organize your time and your life to accomplish what you want to accomplish.
And yes he does live in California--Ojai, to be exact. But Wall Street and Fortune 500 companies rely on his advice. And now so do I.
I was introduced to Allen by an article in the Atlantic Monthly by James Fallows, former speech writer for Jimmy Carter and once the editor of US News & World Report.
Also my friend at Poynter, Chip Scanlan, told me about Allen's template--"Natural Planning"-- which is a set of useful questions to ask when you are doing a big project, such as a book.
Allen and his company are very tech savvy and has introduced me to many things, including a new brainstorming software--Mind Manager.
One of the strategies I have adopted is the Weekly Review. That is the time to go over everything--which I have stored mainly in my Entourage Tasks lists. There are about 480 items there today--anything from return a book to Amazon to write one hour today on an article. These are my Next Actions.
The idea of the Weekly Review is to review the things you need to do. This can take one to three hours. This is not time spent completing the actions. But the idea is to get all these things off your mind so you can then focus on what you need to do now and not be distracted by thinking: "I need to return the Amazon book" while I am drafting an article today.
Anyway, in this spirit, I ask you today to consider the rest of your semester.
What do you need to accomplish?
What are the discrete steps that you must take for each major project?
When will you do them?
When is the best time of the day to do these tasks?
And here are questions that David Allen asked me today in my Friday email I get from him:
=============
Do you need to be scheduling blocks of time for yourself in the coming two weeks?
Do you have any actions that require more than an hour of uninterrupted time, and which are "heating up" now in terms of urgency?
This is a very important benefit of your Weekly Review giving you tactical perspective and permission to bracket valuable space for yourself to get some of those things done.
"It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself." Johann Goethe
==============
May you move closer to getting done what you want to get done--including finding a balance in work and play.
BH
For about four years I have been following the advice of David Allen about how to get things done--GTD, as he calls it.
I still have much to learn.
My wife and I last year went to his day-long workshop in Chicago and found it helpful. He has smart ideas--what he calls advanced common sense--about how to organize your time and your life to accomplish what you want to accomplish.
And yes he does live in California--Ojai, to be exact. But Wall Street and Fortune 500 companies rely on his advice. And now so do I.
I was introduced to Allen by an article in the Atlantic Monthly by James Fallows, former speech writer for Jimmy Carter and once the editor of US News & World Report.
Also my friend at Poynter, Chip Scanlan, told me about Allen's template--"Natural Planning"-- which is a set of useful questions to ask when you are doing a big project, such as a book.
Allen and his company are very tech savvy and has introduced me to many things, including a new brainstorming software--Mind Manager.
One of the strategies I have adopted is the Weekly Review. That is the time to go over everything--which I have stored mainly in my Entourage Tasks lists. There are about 480 items there today--anything from return a book to Amazon to write one hour today on an article. These are my Next Actions.
The idea of the Weekly Review is to review the things you need to do. This can take one to three hours. This is not time spent completing the actions. But the idea is to get all these things off your mind so you can then focus on what you need to do now and not be distracted by thinking: "I need to return the Amazon book" while I am drafting an article today.
Anyway, in this spirit, I ask you today to consider the rest of your semester.
What do you need to accomplish?
What are the discrete steps that you must take for each major project?
When will you do them?
When is the best time of the day to do these tasks?
And here are questions that David Allen asked me today in my Friday email I get from him:
=============
Do you need to be scheduling blocks of time for yourself in the coming two weeks?
Do you have any actions that require more than an hour of uninterrupted time, and which are "heating up" now in terms of urgency?
This is a very important benefit of your Weekly Review giving you tactical perspective and permission to bracket valuable space for yourself to get some of those things done.
"It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself." Johann Goethe
==============
May you move closer to getting done what you want to get done--including finding a balance in work and play.
BH
Confucious Says...
An unattributed note I made in one of my small notebooks:
Confucious said:
"Music produces a kind of pleasure human nature cannot do
without."
