Well, now Dave Barry has gone and made me sad. After taking a yearlong sabbatical, he's not going to resume his weekly humor column.
It's been more than a year since I blogged about how he was taking a break, and I guess I'd just figured he would be back. Fortunately his blog is far from silent, so I can attempt to keep up with him there. However, the newspaper column world just won't quite be the same.
OK, now that I've thought about it for a little bit, my response is more along the lines of, "Good for Dave! He's a newspaper writer who can actually take a sabbatical and then not return to work -- but can still write on his own terms." He's done a heck of a lot of work over the years, and he deserves to be able to keep writing in a way that makes him happy.
I really wanted to blog about a call I received today, but I guess I'll just have to keep it inside unless I want to tell the world about a story before I get to write it. Those who know me will also know it's not the first time I've hinted about stories and then had to sit on them. I'm a reporter and like to tell stories to the world, but I'll be damned if I do anything to give someone else the story first.
So, I'll instead go vacuum and leave you with a warning that Kakuro (like Sudoku) is addictive. You have Travholt to blame if you become hopelessly addicted.
Kevin Fagan, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle (and who once worked at the paper where I work), has seen six executions and has already requested media credentials for another one next month. Odds are fairly high that his eighth execution will be my first.
Anyway, he wrote a column about why he watches executions, and he basically summed up most of my feelings about crime reporting, and the thoughts that went through my head when I first learned that I might really witness an execution. I haven't seen anywhere near the amount of crime and sadness and horror that Fagan has, but I feel I can say that I understand his column.
Roughly 10 years ago, some friends and I heard that the freeway was closed due to a big wreck. We were teenagers in a small town with nothing better to do, so we took a side road and climbed up a forested hill to the freeway. We arrived on the roadway directly at the scene where a motorhome had crossed the center divide and crashed head-on into a Honda. The Honda was cut in half and pieces were scattered everywhere, as were bodies that had partially been covered up by the time we arrived.
I've since seen plenty of horrific car wrecks and other crime scenes. I've seen gruesome photographs and heard graphic testimony that virtually no newspaper would publish. But the fact of the matter is that these things do happen. They're real, and sometimes they happen to people who never dreamed that life could be so cruel.
To come back around to Fagan's column, that's why he witnesses executions. It's part of his job to remind people that horrible things happen and that we need to be aware of them rather than just pretend they don't exist. As Fagan says, "Many of these things were more traumatic to me than watching five murderers sleep their way to eternity while attached to intravenous poison lines."
It all comes back to the one word I've clung to over the years and have used in more than a few deep, introspective writings: perspective. Another reporter asked if I was planning to attend February's execution and said he was, but he thought witnessing it could "cause some major psychological damage." I, on the other hand, see it more from Fagan's view.
I wish I could somehow make future murderers listen to me. If so, I'd beg them to retain one word: Don't.
I'd tell them that nobody wins, and everybody loses -- that the victims' families wouldn't be the only ones permanently altered.
Long after the crime fades from the public eye, people will still cry over it. Years after the fact, they'll still lose entire nights of sleep. Two dozen years later, some will find themselves talking to a stranger about it for the first time, outside of immediate family and people who had to know. The stranger will suddenly feel sucked into the story and wish there was some way to fix things. Instead, the stranger will also stay up late, then toss and turn before finally going to sleep out of sheer exhaustion.
Because, when it comes down to it, there is no way to fix it. Murders can't be undone. And so many of them can't be prevented because, for those of us who want nothing more than for murders not to happen, we don't know when the next one will take place.
After a local guy stabbed a fellow parolee five times and got himself arrested for attempted murder, the victim had some spare time while recovering in the hospital.
One thing he did was to call a certain reporter and deny a police account saying that both men had been drinking all night until the stabbing. In fact, he said, the two "had a couple of beers, ate a DiGiorno's pizza and went to bed." (I thought the pizza brand was a nice touch.)
At any rate, the guy who had been demanding a retraction was soon put at ease. But then he became so at ease that he offered to give the reporter the "full story" in person, and asked the reporter how to pronounce her name. Then: "That's a pretty name, and it makes me want to meet you more. How old are you? I'm only 37."
Said reporter managed to say, "Um, we don't talk about that," then got herself off the phone.
If you've never read the Chronicles of Narnia, get thee to a library/bookstore/Amazon immediately and rectify the situation. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe hits U.S. theaters Friday, and it's not too late to read the book first.
Can you tell I'm looking forward to this movie? What gave it away?
Anyway, I've never been a sci-fi or fantasy fan, but the Narnia books are a notable exception to the fantasy rule. I read them countless times as a child, and now I just got out the Wardrobe book and read it again. Technically, The Magician's Nephew comes first chronologically, but C.S. Lewis wrote Wardrobe first. And, since the movie is coming out Friday, I decided to refresh myself with that book first. It's been a number of years since I last read the Narnia books, so a lot of the details had faded into the depths of my memory. I've now been sufficiently reminded of how great the books are, and I plan to soon re-read the rest of the series. You should, too.
Dave Barry's done
Well, now Dave Barry has gone and made me sad. After taking a yearlong sabbatical, he's not going to resume his weekly humor column.It's been more than a year since I blogged about how he was taking a break, and I guess I'd just figured he would be back. Fortunately his blog is far from silent, so I can attempt to keep up with him there. However, the newspaper column world just won't quite be the same.
OK, now that I've thought about it for a little bit, my response is more along the lines of, "Good for Dave! He's a newspaper writer who can actually take a sabbatical and then not return to work -- but can still write on his own terms." He's done a heck of a lot of work over the years, and he deserves to be able to keep writing in a way that makes him happy.
Posted by Layla at 11:15 PM, December 28, 2005. Comments (0)