This has nothing to do with writing (well, maybe). A guy in New York buys vending machines off the Web, fills the capsules with ideas and plants them around the city. Fifty cents buys you a toy, an idea, and a map to the location for your idea. He also gives back a quarter.
Read more here and here.
Libby Copeland: Cindy McCain might yearn to be invisible sometimes, or at the very least, not surrounded by the Secret Service and photographers and gawking people. The scrutiny seems too much to bear. Something about that half-apologetic manner.
"I appreciate you disrupting your day," she tells one of the administrators of a Harlem charter school during a June visit to New York, even though it's a big coup for this little school to score a visit by a potential first lady.
"I'm sorry to interrupt your work," she tells a class of frisky fourth-graders, who are thrilled to be interrupted.
McCain, 54, stands against a wall, hands behind her back, half-stooping at a respectful distance to observe the children. She's ethereally slender, and today she wears a satiny taupe suit with her hair twisted into a curly up-do by the stylist who travels with her.
It would look like this: Twelve hours ago: Called wife on way home. Wondered if I should pick something up for dinner.
Eleven hours, 59 and a half minutes ago: Listened to wife's cell ring and ring and ring.
Eleven hours, 59 minutes ago: Didn't feel like hearing voicemail woman explain calling options, hung up.
Eleven hours, 30 minutes ago: Arrived home without incident.
Eleven hours, 29 minutes ago: Wife and three kids got home from mud-puddle-splashy walk.
Eleven hours, 28 and a half minutes ago: Wife asked where I had been. Told wife I had called, asked her why she didn't answer, even though it seemed obvious.
James Meadow in Part I: She is half-naked and friendly. Probably clean, too, since she is merrily soaking in the Seal Pond - where, by the way, there are no real seals. Just two statues that spit water at each other and are lucky they are made of bronze because that means they don't have to worry about accidentally catching a glimpse of the woman who, FYI, is naked from the waist down and sharing the pool with them even as she sings out to a passing unlucky non-statue, "Hi! What's your name?"
You don't often get the chance to be scarred or amused - take your pick - by this kind of nether-view in The Park. But if you hang around long enough, chances are you'll see something odd or scary or scuzzy. Something that will make you want to not hang around.
It might be the guy rummaging through a garbage can, tossing stuff out - think of it as a different form of trash recycling - as he looks for whatever it is he's looking for. It might be the homemade obscene ads offering cheap oral sex posted with indelible pink marker on a stone railing. It might be the portable toilets where beer cans have been tossed in the urinal. It might be a hard look from one of the people who use-buy-or-sell drugs. It might be the dead pigeon that lies stiff in the grass, flies buzzing around it, and, a day later, all that's left is a single feather.
From Roy Peter Clark:
Chip Scanlan and I have been asked to do a third edition of the Bedford book: “America’s Best Newspaper Writing.” The first edition was a historical anthology of the best of the best from the ASNE Writing Awards competition and books.
This go-around, Chip and I would like to expand the pool of potential stories beyond ASNE winners. So we are looking to add about 15 stories from these categories:
deadline writing
local reporting and beats
business and explanatory
obituaries and funerals
crime and courts
opinion and persuasion
the profile and feature story
war and disaster
We are open to nominations from the readers of Gangrey. Please nominate one of your own stories, or one that stands out for you from another writer.
We are looking for newspaper stories only. It would be cool if the story won some award, but even that is not necessary. For example, I’m nominating Kelley Benham’s obituary of Terri Schiavo. You can send your nominations to me at rclark@poynter.org, or hash them over on Gangrey. Thanks. – RPC
Lane DeGregory: LITHIA
She slept late last Sunday.
After her daughter and grandbaby had moved back to town, after her sister had flown in — surprise! — from Italy, her husband figured she was exhausted.
"I didn't think anything of it," he later told the police.
Margherita "Meg" Tanner woke just after noon and pulled on an old pair of jeans, a blouse with pink flowers, and flip-flops. She walked into the living room of their mobile home and slumped onto the sofa.
