Our Finest Hour

Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin courtesy of The Atlantic

Amid all the layoffs, furloughs, and buyouts, in all the name-calling and denigration (“hoax”; “fake news”; “made up sources”; “terrible,” “horrible,” “nasty” stories), this is journalism’s finest hour, one in a series of finest hours alongside the reportage on the Great War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Vietnam War, Gulf Wars I and II, 9-11, and, in fact, everyday life and the true stories of people doing extraordinary things.  All of it appears, every day, in the newspaper.  Whether you are a purest who reads the physical paper or the online reader pulling meaning from bytes and megapixels, the newspaper is the best news source, and not just for the facts.  Reporters give us the facts and columnists give us the meaning of the facts; they ruminate and assert.  They make the connections between world events and us, the people.  They analyze the reporting, the data, the details, and they make it coherent to our lives.

Are they biased?  Certainly, because they select what facts to report, but if one reads widely, liberal and conservative publications, a clearer picture develops.  We see all sides, so it is necessary to read it all, consume it all, digest it all.  Newspapers should be daily reading for students, elementary school to college.  We should be talking about the latest story in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and news sources like Politico, CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC.  We should be subscribing and supporting every paper and legitimate news site in this country and around the world.  This is the information age and some of us, by not supporting and reading every day, are missing out.

In these times of COVID-19, I find myself wishing we had more of past voices that Americans used to rely on for an analysis of world events:  the irascible Jimmy Breslin; prose-poet Pete Hamill; Chicagoan Mike Royko; and the gravelly-voiced David Carr.  All are direct descendants of H.L. Mencken.  These guys had voice to spare, and had street cred and the hard-earned wisdom of human beings who saw it as their mission to document and bear witness to human life in all its ugliness and elegance.

Many of these columnists came to their stories as reporters first.  They did not go to elite journalism schools, or in some cases, even graduate from high school.  They learned on the job from the blue-pencil lessons of their editors.  Active verbs.  Concrete nouns.  Cut the adverbs and the sentiment and the overwrought emotions.  They wrote five days a week for years, churning out fresh ideas and insights gleaned from the streets.  They had to get out and be among people; they had to talk to people.  They had to know how to start a conversation, get the quote, check and double-check the facts.  Breslin and Hamill in New York, and Royko in Chicago, knew where to look for stories, be it at the corner bar, or an impromptu street protest.  Breslin, a champion of African-American stories, took a beating to report on race riots.  Pete Hamill wrote about becoming separated from this wife as the towers fell on 9-11.  They were in their stories but not the subject of the story.  They were present to observe and report.  And they knew that all stories are local with a larger, worldwide human impact, and that is bridge they forged for readers:  “you need to pay attention to this,” their work screamed.  What happens in the big cities or the lonely country lanes had resonance that affected the human condition the world over.

Breslin’s best work was the tangential story, the everyman at the margins of history.  His interview with the man who dug John F. Kennedy’s grave is a classic and should be read by any serious student of journalism.

The work of the writers I have mentioned is also captured on film in documentaries that are must-sees for insight into their working lives.  Page One:  Inside The New York Times (2011) and Breslin and Hamill:  Deadline Artist (2018), are two excellent windows into the life of these writers.  CNN’s documentary, The Fourth Estate (2018) documents what life has been like for news reporters and columnists in the Trump age.  Esquire Magazine featured a number of “new journalism” writers like Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese in its documentary, Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire in the 60s (2014).

Who is doing this kind of writing now?  There is no shortage of writers out there following in their footsteps.  One favorite who has done remarkable work in this age of COVID-19 is The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof.  His recent column from the hot zone of two New York City hospitals in the Bronx is nothing short of breathtaking.  He makes the reader feel what it is like there, with the energy and anxiety of healthcare providers on the front lines of this war against a virus.

We need to cultivate new voices to replace our journalism heroes. Even as I write this, after 115 years of service, the Burbank Leader, Glendale News-Press, and La Canada Valley Sun are closing down shop.  Other newspapers continue to struggle to bring us the news and analysis with fewer and fewer resources.  Trump can rail against the news media but his self-righteous narcissism betrays him.  His anger and vitriol are a clear sign that he is rattled, that he is at war with the truth.  Not only do journalists testify to his lies, they refuse to be forced to sell his narrative.  This makes them advocates for us, the citizens, and they may be the last best chance for our democracy to survive.  We need to read.  We need to pay attention.

The Way We Live Now--Total Embarrassment

So our favorite Italian restaurant is closed but is still doing pick up orders and delivery. The owner announced on Instagram that in addition to their normal menu, they had select grocery items and toilet paper for .99 cents a roll. Of course, toilet paper has been the most coveted item in the crisis so far, and even though we did have some in the closet, we were worried it would not be enough. When I called to place my delivery food order, I also had to ask if they still had toilet paper available.  My conversation went like this:  "I will have a large pizza, spaghetti and meatballs, and six rolls of toilet paper."

My voice went up at the end of that sentence as if I were asking a question. I don't know why, but I was incredibly embarrassed to ask for this with the food. I mean, I turned red on the phone. I actually had to work up the nerve to call and order. Here I was, barely summoning the courage to order food with a side of toilet paper. Total embarrassment.

The Way We Live Now--The Laundry

It was in Paris, a long time ago.  I was taking a group of students on an exploration of the city.  We were staying in what seemed to be an ancient building with residences on one side and hotel rooms opposite surrounding an air shaft that ran up the center of the four-story, square building.  I could sit on my bed, look out the window, and see into the rooms directly across the air shaft.  Because it was hot and humid that July, everyone had their windows open, curtains fluttering in the light breeze.

