A lowly sea creature lofted to culinary heights, a lowly vegetable that gets a fancy name, a drink made of common ingredients in a shapely, light-catching glass. Sitting at the Tacklebox bar with plastic utensils, you are both the 99% and the 1%, simple yet fortunate to be there.
It's past 3:30 in the morning. I need to be up in four hours, and I can't sleep. Today was six meetings, an amazing field trip, two digital-talking get-togethers, then collapsing onto my couch at home and making the critical mistake of falling asleep on the spot. I have a big presentation in the morning, so being awake now is bad. But making the best of it… I'm rereading a recent St. Petersburg Times article about a young artist who struggles with mania. I can't imagine what daily life is like with the illness, but the adapting he takes on — channeling the cycles of energy into something positive and ultimately relaxing for him — is inspiring. If he can do it, those of us just sleeping wrong can surely try the same.
Hunter Payne stares into cold bands of water falling into a rust-stained tub.
"Why am I doing this to myself?" the 21-year-old asks.
"Because it'll be totally freaking worth it," he answers and steps in. The mania that pushed him far into the night comes back in a rush of ideas:
Play tennis on top of a zeppelin over Kansas. Have a wine party while parachuting. Dress 20 friends in animal costumes and hang out in the Lowry Park Zoo parking lot. Draw underwater.
Right there between wage and moxie, baby. Because it's 2011. I can confirm Arlington turnout was light. But democracy was in full effect.
Before blogging anything on Joe Frazier's death, I waited to see if USA Today would post its '09 interview with him. Erik Brady talked to Frazier about Muhammad Ali, for a story in a special-edition Ali tribute tabloid.
The edition was the best cover-to-cover publication I saw at USAT, ink or digital. The Frazier article was the most hard-hitting of the lot, sure to catch a reader with his or her gloves down and draw some blood.
The publication's content only ran in print at the time — a concept that was smart and profitable use of already-controlled newsstand footage, no digital criticism from me on this one. But I was disappointed not be able to share the Frazier piece. The article showed the storytelling the org was capable of when it stepped out of the usual narrative boxes.
With Frazier's death, and with the special edition far behind us, USAT posted the story this morning. I've copied the lede below. Click, read the rest. Scene subsequently moves to a car, the street and a ring. I reread the story now and feel all of the same emotions I felt the first time. Brady drops you in life's last round. There is sympathy. There is disgust, violence and confusion, all or none of which may be justified.
I'm an easy mark for a good boxing read (and have yet to see boxing movies I haven't loved), but I think you'll devour this story as well.
PHILADELPHIA —Joe Frazier's one-bedroom apartment, a couple of blocks from City Hall, feels a mite crowded today.
That's Joe on the couch, his longtime girlfriend in the kitchen and his son Marvis on the computer. Arrayed in front of Joe are a reporter, a photographer and his assistant, a videographer and her assistant, plus Joe's public relations man. That's nine people in one half of his 900-square-foot suite.
Oh, and one more. Don't forget Muhammad Ali, the elephant in the room. It seems like Ali is always there — not physically, of course, but his prodigious personality remains an eternally outsized presence in Frazier's life, even here in his temporarily cramped living room.
You can see Ali in a painting above the couch, frozen in time as a wicked Frazier punch sends him reeling. You can hear him in the ebb and flow of conversation, as Frazier occasionally imitates Ali's familiar voice. You can even feel him, haunting Frazier across all of the years and the miles and the shared history.
All right, enough with the dude mischief and pretending to play musical instruments. Time to tie that knot and have a party. Jeff and Mollie got their lines right. Not one of the wedding party, myself included, tripped and fell mid-ceremony. The limo driver only scraped a couple rocks. The speeches hit quality notes. Eye Street represented. I cut a few moves (not pictured). The happy couple headed out to watch college football.
My favorite magazine has been on a warmer streak this fall, it feels like. Take the October 17 issue. In the back of the book, literary critic James Wood assembles one of the best paragraphs of the season:
… Hollinghurst works quietly, like a poet, goading all the words in his sentences — nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs — into a stealthy equality. I mean something like this, from his novel “The Line of Beauty” (2004): “Above the trees and rooftops the dingy glare of the London sky faded upwards into weak violet heights.” We can suddenly see the twilit sky of a big city afresh, and the literary genius is obviously centered in the unexpected strength of the adjective “weak,” which brings alive the diminishing strata of the urban night sky, overpowered by the bright lights on the ground. The effect is paradoxical, because we usually associate heights not with weakness but with power or command. And the poetry lies not just in what the sentence paints but in how it sounds: there is something mysteriously lovely about the rhythm of “weak violet heights,” and the way the two adjectives turn into a plural noun that is really just another adjective; the sentence does indeed seem to drift away into the far distance.
