Memorable writing - on grief, mass shootings and a papal document on climate change

A few pieces of recent writing on different subjects have struck me as particularly powerful.

On grief was a Facebook post by Sheryl Sandberg written 30 days after her husband Dave Goldberg died and for the Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin wrote "What it was like to cover Beau Biden’s funeral" about her experience as a White House pool reporter. The Sandberg piece obviously more personal, but both really profound.

About the recent murder of nine in a Charleston, SC church were two pieces, one written and one for TV, with similar refrains. For Esquire, Charles Pierce wrote the incredibly good "Charleston Shooting: Speaking the Unspeakable, Thinking the Unthinkable" and there's six amazing minutes from Jon Stewart with this link containing both the Daily Show video and a few sentences out of him talking.

In another totally different category was writing on the recent Pope Francis document around climate change with another Charles Pierce piece for Esquire titled "Pope Francis Drops the Hammer on Climate Change" and Bill McKibben for the New York Review of Books writing "Pope Francis: The Cry of the Earth," with both pieces about just how influential this document from the Pope could be.

Profound pieces of writing - by Kruse, King, Marantz & Shapira

There's a few pieces of writing I've seen lately that were particularly touching and heartfelt, with each about distinct phases of life.

For the Tampa Bay Times in 2007, Michael Kruse wrote "On her own two wheels," a beautiful 300-word piece about a father teaching his eight-year-old daughter to ride a bike that featured the quote "I'm supposed to let go, I can't hold on forever" and for his Monday Morning Quarterback column for Sports Illustrated, Peter King wrote of his 31-year-old daughter Laura marrying her partner Kim under the title "Happily Ever After."

Also incredibly moving were two pieces in past weeks that dealt with a much different phase. Robin Marantz for the New York Times Magazine wrote "The Last Day of Her Life" on Sandy Bem, a Cornell University professor diagnosed with Alzheimer's and who wanted to die on her own terms and Ian Shapira for the Washington Post wrote the lovely story "Americans gave their lives to defeat the Nazis. The Dutch have never forgotten" about multiple generations of people in the Netherlands tending to the graves of U.S. soldiers who died during WWII.

Writers on writing & pieces about New York Times writer David Carr

There's been a number of great things I've seen recently on writers and writing, with a majority of them related to New York Times writer David Carr who died on Feb 12th.

Three really profound remembrances were "David Carr, friend of journalism" by Erik Wemple for the Washington Post, "King David" by Ta-Nehisi Coates for the Atlantic, and (with this last one the shortest) "David Carr was one of my dearest friends" by Andrew Rossi for CNN. Related to Rossi, he directed the movie Page One: Inside the New York Times, an awesome film for anyone interested in writing.

Written in the New York Times as a final "Media Equation" column of Carr's (the byline was "with David Carr") was "David Carr's Last Word on Journalism, Aimed at Students," a piece that included the link to Carr's syllabus to his Boston University Journalism class, a pretty fascinating document about writing that Carr posted to Medium. The last thing to note about Carr in this post was something published by Longform with "David Carr, 1956-2015" containing five pieces by Carr and one interview done of him.

Two other pieces about writing were compelling works starting off with "I never intended to write a Starbucks story" posted to Nieman Storyboard and on an interview with New York Times writer Jodi Kantor done by Lisa Pollack. It's interesting content from Kantor about writing a story that's incredibly fascinating to me in that it appears to have quickly brought about a large change for the better from Starbucks in how they schedule employees' work shifts.

The final piece to mention here was a sort of oldie, but goodie with "Stephen King's Top 20 Rules for Writers" taken from his brilliant book On Writing, originally published in 2000.

Writing on the CIA and Secret Service - by Leonnig, Burt & Wax-Thibodeaux

Three recent excellent stories seemed to group together with the CIA being the topic of two of them (one a heroic tale and one simply an interesting story) and an extremely poor response by the Secret Service the topic of the third.

The larger and more gravitas-having of the two CIA stories was for Slate by Andrew Burt with "Your Future Is Very Dark," a remarkable tale that carries the subtitle "The incredible story of former CIA agent John T. Downey, the longest held American captive of war." Downey is now a judge and the story of him being held by the Chinese for 20 years until his 1973 release is simply an amazing one.

