President Obama and The Leaders from Both Parties Met For An Hour and Fifteen Minutes: Only????? What ELSE Could Have Been More Important?

Tags

Barack Obama, David Brooks, gulls and clams, inability of Congress to act, Jim Lehrer, John Boehner, on hope and pessimism, PBS Newshour, Pollyanna, priorities, Ruth Marcus, Social Security, Washington Post

Like it or not our government writes 80 million checks a month, 55 million in Social Security payments. (I wonder if all those people who insist they don’t want government in their lives think about this when they CASH these checks?)

So it’s good that All Sides now agree that we will raise the debt ceiling so a default landslide doesn’t happen. But, guys and gals, all you Congressional Leaders? What WERE you thinking yesterday that you couldn’t stick around with President Obama for more than one hour and 15 minutes to figure out Our Country’s Most Pressing Problem?

(Was it that you couldn’t cancel some of those campaign fund-raising events?)

Note that I don’t think it’s our Biggest Problem, it’s just that we need to figure it out now and with a huge piece of tape and gauze, not just little Bandaids, no offense to Bandaids here, but really.

It’s as if  a nursing mom tends first to the laundry, the supper, the weeding, the other kids’ hair washes, etc.–all vital if the household is going to run smoothly–but doesn’t get to nursing the new baby.

I mean some things Just. Have. To. Be. Done. First.

I admit to allowing my optimism to flaunt on Friday even amidst the dismal jobs numbers. It’s because of David Brooks, NY Times columnist. He and Ruth Marcus (Washington Post columnist) were walking through the week’s top political news with Jim Lehrer on the PBS Newshour. My ears perked up when they got to the on-going debt-ceiling talks.

 

He said his optimism for there being a deal before Aug. 2 is higher than it’s been for five years. After chuckling over that he explained:

 ”…if Boehner and Obama were in the room, they would have a deal already. And I think they have made significant progress in private.”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec11/bandm_07-08.html

OMG, I haven’t heard the words significant and progress in the same sentence for a long time, unless it’s me talking about my grandchildren.

But then on Sunday I hear about the abbreviated length of that the much-heralded “summit” of Congressional Leaders and the President and I figure the influence of ideologue rejectionists from the left and the right tsunamied Significant Progress.

I admit to maybe hexing this with my quiet dread that it wouldn’t work, but I was bouyed by David’s guarded optimism.

I’m like a clam when I hold onto a hope in the face of dismal prospects. Clams–mollusks of all sorts–are food for gulls. But they need opening. No self-respecting gull eats an already open clam, that’s how you get sick. So the gulls commonly drop the clam from on high to crack them open. But the gulls’ selection of the surface on which to drop is just as likely to be a soft surface like sand as a hard one like rocks on the getty. It seems like a curiously non-adaptive behavior, doesn’t it? I mean, you’d think somewhere along the evolutionary train of events the gulls that drop clams on sand would fall off the chart and the ones who drop on rock would thrive. (Hmmm, I could use this to describe our Congress too, but that wasn’t my intent. I’ll stick with the clam’s perspective for now.)

A clam, therefore, has some reason for optimism, knowing (as he probably doesn’t given that clams don’t have a written history or common lore on such matters that they pass on to each other, but that is definitely beside my point!) the clam has some reason to hope that maybe, just maybe, he’ll get dropped on sand.

Well, that’s the level of my optimism. I thought maybe, must maybe, these folk could figure out Our Most Pressing Problem. But, alas, like the clam unlucky enough to get a canny gull, my hopes were dashed.

This time.

I’ll continue my almost inaudible hum of optimism based on the fact that  John Boener and Barach Obama, the leaders of our two parties, were able to have a serious and lengthy discussion about the Big Things That Need Solving Now. I agree with David, that “overall it’s excellent news..”

(Can you tell that Pollyanna was one of my favorite books and movies? Maybe David’s too?)

Patty 7/11/11

Patty

THESE GUYS HAVE ALL THE FUN

Tags

Anne Hull, Books about writing nonfiction, creative nonfiction, feature writing, Gene Weingarten, literary journalism, narrative journalism, new journalism, non fiction, postaweek2011, stories, storyteller, telling true stories, Washington Post, writing

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Telling true stories is what Gene Weingarten does best.  Call it what you like ~ narrative journalism, new journalism, literary journalism, creative nonfiction or feature writing ~ his stories have us by the throat.  Weingarten, winner of not one, but two, Pulitzers, is The Best Storyteller around. He’s simply a master at finding a story. But it’s his courage, patience, savvy, and dogged research that fill the page with words. Perfectly. Every time.

We hunger for true stories, not just information. I get my story fix in the daily newspapers, online posts, and podcasts that take me out into the real world and teach me something new. Stories are what make us human and we all tell them. To be a socko-boffo storyteller like Weingarten, you need to be an Olympian observer and a raging good thinker. His stories are full of laser-accurate details, not steel-plated facts.

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Anne Hull, a Pulitzer finalist, describes a Mexican woman who was part of a legal guest-worker program in North Carolina in her piece for the St.Petersburg Times ~

She was thirty-five, barely five feet tall in her sandals. Her pans of tamales had gradually found their way to her hips. For a mother of eight, she was unusually mild-mannered. A hen would fall asleep in her hand as she drew the hatchet back to chop its neck. 

In those few sentences, Hull tells us plenty about a woman desperate for work, one who travels by bus for four days to stand at a steel table with a small knife and pick meat from blue crabs, ten hours at a clip. There’s no laundry list of details, just a few sharp observations. Nonfiction writers like Weingarten and Hull know it’s the little things that really matter in our stories.

