I spent last week scanning the scene throughout parts of Washington and Oregon. Just shy of 1800 miles tallied, which took me from Seattle to northeast WA, along the Columbia River all the way to the OR Coast, on down to the southwestern edge of OR and all the way back home again. I'm being a total tease (just for the time being...I promise) when it comes to the details. The trip helped me mix and strengthen the mental mortar I need for a expansive, not-just-decorative wall o' insights. But this week, I've changed hats and get to play a personal favorite role as tour guide (my parents are visiting from Wisconsin for the first time in a few years). I'm savoring the chance to hit the full Seattle slew of delights - too many of which most local folks don't normally have the time to enjoy. Issues continue to hit my radar. The work goes on. Deadlines are still deadlines. It's worth noting, however, the validation that comes from a straight-up touristy wander when the situation calls for it. You're welcome to join me. Just look for the guy with the big foam finger and Sasquatch costume, pointing up at the Space Needle. Any questions?
Shuffling my roadtrip playlist
For those who might be interested in my Spring Break roadtrip, I cranked through another biggish distance yesterday. I started in Pullman (for those unaware - right up next to the Idaho border) and then drove through the gorgeous undulating hills of that part of Washington on toward Walla Walla. I'll hold my fire when it comes to the DoubleWalla (anyone call it that? I surely want to). Aside from saying the old timey Fort there was the most unintentionally hilarious stop spread over the 900 miles of Washington and Oregon I've thus far covered. It surely goes without saying if you've already seen it, but the Columbia River features jaw dropping sights all along the way. Before darkness fell, the Columbia was my most interesting companion. Aside from Rachel Maddow. The audio version of her clever and well-researched book Drift (which she reads herself) gets my highest recommendation. Along with the atmospheric and multi-faceted new album I kept looping all of Monday - Kill For Love by Chromatics. So as I prep to leave Astoria (my successful targeted location last night and subject of this morning's research), here's hoping I find a suitable accompaniment to today's views along the Oregon Coast. But I'm happy to have batted a big 2 for 2 thus far when it comes to this roadtrip's soundtrack. May we all be so lucky, from time to time.
Sampling a tasty chunk of Washington
I've lived in Washington for long enough to be somewhat sheepish about admitting how many huge swaths of the state I've just never been through. Yesterday gave me the chance to get out there - from west to east with enough north to south to really stir the pot. I beat the snow accumulating at Stevens Pass just as my worries about leaving the chains for the car back in Seattle reached a fever pitch. I saw the fruit trees especially around the vicinity of Wenatchee exploding with blossoms. I took huge visual gulps from the Columbia River, as our paths crossed and crossed again a few times based on my itinerary. I was all alone on the road more often than a car was anywhere within sight. I stopped and asked directions from a dingy convenience store within downstream sight of the Grand Coulee Dam - not really worth the trip, but the locals are fabulous even when you let it slip that you're from Seattle. I actually fueled up and chatted up some of the friendliest people I've met in years all along the way. My northern trajectory peaked well into Stevens County - past the Spokane Indian Reservation, but not yet within spitting distance of British Columbia (not that I would ever do such a thing). Then I backtracked and hit the two-laned glide path through the green fields (alfalfa? jeez, I should know such things...) of eastern Washington all the way down to Pullman. The summary takeaway? A sincerely awestruck double-header - 1. Road trips still connect me with America and I expect to always be romantically yet inexorably tied to that heavy carbon footprinting, and 2. Washington, whether big, hairy and wild or in the smaller town bites, holds its own very ably with any state across the nation in terms of awesomeness. No pollyanna cheese is required to say that. I mean it - drop dead gorgeous and inspired, from the Coast through the mountains to the flattest of flatlands. If you can say that after clocking nearly 500 miles all within the borders of a place, it surely was a good way to kick off a week on the road. There's more of it ahead for me today, but I at least wanted to get that off my chest before I head out to chat up some folks. Rock on.
