Opening Day

Winter has defeated me this year, more than any winter since that of 2003-04, when I first moved here.

That year, I was not only unprepared for things like lake effect snow and the perpetual grey that is a Central New York winter, that winter was the coldest the area had experienced since they started keeping records. It was also the second-snowiest.

This year, it just seems like it's been cold forever.

Sunday morning I woke up to bright sunshine and 17 degrees. Fahrenheit.

The Red Sox and Athletics played two regular season games in Japan last Tuesday and Wednesday, but baseball season starts today for real.

It is the day I look forward to starting in late October, after the World Series ends. That irrational thing we call "fandom" always brings me out of my shell when I get to follow the Red Sox day-to-day, but it also signals spring: renewal, green grass, trees blossoming, the chance to get outside at long last.

As Sunday progressed, the sun continued to shine, working the air above freezing. I sat, reading the last 75 pages of The Lost – a long, draining book that had become a metaphor for my winter – and listened to the last of the icicles crash from the eaves onto the roof.

Thursday, I will be at the ball park, covering Opening Day for the Chiefs, Syracuse's minor league baseball team.

They've replaced the Astroturf with grass, though I can't imagine the grass will be up by Thursday. At any rate, I'm sure the field won't be blue (nor will the photos).

It still might be too cold, mornings this week, to ride my bike to work – or even to think about throwing my bike on the back of my car. But sunshine and baseball are both signs that spring is on its way, and I'm ready for it like I haven't been in a while.

What We're Reading: The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn

I've been writing about The Lost for the past several months.

I did finally finish the book, and it turns out that once you're past the first 50 or so pages, it's an emotional drain. The whole way.

I'm glad I wove some fluffy fiction in throughout the book.

I'm also very glad I read it.

In the end, Mendelsohn finds his family. He even stands in the spot where his grandfather's brother and his daughter hid – a three-by-three basement, about eight feet deep.

For the spatially challenged among you, imagine eating, sleeping, going to the toilet, resting and everything else you could do, in your refrigerator.

With your daughter.

Or your father.

Mendelsohn is able to touch the earth where his great-uncle and his mother's cousin were shot after they were discovered.

It's a long, exhausting journey; you should take it yourself to see how he gets there.

The author spent the better part of seven years writing the book. Eight people who were instrumental to the writing died between the time Mendelsohn met them and the time the book was published. Except for one one of them – who died just before Mendelsohn was able to meet her, though he did get to speak with her on the phone.

One thing that strikes me about the book is the way Mendelsohn is able to organize the narrative for his readers. It's a long, convoluted journey. There's some fact, there's some speculation, there are a lot of contradictory stories.

Another thing that strikes me is the amount of help Mendelsohn is able to dig up. Not only from his family (between his parents' stories and his brother's photography) and his teachers (one travels with him more than once), but from total strangers – a younger man who happens to be studying the Jews of the area from which his family came carts him around Poland and Ukraine, translating, for days at a time; a man who has already taken it upon himself to track down all the survivors from the area carts him around Israel, translating.

Serendipity, kindness, coincidence: these are all part of the story, and all in a big way.

The Lost Update: How to tell the story

I have promised myself never to see the film Schindler's List again.

This is not a statement on Steven Speilberg's amazing interpretation of Thomas Keanelly's rather dry – though ultimately interesting – tome.

It is not a statement on the girl in the red sweater – the only piece of color in the film.

I saw the film twice in the theater. Once was with a group of fellow Jewish high school students. We sat, immobile, in the theater after the movie, until theater personnel told us we had to leave so they could begin letting in the crowd for the next showing.

The second time was with my Irish Catholic friend B—. We were very close in high school, I was one of the very few Jewish friends he had, and it was important to him to have me along for the experience, for some cultural reference, history, conversation.

I broke down crying at the same point in both showings: when Oskar Schindler falls against his car, crying, "If I could only have saved one more."

I've read lots of books, seen lots of movies, about the Holocaust. The only two other works I've exposed myself to multiple times are the film Life is Beautiful, which I've seen twice, and Elie Wiesel's book Night, which I've read three times (once for a class).

The point is, by now, more than 60 years after the end of World War II, hundreds upon hundreds of books have been written; dozens upon dozens of films have been made; thousands upon thousands of stories have been told.

All the stories are remarkable. The individual stories of survival, the individual remembrances. All are powerful.

So how do we tell a story about the Holocaust, and make it stand out? Have we reached a saturation point? Is it possible?

Daniel Mendelsohn does address this question, although it is not his question, in The Lost.

And there's no real answer. The answer has to be, you tell your story, and hope people find it interesting.

And so that's what Mendelsohn does.

For more posts about The Lost, click here.

What we're reading: Different perspectives on Eliot Spitzer

Since I work in media, I try to steer away from politics on the blog. A little Web search will point you to my true feelings on politics, but it's all about the appearance of neutrality, right?

