Nancy Rommelmann

On the Bridge

This is part II of a series of writing about Amanda Jo Stott-Smith. Part I is here

I went on Friday to the Sellwood Bridge. I told my husband I was going to buy watermelons, but instead I drove to the bridge. I wanted to see where Amanda Jo Stott-Smith took her children last week and, so far as we know, threw them over. I wrote about this. Today, Sunday, they buried the little boy. I did not attend the funeral because it was private.

But I did go to the bridge. To get there from the east side, you must drive on SE Tacoma Street, and then, lest you wind up going over the bridge, turn north. The closest cross street is Sixth; I parked there and wondered if Stott-Smith had, too.

I walked the long block to the east end of the bridge and saw the sort of memorial that is spontaneously set up for children who are murdered. There were stuffed bunnies and teddy bears and one Mylar balloon that read, “We’ll miss you.” There was a white board, onto which people had written their good-byes and god blesses. Some of the writing was in children’s large wobbly script, “To the bravest girl in the world! We are sorry to hear about your brother.” Tucked amongst the wilted bouquets were notes, including one from a little girl that read, “I hope you new birthday life goes well.”

I continued on the bridge itself. The walkway is narrow, perhaps four feet. Approaching cyclists do and must ring their bells; two people cannot easily pass. The bridge has two traffic lanes, one in each direction. There is no walkway on the other, south side of the bridge. If Stott-Smith walked her children onto the Sellwood Bridge, where I was walking is where they walked.

I don’t know what happened on the bridge that night. Only two living people do, the little girl, who’s been released from the hospital in good physical condition and who has been interviewed by police, and Stott-Smith. I have no idea whether she’s given any details. I can tell you different versions of what I think happened, and you’re not going to like any of them. I am telling you now: you may not want to keep reading. It’s going to make you mad and very sad and perhaps angry with me for letting my mind go where it’s gone. As I wrote last time, I am trying to understand. Saying Stott-Smith is “the definition of evil”; suggesting, as someone did on the Oregonian’s website, that the thing to do, the thing that would make us feel better, is bind Stott-Smith’s hands and feet and throw her over the bridge, doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t explain anything.

As I walked the bridge on Friday, I thought, maybe Stott-Smith did not park and walk. Maybe she stopped the car on the roadway. This seems unlikely. Had she stopped the car, she would have caused cars to jam up behind her, and been seen by cars coming from the other direction. Even on a dark night on the poorly lit bridge, someone would have seen her taking children from the car and thought, what the hell? I don’t think she could have taken that chance.

The next time you are out, or perhaps you can do this in your own living room, look at the size of four- and seven-year-old children. They’re very small. You can lift them from beneath their arms and pass them over a waist-high rail with no trouble. Two would be more trouble if they were kicking and screaming. They would have been dead weight had she taken them warm and sleeping from the car.

But I don’t think the children were sleeping, because I don’t think she could have parked on the roadway, gotten them out, thrown them over, and sped off without being seen. It’s too busy and too tight a roadway. I am not even taking into consideration that she might pause for a moment after throwing her two children over the rail and into the river seventy-five feet below.

Did she look down? Did she see them in the water? How long did she wait? She would have heard them, not merely because we know the girl, at least the girl, was crying and moaning, but because a mother, whether she wants to or not, recognizes her child’s cry. I had this happen in a hospital full of squalling newborns. Under orders to walk, I was on the other side of the building when I heard crying and knew it was my newborn and, as fast as the stitches allowed, got back to my room to see she’d been brought there, where she waited, screaming for me, for someone.

We have no idea yet how long Stott-Smith waited on the bridge after she threw her children down, or if she waited at all. If she parked her car on the roadway, she could not have waited. She would have to have gotten back in the car and driven off.

