Langewiesche flies again

William Langewiesche is one of our very best journalists (as well as a superb prose stylist), especially on matters of aviation. He knows whereof he writes; he was for a long time a "freight dog," flying cargo in drafty, crapped-out, barely airworthy airplanes from one godforsaken airfield to another, and the experience leached the treacly romance of aviation out of him. He sees blind hero-worship of pilots for what it is.

Today in the New York Times, Dwight Garner reviews Langewiesche's newest book, Fly By Wire, a revisitation of Capt. Chesley Sullenberger's storied landing of that Airbus 320 in the Hudson without loss of life.

It was a professional performance by a superb pilot, Langewiesche declares, but he also argues that the Frenchman Bernard Ziegler, who long ago devised the fly-by-wire system that really guided the Airbus to the river, may have been the greater hero -- if "hero" is the proper term for someone who executes the job he was painstakingly trained to do.

Garner sums up the book as "prickly and uneven but plainspoken."

That's good enough for me. I'm off to Barnes & Noble to get a copy.

Omt ndlss vwls

Away back in the 1960s when I was a journalism student, I had to learn the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, the little booklet beloved of city and copy desks that dealt with stuff like capitalization, numbers, punctuation, hyphenization, proper terms of address, grammatical rules and other housekeeping tasks without which a newspaper would have looked like the town dump.

I hated it. I never could remember the difference between "that" and "which" and how to mention the Queen on second reference. ("Her Majesty," I think it was. Or not. It's been a long time.)

But after wrestling with the stylebook for months, I knew where to look things up quickly while batting out a news story or editing one.

The journalism students I taught hated it, too, but eventually came to see its value as a kind of Army field manual for the news infantry, a statement of principles and standards. When they got jobs they were ready to go out and report or stay in and edit, perhaps after mastering their new employer's stylebook, almost always based on the AP version but reflecting local conditions and idiosyncrasies.

Sometimes a newspaper's stylebook difference reflected nothing but an individual's whims. The Chicago Sun-Times, my former employer, had an editor-in-chief from Australia, one of Rupert Murdoch's minions, who forbade the word "gay" in reference to same-sex orientation long after it had passed into common usage. "Call them homosexuals, for that's what they are!" he thundered.

We also had a copy desk chief, a staunch atheist, who changed the manual to stipulate that the deity be called "god," in lower case. His argument was that god was a figment of the human imagination, not a real entity, so did not deserve capitalization. Neither was tom sawyer, I said, or huckleberry finn, but they were proper names, just as God was. The chief was adamant. After he either quit or was fired (I can't remember which), the rule was immediately thrown out.

The style manual is so ingrained in the American journalist's hide that when some enterprising newsies started batting around imaginary AP Stylebook rules on Twitter in the last month or so, there was such a huge explosion of interest that the perpetrators are close to landing a book contract for their "Fake AP Stylebook." The story is here.

Some examples:

While it's tempting to call them "baristi" because of the Italian roots, the plural of "barista" is "journalism majors."

Do not change weight of gorilla in phrase, “800-lb gorilla in the room.” Correct weight is 800 lbs. DO NOT CHANGE GORILLA'S WEIGHT!

Dr Pepper doesn't have a period in it. An easy way to remember this is "Doctors are dudes and dudes don't get periods."

Breasts should not be referred to as "jugs" unless you need it to rhyme with something else in the article. See also: cans, sweater puppies.

Always capitalize Satan. You don't want to get dead goats from those people.

It almost makes me want to un-retire. (Or is that unretire? Where did I put that Stylebook?)

With thanks to Jim Romenesko for the heads-up.

The wisdom of Stanley Walker

As the Lady Friend worked on cleaning out the attic today, she found in the boxes of my accumulated crap a brittle, yellowed sheet of copy paper punctured at the top by a dozen tack holes. On it was neatly typed:

What makes a good newspaperman? The answer is easy. He knows everything. He is aware not only of what goes on in the world today, but his brain is a repository of the accumulated wisdom of the ages.

