Last week, in my first visit since that time, the contrast was stark. There were perhaps 10 adult gators, a few more younger ones, and dried up streams and inlets everywhere. I can only assume this is a product of the area’s recent dry summer.

Still, the area remained beautiful. Here are about 20 photos from the visit we made—again with Ruthie and her family.

A few images of the dry landscape.

Despite the brownness, there were plenty of birds hanging around, including a hawk of some species.

And those few remaining visible gators…

Not all of these books are new—only half were released in 2011—but I read each in the past 12 months and each one had a lasting effect on me. They’re listed chronologically, as it would be difficult for me to pick any one as more important than another.

I pursued this after seeing “The Social Network” last fall and then reading that much of Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay was based on Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires,” much of which wasn’t entirely accurate. This more strictly journalistic account was just as entertaining and more believable than some of the film’s premises.	I first tried reading this book, my first entry into David Halberstam’s non-sportswriting world, back in late 2008. I didn’t make it far, for I don’t think my appreciation of the broadcasting and publishing industries was yet as nuanced as it needed to be to fully appreciate it. In January, then, I began it again and found it truly unputdownable.	Somehow, I’d read much of Feinstein’s work before delving into his first book. But during a February blizzard, I picked up a tattered copy from the Erie County Library. It so pulled me in that I sometimes read it as I walked up a frigid Myrtle Street on the way to taking basketball scores by phone during nights at the Erie Times-News.
In increasing my perspective on what a great form journalism can take, outside of the daily crime reports and sports box scores, I credit this book as being the most important I read this year. And for that, I credit Merciad advisor Bill Welch, who left me his paperback copy of the book in the newsroom one afternoon. Reading it also gave me the desire to explore Simon’s extremely detailed fictional world of “The Wire.”	I read just about every important book on the War on Terror this year after the bin Laden raid, feeling that I, too, had become not quite as informed as all Americans should be in this modern, completely connected age. This was the last one I read, and it was a perfect capper on the selections I made. Then, when Peter Bergen made a visit to UF in October, this book solidified an even more prominent place.	While I also read Miller and Shales’ book about Saturday Night Live this summer and found that one to be more original, this was important to help understand a course I took this fall called “Sports Media and Society.” (Indeed, it was the course’s only assigned textbook). I learned much about ESPN, its beginnings and its scandals, but it didn’t really change my negative views of the station.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from Peter Bergen’s serious work about Afghanistan and Pakistan sits Kim Barker’s first book. A former correspondent for the Chicago Tribune who now works for ProPublica, she provided a humorous, sometimes flippant, account of her time covering the War on Terror in this region of the world. I loved her writing style and thought she took the perfect approach to an account of how absurd this war has sometimes been carried out.	Pearlman visited that Sports Media class via Skype early in September, and since then I’ve been a big fan of his work. When this came out later in the fall, I was the first to put a hold on it at the library. When that took too long, I bought the audio version from Audible and ripped through it in about two days. It was that good. And I never cared about Walter Payton before reading it. He’s that good of a writer.	The book that was seemingly on everyone’s Christmas list. And for good reason. Jobs was one of the defining figures of our time, Isaacson is one of the most talented living biographers. A great match. Even though I was largely familiar with the Apple/Jobs narrative, this clued me in on many things about his life that I was fuzzy on. Worth the hype.
	While it was one of the last books I got to in 2011, Wilkerson’s account of the Great Migration was also one of the most important. It defines thoroughness. The writing is lively, the research is unending and the narrative is what one would expect from a Pulitzer winner. I hope to visit Boston University during spring break to conduct research on a project I’m working on, and hope to get this copy signed by her, since she heads the university’s narrative nonfiction program there.

It’s a critique of the inanity of a 21st century pro sports broadcast. While ROOT Sports of Pittsburgh is far from the worst practitioner of this sort of in-game nonsense, I watch its programming for the Penguins and Pirates games more than any other station. I cannot duplicate the actual video clip here, but you’ve probably seen something like it if you’ve ever watched a pro game on TV.

We’ve all seen this sort of nonsense before. When we do, we hope we never see it again.

It’s the kind of display that only the ever-desperate-for-more television lens could possibly care about. The kind of claptrap that makes the halfway intelligent viewer sit back and wonder “Who really gives a shit?!”

The scene I’m talking about went down on Thanksgiving Eve when the Pittsburgh Penguins hosted the St. Louis Blues in a perfectly entertaining Wednesday night National Hockey League game. Even without any sort of telecast frills, this is the type of contest that keeps hockey purists locked in for the full 60 minutes of play (sometimes more if it goes to a shootout).

I’ve watched, for the past two hours, as my Penguins have played the Blues to a perfectly enjoyable one-all tie. The game is returning from a television timeout (what a horribly wondrous late-20th century capitalist creation that was) with about 13 minutes left in the hockey game, which is being broadcast on ROOT Sports Pittsburgh. What the hell kind of name for a television network is that, anyway? The cringeworthy moniker became even more absurd with a recent spate of corporate summer promotions with the tagline, “You’ve always had a place to watch, now you have a place to ROOT!”

Gee, thanks, Mr. Suit in Seattle.

Back to the action? Yes, I think so.

But wait just a minute. What do we have here? In comes the voice of one Mr. Dan Potash, loyal sideline correspondent, in effect telling us that, OH YES! This is a big night for one special fan!

He’s standing under a concourse awning in the middle of the CONSOL Energy Center (all hail western Pennsylvania coal and gas drilling!) with a fan from nearby Charleroi, Pa., a town about 50 minutes down the Monongahela River.

What has this gent, a Mr. Tom Mimidis, done to warrant the 67 seconds of fame he’s about to have lavished upon him? Nothing at all, really. Nothing more than any other fan in attendance did tonight. That is, he simply showed up.