Yup.
Elsewhere in the issue, there's a quote from a Henry James character: "We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
In still another part, movie director Andrew Stanton says: "I've always felt you unearth story, like you're on an archaeological dig. Stories tell you what they are — you don't have a say in what bones you're going to get, and when. You just have to have the intestinal fortitude to acknowledge, Oh, my stegosaurus is actually a T. rex."
But my favorite part of the issue (and you can buy it here) is:
"For James Michael Taylor, an evening bath became a death sentence."
If you haven't been following the New York Times' "Abused and Used" series, you should be. It's the best major investigation of state care of people with developmental disabilities since the Post did its "Invisible Lives and Deaths" series more than a decade ago. Katherine Boo won a public-service Pulitzer for "Invisible" after her reporting fired up just about every elected official in Washington and forced turnover within the Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Administration.
The Times work, primarily from Danny Hakim, the Albany bureau chief, is prompting similar calls for change. But I imagine a bureaucracy shift at the Empire State-level is far more difficult than just in a city. Seeing the effects of this New York reporting play out, in what feels like slow motion, it makes you wonder how care is faring here, years later. The journalism, as huge an effort may be extended, can only do so much.
I think the last few paragraphs of today's Times story touch the bigger equation. Beyond whatever buck-stoppers and involved players need to go, the success of any system — public, private or mixed — helping those who can't help themselves hinges on a society full of supportive individuals. Final paragraphs, talking to James Michael Taylor's sister:
She worries about the developmentally disabled who die and have no family around to push for answers for them.
“These deaths are marginalized because these sort of people are not valued by society,” Patricia Taylor said.
When she was in the fourth grade, she dreamed of taking her brother and running away with him, protecting him. She finds it hard to accept that no one was able to protect him after he grew up.
“I believe that God put these people here for a purpose, because if we didn’t have them to look after, we would lose our humanity,” she said. “How would we know compassion? It says in the Bible, do ye so unto the least of my brothers. I think that’s what it’s all about.”
The link, tellingly, is the Times'. Whether these stories seal the firings or not, this use of the megaphone makes a difference in the system. I feel fortunate to see my dad and uncle secure such good care for my aunt — and her own continued thriving against difficult odds. But the continued work, education, decisions, and trust involved are incredibly challenging. When care rests out of a family's choices and control, you have to count on all involved, far from the top, having an awareness.
We groomsmen gathered at Jeff's house to get ready, eat Subway and rehearsal leftovers, fight with bow ties, bang on instruments, and walk to church. A lawn guy shouted to us: "Uh oh! Somebody's in trouble!"
Rob took this photo for me a long time ago, and it has sat around ever since. For his birthday today, I salute him and his accompanying note: "Fyi, the cheddar flavor creates a perfect cross between Cheerios and Cheetos." This is why we are brothers and why I respect and love him.
Not only is he a fine investment banker (and an upstanding investment banker, it must be said in this day and age), but he understands and, I know, appreciates the finer things in life. Like Cheerios! And Cheetos!
Happy 29th, brother Rob! Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. It's sure hard to believe you'll be 30 next time. Give me a year on that one.
To continue the celebration, more pictures, nearly lost on my machine, of boxes of cereal, all of which remind me of my brother in some way…
The Post brings news Mac McGarry is retiring after 50 years as host of It's Academic. I was never on the TV show (too slow in mind, thumb or both?) but had Gonzaga friends who appeared, our senior year even winning the region championship. Going to see them play was a blast.
You walked past a dark George Michael Sports Machine on your way into the local NBC studio. You packed into the bleachers. You checked out the cheerleaders from the schools that had girls. You considered your chances of getting on TV. They panned to the crowd, you know?
You sat with your friends from the football team, the newspaper, the subway, the soup kitchen, and you got quiet before you got real loud. The theme song played. You went crazy as the director wanted. Then you stayed on the edge of your seat. Mac McGarry kicked off the game.
McGarry was the perfect host of the show. He was encouraging but on point. He was in charge but welcoming to all. He appeared to delight in calling the end of the game — the drama — and then telling the studio crowd to come down and congratulate the players — the community. I think he's found a good successor in smart and likable Hillary Howard. Haven't had a good "pajama day," as the Post puts it, to see her yet.
The next extension of McGarry's legacy? High school friend Justin, who led Gonzaga's drive to that It's Academic title, is set to appear Tuesday on the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. On the Facebook page for it, you see the same motley crew of classmates packing the bleachers.
