One Man's Take on the Happy Life

'Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life.'
--William Ellery Channing. Don't recognize that name? Neither did we. But no less a figure than Emerson called this 19th-century Unitarian minister from Boston "a kind of public conscience." It doesn't get much better than that, folks.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone

Earth is turning and a massive star burns.
The unfailing harvest from the soil arrives
in its true season and every living day
succumbs to the dark and restive night.

Hearts are beating and lungs expanding,
the brain exerts its power of language and love,
blood strains relentlessly for its destination
as our bodies continue on.

We do nothing in all the days of our lives
to keep these laws in motion
or call them forth to complete their roles.
Nothing we do allows our eyes to open each morning.

And so for all that we cannot do on our own,
for the gift of free will and lives of unending choices,
for this food, and love we learn through time on Earth,
we thank you God for your blessings.
--Diane Vogel Ferri.

As we considered what we might share with you this holiday, we thought back to our earlier messages (from last year, the year before that, and three years ago). This year, nothing touched us quite the same as our friend Diane's tender, moving holiday poem. So thanks to her for sharing it. And while we respect this fellow's opinions about stuffing, we must take strong exception to it. To the contrary, we think this dish is divinely inspired, especially in the hands of our sainted mother-in-law, Mary, whose cooking routinely brings strong men to tears, as it will again in a few hours. Have a blessed day, y'all. We love and cherish you in an extra special way on this holiday, wherever you may be.

Our Favorite Book

Title, Part 20

This time, we liked a couple of titles about equally: Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back and Ignore Everybody--And 39 Other Keys to Creativity. They both do a marvelous job of distilling their subject matter into a few words, and those words happen to be quite memorable--to me, at least. Each would make me stop what I was doing to flip through the book. Runner up? The nod goes to An Irreverant Curiosity--In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic In Italy's Oddest Town. If the book delivers even half of what that alluring title seems to promise, it would be eminently worth reading (you can read an interview with the author here). Perhaps you have some thoughts about these, or may have even read one. If so, we'd love to hear about it, and welcome hearing about other great book titles. Meanwhile, you can review earlier favorite book titles here.

Secret Anniversaries
Of the Heart

'The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart, the secret anniversaries of the heart.'
--the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. If you'd care to share anything at all about your secret anniversaries, we'd love to hear about them.

The End of Market Worship--Or
Have We Really Learned Anything?

'A few years ago a friend advised me that if I wanted to know what was going on in the real world, I should read the business pages. Although my lifelong interest has been in the study of religion, I am always willing to expand my horizons; so I took the advice, vaguely fearful that I would have to cope with a new and baffling vocabulary. Instead I was surprised to discover that most of the concepts I ran across were quite familiar. Expecting a terra incognita, I found myself instead in the land of déjà vu. The lexicon of The Wall Street Journal and the business sections of Time and Newsweek turned out to bear a striking resemblance to Genesis, the Epistle to the Romans, and Saint Augustine's City of God. Behind descriptions of market reforms, monetary policy, and the convolutions of the Dow, I gradually made out the pieces of a grand narrative about the inner meaning of human history, why things had gone wrong, and how to put them right. Theologians call these myths of origin, legends of the fall, and doctrines of sin and redemption. But here they were again, and in only thin disguise: chronicles about the creation of wealth, the seductive temptations of statism, captivity to faceless economic cycles, and, ultimately, salvation through the advent of free markets, with a small dose of ascetic belt tightening along the way, especially for the East Asian economies.'
--from Harvard theologian Harvey Cox's 1999 essay in The Atlantic Monthly, "The Market as God." What do you think: has the near-economic meltdown finally put a dent in the peculiarly American notion that markets take precedence over everything, or will we simply return to our old ways before too long?

Channeling

Your Inner Rat

'The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability.'

--Harold Evans, quoting a colleague in his new memoir, My Paper Chase. We heartily encourage you to share your own war stories about how you employed ratlike cunning in support of your larger goals, vocational or otherwise.

After All, It Worked
Pretty Well For Him

'Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.'
--Albert Einstein. Like most of what the great one did and said, this seemingly simple maxim contains deeper layers of insight. How are you creating value? While you're thinking about that, you can review earlier mentions of the frizzy haired physicist here. As a Friday bonus, we bring you our favorite cartoon of the week, from the pages of the New Yorker. Have a blessed weekend, everyone.

The Act of Writing As an Exercise in Honesty

'Somehow, when we start writing, all the lies we told ourselves, all the deceptions and mistaken beliefs that we held up as a shield, are challenged. We can do it in prose or poetry, in fiction or non-fiction, in a piece meant for public consumption or in a private diary. It doesn’t matter how and where it is presented. What matters is that we approach the act of writing as an exercise in honesty, keeping ourselves open to find the truth.'
--from Nancy Christie's blog, The Writer's Place. You might also want to check out the Youngstown-based writer's website.

Headlines of the Week

The Biology of Joy and Sex Without Nipples--two recent headlines almost guaranteed to attract wandering web surfers to stop and click. Again, we ask the question: do the articles deliver on the headline's promise? As Fox "News" would say, we report; you decide. And speaking of Fox, we loved David Letterman's recent crack about the propaganda outlet: "The Obama Administration has said they don't consider Fox News to be a legitimate news network. They're about eight years behind the rest of us." We also admired how the lefty pub In These Times skillfully used this pleasing pun and how the New York Times managed to grab attention with this headline.

Notes on Building Your Network

Below are a few rough notes from my session on Monday about building your network. A special welcome to first-time visitors whom I met that evening.

Why would anyone want or need to build a network? And I emphasize the verb build, as opposed to the mere activity of networking. It’s not just something you should do when job-hunting—a classic mistake made by many—or important for those in sales & business development, another common misconception.

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” --Jane Howard, British actress & novelist.

I’ve had the good fortune to spend several years of my career in various places where the concept of networks were carried to a high art.

• Covering Capitol Hill in my 20s.
• Working later at a university in the Alumni Office, where you learn that friendraising MUST precede fundraising
• Shared offices for a few years with a search & outplacement firm, where I picked up lots of insight about network-building around the watercooler.
• General business reporting background.

A good network should provide you many crucial things, among which are listening posts and at least a couple of walking encyclopedias. Who are yours?

So let’s go back to that Jane Howard quote and pay attention to that term “tribes.” You might also know it as “affinity groups.” Building your network should begin there.

Types of Tribes or Affinity Groups

• Schools you attended, especially college
• Former employers (IBM and McKinsey alums are famously tight)
• Places you’re from
• Industries/sectors you work in or want to work in
• Ethnic groups

The strongest and largest networks come from combining the power of in-person and online networking. Each alone has its limits. When combined, they reinforce each other. Remember, every interaction you have in person or online represents a chance for you to shine, or not.

You should always be developing superchampions (friends, mentors, former and current clients) who can become your sales force. How do you find/grow them? And remember the power of the second tier of your network, the people who your contacts know. There's often gold to be found there.

UPDATE: My friend Valdis Krebs, the guru of gurus on network mapping, recently posted this interesting exploration of how some people use their personal networks in an especially mindful manner. You can review an earlier mention of him here.

Love & Miracles

'Where there is great love there are always miracles.'
--Willa Cather. We're bashful to admit that the only prior appearance of the poetess of the plains in these pages was this brief nod to her by our friend Deanna Adams. But hell, that's better than nothing. And she was surely something.