Mr. Potash (whose name sounds something like a Thanksgiving dish—“Hey, ma, wudja pass the danpotash there, please? I want it here on my plate next to the stuffing.”) asks Mr. Mimidis, Greek god of attendance, to recount in dramatic form how his night at the hockey game began.

Potash, who wears thin-framed glasses and an excellent suit, buddies up like any worthy sideline reporter to Mimidis, a man he’s surely never met before in his life.

“You entered the building with seats in section 216,” Potash says. “But what happened as you came through the turnstile?”

Yes, tell us, oh blue-sweatered one!

“They told me I was the 25 millionth customer—er, fan—to uh, come into the, to see a game,” he says, hands in his pockets and Pitt Panthers hat on his head.

Potash responds with the first in a line of questions that aren’t really questions.

“So, you never thought that was coming, huh?”

“I wasn’t ready for that,” Mimidis guffaws, with his son and buddy (who we never actually hear from) smiling alongside and loving the whole bizarre exchange.

What follows is a concise, vivid, three-second history of the team, from its origins in 1967 all the way to Mimidis showing up tonight. Then Potash confirms something on air that he had obviously talked over during the commercial break with his subject. Mimidis rarely actually buys tickets for the game.

“You don’t buy tickets very often, though, right?”

“Nah. Wish I could, but I don’t. No.”

Potash surely hoped for something or someone more—say, a season ticket holder or one of those lifelong fans who travels thousands of miles each year to see his beloved ‘Guins on home ice—but this is the hand that the turnstiles, ticket sellers and his producer have dealt him.

They tell us Mimidis’ last game was the Winter Classic, held outdoors in January at the Steelers’ Heinz Field football stadium. Not really all that long ago, but still Potash is getting pumped up over the possibility of Mimidis’ newfound fame spurring him into buying more tickets.

“So now that you’re the big number 25,” Potash says, his head about to nod at least five quick times with each word, “maybe (nod) you’ll (nod) come (nod) to (nod) a few more games (nod)?”

The nods, we assume, are a sign of Potash’s desperation to somehow salvage this stillborn interview borne out of the incestuous relationship between professional sports franchises’ affiliation with their TV rights holders.

“Yeah, yeah I will,” Mimidis says with a polite smile and laugh, but we’re not really supposed to believe him. From an Internet search, I learn he’s the owner of a small business in nearby Belle Vernon, Pa., that makes garage door awnings.

See, here’s the problem with what modern big-time college and pro sports have become. People like Mimidis, a solid, working class family individual who’s been a fan since 1984, can hardly afford to attend, with any sort of frequency, pro hockey games in a city like Pittsburgh, where tickets run from $60 to $215.

Back upstairs we go, as Potash addresses that night’s commentators in the booth. They don’t have much more to add after that riveting exchange.

“Big 25, guys, wow!” Potash grunts. “Back up to you.”

They wish congratulations to Mr. Mimidis, who I imagine at this point just wants to get back to his seat and his cold brew, and note that he’ll be getting a free trip to see the Penguins play on the road later this season.

Later, WTAE, Pittsburgh’s ABC affiliate, recounted the whole elucidating event for viewers on the nightly news, adding that Mimidis also won an autographed Sidney Crosby jersey and an upgrade to box seats that night.

The pointless nature of this story becomes ever clearer when I look at the Penguins’ average attendance over the past few years. Except for years when the team was terrible, since the late 1980s, between 600,000 and 700,000 fans generally show up each season.

Guess we will indeed be put through this gotta-fill-time television ringer all over again in another 18 months or so when the total inevitably hits the big 26.

Books

 Dispatches by Michael Herr, 1977: My classmate Matt Cretul decided to present this book in our Seminar in Journalism as Literature course, and I was intrigued enough to take it in myself a few days later. This is one of the first seminal works on the utter nonsense Americans engaged in during Vietnam, and Herr established a strong precedent and mark for other narrative works to follow on in war reporting. I have been a fan of “Apocalypse Now” and “Full Metal Jacket” since high school, so it was interesting seeing exactly where he took much of his inspiration from. The first morning I listened to this book, I rode my bicycle to campus through one of Gainesville’s worst downpours of the fall thus far. It felt like I was right back there in the rainy jungles with the troops Herr profiled, minus, of course, the bullets and napalm. I’d argue, though, that with the terrible drivers and their overall lack of respect for bicyclists, pedaling the roads here can often be as dangerous as ‘Nam (5 of 5 stars).

 Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, 2005: I absolutely love Showtime’s series and thus envisioned being just as keen on  the books. I have, however, been slightly disappointed by Lindsay’s print series; this is a very rare occurrence in the based-on-the-book realm. To the extent that I liked the Dexter animated YouTube series for its portrayal of the character’s genesis, I similarly enjoy these books. That is, they’re not inherently entertaining for their writing, but more so for their additional lines of entry into the serial killer’s world. I do find, however, that I become rather annoyed with Lindsay’s overwritten plot and first-person perspective. Dexter’s sister, Deborah, is even more annoying in print than she is on the screen. Still, now that I live down here, his descriptions of everything Florida (albeit southern instead of central Florida), from the heat to the light to the smells of suburbia, are spot on and worth the read. I’m trying to work my way through the rest of them that he’s written thus far so as to catch up with last month’s release. (3 of 5 stars)

