Category Archives: Media

Feelings Not Facts

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After a welcome break from tutoring, I was back at for the first time in two weeks. I’m not sure why—maybe it was just that I’d gotten used to having my evenings back and under my own control—but I was exhausted when I rolled up on the cove around 9:45 Wednesday night.

When I get home after 2 ½ hours of trying to get 25 high school-age students to put down their cell phones and do some homework, I’ll often sit-up for an hour or so with a beer (sometimes a snack) and more often than not, I’ll watch The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. Because I tune-in just prior to the 10:00 p.m. segue between hosts and shows, I’ve come to enjoy being there for the “hand-off” that takes place between the brilliant Rachel Maddow and O’Donnell, a savvy political veteran of DC’s internecine combat.

Wednesday night, though, for some odd reason, I switched on CNN. When I am home at night, I rarely miss Ms. Maddow’s special blend of research, commentary, and the way she weaves each evening’s storyline, coaxing viewers along for something other than the usual soundbite journalism that’s all-too-common in this post-factual era.

It’s unfortunate that the only two left-of-center news networks force us to choose: pitting Maddow against Chris Cuomo (over on CNN), and then, O’Donnell goes head-to-head against worthy rival, Don Lemon. What I often end up doing is channel-surfing between networks during commercials, which works at times.

Cuomo, in addition to being a journalist is also a licensed attorney. He draws on that  legal background to “make his case” in whatever story he’s covering on a given night. Wednesday night, it was President Trump, and how the Orange Menace opts for feelings over facts, time-and-time-again. This is nothing new to anyone who doesn’t source their information solely from TrumpTV (better know as, Fox News). But for the Kool-Aid crowd of Trump toadies, this is an interesting flip-flop. Continue reading →

Left Coast Tacos

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In a perfect world—which for me right now would be one without excruciating (at times) back pain—plant-based foods would be ubiquitous. But alas, I live in Maine, where snout-to-tail cooking and meat necklaces abound. Don’t get me wrong, Maine has some great food, it’s just not the greatest place to be a plant-based vegan.

I love tacos. I’ve even managed to develop a couple of my own versions that don’t rely upon meat fillings. One is made with tempeh, the other with a plant-based crumble that’s readily available in most Maine supermarkets (including Shaw’s and Hannaford’s).

Vegan tacos are the bomb! (The Minimalist Baker)

The reason why I’m talking tacos this morning is entirely due to the New York Times’ California Today newsletter that I’m signed up for and receive weekdays. As California goes, so goes the nation.

When we were out in Los Angeles in 2017, you could throw a rock and pretty much hit a vegan eatery in most parts of town. Some of them were absolutely amazing. In a city of 10 million people, economies of scale are a big factor in food options and variety. Instead of menus with minimal options nearly invisible due to burgers, chicken, and fish, you have chefs like this one, transforming native foods from her home country of El Salvador, offering more than 40 ethnically-authentic dishes. Continue reading →

Crossword Puzzles

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I’ve probably done five crossword puzzles in my life. Puzzles never really interested me. Then, inexplicably, I decided to tackle Sunday’s puzzle in The New York Times Magazine. It was harder than I thought it would be. However, I kept at it for two hours and then, came back to it at night. I still didn’t finish it. Actually, I kind of sucked at it!

My first Sunday crossword was a learning experience.

There have been people in my life devoted to puzzling—like my late father-in-law. He would sit at the table after returning from one of his endless nighttime meetings and work his way through a daily puzzle as a way to unwind. Continue reading →

Newspaper Reading

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I have a vested interest in people’s ability to read—I’m a writer, for God’s sake! And while the model of books and publishing has been turned on it’s head by digital technology, print still offers us a route to the future, I think (at least, I hope it does).

A week ago Saturday, I drove into Portland for a book event. Author Steve Almond was in town at Longfellow Books. He was slated to be paired with local writing star, Ron Currie Jr. It promised to be an evening worth leaving the house for during a season when it felt (at least a week ago) that spring’s been detained somewhere else..