Pre-road trip nod toward Astoria
As a small part of my upcoming week on the winding roads of the Great Northwest, I'm planning a visit to Astoria, Oregon - the first United States community established on the Pacific Coast. There's tons of history there that's of interest to me. Plus the folks at the Clatsop County Historical Society have been downright folksy and fabulous via email in prep for what I'm expecting will be my too-short visit there. So I'd be remiss if I didn't nod in their general direction today - the 201st Anniversary of Fort Astoria's founding. John Jacob Astor - the town's namesake and original keeper of the checkbook - maybe sounds vaguely familiar. Don't sweat it. Post-Revolutionary War tycoons don't often get the Steve Jobs treatment. Astor was nonetheless fascinating, and a seemingly boundless trove of juicy trivia. Smuggling opium, pushing for exploration throughout vast tracts of North America, buying up tons of what became Manhattan, and so much more on his way to dying in the mid-19th Century with what would be worth of well over $100 Billion in today's money. Even the Astor's footnotes are interesting. Case in point - his great grandson (John Jacob Astor IV) was probably the most famous victim on the Titanic. That's a rather roundabout way to get back to Astoria. Rather fitting, though - given the wacky route I'm planning for next week.
PETA gets shown they're squirrel bait
It would be hard to imagine a more compelling new star than Jennifer Lawrence. I'm not alone in thinking she burst through magnificently during her Oscar-nominated role in "Winter's Bone". She managed to carry an otherwise lethargic "The Hunger Games" (for the record, the pacing is too methodical and Suzanne Collins' trilogy is much better on the page). Lawrence's PR/media circuit appearances are the distinct opposite of dull - David Letterman and "Rolling Stone" got the best of her most recently. So I'm especially surprised that PETA is willing to get rope-a-doped into a cleverness tussle with her. So she skinned a squirrel in "Winter's Bone" and is willing to make a joke about PETA in anticipation of their objection - that's either just smart branding or acting. And I wouldn't put it past her to actually chuckle at all the chuckleheads currently singing her praises on the gun-toting fringe. She's effectively a good Southern gal from Kentucky, no matter how she's spent her time since being discovered at 14-years-old. I suggest that anyone trying to scold her for being brassy remember what sort of persona she's currently toting around like a quiver on her back. To go for the low-hanging joke, she'll surely turn it around and shoot that self-satisfied apple right out of anyone's mouth. And - to run that over-used tagline from "The Hunger Games" even further into the ground - I suspect the odds will always be in her favor on this catfight.
Changing the game
Don't look now, but we've reached the start of another baseball season. At this very moment, the Brewers are getting shelled by the Cards. So some things have carried over from last year, no matter how much has changed in the world otherwise. I've spent the last few weeks focusing on what's just down the road for my book, Pelting Out. Some really good doors have opened, amazing connections within the narrative I'm researching have proven worth the effort to seek them out, and I've scheduled some exciting travel during the next few months. Up next for me is a road trip through parts of the Northwest I've never taken the time to see - expect loads of pictures of those sights (among many other things) to come. Soon thereafter in May and June, I'll be hitting the road again for more than two weeks in both Canada and the northeastern U.S. That's by no means the end of my field research. It merely gets me to where I wanted to be so that I can fill in the bigger pieces of this story. I'm not yet frosting this cake. But I at least have a good idea of what shape it will be. We'll see how it tastes after everything gets mixed in.
I hope it's obvious that I'm extremely excited about lies ahead. It's taken a great deal of will power to hold back some of the compelling stuff that I've found and all the new angles I've learned to use in looking at this very particular slice of life. From here on out, the content on this blog paired with what I offer in other places such as through my Twitter feed might appear to change somewhat. I think you'll see what I mean as it unfolds. Shorter, snappier observations will show up more regularly to start with, followed by more of the grand reveal as we head into the summer and onto fall. Consider yourself forewarned. And thanked - for checking in thus far.
I hope it's obvious that I'm extremely excited about lies ahead. It's taken a great deal of will power to hold back some of the compelling stuff that I've found and all the new angles I've learned to use in looking at this very particular slice of life. From here on out, the content on this blog paired with what I offer in other places such as through my Twitter feed might appear to change somewhat. I think you'll see what I mean as it unfolds. Shorter, snappier observations will show up more regularly to start with, followed by more of the grand reveal as we head into the summer and onto fall. Consider yourself forewarned. And thanked - for checking in thus far.
A light dusting of Kardashian eventually gets on everything.