The other CIA story to note here certainly an entirely different one than that on Downey, but Emily Wax-Thibodeaux wrote a pretty interesting short piece with "At CIA Starbucks, even the baristas are covert" for the Washington Post.

Also published in the Post was "Secret Service fumbled response after gunman hit White House residence in 2011" by Carol Leonnig and it's a sobering tale of bumbled response by those in an extremely important job.

Great pieces from and related to events in Ferguson, MO

I've found myself riveted lately by what's been going on in Ferguson, Missouri over the past nine days and there's been some amazing writing on what's happened there, as well as other great writing and a speech that come to mind as I follow the unfolding events.

The most detailed piece I've seen about the shooting death of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson that precipitated everything was "In Ferguson, three minutes — and two lives forever changed" for the Washington Post by Manuel Roig-Franzia, DeNeen L. Brown and Wesley Lowery. The story was published on August 16th so additional details have and will continue to come to light, but it seems a really solid account.

In terms of the police action both that August 9th day and since, two pieces of writing I keep thinking of that weren't about Ferguson and the events there, but seem very much related, were by Jason Fagone and Matt Taibbi. For Mother Jones, Fagone wrote "How a Squad of Ex-Cops Fights Police Abuses" on retired cops working as investigators for a Florida Public Defender's Office and Taibbi authored the book The Divide (which I wrote on a few weeks ago). Taibbi provided an excellent and infuritating look at the application of justice in America and how there's different sets of consequences for breaking laws depending on what group someone a part of.

Two really well done pieces of writing done as a result of police reaction to protestors in Ferguson were both political in nature, and from two people perhaps often on different ends of a political spectrum. For Time Magazine was "Rand Paul: We Must Demilitarize the Police" by the Kentucky Senator and for his own company site, Venture Capital investor and Barack Obama backer Chris Sacca wrote "A few thoughts on race, America, and our President" about what the unfolding situation calls for.

The last thing to note here on something that I've seen posted in relation to Ferguson and which has stuck with me was video of the speech Robert F. Kennedy gave in which he annouced the death of Martin Luther King Jr. I six years ago linked to an audio-only version and the speech more powerful today than ever.

Great feature stories by Kleinfeld, McCrummen & Baron

Three great recent pieces of feature writing included a story of heroism, one of mental illness and one of a near disasterous situation.

For the New York Times was the story of heroism with "Baptism by Fire" by N.R. Kleinfeld. Just a captivating piece on a rookie New York City firefighter and him in a rarely encountered situation. The story of mental illness was by Stephanie McCrummen for the Washington Post who wrote the incredibly sad "Behind the yellow door, a man’s mental illness worsens" and for GQ, Zach Baron wrote "Cliven Bundy's War: Inside the Rancher's Independent Sovereign Republic," a piece that stood out with it's depiction of an armed standoff between the government and U.S. citizens that could have gone horribly horribly wrong.

Very different topics to be sure, but great writing in each piece.

Excellent sports stories - Wickersham on Derek Carr, Svrluga on a baseball marriage & Michael Sam being drafted

Over the past few weeks three different sports stories stood out to me, one as particularly well-written, one as being on an interesting topic and a third as being just a fantastic thing.

The one I found noteworthy due to the writing was by Seth Wickersham for ESPN The Magazine with "Sins of the Brother" on Derek Carr, the Oakland Raider second-round pick at QB and whose brother David was the first pick of the 2002 draft, also at QB. Really focused look at the connection between the two and fascinating reading.

The second piece of writing that was memorable for me in the past few weeks was by Barry Svrluga for the Washington Post with "The Wife: Chelsey Desmond" about the baseball life led by the young family of Washington Nationals SS Ian Desmond. Tremendously interesting look at a family life very different than most.

The final sports story to note here wasn't writing, but the ESPN video of Michael Sam learning of getting drafted by the St. Louis Rams and kissing his male partner. Really great stuff...

Boston Marathon stories - by Lowery & Pfeiffer

Two really interesting pieces sports writing were done recently on the Boston Marathon last month, with one before and one after the race.