Unfortunately, Currie had a personal matter that kept him from facilitating the discussion, but a rising Maine legislative star, Ryan Fecteau, was pressed into action on short notice. He performed admirably. All this to say that Almond’s new book and provocative discussion around the idea that we’re telling each other the wrong or “bad stories” has been on my mind since.

People who once occupied prominent space in my life recognized the importance of stories and maybe better—reading. My son, Mark, comes immediately to mind. But unlike others who have dropped out of my orbit (by choice), he walked his talk. I’ll always remember the years we spent a fall Saturday in Copley Square at yet another Boston Book Festival, and the year he ended the day toting two overflowing canvas grocery bags that must have weighed about 75 pounds each, overflowing with books. We have a bookshelf in our house that’s filled with books he had at his Providence house. Mark had “de-cluttered” his life in a Marie Kondo-esque manner, but he still kept books. I’d say that 3/4 of the things we carted back to Maine when we emptied his room after he was killed were books. I still marvel at his reading lists.

Weekend reading.

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Good Journalism

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Years ago (it was actually in 2003), I began blogging. I tried to consume the best bloggers in the blogosphere at the time. One of them was Andrew Sullivan.

His blog became a daily stop for me. There were few writers covering issues and writing about them with his clarity and erudition. He’s one of the few writers/journalists that I’ve found whose work regularly countered ideological defaults.

I recently signed up for a year-long subscription to New York magazine. Why? Because I’ve consistently been directed to stories on their website. Rather than be a “taker,” I figured a subscription was the least I can do to support what remains of viable journalism in America.

I wasn’t surprised that when my first issue arrived in my mailbox (replete with Clarence Thomas staring back at me from the cover) that there would be a Sullivan-written article on opioids.

New York Magazine cover (Feb. 19-March 4)

It’s the best writing on the topic I’ve read up to this point.

America’s in tailspin on multiple fronts. Simply talking about a crisis like the one afflicting the country won’t solve it, and like Sullivan points out, neither will trying to win it with a “declaration of war,” as has been tried with dismal results in the past.

Then there’s this:

One way of thinking of postindustrial America is to imagine it as a former rat park, slowly converting it into a rat cage. Market capitalism and revolutionary technology in the past couple of decades have transformed our economic and cultural reality, most intensely for those without college degrees. That dignity that many working-class men retained by providing for their families through physical labor has been greatly reduced by automation.

That’s not going away, as technology—which has overshot its intended mark time and time again—with its incessant over-promising and under-delivering, has left America awash in people and lives destroyed by opioids.

Read Sullivan and weep.

Let Them Speak

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Losing a child is an experience that alters your life forever. Parents never get over it. I know this firsthand.

Last Wednesday, 17 students lost their lives in Parkland, Florida. The grief and loss that follows parents burying their adult child brings with it shock, and a host of other powerful emotions. The only solace they might feel in the days, weeks, months (and beyond) often comes from the kind and empathetic people that come alongside them and share in their loss.

When a tragedy has a public component, then this means the media comes calling. Parents, along with fellow classmates, will be asked an incessant line of questions—some of them invasive and even, just plain heartless and worse—stupid.

My son wasn’t gunned down with an assault rifle, but when the car impacted his body along U.S. 90 in Crestview, Florida, killing him immediately, he was just as dead. My wife and I have been picking up the pieces of our lives ever since—we’ve now passed the one-year anniversary, and continue counting.

I’m not going to say I know exactly what the parents of the 17 classmates at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland are feeling today and have been for a week. I will say I have a sense about what the pain feels like—for me, it felt like my heart was ripped from my chest.

When a son or daughter is murdered like their children were, and the media turns it into a circus primarily to enhance ratings (and sell advertising), anger is never too far away. In my case, I ended up telling a writer from a major newspaper to “fuck off” when all she cared about was including Mark in her story about people crossing America who had been killed after being hit by a vehicle. She was heartless.

I have been amazed by the strength and resolve of students like Emma Gonzalez and Cameron Kasky, some of the more prominent classmates (among many), in speaking out forcefully in the aftermath of the mass shooting at their school. Not sure if the adults plan to follow their lead.