But as I said, I don’t think she did park on the bridge. I think she walked the children onto the bridge. Is it possible she made a game of the walk? This seems an unlikely scenario; that she could have had the largeness or smallness of heart to tell her children, we’re going to play a game. One does not want to see the children skipping, at one in the morning, along that narrow walkway. Though one is inclined to think, there would be no skipping. It’s scary enough in the daytime, for an adult, feeling the velocity of the passing cars, walking astride the waist-high rail. It’s too easy to go over that rail. Even when you know you have no intention of going over. Looking at the water below, I experienced the hot, wavy feeling you get in the backs of your thighs when you look down from a great height.

It’s unlikely the children experienced this. It was dark. It was late, past young children’s bedtime. Their adrenaline would have been pumping for other reasons – how mad was mommy? What was happening? And in any event, they were too small, too short to see over the railing, to see how far down the water was. What could they know of their fate? They couldn’t have known. Being thrown off a bridge was out of their purview, out of their range of experience, outside the parenthesis of what four- to seven-year olds need to know.

I am having a difficult time thinking their mother told them what she was going to do. But I have read the following, and it makes me very unhappy to know it:

“A massive search was launched about 1:20 a.m. when 9-1-1 calls started coming in from people who heard the screams of children and an adult woman coming from the river.”

So she was yelling at them. Where were they? Did she make them stand together, with their backs against the concrete railing, with its church-window-shaped cutouts? It is possible the boy was small enough to crawl through one of these cutouts. Certainly, neither of the children stood as high as the rail. They may have been stood with their backs against it, facing their mother, the wind of the cars pushing them against it. They have to have been terribly frightened: what were they doing here, with the cars passing, perhaps people honking? Perhaps their mother had to wave cars on, to say, “We’re okay, we’re fine,” and the children would have thought, are we?

I think it is more likely the mother was ranting. Perhaps she was holding the boy, squirming and crying, and pulling the girl by the hand. Perhaps she was in a mood so bad, a mood the children could not hope to navigate, that all was chaos. Perhaps she told them what she was going to do. While it seems even more heartless to inflict the information on them, I prefer this to seeing them tossed in their sleep, or being made to jump. They knew their fate, impossible as it was, and in the case of the girl, was somehow able to gird for it.

The boy, who drowned, had no chance. How, at four years old, in a moving river, in the middle of the night, do you survive? You don’t. You take in some water, and you take in a little more. I imagine his sister would have been holding onto to him; that’s what I would have done for my little brother; it’s your job. We have no idea how she held onto him; we do know they were found right next to each other. We know this from the two people who went out on their boat and found the children.

“We speculated that she had ahold of her brother because they were so close, right next to each other in the water,” David Haag told the Oregonian.

Haag and his companion Cheryl Robb are being called heroes, and I think they did act heroically, no doubt. I think everyone who has heard about what Stott-Smith did to her children wishes they could have helped; perhaps, in our minds, we are lined up on the bank of the river in the middle of the night, each offering Eldon, the little boy, one more breath. He had only his sister in the water with him. She did the best she could. She screamed. She yelled. We know this from the TV news:

 “Pati and Dan Gallagher, both 50, live in a town home near the Sellwood Bridge. They were sitting on their patio, they said, when they heard a splash, and then screams.”

A splash. One splash. They went in together.

Where was their mother? Can we imagine her standing on the bridge, watching her children drift north, wondering when they would stop crying? Was she afraid someone would hear her children? Was that what got her back in her car and gone, the fear of being caught being broadcast with each of her daughter’s cries?

Or did she just walk back to her car as the children drifted north. Or did she run? Was she crying? Was she yelling? Was she white and cold with shock? Was she pleased? Did she feel victorious? Was she afraid? Did she think twice and then say to herself, well, too late now? Did she call their names?

And would they have heard her? It was a windless night, the only reason, David Haag said, that he was able to hear the girl's screams. As I am sure her mother did.

Part III, "The Mom Next to You," is here

Stuff Journalists Like

Funny, pathetic, and all true

Summer Books Bonanza and that Kindle Piece

Like books? You are going to love love love love love this section, with authors aplenty telling you what books they love, which ones they're sorry they finished, which ones they've never finished. Plus this year's great beach reads; literary pull quotes, books on the horizon and those authors you really, really should be reading. Plus my take on Kindle, all courtesy of City Arts Magazine (which puts out three editions, Seattle, Tacoma and Eastside, so pick on up, will ya?)