"The story behind that Boston Marathon photo of runners carrying a competitor toward the finish" was written by Wesley Lowery for the Washington Post and about a heartwarming moment from the race and "One Last Boston Marathon For Legendary Father-Son Team" was by Sacha Pfeiffer for the Boston-area radio station WBUR and about the longstanding heartwarming tale of Dick Hoyt and his quadriplegic son Rick Hoyt, the duo many learned about from a great Sports Illustrated profile (which I wrote about in 2011) by Gary Smith.

Writing on Edward Snowden - by Barton Gellman & the NYT Editorial Board

Two interesting pieces of late on NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden (who was also profiled along with Glenn Greenwald in an excellent Rolling Stone feature) were "Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished" by Barton Gellman for the Washington Post and a New York Times Editorial Board opinion "Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower" arguing for the U.S. Government to reduce charges against Snowden.

Writing by Saslow, Gawande & Cowen - on the Navy Yard shooting, food stamps, health care & Texas

There's been a few pieces of writing I've come across lately that were all linked together in a fairly circuitous route.

A writer I find to be one of the best working today is Eli Saslow as his pieces so frequently use great detail to tell an emotional and often heart-wrenching story and two recent Washington Post works of his very much fit that description. Published last month after the gun deaths of 12 people in Washington D.C. was "At Navy Yard, the ‘Cube Farm’ had settled into its reassuring Monday routine. Then, a jolt." and just yesterday was "Too much of too little", a piece with the subtitle "A diet fueled by food stamps is making South Texans obese but leaving them hungry."

Very much related to the Saslow piece on food stamps both because of the topic and with it being by a writer whose byline I'm always interested to see was "States of Health" by Atul Gawande for the New Yorker. About the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare) the piece is from a noted physican and excellent writer and just makes me bothered by what seems to be the fervently held opposition by some to more universally provided health care.

The final piece to note here also relates to Saslow's piece set in South Texas as the October 28 issue of Time Magazine featured the interesting cover story "Why Texas Is Our Future" by Tyler Cowen, economics professor and author of Average is Over. Noted up front in the story is that "three of the five fastest-growing cities are in Texas" and what I also found interesting in the story, and also connected it to the pieces by both Saslow and Gawande, was the mention of how stratified Texas is in terms of it's upper, lower and increasingly small middle class. There's been a lot written about the concept of income inequality, a shrinking middle class and an upper class living in a completely different America than the lower class and Cowen's piece (which requires a Time account to read online any of the nine web pages it split into) shows a state that's both emblematic of the dynamic and driving it.

Writing on guns, violence & our reaction to both

There's been a few pieces I've come across in past weeks related to guns, violence & our reactions to both. Each was excellent work and reminded me of past writing come across and blog posts I've done.

Around the anniversary of 9/11 I saw "Just Asking" by David Foster Wallace for The Atlantic in 2007 with him writing an essay questioning whether the government response excessive in the years since 9/11. It was definitely something to think on from the late writer and brought to mind a post I wrote last month titled "Esquire writing on the world we live in."

If the Wallace piece was about our reaction to violence and perhaps an overreach to terrorism, more recent writing was on there being not enough response by lawmakers to plain old-fashioned gun violence. Eli Saslow for the Washington Post wrote "Shooting massacre survivors: ‘Thoughts and prayers' aren't enough" and similar to how the Wallace essay took me back to a past blog post, this Saslow story made me think of my post "Writing on Boston & Guns" from April of this year.

On the same day the Saslow piece was published, there was an attack in Nairobi, Kenya mall by the Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab. Three pieces I saw on that and the following day were "Witness to a Massacre in a Nairobi Mall" for the New York Times with an interview of and images by photojournalist Tyler Hicks, "Terror at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya" by James Verini for The New Yorker and "At Nairobi mall, covering a war zone too close to home" by Sudarsan Raghavan for the Washington Post. Each was excellent work and the one by Raghavan and that with Hicks struck me as particularly personal accounts.

One shouldn't go too far in making comparisons between horrible events real and hypothetical, but I imagine an ideology-driven case of gun violence like this would definitely command our attention were it to happen in America. Beyond this, it seems such a shame that the level of official government action would likely be so much greater than that paid to to simple random gun violence, like that in Aurora, Newtown or the D.C. Navy Yard.

