November 18th, 2008

Edges of Bounty Book Tour Too (Catch-up and Debrief)

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Self Portrait with Author Event Flyer, Avid Reader, Sacramento

Sunday, the 9th, we had a reading at the Avid Reader in Sacramento. Nice event, and thanks to the Avid folks.

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See that projector? It was SUPER GRACIOUSLY lent to us by the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis. Great place. Thanks JNG!


It was at this event that William and I had the simultaneous realization that (hello!) we really need to be doing some of the bushes beating on this thing ourselves. I mean, I think there were about eight people at this Avid Reader event, and they were all nice. It was a good conversation and fun as the rest. But what if we’d sent out some emails to a handful of RFBs (Righteous Foodie Bloggers), farmer’s market people, all manner of local/sustainable/organic/downhome eater-readers in the few days leading up to this event? I bet you five dollars we woulda had a bunch more folks there, and more of them with focused interest in our book.

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At the Woodward Park Regional Library, on the outskirts of Fresno.

The next event was prefaced by our librarian, who met us with a concerned face as we arrived. Her first words to us were: “Oh, I’m just bemoaning that we didn’t get the word out about this reading a little bit better.” I replied, “Oh, that’s alright. It’s not that long a drive from the Bay Area.” Which, of course, being something like three hours, isn’t. Or is, depending upon your perspective.

Of course, our final perspective on the matter was probably clouded by the unfortunate dinner experience. We got to the library a couple hours early–travel time just worked out that way–so we got set up and then asked for directions to a Basque restaurant we’d heard of. Well, our hostess told us, that one is hard to find, but there’s another that is much easier to get to, and we were directed.

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Despite appearances to the contrary, the Shepherd’s Inn…

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…is no Wool Grower’s Rest

As William and I pulled up to the Fresno restaurant, I was struck by the similarity of the place’s streetside countenance to that I’d photographed on our first visit to the Wool Grower’s. Surely a good sign, we figured.


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Ride ‘em, Jackalopemonkey!

Nice old bar, with some good beers on tap. A bit more stylish than the Wool Grower’s, perhaps, but then Fresno is obviously a more dynamic city than Los Banos. “The kitchen opens in ten minutes, boys,” says the nice bar lady. “Okay, soup’s on.” she says a bit later. Sounds good to us.

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Well, looks like it ought to look. Nothing about this tickles our inbuilt authenticity radar…

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Dear God, please let there be an actual Basque in that kitchen!

Alas, it was not to be. The desultory waitress told us as she was serving the first of many oversalted, underloved, probably-started-in-a-can courses that the last Basque cook left back in April. The food bore only a passing resemblance to real food. Let alone real Basque food. I mean, if what we were served at the Wool Grower’s rest is any indication.

The first meal we were served there was epic, and William recorded it scripturally in the Kitchens chapter of the book. One of my favorite photos from the book is this, of the aftermath:

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“I felt my face harden and grow distant. I had never before experienced terror in mercy. Was there no true thing that did not seek to immolate us? Strange, the cuisine that creates asceticism out of abundance.” —page 141, Edges of Bounty

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Disappointment. The photos are similar, but the sentiments behind them differ hugely. It would be an immoral stretch to call this food ‘inedible’, but I–who can ill abide the sight of wasted food–don’t mind saying I left this awful meal as you see it here. No celebration in that.

Ah, well, at least the library put on a good little edibilist feed for us:

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They had a great projector and a brilliant room in which to present. Seven people came. To our surprise, we did sell one book.

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Highlight of the evening was this fellow, Bill, who wore the shirt advertising his former employers, Kraft Foods brands Kool Aid, Capri Sun and some other gawdawful brightly colored glop. “Evil, evil company,” he said, of the outfit with headquarters in Fresno. We may not get on too big a soapbox in the book about it, but this kind of BIG FOOD is really just evil–Bill’s right. I think he enjoyed being kind of a double agent of subversion–wearing the shirt ironically in a town where nobody would think it’s out of place at all, and wearing it to our event knowing its antithetical to the whole premise of the book.

All of this is not to say that we are ungrateful for the support of the library, or to the people who came. We are. Unequivocally.

But in general it was not a good evening to reflect on the value of the tour. What I mean is that we drove three hours to get there, to find a nice room full of empty chairs and a scattering of people, only a couple of who’d actually seen or heard of the book (the rest were, to all appearances, folks who routinely visit library events, not that there’s anything wrong with that).