Amanda Jo Stott-Smith Arraignment

This past Saturday morning, at around 1 AM, Amanda Jo Stott-Smith, 31, apparently threw or otherwise caused her two children to fall off the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon. The children, four-year-old Eldon Jay Rebhan Smith, 4, and a 7-year-old girl landed 75 feet below in the Willamette River. People living along the water heard moans, and at about 1:30, residents David Haag and Cheryl Robb took their boat onto the river, and found the children. Haag jumped into the water and retrieved the boy, who was dead, and the girl, still alive despite having spent up to 30 minutes in the 56-degree water. She was taken to the hospital, where her condition continues to improve.

Stott-Smith was found later that morning, around ten, on the ninth floor of a downtown Portland parking garage. When the police confronted her, she threatened to jump, but was talked out of it and taken into custody.

Today at 2 PM, she was to be arraigned. I arrive at 1:30, and walk in just behind a photographer for the Oregonian. Doug Beghtel and I are the only two people in the gallery. When one of the women working on the other side of the divider ask if we're with the Oregonian, Doug says yes and I say, "Not yet." I am there simply because I am compelled, as well as having been urged by a friend to write about Stott-Smith.

Doug and I are joined by James, a cameraman for Channel 12. We talk about whether Stott-Smith will appear with her face down or facing forward; what her condition might be and what caused her to do this; we talk about other cases, other murders. We talk about the helplessness of schizophrenics, and the coolness and calculation of psychopaths.

"When they start letting people in, it's going to get really crowded," says Doug, which is when I realize, I'd ridden his draft; I am not supposed to be in the room yet at all; that they let in the photographers early in oder that they might secure good angles.

At 2:10, the room fills, with 22 people on four rows of pew-like benches. Someone from the Tribune hands Doug his card and says, "Make sure we get a photo, too." One of the deputies in city-park-green uniform tells people, no cells phones, no cameras, or we'll be asked to leave. I see only one laptop. There are perhaps four reporters there, tops. I am not sure who the other people are. But I think perhaps the young man in the back row, the one flanked by two women and snuffling loudly, is related to Stott-Smith in some way; he looks as though he's been crying. If he is here because of her, or is some relation to her, I think, I want to speak with him. I glance back. He meets my eye.

There are a dozen people on the other side of the divide, women filing and talking and using computers. Something one of them says makes them laugh, and I think, this seems an affront, in light of what's happened; it seems almost cruel, but then I think, it's another workday for them, and how, in fact, I'd like to write about one of them, perhaps the heavy-set one drinking a diet Shasta. I'd like to know how she lives through her days.

I look back again at the young man. I give a very small, hopefully respectful smile. He gives me one back. I think now, if I can get him in the hall later, I will say, do you want to talk? And then we will talk, or I can walk him over to the Oregonian; I can stand in the lobby with him and his mother and who I think is his sister, and I can ask the receptionist to call George Rede, the Sunday Opinion editor, and I can say, George, can you walk this young man upstairs to talk with whomever is writing about Stott-Smith? I will do this not for glory, but for the story.

A DA comes in and reads off ten names of people who are not facing criminal charges right now. I don't know what this means. The young woman next to me audibly exhales.

At 2:27, Judge Julia Philbrook enters. We all rise. The DA tells her, she will be seeing three defendants today, whom I will call AH and NJA, in addition to Stott-Smith. They call AH. The young man in the back row, my snuffling boy, gets up -- he is AH. He's accused of third degree assault. He pleads not guilty. He's ordered to come back on such and such a date and then, he leaves. His tear-creased mother meets my gaze before she joins her son, and they all walk out. I think, they have no idea who they were on the docket with.

Next, from the back of the room and led in by a guard, is NJA, in prison blues. He's charged with murder. The judge asks if he can afford an attorney; he answers in the affirmative, but it seems he has misunderstood the question. She appoints him an attorney and instructs that he will reappear on June 3rd,9:30 AM.