Why Americans hate to love government.

A Very Different Take On the

Thank God It's Friday Culture

'Work is love made visible.'

--Kahlil Gibran, the sublime Lebanese-American author, whom we've somehow gone nearly seven years without mentioning here, an oversight which we're only too happy to now correct. You can sample from his life and work here. Has anyone read his book of inspirational essays, The Prophet? If so, we'd love to hear your thoughts.

Interested in Growing Your Human Network?
Join Me for a Presentation Next Monday Eve

In this, the Great Recession, there's never been a greater need to have a strong professional and personal network. People who are in business for themselves take it as a given that they must maintain strong relationships with a wide array of people from all kinds of walks of life, and must constantly nurture and grow that network. But when you're a long-time employee in an organization (and not part of the sales or business-development group), it's easy to forget about why all this matters, at least until your job has been eliminated or you otherwise find yourself in transition, the giant catch-all phrase one hears everywhere these days. When you're looking for your next thing, a strong network suddenly matters, a lot.

Next Monday, November 16th, I'll be talking about that very subject--the building, care and feeding of one's network. As a bonus, you'll get to take a look around an old Cleveland institution that most people have only walked by and admired on their way to an Indians or Cavs game, Gray's Armory. It's a magical old place that instantly summons what late 19th-century Cleveland looked like. When I took a tour a couple weeks ago, I was slightly awed by its musty majesty. Anyway, you can get more information about the event here, but there's no need to RSVP ahead of time. Simply come down and be part of it all. I hope to see some of you there.

Locking Yourself Away to Focus On
Making Money as Quickly as Possible

A trove of F. Scott Fitzgerald's tax returns recently surfaced, and they contained a host of surprises, as this article in The American Scholar notes. The piece is full of delicious details about the ups and downs of his financial life. But veteran writers may especially appreciate this passage about how even such a prominent writer and relative money-making machine as Fitzgerald occasionally had to focus on factory-like productivity of material that, to him at least, was more about commercial than artistic success.

By November, Fitzgerald was out of cash—including Scribner’s $3,939 advance for Gatsby. The wolf was at the door. For the next five weeks he went to a large bare room over the garage and worked 12 hours a day “to rise from abject poverty back into the middle class.” Between November 1923 and April 1924 he produced 11 short stories, earning $17,000. Some of the early stories have lasted—“May Day,” “The Ice Palace,” “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”—but Fitzgerald viewed them as a waste of the time he wanted to spend on the novels. They were, however, an economic necessity. He wrote to Edmund Wilson, “I really worked hard as hell last winter—but it was all trash and it nearly broke my heart as well as my iron constitution.” He wrote that he was “far from satisfied with the whole affair.” A young man “can work at excessive speed with no ill effect but youth is unfortunately not a permanent condition of life.”

We'd love to hear your reactions about this passage or about the larger point, the eternal tension between making a living and making your art. You can also review earlier mentions of Gatsby's creator here.

Market-Tested Ideas

'Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.'
--Thomas Edison. I don't know whether I agree with this, nor do I have the foggiest notion of what this has to do with writing and storytelling (well, okay, I do have some ideas). Mostly, I just thought it was an interesting observation by an interesting guy (this is his second appearance here, the first being this item from '06). But enough about what I think. Time for you to unload your thoughts about all this, gentle reader. Commence firing...

How the Dreaded Mission Statement
Doesn't Have to be Study in Banality

Fast Company offers a nice disquisition on a topic that occasionally comes up in my web copywriting duties--helping distill an organization's essence into a mission statement. The vast majority of these statements are dreary exercises in banal corporate-speak. But it doesn't have to be that way. As FC puts it: "Mission statements don't have to be dumb. In fact, they can be very valuable, if they articulate real targets. The first thing I'd do is forget the exact words and remember the reason for a statement in the first place. In 2006, Wilson Learning surveyed 25,000 employees from the finance and tech industries. Respondents said they wanted a leader who could 'convey clearly what the work unit is trying to do.' The same applies to mission statements, which set the tone. Employees, vendors, and clients don't get stoked by fuzzy mission statements. They will line up behind concrete goals." Thoughts?

A Writerly Question & Answer Session

Not long ago, I met the writer Kristine Meldrum Denholm in virtual fashion, on Linkedin (which I wrote a little about here). She also publishes a blog, and was nice enough to invite me to spend a little time with her readers, via a Q&A session. She posted the resulting interview today here. Thanks again for the invitation, Kristine. And good luck with all your writing.

The Illusion of Control

'We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.'
--Annie Dillard. She's perhaps most famous for her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won a Pulitzer Prize more than 30 years ago. But she's written so much more that's eminently worth reading. Do yourself a favor and dip into a bit of it sometime, and then come back and let us know what you thought.

Step Right Up & Place Your Bids

Future Heights, the group that publishes the Heights Observer, holds an online auction each year to raise money to support its operations. I'm doing my small part this year by offering five hours of writing coaching services. The auction runs through November 15th, and we hope you'll look around the auction site and see if there's anything up your alley. Let the bidding begin!

Some Things We Couldn't Help Notice

The Secret History of Swine Flu...Revealed.

A Dynamic as Inevitable as Rainfall. Spewers of hatred inevitably become targets of violence themselves. For teletyrant Lou Dobbs, a latter-day Father Coughlin in pancake makeup, and his disgusting campaign against immigrants, he's merely reaping what he's sown.

And Speaking of Teletyrants in Pancake Makeup...We got a kick out of learning that John Stossel, the mustachioed right-wing ideologue who has been masquerading for years as a consumer reporter on ABC, has moved his sad little act to Fox News. We think that's right where he belonged the entire time. He'll fit in marvelously.

The Head-Turning Mrs. Kucinich is Back in the News. And even these female columnists can't help referring to her right up at the top of the piece as a "gorgeous redhead." We almost feel sorry for her, given the seeming obsession about her looks (during Kucinich's last presidential campaign, GQ writer and Cleveland native Scott Raab tagged along with the couple and spent much of his memorable article exploring the many sides of his lust for her). We wonder if she ever finds all this attention to her looks a bit off-putting.

Gloria-ous Recovery. Our friend Gloria Ferris has made a remarkable, even miraculous, recovery from a stroke and other complications. Last month, she returned to Cleveland's MetroHealth Hospital to tell her story to a conference of stroke survivors. We're so glad to have you back in fine form, Gloria.

Question of the Day: How much lower can the once-august Time Magazine go in chasing readers downmarket before it becomes US News & World Report, an unread and unreadable mess? Answer: we hope it can't get any worse than this pathetic sop to pet lovers masquerading as a serious magazine piece (but of course it can, and probably will). It made us embarrassed for the entire magazine industry.

Listen to Your Father

'My father always told me you don't get anything for nothing, and although I was always rebelling, I never rebelled against that.'
--actor and director Clint Eastwood, from a new biography on his life. We couldn't help noticing the applause he received some months ago when he appeared on the Letterman show around the time his most recent movie, Gran Torino, debuted. It may have been the longest, loudest, most appreciative celebration for any guest on that show in years. Something about his work strikes an emotional chord in many people, and we happen to be among that cohort.

