Writing on different times & different places - by Colloff, Mogelson & Goldberg

There's been a few pieces of writing I've seen in the past few weeks that struck me as excellent and which felt to be about the themes of "different time" and "different place."

In terms of different time was the tremendously well done "96 Minutes" by Pamela Colloff for Texas Monthly in 2006. It was an oral history on a mass shooting on the University of Texas at Austin campus in 1966, when mass shootings were pretty much unheard of. Colloff wrote a riveting piece that made me think about the topic of gun control, as written about both in past posts I've done with it as a label and a Jan 2013 New York Times editorial by former Australia Prime Minister John Howard "I Went After Guns. Obama Can, Too." Also related to both the subjects of guns and a different time was the Time website piece "Symphony Learns President Kennedy Is Dead" from 1963 and which contains an embedded audio file that has a staggering first 40 seconds.

The other two pieces of great writing to mention here weren't about guns and events from 50 years past, but rather about places in the world that are horrifying in terms of how people there live, and just how different their lives are than for those in the developed world.

For the Nov 17 New York Times Magazine was "The Dream Boat" by Luke Mogelson and then the Nov 25-Dec 1 issue Businessweek cover story was "Drowning Kiribati" by Jeffrey Goldberg. The two pieces center on islands some 6,700 miles apart from each other (on opposite sides of New Guinea above Australia) and both portray worlds that people would never hope to be born into. The Mogelson feature is about refugees who attempt to take the treacherous boat trip from Southern Indonesia to the Australian territory of Christmas Island and Goldberg writes about the sinking into the ocean islands of Kiribati and its 103,000 residents. The Businessweek cover text notes how climate change causing the sinking, but really what struck me from the story was how the people there now live. The short lifespans, high infant mortality rates, severe malnutrition and infectious diseases noted by Mogelson are just staggering and it's incredible to read of how people live in some other places.

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 Boston & on Guns - by Charlie Pierce & Gabrielle Giffords

It's somewhat remarkable to me that conversation around the Boston Marathon bombing would be completely separate from the larger question of weapons (i.e. guns) and the ease in which people can get them, but that certainly seems to be the case over the past week. While many people (myself included) closely followed the aftermath of the bombing and manhunt yesterday for apparent co-perpetrator Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to block legislation strengthening background checks on gun sales.

On the subject of the Sentate actions (or inactions) were two great pieces of writing, with one from former U.S. Congresswomen Gabrille Giffords and one from Esquire writer Charlie Pierce, with Pierce more recently writing another piece that felt very much related.

The writing by Giffords was "A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip" published in the New York Times and an extremely direct and well written op-ed piece from someone in a position to write about gun violence.

From Pierce for the Esquire website the morning after the Senate inaction around background checks was "The Violence We Live With". It's a powerful essay that opines how we as American people seem to deplore horrific violence while at the same time accept that it's going to happen sometimes and not take steps that could curb it. It was a tremendously interesting idea put forth by Pierce and another Esquire piece of his published this morning had a similar notion in it to me.

"Guns Along The River: A Late Night In Watertown" was about the manhunt for Tsarnaev yesterday and exceptional writing.The thing that got me more than any other from his more recent piece was the repeated phrase "cops being cops" and Pierce writing of how capture of Tsarnaev means he can (and as he should) go to trial in our U.S. court system like any other criminal.

My thought out of this was that while the violence was much more high profile than that done by a "typical criminal with weapons", it's still violence resulting in the death of innocent people, just like the violence perpetrated by Jared Loughner in Tucson, James Holmes in Aurora or Adam Lanza in Newtown. It's a great thing that Tsarnaev will be tried for his crimes, but what will be interesting to see is whether the crimes committed have any impact on U.S. perception of violence or lawmakers reactions around violence through various means.

Would be a shame if the response is for Congressional leaders and other decision makers to either (A) accept that these things can happen and not try to look at additional ways to prevent it (basically what Pierce wrote in his essay about gun violence) or (B) put the Boston bombing in a specific bucket and try to stop that (i.e. make pressure cookers illegal). While this hypothetical option B may seem absurd, anyone that's had to pour out water or take off their shoes in an airport security line may recognize it as an approach that we've taken before.

Trayvon Martin / "Stand Your Ground" Pieces - for Time Magazine, Miami Herald & Tampa Bay Times

Over the past few weeks I've come across some very well written pieces on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The writing has been for a variety of publications with each piece containing something a bit different around the tragedy and Florida "Stand Your Ground" law that's so far kept the shooter, George Zimmerman, from being charged by prosecutors.

The largest article was "The Law Heard Round The World" by John Cloud for the latest issue of Time Magazine. Cloud notes that the exact exchange between Zimmerman and Martin is unknown to the public (there are apparently witnesses, though), but what is known is that Zimmerman was told by a 911 dispatcher not to pursue Martin, but then followed and shot in during the course of a confrontation. An interesting post-script was also tacked on to the piece by noting that "officers did indeed take Zimmerman into custody that night and questioned him; according to reports, police also asked the prosecutor for an arrest but were refused."

This information takes the case heavily towards an examination of the "Stand Your Ground" law that prosecutors would have been following in (at least for now) deciding not to charge Zimmerman. Two excellent pieces about the law (which is also detailed well by Cloud) were in the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald. For the Times, Ben Montgomery wrote "'Stand your ground' law protects those who go far beyond that point" and David Simon (creator of "The Wire" for HBO) provided "Opinion: Welcome to Florida. Beware of gunmen standing their ground." Montgomery details how the people who wrote "Stand Your Ground" assert that it wouldn't provide safe haven for Zimmerman in this case, but that the laws wording and the legal systems usage of it may make it entirely applicable to this case. Along these lines, Simon relates a story from 1998 Baltimore where prosecutors made the decision to not give free reign to shooting in the interest of property protection. Additionally, Simon notes how "Stand Your Ground" or laws of its ilk in effect consider everyday citizens to be like police (but, without any of the screening or training) in how we evaluate whether their actions at any given time are justified.

Finally, the same April 9 issue of Time that contained the Cloud article also had the Joe Klein column "Triumph of the Gun Fetishists." There's not a large amount of content on Trayvon or "Stand Your Ground", but what is covered is what seems be be a push against gun laws in the US. Klein specifically notes the National Rifle Association and efforts on behalf of the "National Right to Carry Reciprocity Act" that three years ago narrowly failed Senate approval, but could well come back up again. If passed in a similar form, it would provide "back-home" gun control (or lack thereof) for any residents visiting another state or location with different restrictions around carrying guns.

Trayvon's death is a tragedy and it certainly appears that Zimmerman created the confrontation that resulted in the shooting. What's fascinating in an entirely macabre sort of way is now whether a law passed (behind a movement passing these types of laws) will mean that Zimmerman can't even be tried by a judge and jury of his peers. It doesn't take away from the loss of Trayvon, but his shooting really brings into the open a direction that our society seems to be taking with what we allow pass into law.

From this perspective, it reminds me of Representative Gabrielle Giffords being shot, six people killed and there then seeming to be little discussion of Arizona gun laws and how it it was for the killer, Jared Loughner to obtain his 9mm Glock pistol used in the attack.