I’m sure everyone in Alfond Arena wondered who the hell I was that I rated a handshake from the senator. It was May 1995, and I was graduating from the University of Maine with my master’s degree in English. Olympia Snowe, long-time member of the House of Representatives, recently elected to the U.S. Senate, stood up from her seat on the speaker’s platform, took a few steps forward, and shook my hand.

Olympia was the Commencement speaker that afternoon. As a member of the local media, I’d interviewed her during a press availability prior to the ceremony. As the news director for a radio station in Bangor/Ellsworth, I’d covered Olympia a lot, and we’d become friendly over the years.

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“Who the hell is this guy writing to?” I wondered as I made my way deeper and deeper into Bill McKibben’s Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

In my recent readings about “place” in creative nonfiction, I’d had the pleasure to read a lot of fine, fine work by nature writers. I’ve always enjoyed that kind of writing, and I’ve enjoyed a deeply felt connection to the natural world (one reason I took on that reading project in the first place). I’ve tried of late to make a conscious effort to seek out writers who talk about the relationship between humankind and nature, particularly in the context of looming environmental collapse. That’s how I found McKibben.

That I finished his book—instead of throwing myself off a bridge in despair—still amazes me.

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On Valentine’s Day, a Buffalo business news magazine reported annual operating profits at my regional metro daily, The Buffalo News, had “for the first time in at least 25 years … [fallen] below $10 million and the paper is exploring the possibility of perhaps charging for online content to offset circulation declines.”

Such is the trend — ad revenues diving into fiscal oblivion — at many of the nation’s large metropolitan dailies. As Alan Mutter at Newsosaur wrote in December:

Newspaper advertising sales this year will come in at less than half the record $49.4 billion achieved as recently in 2005, according to an analysis of the year-to-date performance of the industry. [emphasis added]

Imagine that: An industry’s ad sales have fallen by half in just seven years. But to listen to the publisher of The Buffalo News, you’d conclude he’s saying, “It’s not our fault.”

In a Buffalo First story by reporter James Fink, publisher Stan Lipsey suggests that the Buff News‘ sinking financial fortunes are due to factors beyond the newspaper’s control. Perhaps, but like many such managerial pronouncements in the industry over the past decade, admission of flawed management decisions past and present is nowhere in sight.
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I was originally going to respond to a thoughtful piece by Jane Briggs-Bunting here at Scholars & Rogues, “Is the media simply racist? Detroit News columnist hits the mark on Bashara murder coverage,” but the more I thought about the matter, the more I disagreed with her conclusion that columnist (actually editorial page editor) Nolan Finley’s piece “Finley: If life’s cheap, murder’s not news” is either poignant or accurate.

Somehow, I missed the sensational headlines about the Bashara murder since it happened, but then again, I don’t generally keep up with national news of local murders for pretty much that very reason…the sensational aspect. Full story »

Crime is a way of life in urban communities, and Detroit is always right up there as one of the baddest of the bads when the FBI releases its annual violent crime statistics.

In the first month of this year, Detroit initially recorded 38 homicides–more than one a day and a sobering statistic.

When a Grosse Pointe Park woman was found strangled in her Mercedes SUV in a Detroit alley on January 25, she was initially listed as one of the 38.

The case became a national and local media sensation since Jane Bashara was white, and Grosse Pointe Park, a suburban enclave, not quite as tony as Grosse Pointe but close, hadn’t had a homicide in more than 20 years. Full story »

I read a lot of books, which means I also read a lot of book reviews. And some are classics. They’re essays of a certain type, after all, and there are great essays, so why not great book reviews? John Banvilles’s take-down of Ian McEwan’s Saturday in The New York Review of Books several years ago is already legend. Going back further, it’s hard to imagine a better piece of essay writing than Paul Fussell’s review of The Boy Scout Handbook (to be found in the collection of essays bearing that same name). And perhaps topping the list of all-time classics is Peter Medawar’s well-deserved destruction of Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man (collected in a book of Medawar’s essays, Pluto’s Republic), back when people actually read, or claimed to read, Teilhard, in 1961.
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The law forbids super PACs — political action committees permitted to raise unlimited funds with little disclosure of donors — from coordinating their activities with those of candidates’ formal campaign committees.

But, it seems, nothing prevents super PACs from coordinating their fundraising activities with each other. And this comes with the blessing of the Democratic fundraiser-in-chief.

From a report by Peter Stone of the Center for Public Integrity comes this tidbit:

Five Democratic super PACs are reaching out to party mega-donors, in a fledgling effort seeking $1 million to $10 million contributions, now that President Barack Obama has blessed the outside spending group working to get him re-elected.