9/11 Story from Washington Post along with Welles Crowther & Boatlift videos

There's a few incredibly well done stories and videos I saw yesterday on the anniversary of 9/11 that struck me as inspiring about the events of that day and reminded me of past works of similar uplift. Writing I've written on and linked to previously included that from Scott Raab for Esquire with his now 9-story series "The Rebuilding" about the World Trade Center and great work from both Time Magazine and the Charlotte Observer that I noted in a post just after the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

A story I saw yesterday for the first time and which stood out to me as inspiring was "F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11" by Steve Hendrix for the Washington Post. Published two years ago, it details the story of U.S. combat pilots Col. Marc Sasseville and Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney, who took off from Andrews Air Force Base on 9/11 with no ordinance, but an intention to take down United Flight 93 rather than have it used to attack Washington. It's a remarkable piece from Hendrix about the potential suicide mission that was averted by United 93 crashing in the Pennsylvania countryside.

The other two works about 9/11 to note here were both videos done several years ago, with one I had seen previously, and one I saw yesterday for the first time. The one I was familiar with but hadn't written on before was the ESPN segment "Man in the Red Bandanna" on Welles Crowther, a former Boston College lacrosse player credited with saving lives in the World Trade Center before he lost his own...


The video I hadn't seen was titled "BOATLIFT, An Untold Tale of 9/11 Resilience" and about the evacuation by boat of 500,000 people from Manhattan on 9/11. Narrated by Tom Hanks, it's an incredibly uplifting story of everyday people heading into danger after a Coast Guard call for help...

Great pieces that dealt with humanity - by Mooney, Harding & Deitsch

There's a few pieces of writing I've seen lately that were really well done and for me struck a cord in the humanity showed in them. Also very much related to this idea of humanity was a request on twitter that's generated a number of heartwarming responses very much worthy of keeping track of.

The first piece of great writing to to note here was by Michael Mooney for the September issue of D Magazine. "Signs of the Homeless" was about Dallas area man Willie Baronet, who as Mooney wrote "has been buying and collecting signs made by homeless people for 20 years" and it's a tremendously interesting read that trafficks in the ideas of charity, commerce and contribution.

Another piece of excellent recent writing was from the Washington Post on September 7th. "Hiding in N. Virginia, a daughter of Auschwitz" was written by Thomas Harding tells the story of Brigitte Höss, the now elderly daughter of Rudolf Höss, Kommandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The piece is a pretty amazing one and Harding towards the end of it included a quote that very much made me think of this aforementioned theme of humanity. Speaking of Brigitte, the son of a Jewish Virginia couple who employed her even knowing who her father was said "she is a human being, she was not responsible for her father."

The final thing to note on this subject of humanity came out of a Twitter request by Sports Illustrated writer Richard Deitsch with him asking people for pictures of the "single best moment in their lives". The resulting flood of images resulted in multiple stories on it with several of the pieces that included a number of the images being ones by CNN, by Fast Company, by The Chive and by the San Diego Union-Tribune.

There are a ton of great images that I've seen retweeted from this request and below are a few of the tweets that particularly struck me...

@richarddeitsch My 3 year old, Zoe, walking less than 24hrs after her 3rd open heart surgery. #myinspiration pic.twitter.com/xS4z6zjc71
— Caleb Lihn (@CLihn) August 17, 2013

@richarddeitsch today my daughter met her brother for the first time... pic.twitter.com/Zg4hvc2uJO
— BW (@bdubs20) September 10, 2013

Love. RT @ssharpwft: 1 of my top moments in life - Zoe 1st meeting her lil bro Sean & his reaction :) pic.twitter.com/03rsd4Wxca
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) August 16, 2013

@richarddeitsch The day my wife woke up after her double-lung/heart transplant. pic.twitter.com/JEYalwt6lr
— Ryan Kaltenbach (@RyanKaltenbach) July 9, 2013

Writers on writing - Whedon, Chiarella & Hastings

There's been a few pieces on the subject of writing I've seen recently that contained some insight I thought worth holding onto.

The July 2013 issue of Indianapolis Monthly featured "Celebrity Profiler: Tom Chiarella, in His Own Words" and there was some tremendously interesting stuff from the Esquire writer.