Election Day

My friend Richard Andrews used to publish his own alternative print newspaper, aptly named The Real Deal. Now he offers an electronic version, and with analysis like this, we hope he sticks at it. He calls this the most consequential election for this area since Cleveland became the first major American city to elect a black mayor, more than 40 years ago. But he's not happy with the job our daily newspaper is doing in covering it all. He likens the Plain Dealer to Fox news. Anyway, we hope you'll read it, and vote.

She Gets Our Endorsement

Our friend Jill Zimon has taken a break from writing for the last couple of months to focus her full attention on running for city council in her suburb of Pepper Pike. Jill still writes a parenting column (which I mentioned a little here), and more recently I mentioned that her fine blog was noted in a new paperback guide to Cleveland. As for Pepper Pike, I got to know this nearby suburb a little better when I wrote the copy for its website not long ago, and I know enough to believe she'd surely shake things up a little, if elected. We're keeping our fingers crossed on her behalf, and we'll be watching those election returns tomorrow with an extra bit of interest. Good luck, Jill.
UPDATE: It's not yet official, but it looks like she's won a seat.
UPDATE #2: The Cleveland Jewish News briefly chronicles her victory.

Gift or Servant?

'The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.'
--Albert Einstein. You can review earlier mentions of the great man here.

Ten Things That Scare Freelancers

Just in time for Halloween, freelancer Michelle Rafter offers a top ten list of things that scare her tribe. Do any of these sound familiar to you?

Till Death Do Us Chaste

'Personally I know nothing about sex because I've always been married.'

--Zsa Zsa Gabor

We All Need Help Sometime

'{Georgetown University Sophomore Charley Cooper} logged on to the university's student employment Web site last week and posted an ad for someone to tackle "some of my everyday tasks," such as organizing his closet, dropping him off and picking him up from work, scheduling haircuts, putting gas in the car and taking it in for service, managing his electronic accounts and doing laundry (although the assistant will be paid only for the time spent loading, unloading and folding clothes, not the entire laundry cycle). The successful applicant can expect to work three to seven hours a week and make $10 to $12 an hour, although "on occasion it will be possible to work additional hours and/or receive bonuses at my discretion."'
--You can read the entire article here. We can't quite decide whether this fellow is a budding dynamo or simply a kid in need of some attitude adjustment. What do you think?

That's the Spirit

'I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.'
-- Pablo Picasso (a tip of the cap to our friend Scott Crawford, the branding guru, for finding this quote).

A New Blog That's Worth A Look

My beloved New York Review of Books was founded nearly 50 years ago out of a concern that a long New York newspaper strike was preventing readers from learning about important new books. For decades, it was lovingly tended by a pair of publishing dynamos. The NYRB, contrary to its fussy intellectual reputation in some quarters, was among the first major pubs to use the web smartly to expand its reach. It puts much of its content online for free, adding in regular podcasts. And it famously has one of the world's great destinations for personal ads, for discerning readers who are searching for love or perhaps just companionship. Now, it's also just launched an interesting new blog. I recommend to you this entire intellectual feast.

A Thought for Our Friends in Transition

'The world is round, and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.'
--Ivy Baker Priest, who may have been an obscure mid-century political figure, but who evidently understood some important things about life.

Cutting Through the Statistical Quagmire:
Here's NE Ohio's Chief Economic Problem

Richard Florida, a controversial guru of regional economic competitive advantage (with whom I don't generally agree) does nicely cut to the chase about Northeast Ohio's number one economic problem: the unnervingly low rate of college graduates in this region. In this article for a publication by the McKinsey consulting firm, he highlights what he calls a "means migration" that "can be seen most clearly in the increasing geographic concentration of college graduates." And as he often does in his various writings (this article is an excerpt from his latest book), he rightly uses the Cleveland area as a prime example of the negative side of the equation, pointing to its low rate of college grads, which is lower than even Detroit's.

Are You Tending to the

Weeds or the Flowers?

'Gloom we have always with us, a rank and sturdy weed, but joy requires tending.'
--Author and writer Barbara Holland. You can learn more about her at her website. Given the long conversation touched off by our previous post, we couldn't help noticing that she says she "started out in poetry...but converted to prose when faced with a living to earn." Anyway, please don't hesitate to send us your stories about gloom or joy. Who knows? Maybe some stray comment from another reader will inject you with an unexpected dose of the latter.

Why Don't People Read Poetry Anymore?

'On my morning commute, I often check people out, their heads buried in newspapers or portable Web browsers or beauty magazines. On the whole bus, I’m always the only person with a poetry book in my hands, and I often wonder how different this world would be if more people read poetry. I don’t know — maybe that’s just something that I tell myself to make myself feel better, a kind of self-validation. Maybe it’s just a dream I have, that this world could change, and poetry is the only way I know how to do it.'
from a recent piece in Smart Set. We'd love to hear why you do or don't read poetry. Send us your poetry-related stories. And don't worry, they don't have to rhyme.

Earth To Not-So-Breitbart: Please
Take Yourself a Tad Less Seriously

This fool--a protege of the egregious Matt Drudge, no less--tells the Financial Times that his goal is to be a kingmaker. Someone please tell this human dunce cap that leading the "conservative agenda" in America these days amounts to being idiot-in-chief. Not something any serious adult should be striving toward.

Erin Knows Sexy When She Sees It

My friend and fellow scribbler Erin O'Brien has done some great work in the past, including this well-reported cover story last month in the Scene. But this week she tops even herself with this inspired riff on what constitutes real sexiness for those of a certain age:

I'm not going to give you that tired old list of looking-into-my-eyes, rubbing-my-feet, champagne and strawberries stuff. I am 44 years old for chrissake. I can do a little better than that. Here goes:
-Overtipping the overworked lunch waitress is sexy (and I mean just slipping a few extra bills under the sugar bowl without making a big showy deal of it).
-I do not miss smoking, but I do miss men lighting my
cigarette.

-Whispering something sophisticated and funny in my ear at a dinner party is sexy.
-Work Chinos are sexy. So are the men in them. I don't care about that beer belly, darlin'.
-Desire is sexy. I'm not talking about simply being horny, I'm talking about profound desire, the sort that says I want you. I want to be as close as two people can be, to draw you into me and put my mouth on your mouth and have you so completely that the edges between us blur.
-Taking both my hands in either of your hands and pulling them up above my head and holding them there with our fingers interlaced while we kiss in bed is sexy.

Stop the Presses!

'Contrary to the hopes of some advocates, the internet is not changing the socioeconomic character of civic engagement in America. Just as in offline civic life, the well-to-do and well-educated are more likely than those less well off to participate in online political activities such as emailing a government official, signing an online petition or making a political contribution.'
--a conclusion from the most recent "no-duh" report assembled by the Pew Internet organization, producers of a series of studies that point out the painfully obvious. You can review earlier iterations of our Stop the Presses series here.

We'll Survive, Somehow

A dispatch from the Idiot Culture notes that Tom Delay is apparently leaving a show called Dancing With the Stars. If you've seen this show (I witnessed a few clips of him shaking his booty on the Internet) you're perhaps left shaking your head that a guy famous for political corruption is reduced to trying to change the subject in such humiliating fashion. If it's a little hard to remember what all that fuss was about, we outlined it here two years ago, when he left Congress.

How to Recycle Anything

Do you want to be more environmentally responsible, and yet feel overwhelmed by where to begin? I know that describes me. This feature in Real Simple magazine might be a good place to start. It provides a simple guide to what can be recycled, and how. I found it to be eye-opening. Here's hoping you will too.