I would have preferred to never enter into a debate over the validity of the Kardashians. They have every right to do whatever it is that they do. Yet whether they (or their most exposed member - Kim) are discussed as a cultural force, a target for all sorts of the disgruntled, or as an exercise in bush league satire - they bring it on seemingly everywhere and oh so often. I'm probably not alone in being hooked by the latest story involving Kim Kardashian. I hope you somehow avoided it, but for those looking for the goods - the debate got rolling with last week's "flour bomb" delivered while Kim was walking the red carpet for her new fragrance. The nebulous point(s) evolving from this episode include: who might have targeted Kim and why, whether she'll file charges, and who might pay for that responsible individual's legal defense. Never afraid to step right in it, PETA's already lunged into the frame. That comes from their simmering beef with the Kardashians - which actually features some confusing Kardashian on Kardashian hypocrisy. Obviously, there are more than a few positions to take when it comes to the Kardashians. Prior to this I would've at least tried to claim my typical reaction was to run away from the entire Kardashian milieu at top speed. No longer - check back from all your Kardashian vs. PETA updates right here. Now if you'll excuse me, I must scan my hard drive for all the viruses newly downloaded from my latest Googling.
Nutria Get a Makeover
A fabulous little artistic surprise showed up in my inbox this morning. A writer friend (Eric Jay Dolin - total pro historian & writer of book-length tales) forwarded the link from the NYTimes because his last book gets featured prominently in the resulting video. The animator/writer of the actual video (Drew Christie - maker of all sorts of amazing creative goodness) lives here in Seattle. The subject of the video is the often maligned nutria. They're tough furry buggers to love. Nutria decimate the vegetation along the shoreline of various bodies of water, leading to erosion and general environmental sadness. So they've had bounties placed on their fugly little heads as an unworthy "invasive species" for years. I've been intrigued for years by the various origin stories of how this South American rat with its distinctive orange teeth ended up scattered all over. The basic rundown (also described by Christie in this animated story from his own family's lore) usually ties in some overly excited agribusiness folks who couldn't handle what they bought. Nutria, as the story goes, enjoyed a period of being touted as the next big thing for furry fashion. Oddly enough, even today's fashion hasn't abandoned the idea of using nutria. In fact, some folks are astonishingly creative when it comes to using them, while trying to rebrand the "use" of nutria as good for the environment. But that's a whole other distillation of the nutria debate featured in this animation. I highly recommend y'all check out Drew Christie's fresh, fantastic video featuring a downright lovable nutria, duly educated by Eric Jay Dolin's book (Fur, Fashion, Empire - W.W. Norton 2010). Kid friendly, to boot.
Daisey on the Shame Chain
Near the end of last week, I'd wanted to weigh in here on the cancellation of HBO's "Luck" - the ending of which was directly caused by accidents that led to three horses being euthanized during filming. The story leading up to the plug being pulled on "Luck" had me intrigued because it allowed for a curious peek inside the chasm between PETA and the American Humane Society. But I was also drawn to the evolving intrigue around this horsey story because I just plain love(d) the show. It seems that I'm one of the few who saw the snap once again in David Milch's writing and the conflict-heavy brilliance possible inside the world of racing. As luck would have it, we hit the road last Thursday for a long weekend in the Bay Area. A nice big chunk of which for me meant getting back to the satisfying face-to-face work of research in the field as it relates to much grander narrative ambitions. As has been the case up to now and will still be going forward until such time as having some announcements to make, I don't talk about sources. In effect, this blog parses out parts of the story of a story in progress. Things that interest me as I go along get sporadically posted here - all, hopefully, related to the broader theme. I make up my own rules, but they adhere somewhat to a basic sensibility - I'm not doing journalism, but I treat the people I speak with as if I am doing so. Then something happened over the weekend which made me do a full stop as a small storm of pseudo-journalistic inappropriateness rumbled over the horizon.
"This American Life" ran its "Retraction" of Mike Daisey being featured on their show in January of this year (the most popular episode in their history dating back to the mid-90s). In that original airing, Daisey excerpted and repackaged parts of his stage performance "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs". I wish Daisey's mistake and the subsequent reaction didn't belong to an entire category of such trainwreck stories. James Frey and Greg Mortensen (to name just the most obvious two) have already primed the memory pump. Yet to hear Daisey being interviewed by Ira Glass about the way he outright lied and spun the truth and bent over backwards to lump together an otherwise compelling story about the supply chain for Apple products manufactured in China is to hear a man's reputation come crashing down around him in pieces. I was stunned. I was saddened. I was impressed by "This American Life" immensely yet again. I thought about my own time in China last fall "reporting" for my own book. And I'm still thinking about what it means if someone with a mission to tell a larger truth gets caught with even a few lies mixed into the work.