Anyway, New York made some history last week, with a governor famous for bringing down things like corporations who liked screwing investors and prostitution rings got caught with his pants down and $4,300 invested in a...wait for it...prostitution ring.

OK, here's the deal. Wanna make some cash by selling a little sex? Up to you. I don't want government's stinking filthy hands on my profession, either. Want to put up some cash for a little sex? Up to you. I don't the government's stinking filthy hands on my consumer choices, either.

(Like how I hedged that?)

Anyway, here's some interesting stuff on Former Governor Eliot Spitzer you might not have read:

» Find out how Spitzer got brought down by a technique he pioneered.
» Analee Newitz says Spitzer did nothing wrong, apart from the hypocrisy.
» Matisse offers some advice for folks who want to do what Spitzer did, but without getting caught. (At least I think that's the link – the good people at the cafe at which I'm accessing the Internet have deemed that content inappropriate for their patrons.)
» Sudhir Vankatesh suggests that maybe $1,000 an hour isn't enough to spend – if Spitzer really wanted anonymity, he should have dropped closer to $7,500 an hour to work with someone who is a little more focused on consumers' anonymity.

What we're reading: Drinking Coffee Elsewhere: Stories by ZZ Packer

Sometimes I judge books by their covers.

I was checking out the new DeWitt Community Library. It's lighter and airier, a lot more space now. Wandering the aisles, I came across this book, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Drinking coffee elsewhere, I thought, it's kind of what I do.

And the cover had a photo of an old-fashioned empty booze bottle (capped) on an empty street, under a gray sky with a haze of blurred-out buildings in the back.

Have I said the word bleak lately around these parts?

I totally missed the word "Stories," and so was surprised when I opened up the book. I didn't read the jacket, didn't notice the author's photo.

I don't look like an "other." This has its advantages. Middle class white maleness is the norm in the U.S. (even if it's not the majority, or even plurality, probably). I have to go pretty far out of my way to have people look at me funny.

This also has what some might consider its disadvantages. I don't look like an "other," but being Jewish, I am definitely an "other." I was at a hockey game with a couple of friends not too long ago, a husband-and-wife couple. I'd known the husband well, and gradually got to know his wife.

Anyway, knowing that my family and I live in different places, she asked what I was doing for Easter. I tend to forget that not everyone knows I'm Jewish, so when I looked at her blankly and said, "uh, nothing?" and she looked back at me blankly, I realized we had a little disconnect there.

I explained. She was embarrassed. We're over it. I'm going over there for Easter dinner. It gets me out of the house, and it gives them an excuse not to drive four hours for a family affair. Everybody wins.

Ummm, Josh, tangent much?

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is very much about black experiences. I had to get all the way through the opening story, "Brownies," before I felt like I was welcome to read the book. As I started the book, I felt like I was intruding on something. On someone else's world. And I didn't know if they wanted me there.

I learned a lot from the book, I think. I don't care, really, whether these stories are entirely fictional, based in fact, or at all autobiographical. Packer's writing connects what we'd like to think are abstractions – race, gender, sexuality, religion – with tangible, real-world experiences. She describes her characters as, say, having the complexion of "a good scotch," rather than describing a light-skinned black woman.

Have I gained any actual knowledge, any true insight, into the experience of someone who looks like an "other"? I don't know. It's something I've been conscious of for several years, but I still don't really know how people think I see them. Have I been given some new insights into perspective? I hope so.

This book, by the way, is the first in a very long time that's made me want to read anything about the author. Here's an in-depth interview she did with indentitytheory.com after the release of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.

What we're reading: You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore

Let's back up minute. From where? Well, here. I guess if I'm going to write a brief review of a sequel, I need to mention the original.

In Bloodsucking Fiends, we meet C Thomas Flood, a recent high school grad from Indiana who drives to San Francisco for romance and a writing career. His car burns to the ground the second he parks it in San Fran, and he winds up finding work as a night manager in a grocery store.

We also meet Jody, a 24-year-old professional hanger-on. She jumps from relationship to relationship for co-habitation purposes. Except this time, we meet Jody under a Dumpster, where an 800-year-old vampire has left her after he turned her into a, well, bloodsucking fiend, entirely against her will.

Short version: Jody and Tommy hook up, Tommy and his night crew find the old vampire and destroy his boat, and Tommy has both the old vampire and Jody bronzed while he thinks about what to do with them.

Thing is, he drills holes in bronzed Jody's ears so that she can hear him, and one night, while he's asleep, she turns to mist and seeps out of one of the holes.

And so we open You Suck with Jody having just turned Tommy into a vampire, quite against his will. "You killed me. You suck!" Tommy yells.

Moore's got himself a series of repeated characters – Rivera and Cavuto, detectives; the Emperor of San Francisco with his intrepid pooches; and he brings back Charlie Asher, Abby Normal and Lily from A Dirty Job.