The evident economy of our time and effort, plus gasoline, plus our expensive/lousy dinner seemed to William and me to add up to a big “Is This Worth It?” Fresno was leaving an unpleasant taste in our mouths.

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No lifeguard on duty.

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It’s complicated.


At this point, I feel like it was a huge blessing to have done the book tour. So we didn’t sell a million books. No groupie stories or trashed hotel rooms. Obviously we got the book some good solid personal exposure, out there among its real audience. I’m proud of that.

As far as the literal economies of the thing–how much money we spent on gas/hotels/food/airfare, how much time we spent away from paying work, how much wear William put on his car, etc., versus the number of books we directly sold? Well, that’s a silly thing to think about, is what we concluded. It’s just not there.

What is there is a bunch of people who saw and heard us speak. Some bought books; most did not. But all of them know it’s out there. Plus, it’s clear it’s not just about selling books. And for us? BIG learning thing going on here: What it means to be on tour, what kinds of things we might do differently next time, what bits of the book do people respond to/do not respond to. All that stuff.

And one of the amazing things the tour afforded us was the chance to re-connect with some of our subjects. There are many more we hope to get in touch with, but on this last round, we caught up with

Harold Dirks, the beekeeper: EdgesReading034.jpg

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Rosie, the ‘mayor’ of Volta: 19_01_4c_Fogra.r1.jpg

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“Oh, you guys are a coupla characters!”

Paul Buxman in Dinuba: 04_04_4c_Fogra.r1.jpg

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Ron Goode, of the North Fork Mono: 24_03_4c_Fogra.r1.jpg

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I would consider our book, and our tour, completely successful if only all our subjects feel as good about the book as these four good folks seemed to. Of course, they haven’t read it yet…

November 8th, 2008

Edges of Bounty Book Tour (or: Hi Honey, I’m Home!)

Packing to go

Passion rolling. (Prop 8, a measure designed to take away marriage rights for same-sex couples, passed. Can’t see any good coming out of that.) 

Howdy there. Long time no see! I’m on a book tour, in support of Edges of Bounty. William and I have about 15 events over 15 days, all over the Central Valley. As I write, there are still about seven or eight events left.

I’m writing this kind of in the middle of things, so the chronology will be all boogled up. Right now, I’m sitting in the back seat of William’s Jetta, on our way to Sacramento, where we’re appearing on radio station KXJZ, on our fourth day of this extravaganza tour. After, we’ll jog back to Davis for a reading at the Avid Reader, and with some luck, link up with some of our Davis connections–Pru at Tuco’s, Jaymes of Aisu Pops, etc.

Olga, William and I in the green room at KXJZ, Sacramento. Peter Case came on and played after us. You can hear the whole show here.

Last night (meaning Thursday the 6th) we had a brilliant reception/reading at the offices of Heyday, in their new digs, which is the old home of Ifshin, the violin maker. The night was great, but the building deserves a few words, owing to the special touches to the woodwork obviously put in place by the former tenant: 

There are an insane number of different, fine woods making up the flooring and moldings, all finely finished of course. Most noticeable are the violin backs set into many of the doors and floors. Just amazing. I should remember to take some pictures. 

Yesterday was pretty well consumed by getting food ready–William catered the event, with foods gathered from produce stands and folks in the book (and in the case of Jerilee of Tony’s NOT in the book, alas–see below). 

Just a little of the grub getting ready to be gotten ready

William’s friend Alexandra doing some persimmon pudding magic

I drove out to Putah Creek country to see Mike Madison (he’s featured in the first chapter of the book, and sells Yolo Press oil and Yolo Jam and Yolo Bulb flowers in the Davis farmers market). 

Mike was just pressing his first olive harvest of the season, and gave me a tour of his plant, which consists of one very awesome machine whirring loudly and fragrantly in Italian in his olive shed. The machine is the kind of highly specialized, semicustom, small-shop-produced piece of equipment that switches on “gearhead Scott’. 

Mike’s mill has electricity and hot and cold water lines going to it, and at one end is a hopper about 4′ square that you dump the fruit into. It shakes them out and a blower blows the leaves and dirt off. Then the olives go through a bath to clean off dust and any critters. 

Then they go through the grinder part, which is two knurled rollers (one is adjustable for distance, to accommodate olives with different sized pits. Mike said the guy that built the mill says, ideally you want it to break each pit into seven pieces. 