We Can't Say We're Surprised: Mediterranean
Diet is Linked to Lower Rates of Depression

'People whose diets were more strongly associated with the Mediterranean diet were less likely to be diagnosed with depression during the four and a half years they were followed up. They had about one third of the risk of those who ate a diet least like the Mediterranean diet. The researchers say that how much fruit, nuts, and legumes (such as lentils and beans), as well as the types of fats or oils they ate, were strongly linked to a lower risk of depression. They think that the fatty acids found in olive oil may be one factor in lower rates of depression, although they conclude that the overall effect of the diet may be more important than singling out individual foods.'
--from a recent article in The Guardian, part of a series published in conjunction with the British Medical Journal. This is especially worthy of attention for Northeast Ohioans, since our unusually overcast weather--especially the long, pewter-colored gray skies of endless winter--lead to what I think of as a generalized form of low-grade regional depression. The psychiatric community has a name for this--Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. You can review the American Psychiatric Association's suggestions for counteracting SAD here.

Just in Time for Thanksgiving,
Your Chance to Bag A Turkey

"Are you fed up with meaningless gobbledygook? Words that mean little or nothing? Empty phrases? Vague writing that confuses rather than communicates? Now is your chance to fight back against bureaucratese, legalese, technobabble, government-speak and other assaults on the English language. Announcing the first Online Gobbledygook, Gibberish and Jargon Awards(TM)." You can nominate some bad examples you find by sending them here. I think you already know we're in sympathy with any attempts to stamp out assaults on clear language. If you do send along a bad example or two, we hope you'll also share it with us here.

There's Just Something About Red

"The color red represents life, blood, passion, anger, desire, luck, love, to name just a few." Slate explores the topic with this photo montage. Please, feel free to share your red-themed stories, class. We'd be interested.

Our Favorite Headline of the Week

Are Married White Men in Convertibles Doomed to Deafness? The headline on this CNet story does what good headlines are supposed to do: it stops you (or at least it stopped me) and beckons your attention. I don't know about you, but I couldn't resist reading on to learn more. Is it only because I happen to share two of three attributes mentioned (I'm a white married guy, but alas, I'm convertible-less)? That doesn't hurt, I suppose. But I think it's also just inspired headline writing. On the other hand, does the story deliver on the headline's promise (another important but often overlooked element of good headline writing)? On this question, we report; you decide. Meanwhile, you can review earlier favorite headlines here.

First, Work on Yourself

'Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.'
--Leo Tolstoy

You Know You've Hit Rock Bottom When...

Your city can't afford to bury its dead people. How much more pain can Detroit take? Thoughts, anyone?

An American Dream Fades in the Suburbs

The Soviet leader Josef Stalin famously observed that "a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." In today's Plain Dealer, my friend Maria Shine Stewart manages to put a human face on the convergence of twin American crises, the healthcare and foreclosure problems. She does so by writing a haunting essay on her cousin's tenuous attempts to cling to the American dream. I hope you'll click through and read it all. I've been privileged to know Maria, a writer and English teacher, for more than 20 years. Last year, she wrote this wonderful guest report on her experience attending the Neiman Conference on Narrative Journalism, and she regularly contributes fine essays to the excellent online-only pub Inside Higher Ed. May your writing fingers continue to find their way to these essential stories for many more decades, Maria.

Ladies, Your Travel Worries Are Over...

This revolutionary device will no doubt make your life simpler. Just imagine what it would have meant for that lovelorn astronaut. Leave it to the Germans to come up with something like this. Anyway, please let us know how it works out for you. But please, no photos.

One Writer's Nostalgia for Former Subjects

'The pile of old newspapers and magazines sat weathered and dusty on my office floor. It was hard not to notice them when you entered the room, yet I managed to block them from my peripheral vision for more than two months. Once our two new kittens began to use the pile of reading material as a bed, however, I knew it was time to do something. There aren't many things worse than the smell of newspapers on which almost-totally-trained cats have lounged.The reason I'd been putting off going through those old publications was simple and understandable, if you're a long-time writer, as I am. That seemingly annoying stack of slush represented ten years of my career...They dated between 1995 and 2005, and most of the articles I'd written for them had not been placed on the Internet. They existed only in ink...As I read through articles from several years ago, I recalled vivid details, not so much of the actual writing process, but of meeting the people and visiting the places described in the articles. There was the dad who painted a mural of the Wizard of Oz across all four walls of his daughter's bedroom, the florist whose dog liked to wear cool sunglasses while riding in the car and the homeowner who happily gave my two-month-old daughter a bottle while I jotted down notes about her living room. I remembered lugging an infant to interviews when I couldn't find a sitter, and the extremely considerate interviewees who never complained about the extra bundle at the interview. I recalled the quote from a longtime Browns fan who was selling off his extensive memorabilia: "When I got married, I told my wife the Browns come first on Sundays. As you get older, you realize it's not that important." I can see myself sitting in the home of two prominent lawyers, who welcomed me in as though they had all the time in the world to talk with me.The articles reminded me of the people I'd met and the kindnesses they'd offered me. I thought about the joys and sorrows they shared with me, the way they confided in me as though I was a good friend and how thrilled they were to read about themselves, their business or their home in a publication.'
--From my friend Diane DePiero's recent blog post. Veteran writers will recognize the way she fondly recalls former subjects of her writing.

Some Call it Meditation, Others Prayer

'Half an hour's meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.'
--St. Francis DeSales

Torture on the Cuyahoga, Part 2

Last week, we told you about a long-suffering Cleveland sports fan's cry for help. This week, after the Browns managed to be even worse in week three than in the first two weeks of the season, some fans have begun circulating a petition inviting the team's owner to sell the franchise. Sure enough, others are circulating a counter-petition, asking owner Randy Lerner to ignore those other fans. If you happen to be among those who believe petition drives have any effect in the real world (I'm not, alas) perhaps this gives you a glimmer of hope for your team. The rest of us will just quietly lick our wounds and go about our business, as usual. Perhaps our favorite Argentinian reader, Mariana, can give us a more hopeful update about her favorite soccer team.
UPDATE: A new Sports Illustrated columnist (and Cleveland-area native) wonders aloud: is new Browns coach Eric Mangini the worst hire ever?

Take Your Semicolon to Lunch

In the crunch of events, we somehow missed the crucial news that last week was National Punctuation Day! Thank goodness our friend Mike Quinn was more on the ball, and took note of it, thus tipping us off. We'd love to hear your thoughts about your favorite form of punctuation and/or top punctuation memories. If you'd like to send along some photos as well, by all means, please do so. We know how emotional people can be about their punctuation.

Useless People and Death Panels

'Lady, if we were getting rid of useless people, you'd be the first to know.'
--comedian Bill Maher on the Jay Leno show this week, addressing the idea propagated by Sarah Palin that the Obama healthcare reform proposal includes the formation of "death panels" overseeing decisions on which patients will live or die. If you're dying to read her new book, word is it'll be out in about six weeks. And Politico reports that she's just as popular as ever with the right wing. Finally, you can review our earlier mention of Maher here.