Wait, let's back up again. You Suck wasn't an intended sequel. People liked Bloodsucking Fiends so much that they asked him for the sequel.

Now that's an author who's in touch with his fans.

The genius of You Suck isn't in Moore's storytelling – I've already expressed my love for his cheesy B-grade horror-romance fiction. The genius is in his writing of the Abby Normal character.

Abby is a 16-year-old caffeine-addicted anorexic goth chick who is in love with the idea of vampires. And Moore writes her narrative as a diary. And he nails the high-school-fantasy-romance-love-of-the-dark thing. Down to the flannel and the Chucks.

Also, this book includes a blue hooker, people who spend $600,000 on her (Eliot Spitzer, you got nothin'), a micturated-upon running suit, and a geeky Asian dude who builds floodlights into overcoats.

What more could you ask for?

That's what the Internet's for: slandering others anonymously

Thanks, Kevin Smith, for reminding us of that. Tim Couch, thanks for trying to make the Internet useless.

Wow

Life goes on, but, well, wow. I guess that's why I'm a news junky.

If you build it, they will come

Sorry about that. Someone had to, so it might as well have been me, right?

They built a new Wal*Mart north of here and at the opening this weekend, they arrested some guy for masturbating in his truck in the store's lot.

The man also had some pot and some hydrocodone pills – although he could have gotten the same effect by drinking the tap water, it turns out.

In other new Wal*Mart news, a woman was arrested for stealing $1,000 worth of merchandise. Police charged her with trespassing, because she had previously been ordered never to enter another Wal*Mart store.

Sometimes I laugh at the wrong times

Wait. Is Scott Adams living in my chimney?

Find anything floating ashore lately?

Like three right feet wearing size 12 running shoes?

Nope, me neither.

Living it out, The Lost and interviewing

I mentioned in my brief review of The Wanting Seed this week that it's a bleak book.

I live in Central New York, which is about the bleakest of places – not for the economic troubles, which I realize a lot of mid-sized cities are stuck with, but for the weather. We have positively lovely summers. Two months of sunshine spattered with a couple of thunderstorms.

The thing is, this area gets something on the order of 66 days of sunshine a year. And if two months of them come during the summer, well, that leaves six days of sunshine, give or take, during the other 10 months of the year.

We're in one of those stretches now, when everything is the same color. The dirty snow sits gray on the side of the road. The formerly black road pavement is rendered gray by salt. The sky is rendered gray by clouds. And the air is rendered gray by snow blowing around but never really hitting the ground.

Bleak.

It's why the thinking gets serious this time of year.

Because I don't have my copy of The Wanting Seed handy, I'm going to paraphrase from the book. The scene is two soldiers who are to head off to battle in the morning to fight an unknown enemy. "Life," says one to the other, "is about postponing death until you get to die in the manner and at the time of your choosing."

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I've been reading The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn a little at a time, because for me, it's a very heavy book. Very heavy. I've been sprinkling in light fiction, and reading it much more quickly. Here are some previous posts about the book.

The people Mendelsohn is searching for, well, they tried to postpone death, but it didn't work. Sometime between 1942 and 1944, they were dead, and no one's exactly sure what happened – if they were there, as survivors note, they would have been dead, too.

People who don't interview others routinely think that the hardest part is coming up with questions. Depending on the interview, what's difficult varies, but unless you're talking to someone with a 15-word vocabulary, coming up with questions is pretty much never an issue.

The hardest parts of interviewing tend to be (a) getting your subject to stick to the topic you're interested in, and (b) getting your subject to trust you.

Story Corps works well – now that we have easy-to-use technology – because the interviewer and subject tend to know each other well and have an idea of what they want to talk about. In fact, they've probably practiced.

Actually, (a) tends to be most difficult when the subject has some sort of agenda – if it's a political candidate, say.

But if you walk into a stranger's house, or shake a stranger's hand across a café table, and you know you have a limited amount of time with this person, you go in expecting to have a very intense conversation about something very personal, write something you hope does the story justice, and nine times out of 10, you'll never talk to the subject again.

Mendelsohn isn't doing exactly that. He follows up with his subjects, keeps in touch with them. But here he is, sitting in a living room in Israel, listening (through a translator) to a woman talk about someone she knew 70 years ago. Listening to this woman talk about the moment she told her friend – Mendelsohn's long lost cousin he was born 30 years to late to have ever known – you better kiss me goodbye now, because God knows when we'll see each other again.

Because this woman whose living room he has invaded, this woman never told her good friend that she was going into hiding and where, because the fewer people who knew about your plans, the better chance you had of surviving, of postponing death.

Everybody has secrets, and I'm sure everybody has secrets they keep from them closest to them. But secrets that you keep because maybe those closest to you will die but you won't? If we're ever in that situation, friend, kiss me goodbye, don't tell me where you're going, and I won't tell you where I'm going.