 Nigger by Randall Kennedy, 2002: After listening to the New York Times’ Book Review podcast two months back and hearing Kennedy talk about his interesting thesis on the current state of race and politics in America, I sought out “The Persistence of The Color Line a few weeks ago at UF’s Library West. As I began to flip through, I noticed the list of Kennedy’s other works, and this title, understandably, caught my eye. “The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word” likewise proved a perfect subtitle. I went downstairs and picked this one up, too, and found it to be a concise but thoroughly academic look at the origins, pervasiveness and present reality of this terrible word. His thoughts on why “nigger”, as with any other word, is not inherently bad in and of itself were intriguing. While this book is now nearly 10 years old, I recommend it for its scope, continued prescience, and balanced view of the term and its history. Plus, at 200 double-spaced pages, it’s a very quick read. (As an aside, I only ended up having time to skim “The Persistence of the Color Line,” and it is therefore not included here). (4 of 5 stars)

 $20 Per Gallon by Christopher Steiner, 2009: The final assignment for Documentary and Social Change this semester requires us to pursue, at great depth, one topic relating to, of course, documentary films and social change. After some thought, I chose to examine a slew of recent films examining the impending oil shortage and overall global energy crisis, among them “Fuel,” “Escape from Suburbia,” “Collapse” and “The Power of Community.” In addition to the films, I picked up a few books that explore the situation with much greater depth than 90-minute films can. This is one of them. I sometimes get a little depressed exploring this topic, particularly when there seems to be so much resentment and public opposition to changes the environmental movement proposes. So much ignorance, really. Only with the rising popularity of the “go green” campaigns has this begun to change, but Steiner has crafted a far better argument for why our current deep-seated energy habits will soon have to change. Simply, gas prices will someday soon go up. And up. And up. And at that point, a whirlwind of economic paradigm shifts are likely to occur. My favorite chapter, having ridden one of Amtrak’s cross country trains last year, is about how train infrastructure and ridership will likely very soon improve dramatically. (4 of 5 stars)

 Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, 2010: This book was all the rage last year, especially after Obama gave it his nod. Not wanting to jump into it without familiarizing myself with Franzen’s other work first, I held off for quite some time. I read “The Corrections” last winter and really found it to be quite a snore. I couldn’t connect with its characters and was overall pretty disappointed. That made me apprehensive to approach such a highly-praised book like this one, but I had completely opposite feelings to Franzen’s work this time around once I got into the first few chapters. All the characters felt much more realistic, and I loved Franzen’s not-so-subtle running commentary throughout about life in America under the Bush administration. That’s really what the whole book was about, this disgraceful period of the past decade, and I found it a soundly reflective work. (4 of 5 stars)

 Telling True Stories edited by Mark Kramer & Wendy Call, 2007: In trying to put the finishing touches on my 3,000-word story on the person behind the genesis of UF women’s basketball program (to be posted here in a few days), I quickly ran through this one. I most enjoyed the contributions by some of my favorite writers—David Halberstam, Malcolm Gladwell and Isabel Wilkerson—but there were invaluable tips on every page from a wide variety of writers about how to craft better narratives. Also of particular interest was Tom Wolfe’s concise summation of how New Journalism came into being and how writers today have adopted its successful techniques. The link to that can be found here. (5 of 5 stars)

 Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, 2011: Following his death and the corresponding media saturation coverage in October, this one was on many reading lists. With the holidays coming on, I suspect it remains there for those who haven’t read it and are interested in Jobs’ life. I whipped through it in just a few days, and Isaacson, as he is known to do with exceptional skill, took me on a complete journey through Jobs’ life. I have utterly mixed feelings about the lasting effects Jobs will have on all our lives; I write these words from my MacBook Pro while listening to music through my ubiquitous white iPhone-connected headphones but believe he will ultimately contribute most to the human race’s perpetually shortened attention span. But there is no denying he was an amazing, if acerbic, visionary. In tapping Isaacson to write his story, he certainly made yet another great user (reader) experience choice. (5 of 5 stars)

 Best American Sports Writing 1991 & 1992: These are two separate books, but I combine them here because there’s not really enough to say about them individually. I stumbled into this annual series about three years ago and read through a large portion of the 2001 edition on a single flight from Pennsylvania to Florida. I was hooked. I have since tried to collect most all of the annual entries (they can usually be had for $2 to $6 each from Amazon’s authorized resellers). I plan to read at least one or two a month for the next year or so until I’m all caught up. Such great writing on every page. I have found the topics, though, to be sometimes a bit too far flung or obscure. I generally, though not always, gravitate toward the more popular figures and subjects being written about. That’s not to say I wouldn’t ever read a 4,000-word story on fishing, but it has to be some of the best prose ever created. Close-minded, I know, but there’s just so much out there that’s more worth the time. (4 of 5 stars)

 Sweetness by Jeff Pearlman, 2011: I don’t know about most of you, but when I meet and get to personally speak with an author, that person’s work will immediately vault toward the top of my reading list. Such is the case with Mr. Pearlman, who visited one of my classes in early September via Skype to discuss the John Rocker/Sports Illustrated fiasco and his career at large. I’d already read his book on the Cowboys and thus knew and loved his style. On the way home from class that day, I stopped at the library and took out his books on Barry Bonds and the 1986 Mets. Those reviews are covered in a previous post. As for this one, I’ll admit that I really didn’t care much about Walter Payton, nor his life. Still, Pearlman worked so diligently in researching and writing this book during the past few years that I was inevitably drawn to it. It didn’t disappoint. For anyone who ever watched Payton play or for anyone who never did and simply wants a great sports read, I highly recommend this one. (5 of 5 stars)

 The Thinking Life by P.M. Forni, 2011: This book, very small in size, is similar to one I read a few months ago, “Blackberry’s Hamlet” by William Powers. They both offered many tips and guidelines for discovering ways to disconnect from electronics and return more time to both introspection and interpersonal communication in the 21st century life. Being extremely connected for many hours of my day, I very much enjoyed both of these books. Forni, too, returned to a select group of classic philosophers who advocated the need for deep personal thinking and relaxation as the way to mental success. In the age of Twitter, I wholeheartedly agree. If we’re not conscious of the electronic demands on time, the hours tend to slip away. That leaves little time for reading or connecting with friends and family. I can’t recommend enough an examination of either Forni or Powers’ books. (4 of 5 stars)

