No, I didn't see The Queen Mum and that other guy. There was never any hope of my getting into the pool for a spot even remotely close, and I didn't care about the air she breathed, so I didn't bother.
Still, it's a great souvenier... the time someone thought I might have been a real reporter.
Showing posts with label The World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The World. Show all posts
Friday, May 11, 2007
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Smoke-filled rooms are bad for the editorial vision
Last month, The Washington Post Magazine ran a story about superstar violinist Joshua Bell's gig in a Metro station. In brief: Would morning commuters be stopped in their tracks by the music of Bach et al. played by the nation's most prominent violinist? No.
The article by Gene Weingarten is interesting, though written in an overblown glossy-mag style:
The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician's masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang -- ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.
So, what do you think happened?
HANG ON, WE'LL GET YOU SOME EXPERT HELP.
He touches on the nature and purpose of beauty (always an interesting question for me, though I rarely, if ever, consider what Leibniz or Kant have to say about it; Weingarten managed to work them--and Plato and Hume--into the piece) and reports on several later conversations with communters who agreed to be interviewed for the article.
But the paragraph that stopped me in my own tracks was this:
In preparing for this event, editors at The Post Magazine discussed how to deal with likely outcomes. The most widely held assumption was that there could well be a problem with crowd control: In a demographic as sophisticated as Washington, the thinking went, several people would surely recognize Bell. Nervous "what-if" scenarios abounded. As people gathered, what if others stopped just to see what the attraction was? Word would spread through the crowd. Cameras would flash. More people flock to the scene; rush-hour pedestrian traffic backs up;....
(I left off the end of the final sentence, as it was clearly meant to be hyperbole.)
...In other words, these editors saw the city as populated by people pretty much just like themselves. They had no idea who really walked through that Metro station. No conception of a world outside their own spheres of awareness.
I feel like a shaft of light has singed part of my brain--a little dramatic, maybe, but think about the implications. If the people who largely control the content for major media outlets define what's significant by what they see as significant, how does that affect the way in which stories are told, and what stories get told? How does that affect who gets interviewed for stories, who gets to provide answers to reporters' questions, what the questions are?
I consider myself a healthily skeptical person, yet I used to think that by and large, editors and journalists honestly tried to approach things objectively--I suppose I still think that they do try. But this is such a revealing glimpse inside the editor's office.
But wait... yes, it's true: I am an editor. That's the other reason I can't let go of this paragraph. I know I'm guilty of this same solipsistic error. I justify it by thinking, "Well, I don't really know who the readers are, so I might as well make papers that I'd want to read." Or: "With 50,000 readers, there are bound to be a few who appreciate my editorial decisions." Or: "Writing is best when the author writes to a specific reader." (I sort of believe this, but not necessarily for journalism, even though once I did hear this point made in a workshop for journalists.)
But those are excuses for laziness. I always need to be asking myself: how is the world bigger than I realize?
The article by Gene Weingarten is interesting, though written in an overblown glossy-mag style:
The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician's masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang -- ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.
So, what do you think happened?
HANG ON, WE'LL GET YOU SOME EXPERT HELP.
He touches on the nature and purpose of beauty (always an interesting question for me, though I rarely, if ever, consider what Leibniz or Kant have to say about it; Weingarten managed to work them--and Plato and Hume--into the piece) and reports on several later conversations with communters who agreed to be interviewed for the article.
But the paragraph that stopped me in my own tracks was this:
In preparing for this event, editors at The Post Magazine discussed how to deal with likely outcomes. The most widely held assumption was that there could well be a problem with crowd control: In a demographic as sophisticated as Washington, the thinking went, several people would surely recognize Bell. Nervous "what-if" scenarios abounded. As people gathered, what if others stopped just to see what the attraction was? Word would spread through the crowd. Cameras would flash. More people flock to the scene; rush-hour pedestrian traffic backs up;....
(I left off the end of the final sentence, as it was clearly meant to be hyperbole.)
...In other words, these editors saw the city as populated by people pretty much just like themselves. They had no idea who really walked through that Metro station. No conception of a world outside their own spheres of awareness.
I feel like a shaft of light has singed part of my brain--a little dramatic, maybe, but think about the implications. If the people who largely control the content for major media outlets define what's significant by what they see as significant, how does that affect the way in which stories are told, and what stories get told? How does that affect who gets interviewed for stories, who gets to provide answers to reporters' questions, what the questions are?
I consider myself a healthily skeptical person, yet I used to think that by and large, editors and journalists honestly tried to approach things objectively--I suppose I still think that they do try. But this is such a revealing glimpse inside the editor's office.