Supposedly once after he heard an orchestra perform, he was so overwhelmed
that he could not fully taste his food for three months.
Whether it was three months, three days, three hours or three seconds, this is truly an idea that is "food for thought."
How would this idea connect with what you report, what you write, and how you think?
BH
Confucious said:
"Music produces a kind of pleasure human nature cannot do
without."
Supposedly once after he heard an orchestra perform, he was so overwhelmed
that he could not fully taste his food for three months.
Whether it was three months, three days, three hours or three seconds, this is truly an idea that is "food for thought."
How would this idea connect with what you report, what you write, and how you think?
BH
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Wright Thompson, GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI, ESPN MAGAZINE online
I draw your attention to Wright Thompson's strong reporting and writing in this ESPN Magazine.
Here is an excerpt of what I wrote to Wright, who received his undergraduate degree from the Missouri School of Journalism, who is married to another Mizzou journalism grad, Sonia Weinberg--Steve Weinberg's and Scherrie Goettsch's daughter.
I wrote to him:
Once I began reading, I knew I wanted to slowly read every word, and think about what you were saying, think about the 1962 Rebels football team and their intersection with history. Most of the 1962 games, (I can't recall if I went to the Mississippi State game), I heard in their entirety on the radio.
I read your story instead of writing a book chapter. But, in fact, I believe it will help me to now return to write that chapter, about magazines in America in 1880-1920 period.
The SATURDAY EVENING POST in November 1898, according to Frank Luther Mott, described football this way, before there was Buck Randall of Ole Miss:
"The capacity to take hard knocks which belongs to a successful football player is usually associated with the qualities that would enable a man to lead a charge up San Juan Hill or guide the Merrimac into Santiago Harbor."
There are many fine things about the 1962 story, including your own struggle with your family, the history of your state, our state. One of my brothers was in Meredith's biology class and lived a dorm or two away from Baxter Hall.
These days as part of my work, I deal with brutal photographs of racial violence in the 1930s in my hometown of Columbus. And at the same time I deal with images that are so sublime, pictures of black people and white people living their lives in the 1920s, 1930s & 1940s, in the era of "the little grocery stores and the guy pushing burgers off a griddle."
Great reporting. Great writing. You wove into this story so many specific, telling details that can resonate with people who know nothing about Mississippi and people who know a great deal about Mississippi.
I especially like how your handled the whispered phrase with the wives out of earshot: "The blacks..."
I will share your article with my Advanced Writing students at Mizzou.
Thanks for your care and insight, made manifest in journalistic writing.
Here is an excerpt of what I wrote to Wright, who received his undergraduate degree from the Missouri School of Journalism, who is married to another Mizzou journalism grad, Sonia Weinberg--Steve Weinberg's and Scherrie Goettsch's daughter.
I wrote to him:
Once I began reading, I knew I wanted to slowly read every word, and think about what you were saying, think about the 1962 Rebels football team and their intersection with history. Most of the 1962 games, (I can't recall if I went to the Mississippi State game), I heard in their entirety on the radio.
I read your story instead of writing a book chapter. But, in fact, I believe it will help me to now return to write that chapter, about magazines in America in 1880-1920 period.
The SATURDAY EVENING POST in November 1898, according to Frank Luther Mott, described football this way, before there was Buck Randall of Ole Miss:
"The capacity to take hard knocks which belongs to a successful football player is usually associated with the qualities that would enable a man to lead a charge up San Juan Hill or guide the Merrimac into Santiago Harbor."
There are many fine things about the 1962 story, including your own struggle with your family, the history of your state, our state. One of my brothers was in Meredith's biology class and lived a dorm or two away from Baxter Hall.
These days as part of my work, I deal with brutal photographs of racial violence in the 1930s in my hometown of Columbus. And at the same time I deal with images that are so sublime, pictures of black people and white people living their lives in the 1920s, 1930s & 1940s, in the era of "the little grocery stores and the guy pushing burgers off a griddle."
