Over at TOS On Tour my former boss and a damn good editor and journalist is posting a must-read diary about his trip to South America. He’s in southern Peru now, amid stunning poverty and the physical destruction wrought by a magnitude 7.9 earthquake on Aug. 15, 2007.
Peru is one on a long list of commodity-rich countries that have a hard time maintaining consistent economic growth due to the gyrations of global demand for the kinds of things it has to sell: minerals, steel, textiles and energy commodities like natural gas and crude oil. Even when times are good, as they have been in recent years, countries like Peru have a hard time spreading their modest transitory prosperity among their own people. The percentage of Peru’s population living below the poverty rate in 2007 was 45%, according to the CIA Factbook. Its 2007 per capita gross domestic product of $7,800 was higher than Columbia, the Dominican Republic and many African nations facing similar economic realities. Not surprisingly, the poverty rates among those nations are similar. For reference, the United States’ poverty rate was 12% and its per capita GDP in 2007 was $45,800.
TOS makes the point that, “Different doesn't do justice to the void between life in Peru and in the U.S. Alien would be much more like it, and damned if the commenters on newspaper sites wouldn't approve of the usage upgrade…. Flat out destitution -- and worse, less hope for improvement than any poor folk in America.”
I believe him when he writes that because he has seen both places. I have to say, though, that it is hard for me to fathom when I think about places like New Orleans, or Appalachia, or even parts of Chicago’s own West and South sides. Breathtaking poverty exists here as it does there, and in some places I imagine the outlook isn’t much less bleak than in a place like Pisco.
Perspective is key. It’s hard to hide a reality like 45% of your population living below the poverty line. When the figure is 12% one must look harder, along Lower Wacker Drive, for example, or in building vestibules early in the morning; on the ventilation grates along E. South Water Street, just off Michigan Avenue, or in the stairwells leading down to the Randolph Street commuter rail station; in the nooks of the city’s railroad bridge underpasses, and in the vacant lots along the Orange Line southwest of downtown, where blue tarpaulin tents and little islands of trash appear, disappear and then reappear, depending on the day.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see this as a competition. Poverty is poverty, no matter where it is or how well it is hidden. TOS’s descriptions of the conditions in parts of Peru got me thinking about some of the things I’ve seen here, that’s all.
I’m looking forward to reading more as his trip progresses.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Caution: Fork Ahead
I’m losing my job. They’re closing the website where I work with nine other journalists. Lucky me, though: they’re phasing us out. While most of my coworkers will be out of work as of Friday, I will, to the best of my knowledge, have a job until Dec. 31, at which time I will be given my walking papers and my (rather generous) severance package.
For all of us whose sweat, tears and cuticles have mixed with the sandwich crumbs and spilled pop inside our QWERTY keyboards, it’s decision time. What’s next?
I find myself in the rather unusual position of being able to see what’s coming. Most of my coworkers had two weeks from the date they learned they would be losing their jobs to the end. They have had to quickly recover from the shock of it all and get down to the serious business of finding jobs to pay bills and care for families. As things stand now I have the time and the money to plan.
Having been a tool of the Man pretty much since I left daily newspapers in 2000, I have little interest now in continuing that relationship. I might consider going to work for my old boss, were the right situation to present itself. I think daily newspapers as they are now are pretty much fucked. Wall Street has extorted whatever easy profits were to be had and left journalism’s carcass rotting in the sun. Public companies should not own newspapers because public companies are beholden to shareholders, not readers. Owning a newspaper is a civic undertaking, and as far as I can tell most shareholders aren’t interested in civic undertakings (I should add, at least as it relates to their investments). So I will avoid stepping into that mess for now.
Good journalism, especially local journalism, does have a future. I could see trying to get some money together to start an online community news service. It might incorporate written stories, photos, audio and video posted daily to a website and emailed to subscribers, plus a once-a-week print publication with all of the previous week’s written stories and photos. It’d be a shitload of work for me, but I’d make sure it was done right.
Another option is to freelance, to write what I want to write but never find the time for. Maybe it’s a novel, maybe it’s a piece on the Chicago music scene. That’s appealing, but also a ton of work to make it pay. Also, I have no freelance contacts as of now; I’d be doing a lot of cold calling.
