I had the pleasure of moderating a roundtable on online comments a few weeks ago, and Jack Lail has posted a note on Knoxnews.com about the roundtable that gives an excellent summary and links to related info. Kudos to APME for funding this. It’s much needed. I was an early advocate of comments on newspaper sites and I’ve been really disappointed in how the potential for community never really lived up to its potential. I think discussions like this roundtable go a long way toward helping newspapers figure out their role in online community and how best to facilitate it.
Month: May 2009
“Jesus turned the water into wine. I turned it into damned liquor.”
That’s legendary moonshiner Popcorn Sutton, talking to my buddy Tom Jester during one of Tom and photographer Don Dudenbostel’s visits with Popcorn. The duo ended up with an amazing chronicle of the ornery, contrarian mountain alchemist. The News Sentinel’s Fred Brown did a nice piece today on Tom and Don’s work with Popcorn, and it reminded me of the dividends I received from their work.
First was a jug of Popcorn’s moonshine that Tom nabbed for me. It was amazing. Much smoother than I’d envisioned. I still have a bit of it stashed in the back of the freezer, and I’ve saved the half-gallon jug it came in, autographed in true Popcorn style: “Popcorn Sutton sez Fuck You!”
Second was the photo that appears in this post. It’s one of Don’s shots that Tom gave me, and it’s just one example of what an incredible photographer Don is.
And finally, there’s this sound file (12mb MP3) that Tom sent me. It’s Popcorn Sutton telling it like it is. It’s raw. It’s funny. It’s a fine tribute to the late, great moonshiner.
Categories
The war to end all wars …
I’ve been fascinated with the First World War for a long time, probably working backward from post-war literature to find out more about this event that tore the very core of Western man’s belief in humanity and God. So when NPR’s “You Must Read This” segment featured R.L. Stine raving about “A Long Long Way,” I added it to my list.
What an incredible book. The protagonist, Willie Dunne, is an Irish kid who gets sucked into the mess that is World War I in 1914. Irish nationalism falls into the mix, making for a conflicted experience that has eerie overtones of the American experience in Vietnam (in particular, an incident where Irish nationalist kids spit on Willie for wearing a uniform when he’s back in Dublin on leave).
It’s tough to describe how disturbing this novel is as it records civilization being blown to smithereens in the trenches of Belgium. Sebastian Barry’s writing is spare, his similes startling. Witness this scene toward the end of the novel, when Willie once again is up to his knees in mud, gore and violence:
“Two days they suffered there, with water up to their knees, and not a bite came up behind them, not a scanty suggestion of fresh water, nothing. And always the ruckus of the shells, the machine-guns, the evil stenches. Even in the walls of the trenches hung the sad bones and fleshy remnants of other souls, as if some crazy farmer had sown them there, expecting in the spring a harvest of of babies.”
Indeed, you must read this …