Great reporting. Great writing. You wove into this story so many specific, telling details that can resonate with people who know nothing about Mississippi and people who know a great deal about Mississippi.
I especially like how your handled the whispered phrase with the wives out of earshot: "The blacks..."
I will share your article with my Advanced Writing students at Mizzou.
Thanks for your care and insight, made manifest in journalistic writing.
Monday, February 23, 2009
How To Get Ideas for a Profile
What matters to you? What do you want to know about?
Pointers:
Write down the answers to these questions above, then narrow it down to people, places, things, then narrow it down more.
Google it with Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. Search the Mizzou website for those topics. Search magazine archives for those topics. Search NYT archives for those topics. Go to library and look among the stacks at actual books with those topics. Read actual magazines in the library. Read actual newspapers in the library. Read MIZZOU alumni magazine. Read in-house publications such as ILLUMINATIONS. MizzouWeekly.
Talk with everyone you meet, including reference librarians, teachers, friends, family, mechanics, preachers, doctors, lawyers, dry cleaning people, bartenders, cooks, waiters, waitresses, taxi drivers, bus drivers, sinners, shoe saleswomen, cash register check-out girls, check-out boys, police detectives, judges, hairstylists, refrigerator repairmen, dishwasher repairmen, dishwasher repairwomen, junk yard dealers, car dealers, landlords, astronomers, botanists, weight lifters, long distance runners, paraplegics, deaf people, blind people, tall people, divorce lawyers, bankruptcy lawyers, federal prosecutors, district attorneys, short people, hat sellers, clothing merchants, old people, young people, rich people, bankers, bank tellers, plumbers who bowl, plumbers who don't bowl, carpenters who are great at what they do, poor people, economists, ambulance drivers, ambulance chasers, paramedics, emergency room doctors, baby doctors, skin doctors, stomach doctors, brain surgeons, trail walkers, bicyclists, mushroom scientists, child psychiatrists who go to Bosnia from Mizzou six times a year, poets who write about Palestine and live in Columbia, pool sharks, card players, video game players, card sharks, gamblers, snake experts, frog experts, hog experts, corn experts, naturalists, park rangers, canoeists, kayakers, baseball players, school teachers, angry people, sad people, happy people, drunks who don’t want to be drunks anymore, college students who know what they want to do, college students who have no clue, people from Africa who live in Columbia and clean houses, people from India who are cardiologists and live in Columbia, people from Somalia who live in Columbia, people from South America who live in Columbia, people who are doctors from South Africa and live in Columbia, people from Austria who are doctors and live in Columbia, people in Missouri who lost money to Bernie Madoff, Brad Pitt's next door neighbors in Springfield, Sheryl Crow's best friend from high school, the people in the town where Walt Disney lived, saints, Harry Truman's librarian, stockbrokers who are worried, night owls, early birds, luggage repairmen, people who sharpen tools for a living, chain saw experts, loggers, tractor dealers, sawmill operators, mountain lion experts, lead paint experts, gun shop owners, dog breeders, dog trainers, veterinarians, pacifists, & inventors you meet.
Ask them if they know of someone who.....
Then read the Don Murray handout, Problems and Solutions, I gave to you.
Read your favorite writers. Read their articles and books. Read profiles they have written about motorcycle riders, beauticians, and bathing beauties.
That’s a start.
BH
Pointers:
Write down the answers to these questions above, then narrow it down to people, places, things, then narrow it down more.
Google it with Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. Search the Mizzou website for those topics. Search magazine archives for those topics. Search NYT archives for those topics. Go to library and look among the stacks at actual books with those topics. Read actual magazines in the library. Read actual newspapers in the library. Read MIZZOU alumni magazine. Read in-house publications such as ILLUMINATIONS. MizzouWeekly.