The judge is informed that Stott-Smith is not yet ready to appear. Instead, it's W, also in prison blues, tall, lanky, with rocker-boy hair. He's accused of possessing heroin; the judge asks if he understands this.

" 'K," says W.

He is told, he can go to the STOP program, and then come and report back to her. W says to a woman near him, who speaks for him to the judge, "Will I be released today." She says, he will.

"Cool," he says.

Next is another young man, charged I think with second degree assault, though some priors may move it up to a felony. The judge asks whether he can afford a lawyer.

"It depends on how much it costs," he says.

"Do you have a bank account?" asks the judge.

"Yes."

"And how much is in it?"

"Well, it's overdrawn," he says. The judge assigns him a lawyer.

All four have been dispensed within maybe eight minutes.

Stott-Smith is led in by two guards. She is wearing a sleeveless forest-green top; it's hard to tell, because she's in the corner and flanked by the guards as well as a tall attorney, if this is prison issue. She is not looking down. She has a wide, coffee-with-cream-colored face, and her thick glossy hair is loose and not untidy. Her expression is unreadable from this distance, besides to see, she is not smiling, nor is she crying. What she is going through, where she finds herself now, is as yet unnameable. I imagine it's like being pinned in chaos, no release, no relief, no hope of being let go.

The judge reads the charges: aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder. She asks the lawyer to speak.

"I am James McIntyre, M-C-I-N-T-Y-R-E," he says, and adds some sort of ID number, and that he is here as a courtesy for attorney somebody Gray; I wish I had heard the first name but I am too busy looking at Stott-Smith. She looks worn. She looks as though standing is taking some effort, as though the weight of her shoulders is dragging her forward and down.

"Do you understand the nature of the charges against you?" the judge asks. Stott-Smith does not answer. The judge says again, "Do you understand the charges against you?" This time, Stott-Smith appears to move her lips, but all that comes out is a syllable that sounds like, "Muh."

The judge orders Stott-Smith to remain in custody until she reappears on June 3rd, 9:30 AM. Stott-Smith is physically turned by the guards, and moves back out the door as though she were moving through deep water.

To be continued.

Part II: On the Bridge

The New Writing Guru

Readers of this blog -- and again, my apologies for being so absent of late -- know that a few weeks ago, I followed Dan Baum's Twitterfeed regarding his unrenewed contract with The New Yorker. I later emailed with Baum, and also, wrote an editorial for LA Observed.

Baum's original tweets contained a few links to pitches he'd sent to various publications, as well as noting whether the pitch had sold or not. I read one or two of them; they were well-written, writing we learned was helped to get that way by Baum's writer/editor wife, who edits not only his articles (and book) before they go to his editors, but the pitches. I am not going to get into the discussions I've seen online, and also had with several colleagues, about Baum's wife working for no byline; that's their business, and those interested in her services can read about them on Baum's/(their) website.

At the time I read the pitches, I felt they might be useful to beginning journalists. I've had at least a dozen beginners ask me how to write a pitch; I am happy to tell them and to share an example. It seemed a generous act on Baum's part to include links to the pitches.

Since the whole brouhaha has died down, I've checked Baum's blog once a week. A few days ago, I came across a post in which he explained there'd been a slight uproar over his saying, in a recent Q & A, that when he's researching a piece for a magazine but before he's actually sold them the piece, he represents that he is already writing the piece for such-and-such magazine. For those who do not understand the process of selling an article: in the main, you write up your idea (i.e., the pitch) and submit it to an editor at a publication. Once they give you the green light -- meaning they are going to buy it --you're now working on the piece for this magazine. But not before. During the research phase of a pitch, it's just yours. You're out there with no big name giving you credibility, but nevertheless must harvest enough information to make your story appeal to that big name.

Baum doesn't see it this way. From the Q & A:

When you are calling people and you don’t have an assignment yet, how do you convince them to talk to you?

I say, “I’m working on a story for The New York Times Magazine.” Or “I’m working on a story for Wired magazine.”