The Primordial Hankering to be an Editor

'No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.'
--H.G. Wells

The Decline of Humanities Majors

This interesting piece in the American Scholar breaks some news of which I was only dimly aware: the number of humanities majors has declined steadily over the last generation. The headline is a little misleading--even though it focuses on the decline of English majors, the piece goes on to note the drop is just as apparent in other areas of the humanities, such as foreign languages and history. No surprise about what's filled the vaccum, of course: from the '70-'71 to '03-'04 school years, the ratio of business majors in American higher education went from 13.7 to 21.9%. The author, a former president of a couple of leading private colleges, suggests one main reason for the change is the country's slow shift in emphasis away from private colleges and universities, which have historically nurtured the humanities, to public institutions, which mostly have not. Three years ago, we noted with interest a book about the many ways in which English majors remain in demand. We were equally interested in a comment our friend
Ron Copfer made in that string: how, as a longtime employer, he had come to appreciate the contributions of English majors.

A Recipe for a Contented Life

'Nine requisites for contented living: health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of god. Hope enough to move all anxious fears concerning the future.'
--Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Last Call for Citizen Journalism Workshop
On Feature-Writing at the Heights Library

I'll be facilitating a workshop on feature writing this Saturday morning at the Lee Road Library in Cleveland Heights. While it's sponsored by the Heights Observer, a community owned paper, and thus targetted at citizen journalists, we'll no doubt have a wide cross section of folks on hand for a lively discussion. I expect everything from curious beginners to pros intent on brushing up their skills (including at least a couple of WWW readers whom I've already heard from), traditional-age students (we should all be lifelong students, right?) to those who are just curious about reading. Even some folks who simply want to be better citizens. If reading, writing or citizenship hits your buttons, we'd love to have you there too.

Torture on the Cuyahoga, Or the Latest On
What It's Like to Be a Cleveland Sports Fan

'Frankly, I'm not even sure the Cleveland Browns are in the NFL anymore. Brady Quinn appears to have the arm strength of Marcia Brady or maybe, at best, Sally Quinn. Eric Mangini stood on the sidelines yesterday with his hat turned askew as if he were a five-year-old boy who just got kicked off the swings by the mean bully in Denver. The Browns defense is more generous than the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation and the overall strategy couldn't win a game of Chutes and Ladders. The owner is involved in some British soccer team and the team traded the rights to a quarterback who just beat the New England Patriots for the rights to draft a center who doesn't know how to snap in the shotgun. The Browns play Quinn instead of the unpopular Pro Bowl quarterback who sits on the bench. Meanwhile the twin brother of the brash New York Jets coach and the son of an even brasher father is on staff but under the supervision of a guy who thinks the NFL is the CIA. Here's what it's like to be a Cleveland fan: Lebron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers is probably going to New York. In the last year, the Cleveland Indians have traded away two Cy Young Award winners and the second best hitting catcher in baseball. The Browns are more disappointing.'
--Brian Tarcy, co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Football, and a Browns' fan, tells the Washington Post what it's really like to be a long-suffering sports fan in this region. It's beginning to feel like a chapter from the Old Testament, folks. You know, the Book of Job, about epic loss and frustration that never ends. We've dealt with this topic earlier, though always in the context of the basketball Cavs, most recently when they were unceremoniously ousted from the playoffs this spring. We also talked about the longer history of Cleveland sports frustrations in this piece three years ago. May we never feel the need to return to this subject again. Fat chance of that.

How Writing is a Lot Like Sex

'Writing is a lot like sex. You won't have any fun unless you're willing to switch positions.'
--at least according to this Latina poet. We'd love to hear about how you may or may not be stuck in a rut with your writing, and what might constitute switching positions. Or as our friend Art would say, how you manage your creative crop rotation. As it happens, we were privileged to finally meet our longtime commenter Art Durkee earlier today, as he traveled through town. We'll save that report for another day. Suffice it to say for now that the in-person conversation was even more sublime than the virtual one we've been having for a couple years.

First, Throw the Whole

Thing Down on Paper

'Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.'

--novelist John Steinbeck, whose classic Great Depression-era novel The Grapes of Wrath is garnering renewed interest during this current Great Recession. This is Steinbeck's inaugural mention here.

A Stout-Hearted Cleveland Teacher

Writes Trenchantly From the Inside

'Even for those of us who have lasted long enough in the education trenches to bear the moniker of 'Seasoned Veteran', the first day back to school is still anticipated with a bit of trepidation, along with the excitement of a fresh start. Driving along the Shoreway early Thursday morning I wondered, "Who will I meet this year?" Over the past 28 years of 'first days', I have met thousands of young men and women. As I taught them new concepts, they enriched my life. So many made me laugh, some tested my patience, a few even broke my heart. Most eventually graduated to go on to jobs or college. They became hard workers, good parents, and successful business people. A good number became artists, and an admirable number became teachers. I've sent quite a few of my students off to the armed forces. Some made careers in the military, others have returned from war physically and/or emotionally scarred. I see my former pupils' names in the newspaper, or on the internet, in the business or society pages, occasionally in the obituaries, and more often than I care to admit, in the police blotter. I've seen their faces on the walls of the post office featured on the FBI's most wanted posters, found them listed in the sheriff's sex offenders updates, and on prison web pages. I've taught killers, gangsters, rapists, bank robbers and con-artists. And I've also taught the victims.'

--from my friend Mary Beth Matthews' incredible blog. If there's a better example of a teacher writing with vivid honesty about how urban public education really works in America, I've yet to come across it. Here's hoping this heroic woman continues to touch young lives with her almost freakish dedication. I also hope she'll one day write a book full of all she knows about what takes place in school classrooms. It would be an unforgettable book. I couldn't help noticing how she evidently follows the progress of her former students over a lifetime with the same kind of perpetual interest that I have about anyone I've written about in the past.

The Recipe for An
Indomitable Spirit

'If you're going through hell, keep going.'
--Winston Churchill. You can review an earlier mention of the late British leader here.

When Infoman Speaks, We Always Listen

If you're of a certain vintage, perhaps you remember the famous series of commercials for the now-defunct brokerage house E.F. Hutton. It was so well done and so vivid that it's often remembered today in conversations, years--hell, decades--after it stopped running. It went like this (or at least one of them did): two older guys of means were sitting at a table talking about the stock market, and one of them begins to say '...and E.F. Hutton says...' and the entire roomful of people stopped talking and craned their necks, hoping to listen in on the advice (you can see another variation of the TV ad here). It was one of those rare ads that managed to break through the incessant clutter of advertising and into the larger cultural conversation.

Anyway, we're blessed to know a few people such as that, folks so sharp and discerning that you tend to sit up and take notice when they say something. One of them is Doug Mazanec, a.k.a. Infoman. We noticed the other day that he spoke highly of a new word-obsessed website, Worknik, and we decided to give it a look. Remember, it's labeled "beta," a software term that means it's a work in progress. But please give it a look and let us know what you think. As for you, Infoman, thanks for the tip.
UPDATE: Our old friend Kate Oatis, a dear classmate from college and one of the smartest, sweetest women in America (you can look it up!), who's a fellow writer and Russian history buff, sent along this site for my inspection. I figured as long as you're already checking out Doug's Wordnik, you might also render your opinion on the Motivated Grammar blog. And don't forget to check out Kate's blog as well.

Tinkering Toward That Elusive Perfection

'I have rewritten--often several times--every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.'
--the late Russian-born novelist Vladimir Nabokov.