Talk with everyone you meet, including reference librarians, teachers, friends, family, mechanics, preachers, doctors, lawyers, dry cleaning people, bartenders, cooks, waiters, waitresses, taxi drivers, bus drivers, sinners, shoe saleswomen, cash register check-out girls, check-out boys, police detectives, judges, hairstylists, refrigerator repairmen, dishwasher repairmen, dishwasher repairwomen, junk yard dealers, car dealers, landlords, astronomers, botanists, weight lifters, long distance runners, paraplegics, deaf people, blind people, tall people, divorce lawyers, bankruptcy lawyers, federal prosecutors, district attorneys, short people, hat sellers, clothing merchants, old people, young people, rich people, bankers, bank tellers, plumbers who bowl, plumbers who don't bowl, carpenters who are great at what they do, poor people, economists, ambulance drivers, ambulance chasers, paramedics, emergency room doctors, baby doctors, skin doctors, stomach doctors, brain surgeons, trail walkers, bicyclists, mushroom scientists, child psychiatrists who go to Bosnia from Mizzou six times a year, poets who write about Palestine and live in Columbia, pool sharks, card players, video game players, card sharks, gamblers, snake experts, frog experts, hog experts, corn experts, naturalists, park rangers, canoeists, kayakers, baseball players, school teachers, angry people, sad people, happy people, drunks who don’t want to be drunks anymore, college students who know what they want to do, college students who have no clue, people from Africa who live in Columbia and clean houses, people from India who are cardiologists and live in Columbia, people from Somalia who live in Columbia, people from South America who live in Columbia, people who are doctors from South Africa and live in Columbia, people from Austria who are doctors and live in Columbia, people in Missouri who lost money to Bernie Madoff, Brad Pitt's next door neighbors in Springfield, Sheryl Crow's best friend from high school, the people in the town where Walt Disney lived, saints, Harry Truman's librarian, stockbrokers who are worried, night owls, early birds, luggage repairmen, people who sharpen tools for a living, chain saw experts, loggers, tractor dealers, sawmill operators, mountain lion experts, lead paint experts, gun shop owners, dog breeders, dog trainers, veterinarians, pacifists, & inventors you meet.
Ask them if they know of someone who.....
Then read the Don Murray handout, Problems and Solutions, I gave to you.
Read your favorite writers. Read their articles and books. Read profiles they have written about motorcycle riders, beauticians, and bathing beauties.
That’s a start.
BH
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Mark Twain's report on the Buffalo Female Academy's Writing Contest
My mentor Mel Mencher drew my attention to this report about writing, from Mark Twain. Note: One of my LitJo master's students, Charlotte Atchley, is working on final paper about Twain's INNOCENTS ABROAD.
Excerpt from Mark Twain: A Study of the Short Fiction Tom Quirk-University of Missouri-Columbia Copyright 1997 by Twayne Publishers Page 132-135
The paper we have chosen for the first prize of the graduates is very much the best literary effort in the whole collection, and yet it is almost the least ambitious among them.
It relates a very simple little incident, in unpretentious language, and then achieves the difficult feat of pointing it with one of those dismal atrocities called a Moral, without devoting double the space to it which it ought to occupy and outraging every canon for good taste, relevance and modesty.
It is a composition which possesses, also, the very rare merit of stopping when it is finished. It shows a freedom from adjectives and superlatives which is attractive, not to say seductive--and let us remark instructively, in passing, that one can seldom run his pen through an adjective without improving his manuscript. We can say further, in praise of this first-prize composition, that there is a singular aptness of language noticeable in it—denoting a shrewd faculty of selecting just the right word for the service needed, as a general thing.
It is a high gift. It is the talent which gives accuracy, grace and vividness in descriptive writing.
[I can send you a Word document with the full Twain report, if you want it. BH]
Excerpt from Mark Twain: A Study of the Short Fiction Tom Quirk-University of Missouri-Columbia Copyright 1997 by Twayne Publishers Page 132-135
The paper we have chosen for the first prize of the graduates is very much the best literary effort in the whole collection, and yet it is almost the least ambitious among them.