After the olives are ground, they go into a longitundinal drum with a worm agitator, where (I think, a small amount of water is added, and) the slurry is heated to about 85 degrees F to loosen up the oil. 

From there it goes into a centrifuge spinning at 4200RPM. The oil collects and filters out through a baffled box that helps to separate the water and guck, and there’s a little spigot from which drips a bright, fruity, spicy oil that makes my mouth water just typing about it. 

Perfectly lovely.

After Mike bottled up a bit and smoothed a nice label on it, he sent me on my way, saying he’d see us later.

Mike Madison labeling the first Yolo Press olive oil bottle of the season

From Mike’s, I went to Elmira, just east of Vacaville, which is almost not a town at all (no offense, Elmira, wherever you are), except that Chepo’s Tamales is there. 


Food styling by Scott Squire. And his appetite.

Chepo’s is one of those places you find only by going down the tiny roads and stopping at a lot of random little no-account looking places that turn out to offer nothing special at all. Only then do you find that some of the no account are of account after all–you find in this way the spots that do offer something special. This is a point I never get sick of having driven home.

 

“Stop. Go back. Did that sign say ‘tamales’?”

 

Señor Chepo has in his employ some very kind ladies who make a lot of beautiful tamales, from pork or chicken, a dollar a piece. The place itself is not much to look at, scarcely set up for dining in. Looks like it used to be (and still kind of is, really) the town grocery. 

 

Señor Chepo oversees his operation.

 

It is an art, and a job, making tamales.

 

This is (a bad scan of) one of my favorite pictures that didn’t make it in the book.

 

I bought a dozen for the reception, six pork and six chickn, and a pork one for my lunch. La señora spooned out a spunky tomatillo salsa into little plastic cups and packed it all in some zip-loc bags. As good as I remembered. 

The reception at Heyday was buzzy, drinky, giddy and crowded. That was my impression anyway. My invitations and William’s and Heyday’s had more than paid off; there were more people there than there was space to show them all a good time. 

This is no knock against Heyday, to be sure–it’s a new office, and a new book. The food–which all came together kind of miraculously, in that way that I’ve seen William pull off many times by now–was served. 

William is a gifted natural cook, and is justifiably confident in his intuition on flavor and texture combinations. Lots of stuff nobody’s ever eaten before, and all delicious. It consisted of:

 

 

  • Bartlett pear pasta with Chico Locker smoked pork and Saeturn mustard greens
  • spaghetti squash salad, with carrots, onions, pistachios and Mike’s Yolo Press olive oil. 
  • Persimmon  salad with Kiwi, pomagranate seed and Harold Dirks’ star thistle honey
  • Chepos tamales
  • Scalloped yams in cardamom and chipotle cream sauce and Chico Locker shoulder bacon
  • Five California cheeses from the Pasta Shop, including the wonderful San Juaquin Gold–our sole Valley cheese. 
  • Persimmon pudding with whipped cream, and Dark chocolate clusters with dried fruits and nuts, both made by William’s chocolatemaker friend Alexandra. 
  • Roan Cream beer, made by William and Andrew for this event. It was a hearty English style Ale, with a bit of hop and a big round (but still restrained) fruit. Righteous

 

 

AND IT WAS GOOD.

The small presentation room and the big event.

Malcolm Margolin, the publisher, introduced us in a thoroughly classy fashion, and flattered book and authors roundly. He’s a wonder.

 

I’d printed up the best print I can make of Ramon Cadena’s walnut shelling portrait, and had it framed modestly to present to him as a gift of appreciation and officewarming. 

 

Thanks to everyone who came. I wasn’t able to really get my head around the event, neither was I able to give my friends and well-wishers the attention they deserve. Honestly though? Kind of a rush.

Neither of these shows the event’s fullness, but then, I was not exactly in event-shooter head.

 

By now we are five days and five events into this tour, and as I type, the chronology is all screwed up, since we’ve had two more engagements between now-typing-time and when-I-started-typing time. I’ll just list the events in their order, below, starting with the earliest:

 

The River Reader, in Guerneville, CA, on the Russian River, up north of Sebastopol. That was on Monday. 

We liked Guerneville right away.

William, obliging.