Their son's girlfriend was there with their two grandsons, ages 4 and 1. While the girlfriend did laundry in the kitchen, Meg, 50, and her husband, Mark, 53, played with the boys.
Soon Meg went outside for a cigarette. Minutes passed. "She must be getting hot out there," Mark thought. He stretched up in his easy chair and looked outside.
His wife was gone.
Paul Kix (thanks, Dan): This is the machine.
It is a gray square of hard plastic, looks like a garage door opener but is perhaps double the size of one. Inside this square is the circuit board and all that is evil and beneficent and contentious about the machine. But the square itself couldn't be more pedestrian. Fastened to it, by Velcro, is another casing of hard plastic, another square, which houses a 12-volt battery. Dangling from the machine's corners are wires, and at the ends of these wires, electrodes that emit 60 volts and 15 milliamps of electricity in two-second bursts. The electrodes are attached to the arms, legs, or stomachs of roughly half of the 209 students at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton. The machine's sole purpose is to shock these students. The shocks are viewed by JRC, and pretty much only JRC, as a corrective therapy.
It is a painful shock; you hear all sorts of stories about it. JRC's lawyers used to let journalists receive it, but not anymore. They can watch, though. They can watch Ralph Antonelli, director of quality control training at JRC, a wiry man with swept-back black hair, secure an electrode to his right forearm, the machine on the table before him, and the transmitter for it, the little remote control that staffers hold at all times, sitting next to that. They can watch as Antonelli presses the button and his forearm tenses and his middle and ring fingers shoot downward toward his palm. Then they can watch his face, relaxed even as the transmitter is beeping and the electrode is bzzzing his skin. "See?" he says. "Just two seconds and it's over." Some liken it, as Antonelli does, to a bee sting. Others, including a student who's received it, call it the longest two seconds of their lives. One thing is certain about the machine, known as the Graduated Electronic Decelerator: What we just witnessed isn't it at its most powerful. There is a version that is three times stronger.
Irene Jay Liu: Joseph L. Bruno had wandered off again. Walking through the Albany International Airport, with a crush of staffers, media and well-wishers in tow, Bruno was supposed to be headed toward the observation deck that bears a bust that honors the former Senate majority leader, and now former senator.
Bruno was saying goodbye Friday, the last of many "lasts" over the past few weeks, and he couldn't resist the stares from people at the Colonie airport. He bee-lined toward anyone at all -- airline attendants, passengers, custodial workers, a baby.
Some recognized him, others responded to his greetings with curious looks. He chatted, he shook hands, and before moving on, he introduced himself: "I'm Senator Joe Bruno."
But as of 12:01 a.m. Saturday, "everybody calls me Joe," Bruno said.
John Barry: GULFPORT — She looks young and petite, waiflike in T-shirt and shorts. The only clue to who she really is, or was, is a slight toughness in her voice, a commanding directness, a clear vibe that this is someone who could, under certain circumstances, pull the trigger.
The girl in the T-shirt was the lieutenant colonel who trucked duffel bags of cash around Baghdad, who fed donkeys to Saddam's lions, who brought home a Bronze Star, who also brought home a strange illness and a whole lot of emotional ambiguity.
The story of Army Lt. Col. Kathryn Champion, 43, parallels the story of the war. She won plenty, lost plenty. She accomplished a lot, accomplished little. She looks good, feels bad. She can't say what her story means. The ending hasn't been written. It's as though she has circled back to the beginning. She's Kathy again, just Kathy, starting over with nothing.
AP: The many and deepening cuts at newspapers across the country are starting to take a toll on their content, according to a study being released Monday.
The challenge newspapers must meet immediately is to find more revenue on the Internet, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's study, called "The Changing Newsroom: What is Being Gained and What is Being Lost in America's Daily Newspapers."
Newspaper managers need to "find a way to monetize the rapid growth of Web readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their competitive advantage disappears."
Stories are shorter overall, the study found, and staff coverage tends to focus on local and community news.