 11/22/63 by Stephen King, 2011: This first showed up on my radar back in August while browsing Stephen King’s Wikipedia bibliography. It’s obviously not your typical book title, and since I’m planning to someday have read all of his work anyway, it caught eye and went onto my reading list. I got it the day it came out a few weeks ago and immediately dove in. I found it to be an extremely polarizing book and one that King really didn’t need to write to enhance his legacy. In fact, for those of us who believe there just might be more to JFK’s death than Oswald’s alleged lone act, it reeked of a fingers-in-the-ears syndrome that many historians are afflicted with. King has stated that he read through many materials relating to the subject (supposedly from both sides) but finally settled on the theory of the lone gunman. He proceeded, then, for far too many pages to hatch an intriguing and engaging but ill-conceived narrative about how one man could stop the assassination and change history. Particularly strange was his epilogue-of-sorts on what the world would look like had JFK not been killed (and why it would be an even more depressing planet to live on). Still, read it if you’re a King connoisseur, an Oswald myth purveyor or someone who consumes all things related to time travel. (4 of 5 stars)

 An Accidental Sportswriter by Robert Lipsyte, 2011: Wherever I’ve lived, one of my first stops on every visit to the public library has been to its new books section. Over the years, I’ve been able to find some of the most worthwhile reads there. This was one of those books. I had heard Lipsyte’s name a few times before, but was unfortunately not familiar with his body of work, having only recently taken an interest in the New York Times and its sports page. While some of the pages were self-indulgent (like any memoir, really), I enjoyed Lipsyte’s reflections on his career, sports figures of the past five or six decades and American society in general. Of specific interest to me were his early chapters about his beginnings at the Times, including initial interactions with David Halberstam and Gay Talese. (4 of 5 stars)

 Out Of This Furnace by Thomas Bell, 1941: I first tried to read this novel during high school and had found it unapproachable, more out of my underdeveloped intellect than for any detracting qualities the book has. Now, having recently begun my own Slovak family history project, I found it to be an extremely interesting read due to its storyline that takes place in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the ethnic steel mill towns surrounding Pittsburgh. My grandfather immigrated to one such town in the mid-1920s, so his family’s narrative comes some time after Bell’s, but it all connects—certainly the descriptions of working class men trying to support their families all the while trying to survive under the thumb of the city’s steel magnates. (4 of 5 stars)

 Robert Redford by Michael Callan, 2011: It seems that my introduction to some of Robert Redford’s most well known films have all been well-timed. When I first developed a love for the game of baseball at age five or six, my parents rented “The Natural.” Upon learning of my growing interest in writing, newspapers and journalism, my dad recommended I get “All the President’s Men” from Netflix, a film that is claimed to have helped launch a thousand journalism careers in the 1970s. I have since seen eight other films he’s either acted in or directed, and in reading this book, I realize that is only a tiny sample of what this prolific and influential American icon has produced. I may get to more at some point, but for now this was a five-star introduction and thorough discourse on his life and career. (5 of 5 stars)

 Stories & essays

In the newfound tradition of sites like longform.org and longreads.com, I’m adding a new section at the bottom here each month to collect several of my favorite long (and/or thoughful) essays and stories from newspapers, magazines and journals.

“Zell to L.A. Times: Drop Dead” by James O’Shea from the Los Angeles Review of Books (Nov. 9)

“The Fracturing of Pennsylvania” by Eliza Griswold from The New York Times Magazine (Nov. 17)

“When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?” by David Frum from New York Magazine (Nov. 20)

“Scandal. Shame. A search for answers at Penn State.” by L. Jon Wertheim and David Epstein from Sports Illustrated (Nov. 21)

“When Does a Writer Become a Writer?” by Betsy Morais from The Atlantic (Nov. 25)

These are related (on one of my favorite topics): “Wired for Sound” by John Schwartz and “The Mind’s Ear” by James Parker from The New York Times Book Review (Nov. 25)

Notes: (1) Most of these receive quite a few stars. The reason is if I don’t like a book, I won’t keep reading. It won’t appear on this list. Thus, I consider these to mostly be winners. (2) I consumed many of these as audio books. I commute to campus by bicycle 20 miles each day, and thus have many hours at my disposal for audio listening. And I’ll often enjoy having a book read to me more than actually reading it if the narration is well done.

 Here Comes Trouble by Michael Moore, 2011

 October ’64 by David Halberstam, 1995

Confidence Men by Ron Suskind, 2011

Meat Market by Bruce Feldman, 2007

 Hamlet’s Blackberry by William Powers, 2010

Mentor by Tom Grimes, 2010

The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone, 2011

The Rogue by Joe McGinniss, 2011

Cujo by Stephen King, 1981

Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam, 1981

Panic by Michael Lewis, 2008

The Amateurs by David Halberstam, 2006

Everything They Had by David Halberstam, 2008

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, 2004

Little Bunch of Madmen by Mort Rosenblum, 2010

The Big Short by Michael Lewis, 2010

Christine by Stephen King, 1983

What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer, 1993

Earth by Jon Stewart, 2010

Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King, 1983

On Writing by Stephen King, 2000

Through My Eyes by Tim Tebow, 2011

Write a brief piece that recreates an event (see the Whitman piece). Use sources archival or people. Interview some family member(s) or friend(s) about an event – hopefully without too much of a snore factor. In other words, something interesting.