He is not only handsome, but he has the physical strength which enables him to perform great feats of energy. He can go for nights on end without sleep. He dresses well and talks with charm. Men admire him; women adore him; tycoons and statesmen are willing to share their secrets with him.

He hates lies and meanness and sham but keeps his temper. He is loyal to his paper and to what he looks upon as his profession; whether it is a profession or merely a craft, he resents attempts to debase it.

When he dies, a lot of people are sorry, and some of them remember him for several days.

-- Stanley Walker, "The City Editor"

Walker (1898-1962) was the celebrated city editor of that old writer's newspaper, the New York Herald Tribune, from the 1920s to the 1940s, and was a culture hero to two generations of journalists, including mine. In that passage he captures what newspapering once was, in all its humor and pride and ego -- and nails its reality.

Today Walker, too, is forgotten. There isn't even a Wikipedia entry on him. Only one of his famous books remains alive, The Night Club Era (1933), in a ten-year-old Johns Hopkins University Press reprint.

There is, however, a roadside historical memorial outside Lampasas, Texas, his birthplace.

Sic transit gloria scriptor.

Another for the bucket list

A shot from the front porch of the Station Inn at Cresson, Pa., by the noted railroad photographer J. Alex Lang, taken from the hotel's web site. Click for larger view.

One of my enduring passions is staying at old railroad hotels by the side of the tracks where one can sit on the front porch with a camera and long lens and watch the trains go by while debating the relative merits of this locomotive model and that with fellow rail buffs all the livelong day.

This is generally a pastime for old-guy trainiacs, but spouses often come along and discuss choo-choo widowhood among themselves. Trainwatching ("trainspotting" in Britain) is a hobby for a certain kind of person, one who is not exactly a Luddite but perhaps an aficionado of a historic old technology kept alive with modern innovation.

In my particular case railroad hotels are a fine place to get some writing done -- I'm actually more productive in a small room by the tracks that I can leave from time to time to watch a fast freight go by. The thunder of locomotives and the aroma of diesel exhaust somehow inspires me. (Don't ask how.)

My preferred railroad hostelry is the Izaak Walton Inn at Essex, Montana, on the transcontinental High Line of the old Great Northern Railway (now Burlington Northern Santa Fe), reachable on Amtrak's Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle. (See here, here and here).

I've also taken the Southwest Chief to the newish Depot Inn at La Plata, Missouri, on the Burlington main from Chicago to Los Angeles. (See here.)

Last weekend the New York Times' travel section reported favorably (although with barely suppressed amusement) on another rail buff's favorite, the Station Inn Bed & Breakfast at Cresson, Pennsylvania, on the old Pennsylvania Railroad (now Norfolk Southern) main line from Pittsburgh to New York City.

One can get there from Chicago by taking Amtrak's Capitol Limited to Pittsburgh, laying over for a couple of hours, then boarding the Pittsburgh-to-New York Pennsylvanian and debarking at Altoona, where one can rent a car for the 18-mile, 21-minute drive back down the line to Cresson. Alternatively, the time-challenged can fly to Pittsburgh and rent a car for the 100-mile, 2-hour drive to the hotel.

Gonna do it next spring. The Lady Friend wants to go, too.

Reality catches up to fiction

On page 111 of my 2003 novel Season's Revenge appears this paragraph from the Porcupine County Tribune of October 24, 1932:

SIX FINNISH PEOPLE
LEAVE FOR RUSSIA

Mr. and Mrs. Simon Talikka, Mr. Arthur Weser and sons Arthur Jr. and Elmer, and Heinrikki Heikkila, who have lived at Greenfield for several years, left Thursday for Kontupohja, United Soviet Social Russia.

A farewell party was given for them at the Farmers' Hall at Greenfield Monday evening.

