P.S. A Column On Things

Science Made Simple

From the PBS Newshour on Oct. 15:

Dr. Celine Gounder:

Well, think of it like maybe a mug shot of a criminal. If you have two different photographs, one from the front, one from the side, you have a better chance of recognizing that person out in public than if you only had one snapshot.

And, similarly, these vaccines give your immune system different ways of looking at the virus. And so your immune system has a better shot at recognizing it down the line.

The Effect of Writing Tools on Writing

The Internet is chockablock full of essays on how the typewriter changed everything, including this recent book review of The Typewriter Century: A Cultural History of Writing Practices.

It certainly changed business and industry. First the typewriter, then the word processor, also changed the nature of writing.

I like to show off the fact that I know that Mark twain wrote the first American novel written on a typewriter: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Since the day Twain pulled the last piece of paper from his platten, the argument has raged: does the typewriter facilitate writing or degrade it?

Famously, Woody Allen drafts all his screen plays by hand. That would drive me insane. I can think at 2 to 3 times the speed that I can write by hand; I can type roughly as fast as I can think.

I started using a typewriter when I was 12 years old; I used it to write my 300 page novel Vernon Jones Super Scientific Detective on my mother’s portable typewriter over the summer, causing carpal tunnel syndrome. The only known treatment for the then-unnamed condition was to put my arm in a sling for a month. Thank goodness I didn’t have a serious case.

I know some writers disparage both the typewriter and the word processor on the grounds that they reduce the thinking and rewriting parts of the prose creation process.

Certainly the revisions are less obvious. In journalism, you often spend half your time writing the first paragraph, a.k.a. the lede, and the rest of your time writing the rest of the story. I used to average a half-dozen sheets of paper for every new story I wrote. But I welcomed the word processor with open arms.

I can confidently state that the thinking and re-writing portions of my writing process were unaffected by the word processor. Virtually all of my writing has been a stream of consciousness first draft, rewritten only in the sense of corrected. I don’t outline. Often, I don’t even know my endpoint.

Now that I have begun writing poetry, I no longer disbelieve writers who say they begin a project not knowing where it will end up. In the case of about half the hundred poems I have written in the last year, I began with an idea and allowed the poem to lead me to its natural conclusion. I no longer find such statements pretentious; I find them factual.

I have never outlined, and it is too late now. Plus, thanks to the joys of retirement and the Internet, it is extremely rare that I have to write more than 750 words on anything. Feature stories and long-term projects were always my least favorite part of journalism, the part I don’t miss.

Just as the pandemic made bad marriages worse and good marriages better, I believe the word processor made bad writers worse and good writers better.

Right Column Redux: Stories of a Young Journalist

The column to the right on this blog contains permanent content, most of which has appeared at one time or another in the main body. I’ve decided to include a few reminders of said content each week.

Stories of a Young Journalist
These are stories from early in my journalism career

Best Infographic: New Winner

I must be growing fickle in my dotage. For decades, I agreed with Tufte that the best infographic ever was Minard’s map of Napoleon’s invasion of Moscow, until the USA Today Covid Mask graphic. Imagine my surprise this morning when linked In presented Brandon Rossen’s graphic:

And even better yet, Geoffrey Colon’s modified version

 

Dalton on Writing

I recently found a letter from my close friend and regular contributor, the late Richard Dalton, in a December 2006 column. I had completely forgotten it, and I am pleased to see we had similar thoughts on the nature of poetry (which I have only just taken up, fourteen years later) and inspiration―which we both called a muse.

Your modesty notwithstanding ("But I think I learned by reading constantly, widely, regularly and voluminously from the age of 5. That, combined with an English-teacher mother and a house full of books and magazines, showed me what good writing was. I just imitated it."), I wonder if anyone knows how they write. That question ranks up there with "How did Picasso paint?"

Maybe you can teach how to write unencumbered sentences and think analytically, but the older I get (and the more words I see trailing behind me) the more I believe there is a Muse who spends more time with some people, less with others. It amazes me that I have spent decades earning most of my income from writing without consciously preparing myself or following some prescribed regimen.

Poetry is a wonderfully humbling experience. Trying to synthesize beauty and meaning out of thoughts is a way for me to capture how little we are beyond the spiritual. In fact, I'm abashed that I used the word "trying" in the same sentence as "spiritual." What I guess I really mean is synthesizing (for me, the most mysterious of mental processes) happens, it isn't caused. The Muse at one's shoulder is as real as any "explanation."

Mourning a Lost Newspaper America

Robert Malchman notes that Mary “Wear Sunscreen” Schmich is taking a buyout from the Chicago Tribune's new hedge fund owners.  This is truly sad. I still miss Herb Caen and Doug Baker, the Herb Caen of Portland. I mourn a lost America, but then most older people do.

That was going to be the end of the item, but when I shared it with Robert, he offered some useful context which makes me feel slightly less bad.