 On writing celebrity profiles, he wrote the maxim (which could apply to almost any type of worthwhile endeavor) "I keep myself moving forward. I step into the restaurant, climb into the car, ring the bell. This is Rule Three: Keep moving forward. Toward the subject and through the conversation." 

On the actual physical act of writing, and output of his work for Esquire, there was "I return to Greencastle and sleep for two days before I sit down to stare—like any writer, anywhere—for days on end (but never more than 14, in truth) into the white, white guts of my computer, groping with leads, sussing out the transcript, figuring what is new copy and what’s shopworn, doping out a structure, one that hopefully provides an angle no one’s thought of yet, all in service to the peculiar charge I put upon myself: to craft a feature more like a literary short story than any piece of reliable reporting. And Esquire lets me do it, because the editors there still believe that a magazine is a luxury, a vaguely weightless indulgence, a beautiful thing, and they ask me to write a story as if it were a creative construction, one that might puzzle a reader with observations of the sunlight, rather than teasers from the Season 3 DVD screener. So, in that regard, I know: I’m fortunate. I have the only job in the world that demands the kind of work I do." 

On interviewing and portraying story subjects, Chiarella wrote "I let people see him changing his mind. Readers like a little ambiguity, a little progression of thought in their profiles. They want to see a conversation in full, which never means a straight Q-and-A for me. It requires a little texture. And that usually extends beyond the experience of a single meal. That’s why I always ask for three meetings and only settle for two." 

Finally, I found noteworthy from the piece by Chiarella a comment he made both because of his experience writing celebrity profiles and just a general notion with "All lives are interesting. The grand life and the small. It would be petty and presumptuous to assume otherwise. And that too is a rule: All lives are interesting." 

For Fast Company Magazine that was a piece by Ari Karpel titled "How to be Profilic: Guidelines for geting it done from Joss Whedon". The acclaimed writer and director of The Avengers, the superhero blockbuster hit that I enjoyed quite a bit, had some interesting thoughts around creative work (including reference to the David Allen book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity) passed along by Karpel.

Finally, non-fiction writer Michael Hastings died at 33 last month from a car crash and written about him were "Missing Michael Hastings" by BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith and "On Michael Hastings" by Max Fisher for the Washington Post. Both interesting and very nice tributes and the Fisher piece included at the end advice Hastings gave last year to young journalists via Reddit:

1.) You basically have to be willing to devote your life to journalism if you want to break in. Treat it like it’s medical school or law school. 
2.) When interviewing for a job, tell the editor how you love to report. How your passion is gathering information. Do not mention how you want to be a writer, use the word “prose,” or that deep down you have a sinking suspicion you are the next Norman Mailer. 
3.) Be prepared to do a lot of things for free. This sucks, and it’s unfair, and it gives rich kids an edge. But it’s also the reality. 
4.) When writing for a mass audience, put a fact in every sentence. 
5.) Also, keep the stories simple and to the point, at least at first. 
6.) You should have a blog and be following journalists you like on Twitter. 
7.) If there’s a publication you want to work for or write for, cold call the editors and/or email them. This can work. 
8) By the second sentence of a pitch, the entirety of the story should be explained. (In other words, if you can’t come up with a rough headline for your story idea, it’s going to be a challenge to get it published.) 
9) Mainly you really have to love writing and reporting. Like it’s more important to you than anything else in your life–family, friends, social life, whatever. 
10) Learn to embrace rejection as part of the gig. Keep writing/pitching/reading.

Writing on Hotshot firefighters - by Kyle Dickman & Molly Hennessy-Fiske

There was a great story written for the July issue of Outside Magazine that I had already planned on linking to before it became so tragically timely. "In the line of Wildfire" was by Kyle Dickman and is an account of time he spent with the Tahoe Hotshots, who Dickman describes as an elite group of wilderness firefighters based in Camptonville, CA.

It's a gripping feature story on people with jobs completely different than most and the tragic timeliness of it came with the June 30th deaths of all but one of the Prescott, AZ based Granite Mountain Hotshots. The next day Dickman wrote "19 Hotshots die in Arizona" for Outside and then followed that up with "Examining the Arizona Wildfire Deaths".

