Back to school with The Bird Artist

Guess I took the summer off.

But summer officially ends today, so I return to my writing exercises.

Picked up The Bird Artist (by Howard Norman) this week from a pile in the house, and was struck by the opening paragraph:

My name is Fabian Vas. I live in Witless Bay, Newfoundland. You would not have heard of me. Obscurity is not necessarily failure, though; I am a bird artist, and have more or less made a living at it. Yet I murdered the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I think of myself.

Wow. Laying out your themes in the opening paragraph?

I think Howard Norman owes Ms. Shirley Jackson a dollar: (http://terminationdate.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/this-paragraph-saved-my-story-today)

The Washington Post is a joy to read anymore

I loved that thing they did where they talked about who shot Osama Bin Laden, even though they didn’t actually know who it was.

Now I love their obsession with SEAL spotting, where folks local to the SEAL base whisper among themselves about who shot Bin Laden, and the writer takes a trip to see what’s what.

I find the writing just delightful. Look at this:

Even apparently well-grounded adults talk about the SEALs as the closest thing we know to comic book characters: They have superhuman powers to withstand cold, heights and fear! They have secret identities! They dive into the sea from submarines and leap from airplanes at 30,000 feet! They have cool zoomorphic job titles, like Spider-Man or Batman! They roll with the best high-tech gizmos and deadly toys! Even their trident insignia is snazzy! And such good manners!

“They could kill you with a straw 13 different ways, but they’re really nice,” said Allen Norfolk, 52, the manager of Chicks, a rumored SEAL hangout off Shore Drive.

The piece – which of course does not spot the SEAL who shot Bin Laden, ends on another prime piece of dialogue that gets at the problem:

On Saturday night, as the Chicks bar begins to overflow into the dining room, an athletic-looking guy heads out with a lovely young woman at his side. His T-shirt is taut as a sail across his V-shaped torso, and there are flamelike tattoos curling from the sleeves.

“Are you a SEAL?” he was asked.

He beamed.

“Yes,” he said.

“Would you be willing to talk to The Washington Post?”

“No,” he said.

“Are you really a SEAL?”

“No.”

‘Cops have long wait at courthouse’

JOLIET — All morning, a buzz fills the hallway outside the six courtrooms on the Will County Courthouse’s felony floor.

Police officers gossip, defendants consult with attorneys, mothers hurry children to restrooms. Bodies keep the fourth floor’s slatted, blond-wood benches occupied.

During an ongoing fatal DUI trial against Cecil Conner Jr., two well-dressed witnesses have been near-constant fixtures in one set of seats. As other witnesses march in and out, Sgt. Gerald Ruff and Det. Peter Fajman have spent 13 — or maybe 14 or 15 — weekdays waiting. They sit in seats in the hall since witnesses can’t listen to testimony in the courtroom.

And the two Steger officers constitute a good part of the state’s case against the accused drunken driver, Cecil Conner Jr.

The pair also were needed as witnesses during the defense’s pre-trial motions, delayed first by new evidence, then for other witnesses, then snow. They were retained for the defense and then for the state’s rebuttal, all of which ended Friday afternoon. Closing arguments are scheduled for today.

They had been sitting out in the hall hoping every day was their last there.

On Friday, finally it was.

Ruff, a DARE officer by day, relied on his phone to keep him occupied. It’s hard to do so much nothing, he said.

Fajman made slow slaloms down the hall and back.

Ruff and Fajman were dressed and ready to dance. But with few exceptions during the weeklong trial, the two were more like wallflowers.

Their boredom filled the space in an otherwise empty hallway.

Ruff testified Feb. 14. He was the first responder when the Chevrolet Cavalier skidded almost sideways across a lawn along Steger Road and a tree impacting right where little Michael Langford Jr. was strapped into a booster seat.

Fajman took over the case’s investigation as a Steger detective and did the interview that led to Conner’s arrest. But as a part-time Steger Estates firefighter and EMT, he first helped a wobbly Conner into the ambulance. His main testimony came Tuesday.

By Thursday afternoon, some Steger 911 dispatchers had left the courthouse, released from their own subpoenas so they could return to work.

With them went the new blood to talk to.

The judge got back on the bench after a break and everyone scrambled to get back in where the action was — everyone but the two officers.

On his way in Thursday, the lead defense attorney hollered out the courtroom door, “I’ll call you when I need you.”

Then an hour later, he reappeared to say, “Hang in there, guys.”

