Michael Stipe approached me, asking if he could teach a section of our beginning writing class at BU. I said sure, and we began working out a teaching schedule.
Then I woke up, went to the biffy, and then when I returned to sleep the dream resumed. That doesn’t happen to me very often.
Michael and his people (two or three, far short of an entourage) and my colleague Sarah and I were never able to work out a schedule because of his other commitments, but he kept gripping the edge of the table, saying, “Dammit! I am determined to make this work!”
Then I woke up again. Michael, if you’re out there, we would love to have you teach for us.
Millions of women entered the work force during the Second World War and the ‘We Can Do It’ image of Rosie the Riveter became a frequent symbol of that change.
Saturday Evening Post illustrator Norman Rockwell made a couple versions of Rosie on his own — one modeled after Michelangelo.
But the image has persisted long after that war, even as American women were encouraged to vacate the workplace and return to the kitchens of post-war America.
It’s good to see the Rosie symbol returning in the aftermath of the Women’s March of January 21, 2017, and the comments by Senate leader Mitch McConnell, made in an attempt to shut down Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Great new slogan — and, I’m proud to say, inspired by my senator, Elizabeth Warren. This image is available on mugs, posters, T-shirts and hoodies. Click here to see the whole array and the profits go to support the women’s-march movement.
Pitchers and catchers reported this week for spring training, the annual ritual I miss so dearly since moving from Florida. Baseball has been much on my mind.
File this under “library, treasures of the.”
Whenever I’m blue, I get a book down from the shelf, turn to page 78 and begin to laugh.
It’s The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book and it’s one of those things available by special order. You can also find a used copy online, often for assloads of money.
Whatever the cost, it’s worth every penny.
You can also find it at the library, which is a pretty cool place. It’s like the Internet, only with stuff printed out.
On page 78, the authors simply list their favorite nicknames of ballplayers. I’ve never needed more than five bites of the first column before I begin to feel better.
I present this selection of names as a public service to all humanity. If only the United Nations General Assembly would join me in my mission to bring peace to the world . . . .
I love this book. I have the original, from 1973. This is the cover of the 1991 reprint. Click on the cover to see if you can track down this book through third-party sellers. It is a treasured part of my home library.
If this was read aloud before that body, in all the languages of earth, we could achieve a just and lasting peace.
It’s hard to fight when you’re laughing.
(I use the Rocky Bridges card as an illustration above. The nickname ‘Rocky’ isn’t nearly as funny as his real name — Everett. But Boyd and Harris write an essay on every baseball card in their book and the essay on Bridges is probably the funniest.)
Unfortunately, the tradition of baseball nicknames seems to have been lost. Since Boyd and Harris compiled this list four decades ago, there haven’t been too many colorful additions. Chris Berman does his part on ESPN. There was a player on the University of Florida baseball team some years back named Dave Majeski. I tried to get one of my sportswriter friends to work Purple Mountains Majeski into his story one day. He did, but it didn’t catch on.
The baseball nickname is the entymological equivalent of the dodo. So appreciate these names while you can.
Bless you, Brendan Boyd and Fred Harris. Your book is a treasure.
(Insert drum roll . . . )
Read this aloud at the office. Suggest new names for your pals. Fuck bringing sexy back. Let’s bring nicknames back.
(Big rimshot here . . . )
And now, broken down into alphabetical order, the silliest baseball nicknames we can find:
For more fun along these lines, I heartily endorse The Outside Corner’s “All Innuendo Team,” featuring Rusty Kuntz, Stubby Clapp, Johnny Dickshot and many others.
These are Bob Dylan’s liner notes for his 1965 album Bringing it All Back Home. I used this as the opening piece in my book Rock and Roll is Here to Stay. This is my favorite piece of Dylan writing that has not been set to music.
i’m standing there watching the parade/ feeling combination of sleepy john estes. jayne mansfield. humphry bogart/mortimer snerd. murph the surf and so forth/ erotic hitchhiker wearing japanese blanket. gets my attention by asking didn’t he see me at this hootenanny down in puerto vallarta, mexico/i say no you must be mistaken. i happen to be one of the Supremes/then he rips off his blanket an’ suddenly becomes a middle-aged druggist. up for district attorney. he starts screaming at me you’re the one. you’re the one that’s been causing all them riots over in vietnam. immediately turns t’ a bunch of people an’ says if elected, he’ll have me electrocuted publicly on the next fourth of july. i look around an’ all these people he’s talking to are carrying blowtorches/ needless t’ say, i split fast go back t’ thenice quiet country. am standing there writing WHAAT? on my favorite wall when who should pass by in a jet plane but my recording engineer “i’m here t’ pick up you and your latest works of art. do you need any help with anything?”