And the reason? Stone reported in January that Democratic super PACs and nonprofits, formed last year, had only raised about $19 million.
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As if we needed still more evidence that financial authority over national political campaigns is increasingly wielded by fewer and fewer really rich people, consider this exhibit:

Super PACs raised about $181 million in the last two years — with roughly half of it coming from fewer than 200 super-rich people.

That’s the news from a study called “Auctioning Democracy” jointly conducted by Demos, an organization that says it practices “advocacy to influence public debate and catalyze change,” and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Both groups seek to strengthen, if not compel full disclosure and expenditure rules.

Super PACs’ power stemmed from the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 2010 SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission decision. The Court’s Citizen United decision further strengthened corporations’ claim to personhood and weakened the requirement for full disclosure of donations to super PACs.

Politico’s Ken Vogel and Abby Phillip’s analysis of the study noted that

A relatively few wealthy backers are keeping super PACs afloat — and they’re saying so. Last year alone, individuals gave super PACs $63 million.

The news only worsens.
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Gillian Tett, normally a font of level-headedness and good judgment over at The Financial Times, had a very odd column this past weekend. She was at Davos (of course!) and was vaguely unhappy about Unilever’s presentation about all the good works it was undertaking in the name of Social Responsibility.

I know, I know, who is going to believe Unilever, one of the largest food and consumer products companies in the world, is Socially Responsible? What does that even mean, anyway? Well, leaving that aside for the moment, I’ve been following this area for a while, and in fact Unilever does spend a fair amount of time and money (relatively speaking) in this area. Why? Because there are an increasing number of investors that are demanding it. Full story »

Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. (1937) — Orwell is best know for his dystopic 1984 and Animal Farm, but Orwell cut his chops as a journalist, and he understood the power of his pen. In Wigan Pier, he looks at the abominable Depression-era conditions of northern England’s working class. “I have seen just enough of the working class to avoid idealizing them,” Orwell says, yet he obviously admires them for somehow making due, lowering their standards of living rather than giving in to despair.  He also realizes their value in calling out the hypocrisies of the country’s middle class. Full story »

When you come down to it, we’re surrounded by morons and fools, many of whom are our leaders–political, cultural, media, whatever. Opening a newspaper or turning on the television in modern America often is like diving into an oil spill. So it’s time once again to remind ourselves of their transgressions, which we have the Buffalo Beast to do for us, so we don’t have to waste time trying to keep track ourselves. Once again, here is their annual list of the 50 Most Loathsome Americans in 2011. It’s got Megyn Kelly (pictured, number 45) on it, and all the Repubican presidential candidates, and Rupert Murdoch is way up there at number 2, bless his heart. And The Donald, of course.

Yesterday I attempted to shed a little light on the PR crisis strategy behind the Komen Foundation’s sudden Planned Parenthood “backtracking.”

Contrary to what Komen’s highly-paid PR crisis hacks and gullible headline writers at newsdesks around the nation would ask you to believe, The Susan G. Komen Foundation does NOT promise to fund Planned Parenthood in the future. They promise to let PP APPLY for grants in the future. Applying and receiving are different things, as anyone who ever applied and got rejected for a job ought to know. Full story »

After feeding twenty-six books into my head in thirty days, I’d like to say that I’m letting my brain decompress, but I’ll be honest: I’m still reading. In fact, I have two books going right now, Bill Bryson’s I’m a Stranger Here Myself and Barbara Kingsolver’s High Tide in Tucson. I want to hit up Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams and Wendell Barry’s agrarian essays, too, and I want to spend some time with David Cushman’s book on The Wilderness, Bloody Promenade. Maybe then I’ll be done. Maybe.

But there’s David Gessner’s Sick of Nature. There’s Susan Jane Gilman’s Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven. There’s George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier. And there’s still John Muir looming over everything, a backdrop to much of what I’ve read, as significant as the Sierra Nevadas, as significant as Thoreau and Walden.

So many books, so little time. Full story »

I’m in my second term in the U.S. House of Representatives. I’m a Republocrat. I like the job. It pays $174,000, has great medical benefits, provides a really nice private gym to use, and lots of people have to be nice to me. And there are those $110,000 in taxpayer-funded fringe benefits I get (including plush retirement plans, paid time off, and contributions to Social Security and Medicare taxes). I’ve got a staff to answer the phone and email, run my Twitter and Facebook stuff, and deal with those damned constituents. And I’m in a relatively safe district, thanks to that Republocrat-friendly redistricting bill passed in my state last year. Hey, sometimes people let me use their corporate jets! (Well, as long as I keep quiet about those trips and pay commercial airfare for it.)

Yeah. This is a sweet gig. I want to stay here. In fact, I want to … move up. Be in the leadership. Be a mover and shaker. Now how am I gonna do that beyond kissing the speaker’s ass (and those of his damn deputies, too) and voting however he (or she) tells me to?