From time spent collecting an oral history with my grandparents this summer, I had the material I needed: my grandfather’s passage from Slovakia to Ellis Island with his family.

Special thanks here to my dad for answering some of my Sunday-night deadline questions and to my professor, Dr. Rodgers, as well as classmates who critiqued and helped me refine this piece.

————————

Steve Magoc is going to need a new hat.

It’s a frigid afternoon in the middle of December 1925 and he and his older brother, Tom, are standing on the deck of a steamship crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Tom, who is not quite seven years of age, is pondering the buoyancy of various objects if they were to land in the icy water below. He looks at Steve, whose four-year-old frame is dwarfed by the size of the ship they’re aboard; it’s a vessel operated by the White Star Line, the same shipping company under whose mantle the Titanic had sunk 13 years before while crossing these same waters. Steve’s predicament isn’t a disaster of that scale this afternoon, but his head, topped with a tuft of blond hair, is quickly getting cold. Tom had just decided to snatch Steve’s flat cap from his head and wing it into the sea’s waves where it flops on the frigid surface.

This is not good. Steve, who will live into his nineties but never learn to swim, is not about to climb over the steel rail and fetch it. They’re on board a ship carrying more than 2,000 other European immigrants from Antwerp, Belgium, to Ellis Island in New York City. Suffice to say the voyager’s captain is not stopping for a young boy’s hat, even if it had been keeping his head warm through this cold, blustery passage. Leaving in December might not have been the best decision, comfort-wise, but it’s the way things worked out.

Anthony Magoc, Steve and Tom’s father, left them with their mother in the small town of Trnove (pronounced tur-nih-vah) in eastern Czechoslovakia two years earlier to make his own way to America. He worked for a time in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, before heading west across the state to a town outside Pittsburgh. But these are places Steve has heard little about so far. Indeed, he doesn’t much remember his father; he wasn’t more than 3 when Anthony left Europe. All he knows is that about a month ago, he, Tom, and his mother, Margaret, left most everything they had in Trnove and boarded a train for Antwerp—an 825-mile ride through Germany and most of Belgium. They arrived in the port city and Margaret used most of their remaining money to purchase three fares to America. Their father had sent the funds, which he steadily earned through two years of work at an iron casting foundry making 40 cents an hour. The job was hot, so hot, left the skin caked black at day’s end, had killed the man who preceded Anthony just a few weeks before he arrived in Pittsburgh.

But as for that hat. Steve runs to his mother and tells her what happened. It can’t be the 28-year-old woman’s biggest concern right now, with all the worries and seasickness of traveling to the New Country keeping her preoccupied, but she sees the injustice Tom’s curiosity has caused her youngest son. She finds Tom, scolds him and makes him give his own hat to Steve. She buys Tom a brand new one, and Steve is left with the hand-me-down. Still, Steve’s head is covered for the rest of the trip across the Atlantic.

***

The weeks pass, and as they near New York City, Steve and Tom head above deck to gaze out past the harbor. There are big, gray buildings everywhere, plus a massive green lady with her right arm thrust in the air. Gone are the steep, tree-lined hillsides near their Old Country home. Their ship docks at Ellis Island, and they join the swarm of immigrants converging at America’s gates.

Whether it was the new, ill-fitting cap or the overall winter passage, something has given Steve a cold. At Ellis Island, they begin to pass through customs and physical inspections. Tom and Margaret make it through, but Steve’s cough gives the doctor pause. Many immigrants, Margaret has heard, get sent back to the Old Country if they’re not healthy. Could this be the case for Steve? She begins to worry. A case of double pneumonia, the doctor tells her. They won’t send him back, as pneumonia isn’t on the list of contagious diseases America doesn’t want coming over, but Steve will need to rest and recover in the hospital for a while. He settles into an Ellis Island quarantine facility. His room features a bed near a window through which he can again watch the New York-New Jersey harbor. He passes most of his two weeks in that room looking out the window, seeing tugboats, ferries and steamships cross the harbor.

A few days into his stay, a nurse brings Steve a small, circular object he can hold in his hands. He’s never seen anything like this before; it’s brightly-colored, has a bitter smell and is sort of soft. It’s even softer after Steve throws it on the floor—thunk—and starts playing with it, rolling it back and forth around the room. The nurse returns the following day, realizing the now-lumpy object hasn’t been eaten because Steve doesn’t realize it’s food. She brings him a new one and shows him how to peel and eat the citrus fruit. The orange is likely one of the things that helps cure Steve’s infected lungs within two weeks. He is officially admitted through Ellis Island, and he, Tom and Margaret reconvene to head farther west into the New Country.

Steve will soon settle into West Tarentum, just up the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh, live there for 15 years with his family, serve in the Pacific during World War II, come home and marry a Slovak woman from across town, father five boys, work 35 years in a steel mill, become a grandfather to eight, and retire comfortably to his garden, his jig-saw puzzles and his cellar.

But at that moment, leaving Ellis Island in early 1926, Steve is glad to have a hat and his health.

A family portrait from America in the late 1920s. My grandfather is on the right.

Observe a scene and write a slice-of-life sketch in exactly – or as much as possible – the style of Stephen Crane’s sublime sketch titled When Man Falls, A Crowd Gathers. Three to four pages double-spaced.

Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for the subject of the story below, a few weeks ago I witnessed a moment similar to the one Crane did more than a century ago. My effort is below.

Author’s note: You’ll have to pardon the now dated Steve Jobs reference—I wrote this more than three weeks before his passing.

The sun began to creep high on this hot and perpetually muggy Florida morning. The pavement, dry now after the cool evening rain from the night before, likewise rose in temperature as the sun arced in the sky.