(pause)
my songs’re written with the kettledrum 0in mind/a touch of any anxious color. unmentionable. obvious. an’ people perhaps like a soft brazilian singer . . . i have given up at making any attempt at perfection/ the fact that the white house is filled with leaders that’ve never been t’ the apollo theather amazes me. why allen ginsberg was not chosen t’ read poetry at the inauguration boggles my mind/if someone thinks norman mailer is more important than hank williams that’s fine. i have no arguments an’ i never drink milk. i would rather model harmonica holders than discuss aztec anthropology/ english literature. or history of the united nations. i accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. i know there’re some people terrified of the bomb. but there are other people terrified t’ be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. experience teaches that silence terrifies people the most . . . i am convinced that all souls have some superior t’ deal with/like the school system, an invisible circle of which no one can think without consulting someone/in the face of this, responsibility/security, success mean absolutely nothing. . . i would not want t’ be bach. mozart. tolstoy. joe hill. gertrude stein or james dean/they are all dead. the Great books’ve been written. the Great sayings have all been said/I am about t’ sketch You a picture of what goes on around here sometimes. though I don’t understand too well myself what’s really happening. i do know that we’re all gonna die someday an’ that no death has ever stopped the world. my poems are written in a rhythm of unpoetic distortion/ divided by pierced ears. false eyelashes/subtracted by people constantly torturing each other. with a melodic purring line of descriptive hollowness — seen at times through dark sunglasses an’ other forms of psychic explosion. a song is anything that can walk by itself/i am called a songwriter. a poem is a naked person . . . some
people say that i am a poet
(end of pause)
an’ so i answer my recording engineer “yes. well i could use some help in getting this wall in the plane”
We are dealing with the second anniversary of David Carr’s death. There were so many tributes after this death, so maybe this ‘last interview’ (with Stefanie Friedhoff of the Boston Globe) got lost in the mix. Thought I’d reprint it. We were lucky to have David on the Boston University faculty. He was a gifted teacher and we all looked forward to many years of his friendship. This was published February 13, 2015.
New York Times columnist David Carr, who died Thursday at the age of 58, had a reputation for going after his own tribe with bracing honesty and clarity. With his unusual past as a crack addict, a distinctive scratchy voice, and quirky character, he had become a media figure in his own right as he chronicled journalism’s struggle to reinvent itself in the digital age. Carr shuttled to Boston once a week to teach journalism at Boston University, a routine he had started last fall. In one of the last interviews he gave before his death, Carr talked with Globe correspondent Stefanie Friedhoff in late January about his rookie teacher mistakes and the future of writing.
[Friedhoff’s questions are in bold italic. Carr’s answers are in regular type.]
What was it like, working with this next generation?
The first time they said, ‘Here comes the professor,’ I turned around looking for him, then realized, oh, that was me. I asked them to call me David. I did not feel a huge generational divide. I was not parenting or patronizing them. As long as they didn’t call me professor.
One generational difference is that they rely on texting, which is not a good business or academic application. I much prefer e-mail, which allows you to keep an archive, send attachments. I also made it clear that there was no texting or Facebooking during class. When someone did it, I would stop and say: ‘Do you need a few moments so you can finish what seems so important?’
The platform you used, Medium, allows for storytelling in all media. Did students experiment with different forms?
Some students included extensive video and audio, and some built stories around photographs, but writing played a distinctive role. Students were far more traditional than I thought they’d be, they were extremely animated by idea of longform narrative. I weighed heavily on blended content but they were not as interested as in big narratives.
Is there a future for writing, for the careful crafting of sentences and narratives, in the digital age?
Well, there are two problems with it. One, if you look at The New Yorker, GQ, and the Atavist or Longreads, there is a good supply of deep immersive writing, but there is an audience problem, in terms of what people are willing to commit to. And two, there is a business problem: getting paid enough to do what may pass for literary journalism.
Some signs are encouraging: Engagement levels, people staying until the end of the story, are quite high. But you have to earn the readers’ interest. Turns out that the phone, which was thought of as the enemy of longform — people read a lot on phones, they have become used to the infinite scroll. I read a lot on my phone, and I am old as dirt.
Did you like teaching?
Oh, this class was like a bomb going off in my life. I thought I could zoom up on an airplane on Monday, teach the class, do office hours, go to sleep, take the train back in the morning and be fine.
That is not how it went. There was a lot of steady communication with students. We produced a lot. Sixteen students wrote over 60 pieces, published in four collections on Medium. Four articles are on their way into the commercial market.
David’s memoir, “The Night of the Gun,” is one of the finest books I’ve read in the last decade. Click on the book cover to order.
I enjoyed it all. The truth about teaching is, whatever you expect from them, you should be ready to give back. I’m glad I’m like a vampire. I still keep college hours and stay up late.