There's I'm sure going to be other well-done and poignant stories written on the disaster and one I've seen already was "Widow of fallen Arizona firefighter recalls his last day" for the L.A. Times. Written by Molly Hennessy-Fiske, this story was on Juliann Ashcraft, whose husband Andrew Ashcraft one of the 19. It's a heartbreaking piece that notes the Ashcraft's 4 children, all under the age of 7.

In relation to all the men lost in the fire, among the various places online that provide biographical info was "Remembering the Granite Mountain Hotshots" in the Washington Post.

Eli Saslow on the family of a slain Newtown child

Such a great story by Eli Saslow for the Washington Post a few days ago. "After Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet" was about Mark and Jackie Barden, parents of three children until their youngest, Daniel Barden, killed in his classroom.

Like others (well, at the least like one other shown below), I find myself thinking of the story in relation to some areas other than the overwhelmingly horrible loss.

I defend myself emotionally from stories like Eli's by thinking about the work. That is a perfectly written story. It's flawless.
— Chris Jones (@MySecondEmpire) June 9, 2013

The writing itself - Saslow is a someone who I've previously posted on and linked to ESPN pieces he's written and I'm sure there will be additional great analysis done on his Washington Post story, but two I've seen thus far were from the website Gangrey and by Paige Williams with a "Why's This So Good?" for Nieman Storyboard that features a breakdown of the story along with short Q&A with Saslow. As was noted by Williams and others I've seen commenting on the story, it just felt so incredibly restrained and created for myself as a reader the feeling of sitting and watching a family's life lived.

Other related writing - Two different post labels I've used on this blog are Newtown and Gabrielle Giffords and between them there's five posts that link to multiple pieces. The stories are by some great writers and run the gamut in terms of subjects and emotions. There's David Von Drehle on what happened in Tucson and why, Joe Posnanski on the loss of a young girl, Jim Dwyer on one family not knowing if their child safe, Gary Smith on how he envisions responsible gun legislation coming about from tragedy and, as a sort of counterpoint to Smith, Joe Klein, Charlie Pierce and Gabrielle Giffords on the prevention of said responsible gun legislation.

Efforts by the Bardens - It's remarkable reading in Saslow's piece of the strength that Mark and Jackie Barden show in campaigning for responsible legislation around guns. On one hand, it seems as if their efforts are futile in the face of both active opposition and passive ignoring of the problem, but on the other, the Bardens are working towards something important so perhaps the odds of their success don't matter as much as the end goal itself.

All in all, it was great work by Saslow that was both difficult to read and an important and revealing story.

Writing on Sports Phenoms - by Pablo Torre & Dave Sheinin

Great sports writing on phenoms can often be more compelling than pieces on established sports stars because the phenoms represent potential not yet fully realized. Granted, that hoped for greatness may not come to pass, but it just might.

Athletes in their teens or early 20's I've linked to pieces on include baseball players Mike Trout, Stephen Strasburg, Trevor Bauer and Bryce Harper and recently I've come across two excellent pieces of writing on young stars playing two other sports.

"The Making of Kyrie Irving" was written by Pablo Torre for the Jan 7 ESPN The Magazine and is a really solid look at the Cavaliers second year point guard. Irving has performed extremely well on the NBA level after his injury shortened single season at Duke and the Torre piece is a revealing look at what got him to this point. Irving's mother passed away when he was five and Torre tells well the story of his father helping develop both Irving's game and confidence while raising he and his sister. Just a very heartwarming tale of a great athlete with potential to become even better.

The second piece of excellent sports writing to mention here was by Dave Sheinin for the Washington Post. "Robert Griffin III emerges as the Washington Redskins’ leader despite rookie status" was done prior to the Redskins recently winning the NFC East and shows the steps taken by Griffin to earn his role as a team captain and someone team veterans want to follow. It's tremendously interesting reading from Sheinin and Griffin's both calculated and completely authentic approach towards assuming leadership could serve as an example for other young stars moving up to the next level of competition.

It was solid writing from both Torre and Sheinin on two athletes that come across in the respective pieces as stars easy to root for.

"Elsewhere" by Richard Russo

Elsewhere by Richard Russo is an interesting memoir from the writer of notable works of fiction like Straight Man (which I read and enjoyed) and the Pulitzer Prize winning Empire Falls.