The paragraph was reproduced nearly verbatim from the October 24, 1932, issue of the Ontonagon Herald, the actual weekly paper of the Upper Michigan county that is the model for Porcupine County in my mystery fiction. All I altered was the real name of the paper and the real name of the town, Green. I added a fictional character, Heikkila, to support a subplot of the novel.

That subplot involved the historical reverse migration of more than 10,000 struggling Finnish farmers from Upper Michigan, Minnesota and Ontario to Karelia, a Finnish-speaking Soviet province next door to Finland, during the Great Depression. Most of the farmers were never heard from again, presumably having perished during the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s. Many of their American properties were abandoned for taxes and sold to greedy land speculators -- giving rise to a possible motive for murder.

This morning I sat down at the computer to the following e-mail:

Dear Mr. Kisor,

I was shocked when reading your book Season’s Revenge when I came across the section that talked about Karelia and Simon Talikka, Mr. Arthur Weser and sons Arthur Jr. and Elmer, and Henrikki Heikkila, who have live at Greenfield for several years, left Thrusday for Kontupohja, United Social Soviet Russia.

The reason why I was shocked is because your fiction story as it relates to Karelia was more non-fiction to me. You see, I have been searching for decades trying to find out what happen to my missing relatives that went to Karelia from Green, Michigan. They are: Simon Talikka, Mr. Arthur Wesa (your book says Weser), and sons Arthur Jr. and Elmer, and Eero. I find your story of them more than coincidence. Simon Talikka and his wife took in (unofficially adopted) Arthur’s boys shortly after Olga died (Arthur’s wife). Arthur also lost a very young son named Onni.

I pray that you might have some information (letters, news paper articles, etc) of my missing relatives. My family was from Green, Michigan, not from the fictitious Greenfield noted in the story. After Simon Talikka and Arthur Wesa and the boy’s went to Karelia sometime around October 29, 1932, we lost contact with them in 1936. According to Mayme Sevander's book titled "Of Soviet Bondage" has a listing of "Vesa, Arthur; from Green, Mich. US 1931." in Appendix 5, titled Wartime Labor Camp Victims. This suggests that they may have become victims of Stalin's purges.

The last time anyone heard from Arthur and the boys was in a letter written by Simon Talikka in 1936. Simon writes; "At this time he was no longer living in Karelia, but rather in a different area of Russia working in a gold mine. Wesa [Arthur] stayed with his boys in Karelia. They are working there in the woods. Young Paavo [Walter Kytöneva - Wesa] is a teacher in Tunkua.” [Tunkua is a town in the northern part of Karelia]. This was the last piece of solid evidence that Arthur and the 3 boys were still alive.

Thank you for your time and would appreciate any help you can provide.

Respectfully,
Kevin Levonius
Gilroy, California
Cell (408) 710-6606
e-mail kevin@levonius.com

Accompanying the e-mail was a reproduction of a listing of the members of the Wesa family (also with their mother's maiden name, Kytöneva) who had emigrated to Karelia -- and three photographs:



Left to right: Onni, Eero, Lauri, Paavo and Viljo.










Arthur Kytöneva-Wesa









Olga Kytöneva-Wesa

I had to tell Mr. Levonius that I had no further information on his family, but that I would post his letter on this blog in the long-shot hope that someone researching the Karelia period who might know what happened to the Talikkas and the Wesas would discover it during a Google search.

Agincourt and the Whiskey Rebellion

Family lore, especially legends about heroic and illustrious forebears, gives us a sense of rootedness. But just because a story has been handed down through the generations doesn't make it true.

For a century or more, one branch of my family has taken enormous pride in the belief that its first American ancestors arrived in this country from Northern Ireland in 1770, settled in the Monongahela Valley and fought in the storied Whiskey Rebellion of 1791-94 against arbitrary federal taxation of alcohol.

Now my brother, a retired professor of economics and a trained researcher, has discovered two strong bits of documentary evidence suggesting that the family did not get to this country until 1798, far too late to have participated in the Whiskey Rebellion.