Along this fine, slender stretch of pavement on the east side of the University of Florida campus a line had been painted by some nameless maintenance crew many years before. It demarcated the separation between those coming and going, those headed north and south, those nearing the heart of campus and those leaving toward University Avenue. A simple line, really. A handy touch of alternative transportation infrastructure.

The line, painted to split a road with the width of just a single car lane perhaps eight feet in sum, was put there with an elementary purpose. You’re headed this way? Stay on this side. And you’re headed that way? Stay on that side.

All very simple.

The lane was meant for students traveling via unmotorized wheel, whether eight (roller blades), four (skateboards) or two (bicycles). That neither car nor moped could fit through the concrete barriers set up at either end of the 100-yard stretch of—mostly—smooth pavement was a source of ease-putting for students in a hurry.

On this fine September morning, just shy of 10 a.m. when things really heat up in Gainesville, the lane was the apparent cause of too much carefree truculence by one quick pushing skateboarder, who swung his weight to weave around obstacles in his path. Thin white strands of music-carrying rubber ran from his cargo shorts pocket up under his orange polo and into his ears.

Probably an iPhone. They’re ubiquitous these days on campus, no doubt to the joy of a wire-rimmed glasses wearing genius who was recently semi-retired in Silicon Valley. But this young man was no Steve Jobs. At least, he did not outwardly possess a shred of the logic that had carried the Apple exec to the top over the past four decades.

No, to be brutally honest, this chap really looked kind of, well, stupid, though this harsh perception may have initially been more generous. Maybe. Hard to say. It was permanently clouded and sullied, however, by the events that followed.

As he weaved, demonstrating balance that those who don’t ride skateboards on a daily basis really don’t understand and shouldn’t try at home, he seemed not to care that he wasn’t the only one using the eight-foot lane this morning. If he cared, he probably did so only enough to perform quick calculations about the distance and approximate speed between himself and the pedestrians both darting and strolling, unfortunately, obliviously across the yard-plus length of pavement. Will I hit her? Nah, he thought. But maybe him. Yeah, better slow down just a step.

Suddenly, his carefree movements caught up with him. A bicyclist, a species not given themselves to entirely logical redirections on campus roads, decided to dart out into the bike lane about 15 yards in front of this wheeling gentleman, crossing through the skater’s lane to head north as he continued south. You’re going this way? Fine, she must have thought. I’m going that way. And I’m going there right now.

A fateful initial miscue, it was one that would set off a chain of events which the skateboarder quickly lost control over. Seeing the assuming cyclist make her move, he quickly took his right foot off the board and tried to create some braking friction while simultaneously leaning to his right, away from the left and oncoming lane where she now intended to cross. He tilted and slowed enough in time to get out of her way, but still kept going at a good pace. She rode on her way, never knowing what happened in the next three seconds.

The pace proved still too swift when he next needed to swerve away from one of those not-so-smooth bulges of pavement as his eye caught on a young woman also planning to cross the lane. Whatever the precise cause, a slip of the foot, a lock in the wheels, a furtive, one-second-too-long appraising glance her way, the boarder went down.

Hard.

Remember those absurd early 2000s episodes of “Jackass” when foolish white males did even more foolish things for MTV ratings and corporate endorsements? Eminently forgettable, so you’re excused if you don’t recall them. But this man’s tumble could have come straight out of such a series episode. Helmet-less and rather unprepared for any sort of shoulder-to-knee-to-pavement somersault contact, it was the kind of fall that police and frequent campus pedestrians, alike, frankly can’t believe doesn’t go down more often.

He sprawled on the pavement, his board clattering a few feet away down the lane until its nose came to rest against a lateral concrete barrier. People nearby on their lunch breaks heard the racket and looked up for its source. Briefly ensuring he was, visually speaking, all right, they casually turned back to their sandwiches.

But back in the lane, where the man was somehow now all alone—not another set of wheels on the entire 100-yard stretch—he gave himself a quick once over. His shoulder and shirt might have been scuffed, but his shorts weren’t ripped. Praise that Florida heat, else his pants surely would have been torn on a cooler day. Finally, and surely most importantly, his iPhone was still ensconced securely in his pocket, though a single earbud had come loose in the fray. It dangled down over his shoulder as he sat, knees pointed up but feet on the ground, and looked around, assuring quick passers by that he was, indeed, quite all right.

“No, no, I’m good. Just, yeah, hit something there.”

To be sure, he was embarrassed as hell and wondering what exactly caused his fall. But it could have been worse.

With a grunt and an awkward attempt at humor he said, to no one in particular and somewhat unintelligibly, “That looked better in my head.”

Yet not quite as good as it still appears in the minds of those who saw it.

  I read two of his three books this summer and consider him to be one of the most expert and balanced journalists in the world today. My girlfriend and I visited his autograph table after his 70-minute lecture and bought a signed paperback copy of “The Longest War.” I spoke to him and told him of how I wish all citizens of this country would read his book. We might not be so collectively stupid. It would have helped to eliminate some ignorance the night bin Laden was killed. I also said I disagreed with his assessment that we won’t be leaving Afghanistan any time soon but noted my hopes are probably more wishful thinking and that I respect his opinion far more considering how much time he’s spent on the ground in that part of the world. Even posed for a quick picture. Definitely a brilliant, humble guy, in my opinion.

I’m assuming the video will show up on the Graham Center’s video archive at some point for those who’d like to hear what he had to say.

He asked where I completed my undergrad, and when I told him, he noted he visited Mercyhurst College about four years ago. Wish I’d been that tuned-in back then as a senior in high school.