‘The snow’s over — bring on the routine’

The signs of morning all were there: Steaming paper cups. Hats in fur and wool framing faces slapped awake by the cold. Totes and lunch bags dangling from shoulders.

A steady stream of foot traffic through a notch in a snowbank between the Starbucks and the Oak Lawn train station.

And a canned announcement from Metra SouthWest Service announcing delays of eight to 15 minutes Thursday morning.

“That’s normal,” said Kelly Doyle, of Oak Lawn, pulling off a fur-lined hat as she awaited her train. “They should hand out notes when it is on time.”

Normal is back for workers who don’t save lives, birth babies or plow streets, but whose jobs keep us going: Accountants, bankers, designers, insurance agents.

They enjoyed a snow day — or at least spent it home uncovering driveways — but had to return to the commute Thursday morning when SouthWest trains resumed service.

It’s not that graphic design is exactly essential work, so Karen Barth’s employer closed its office Wednesday in Chicago’s Loop when 20 inches of snow buried the city.

But the usual deadlines still loom.

“I should have brought work home,” Barth said. “I have to go in.”

So she bundled into her black fur-rimmed parka and boots early Thursday morning to stand on the Metra platform and board her train, the 7:17 that left the Oak Lawn station closer to 7:28 a.m.

She probably wouldn’t have accomplished much work at home in Burbank, though, having spent most of Wednesday like everyone else, digging and shoveling and snowblowing.

As published on www.southtownstar.com, Feb. 3, 2011.

The narrative of Loughner’s last night

Huh. Anyone else surprised that this kind of chronological oeuvre about Jared Lee Loughner’s last night was done by the AP?

I like this tool of ending one minute before the part everyone knows:

Eventually, Loughner returned to the Circle K he’d visited three hours earlier.

He was carrying two extended pistol clips that hold up to 31 bullets, along with two 15-round magazines, a four-inch buck knife, a Visa card, his driver’s license and cash in a plastic bag.

Authorities said a cab picked him up at 9:41 a.m.

His destination was a Safeway store — and a violent confrontation with Gabrielle Giffords.

File this under: Ideas to copy: The story of what happened before the story happened.

Warning!

Knocking on a front door today, it took me a minute to realize it wasn’t your typical security company posted on the shield-shaped sticker:

For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.
Warning: This property protected by ANGELS.

Warning!

We are still here

A small town
Puts up a small sign
In a huge gesture
Here and now in these United States
In Nebraska.

I love this writing, Mr. Dan Barry:

HOOPER, Neb. — A few years ago, the Nebraska Department of Roads rolled out a highway bypass to hasten the already-hurried everyday pace. Motorists rushing north to Norfolk, or south to Omaha, no longer had to slow to 40 miles an hour through a blink-and-miss-it place called Hooper.

No longer did travelers have to pass the Hooper ice cream parlor, or the Hooper grain elevator, or the ancient railroad cars sitting on discontinued tracks, or the decades-old neon marquee, long past glowing, that welcomed travelers to a downtown from the late 19th century.

The people of Hooper – population 827, more or less – knew what this meant. The small green sign planted beside the new highway barely whispered their town’s name. And in the flat terrain of rural Nebraska, the eye can see far into the distance, yet miss so much. They feared being missed. Bypassed.

Another community might have resigned itself to this subtle humiliation, enduring the slight on behalf of rural America as just one more nudge toward oblivion. But Hooper was determined to raise its collective hand somehow, and say to the busy world:

We are still here.

It’s a story about a new sign on a highway in Nebraska, right?

No. It’s so much more.

I can now imagine a dozen more ways to think this way about writing in these Chicago suburbs.

They make tiny gestures all the time that mean much to them, that follow grand themes.

Writing other people’s words

An excellent writer I admire for her voice told my writing class this summer that when she gets stuck writing, she keeps moving.

The lady types out passages of things she loves to read to keep her hands going and to get the beloved writer’s voice into her head.

Thus I begin, going into the National League Championship weekend, with a sports writer who knocked me on my tush this summer when writing about my number 11:

On paper, the moment will fall victim to the limitations of black-and-white numbers and black-and-white words. But for those who actually witnessed Jimmy Rollins rounding third, who watched him approach home plate deader than a 12-point-buck, who watched Yorvit Torrealba catch and turn for what should have been the latest in a long line of brutal developments, there can be no mistaking the magnitude of what happened next.

Rollins dropped into a slide, twisted his body to his right, and raised his hand, slapping home plate as he sailed past it, Torrealba’s glove reaching in vain for something that wasn’t there.

Safe, the umpire ruled. Win, the Phillies did.