Let's Remember That Nurses Provide
The Backbone of Healthcare Support

Nowhere amid all the bloviating coverage of "healthcare reform" can I recall ever, even once, hearing or reading anything about nurses and the crucial role they play in the entire healthcare system. That's as unbelievable as it is depressing, because anyone who has ever been in a hospital or even visited a friend or loved one there can't miss noticing that nurses are the real backbone of everything. I was reminded of that truism when I sent this Washington Post article to a friend named Kim, a nurse and a writer (her as-yet-unpublished novel is a gleaming jewel). She responded with a note whose gentleness and loving regard for her patients blew me away. I read it several times since, and teared up each time. I share it with you all with her kind permission:

After reading this I was immediately transported to my nights as a nurse on the oncology floor. I've been blessed to have those connecting moments with patients. As a new nurse I was terrified to take the dying patients. I didn't know what to say, felt awkward, and just downright sorry for everyone. The longer I worked there the fonder I became of this type of nursing. I started to request the dying patients and didn't mind if I had three or four at a time. It was a gift to be able to care for them during that sacred time. People are so vulnerable and afraid. I found that the night-time was the hardest for them because there were no distractions. Most families were gone and the only person to give them any comfort was the nurse assigned to them. Sometimes you would meet the patient for the first time and a few hours later you would be helping them through a crisis or even their death. I once had a patient assigned to me that I was told was having end of life issues. She was afraid to die because she was unsure if she believed in heaven. She had been struggling with this for a few days and had been visited by the hospital chaplin, various family members, etc. She was one of eight patients I was assigned to that night, several of which had a lot going on that would need my direct attention. I felt led to go see her first, even though I could have easily started with another task. I walked into her room and found the seventy year old sitting up quietly in her bed. I pulled a chair close and introduced myself as her night nurse. I then reached for her hand and gently talked about what I had been told from the other nurse concerning her possible death. I shared some of my thoughts about death, asked if there were any questions she had, and if I could help her in anyway. She gave me the most peaceful knowing smile and said, "No sweetie, I'm fine now." I asked her if there was anything she needed and she declined. I left her and went on to check on my other patients. It took me an hour and a half to see them all before I could go back to check on that first patient. When I did I found she had quietly died. It is in those moments that I feel God reassuring me that I chose the right profession. I could go on and on about the many people I have cared for. This particular one is high on my list. Thank you for sharing. I am going to email my mom the article. She's a nurse as well.

Trust the Reader

'No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.'
--E.B. White. You can find earlier mentions of the immortal one here. Looking for a good writerly biography? Scott Eledge's book on White's life is perhaps the best biography of a writer that I have ever read.

Plenty From Which To
Choose This Weekend

Northeast Ohioans know there's always a lot to do around these parts on weekends, perhaps doubly so in the autumn. But there are some particularly interesting events from which to choose this weekend. Though it's been happening annually for 20 years, I never knew the Cleveland Museum of Art hosted a chalk festival to highlight the sidewalk chalk arts. It's happening this Saturday and Sunday, and looks awfully interesting. I'm hoping to poke my head in for at least a brief look on Sunday. A bit to the south, NPR's Michael Feldman brings his Whad' Ya Know? show to Wooster on Saturday, which I would have loved to attend after listening to and enjoying the show for many years. But tickets no doubt were snapped up instantly as soon as they became available (though the website says some tickets will still be available at the door, however improbable that seems, given the deep reverence of so many for this show). And in any event, I was already obligated to serve as a volunteer for yet another interesting and important event this weekend, a bike ride to celebrate the life of professor Miles Coburn, tragically killed in a crash last year, but a man whose life really made an impact (more about which later). Here's hoping you enjoy your glorious early fall weekend. We'd love to hear how you plan to spend it. And if you happen to make it to any of these events, we'll especially hope for a report on how it went.
UPDATE: A new writer friend, Audrey McCrone, whom I met only the other day at an SPJ event, noticed this subject, and sent me the photo you see above, which she snapped of a past Chalk Festival. Audrey's an impressive lady with boundless energy, passion and enthusiasm for journalism, as one of her college administrators noted here. You can sample from some of her essays here. We feel blessed to know her.

Craftsmanship Counts

'Word carpentry is like any other kind of carpentry. You must join your sentences smoothly.'
--Anatole France, a French poet and writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921.

A Few Things We Couldn't Help Noticing

• Proud to Proclaim Our Ignorance. A Cleveland company we've never heard of is among Fortune Mag's 100 fastest-growing companies.
• Yet Another Health Myth? Canada's leading newsweekly thinks so.
• World's Weirdest Hotels. Which one is your favorite?
• Ten Oddest Places to Work or Live. Our favorite is #7.
• That Other 40th Anniversary (Sort Of). You can help write a history of the internet.
• Another Kind of History. We're guessing this headline might have drawn more than the usual amount of interest.
• Same Old Crap. This development reminded me of journalist Michael Kinsley's infamous principle about Washington outrages: the real scandal is not what people are doing illegally, but what's actually legal.
• And Finally...This is not a fake news item from The Onion, all appearances to the contrary. I'm just trying to imagine the experience of being coached by this disturbed cretin.

Wisdom Consists of
Selective Disregard

'The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.'
--the immortal Henry James, possibly the best novelist America has ever produced. If you've never read his masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady, you really ought to. When I read it in my mid-20s, not long before I got married, it continued to marinate in my brain for years. If you've somehow been led to believe that he was merely a writer of late-Victorian/early-Edwardian novel of manners that doesn't relate to your life, don't believe it. You can review our lone previous mention of James here.

Happy to Be at Odds
With Rest of Society

'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.'
--the late writer Flannery O'Connor. We think this is perhaps the best explanation we've ever come across of why intellectuals and other ravenous-minded folks are sometimes so out of step with the larger culture around them. You can learn about a foundation dedicated to keeping her memory alive and a short fiction award named in her honor.

How Words Free Our Ideas
From General Formlessness

'Words do not label things already there. Words are like the knife of the carver. They free the idea, the thing, from the general formlessness of the outside. As a man speaks, not only is his language in a state of birth, so is the very thing he is talking about.'
--Eskimo saying

Best Lead of the Month

'At midnight on Monday, when Labor Day ends, the summer of 2009 will officially pass into the annals of history. Good riddance. If there is a less scintillating summer on record, it's hard to remember it. By any standards—cultural, horticultural, political, cinematic, jurisprudential, meteorological—this is the least eventful summer since 1491. It started raining in June and never stopped. Health-care reform didn't get anywhere. The tomatoes were uneatable. Congress accomplished nothing. All the movies stunk. There were no good summer reads. The Jonas Brothers maliciously tried to pass themselves off as entertainers. Kate and Jon ruled the roost. As the summer slogged toward its sad, ignominious conclusion—just when the nation needed some bucking up, some leadership, perhaps even a few good chuckles—the president retreated to Martha's Vineyard, where he made a point of getting himself photographed acting really, really cool for a change. That left Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to provide all the last laughs. If it hadn't been for the exploits of the peregrinatory Lothario Mark Sanford and that prickly cop up in Cambridge, there would have been no fun at all this summer.'
--from literary bad boy Joe Queenan's rollicking good read in the weekend Wall Street Journal, his uniquely gimlet-eyed take on the "hegemony of dreariness" that has marked the summer just now coming to a close. You can review earlier best leads here.

The Most Irritating Phrases in the English Language

The Canadian newspaper the National Post raises the question what are some of the most irritating phrases in the English language? I think they nicely cover most of mine. Think of this as a companion of our earlier post about words that make you wince. So don't be shy: step right up and add your most irritating phrases.