It will take money for that Republocrat to ascend higher in the House’s toadying ladder of leadership. Lots of money. And as we know, House members (and senators) have a vehicle to collect and dispense money to other House members — the leadership political action committee. A principal reason for the existence of leadership PACs to is buy friends and influence on Capitol Hill. Apparently, hard work and intelligence are insufficient.
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#26: Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism by Thomas B. Kohnstamm (2008)

I don’t know much about Brazil beyond the fact that the Creature from the Black Lagoon lived there on some branch of the Amazon. I also know that a different branch of the Amazon, the River of Doubt, nearly killed Teddy Roosevelt. And I know Rio is there, but what happens in Rio stays in Rio, so I don’t know many details.

So when I stumbled across Kohnstamm’s book about being a travel writer in Brazil, I thought it would be a good chance to learn something about the country. The book looked interesting, too, because it implied a good ethics lesson: Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?

Well, I didn’t learn much about Brazil, and I didn’t get to ponder writerly ethics so much as a get a pretty explicit lesson on what not to do, but Kohnstamm kept me entertained with his Thompsonesque antics. This was “travel hedonism” at its gonzoest. Full story »

New trouble is brewing at Penn State, though the school is operating within the state’s Right to Know law. ABC News has reported that the five current and former Penn State employees enmeshed in the Sandusky abuse scandal are all still on the school’s payroll.

The five are fired football coach Joe Paterno, former president Graham Spanier (who remains a tenured faculty member, as does Paterno), assistant coach Mike McQueary (who is on paid leave), former vice president for finance Gary Schultz (who resigned), and former athletic director Tim Curley (who is also on leave). The latter two are facing criminal charges of perjury and failure to report alleged sexual abuse. Penn State is reportedly paying for their legal defense, as well. Full story »

I still read the print edition of the Plain Dealer, every day. Have had a subscription since I moved back to the Cleveland area in 2004. I read the sections in order and save the comics for last (my habit since I was in my teens). So I was taken aback yesterday when I found this on the comics page:

“Editor’s note: Today’s “Non Sequitur” strip was withheld because it was deemed objectionable by Plain Dealer editors. A replacement strip was unavailable by press time.”

I knew I was going to find that message–my husband had already seen it (and written a letter to the PD editor, Debra Adams Simmons). I asked what the problem was and I expected something about religious or political content. He described the cartoon: two men and a rabbit sitting at a table with a police line-up in progress. On the other side of the two-way mirror: a cat, a bear, a wolf, and a snake. The rabbit’s line, “OK, I know how bad it sounds, but they all really do look alike to me.” You can see the original here on the Seattlepi.com website.

The contents of the rest of the PD, including the comic section, make that bit of censorship seem ludicrous. Full story »

#20: selections from The John McPhee Reader (1976) and The Second John McPhee Reader (1996) by John McPhee

No one seems to know when “creative nonfiction” emerged as a genre, but John McPhee’s name is frequently cited as one of the seminal figures. I decided I should check out his work. Rather than hit up one of his twenty-five-plus books, I decided to dip into a pair of John McPhee readers so I could get a wide sampling, looking at essays that specifically dealt with places.

I first came across McPhee’s work while I was waiting for an oil change. A member of the university’s English faculty happened to come in, and we started chit-chatting. This colleague’s particular expertise rests with Milton, so I was surprised when the conversation turned to McPhee. “Your work reminds me of his,” he told me.

I had no idea at the time what an immense compliment that was. Full story »

#19: The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (1997)

I never read The Perfect Storm until I saw the trailer for the 2000 movie. There, on the big screen, a fishing boat tried to bull its way straight up—literally straight up—a gigantic wall of water. “Did you see that?” I said to my wife, smacking her lightly on the shoulder. “Did you see that? Straight up a wall of water!”

That same image would appear on movie posters when the film finally came out a couple months later.

I had to get the book.

By then, The Perfect Storm had been released in paperback, and I was able to find a copy whose cover had not yet been co-opted by the movie studio. The edition did benefit from a new afterward by the author, Sebastian Junger, which has proven to be one of the most useful “case studies” on literary journalism that I’ve ever read. Full story »

#17: Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz (1998)

If there’s one book I’ve wished I’d written, it’s Confederates in the Attic. Of course, Tony Horwitz already wrote it, nearly two decades ago (I can hardly believe it’s been that long). Here’s a guy who wandered around the South, talking to people about the legacy of the Civil War. He asked questions, had conversations, observed, listened, and explored the landscape for himself. He immersed himself in the story.

This, I tell my students, is what good feature writers do. They take the time to do the story justice—and a story as complex as this one requires a lot of time if you’re going to be thorough and fair. That’s what I respect most about Horwitz’s work on the book: he takes the time to make an honest attempt at trying to understanding that which, I suspect, can never fully be understood.

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