Students have become the leaders in Parkland, FL [Photo-Saul Martinez/NY Times]

Continue reading →

Media’s Cock Roach

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Living in Trump’s dystopian nation (if you haven’t ingested the Kool-Aid), sometimes you can forget that this American life sometimes delivers treats, too.

Last week, it was #InternationalClashDay. This afternoon, while listening to Maine Calling, hosted by Maine media vet, Jennifer Rooks, I found out it’s #WorldRadioDay. Hot damn! I love radio, so why not celebrate the hell out of the day? The verdict of Rooks and her guests was that radio’s still going strong and will continue to survive.

I grew up when you could still hear rock and roll on the AM dial. Now it’s the domain of conservative talk dirges and hosts positing an alternative version of America vastly different than the one I grew up in. Wanna’ make America great again? Flush Rush from the airwaves and play some music!

Happy families listen to the radio.

When I’m home and working, I stream music via several dial-based stations that I can’t pick up in Maine. This is one of the wonders of the internet and technology in my opinion. Here are my top four.

  • KEXP (Seattle, Washington)
  • WMFU (East Orange, New Jersey)
  • WMBR (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
  • WMPG (Portland, ME)

I can pull in WMPG’s signal on my stereo receiver and of course, in my car. I am a fan of their weekday afternoon “rock blocks,” especially Wednesday’s Radio Junk Drawer, with David Pence. More and more, I’m apt to be streaming KEXP most afternoons that aren’t Wednesday. Continue reading →

Moving On

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I was deeply affected by the events in Charlottesville. Many of the emotions I experienced in a visceral way, were flashbacks to Janaury, when Mark was killed. Another young person, with passion and concern for others, was senselessly killed by someone selfish and self-centered.

While there were a host of stories about Heather Heyer, an activist described in one as “a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised,” there was a sameness and quality to these that all made them read similarly after awhile. Her story deserved more. Too often, Heyer became an afterthought, as once again, media made it about “All Donald, all the time.”

Foolishly, I thought I could add a different context, one that was unique and personal, based upon our own journey over the past seven months since Mark’s death. Continue reading →

Faking the News

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I was born into a Catholic family. The Catholicism of my formative years was a totally different brand than the Catholic Worker-style practice of one’s faith (and life lived in accordance with the gospels) advocated by co-founder, Dorothy Day.

When I tried to capture (in an essay in my last book) some of the oddness of growing up Catholic in the house where I was born, it was met with considerable familial disapproval. I obviously failed in my attempt at being a poor man’s David Sedaris and mining family matters for writing material.

Today’s purpose isn’t revisiting family dysfunction, however.

Two Des Moines-based Catholic Workers, Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya were arrested last week, having admitted to sabotaging the Dakota Access Pipeline section crossing the middle of the country and Iowa. Reznicek has a history of this type of activism, modeled after the Plowshares anti-nuclear activists of the 1980s. Both also are carrying on in the spirit of the organization co-founded by Day and Peter Maurin.

Dorothy Day, one of the 20th century’s activist giants.

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Pedestrians and Cars

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The end-of-week news cycle is focused on the attack in London that occurred on Wednesday. A lone driver plowed his car into pedestrians on the city’s historic Westminster Bridge. The latest reports are that four people are known dead, with another 50 people receiving injuries ranging from minor to very serious.

While the media unravels details, seeking to supply motive and all the other things that have become the norm in reporting news events, real humans have been forever impacted by one man’s act. Mary and I know all-too-well how the actions of a solitary figure have the power to permanently alter one’s personal journey.

How our news is received is now ideological. No longer are most people able to simply process information and come to a conclusion. We have grown accustomed to having others tell us what events and actions mean. It’s important to frame everything in some larger narrative—terms like “terror,” “lone wolf,” and of course, the need to link it to “Islamism.”

Personally—especially since Mark was killed January 21—I no longer care to consume news that plays to the same old binary ways of framing the world and my life.  Actually, my aversion to black and white explanations dates much further back than that.

Historic Westminster Bridge, London

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