October 28, 2007

U OF FLORIDA. At a talk I gave last week about Watching the World Change at the University of Florida at Gainesville, professor John Kaplan (a friend, former Life magazine colleague, and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer) introduced me to a large and enthusiastic crowd of journalism majors. The university’s Website has posted a tape of the entire session. (VIDEO VIEWABLE HERE)

An accompanying article, by Stephanie Garry, appeared in the local paper, The Gaineseville Sun.

SYRACUSE. The week before, I spoke with two extremely bright groups of journalism majors at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, in Syracuse, New York. Another professor Kaplan (Joel Kaplan, this time) hosted an evening question-and-answer session. Kaplan posed what could be the single most provocative question I’ve been asked in my year and a half of touring for the hardcover and paperback versions of the book. In light of my involvement as editor of the 2005 Vanity Fair story that revealed ex-F.B.I.-man Mark Felt to have been the confidential source, “Deep Throat,” of the Watergate scandal, Kaplan asked, in effect: “If the time periods had been reversed, how would the country have handled Watergate had it occurred in 2001, and how would the country have handled the 9/11 attacks had they occurred in the 1970s?” To see a partial answer, READ THIS ARTICLE by Syracuse student Melanie Hicken, in the school paper, the Daily Orange. (Full response to the question: To be posted at a later date.)

PROFESSOR JOEL KAPLAN AND YOURS TRULY
AT THE NEWHOUSE SCHOOL, SYRACUSE

I was also impressed by Hicken’s probing questions in her Q&A for the paper, VIEWABLE HERE.

RE: REPURPOSING CALCULUS. Isaiah Wilner, sometime Vanity Fair writer and the author of The Man Time Forgot (Wilner's breakout biography of Time magazine co-founder Briton Hadden) quotes this blog on his blog. Wilner writes:

“Do you ever have time to read anything anymore? Or are you 'scanning darkly,' to take (and reshape) a phrase from Richard Linklater. On his blog Watching the World Change, VF Editor of Creative Development David Friend presents a new way of measuring the condition of cultural refraction...” He links to THIS LINK.

In our spare time, it seems to me, Wilner and I devote too many hours to posting our thoughts online. Like energy companies penalized with carbon-offset debits, we should be docked for every minute we spend blogging -- minutes that would be better invested if channeled toward a book (instead of polluting the blogosphere with hot air).

SEPTEMBER 11 POETRY. The journalist Christopher Ketcham, whose work I have cited on this blog (“The Enduring Hokum of the Inside Job”), has written a book of verse about his reaction to September 11 and its aftermath. It is available, in PDF form, on his Website. A sampling:

“There would be firemen marching in the darkness in single file

Looking like medieval warriors, carrying awls, pikes, pick-axes, shovels on their shoulders

Your saw them planted in sleep on brown couches

Pulled form the smashed windows of ground-floor offices

They had signs saying Dave’s Café Le Menu 1) water 2) water

You saw them in rows of stunned silence, soot-faced, white-eyed

Some wept quietly then quit it suddenly like hanging up a phone

When you saw them you gave them water.”

…AND... Dr. Kathy Reilly Fallon reports that her 9/11 initiative, the children’s book and music CD Heavenly Skies and Lullabies (co-authored with Frank Pelligrino and illustrated by Becky Kelly; proceeds to benefit children born to those who lost husbands in the attacks and the Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund) has been honored with the 2006 Dragon Pencil Award, a gold medal for illustration (during National Book Week last year), and a bronze medal at the 2006 Independent Publishers Book Awards (IPPYs). Belated congratulations.