It's a different book than I expected in that while it's Russo's life story, really it's more about he as an only child and his mother as a single mom. What's remarkable in the book was the depths of care that Russo put into helping his mom starting out when she travelled cross-country with him to college and then through the following decades as Russo would have her living nearby. Additionally, a fascinating detail that comes out late in the book was Russo realizing through his daughter's diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder that his same disease may very well have afflicted his mom throughout her life.

In terms of being a story about growing up and relationship with parents, the book made me think about two other memoirs of the same ilk, The Longest Trip Home by John Grogan and 'Tis by Frank McCourt. Of the two, I enjoyed the Grogan book much more and comparing 'Tis to Elsewhere for me shows a pretty negative depiction of McCourt as a son to his aging mother. Actually, McCourt didn't seem a great son to his mother regardless of who compared against, but especially against someone like Russo who gave of himself so much for so many years. Russo doesn't necessarily portray himself as a perfect son, but he simply seemed to follow the maxim that you don't turn your back on someone, even if it would be the much easier thing to do. 

Additionally of interest from Elsewhere and playing a major role in the book's narrative was Russo's hometown of Gloversville, NY. It's fascinating to read of a factory town and what happens there as the factory slows down and then goes away (while actually causing physical harm to the people it did employ back in the day).

Elsewhere might not hold the attention of some with it simply being about a guy and his mother, but it was an interesting read... and reviewed many other places, including for the Washington Post by Marie Arena.

Feature stories by Rehagen, Martel & Manteuffel

There's three great pieces of writing I came across a week or so ago from a few random sources thanks to the wonder that is links via twitter.

For The Washingtonian, Rachel Manteuffel wrote "The Things They Leave Behind: Artifacts From the Vietnam Veterans Memorial", a remarkable piece that's touching in it's own right, and downright tragic when coupled with the accompanying pictures of objects left.

Additionally, Ned Martel did "Holocaust survivor tailors an American success story" in the Washington Post. It's a very cool story of someone dedicated to perfecting his craft in the person of D.C. tailor Martin Greenfield.

Finally, "This Land Is My Land" was published for Atlanta Magazine by Tony Rehagen. I first heard of Rehagen in July of this year with his piece "Daddy Blues" and this latest effort is a fascinating tale that features the subtitle "In the high country of North Georgia, an old bootlegger and a gun merchant feuded for years over a quarter-mile property line. It ended in the worst possible way."

Penn State Crimes, Moral Failures & Journalism Part 2 - on Joe Paterno & Freeh report

After the Penn State scandal first broke and now convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky was indicted, I did the blog post "Penn State Crimes, Moral Failures & Journalism" linking to a few pieces of great writing on the horrific subject. It's now been a few weeks since the Freeh report came out putting a large amount of blame on late coach Joe Paterno for knowingly covering up Sandusky's crimes and especially in the few days after the report published, there was some new remarkable writing done that's very much worth linking to.

The first two pieces that come to mind were by preeminent sports writers on how they were deceived by Sandusky. Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post wrote "Joe Paterno, at the end, showed more interest in his legacy than Jerry Sandusky’s victims" and Rick Reilly "The sins of the father" for ESPN. Both were very well written and an additional column that stood out at the time was "The Deadspin Five-Point Plan To Rescue Penn State Football" by Drew Magary for Deadspin. Magary generally writes very funny stuff and his piece was both caustic as well as seemingly spot-on.

In line with my blog post idea of preserving some of the best writing on the subject were two posts I came across by others. On his personal tumbler site, LA Times writer Baxter Holmes did "Round-up of fine sentences, part 36 (feat. pieces written about Penn State/Joe Paterno)" and Wired Magazine contributing editor Jason Fagone published "The 5 best and 5 worst sentences written about Penn State in the aftermath of the Freeh Report" on his blog. Both noted some excellent work and Fagone's piece especially stood out with his analysis of the writing he found notable.

Finally, it's another approach altogether, but I thought excellent a recent ESPN The Magazine back page column by Chris Jones. Titled "Statue of limitations" it looks at the now mothballed statue of Paterno and the craftsman who built it. It was an interesting story idea and very well written work.