I can't help but think of my own work and a conversation I continually have (both with myself and others) about the way in which I am pursuing this project. I believe it is possible to write a book that is somewhere between "journalism" and "memoir" - a book that bridges bookstores categories that run from "history" to "current affairs" to the full range of indie bookseller classifications that encompass "animal rights" and "nature" and "politics and culture". In fact, I've been spending a great deal of time lately thinking about just that - if the bridge between categories is something appropriate to use when writing a book. Mike Daisey's experience (and that of Frey and Mortensen and countless others who've seemingly ambled down this same road where they feel like the rules don't apply to them) is very much on my mind today. Whatever happens to him hereafter, I think a lesson might be applicable for all sorts of writers. I think it could be summed up as follows:
If you tweak the truth, someone will follow up and find it. Period. Luck has nothing to do with it.
"This American Life" ran its "Retraction" of Mike Daisey being featured on their show in January of this year (the most popular episode in their history dating back to the mid-90s). In that original airing, Daisey excerpted and repackaged parts of his stage performance "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs". I wish Daisey's mistake and the subsequent reaction didn't belong to an entire category of such trainwreck stories. James Frey and Greg Mortensen (to name just the most obvious two) have already primed the memory pump. Yet to hear Daisey being interviewed by Ira Glass about the way he outright lied and spun the truth and bent over backwards to lump together an otherwise compelling story about the supply chain for Apple products manufactured in China is to hear a man's reputation come crashing down around him in pieces. I was stunned. I was saddened. I was impressed by "This American Life" immensely yet again. I thought about my own time in China last fall "reporting" for my own book. And I'm still thinking about what it means if someone with a mission to tell a larger truth gets caught with even a few lies mixed into the work.
I can't help but think of my own work and a conversation I continually have (both with myself and others) about the way in which I am pursuing this project. I believe it is possible to write a book that is somewhere between "journalism" and "memoir" - a book that bridges bookstores categories that run from "history" to "current affairs" to the full range of indie bookseller classifications that encompass "animal rights" and "nature" and "politics and culture". In fact, I've been spending a great deal of time lately thinking about just that - if the bridge between categories is something appropriate to use when writing a book. Mike Daisey's experience (and that of Frey and Mortensen and countless others who've seemingly ambled down this same road where they feel like the rules don't apply to them) is very much on my mind today. Whatever happens to him hereafter, I think a lesson might be applicable for all sorts of writers. I think it could be summed up as follows:
If you tweak the truth, someone will follow up and find it. Period. Luck has nothing to do with it.
The Search for Meaning Between Activism and Enforcement
Over the weekend while watching "Game Change" on HBO (a truly fantastic adaptation of the juiciest part of Halperin and Heileman's book), a "Washington Post" story by Juliet Eilperin captured and redirected my focus. I've been looking into much of what's covered by the umbrella of that story. And new details continue to emerge on related cases and issues, even just since this story ran on the front page of Sunday's Post. To step back a bit - Eilperin wrote about what she'd characterized as a decrease in the incidences of "eco-terrorism" and the increased scrutiny of those individuals engaged in or considering such acts. Some folks take issue with the term "eco-terrorism" as applied in shorthand to describe a whole host of political, cultural or paradoxical causes. In my opinion, it's on the order of "homeland security" as a term that ends up strip-mined of real meaning when it gets used too broadly. Still, Eilperin offered up a smart list of examples to support the very valid observation at the center of her story. A dizzying array of interests have since brought something to or taken something away from this story. Just read the comments section associated with the story to see how broad the interests are proving - animal rights, anything Green, Occupy Everything, fracking, you name it. Hell, someone even mentioned Solyndra. Crackpottedness aside, I'm fascinated by this amalgam of reactions - within and far beyond the Post's comments section. Maybe it proves that if you paint with a broad brush, people then see whatever they've been searching for in the abstraction. Think Gerhard Richter - but in sociopolitical terms. If you haven't yet read it but choose to hereafter do so, I would love to hear your takeaways. Before you return to "Game Change" or whatever else preceded coming across this.