So look at this. Derek Zumsteg, who writes for a baseball site called Ussmariner.com, recently became the first blogger to have his work included the annual Best American Sportswriting book. The story, a forensic analysis of Bugs Bunny's baseball greatness, made me laugh very loudly on the airplane tonight on the way back from the Mayborn conference in Texas. It illustrates a point that speaker and author Candice Millard made so well this morning: In writing, the idea is everything.
Read it here: With the DVD release of "Looney Tunes Golden Collection" it is at last possible for us to examine in detail one of the most famous baseball games ever played, and see what lessons the contest holds for the analytical community.
"Baseball Bugs" (1946) depicts a game held at the Polo Grounds. No date is given, but artifacts shown such as public address equipment and advertisements ("Filboid Studge," "Nox, 2 for 25," "Manza Champagne") definitively place it during the 1946 season. The visiting Gas House Gorillas are playing against the home team, the Tea Totallers. It is a day game and conditions are good.
The first view of the scoreboard shows the Gorillas at 94 runs (10-28-16-40) after the first four innings. This appears to be footage inserted out of order, as we’ll determine later the score then was not 96-0 but rather 54-0. While obviously neither team was a major league affiliate and it is almost certain that the game played is an exhibition, the score is already notable. The total of 54 runs was far more than the previous all-time run scoring record for a team in a game (held by the Chicago Colts, who scored 36 against Louisville in a game on June 29th, 1897), and the score of forty runs in an inning would be significantly above the most runs scored by any inning by one team (18, by the Chicago Colts in the 7th inning on April 14th, 1883).
The stadium is entirely filled, and as we know that the Polo Grounds could hold 55,000 fans in that year’s configuration, it is fair to assume that this was a game of some note, and that the players participating were extremely popular.
We open to see "a screaming liner" hit by the home team. The outcome of the hit is not defined, and the hit itself seems an indicator that the game was not official: the ball appears to be a shade of grey, and makes an almost-human screaming noise as it travels, neither of which was normal behavior for a regulation baseball in play. Since the balls used in the remainder of the game are white, and since we also see that the Teatotallers are a horrible offensive team, it is reasonable to conclude that this footage is from some kind of pre-game hitting contest, or perhaps an entirely different game.
Wright Thompson: ELDORET, Kenya -- He slips into the backseat of a parked taxi and hides behind its darkly tinted windows. What he is about to say could get him killed.
Two of Lucas Sang's sons walk ahead of their father's coffin during his funeral near Eldoret, Kenya, on Jan. 10. Sang's death remains a source of controversy throughout the country.
He won't give his name. On the way over, he couldn't shake the thought this might be a police sting. If he didn't trust the human rights activist who brokered the meeting, he wouldn't have showed. But here he is, uneasy, eyes following every person who walks past the car -- and those who sit inside. From the back, he asks the driver, a member of a rival tribe, to wait in the parking lot. Then he takes a breath and begins to tell the story of the mysterious death of Lucas Sang. The witness is a Kikuyu. Sang was a Kalenjin. During the 45-year history of Kenya, like the North and South in early 19th-century America, these two tribes mostly managed to keep an uneasy peace, despite tensions over money, land and power. Then, after December's presidential election, that peace was shattered. For a few weeks, it was as if the earth had split open, taken almost 1,000 lives, then snapped shut again.
The Kikuyu says he was a soldier in that civil war. He says that he lives near a place called Munyaka, and that he knew Lucas Sang. Everyone knew Sang: national hero as an Olympian, local hero as a farmer and philanthropist. Even though he had retired from competitive sports, Sang continued to help young athletes. Together, they'd train outside Eldoret -- the birthplace of many successful Kenyan runners -- sometimes down the red dirt road that runs alongside the cornfields of Munyaka, Sang easily recognizable by his long, smooth strides. The Kikuyus working in the fields would stop and cheer Sang as he passed by. On Dec. 31, 2007, Sang came to Munyaka again, along that familiar road. The Kikuyu man saw him and was enraged. "Even you?!" he shouted at Sang.