It relates a very simple little incident, in unpretentious language, and then achieves the difficult feat of pointing it with one of those dismal atrocities called a Moral, without devoting double the space to it which it ought to occupy and outraging every canon for good taste, relevance and modesty.
It is a composition which possesses, also, the very rare merit of stopping when it is finished. It shows a freedom from adjectives and superlatives which is attractive, not to say seductive--and let us remark instructively, in passing, that one can seldom run his pen through an adjective without improving his manuscript. We can say further, in praise of this first-prize composition, that there is a singular aptness of language noticeable in it—denoting a shrewd faculty of selecting just the right word for the service needed, as a general thing.
It is a high gift. It is the talent which gives accuracy, grace and vividness in descriptive writing.
[I can send you a Word document with the full Twain report, if you want it. BH]
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Polk Awards. If You Are Serious, You Will Study Them: Talese, Bearak, Dugger
The George Polk Awards were announced Monday. The Polk Award is one of the highest accolades in journalism. They are named for Polk, who was a CBS correspondent killed in Greece during the 1948 civil war there.
For those of you who are serious about journalism, you will look up the original stories by writers such as Barry Bearak & Celia W. Dugger--of the NYT. Bearak is one of my favorites. He worked at the LAT when I was there and was amazing and is amazing as a reporter and writer. Gay Talese won a lifetime achievement award
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/nyregion/17polk.html?scp=1&sq=Polk%20Awards&st=cse
I read this article in the hard copy of the NYT today. When I went to the website to try to find it, by just looking for the words Polk Awards, it could not. So I put Polk Awards in the search box. Actual newspapers have a virtue in that you can scan quickly through sections. Scanning on a webpage is a different experience: sometimes better. Sometimes worse.
For those of you who are serious about journalism, you will look up the original stories by writers such as Barry Bearak & Celia W. Dugger--of the NYT. Bearak is one of my favorites. He worked at the LAT when I was there and was amazing and is amazing as a reporter and writer. Gay Talese won a lifetime achievement award
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/nyregion/17polk.html?scp=1&sq=Polk%20Awards&st=cse
I read this article in the hard copy of the NYT today. When I went to the website to try to find it, by just looking for the words Polk Awards, it could not. So I put Polk Awards in the search box. Actual newspapers have a virtue in that you can scan quickly through sections. Scanning on a webpage is a different experience: sometimes better. Sometimes worse.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
The Boss at the Super Bowl & Michelangelo: In Discipline Freedom Abounds
Michelangelo supposedly said something like this about creating:
In disciple there's freedom.
For years, I have struggled with understanding that. Editors helped to provide me with the discipline of deadlines and limits. As a freelancer, I had to learn to be my own editor and adhere to the deadlines imposed by mortgage payments and bills due.
Here is Bruce Springsteen, a.k.a. The Boss, in the New York Times, talking about rehearsing, writing, and performing for his band's appearance at the 2009 Super Bowl halftime. He will perform for tens of thousands spectators in person and millions upon millions more via television and the internet.
Ordinarily his shows can last three hours. Today, he will have 12 minutes.
"It was very challenging to try and get that exact 12 minutes. I found that in a funny way it was very freeing. O.K., these are your boundaries, so put everything that you have into just this box. If you do it right, you should feel the tension of wanting to spread beyond that time frame. But it can't." (Jon Pareles, "The Rock Laureate," NYT, Feb. 1, 2009, p. 26).
How do you creatively handle your boundaries and limits in reporting, writing, and revising? How do you handle boundaries in your other relationships? What steps do you need to take improve working with your boundaries?
BH
In disciple there's freedom.
For years, I have struggled with understanding that. Editors helped to provide me with the discipline of deadlines and limits. As a freelancer, I had to learn to be my own editor and adhere to the deadlines imposed by mortgage payments and bills due.
Here is Bruce Springsteen, a.k.a. The Boss, in the New York Times, talking about rehearsing, writing, and performing for his band's appearance at the 2009 Super Bowl halftime. He will perform for tens of thousands spectators in person and millions upon millions more via television and the internet.