So you don’t let them know you don’t have the assignment in hand?

No, I say I’m working on a story for Wired magazine and I am. My relationship with Wired magazine at that point is none of their business.

He later clarified in a blog post:

For example, if I’m working up a proposal for Wired, and I call a source to ask some questions, I don’t say, “I’m working up a proposal for Wired,” or “I may be doing this story for Wired.” I say, “I’m working on a story for Wired.” And if I have to leave a message, I say, “This is Dan Baum. I’m working on a story for Wired; please call me.”

Is that dishonest? I don’t think so.

The truth is, in such a situation I am working for Wired. Wired doesn’t know it yet, but I am out there gathering information that I will send to Wired’s editors in the form of a proposal.  So not only am I working for Wired, I’m working for free.

It is true that I am engaging in a trade with Wired without its consent. I am doing a bunch of legwork for its editors for no pay, in return for the use of Wired’s name and reputation.

It’s fair, I believe, because I’m working in good faith. I am genuinely trying to develop a story that Wired will want. To use Wired’s name in any other context would be dishonest.

Really? I've been a journalist for fourteen years; I know a lot of writers, and I don't know any who would do this in good faith. We've all had to make cold calls -- recently, I had to make some for an article I hoped to sell and did sell to Wired. If the people you cold-call ask who you're writing for, you say, you're working on a pitch; in the past you've written for so-and-so, and they can see some of your work on your website.

 As a journalist, I do think it's dishonest to say you're writing for a publication from whom you've yet to get a contract. Baum is a road-tested journalist with good credentials, but who's to stop Joe Blow from calling and saying, "I'm writing for the New York Times"? The person called now feels a certain security (or, as the case may be, hostility) to speak, to open up; to rely that his story is going to appear in the New York Times. 

To me, prematurely (one might say, hopefully) using a publication's name is a line that cannot be crossed. But what galls me, and I guess why I am blogging this, is that Baum is doling out this advice as acceptable protocol to junior writers. Think I'm exaggerating about the possible impact? Read the comments, which include "Massively inspirational," "comforting" and "He's so tenacious!" Which makes me think that Baum may be creating for himself an empire along the lines of what Robert McKee did for wannabe screenwriters. I cannot count the number of people I knew in Hollywood who shelled out for McKee's classes, and to whom he became a Svengali. 

I could go on; about how much I hate the word "mentor" (want to learn how to write? Read. Write. Write badly. Write better); how having an editor before your editor seems decadent; how I finally last night read a New Yorker piece of Baum's I printed out weeks ago, and how painful it was to see how little his subject wanted the reporter around. Instead, I reprint here what my editor emailed me, after I sent him Baum's Q & A:

Dear Dan Baum,

If you haven't spoken with someone at Wired Magazine about making the phone call, please don't make it under the auspices of Wired Magazine.

Thanks!

Overheard Today at the Coffee Shop

Woman, 40s: "So I'm going into Safeway, the one of Broadway with a Starbucks in it, and this homeless guy comes up to me and says, 'Can you get me a Frappacino?' I told him, a Frappacino is like five bucks -- I'd buy him a cup of coffee."

Man, 70s: "I had my flag out there at five this morning -- I'm a veteran. Some gal from down the street comes up later, with another gal, and asks me what war I was in. I tell her to guess. 'Korea?' she says. I tell her, a little before that, and her friend says, 'World War 1?' I tell her, no, that little war in between."

Just Bury the Damn Thing

Anyone here remember, back in 2005, when the LA Times decided to relaunch its Sunday Magazine? When they hired Rick Wartzman to be editor in chief, and had staff writers along the lines of JR Moehringer and Mark Arax? These are best selling authors, people who understand how to tell a story about place. I was honored to work in this company, to write this cover story, and this one.

All these folks have left the paper, and the magazine, which has tried and failed to reinvent itself I don't know how many times in past two years, is now reduced to an ad-vehicle. What's the frigging point? LA Observed reported on its death throes this morning:

The second publisher has departed LA, the monthly magazine inserted in the Los Angeles Times by the ad side's editorial staff. And the new weekly insert LAetcetera is suspending publication "for the foreseeable future" after Sunday. The memo from marketing chief John T. O'Loughlin is after the jump.