"The Longest War" signed copy to my dad and I

  On Writing Well by William Zinsser, 2006: My literary journalism professor assigned this text as a handbook for this semester. I enjoyed Zinsser’s approach to good writing so much that I read it through in about a week, though the required pacing doesn’t entail our class finishing it until closer to December. Regardless, he addresses just about every aspect of strong nonfiction writing, pitfalls to avoid (cliches being the biggest) and general tips for getting the most out of research and interviewing. Its purpose in class is to guide us along our own long-form narrative writing assignments, two of which I’m posting here soon with another to follow toward semester’s end. Not often are you required to buy a book for a course in college—undergraduate or otherwise—that you immediately decide to hold on to after the course has ended. This will be one of those. (5 of 5 stars)

 Bossypants by Tina Fey, 2011: I’ve always loved Tina Fey for her time on SNL, especially after reading James Miller and Tom Shales’ oral history on SNL this summer. While I’m not quite as big a fan of “30 Rock” as, say, her “Weekend Update” and Sarah Palin SNL skits, I do hope she continues to write, act and produce great comedy for years. I consumed this one via audio book, and I kept laughing aloud during certain parts. I’m sure it would have been the same had I read it in print, but her narration took it to another level. (5 of 5 stars)

 Scorecasting by Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim , 2011: I was one of the first in my circle of friends to read Moneyball back in 2003 during my freshman year of high school, and, like many these days, have since enjoyed reading about statistical methods being applied to sports. While I’m a somewhat abysmal performer in the statistical realm myself, having skated through a freshman undergraduate course with a C, I enjoyed Moskowitz and Wertheim’s application of their sports and mathematical expertise to many aspects of sports data that most fans take for granted. (3 of 5 stars)

 Firestarter by Stephen King, 1980: At some point in my life, much like my pursuit of all things David Halberstam and John Feinstein, I plan to read all of Stephen King’s works. Of course, if he keeps cranking out 1,100-page poorly edited tomes (before I’m criticized for rushing to judgment, I fully intend to purchase and read that linked work when it comes out) every other year, I might revise this goal. Still, this is one of his earlier horror tales that I tracked down and gave a listen. It’s clearly a work from the Cold War era, with shadowy men in suits chasing suspected government experiments gone wrong around the country.  (3 of 5 stars)

 The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television by Tiffany Potter & C.W. Marshall, 2009: If I was cut out for academia in the long-run and wasn’t just pursuing a master’s with the intention of going back into the industry, I would definitely look toward David Simon’s fictitious Baltimorean universe found in “The Wire” for a thesis topic. In a brief conversation with one of my professors, he suggested I might try to examine it from the angle of a journalist’s “constructed reality,” which is most certainly what Simon accomplished in the six-year series. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I’d have enough content there to pursue an adequate study of it, and was even less sure of that being the case after reading this collection of essays. I still enjoyed it for the perspectives that many of the academics within brought to their own studies of Simon’s work.  (4 of 5 stars)

 Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, 2010: Seeing this book near the top of every nonfiction bestseller list for the past two years cemented me reading it at some point. But in looking at the third literary journalism reading assignment for this semester—”any one book or lengthy article by a contemporary literary journalist (not one of the usual suspects like Wolfe, Talese, Thompson or Didion)”—I realized I had my excuse to pursue it right away. Hillenbrand is a fascinating author study in that she suffers from chronic fatigue but is able to put such vigor into her writing. Anyone who read or watched “Seabiscuit” saw how she could bring long-forgotten characters to life. She did it again here with her reconstruction of the life of Louis Zamperini, and I’m eager to present my findings on her style in class during the coming weeks.  (5 of 5 stars)

 What Good is Journalism? by George Kennedy & Daryl Moen, 2007: When I picked Florida for grad school early this spring, I immediately went about finding as many texts from the college’s background reading list (journalism section, mainly) as I could. Even though I figured I had a handle on the study of journalism broadly, I followed the prefatory advice that UF posted: “The list below should be considered, not as required reading but rather as a chance to get a leg up on studies here.” This was just about the last of those texts that I decided to pursue, having found it a month earlier through Mercyhurst’s Hammermill Library e-book system. While it was totally a product of the Mizzou journalism school and slightly outdated (2007), certain parts were applicable to my current studies. And it definitely answered the question found in the title. In short, journalism is good for everything it always has been—delivering news that matters to local and national communities, even in these times of shortened attention spans and declining readership. (4 of 5 stars)

 Somebody Told Me by Rick Bragg, 2000: Yet another recommendation garnered in literary journalism class. I’d unfortunately never heard of the name Rick Bragg before this course, and thus decided to check it out from the Alachua Library as soon as I could, exploring some of the former St. Pete and New York Times scribe’s best work from the 1990s. His approach to topics and then interview subjects is one that has been refined to an art over the years, but it’s one which I am now enjoying myself as I try to piece together a few literary journalism pieces. Bragg’s ability to bring his readers from all over the country into close contact with far-flung subjects all over the south was amazing. He’s now teaching at the University of Alabama, and I would imagine his classes there are nothing short of mesmerizing.  (4 of 5 stars)

 The Bag Guys Won by Jeff Pearlman, 2004: I read Pearlman’s account of the 1990s Dallas Cowboys exploits last Christmas and, not being previously familiar with his work other than the SI John Rocker piece a decade ago, I was immediately struck by his ability to get inside a story through dogged interviewing (generally to the tune of 400-plus interviews). A few weeks into my Sports Media & Society course at UF, professor Ted Spiker surprised the class by bringing Pearlman to our lecture hall via Skype. I was enthralled with everything he had to say and zoomed to the library on my bike ride home to check out all his books. This was his first, and his book-length talents were on display from the beginning. If you’re a Mets or even a huge baseball fan, this one is worth a read. As a big ’97 Pittsburgh Pirates devotee (sad, I know), I loved the stories about a young Kevin Elster who came into the big leagues with that ’86 Mets team. (5 of 5 stars)