Those are the two top options at this point, provided I manage to benefit from the twin luxuries of time and money in the way I think I might. They’re both romantic, pie-in-the-sky thoughts. But what the hell? I’m 37, nearly 38. It’s time to dream a little, and maybe turn the dreams into something real. My cousin Julie (herself a talented writer) has been encouraging on this point. She and I are kindred spirits, artists struggling to emerge from our respective cocoons and fly toward the bright light of the possible.
The key for me will be to overcome The Fear. I have supportive people around me, though, which makes it all easier to contemplate. That fork in the road ahead is real, but I have plenty of warning. These next few months are gonna be real interesting.
For all of us whose sweat, tears and cuticles have mixed with the sandwich crumbs and spilled pop inside our QWERTY keyboards, it’s decision time. What’s next?
I find myself in the rather unusual position of being able to see what’s coming. Most of my coworkers had two weeks from the date they learned they would be losing their jobs to the end. They have had to quickly recover from the shock of it all and get down to the serious business of finding jobs to pay bills and care for families. As things stand now I have the time and the money to plan.
Having been a tool of the Man pretty much since I left daily newspapers in 2000, I have little interest now in continuing that relationship. I might consider going to work for my old boss, were the right situation to present itself. I think daily newspapers as they are now are pretty much fucked. Wall Street has extorted whatever easy profits were to be had and left journalism’s carcass rotting in the sun. Public companies should not own newspapers because public companies are beholden to shareholders, not readers. Owning a newspaper is a civic undertaking, and as far as I can tell most shareholders aren’t interested in civic undertakings (I should add, at least as it relates to their investments). So I will avoid stepping into that mess for now.
Good journalism, especially local journalism, does have a future. I could see trying to get some money together to start an online community news service. It might incorporate written stories, photos, audio and video posted daily to a website and emailed to subscribers, plus a once-a-week print publication with all of the previous week’s written stories and photos. It’d be a shitload of work for me, but I’d make sure it was done right.
Another option is to freelance, to write what I want to write but never find the time for. Maybe it’s a novel, maybe it’s a piece on the Chicago music scene. That’s appealing, but also a ton of work to make it pay. Also, I have no freelance contacts as of now; I’d be doing a lot of cold calling.
Those are the two top options at this point, provided I manage to benefit from the twin luxuries of time and money in the way I think I might. They’re both romantic, pie-in-the-sky thoughts. But what the hell? I’m 37, nearly 38. It’s time to dream a little, and maybe turn the dreams into something real. My cousin Julie (herself a talented writer) has been encouraging on this point. She and I are kindred spirits, artists struggling to emerge from our respective cocoons and fly toward the bright light of the possible.
The key for me will be to overcome The Fear. I have supportive people around me, though, which makes it all easier to contemplate. That fork in the road ahead is real, but I have plenty of warning. These next few months are gonna be real interesting.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Word Limit
Some people take the view that we have only so many minutes allotted to us, and that to waste a single one is wrong. Similar theories hold true for breaths or heartbeats. I’ve never subscribed to any of these theories, and maybe that’s why I’ve seen more movies than a lot of the people I know and climbed fewer mountains than some of them. When you break life down into breaths or heartbeats or minutes, waiting in some weird way for the last one, and you manage to maintain that outlook through a good portion of your life, your deeds speak directly to your values without you having to say a thing.
Lately I’ve been thinking about words this same way. Maybe there are a finite number of them available to us in life. We must choose carefully how and when to use them. It’s a good story, anyway, a cover for not using many at all of late. But it’s not all bullshit. When I sit down to write … scratch that … before I sit down to write, I think about what I want to say and how. I have an idea, sometimes it’s just a phrase or a bit of dialogue in my head, that I want to get down. The next thing I know I’m thinking about how I’ll never be able to capture it the way I want, which leads directly into “why even bother?” Sometimes I run through that full cycle without my fingers ever touching the keyboard.