Susan, who runs that place, had arranged for some folks to bake some pumpkin pies, and had a crock pot full of hot spiced apple cider. She took us out to the taco truck down the block, which–everyone in town pointed out to us–had been written up in Gourmet Magazine. It was everything a taco truck should be. Delicious carnitas, and I had a tostada de ceviche also. Yowch!

That big fomecore poster? It’s still in that window, on account of we forgot it.

Hey, lookee: A table of our stuff, right there in the front of the store!

Susan had gotten the word out really effectively, and I’d say there were something like thirty people there. Lots of pleasant, bookstore-going kinds of people, many of whom seem already to have been familiar with the book. Quite exciting, to have smart questions about your work from people you don’t know who nevertheless are paying close, thoughtful attention to that work. 

Susan did a great job. If you go to Guerneville, stop in, buy books.

There was a little bit of excitement that the sometime local and important food industry muckymuck, Clark Wolf might be in attendance. Clark runs the Clark Wolf Company a food, restaurant and hospitality consulting company and knows just about everybody who’s anybody in the food biz. He also has a book coming out, on cheese.


Clark did indeed show up, and helped to take our post-reading conversation into some pretty interesting cultural territory. 

 

There is a natural gap, culturally, between the coasts and the middle of the country; Clark’s read on our read on the Great Central Valley was that the Middle West (Middle America, in essence) has largely emptied out its center parts of culture and people (leaving gutted little towns and giant lonely agricultural installations in their place), moved closer to the edges of the country and is now taking up residence just inland of the Coast Range. 

 

If we understood him right, in other words, the increasingly polarized sociopolitical climate in our country–red counties versus blue counties, “Real America” versus “Media America”–and the decreasing diversity of crops grown in rural areas, essentially mean that our most pressing, most current domestic battle isn’t the one being fought for the hearts and minds of Americans, but for our bellies. And that the front in that battle is becoming an increasingly bright line. 

 

If this is a reasonable way to think of the differing ideas about how best to feed the 300 million people in our country (and I’m not convinced it is), then our book might be seen as a chronicle of the resistance. We’d originally thought we might include the phrase “guerilla ariculture” in our concept. In this context, it definitely fits. 

 

What with the pie and the nice people and the general warmth of the River Reader reception, we kind of figured it was a fluke, and that we very likely wouldn’t get treated anything like that nice at subsequent readings. 

 

Wrong! 

“Mama Rose” Febbo, at KZFR in Chico

Tuesday morning we had a brief appearance on Mama Rose’s Kitchen, a radio show on KZFR, Chico’s publich station. Rose Febbo made our book part of her membership drive premium lineup, which also included half a locally grown lamb, donated by Chico Locker and Sausage, one of the businesses featured in our book. So we got to make a nice connection.

 

That day we went and had lunch at Chico Locker, and reacquainted ourselves with Dave the owner, who’d granted me pretty much carte blanch two years ago during the height of deer season, to shoot the place up. I was in hog heaven, and made a couple of my favorite pictures during that time.

Too many good meats.

After we finished our sausage sandwiches and pork ribs lunch, we gave him a copy of the book, and thanked him again. Wed return the following day as well, to gather provisions for William’s day of cooking for the Heyday reception described above.

 

Election night we spent at Duffy’s, a pretty down-home bar in Chico, until it got too crowded and we got too hungry. We had dinner at Tres Amigos–fancy-frat-Mex–and saw McCain give his concession speech across a room crowded with people on first dates and sorority girls singing each other happy birthday. As far as I can tell, we were the only ones even paying token attention to the TV screen. It was weird.

Something about the combination of the light-skinned Black woman in the late ’70s Pabst ad and the light skinned Black man getting elected president on TV seemed important. I don’t think I have the chops to articulate why.

Umm, HOLOGRAM journalism? “Help me Obi-Wolf” This seems to me like a gimmick to get the live-bloggers talking, in order to get folks to switch channels in real time. What other value can it possibly have? Except to draw attention to the resources CNN is NOT devoting to sending folks out to do actual journalism.

Hey! Is that a sheetmetal frog in a sombrero? 

Hey! Margaritas, frozen in glasses or pitchers. Strawberry & Peach!

We spent that night at Days Inn on the edge of downtown, on account of we might as well, since Wednesday night we had a reading at the Chico Grange, sponsored by Lyon’s Books. Great bookstore. Like the River Reader a couple days before, they were stocking lots of the kind of books and magazines I would pick up. Seems like a good sign. 