From: O'Loughlin, John Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 12:02 PM Subject: Changes in LA Magazine

Effectively immediately, LA, Los Angeles Times Magazine Publisher Penn Jones has left the Los Angeles Times Media Group to pursue other opportunities. An aggressive search for his successor is now underway and, in the interim, Associate Publisher, Nora Gervais will be your primary liaison. She can be reached at 213-237-6134 or xxxxxx@latimes.com.

I’ve just gotten a sneak peak at the coming June 7th “Music” issue and it’s shaping up really quite nicely. Please know we’ve now extended the close-date to you and your clients through tomorrow, Friday 5/23. The weekly LAetcetera will publish this Sunday 5/24 and then suspend publication for the foreseeable future while we revise the overall LA planning calendar.

As always, thanks for your interest and continued support. JTO

John T. O'Loughlin
EVP and CMO/Targeted Media and Marketing
Los Angeles Times Media Group

I Guess it Was a Good Story *

This is a kind of big deal for me: the same story that's up for an LA Press Club award is the finalist in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. To me, this is a big deal. I'm really, wow; I'm happy.

My husband, who likes to interface with my writing social life about as much as he likes paying taxes actually asked, "When are the awards? Maybe we should go."

They're in Tuscon, on June 26. I've won several AANs in the past, but have never attended the annual convention... no, wait, that's not true. I attended when it was in Portland a few years ago. It draws thousands of folks from hundreds of papers around the country. I think we'll go this year.
Anyone else going?

For anyone interested in the pieces up for Arts Feature, here you go:

ARTS FEATURE

Chicago Reader: Life Without a Script by Anne Ford

LA Weekly: No Exit Plan by Nancy Rommelmann

The Pitch: A Picture of Hope by Jason Harper

* So I just read the other two articles. "Life Without a Script" is about actor T.J. Jagodowski, who these days can be seen in, amongst other vehicles, the Sonic commercials (he's the blond one). I just watched a few on YouTube; they -- and he -- are wonderful. Here's one now!

circulation 50,000 and over

Joseph O'Neill on Flannery O'Connor

One of my favorite novels of the past year was Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. It took me a little while, nearly 100 pages actually, before I fell into it, and then, to my surprise, just kept falling and falling. Most successful novels (successful in the sense that, I like them) do not gather ferocious speed at the three-quarter mark, but this one did, throwing me into the abyss where you could only fall and watch, fall and watch. Not a lot of writers can do this sort of controlled madness -- the first I recall reading was Jane Bowles, who just let the whole thing spool out until you were, sometimes and unfortunately, untethered from the story. Anyway, I wound up loving Netherland, whose end had me holding my breath and then crying from the realness of it all. The last book to do that was Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year, which I cannot recommend strongly enough, and which, I've just realized, also threw me at the beginning, though in that case, only for the first page or two.

O'Neill writes, in the Atlantic, about Flannery O'Connor, one of the very greatest of twentieth century fiction writers. She writes with a controlled, even cold savagery, writing which O'Neill describes as:

[A]lmost unfairly good:

She lay her head back and as he watched, gradually her eyes closed and her mouth fell open to show a few long scattered teeth, some gold and some darker than her face; she began to whistle and blow like a musical skeleton."

Or (upon the arrival of refugee Poles at a farm):

She began to imagine a war of words, to see the Polish words and the English words coming at each other, stalking forward, not sentences, just words, gabble gabble gabble, flung out high and shrill and stalking forward and then grappling with each other. She saw the Polish words, dirty and all-knowing and unreformed, flinging mud on the clean English words until everything was equally dirty. She saw them all piled up in a room, all the dead dirty words, theirs and hers too, piled up like the naked bodies in the newsreel. God save me, she cried silently, from the stinking power of Satan!

