What Will Happen To The Hoarders ...
when newspapers die?
"I acknowledge the stackability of newspapers."
Can't get this video to imbed properly, so here.
The Mayborn
literary nonfiction conference
Go, now, and sign up for the Mayborn conference in Grapevine, Texas, July 23-25. Sweet line-up, with keynotes by Gary Smith, Mark Bowden and Mary Karr.
To Fly
encounters
Leonora LaPeter Anton: CLEARWATER — Robert Utley and his mother pedal their bikes up the sidewalk toward the library. The temperature is in the 40s, but Robert doesn't feel cold. He doesn't feel much of anything.
Inside, Robert sits in front of his battered computer and signs on to an airplane chat group. His mother waits nearby while he looks at photos of the largest plane ever built and the most expensive plane.
He imagines himself flying them one day. Up there, he could get away from down here.
Glenda, The Waitress
sorta, kinda
John Barry: ST. PETERSBURG — The way it was for 30 years, grizzled old fishermen, smelling of salt and last night's bait, stumbled into Skyway Jack's at dawn. A skinny Tennessee hillbilly brought their coffee and said — voice as Southern as peppered grits — "How y'all doin'?"
Those rough old cobs fell forever in love with Glenda Hill.
She died on Jan. 26 of ovarian cancer. She was 62. No one felt right that her ashes were whisked north without a goodbye. So Skyway Jack's will say farewell Saturday to the hillbilly waitress that everyone fell in love with.
The woman they loved was barely 110 pounds, a single mother of three. She held it together with her trayfuls of eggs and coffee.
Big Trouble At 11:35
the laid show
Mark Seal (thanks, Mark): A man waits in the darkness, watching what is left of his life slip away. His name is Robert Joel Halderman. At 51, he is a producer for the CBS true-crime series 48 Hours Mystery, the latest post for a battle-scarred newsman who has spent much of his life in war zones. He’s had two divorces, which have saddled him with crushing alimony payments, and his second wife recently sent him “reeling,” as he e-mailed colleagues, when she moved to Colorado with their 11-year-old son, Jimmy.
It’s late August 2009, and Halderman is keeping watch outside his modest house, in Norwalk, Connecticut, as a $100,000 electric Tesla sports car comes to a stop at the end of the road. In the passenger seat is his smart, attractive live-in girlfriend, Stephanie Birkitt, 34, being driven home from work by her boss, David Letterman, who lives 20 miles away on a 108-acre estate in Westchester.
Applause
contest
Congrats to Tom Lake and Tony Rehagen, finalists for Writer of the Year in this year's CRMA Awards.
Tom's also up for Feature Writing for "The Debtor" and Reporting for "The Good People of Dalton Would Like Jobs Now, Please."
Tony's up for Personality Profile for "Free Man."
The Seven Best
IN CASE YOU MISSED ANY
Did someone else already post this? Even if they did, these stories -- by C.J. Chivers, Tom Junod, Richard Ben Cramer, Gay Talese, John Sack, Tom Wolfe, and Norman Mailer -- are worth another look. For its 75th anniversary, Esquire named them the seven best in its history.
Here's the link.
Who's read all of them?
Which one is your favorite, and why?
Do you know of any better than these that should have made the list instead?
A Quarterback's Tears
BLINDSIDED
Tommy Tomlinson: Jake Delhomme cries. And of course the jokes start right away.
We cried, too, when you threw all those interceptions.
Maybe he can wipe his eyes with some of that 13 million dollars he's getting.
Blowback
on comments
From Story Lab:
... After the story appeared, I sent Sutherland an email asking him what he thought. He wasn’t happy with the drawing that accompanied the story, a couple of sharks circling a woman. And he wasn’t happy with the comments that readers posted on washingtonpost.com about the story.
You could hardly blame him.
StoryCorps
why does this work?
Two Fridays in a row I have arrived to work in emotional shambles. Thanks, StoryCorps.
But why does this work?
If you missed the stories (are they stories?) on the last two Fridays, give them a quick listen. Do me a favor though and don't read anything when you click on the following links so you can simulate my experience.
Here's the first part.
Here's the second.
You get spare context and what amounts to a very short conversation. We know almost nothing about their lives. There is little character development. But I find myself inside the lives of the subjects immediately. Why?
Justice And Friendship
C, For Convicted
Kurt Streeter (thanks, Richard): The man, a thin and gray-haired federal judge, walked nervously up and down the streets of skid row, past drug dealers, pimps and thugs, past rows of men lying like glass-eyed zombies against concrete walls.
"Excuse me," he said, pulling out a photograph, "have you seen this man?" He was met by blank faces or angry stares. And, always, one word: "No."
He couldn't give up. Down more streets and through urine-soaked alleys. He was the only white person he could see.
To Judge Spencer Letts, then 72, this distinction did not matter. What mattered was that Michael Banyard, an ex-con who had lived much of his adult life in prison, could be in trouble again.
Balls, Bodies*, Beef Jerky
*The Exhibition
Trent Moorman (thanks, Hank): he first thing you notice: eerie, sleek, air-lock cleanliness. Bodies: The Exhibition being an emporium of dissected dead people, I expected cots and canvas, a triage tent with bloodstains and tears. I couldn't believe how many couples were on dates. An exhibition of dead bodies, apparently, is a romantic hot spot. I brought beef jerky.
The bodies on display are small and svelte, skinless, and Asian. Muscles and bones. Cross sections of neatly carved-up torsos. Wet- looking lungs and hearts. Kidneys, intestines, and dangling balls. Lots of balls. Bodies is a ball fest. Also: penises. One body is flayed into two parts—its skeleton holding hands with its muscular system (ball area included) in a macabre eternal jig. Even more unsettling were the eyelashes. Tiny, delicate fringes, so alive, so familiar, guarding soulless, piercing glass eyes. The eyelashes made the bodies look like they were about to say something. Something like "Stop staring at my balls."
A National Late-Night Hallucination
a win for the middle of the road
Hank Stuever: Of course Jay Leno opened his return to "The Tonight Show" Monday night with an "it was all a dream" gag, waking in a sepia-toned, Dorothy delirium from "The Wizard of Oz." Because it was sort of like a bad dream -- a national late-night hallucination -- in which overpaid funnymen retired, said farewell, switched time slots, spent millions on new studio sets, said hello, launched middling-to-awful new shows, then spoke badly of each other and their employer. All to bring Leno back to his old job.
Death And Revenge
operation Dark rest
Miles Amoore (thanks, Dawson): THE patrol set off in darkness. Through fields of poppy and wheat, 100 men from the Brigade Reconnaissance Force stumbled towards their target, a strip of compounds that had been used by the Taliban to fire on British troops.
“Right, lads, the Taliban are waking up. They’ve already pinged our position,” said Captain Andy Breach, the BRF’s intelligence officer, as he listened in to the insurgents’ radio under a moonless sky.
Then the mine exploded.
The Goalie
'THE HAPPY-HOUR LAMENT OF YOUR BUDDY AT HAYNES AND BOONE'
Michael Brick: CEDAR PARK, Texas – Game night, and the goalie paused in his doorway – 6 feet 4 inches, 212 pounds and a faithless left knee backlit against the amber glow of a townhouse leased for seven months to last the hockey season.