 

Heather Lyon was beyond gracious, lending William and me her and her husband’s bicycles to go exploring up in the TOTALLY RIGHTEOUS park that leads from the middle of Chico up into a canyon outside of town. Gorgeous place. Quite a vision, to have a big huge park like that, smack in your town. 

About one-fifth of the dessert tonnage that was on hand. Wow.

The evening at the Grange was really cool. It was actually the kickoff event of the fourth annual Sustainability Conference, which we were informed was the largest conference on sustainability in US history. I’m not really sure what that means, but I suspect it’s good. 

 

Just the Grange itself was cool. I mean, there are grange hall in ag towns all over the country. For generations they served as the main seat of nonreligious social activity in these towns. Dancing, socials, orgainzing, governing, all kinds of the stuff people do in order to work better with their neighbors. Lots of granges are closed, boarded up, as the older generation retires and dies off and the younger generation moves into different lines of work. 

 

But the Chico grange has had a renaissance, with a new generation of earnest young farmers and would-be farmers tearing off the boards, applying a new coat of paint, and setting up a social calendar for the building. And the organization. 

 

Because we were part of this event, and because somebody is very thoughtful, there were something like thirty home-baked desserts on hand. The hall was decorated in a warm, homely, functional fashion for the evening. Owing to a conflict with a Tai-chi class in the main hall (with the projector), we had extra long to schmooze with the broad mix of people who turned out. 

So, persimmons sure are pretty, huh? This one was in Heather Lyon’s yard.

O blessed community Americana! I do love you so.

Karen of Lyon’s, selling books. Thanks!

William, reading at the Chico Grange. Harold Dirks on the screen.

 

There were probably 70 people there at the evening’s peak (some enterprising souls snuck out after stuffing themselves on–and barely making a dent in–the dessert extravaganza).

 

We were introduced by Scott McNall (Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Development), who, it turned out, has a Kansas connection and who wrote a book that William has on his shelf here. Small dang world. Not that it’s that tough to have written a book William has on his shelf, come to think of it–he seems to have most of the available ones.

 

It was a great evening.  

 

Last night’s reading in Davis was at the Avid Reader. 

Jaymes (whose black hair you can just see poking out over the top of the red-plaid fellow’s on the right) came, and brought a couple other folks as well. She brought us some of her Amazing Aisu Pops. Thanks Jaymes!

After the reading, we went to Tucos, and visited with owner Pru and Megan, the wildly enthusiastic waitress who’s been there just about every time we have visited. Tucos is, I think, my favorite restaurant in California. or at least vying for top honors. There’s a chapter in the book about Tucos, and we were pleased to give him a copy of the book. With some luck, we’ll be able to arrange to have the book sell in his space, or have an author dinner down the road a piece or something. 

There is, at Tucos, a very sophisticated understanding of combining flavors. Always remarkable.

Salad Nicoise. Gorgeous. This is not food photography; this is remembering.

August 31st, 2008

The World Grows a Little Smaller

A couple months ago we wrote about Shanta. Amy wrote, “…she really gets it!” –meaning that Shanta seemed to sense that being part of our film might have a bigger effect on her life than just the several days’ interruption us and our cameras made.

On our first day with Shanta, as we had with most of the other girls, we noticed that along with the pop singers and movie stars she had on her wall–there were snapshots from America. We suspected (and she confirmed) that these Friendly, nondescript looking foreigners on her wall were her sponsors. 

We looked a little closer, and–well I was actually reminded of this story a couple days ago when I ran across this posting on a stranger’s blog…. Read down a little and you’ll pick up the thread of this story (then come back here, cause it’s not over.) 

Or, if you can’t be bothered to click through, long story short: the sponsors are the parents of Chris F. a friend we knew when we were teaching in Ecuador. And we knew because we saw our old colleague in the pictures. 

In this photo, Chris is in the snap of people on the stairs, next to the older couple (his parents) dancing. You can click on it then zoom in to view in more detail.

Our email to Chris was in hopes of letting his family know the girl they sponsor now knows not just one, but two random (and randomly connected) sets of Americans. And Chris’s cousin, Suzanne (who’d set in motion Chris’s mom’s sponsoring Shanta by telling stories of the time she spent with ‘her’ sponsoree girl on a trip to Nepal)… well naturally Suze got wind of the chance encounter, and that’s how it came to be posted on her blog.

