And Now For Something Completely More Differenter
After a week of tragedy coverage (from which I did learn the important fact that I am apparently not the only reporter who pretends to be some other, tougher reporter when forced to do terrible things like call up grieving families or ask mean questions), my NPR editor suddenly became very interested in a pitch I sent him two weeks ago about a humor conference happening up in Greenville. This weekend.
Which is how, today, I came to drive five hours for a 2 minute 45 second story. Which you can hear tomorrow morning at either 8:34am or 9:34am or not at all depending on your time zone and whether your local station covers that segment.
I am fond of this story as it is the first time NPR has ever allowed me to be funny. And I sooo like being funny. I managed to work a rimshot into a story about zoning decisions this week. Zoning decisions! That takes work (it also takes stealing an MP3 of a rimshot from the Muppet Motion Picture off the internet at 11 at night).
Since I have to stay at my post until the audio file for my story crawls its way into NPR's ftp site, I thought I'd share with yo a few observations from my long drive through a lot of not much.
There's just something about driving country roads in autumn, the way the soybean fields have all gone golden and the trees are already standing stark in the marshes. The cotton fields are all rust and snow again and balls of it, blown off the trucks, were stuck in the grass all along the verge like bits of foam. The sky had a scraped quality today, the light blanched with a whiteness that was utterly different from the moisture-freighted whiteness of summer light. There was a strong wind scouring the earth and everything just had that extra edge of wildness to it that made it so nice to be heading down new roads in a direction I'd never been before.
This route had such great place names along it. I went through Chinquapin and Beulaville, Pink Hill and Kinston. Some of those were real towns, county seats with majestic old banks and crumbling brick main streets. And some were little more than a volunteer fire district and a water tower. I love seeing them all. And then there were the intersections. Most of the roads seemed to be named for people, probably people still living on them, or at least still well remembed by the people living on them. A few I bothered to remember: Emmanuel Spearman Road, Jack Dale Road, Kelley's Sandpit Road. This landscape is so rich in the poetry of literalism.
And finally, there was the Sandy Bottom Original Free Will Baptist Church. Do you think there's a Johnny-come-lately Free Will Baptist Church hanging around Sandy Bottom causing all kinds of discord?
Which is how, today, I came to drive five hours for a 2 minute 45 second story. Which you can hear tomorrow morning at either 8:34am or 9:34am or not at all depending on your time zone and whether your local station covers that segment.
I am fond of this story as it is the first time NPR has ever allowed me to be funny. And I sooo like being funny. I managed to work a rimshot into a story about zoning decisions this week. Zoning decisions! That takes work (it also takes stealing an MP3 of a rimshot from the Muppet Motion Picture off the internet at 11 at night).
Since I have to stay at my post until the audio file for my story crawls its way into NPR's ftp site, I thought I'd share with yo a few observations from my long drive through a lot of not much.
There's just something about driving country roads in autumn, the way the soybean fields have all gone golden and the trees are already standing stark in the marshes. The cotton fields are all rust and snow again and balls of it, blown off the trucks, were stuck in the grass all along the verge like bits of foam. The sky had a scraped quality today, the light blanched with a whiteness that was utterly different from the moisture-freighted whiteness of summer light. There was a strong wind scouring the earth and everything just had that extra edge of wildness to it that made it so nice to be heading down new roads in a direction I'd never been before.
This route had such great place names along it. I went through Chinquapin and Beulaville, Pink Hill and Kinston. Some of those were real towns, county seats with majestic old banks and crumbling brick main streets. And some were little more than a volunteer fire district and a water tower. I love seeing them all. And then there were the intersections. Most of the roads seemed to be named for people, probably people still living on them, or at least still well remembed by the people living on them. A few I bothered to remember: Emmanuel Spearman Road, Jack Dale Road, Kelley's Sandpit Road. This landscape is so rich in the poetry of literalism.
And finally, there was the Sandy Bottom Original Free Will Baptist Church. Do you think there's a Johnny-come-lately Free Will Baptist Church hanging around Sandy Bottom causing all kinds of discord?