It’s a lazy person’s way of evading the task at hand: I can’t do it right so I may as well not do it at all. Why waste words? Part of what holds me back is an obsession with needing what I write to be better than anything I read. Most of the time that’s not hard—there’s an awful lot of crappy writing out there. I see it every day, clogging my email and polluting the Internet. But reading this stuff regularly, and seeing how successful some really bad writers are, is discouraging and tiring. Often I feel like a small voice shouting into a shitstorm of garbled syntax, non-sequiturs, incoherent grammar and aimless storytelling.
And so, when it comes time to use the words at my disposal, I hesitate. And then they evaporate, and into their space filters this overriding exhaustion. There are so many things to think about other than the next sentence. I have to get up tomorrow and go to work. If I don’t go to bed now I’ll be tired tomorrow. But I’ll be tired anyway, so what’s the difference? Already this post is meandering and I’m second-guessing what I want to say. I should really cut back on my caffeine intake because it’s making me moody at work. It’s not the caffeine, it’s work. It’s not work, it’s me. It’s the weather. The moon phases. The tides. Shit. How am I ever going to write a book with this loopy thought process?
Meanwhile, here are a bunch of words. I’m using them but to what end? Am I just using them up?
Lately I’ve been thinking about words this same way. Maybe there are a finite number of them available to us in life. We must choose carefully how and when to use them. It’s a good story, anyway, a cover for not using many at all of late. But it’s not all bullshit. When I sit down to write … scratch that … before I sit down to write, I think about what I want to say and how. I have an idea, sometimes it’s just a phrase or a bit of dialogue in my head, that I want to get down. The next thing I know I’m thinking about how I’ll never be able to capture it the way I want, which leads directly into “why even bother?” Sometimes I run through that full cycle without my fingers ever touching the keyboard.
It’s a lazy person’s way of evading the task at hand: I can’t do it right so I may as well not do it at all. Why waste words? Part of what holds me back is an obsession with needing what I write to be better than anything I read. Most of the time that’s not hard—there’s an awful lot of crappy writing out there. I see it every day, clogging my email and polluting the Internet. But reading this stuff regularly, and seeing how successful some really bad writers are, is discouraging and tiring. Often I feel like a small voice shouting into a shitstorm of garbled syntax, non-sequiturs, incoherent grammar and aimless storytelling.
And so, when it comes time to use the words at my disposal, I hesitate. And then they evaporate, and into their space filters this overriding exhaustion. There are so many things to think about other than the next sentence. I have to get up tomorrow and go to work. If I don’t go to bed now I’ll be tired tomorrow. But I’ll be tired anyway, so what’s the difference? Already this post is meandering and I’m second-guessing what I want to say. I should really cut back on my caffeine intake because it’s making me moody at work. It’s not the caffeine, it’s work. It’s not work, it’s me. It’s the weather. The moon phases. The tides. Shit. How am I ever going to write a book with this loopy thought process?
Meanwhile, here are a bunch of words. I’m using them but to what end? Am I just using them up?
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Writings from CNU XVI
Lest y’all think I’ve just been loafing (and there has been some of that), here is a sampling of writings from CNU XVI, the 16th annual confab of the Congress for the New Urbanism, held recently in Austin, Texas.
Retail Recipes: Finding What Sells
Conservatives and the New Urbanism: Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Robert Caro on Robert Moses
Lessons From Booming Regions
The Art and Science of Great Streets
The Congress was a blast. I’ve always wanted to go, and this year I got the opportunity to blog the Congress for the CNU’s website. I have some pictures that I’ll post in the coming days.
Retail Recipes: Finding What Sells
Conservatives and the New Urbanism: Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Robert Caro on Robert Moses
Lessons From Booming Regions
The Art and Science of Great Streets
The Congress was a blast. I’ve always wanted to go, and this year I got the opportunity to blog the Congress for the CNU’s website. I have some pictures that I’ll post in the coming days.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Finding the Motivation
It’s been hard to stay motivated these past few weeks. The weather has been lousy long beyond what seems reasonable. Usually February offers at least a tease of spring, a day or two during which temperatures climb into the 60s. Not this year. This year there was just more snow, more depressing weather that makes you want to stay inside and watch bad movies on cable.