More Poetic Take on the Notion

About How No Man is an Island

'We are, each of us, angels with only one wing, and we can only fly embracing each other.'

--the Italian writer, director and actor Luciano DeCrescenzo. We'd love to hear your stories about flying alone or together.

Here's A Possible, Albeit Partial, Antidote
To Worries About Journalism's Meltdown

If you're bummed out, worried, alarmed (take your pick) by the continuing meltdown in traditional journalism (about which we'll have an awful lot more to say in coming days and weeks), please consider doing this first. Take some time, though only when you have it, to click around and read some of this amazing work produced by the new batch of finalists for the Online News Association's annual awards. We can't say we've looked at all of it yet, and of course there are some things that will be familiar to just about any casual web reader, let alone those who are more devoted. But what we've reviewed thus far gives us renewed hope for the future. Naturally, we could use a whole lot more material like this. Anyway, enough about what we think. We'd love to hear your thoughts, including specifics about what you particularly liked here, and why. We won't settle any arguments, but merely hope to prompt a few.

Here's A Pregnant Thought
As We Begin a New Month

'True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.'
--the immortal British man of letters, moral philosopher and proud Catholic, G.K. Chesterton. An impressive portion of his vast papers are archived at John Carroll University, and local Chesterton societies exist in dozens, if not hundreds, of locations around the world. Despite his low name recognition in many quarters, some have called him the greatest writer of the 20th century (we think that mantle actually belongs to his contemporary, George Orwell). In any case, thanks to a longtime friend, WWW reader and soon-to-be grandma for sharing this quote. Today also happens to be the 70th anniversary of the commencement of World War II. He had died three years earlier.

The Real Reason Palin Stepped Down

I got a good chuckle out of all the feverish speculation a little while back about why right wing poster girl Sarah Palin decided to resign as governor of Alaska. It seemed pretty straightforward to me. All of her reasons--1,070 at latest count, and no doubt rising daily--can be found here.

Our Favorite Book Title, Part 19

This month, the honor goes to Building a Home With My Husband--A Journey Through the Renovation of Love. We loved the double meaning, and the lovely cover illustration sure didn't hurt any. Runner-up honors goes to Normal at Any Cost--Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height. You can review earlier fav book titles here.

Save This Date: Why Not Join Me
For a Feature-Writing Workshop?

I was recently invited to join an advisory board of an interesting citizen journalism venture, the Heights Observer, a monthly paper distributed both in print and online. On September 26th, I'll be facilitating a feature-writing workshop hosted by the group. While it will be particularly focused on citizen journalists, it still applies to anyone who's interested in writing newspaper or magazine feature stories. I hope you'll consider joining us if this subject interests you in any way, either as a writer or a reader.

Softening of the Heart

'Meditation is a means of cultivating insight through being mindful of what is arising and passing...the aligning and softening of the heart to be reconciled with this moment just as it is.'

--author Phillip Moffitt.

Here's the Real Reason We're In No Rush
To Add Our Feverish Updates Via Twitter

'All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’
—Blaise Pascal. He may have been a 17th century French mathematician and philosopher, but we think he understood plenty about that which has remained largely unchanged since his time: the human condition. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

A Humbling Thought,
But Also a True One

'Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.'
--the late poet T.S. Eliot. You can read his brief acceptance address upon being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948, and listen to the poet reading one of his most famous poems, The Waste Land. And then, we'd like to hear your thoughts on the man, his work, or that notion of his about all those failed writers. Should the spirit perhaps move you to also register a complaint about editors (those frustrated former scribblers), by all means, do share that as well. It's always open season around here.

'You Have to Learn the Beat'

'I would argue that the paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing--the place where coherence begins and words stand a chance of becoming more than mere words. If the moment of quickening is to come, it comes at the level of the paragraph. It is a marvelous and flexible instrument that can be a single word long or run on for pages (one paragraph in Don Robertson's historical novel Paradise Falls is sixteen pages long; there are paragraphs in Ross Lockridge's Raintree Country which are nearly that). You must learn to use it well if you are to write well. What this means is lots of practice; you have to learn the beat.'
--from On Writing--A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King. For many years, King championed Cleveland author Don Robertson. In 1987, King's Philtrum Press published Robertson's novel, The Ideal, Genuine Man. Before launching his fiction career, Robertson worked at all three major Cleveland papers, the News, Press and Plain Dealer. He died in 1999.

Why Cleveland is Not Cool

'Along with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which Cleveland landed by stuffing the ballot box in a USA Today survey, the West side is supposed to represent Cleveland's new-found hipness. This is all wrong. Cleveland is not cool. Cleveland can never be cool. Think of Cleveland's greatest entertainers: Drew Carey wears thick horn-rimmed glasses and a Marine buzz cut. Fred Willard has played so many cluelessly gregarious suburban dads that you can't film a tasteless summer comedy without writing him a cameo. Fellow Clevelander Martin Mull put Willard's talent to use in The History of White People in America. Cartoonist Harvey Pekar--record collector, file clerk, irritable bachelor schlump--knew "From off the streets of Cleveland" would clash perfectly with American Splendor, the title of his comic book. Their uncoolness is so much a part of Cleveland's character that the city is cooler when it's uncool than when it tries to be Brooklyn or San Francisco. This might be Cleveland's moment, too. In America's hippest urban neighborhoods there's nothing cooler than looking uncool. From coast to coast, alienated, countercultural twenty-three-year-olds have raided Cleveland's closet for Penguin sports shirts, Jack Nicklaus golf slacks, chunky glasses, and granny skirts (preferably worn with sneakers). They think bowling and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer make a great night out. Cleveland's thrift stores and alleys could become major tourist attractions. But Cleveland isn't cool enough to pick up on that. Instead, it flogs the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rock and roll isn't even cool anymore. Rock and roll is the music of baby boomer dads. It's the soundtrack to investment ads. Memphis was the logical winner of that USA Today poll, but I've come to agree that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame belongs in Cleveland. Only Cleveland would think putting rock music in a museum is cool. that's why you should go to the polka hall of fame instead. It's up front about being uncool. Which makes it so much cooler.'
--from The Third Coast--Sailors, Strippers, Fishermen, Folksingers, Long-Haired Ojibway Painters, and God-Save-the-Queen Monarchists of the Great Lakes, by Chicago-based writer Ted McClelland.

Three Good Reads

Here's some great long-form reading for your last dying days of summer. Ace magazine writer William Langewiesche uses the knowledge he accumulated as a former pilot himself to tell the story in Vanity Fair of the miraculous water landing of the U.S. Airways plane in the Hudson River. We think it's a magisterial read, and look forward to the book due to be published soon. Meanwhile, author Sam Tanenhaus has a long exploration in The New Republic on the challenges facing the American conservative movement, which he pronounces dead (we think that's a tad premature). Elsewhere, Smithsonian Magazine uses the 50th anniversary of architect Frank Lloyd Wright's master work, the Guggenheim Museum, to take yet another look at his larger legacy. As a bonus, we go back a few months in the ESPN.com archives to bring you this interesting study of the reticent football legend, former Steelers coach Chuck Noll. A Cleveland native, he's a class act to the end. You can review earlier TGRs here.