Ordinarily his shows can last three hours. Today, he will have 12 minutes.
"It was very challenging to try and get that exact 12 minutes. I found that in a funny way it was very freeing. O.K., these are your boundaries, so put everything that you have into just this box. If you do it right, you should feel the tension of wanting to spread beyond that time frame. But it can't." (Jon Pareles, "The Rock Laureate," NYT, Feb. 1, 2009, p. 26).
How do you creatively handle your boundaries and limits in reporting, writing, and revising? How do you handle boundaries in your other relationships? What steps do you need to take improve working with your boundaries?
BH
Friday, January 23, 2009
Managing Doubt
Remember, I wrote to a student recently:
You don't have to banish doubt from your mind when you are reporting and writing. You are learning to listen. You are learning to gather stories and then re-tell those stories in an artful, accurate and meaningful way.
You just need to show up physically, including doubts that are in your mind. Reading will help. Buying the recorder will help.
But also, as Don Murray reminds us, writing to discover what you want to uncover also helps. Writing down your questions now helps. Writing what stories you think you might discover.
Melvin Mencher talks about the importance of having and writing down a working hypothesis that is flexible and open to the evidence--stories, statistics, elements of five senses, conversations, etc.--you will gather.
Writing down your doubts helps now, rather than letting them bounce around in your head and grow larger. That is why you have a blog--to write. To take a few more minutes and write them down. Another label for this day's blog might be "the path to discovery."
Every writer, reporter, story gatherer has doubts. I just watched last night the movie DOUBT. Meryl Streep's character at the end displays a beautifully intense attack of doubt.
A friend of mine who once was my bureau chief in Providence and then later became associate managing editor used to say that he felt those butterflies of anxiety UNTIL he got "a few quotes under his belt."
In your case I want you to be paying attention to not just the "quotes" but any dialogue that occurs and of course, the story. But those butterflies are also telling you about things you need to pay attention to--about yourself and about the story.
BH
You don't have to banish doubt from your mind when you are reporting and writing. You are learning to listen. You are learning to gather stories and then re-tell those stories in an artful, accurate and meaningful way.
You just need to show up physically, including doubts that are in your mind. Reading will help. Buying the recorder will help.
But also, as Don Murray reminds us, writing to discover what you want to uncover also helps. Writing down your questions now helps. Writing what stories you think you might discover.
Melvin Mencher talks about the importance of having and writing down a working hypothesis that is flexible and open to the evidence--stories, statistics, elements of five senses, conversations, etc.--you will gather.
Writing down your doubts helps now, rather than letting them bounce around in your head and grow larger. That is why you have a blog--to write. To take a few more minutes and write them down. Another label for this day's blog might be "the path to discovery."
Every writer, reporter, story gatherer has doubts. I just watched last night the movie DOUBT. Meryl Streep's character at the end displays a beautifully intense attack of doubt.
A friend of mine who once was my bureau chief in Providence and then later became associate managing editor used to say that he felt those butterflies of anxiety UNTIL he got "a few quotes under his belt."
In your case I want you to be paying attention to not just the "quotes" but any dialogue that occurs and of course, the story. But those butterflies are also telling you about things you need to pay attention to--about yourself and about the story.
BH
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Diane Arbus as a Revelator
Here is part of the Guggenheim application statement by photographer Diane Arbus in 1963. I saw a phenomenal Arbus exhibit in New York in March 2005. The book DIANE ARBUS REVELATIONS represents some of the images in that show.
The show included a space in the museum that replicated her darkroom with her books and a photographic enlarger that allowed you to see with a safe-light how an negative image appeared when she was printing it.
What Arbus wanted to explore reminded me of some of the ideas might pursue this.
May her work and the work of others such as her inspire you to achieve your wildest dreams.
