I got into the cab slowly enough to size up the situation. One car in the family means that every once in a while I’m well and truly stranded, public transportation not being enough. I have to trust some other person to be a decent driver who will get me where I want to go safely and quickly. When I’m lucky, I can get a story out of it, too. The tall thin frame of a Somali man greeted me, as usual in cabs these days, and that was the situation. I needed a ride, he was making a living, and that was all there was to the deal. I told him where I needed to go and we were off.
Monthly Archives: December 2009
Illusions
“The illusions which exalt us are dearer than ten thousand truths”
– Aleksandr Pushkin
Perhaps it’s the chill of December closing in on me, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Pushkin lately – and this quote is a favorite. Pushkin was, like so many Russian writers, a man who found nearly carnal pleasure in staring the essence of humanity straight in the eyes and reporting what he saw in a cold, clear voice. Normally, I don’t like translations that seem florid and over-wrought, but in this case it’s Pushkin. The warmth comes in the delight of distilling the essence into poetry, as any true romantic knows. It’s a glow that warms the heart of Russian fatalism, a crackling fire that accepts with a melting smile. It also represents the exact opposite of how we, as Americans, have come to see our own world.
Impact Journalism
In order to clarify the goals a writer might have when writing on the internet, I’ve separated most prose into two distinct types – writing to inform and writing to convince. The problem with this, naturally, is that there is a lot of grey space between them. Quality writing always has a strong clarity of purpose no matter what the intent is. Active writing should have something for the heart and arm and brain, which is to say appeals to intellect, intuition, and action. The place where these clearly intersect is, more and more, being called “Impact Journalism” – a topic that deserves discussion by itself.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 