 The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy, 1972: I’ve read just about all of Conroy’s other works, save his most recent (ironic, I know, given its title). And this one, his second book, hinted at his success to come. His mostly autobiographical style is present throughout the novel, as he captures the year-plus experience he gained while teaching on “Yamacraw Island,” known as Daufuskie Island in real life. It’s an overall heartwarming tale that shows how it was and remains possible for educators to connect with illiterate students in the poorest rural areas around the country. I particularly liked the parts toward the end when he was jerked around by a misguided principal and school board who thought he was guilty of insubordination. Rather, he saw actual value in the students he taught, whereas the local administrators were ready to cast them aside as ignorant poor people who would never accomplish much. Much of Conroy’s haranguing of these foolish authority figures still rings true today, as early education in poor districts remains desperately underfunded. (4 of 5 stars)

 The Corner by David Simon, 1997: Like “Unbroken” above, this was a book I chose to read and present on for literary journalism class. I read “Homicide” last year and only recently heard that Simon had written another “year-in-the-life” type book about Baltimore in the 1990s. Putting it on my read-in-the-distant-future list, I quickly pulled it off the shelf when I saw the description of this assignment (much like the one above except this one had to be a study of a well-known journalist; Simon definitely qualified). I read it quickly, covering at least 30 pages a day over the course of a few weeks, pulling out the major threads for an in-class presentation (right-click, “Save target as” if you want to see it). (5 of 5 stars)

 The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind, 2006: Ron Suskind has been back in the news during the past month for “The Confidence Men” about the Obama administration (as it happens, I’m reading this in October), but I wanted to trek back and go through this one about the War on Terror as well. Plus, I had seen it referenced in more than one of the books I tore through this summer. Dick Cheney’s extreme overreaching doctrine, for which the book is named, strikes the reader again and again as utter hubris. It was evident, even in 2006 when the book was published, that the doctrine just wasn’t going to reach the endgame the U.S. wants. Listening to the constant continued in-fighting that went on among Bush, Cheyney, Rumsfeld and all the players from the FBI and CIA during those years was just astounding. (5 of 5 stars)

 Best American Sports Writing of the Century, 1999: With a David Halberstam introduction to this epic collection of great writing, how could you go wrong? I have read many of this series’ annual collections of the past 10 years and always enjoy discovering or getting reacquainted with great writers. Being a Pirates fan, I particularly enjoyed Roger Angell’s 1975 New Yorker piece on Steve Blass, even if I’m not real fond of Blass as a broadcaster these days. Too goofy. Anyway, the major drawback to this collection and to sportswriting as a profession during the 20th century was its near-total shuttering of women–from coverage and from the press box. Almost completely a boys club, and this collection lacked entirely any gender diversity. I don’t necessarily blame this on Halberstam or series editor Glenn Stout, but it definitely stands out when you read down the list of scribes. (5 of 5 stars)

 The Taliban Shuffle by Kimberly Barker, 2011: Another War in Afghanistan/War on Terror book, though this one focused more on what it was like for the media (specifically, a woman) to cover it during the past 10 years. Her stories of whacky tribal members in Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan should tell the U.S. all it needs to know about ever “winning” this war. Also of note was her discussion toward the end on newspaper downsizing, especially her diatribes toward the corporate management of the Chicago Tribune. You can tell there were quite a few occasions for foreign correspondents and the budget slashers back home to butt heads. It’s good to see Barker has now landed with ProPublica. (4 of 5 stars)

 New York: A Serendipiter’s Journey by Gay Talese, 1961: In exploring books and authors, I really enjoy going back and looking at the first work of a writer who turned out to later become a big success, especially if his or her first book didn’t attract many readers in its day. This is one such book, which now appears to be largely out of print but that UF’s library had an original copy of, where I could explore Talese’s early style. His “man on the street” style fits this subject matter perfectly, as he was able to capture a wide variety of characters in New York City during the early 1960s. You could tell he had a great feeling for the pulse of the city, and probably still does to some extent. I hope to someday read his later works like “Unto the Sons,” “Thy Neighbor’s Wife” or “The Kingdom and the Power,” but for now this, coupled with reading his articles on Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra, was a nice first sojourn. (5 of 5 stars)

 The Big Burn by Timothy Egan, 2009: Ever since I heard that Teddy Roosevelt was capable of reading three to four pages of a book a minute, I’ve been drawn to the sheer power of his intellect and personality. Each of those traits, along with his love for physical activity and the outdoors, were on display in this book. Egan skillfully treks back in time through primary documents and oral histories to examine the Great Fire of 1910, which burned millions of acres of forest in the American West and later helped bring about the U.S. Forest Service, despite widespread opposition. It’s odd to think that park rangers were ever a hated group, and Egan explains all sides accurately and through a colorful historical narrative. (4 of 5 stars)

 Love Me, Hate Me by Jeff Pearlman, 2006: More Pearlman. Like I said, I’m trying to get through all his books now, especially as he keeps them coming. His book on Roger Clemens is next, followed by the needlessly-controversial one just released about Walter Payton, though I could otherwise care less about Payton as a sports figure. The same cannot be said of Barry Bonds, whose career rose just as my own interest in the game of baseball was peaking, and this book detailed much of the darker side of his personality which I had always suspected but never read about concretely. Bonds, of course, would likely call just about all of Pearlman’s book a lie, but it’s tough to argue when he tried his best to fairly portray him and gain a complete picture of his life. There’s really no getting around the fact he spoke with 500 different people who knew or were very close to Bonds. The only one missing was Bonds himself, who laughed when Pearlman approached him one last time for an interview shortly before publication. (5 of 5 stars)

More from this ongoing reading log can be found here.