-------------
1963
Plan for a Photographic Project
American Rites, Manners and Customs
I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present because we tend while living here and now to perceive only what is random and barren and formless about it. While we regret that the present is not like the past and despair of its ever becoming the future, its innumerable inscrutable habits lie in wait for their meaning. I want to gather them, like somebody’s grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful.
There are the Ceremonies of Celebration (the Pageants, the Festivals, the Feasts, the Conventions) and the Ceremonies of Competition (Contests, Games, Sports), the Ceremonies of Buying and Selling, of Gambling, of the Law and the Show; the Ceremonies of Fame in which the Winners Win and the Lucky are Chosen or Family Ceremonies or Gatherings (the Schools, the Clubs the Meetings). Then there are the Ceremonial Places (The Beauty Parlor, The Funeral Parlor or, simply the Parlor) and Ceremonial Costumes (what Waitresses wear, or Wrestlers), Ceremonies of the Rich, like the Dog Show, and of the Middle Class, like the Bridge Game. Or, for example: the Dancing Lesson, the Graduation, the Testimonial Dinner, the Séance, the Gymnasium and the Picnic. And perhaps the Waiting Room, the Factory, the Masquerade, the Rehearsal, the Initiation, the Hotel Lobby and the Birthday Party. The etcetera.
I will write whatever is necessary for the further description and elucidation of these Rites and I will go wherever I can to find them.
These are our symptoms and our monuments. I want simply to save them, for what is ceremonious and curious and commonplace will be legendary.
------------
BH
The show included a space in the museum that replicated her darkroom with her books and a photographic enlarger that allowed you to see with a safe-light how an negative image appeared when she was printing it.
What Arbus wanted to explore reminded me of some of the ideas might pursue this.
May her work and the work of others such as her inspire you to achieve your wildest dreams.
-------------
1963
Plan for a Photographic Project
American Rites, Manners and Customs
I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present because we tend while living here and now to perceive only what is random and barren and formless about it. While we regret that the present is not like the past and despair of its ever becoming the future, its innumerable inscrutable habits lie in wait for their meaning. I want to gather them, like somebody’s grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful.
There are the Ceremonies of Celebration (the Pageants, the Festivals, the Feasts, the Conventions) and the Ceremonies of Competition (Contests, Games, Sports), the Ceremonies of Buying and Selling, of Gambling, of the Law and the Show; the Ceremonies of Fame in which the Winners Win and the Lucky are Chosen or Family Ceremonies or Gatherings (the Schools, the Clubs the Meetings). Then there are the Ceremonial Places (The Beauty Parlor, The Funeral Parlor or, simply the Parlor) and Ceremonial Costumes (what Waitresses wear, or Wrestlers), Ceremonies of the Rich, like the Dog Show, and of the Middle Class, like the Bridge Game. Or, for example: the Dancing Lesson, the Graduation, the Testimonial Dinner, the Séance, the Gymnasium and the Picnic. And perhaps the Waiting Room, the Factory, the Masquerade, the Rehearsal, the Initiation, the Hotel Lobby and the Birthday Party. The etcetera.
I will write whatever is necessary for the further description and elucidation of these Rites and I will go wherever I can to find them.
These are our symptoms and our monuments. I want simply to save them, for what is ceremonious and curious and commonplace will be legendary.
------------
BH
Monday, January 19, 2009
Susan Sontag on reading and writing
In the Dec. 22 & 29, 2008 NEW YORKER, Darryl Pinckney writes about Susan Sontag's early journals. I loved reading about her lists of books she was reading in the early 1960s and her critiques of the writers. Henry James, Proust. Tillich, Gibbon, G. Le Bras, William Faulkner, Nathanael West, Sherwood Anderson, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison & Grace Paley.
Pickney concludes the article with a quote from a 1961 journal entry:
"Writing is a beautiful act. It is making something that will give pleasure to others later."
What are you reading now?
What are you writing now?
BH
Pickney concludes the article with a quote from a 1961 journal entry:
"Writing is a beautiful act. It is making something that will give pleasure to others later."
What are you reading now?
What are you writing now?
BH
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