But wait... yes, it's true: I am an editor. That's the other reason I can't let go of this paragraph. I know I'm guilty of this same solipsistic error. I justify it by thinking, "Well, I don't really know who the readers are, so I might as well make papers that I'd want to read." Or: "With 50,000 readers, there are bound to be a few who appreciate my editorial decisions." Or: "Writing is best when the author writes to a specific reader." (I sort of believe this, but not necessarily for journalism, even though once I did hear this point made in a workshop for journalists.)
But those are excuses for laziness. I always need to be asking myself: how is the world bigger than I realize?
Monday, April 30, 2007
WWJW?
At Saturday's impeachment event: a woman wearing a hat embroidered with "Jesus is my Boss" and a shirt: "Buck Fush."
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Baghdad and Blacksburg
I had just finished writing an editorial inspired by this reported quote from Iraqi mothers, had spent the morning looking at websites enumerating civilian deaths in Iraq and describing the correlative effects of the war on daily life.
Then I heard on the radio of the shootings at Virginia Tech, and even as the reported death count rose throughout the afternoon, I still, horribly, felt dispassionate about the whole affair.
This is a sickness, the comparing of one horror to another, only to discard one for want of bodies.
Yet I must let others feel burdened by the Blacksburg tragedy. I can't pretend that I feel anything more than passing sadness. Might as well try to keep the sorrow well-distributed.
Then I heard on the radio of the shootings at Virginia Tech, and even as the reported death count rose throughout the afternoon, I still, horribly, felt dispassionate about the whole affair.
This is a sickness, the comparing of one horror to another, only to discard one for want of bodies.
Yet I must let others feel burdened by the Blacksburg tragedy. I can't pretend that I feel anything more than passing sadness. Might as well try to keep the sorrow well-distributed.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
The Sound of Yellow Leaves
Autumn is running through its inventory of days. This morning we had mist, the kind that makes colors luminescent, more intense for not having to compete with the sky.
The air was charged with energy. A man walked down the sidewalk so briskly that when he stopped at the street as I drove past, his right leg kept going, flinging itself out over the curb. I could see his whole body stop and lean to bring his leg back.
*
I went to the gathering of protestors outside the George Allen event at which George Bush was to make an appearance. I didn't want to chant anything, yell anything or even hold any signs. I just wanted my body to be there in silent protest. It's hard to be quiet amid noise and feel like one is in league with the noisemakers.
The air was charged with energy. A man walked down the sidewalk so briskly that when he stopped at the street as I drove past, his right leg kept going, flinging itself out over the curb. I could see his whole body stop and lean to bring his leg back.
*
I went to the gathering of protestors outside the George Allen event at which George Bush was to make an appearance. I didn't want to chant anything, yell anything or even hold any signs. I just wanted my body to be there in silent protest. It's hard to be quiet amid noise and feel like one is in league with the noisemakers.
Monday, October 2, 2006
Sky-Blue and Empty
It was so beautiful outside today that I had a sappy grin on my face as I left the new coffee shop after a latte and some productive work. Then I heard Renee Fleming on the radio and got tears in my eyes, and I'm not even an opera fan. That's when I began feeling that something awful was bound to happen: I would either run over a child darting into the street, my boss would have been killed earlier that very morning, or I would get a call from the daycare with news that 2 was dreadfully ill.
In the office, under the fluorescent lights, shades mostly drawn, the giddy fear of pleasure faded.
My husband called--unusually--to tell me to check CNN for news of a fatal multiple shooting at an Amish school, perhaps not far from my relatives or friends of 1. So callous am I towards bad news that doesn't involve me--the school was not in the right town--that I didn't even think until many hours later that someone in Pennsylvania had her lovely-day premonition come true.
In the office, under the fluorescent lights, shades mostly drawn, the giddy fear of pleasure faded.
My husband called--unusually--to tell me to check CNN for news of a fatal multiple shooting at an Amish school, perhaps not far from my relatives or friends of 1. So callous am I towards bad news that doesn't involve me--the school was not in the right town--that I didn't even think until many hours later that someone in Pennsylvania had her lovely-day premonition come true.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Swords and pens
On Monday, July 10, The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page piece (column 4, quirky story placement) titled, "For Afghan Cabbies, A Poetry Tradition Spurs War of Words." The headline after the jump used the phrase "Fight a War of Words."
Briefly: two associations devoted to the recital of Afghan poetry exist in Washington, D.C. One takes a more scholarly approach, primarily discussing classical works rooted in Sufisim; the other spends more time in performance of contemporary Afghan poetry.