Such are the vagaries of oral history, of unsupported memory. We don't, as a rule, remember things as they actually occurred; we tend to remember events the way we want them to have happened.

These musings are spurred by an article in today's New York Times suggesting that the Battle of Agincourt, fought on this date 584 years ago, may not have been the impossible victory against overwhelming 1-to-5 odds that Britons have celebrated for nearly six centuries, helped along by these stirring lines from Shakespeare's "Henry V":

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Indeed Agincourt was a great win for the English against the French, some modern historians now say, but involved closer to 1-to-2 odds (and maybe less) than literary posterity has claimed. Like my brother, the revisionist historians have taken a hard look at actual documentary evidence -- in the case of Agincourt, military and tax records -- and come up with a different truth. It isn't what traditional historians and popular dramatists have said it was all these centuries.

Why is this stuff important? The Times article points out that the recent discoveries have led to a "new science of military history" that today's generals in Afghanistan and Iraq are carefully consulting in making their command decisions. If he who ignores history is doomed to relive it, so is he who relies blindly on national myths.

It's great to believe stirring stories, but it's better to have the truth.

Soaring cliches

Film critics are like sportswriters; all too often they reach for a peach and grasp a chestnut instead. In their reviews of the new, almost universally panned movie about Amelia Earhart, many of their cliches sound either like third-rate Saint-Exupery or cribbed from 1940s comic books about intrepid birdmen.

"Soar" and its ilk were a sad favorite:

"Mira Nair's unfocused direction never allow[s] Hilary Swank's performance as legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart to soar." -- Lou Lumenick, New York Post

"A film that should have soared . . .Like her subject, the filmmaker gets lost in the clouds." --Betsy Sharkey, L.A. Times

"Amelia goes airborne but never fully soars." -- Claudia Puig, USA Today

"The result is verisimilitude without engagement — a risk-taker's story told entirely without narrative risk — and a movie that consequently never takes flight." -- Bob Mondello, NPR

"A director can do only so much with a script . . . that feels like it’s on the runway, waiting, even when it’s up in the air." -- Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

"Most of all, Earhart wanted to be able to fly free as a bird above the clouds . . ." -- Ray Bennett, Hollywood Reporter

One writer scored a trifecta:

"Though this traditional story about a defiantly nontraditional woman doesn't always soar, it fits Hilary Swank, its producer/star, like a jumpsuit. . . . Earhart came to love Putnam, nicely played by Gere as the wind beneath her wings." -- Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer

(This is just ignorant. In real life aviation jumpsuits, or coveralls as they are properly called, are hardly form-fitting but loose, baggy and grease-stained. What's more, wind does not make wings fly.)

Furthermore:

"The onslaught of cliches brings the movie down in flames." -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

"To say that Amelia never gets off the ground would be an understatement; it barely makes it out of the hangar."— Justin Chang, Variety

Some images were just puzzling:

"Trying to import feeling into the movie's stilted dialogue is like trying to fly a plane blindfolded." -- Sam Adams, A.V. Club

"Amelia Earhart's disappearance is one of the great mysteries of the 20th century. 'Amelia' clips its wings." -- Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

(Wing-clipping keeps chickens from flying, but in aviation it increases an airplane's maneuverability.)

"Amelia is the Mack truck of flight. Heavy and lumbering, it delivers the goods, but there's not an ounce of magic in the thing." -- Rick Groen, The Globe and Mail

(How did Mack trucks get in there? Why not an Airbus or a 747? They lumber, too.)

Some images did seem fresh:

"Swank rides the thematic turbulence like the star she is." -- Ty Burr, Boston Globe

"The next generation of American women grew up in her slipstream." -- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

And there was some sharp wit:

"With any luck this biopic of Amelia Earhart will also vanish without a trace." -- J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

"Amelia Earhart is still missing." -- Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal