American Buffalo
April 30, 2011
Not the David Mamet play, which I was privileged to see on stage at Steppenwolf, I’m talking about Steven Rinella’s book American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon. It’s not just the story of a hunt for the America’s largest land animal, Bison bison, but the history of the Buffalo in American culture. From the nickel, and its model, to the introduction to the horse and the decimation of the population by prehistoric Natives Americans and the ruthless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of animals by skin hunters who left the carcasses to rot, this book covers it all.
That said, it’s told through the framework of Steven Rinella — who also hosts “The Wild Within” on the Travel Channel, a hunt-to-table show that’s fascinating — getting one of very few tags to hunt a buffalo in Alaska, a 1-in-50 chance. From rafting down the Chetaslina River and camping along its banks, to brushes with hypothermia, Rinella is a true outdoorsman who, as shown on “The Wild Within,” feeds his family only on meat that he hunts and honors by treating with respect and cooking well. It’s very much worth following him on Twitter, if only for the recipes.
It seems that I’ve been reading about the outdoors lately, probably because of the rainy weather in Chicago, not to mention all the pavement; also in my stack to read next is Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods and, in honor of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, the photojournalists killed in Misrata, Libya, recently, Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva’s The Bang Bang Club. It seems like I’m slamming through some nonfiction while working on submitting fiction to various literary journals.
That said, though hunting season seems awfully far away — I just cooked my last pheasant from last season — it’s getting to be fishing weather. I hope to get out tonight and catch some catfish, some of the best-eating fish, especially when seared in butter with some Cajun seasoning. For anyone in Chicagoland wanting to try it out, head to Fishtech in Morton Grove. They got me set up with some (horrible smelling) catfish bait that makes for an exciting evening afield.
It could’ve been me
April 20, 2011
Back when I was an undergrad journalism major, I worked with an amazing professor, journalist, and friend to this day, Cheryl Heckler. My senior year, we tried like hell to work out an independent study where we’d both go to Kosovo to get a taste of journalism during wartime. A friend who worked at Buzz Coffee, and who served in the Army in Kosovo, gave me this advice: “Don’t step off the pavement. There could be land mines, especially in the Russian sector.” I went to a shooting range and rented a Glock, wanting to be prepared for the worst.
Unfortunately — or fortunately — it didn’t work out. We weren’t able to get visas, and the airfare would have been prohibitively expensive. When I met my wife Ann, I couldn’t fathom taking the kind of risks that conflict reporters and photographers routinely take. I’ve always morbidly joked that if she ever left me or — God forbid — something tragic happens to her, I’d join the French Foreign Legion. I think, now, that I’d rather be a conflict reporter.
If you haven’t seen Restrepo, you owe it to yourself (and I’d argue your country) to see it. It streams on Netflix and is widely available. The trailer is below, but be warned that it contains some not-safe-for-work, soldierly language.
The co-director of Restrepo, Tim Hetherington, died today in Misrata, Libya, and three other photographers were injured, one gravely.
When I talked to Cheryl today, I asked her why Hetherington’s death was affecting me as much as it is. She said, in her typical cut-to-the-point way, “Because their stories are so real, and because you know, if not for Ann, it could be you in that casket.”
There are a lot of heroes in this world. I’m honored to know a few — firefighters, police officers (one killed in the line of duty), people who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, people who did and do amazing things without thinking about it. I know the former company commander of the unit shown in Restrepo.
But what conflict reporters do on a daily basis is a wholly good thing. They put their lives on the line so that we, far, far away from the fighting, have an impartial picture of war. And maybe that’s why I feel the same way about Tim Hetherington that I feel about that police officer killed in the line of duty, the firefighters who don’t make it out of burning buildings, the soldiers who come home with injuries visible and injuries to their psyche. Tim Hetherington represented the best of all journalists, and that’s why anyone who’s ever written under a byline is mourning him today.
The Research High School
April 15, 2011
Lately, I’ve been editing a ton, focusing mostly on an amazing book by the principal of Crown Point High School, Dr. Eric Ban, that is forthcoming from Elephant Rock Books. It’s amazingly complex, the network that Dr. Ban has begun to create. He’s been a college professor, worked in private industry, and put all that knowledge into creating a network of schools and potential employers based on the concept that feeds data into the network just like research hospitals feed information into networks of healthcare providers.
How do you hire people? How do you help folks identify problems? How do you know which problems to work on and how to apply your resources? I asked so many questions when I spoke with the research hospital administrators. But I came to realize that my work is not much different. We have a ton of similarities on personnel, budgeting, and how to get our arms around all the data we collect. The talented research hospital administrators helped me to understand that we are working in a new type of leadership space. My dad used to say that if you are not consistently changing and improving, you are getting passed up. Leading in a culture of continuous improvement is actually what my best teachers do with their kids. They inspire, invent, and produce.
It’s heartening to have had the opportunity to read this, especially when states (including my home state of Ohio—and my mom works in a high school) seem to be turning against the teacher politically. To be clear, Dr. Ban doesn’t just talk a good game. He plays it hard. The sheer amount of data he’s collected in just a few years is driving innovation at CPHS. With the research hospital as a model, it’s almost impossible not to.
And it’s even better to see it in action. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting CPHS twice now—once for an Elephant Rock DVD shoot, and students seem engaged and tuned into their own goals. When you see the results firsthand, you know he’s on the right track.
My First Goose
April 13, 2011
This morning, I heard a flock of geese flying north, and it made me think of the first short story that truly got me thinking about what a story truly should be in terms of plot arc: Isaac Babel‘s “My First Goose.”
I read it first in Dave Kajganich’s Intermediate Fiction class at Miami University, and we broke down the plot into a graph. The push and pull of Isaac Babel’s narrator created a jagged line up to the point where he skewers the goose on his sabre and orders an old woman to cook it for him.
But that’s when translated literature began to suffer. The stories of Red Cavalry amazed me, and I read a collection I got from the library. When Babel’s narrator walks up to the old woman and tells him he needs to eat, she said, “Comrade, I want to hang myself.” I remember it being horrendously out of place, bumping me out of the story.
When I presented Red Cavalry for a Critical Reading and Writing: Novel-in-Stories class taught by Antonia Logue, I went out and bought The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, which is edited by his daughter and translated by Peter Constantine. The woman’s reaction to Babel’s narrator demanding food—and trying to impress the soldiers with whom he was embedded—was completely different.
“Mistress,” I said, “I need some grub.”
The old woman raised the dripping whites of her half-blind eyes and lowered them again.
“Comrade,” she said after a short silence. “All of this makes me want to hang myself.”
And there it is. Character motivation. An old Polish woman, imposed upon by the Sixth Division of the Red Army, has a reason for her utterance of suicide. Of course, Babel the character—let’s not confuse the writer with the storyteller—must, above all, become one of the men to whom he was assigned. “‘Goddammit!’ I muttered in frustration, shoving her back with my hand. ‘I’m in no mood to start debating with you!’”
I thought of this story much over the past few months. Last fall, while in Ohio for the holidays, I took a couple short trips out to public land to hunt geese. I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t bag any, probably because I had no calls, no blind, no decoys, and, well, the water was already frozen—they’d already moved south. I fired one shot at some flying over, but they were plenty out of range. And so is Babel’s storytelling ability. He’s a true master; when the Soviet Union disappears you, you’re doing something right with your writing.