The narrating third person hovers in an almost miraculous fusion of proximity and comic distance. With O’Connor, there never seems to be space between the words and their creator’s sensibility. You almost never catch a whiff of authorial self-consciousness. About how many writers can this be said?

You can read the rest, which includes a review of Brad Gooch's new biography Flannery, here.

A note on why so little blogging: I am writing, and I am also often on Twitter, posting what would have gone here. Why? It's fast. Join me? http://twitter.com/NancyRomm

Another Month, Another Awards Season...

This time, LA Press Club. LA Weekly dominating in all categories. Editor Jill Stewart writes, "C’mon down for the awards on June 14. Let’s go drink wine until we’re too relaxed to move."

B8. Entertainment News or Feature
*Scott Foundas, LA Weekly, Forgiven
*Scott Gold, Los Angeles Times, "Enough About Me"
*Randall Roberts, LA Weekly, Port in the Storm: Heath Ledger
*Nancy Rommelmann, LA Weekly, No Exit Plan: Laura Albert
*Ella Taylor, LA Weekly, "Sacreligulous: Bill Maher's Cross to Bear

The Confessions of Daniel Baum

I have a new essay up at LA Observed, about Dan Baum, the author who last week posted the narrative of his firing as a staff writer for The New Yorker... on Twitter. A clip:

I sent Baum's Twitter link to my sister-in-law and fellow journalist. The moment I hit "send" (and before she could respond that she was reading "on the edge of my seat!"), an email popped through from my pal Kevin Allman, editor of the New Orleans alt-weekly the Gambit, who'd just put up a blog post about Baum's tweets.

"Telling the story of losing your job in 140-character posts on Twitter is a whole lot of things, none of which seems like a remotely good idea for a teenager fired from a fast-food gig, much less a national magazine correspondent," Allman wrote, concluding that Baum's "meticulous, microscopic story of losing a job he loved seems the work of a man under a tremendous amount of pressure, using the Internet as a therapist."

I wrote Allman back saying, I bet there's a method to Baum's madness; that his post-Katrina book, Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans, had been released in February, and maybe he was using what weapons he had in his arsenal to promote it, a position Baum verified when he commented on Allman's post:

It's a gimmick, yes, and I hope it sells books, sure. But it's also galled me a bit, as a reporter, that the New Yorker pulls a veil of secrecy over itself to rival the NSA. I mean, it's a very good magazine, but it's just a magazine.

Happy Mothers Day

We Find Money on the Street

Din's sister Hillary was in town last week, and while conversing at the kitchen counter, Din mentioned he'd found a $50 bill the week before on the street, something he hadn't thought to mention.

"He used to find money all the time when he was a kid," said Hillary.

I asked Din how this could be; he said, because he looks.

I decided to try it. The next day, I found a dollar.

Yesterday, I found a five.

Which makes sense: With the exception of children, nearly everyone carries cash, and some of that cash is going to go missing.

I have not turned into the equivalent of the crazy lady on the beach with the metal detector; I'm simply paying attention.

Eyes open and good luck. Let me know what you find.

Movie I Did Not Very Much Care For

Because it was sentimental.
Because it was formulaic.
Because no one who ignores their child for twenty years comes back and gives the sort of speech Mickey Rourke gives in Atlantic City. I really wanted to yell at the TV, "Bullshit."
Because what were they doing with Marisa Tomei's character?
One charming scene: Rourke's first foray behind the meat counter. Pure joy.

I will counterbalance this with a movie I very much enjoyed, and if you missed, you might check out.

Daphne Knocking

It's funny how life/the mind works. I have a meeting this morning with someone who's asked me to do what may be some important writing, in a venue that will be quite an honor for me. In anticipation of our meeting, I looked over some old work, some previous blog posts, so that he and I might hone in on what I can best do for him. Then just now, I open an email from a friend, asking for stories about Alzheimer's, which her mother has, and I thought, I have one, which I wrote for the LA Weekly, for their A Considerable Town column, where I once regularly contributed. And I realized, this is exactly the sort of column I might produce for this new editor; that I love writing these snippets of the world we pass and which passes us every day, and taking a moment to record them.