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My favorite place for storytelling is radio. NPR journalists tell stories through oral histories, poems, anecdotes, music and memories. The storyteller might be a town official, a hot dog cart owner or a marine biologist. And the voices that share the stories bring us all a little closer together. We feel like their stories are our stories, stories that want to be told…and heard…and shared.

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Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, says that stories are for joining the past to the future. The writing group loves stories ~ writing them, telling them and listening to them. We find the world and the people in it a marvel.  Here’s a list of books that help us fill the page with words.

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You can never have too many stories.

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Toni 6/20/11

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…..Books about Writing Nonfiction

Beyond the Writers’ Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction by Carol Bly

Damn! Why Didn’t I Write That? How Ordinary People Are Raking in $100,000 or More Writing Nonfiction Books & How You Can Too! By Marc McCutcheon

Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir edited by William Zinsser

Legacy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Personal History by Linda Spence

On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser

The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick

Telling True Stories edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call

Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction – and Get It Published by Susan Rabiner & Alfred Fortunato

Writing About Your Life: A Journey into the Past by William Zinsser

Writing Creative Nonfiction: Fiction Techniques for Crafting Great Nonfiction by Theodore A. Rees Cheney

Writing Creative Nonfiction: Instruction and Insights from the Teachers of the Associated Writing Programs edited by Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard

Writing Personal Essays: How to Shape Your Life Experiences for the Page by Sheila Bender

Writing to Change the World by Mary Pipher

Writing to Learn: How to Write and Think Clearly About Any Subject at All by William Zinsser

Foxy Lady, Red Tail, Pen Men and Opportunistic Feeders

Tags

altricial, Armpit of America, Art Plotnick, Arts, Better Than Great, Elko Nevada, foxes, Foxy Lady, Gene Weingarten, Goose Gossage, hawks, kits, mousing leap, opportunistic feeder, Owen Canfield, Packard, Pen Men, play-chase, play-chasing, postaweek2011, prey, skulk of foxes, superlatives, The Mad Hungarian, Urban Dictionary, Washington Post, word wonk, writing

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Foxy Lady is back.  She comes mostly in the late morning, on the hunt for careless squirrels and helter-skelter rodents that putz around the feeders. So far, she’s been alone. But I expect to see some kits tagging along in April. It’s fun to watch the whole gaggle practice their ‘mousing leaps’. Let me be accurate. A group of foxes is actually called a skulk. It’s a raging good name for these shrewd critters that prowl the woods and make the rounds of the yard. During the night, I hear the foxes bark, howl and whine. Sometimes, there’s a  whiff of their ‘skunky‘ smell when they mark their territory.

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Red Tail never left.  The hawk soars overhead, with occasional slow and deliberate wing beats. I hear her raspy scream, kree-eee-ar, watch her swoop down in a controlled dive, legs outstretched ~  to catch a bird in flight or chase a vole over the snow.  Sometimes she perches atop the tree at the edge of the woods ~ her sit-and-wait style of hunting, scanning for prey.  Time well spent.

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The stick-and-twig nest is used year after year, repaired regularly with bark strips, vines and small branches. The hawk pair perch here to hunt and preen. They’ll have a clutch of eggs in early April, and in a few months, the chicks will fledge. They’re altricial, helpless at birth, but in a short time, they’ll start to play-chase things that look like prey until Momma forces them to hunt on their own.

Foxy Lady and Red Tail are classified as opportunistic feeders. And so are the raccoons that camp out under my deck, sleep all day and and raid the feeders at night. They all take advantage of opportunities to snare prey and feed on whatever is available.

I suspect writers are opportunistic feeders, too.  In the best sense of the word, of course.  Writers take advantage of opportunities and circumstances, are crafty and astute.  Take some of our favorite Pen Men, for example. I don’t mean Goose Gossage or Al ‘The Mad Hungarian’ Hrabosky, the guys with funny nicknames in the bull pen who came up with new ways to snack, chew, use and abuse bugs and rodents. I mean Pen Men. As in…. Men. With. Pens.

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Local writer Owen Canfield sits-and-waits by the front window, finds a memory in a great white hedge of snow. Then he takes us along for the ride in a clumsy arc of a Packard on the night he meets his Sweet Ethel.

I love his style, its small town intimacy. It’s good company ~ ordinary people, ordinary lives.  Owen is a storytelling journalist, he’s the voice and spirit of the tale.

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And then there’s Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post,  a self-proclaimed smartass, who visits a charmless city. He walks its streets with slow and deliberate steps, and warmed by the heat of a bonfire, shows us that anything is possible in America. Weingarten notes this and that as he goes along, play-chasing, giving us a first hand look at a town synonymous with The Armpit of America.

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Art Plotnik, The King of Word Wonkery, swoops down on the revered Elements of Style (aka Strunk and White) and, with a mousing leap, snares the opportunity to set writing free, bend the rules and spring writers from their ruts. Now that’s what I call keel-over cool. Don’t miss his new book, Better Than Great: A Plentitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives. http://www.freshsuperlatives.com

I’m intrigued by the idea of writers as opportunistic feeders. What’s their hunting style?  Go read their stuff.  It’s aMAYYYzing. They do it all. They talk to strangers, roam and wander, read everything everywhere – walls, bulletin boards, classifieds. They overhear conversations in cafes and on park benches and find interesting stories in their own day-to-day lives. They seek out people that fail, not just the ones whose dreams come true. They ask questions, wonder a lot and probably hang out in bars.  Everyone tells stories in bars.

The Urban Dictionary defines an opportunist as a wise person who knows a lucky happening when he sees it, like the guy who starts taking a bath if he accidentally falls into a river. Owen, Gene, Art ~ each one as smart as a fox with eyes like a hawk. They beat the bushes, follow the scent, cast about, scratch around, track down, sniff out, and sometimes, just schlepp along.  And then ~ they tell one heck of a story.

Toni 3/4/11