Ten minutes later, Sang was dead.
DeNeen Brown (thanks, Richard): A woman sits alone on a gray chair in a psychiatric ward in a Brooklyn hospital. When we first see her, we do not know how long she has been sitting there. Suddenly, the woman collapses on her face onto the dirty floor.
We watch through a surveillance camera as she lies there, her blue gown above her knees, her legs convulsing. We watch as a guard comes into the room, puts his hand on his hip, looks at the woman, then looks up at the television hanging from the ceiling. Then the guard walks away.
We watch as two other patients sit across the room as the woman lies there. We watch them watch her.
The video, released recently on the Internet, documents the minutes the woman twists on the floor. She stops moving at 6:07 a.m. At 6:35 a.m. a hospital staff member comes in, nudges the patient with her foot. We hope the staffer will do something. But she walks away.
In the time that passes between action and indifference, between life and death, we wait before someone finally rolls in a blue gurney and oxygen tank, puts the woman on the gurney and rolls her away. Later we learn that Esmin Elizabeth Green, 49, an immigrant from Jamaica who moved to New York to make money to send to her children back home, is dead.
The camera goes black, leaving its viewers with the question: What might you have done?
Our friend Tim Logan is all over the In-Bev takeover. Here, here, here and here.
Colleen Jenkins and Tom French: TAMPA — In front of the jury, the case played like a cross between Peyton Place and Bleak House. There were whispers of extramarital affairs, accusations of straight-faced betrayal, stories of files secretly copied and computer records surreptitiously altered, and reams of testimony confirming the worst stereotypes about ambulance-chasing attorneys.
It began with one lawyer — the old man of the firm, his hair gone white, but his name still well-known after years of TV commercials — accusing two proteges of stealing the heart of his practice. A personal injury lawyer, personally injured. It ended with the younger lawyers in a crowded courtroom, giving their side of the knotted story. By then they had formed a new firm, with ads of their own, touting themselves as "Aggressive Attorneys."
A little too aggressive, apparently. The jury recently found the two proteges had committed civil theft and hit them with a verdict that could cost them nearly $2-million.
"This case has been a nightmare. Seven years. It's been going on for seven years," one defense attorney said last week, shuffling wearily out of another hearing. "It's an apocalyptic nightmare."
Richard Lake: Live Action Sex!
Delivered Right to You!
Available Any Time!
At the Library!
Huh?
Turns out, anyone with a library card, a shuddering lack of shame and an IQ just high enough to click a mouse can plop his butt down at one of the local library's computers and do whatever the heck he feels like doing. So long as it's legal.
Porn, of course, is legal. It is also available online, we hear.
The Washington Post's Sylvia Moreno, Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham: It was above 80 degrees, the start of another steamy summer day in Washington. At 8:58 on the morning of July 25, 2001, three D.C. police sergeants gathered 28 cadets along Glover Road in Rock Creek Park. They were looking for any trace of a government intern named Chandra Ann Levy.
The 24-year-old woman from California, with hazel eyes and a head full of unruly brown curls, had left her Dupont Circle apartment and then simply disappeared. She had been missing for 85 days, and the search for her had captivated the city and the nation. Her laptop computer's history showed that she was interested in visiting the vast 1,750-acre park on the day she vanished.
Dan Barry: Lately, in the maintenance garage at the Danbury rest stop just off Interstate 84, the topic of conversation can shift suddenly from grass-cutting and litter pickup to death. What happens afterward? Where do we go? When I die, will you remember me?
Is there coffee in heaven?
Leonora LaPeter Anton: It's fight night at the A La Carte Event Pavilion and Jenna Shiver is pulling a satin skirt on over her shorts. On the other side of the dressing room curtain, her opponent — nicknamed the Predator — is throwing punches into her coach's leather mitts, sounding like a hammer pounding nails.
Bam-bam-bam, bam-bam-bam.
Jenna's pink cell phone keeps beeping with text messages from her friends:
Knock her out
Go get her kill her