I've never whole cloth reprinted a story on my blog, but I am today.

Daphne Knocking

Published on December 18, 2003

My daughter Tafv answered the door to Daphne, who was crying hard, saying she thought her daughter had been murdered.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen her,” said the 74-year-old woman, weeping and holding out the key hanging from around her neck.

I was out jogging, and my husband was at Trader Joe’s, so Tafv, 14, walked Daphne across the street to where she used to live with her grown daughter. She led Daphne up the many stairs, and tried the key in the front door while the woman told Tafv that she thought her daughter’s body was probably inside, and that they needed to call the police. The key did not fit so, at Daphne’s suggestion, they went to the side door; it did not open.

“Maybe we should try the front door,” Daphne said. Tafv suggested that instead she should come to our house and have some tea, which is what we’d done when we found Daphne a month earlier, wandering down the street in the dark.

We hadn’t seen Daphne in six months. For five years before that, we’d seen her daily, gardening, or taking her car on as many as a dozen short trips a day, so many we’d joked she was a “grandma drug dealer.” When we’d seen her again that first time after she moved, I noticed she’d become frail. I’d asked her if she was okay. She told me she’d come to see her sister and began a convoluted story about how her sister had written to her and invited her to visit.

“No, no, that’s not right,” said Daphne, wringing her hands. “I wrote her letters. But she didn’t answer them.”

We brought her inside our home. She did not know us, but settled comfortably with a cup of hot tea and told us how she’d been a nurse for 30 years, and about her three daughters, and how they’d fussed at each other as teenagers. She was lucid and delighted to chat about the past, but about the present she was uncertain, and she knew it.

“I never thought my mind would be affected,” she said, and again asked about her sister, who does not and never did live across the street.

That time, I’d gotten an ancient phone book from her purse, and phoned people with her last name. I eventually reached her ex-husband, who said Daphne was suffering from dementia, and gave me the address of the group home where she’d been staying, a few miles south. I drove Daphne there; she thanked me and told the attendant what a nice girl I was. When her daughter came home from work that night, she told us Daphne had been going downhill rapidly; that they’d had an electronic monitoring bracelet on her, but that she’d ripped it off.

When I came back from running, Daphne was still crying, standing by her old gate with Tafv and my husband, saying we needed to wait for the police. Somehow my presence convinced her it was okay to come inside our place for tea. We chatted, though less this time; she seemed more frightened. Tafv and I then drove her back to the group home, where in the lobby, she told the nurse, “They are such good neighbors.”

On the drive home, Tafv said Daphne had said to her, “This is no way for a person to have to live.” We talked about Alzheimer’s, how it can happen to anyone, and I told Tafv I was very proud of the kindness and responsibility she’d shown.

I know Daphne will show up again; that she somehow remembers the name of this street and gets the cab drivers to bring her. But we are moving at the end of January, and while I suspect some flare of self-preservation will tell Daphne to knock on our door, there will be nobody here that she knows.

History, Trade, Commerce, Warfare: “In the Center” with Dave Machado

New article just posted on Food Dude's site, in which I talk with Dave "It's Impossible for Me to Give a Bad Interview" Machado, about food, real estate, back taxes, and those annoying food fundamentalists. About that last:

“That’s what makers me crazy about Portland and the bloggers,” he continues. “They get all fundamentalist, about authenticity and food. It’s like, where do you think that food came from? Where do you think a dish in Italy came from? It came because some Portuguese explorer put in tomatoes or fava beans. It was a result of trade and commerce that you get cuisine. You didn’t get cuisine in a vacuum; you got cuisine because people brought you products.”

I tell him, don’t get me started on provinciality, as though we should only eat foods from within ten miles of here. That I’m a little more curious than that, actually, curious about coffee and chocolate and chiles and other things that do not grow in the 97_ _ _ zip code.

“You get to a Luddite way of dealing with the world,” he says. “People become fundamentalist about food; you want to say, stop; stop. Stop. Be a little more open.”

Machado's downtown restaurant and bar Nel Centro opens later this month