One afternoon, taking a break in my room, I saw a ghostly figure in the apartment across from me moving passed her open windows.  She was elderly, maybe in her 70s, and she had a thin rope stretched through her tiny kitchen and into her living room.  She was doing her laundry in the kitchen sink and after wringing out each item of its excess water, she would drape the garment over the white line.

It was to this image that I returned during our national isolation due to COVID-19.  We do not have laundry facilities and our local laundromat did not seem safe enough or sanitary, and the fluff and fold service would mean having to go into the place to drop it off.  So we, like the old woman in Paris, decided to wash it ourselves at home and then hang it to dry throughout every room in the house.  We would try to assist the drying with strategically placed fans.

The process was slow, and took a week to do a few loads, but the soft spring breeze wafting room to room had a sweetness and light to it that made us feel the change of seasons.  There is nothing like the smell of freshly washed laundry.

It is amazing how this dangerous and deadly pandemic has made us rethink the ordinary and mundane.  We are forced to be creative, to return to ways we utilized before the conveniences of modern existence.  We are forced by necessity to return to and reflect on the things we have taken for granted, the commonplace, the daily chores of our lives.

This is a haunted time, of empty streets, closed shops and restaurants, of sirens continually screaming in the distance, the soundtrack of the way we live now.  We cycle through new rituals and new routines, cut off from the world and those we love.  So we seek comfort in the little things, baking, cooking, making art, and in this case, fresh laundry drying in our rooms, scented with the perfume of spring, and floating like shrouds in the gentle air from open windows, beautiful in its simplicity.

When You Walk Through The Fire

This is the main aisle of our chapel on campus taken from the altar looking out

Last week, I had to write something to send to my students who have all vacated the campus to return to their homes and will now be attending class and completing assignments online.  Quite suddenly, I am at a loss for words.  We had so much left to discuss.  The class was not over, yet now I had to figure out a way to continue without seeing them each week.  And the question keeps haunting me:  what is important in the face of this virus?  Class assignments now seem meaningless when we are all trying to stave off illness and death.

For a long while now, writing has not been the refuge it once was for me.  I am lost at sea, floating aimlessly in the doldrums of middle age, scribbling frantically in a notebook/journal to try to figure all of this out.  I want to stay in my darkened rooms and read book after book hoping to find the inspiration to create, the wisdom to know the path forward.  I feel I have lost my anchor of “literature, culture and the life of the mind.”  The mind is too unsettled, the everyday too frightening and panicked.  The wisdom bank has been overdrawn.  Survival dominates everything, and since we are living through this new paradigm, how can I have any insight or wisdom to offer in my work that will help people and avoid sounding simply trivial and flat?  This is living with uncertainty, but I have only one tool in my arsenal to fight back:  words.  I do words for a living.  I do words as I breathe, the pneuma of my existence.

This is us and this is who we are and this is how we live now.  There is no turning back, there is no future yet.  All we have is the now.  I can only hold up a mirror to show what we could be, what the future might hold, what better days may lie ahead.  This is what I wrote to my students:

I hear from students all the time, even when we are not experiencing biblical fires, floods and plague, that they are anxious and stressed.  More and more, students express how this anxiety cripples them and keeps them from reaching their goals, from achieving their dreams.

Other generations experienced wars of a global magnitude, famine, financial collapse, natural disasters.  We are not the first generation to be challenged.  We are continually reminded throughout history that human existence is a journey through space and time, and the threats and assaults we experience along the way are the things that make us stronger and our persistence and perseverance teach those who will come after us how to be warriors of wisdom and faith.

In life, the test never ends, and danger and uncertainty are the given conditions when sailing off into the unknown each morning.  The wisdom we seek to deal with the troubles in our lives comes from our predecessors on this earth.

“If you are going through hell, keep going…” (Winston Churchill)

“Never, never, never give up.”  (Prime Minister Churchill again)

“…grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  (Reinhold Niebuhr)

In life, there is very little we can control.  Mostly, we control our actions and reactions in the face of adversity.  We cannot stop the pain from coming; we cannot avoid what is our destiny to endure.  We must live, and as Churchill says, “keep going.”

What does this mean, exactly?  Well, we control the things we can control and let what we have no control over go.  Right now, we are at home in quarantine.  The city is shut down.  All non-essential services are shuttered.  Our normal is now abnormal.  So we must focus on our classes and finishing the semester strong.  We must keep informed and listen to the news and our governor and mayor.  We must take care of our loved ones and help keep them safe.  We must find a way to live, laugh, comfort and love each other.  And as we encounter challenges, we must use our intellect and courage to meet the situation with clear thinking and perseverance.  This is what it means to be resolute, resourceful, resilient and yes, unstoppable.

We must also look at the larger picture.  It is a beautiful spring with mild days, a fresh breeze, no traffic, less pollution, and even a hint of summer to come.  This reminds us that “this, too, shall pass.”  We will survive.  We just have to seize this moment and really live in it, really embrace it.  The day-to-day grind has been altered, and people are awakening to what family and community really mean.  People are finding creative ways to spend time together and bridge distances through social media so family members living elsewhere are not alone.  Teachers and parents are taking shared responsibility for educating children.  Across the nation, people are finding inspiration to create and express themselves artistically in ways never imagined in our pre-COVID-19 lives.

We must continue to be unselfish and look out for one another.  We must maintain our social distancing but never lose our humanity.  We must, as the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, tell us, love our dear neighbor and be the light in the world, even when darkness and difficult circumstance threaten.  It is our mission to stand tall in this difficult time; this is our moment in history to make a difference.

I look forward to helping you finish the semester strong as we anticipate the changing seasons, the rebirth and resurrection of our lives, and the coming of a better day.

And so, here comes spring.