Only the Latest Gleaming Little Gem
From Our Favorite Cleveland Writer

'If you want to truly know the heart of a city, try writing about it. For a handful of years, I worked for a local alternative newspaper as a feature writer, trusted to write about lives I thought had meaning. An editor wondered if it would be difficult to find enough Clevelanders with tales worth telling. I said it would be harder to find somebody without one.'
--from the latest remarkable piece of writing by John Hyduk. He goes on to say in this piece that "there is a genius to listening." Last year, I outlined why he's perhaps my favorite Cleveland writer, even as he remains better known among fellow writers--among whom he inspires something bordering on awe in many--than among average readers.

Do You Have it All Backwards?

'You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.'

--novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. We happen to think this is the real source of much so-called writer's block: people enthralled with the idea of writing, but without anything urgent to say. In any case, you can review earlier mentions of the reigning sage of the Jazz Age here.

How Lack of Professional Proofreading
Can Lead to Disastrous Consequences

You probably know that the sharp increase of writing prompted by the ubiquity of email, along with the ever-lowering standards of careful writing has led to an explosion in basic errors in grammar, spelling and simple word usage, errors that can have bad consequences in business and professional settings (errors are even on the rise at major newspapers, as the ranks of copy editors continues to grow ever smaller). But mistakes aren't even confined to those areas, abundant though they are.

The other day, the Wall Street Journal noted a potentially disastrous error that a federal regulatory agency made in announcing the failure of a Savings & Loan. The agency's PR folks sent a press release that contained editorial changes from an earlier version of the document, still showing information crossed out in track changes (an editing feature in the Microsoft Word program) about a future regulatory action that was supposed to remain secret. They quickly sent another email to the media, asking that the earlier version be ignored, which as you might imagine was itself ignored. So what to do in guarding against these kinds of things? That's easy, actually. Never send any important email announcement without first emailing it to yourself, and then printing it out to read carefully. If you're not too sharp-eyed about language errors, share the printout with someone who is. And if you run a PR or marketing department, hire only people who have these skills. Voila!--like magic, the problem will be solved.

Uniquely Updikean
Take on Nostalgia

'What is nostalgia but love for that part of ourselves which is in heaven, forever removed from change and corruption?'
--the late John Updike, whom we would like to think now resides in writerly heaven. We recently noted his passing here.

A Privileged Job Indeed

'Some writers like to make a show of their struggle, thereby demonstrating just how great their own grit is. Perhaps the most famous among them was Gustave Flaubert, who wrote letter after letter to his mistress Louise Colet, groaning about the difficulties he encountered in composition: struggling all day over a paragraph, achieving no more than a single page after a full week at his desk...I have never liked to suggest that writing is grinding, let alone brave work. H. L. Mencken used to say that any scribbler who found writing too arduous ought to take a week off to work on an assembly line, where he will discover what work is really like. The old boy, as they say, got that right. To be able to sit home and put words together in what one hopes are charming or otherwise striking sentences is, no matter how much tussle may be involved, lucky work, a privileged job. The only true grit connected with it ought to arrive when, thinking to complain about how hard it is to write, one is smart enough to shut up and silently grit one’s teeth.'
--from the latest small masterpiece by Joseph Epstein, one of the finest essayist you'll find writing anywhere in the English language. You can review several earlier mentions of him here. We played a small role in resolving an Epstein-related mystery recently. A reader working on a doctoral dissertation wrote to ask us the source of an earlier Epstein quote we had posted, and we could only point him to a secondary source. Needing to trace it back to its original source, the doctoral candidate was stumped. Why not email the author himself and just ask him, we suggested, sending along Epstein's bio page from Northwestern University (from which he retired not long ago, though he retains an emeritus status). Sure enough, he did just that, and Epstein promptly emailed back, settling the issue.

Hope Begins in the Dark

'Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.'

--Anne Lamott. We've pointed to her often, for what I hope are obvious reasons. She's just damn brilliant.

The Ungiven Gift

'Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it.'
--the late writer William A. Ward, author of Fountains of Faith.

The Big Green Bus Stops for a Visit

We got a treat this week, playing host to 15 college students who are touring the country in a mobile educational vehicle. My wife's niece, Anna Wearn, was among the Dartmouth students who are touring America in the Big Green Bus, and they camped out at our house for a couple nights, and got to enjoy Cedar Point before taking off for their next stop, Columbus. The Plain Dealer's environmental beat reporter Michael Scott posted this video interview with Anna, and the accompanying story ran in the print edition yesterday. You can learn more about their cross-country sojourn at the bus' website. If you like, you can even track their progress through the Big Green Bus blog.

It's That Time of the Year Again, Part Two

This is the weekend of the Feast in Little Italy. I won't bore longtime readers with the story again, which I wrote about last year, and in even greater depth three years ago. Hope to see a few of you down there sometime between now and the end of the weekend. One nice additional element this year is the videos of the band, taken and posted on You Tube by my old pal Dan Hanson, a.k.a. the Great Lakes Geek, whom we've mentioned often over the years. These two videos alone (and there are others) received about 10,000 views between them since Dan first posted them last summer. Ah, the power of the web...

Just Connect

'Creativity is connecting the unconnected.'
--author & leadership guru John Maxwell

How Shorter Attention Spans for Reading
Even Affect Those Who Are Paid To Do It

'When I was a kid, maybe 12 or 13, my grandmother used to get mad at me for attending family functions with a book. Back then, if I'd had the language for it, I might have argued that the world within the pages was more compelling than the world without; I was reading both to escape and to be engaged. All these years later, I find myself in a not-dissimilar position, in which reading has become an act of meditation, with all of meditation's attendant difficulty and grace. I sit down. I try to make a place for silence. It's harder than it used to be, but still, I read.'
--from The Lost Art of Reading, an eye-opening piece by L.A. Times book editor David Ulin, who admits that even he has trouble focusing long enough to read books anymore. We recently had a small conversation here about Twitter, attention spans and A.D.D., but this extraordinarily honest piece should grab the attention of all serious readers. Do you think it's more a sign of advancing age on his part (we don't know his age, but we'll try to find out; one would assume he's not young) or part of a larger rewiring of our brains by a faster, image-addicted culture? We'd love to hear your thoughts. And please note the LAT's new website design, just launched in the last 24 hours. We're saddened that the trend toward plainer, (what we consider) uglier web designs with less color continue to make their inroads all over the web. For me, it makes for a slightly less interesting experience. Finally, you can review earlier entries about the joys of reading here, here, here, here, here and here.

Never Let 'Em See You Sweat

'A good style should show no sign of effort. What is written should seem like a happy accident.'
--the late British novelist W. Somerset Maugham. He lives on through his masterpiece, Razor's Edge. If you've never seen the 1984 movie version with Bill Murray, do yourself a favor and rent it now. And if that ultimately induces you to read the novel, so much the better.

Just Make Sure You Bring Them All Together

'Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.'
--Vincent Van Gogh. We'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on how this idea does or does not resonate for you. And if it does, perhaps you can provide an example of how it's worked in your life.

The Path to Real Inner Peace

Is to Leave Bad Jobs Behind

'Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.'

--the immortal comedian Johnny Carson, who helped launch scores of comedy careers simply by his thumbs up, the coveted invitation to come sit awhile for an interview on his Tonight Show couch.

Why e.e. cummings Would Have
Hated Microsoft's Word Program

I got a kick out of this, from the Cleveland Poetics blog. Perhaps you will too.