Well, when I came across this post on Suzanne’s blog, I made a comment, and she happened to be traveling through Seattle. She had a few minutes between the bus and the train, and we met up at a coffeeshop downtown.

I brought her a picture of Rakshya, the girl she sponsors, from a day we spent filming some of the graduates doing mentorship and tutoring in a school. This is actually a remarkable and wise aspect of the Little Sisters Fund program, but I’ll save that for another post.

We had a great conversation. Right here and now I want to invite anyone who sponsors a girl through the Little Sisters Fund to drop us a note. Chances are pretty good we met and photographed the girl whose education you’re supporting. We would love to meet you and deepen the connection, as we did with Suzanne and Rakshya and Shanta and the Friendly family.

August 31st, 2008

They Think They’re Helping.

 

In a little bout of clicking around, here’s something wonderful I found. This short documentary is almost obscenely lovely, fancy in a plainspoken way. A lot of filmmaking went into this. It is the more compelling for it.

I’m digging it because it flirts with the edge of journalism in a way that I am really coming to value.

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Convincing story, compelling character and timely… but produced. Camera angles, focus tricks, funny edits, moves… not just coverage, but storyboard. If you come to documentary via journalism–as opposed to through interest in film–this production values thing could be a bit of a hurdle. 

It’s a wonderful portrait. Beautiful shooting. Tons of visual anthropology. Brilliant, motivated sound design. I love the sly unfolding of a story that has several layers.

(Not perfect. Maybe a little bit longish, maybe in nearly eight minutes we could have got more of the gentleman’s personality, less of his persona. (But then, just as I was watching, thinking this, it’s revealed that he’s blind–the glasses aren’t an affectation at all. Bang–Layer.))

But here’s what this is about: I have this small, heartwarming suspicion that this film really is a kind of humanist journalism–the collector guy and his story charm the filmmakers, who in turn decide that not only is it a good story to tell, but what if telling the story leads to the story having a happy ending? Maybe 15 people mail a link to Paul Allen or the Smithsonian. Maybe 5,000 people do.

I mean, I can totally imagine the filmmakers having this conversation: “Hey, so, what say we make this killer movie, with all this texture, the great sounds and this amazing character… and then he gets to sell his collection, and retire in comfort and honor? Wouldn’t that be an honorable use of our medium?”

I love the implicit ask at the end of the film. Only it’s not an ask, it’s an opportunity. This is great storytelling.

“Archive” is an outsized human interest crisis story. Like a particularly polished example of something you’d see in the Wednesday afternoon paper’s “Local Characters” feature segment. It’s not even that much of an exaggeration on the form–it just has scene writing and sound design and production values.

Under the conventions of the old journalism profession, “real” stories kinda sorta aren’t allowed to have these.

Which is a little bit nuts.

(Again, not to speak directly of Mr. Dunne, as I don’t know whether he considers himself a journalist, but) it’s kind of a dirty little not-really-secret of journalism that it is often done in the hope of affecting positive outcomes. Why else are there so many stories featuring the lives of real, sympathetic people befallen by crises that seem unjust and somehow betterable? 

Well, it is in part because the world is full of crises, which insist on befalling people. But it is also, partly, the lot of the journalists to find these folks and tell their stories.

Here it is (and don’t tell the conservatives, they’ll laugh you right off the radio):

The Journalists Think They’re Helping*

At what point does telling the stories become advocacy journalism? And is that a problem? If so, why? Isn’t it partly the job of journalists to take note of the things that are going wrong out there, and then find the people whose stories can help us figure out how to make those things right?

I think that’s kind of the basic engine for a lot of journalism. I am pretty much for it, too. In my experience, journalists who are committed to working in this way have a tough row to hoe. And I think that is why a fair number of journalists end up working for do-gooder nonprofits

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Ahem.

*I think so, too. 

August 30th, 2008

Holy Crap: Good News in Multimedia World!

Looks like MultimediaShooter.com is back. And at my old school, no less. It was a sad day when the old blog/site got taken down. I just learned about its resurrection on a blog by a Spokane newspaper photo/videojournalist/storyteller guy, called Mastering Multimedia

And for him to be going to do his thing at Berkeley! Man, tell you what: I wish he’d been there when I was at Cal. Not that my teachers wanted for much–but this guy is on it. Congrats Berkeley, congrats Koci! Lucky Class of 2010.