The past two days I watched baseball. Sure, they were Cubs games, but it was still baseball, and it felt good to fall into that familiar rhythm of the game, even if Cubs TV broadcasters Len Casper and Dan Plesac had to pause occasionally after the fifth inning to figure out the names of some of the players.
Not that the past couple of weeks have been a total loss from a writing standpoint. I’ve started what I think is a promising short story, and I’ve been writing more at work. I have also been making progress with my guitar playing. Last week our Guitar I Repertoire class wrapped up its eight-week session with a performance of “Wagon Wheel” by the band Old Crow Medicine Show.
This may be the lamest blog entry ever. Clearly “Half-Empty Pages’ has suffered of late, but that’s not a reflection of the general motivation I’ve had to write lately. I’ll address the dearth of posts in the coming days, with more than complaints about the weather. In the meantime, enjoy the video. The song was a good one to perform at the last class, five chords – G, D, Em, C and F#. I liked it the first time we played it in class, early on. As a performance song, it stood out for not being written or notably by Johnny Cash, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Pretenders or any other well-known band. After we finished, several people in the back of the room asked me about the song.
It’s good to be different.
The past two days I watched baseball. Sure, they were Cubs games, but it was still baseball, and it felt good to fall into that familiar rhythm of the game, even if Cubs TV broadcasters Len Casper and Dan Plesac had to pause occasionally after the fifth inning to figure out the names of some of the players.
Not that the past couple of weeks have been a total loss from a writing standpoint. I’ve started what I think is a promising short story, and I’ve been writing more at work. I have also been making progress with my guitar playing. Last week our Guitar I Repertoire class wrapped up its eight-week session with a performance of “Wagon Wheel” by the band Old Crow Medicine Show.
This may be the lamest blog entry ever. Clearly “Half-Empty Pages’ has suffered of late, but that’s not a reflection of the general motivation I’ve had to write lately. I’ll address the dearth of posts in the coming days, with more than complaints about the weather. In the meantime, enjoy the video. The song was a good one to perform at the last class, five chords – G, D, Em, C and F#. I liked it the first time we played it in class, early on. As a performance song, it stood out for not being written or notably by Johnny Cash, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Pretenders or any other well-known band. After we finished, several people in the back of the room asked me about the song.
It’s good to be different.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Winter Lament
Winter didn’t listen, naturally. That’s so typical of winter; it is a selfish, heartless season that does exactly what it wants, when it wants and ignores the pleas of mortals for mercy. It has no memory and no feeling. Winter is the worst kind of guest; it will come too early and stay too late. It knows you invited it in for a beer but it plans to spend the night in your bed and make you sleep on the couch. Winter will eat all your best leftovers and not do the dishes. Winter leaves one Kleenex in the box. Winter has already sold its first novel to Random House and is negotiating a movie deal in which Brad Pitt will play it.
Winter is draining the battery in your car and letting the air out of your tires. Winter has used up all your Anytime minutes on psychic phone lines and is now calling its friends in Warsaw. Poland. It left the milk out to spoil and ordered porn on cable. Winter shrugged and walked away when you accused it of getting spaghetti sauce all over the front of your favorite plaid flannel shirt.
Winter doesn’t care about you, it only wants your money. And to make you miserable. Winter steals money from the homeless and kicks puppies on the way to its accountant’s office to set up illegal offshore tax shelters. Winter is bigger and stronger than you will ever be and will kick your ass every time. Your parents wish you could be more like winter.
Winter always wins before it dies.
Winter is draining the battery in your car and letting the air out of your tires. Winter has used up all your Anytime minutes on psychic phone lines and is now calling its friends in Warsaw. Poland. It left the milk out to spoil and ordered porn on cable. Winter shrugged and walked away when you accused it of getting spaghetti sauce all over the front of your favorite plaid flannel shirt.
Winter doesn’t care about you, it only wants your money. And to make you miserable. Winter steals money from the homeless and kicks puppies on the way to its accountant’s office to set up illegal offshore tax shelters. Winter is bigger and stronger than you will ever be and will kick your ass every time. Your parents wish you could be more like winter.
Winter always wins before it dies.
Friday, February 15, 2008
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