You have guest taught a lot. What surprised you about teaching a semester-long course?
I made a fair amount of rookie teacher mistakes. I brought in too many guest speakers.
I said ‘I love your personal essays, I will put comments in’ and then I had to really do that. It took me five seconds to say in class but 12 hours to finish.
I learned I talk too much. Every time I went quiet and solicited discussion, wonderful things were said and I thought, ‘Duh, of course.’ Part of the reason was that I wanted to look like a serious academic. I did not want to be one of these newspaper people who show up and tell stories.
There was also an important business lesson: My teaching assistant insisted I give students some class time to collaborate on their projects. I asked, ‘Why? They are doing this online all the time.’ But she was right — face-to-face time led to amazing cross-team collaboration and improvements. We think online communication works, but a well-run meeting has a lot of value.”
Are you a tough grader?
Not as tough as I thought I would be! When I was an editor, my office was known as Cape Fear. I did give out some rough grades to start with, but if kids demonstrated improvement, I gave them better grades. I was kind of torn about what to do when someone was a good writer but didn’t try very hard, versus someone who tried hard but wasn’t so gifted. It was very much a learning curve.
What did you tell students about their future in journalism?
I told them it’s a good time to be looking for a job. There is a lot of money in content in New York. You can’t be too picky about what you want to do initially. And you need to make your own judgments about where you want to [go] — regardless of where you went to school or who you know.
There is no doubt students will be walking into a news ecosystem that has more information, more sources, more providers, and more clutter. And they have to think about what value are they adding that will make them a signal above the noise and make their work stick out and have value — both in terms of who they work for and the kind of work they do. They have to [go] from creating commodities and toward creating things of value.”
Actor Bryan Cranston‘s portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson was more than a triumph of prosthetics and make up.
Watching “All the Way,” I felt that they had exhumed the former president. Cranston was justly rewarded for his performance by the Screen Actors Guild.
This is what he said in his acceptance speech: “I’m often asked, how would Lyndon Johnson think about Donald Trump? I honestly feel that 36 would put his arm around 45 and earnestly wish him success. And he would also whisper in his ear something he said often, as a form of encouragement, and a cautionary tale: “Just don’t piss in the soup that all of us gotta eat.’”
Scroll down for an annotated photo gallery about John Glenn.
From my interview with Tom Wolfe in the August 2011 issue of American History.
So define “hero” for us, Mr. Wolfe.
In my mind, it’s always someone who risked his life for us. But that’s probably just my view, a classic definition. Someone can be a great role model, like a father, yet still not fit that classic definition of ‘hero.’
To me, the word ‘hero’ is bandied about loosely these days.
Has there ever been a hero of Wall Street? I get asked by groups all the time to make motivational speeches: ‘Do you have The Right Stuff?’ I decline, but I want to ask, ‘How many of your fellow employees have died this year in the performance of their duties?’ Risking of life is a more stable measure of heroism for me….
[John] Glenn, in his way, was engaged in single combat with his Soviet counterpart. These were the days of the space race. So even though it wasn’t face to face, he was having a duel in the sky. And so the cops at the intersections in Manhattan looked at him go by and they cried, because, in one sense at least, he had “protected” us from the Soviets.
John Glenn’s life as an astronaut, in pictures
Front row, left to right: Schirra, Slayton, Glenn and Carpenter. Back row, left to right: Shepard, Grissom, Cooper.They’re all gone. The Mercury Seven astronauts, left to right: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton.With Friedship 7‘Godspeed, John Glenn.’‘Anybody that goes up in the damn thing is gonna be Spam in a can.’ Chuck Yeager, the most righteous possessor of all possessors of the right stuff.‘Monkeys? You think a monkey knows he’s sittin’ on top of a rocket that might explode? These astronaut boys they know that, see? Well, I’ll tell you something, it takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission, especially one that’s on TV.’ Chuck Yeager, the most righteous possessor of all possessors of the right stuff.John Glenn’s flight and his perilous return to earth, as portrayed in ‘The Right Stuff.’ Ed Harris as John Glenn, Dennis Quaid as Gordon Cooper, Scott Glenn as Alan Shepard. One of my favorite pieces of film. You should watch the whole thing (18 minutes, 51 seconds). Click here.
“This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable….. [W]hat a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers…. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?”
Pitchers and catchers reported this week for spring training, the annual ritual I miss so dearly since moving from Florida. Baseball has been much on my mind.
The first time they said, ‘Here comes the professor,’ I turned around looking for him, then realized, oh, that was me. I asked them to call me David. I did not feel a huge generational divide. I was not parenting or patronizing them. As long as they didn’t call me professor.
father, yet still not fit that classic definition of ‘hero.’