The author of the article, Masood Farivar, clearly doesn't trust WSJ readers to be interested in a story about Afghan poetry. I imagine a thought process along these lines: "Hmmm, where's the source of tension? Two groups, they're different, difference produces conflict... fighting poets, that's it!! I've got the story!"
(Too, he seems to be playing into U.S. perceptions of Afghans as never having left behind their warring clannishness: "But having given up battling over the merits of the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, exiled Afghans here have found a new outlet for factional debate: how to celebrate the ancient Afghan art of poetry reading.")
The real story isn't about the conflict. Of course people who are passionate about something, who love poems that reach deep inside them on emotional, cultural and intellectual levels, will occasionally passionately disagree about what they think is the best or right way to honor poetry. But I'm sure that the number of people who even perceive these two groups as seriously in conflict--let alone "at war"--is small compared to the total number of people who attend the poetry readings. Maybe Farivar thinks readers will be amused by the thought of poetry-lovers fighting. And maybe he's right. But he lost the chance to find and tell the real story.
Here's the part that interests me: In the early 80s, "At the end of 12-hour [cab-driving] shifts, dog-tired and sometimes hungry, they'd sit cross-legged in a circle. Over cups of tea and candies, they tackled some of the most technically difficult poems written by the great Sufi poets.... Every now and then, when they found themselves stumped, they'd call upon a ... former Kabul University professor... chipping in 25 to 50 cents each, they'd buy a phone card and hunch over the speakerphone as the professor brought the poems to life."
Was this act of reading and studying poems so important because the readers were tired, isolated in a new country, lost in jobs they never thought they's have to take? How was the ex-patriate Afghan community different 20 years ago compared to now? Who goes to the "contemporary" readings now? How much money do they make? How old are they? How long have they been in this country? Who goes to the traditional group's events? What occasions now do Afghans in this country have to chip in a quarter to a common goal?
***
I could not have said, 10 years ago, that one day I would be reading the Wall Street Journal. We get it free, you know, from airline mileage points, and sometimes it piles up in the recycling bin for days at a time. But I've come to appreciate much of its coverage. And really, how can I complain about poetry on the front page of ANY paper?
Briefly: two associations devoted to the recital of Afghan poetry exist in Washington, D.C. One takes a more scholarly approach, primarily discussing classical works rooted in Sufisim; the other spends more time in performance of contemporary Afghan poetry.
The author of the article, Masood Farivar, clearly doesn't trust WSJ readers to be interested in a story about Afghan poetry. I imagine a thought process along these lines: "Hmmm, where's the source of tension? Two groups, they're different, difference produces conflict... fighting poets, that's it!! I've got the story!"
(Too, he seems to be playing into U.S. perceptions of Afghans as never having left behind their warring clannishness: "But having given up battling over the merits of the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, exiled Afghans here have found a new outlet for factional debate: how to celebrate the ancient Afghan art of poetry reading.")
The real story isn't about the conflict. Of course people who are passionate about something, who love poems that reach deep inside them on emotional, cultural and intellectual levels, will occasionally passionately disagree about what they think is the best or right way to honor poetry. But I'm sure that the number of people who even perceive these two groups as seriously in conflict--let alone "at war"--is small compared to the total number of people who attend the poetry readings. Maybe Farivar thinks readers will be amused by the thought of poetry-lovers fighting. And maybe he's right. But he lost the chance to find and tell the real story.
Here's the part that interests me: In the early 80s, "At the end of 12-hour [cab-driving] shifts, dog-tired and sometimes hungry, they'd sit cross-legged in a circle. Over cups of tea and candies, they tackled some of the most technically difficult poems written by the great Sufi poets.... Every now and then, when they found themselves stumped, they'd call upon a ... former Kabul University professor... chipping in 25 to 50 cents each, they'd buy a phone card and hunch over the speakerphone as the professor brought the poems to life."
Was this act of reading and studying poems so important because the readers were tired, isolated in a new country, lost in jobs they never thought they's have to take? How was the ex-patriate Afghan community different 20 years ago compared to now? Who goes to the "contemporary" readings now? How much money do they make? How old are they? How long have they been in this country? Who goes to the traditional group's events? What occasions now do Afghans in this country have to chip in a quarter to a common goal?
***
I could not have said, 10 years ago, that one day I would be reading the Wall Street Journal. We get it free, you know, from airline mileage points, and sometimes it piles up in the recycling bin for days at a time. But I've come to appreciate much of its coverage. And really, how can I complain about poetry on the front page of ANY paper?
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