~~ David Murphy, of the Philadelphia Daily News.

Dang, those verbs are tight.

Rollins dropped into a slide, twisted his body to his right, and raised his hand, slapping home plate as he sailed past it, Torrealba’s glove reaching in vain for something that wasn’t there.

Weakest one’s “reaching” since it needs modifying.

But it’s the story’s start that raised my expectations from the get-go, letting me as reader know I was in for something so much more special than the stats would later show.

“Deader than a 12-point buck” could inspire some fun copycatting. Stealing the concept is adaptation. Stealing the words is plagiarism.

Deader than, what then? A moose in the road. A deer in the road. An angus steer. A fatted pig. The fatted calf. Thanksgiving’s turkey.

Though none of these creatures quite capture the majesty of the buck.  Murphy admires the heck out of that gutsy little slider.

Editorial from work-program story

This story wound up with a mention in today’s editorial:

Local leaders fail would-be workers

The federally funded Put Illinois to Work program provided free temporary summer workers to businesses across the state, but the failure of some suburban leaders and chambers of commerce left scores of jobless suburban residents without access to the work – or a paycheck.

The PIW program provides the clearest example yet of a stimulus program that makes sense – the federal government provides the cash to pay wages for the temporary job, and businesses that need workers but can’t afford to hire get the personnel they need to operate.

Yet leaders in Oak Lawn, Orland Park, Tinley Park and the Chicago Southland Chamber of Commerce failed hundreds of jobless residents and strapped businesses in the south suburbs by not getting involved with the program.

As reporter Lauren FitzPatrick reports in Tuesday’s SouthtownStar, only a few businesses in the southwest suburbs signed up to get what essentially were free summer workers.

In a state with a 10 percent unemployment rate and unemployment rates in local towns such as Oak Forest, Oak Lawn and Evergreen Park hovering above 10 percent, this doesn’t make sense.

Nearly $200 million in federal funds was routed to Illinois to pay the salaries of newly hired temporary workers in entry-level positions for $10 an hour. More than 60,000 people applied for the jobs and agreed to work at least 30 hours a week until Sept. 30, when the federal funding runs out.

We’re disappointed the Chicago Southland Chamber of Commerce never publicized the program to the 85 communities it covers, blaming the state for failing to provide program specifics.

“We really didn’t get involved,” said the chamber’s chairman, Maureen Kelly. “It’s a missed opportunity for everybody.”

In addition, both Orland Park Mayor Dan McLaughlin and Oak Lawn Mayor Dave Heilmann also claimed not to know about the program.

We suggest all three read a newspaper. We know we published news, announcements and updates on this program – as did the papers in Chicago.

Somehow, the message got to the leadership in the south and southeast suburbs, where nearly 500 firms and organizations climbed on board to hire workers. Chicago Heights had 48 businesses participating, Homewood and South Holland each had 26, while even little Flossmoor weighed in with eight employers.

In comparison, Oak Lawn had three, Tinley Park had four and Orland Park had six.

While we’re baffled at the ignorance of some local leaders on this issue, we praise the Ministers Conference of South Suburban Cook County, which jumped at the chance to connect people with $10-an-hour jobs.

Leaders of this group scoured local businesses and nonprofit organizations, big and small, to find employers who needed workers but perhaps couldn’t afford to hire them. The group singlehandedly connected 20 people to jobs funded through PIW, and its activism and
dedication is to be lauded.

Its leaders saw an opportunity to improve the lives of people in their community, rolled up their sleeves and made a positive difference.

No blaming the state for a lack of information, no complaining the feds should have given more. This group could teach local leaders a thing or two.

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So tacky not to give credit

So the Jeans Day stories came out this week, questioning where all that cash Dorothy Brown collects from her employees in the office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court goes. Right before the Feb 2 election, in which Brown wants to replace this guy, the bomb drops.

And it’s because Dane Placko of Fox Chicago teamed up with the Better Government Association and produced a story.

Only if you read about it, you’d never know where the story came from. And the further out from the story’s broadcast, the more noone feels they have to refer back to the Placko/BGA investigation.

Tacky, sez me. Totally tacky.

It’s like the time last week when my colleague, Duaa Eldeib, found herself at a press conference held by State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez announcing theft and what, public corruption type charges against Charles Flowers. Only, again, to read or hear the coverage, you’d never know Alvarez got onto the case because Duaa and her predecessor, Angela Caputo, dug into Flowers and uncovered all kinds of alleged financial wrongdoing.#mce_temp_url#