“Yes, some good things are getting lost, but when I was young, I couldn't read the Chicago Tribune or LA Times or Washington Post (unless I expended a great deal of time and effort to go to a library or an out-of-town newsstand [or in Portland, Ore. head for the airport].  I wouldn't have seen that column link I sent to you and Barry, and if somehow I had seen it reprinted, say, in the Daily News, I'd have to go find a Xerox machine and mail letters to you both.

At a societal level, gay people couldn't marry or really even be seen as such in public.  A Black person couldn't be President or Vice President.  None of the drugs I take for various age- and weight-related maladies existed.  And in NYC at least, you wouldn't want to get on the subway after rush hour.  So there are trade-offs (even considering that in 1985, I did not live with any serious worries that the United States would become a fascist nation).”

Locked Down: Mini Review /Budget Question

A cleverly written and entertaining romcom/heist film on HBO Max, directed by Doug Liman, written by Steven Knight, starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor and a galaxy of well-known actors in cameos. Written and shot entirely during Covid, a fact which is obvious but not limiting.

At $10 million, it is what is now called a low-budget film. Which reminded me of something I’d love help finding. Years ago, I read an essay―in the New Yorker? Premier Magazine?—by a well-known critic (Pauline Kael? Gene Siskel?) that contended that movies were better when budgets were smaller because directors were forced to be more creative. If you can’t carry the film with special effects, lavish locations or overpaid stars, you are stuck with plot, dialog and cinematography. I agree completely with the thesis, but wish I knew who planted the seed. If you know who wrote that essay, please tell me.

The Rule of Three

In the item above on Work from Home, I was looking at my description of Tom Cooper. All I had was “sweet and daffy.” It nagged at me. Then I remembered: the Rule of Three, an ancient writing device that explains both “A Priest, a Minister and a Rabbi walk into a bar,” and the phrase “tall, dark and handsome.” So, I added “lanky.”

I remember when I first learned about the rule, during the 1960s, when I was an avid reader of Time Magazine, a very heavily stylized weekly newsmagazine co-founded by Yalie Henry Luce, who insisted that everyone’s name be preceded by three adjectives. I would call him “wacky, wealthy, classically-educated Henry Luce.” He also found a constant march of simple sentences boring, so, in the immortal words of parodist Wolcott Gibbs: “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind,” a perfect example of Timespeak.

I realize now that I missed a trick in the summer of 1975, when I was on the overnight desk at UPI Boston, writing the Red Sox summary for the New England radio wire. Luis Tiant never recorded an appearance without being referred to by dozens of New England radio station announcers (reading my script) as “cigar-chomping right-hander Luis Tiant.” If only I’d though of adding “Cuban.”

So, I decided that I am plump, bouncy, chatty Paul Schindler. Perhaps if I, too, had been a Yalie and not an MIT grad, I might say plump, ebullient, chatty. What three adjectives would you use for yourself? Let me know by clicking this email link, or commenting.

Needed Changes in Radio

Per my item of last week, Attention Radio People, I received a couple of quick responses. The first, in essence, agrees that rolling back deregulation would be a good idea: A Modest Proposal To Restore the Fairness Doctrine (but with teeth this time)

Another, from my long-time friend Kevin Sullivan,

About the proscribed radio format -- who gets to choose the content? As a consumer who (let's say) doesn't care for live, acoustic music, am I forced to change my radio station when something offensive is broadcast? If I prefer 24 hours of Tibetan chant, can I have that?  This delves into the fundamentals of the purpose of a government, n'est-ce pas? The airwaves are a shared resource. We ask our representative government to manage resources with the notion of promoting among other things -- justice, tranquility, defense, and welfare. The case for or against a proposal would be well grounded in how it addresses the promotion of those issues.

Neither I, nor the original writer of the RFEEA proposal wants to abolish private ownership of radio in the United States. Well, maybe I do, if it can’t be reformed. But in any case, who chooses? The station owner to whom we, the people, have loaned the broadcast spectrum. No one has ever or will ever force you to listen to a station you don’t want to. I agree we should promote those issues (among others), a task that would be greatly facilitated with the return of regular newscasts and public affairs programming as well as balanced presentation of opinions. As for a station actually originating from a local studio and presenting live acoustic music―those requirements would be in line with government’s constitutional duty to “promote the general welfare.” I think we can all agree we don’t want to live in a country that has no musicians.

Interactive Van Gogh

As Vicki and I were sitting in the middle of the Interactive Van Gogh Experience (in the building that was once the Fillmore West in San Francisco), she turned to me and said, ‘I wouldn’t want to see this stoned.” Neither would I.

The experience was breathtaking, amazing, expensive and safe. See it if you can. Bring a cushion; the seating is hit and miss.

But Vicki’s comment did send my mind reeling back to the summer before my freshman year in college, 1970, when Portland hosted several rock concerts that included the then-new import from San Francisco: the light show. Oil and water dancing above colored lights on an overhead projector was the height of technology at the time. I was mesmerized.

A half-century later, we spent an hour inside Van Gogh’s mind, to a clever (if sometimes a bit bombastic) sound track that put the stacks of speakers in Portland’s Masonic Auditorium to shame.