Many years ago, when there was still money in a newsroom budget for training, our paper flew in a couple of editors from Philadelphia to talk about so-called narrative reporting — the long-form pieces you’re likely to find in Sunday editions. Not the eight-graf government meeting stories, but pieces with a longer or wider reach that seek to tell a bigger story. Semi-regular commenter Kim teaches this stuff, so maybe she has a better capsule definition.

What I recall most vividly from that day was the subject/theme discussion. Some writers have a really hard time understanding what a “nut graf” is — the explanation paragraph that answers the readers’ “so why should I care” question — as well as why you need one, and why the best nut grafs encompass the theme of the story in some way. So they went around the table and had each of us think of a narrative project we’d like to write or have written, and asked two questions: What’s it about? What’s it really about?

What’s it about? It’s about a couple who had a kid with a terrible genetic disease, and it was really breaking them down, and then she got pregnant again and they considered aborting but decided not to, figuring God wouldn’t curse them twice, but the second child was born and it had the same disease. What’s it really about? Coping.

The first question is the subject, the second is the theme. The story can be big:

What’s it about? The Rwandan genocide. What’s it really about? The paralysis of moral actors in the face of great evil.

Or small:

What’s it about? These two guys, lifelong best friends, who’ve spent all the lives chasing Bigfoot sightings, until one got discouraged and switched to 9/11 conspiracies, and they stopped speaking. What’s it really about? Craziness and friendship.

See how it works? The first question is easy, but if you can’t answer the second, you’re going to get into trouble, because at some point you’re going to get stuck and say what the hell, and if you don’t know what you’re really writing about, you won’t be able to go on. Sometimes the answer is a little vague — craziness and friendship may only appeal to those people who enjoy good stories about people — but the theme is the glue that connects the problems of two little people to the rest of the hill of beans we call this crazy world. (Umm…) Only a few of us are Bigfoot chasers, but we all have friends we’ve fallen out with. Anyway.

There’s always some smartyknickers who says, “But my story doesn’t have a theme,” like that makes them special. These are frequently the ones who disdain writing classes of any kind, preferring to spend shoe leather on reporting rather than time discussing these sissy topics. That’s perfectly fine, reporting is essential, but frequently in a long-term project they’ll spend a few weeks reporting, then disgorge a bunch of facts onto the computer screen and tell their editors it’s their job to make it readable. To them I would point out the “Godfather” paradox. If you wrote the story of the Godfather narrative, the lead would be something like, “Michael Corleone has emerged [note that passive voice, a fave of the shoe-leather school] as the heir to the crime family founded by his father, Vito, after a series of suspected mob-related executions last night in New York and Las Vegas.”

But when you consider the theme(s) — and there are so many in the Godfather story that you can’t count them on all your fingers — then the story becomes operatic, mythic. You’ve got the corruption of evil, fathers and sons, the tendrils of family and blood, the futility of trying to outrun your past, the immigrant story in America, and on and on. Why do you think people still watch this movie? Because Moe Green gets shot in the eye? Grow up.

It’s been my experience, as a writer and an editor, that when you’re blocked on a piece of writing the problem is one of two: 1) You haven’t done enough reporting; or 2) You don’t understand the theme. What’s it really about? Does this paragraph illuminate that? If not, you’ve lost your way. The subject is the path, the theme lights the path.

Does this make any sense at all? I hope so.

I’ve been struggling with several pieces of work all summer, and yesterday I had a sitdown with myself and tried to take my own advice. What’s it about? What’s it really about? I realized I’d never really asked myself the second question, and when I did, it was like a door opened, or a wall fell, or something. The light came on. It all got easier.

Which is to say, I have to get back to work. In the meantime, bloggage for the faithful reader.

Kate will be joining this outfit in a few years: The Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation, dedicated to helping people recover from the pain of petting-zoo mishaps. Yes, a joke, but a semi-amusing one. Make sure you mouse over the logo. Via Metafilter.

What’s Chelsea Clinton up to these days? The NYT finds out. The short answer: Turning into a clone of her mother.

First the Swede, now the Italian: Michelangelo Antonioni dies. I loved “Blow-Up,” did you?

As for Tom Snyder, I thought David Letterman appreciated him best when he recalled the night Snyder had some chef on the show, and the two of them whipped up a little snack, and Snyder was stirring a bowl of something with a butt in his mouth. A real individual.

Is it all about death today? No. It’s also about sex: After asking nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, the researchers (at the University of Texas) have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons — everything from “I wanted to feel closer to God” to “I was drunk.” They even found a few people who claimed to have been motivated by the desire to have a child.

Off to let my theme light my path. Have a good day.

Mitch Harper advised his readers to visit a farm market over the weekend. I did, but I was going to anyway. I usually go to the Eastern Market downtown, but Saturday decided to offset a little carbon and ride my bike to the West Park Farmers Market, down in GPP. Now that I’ve lived here a few years, I realize the mistake of not buying in GPP, Grosse Pointe Park, or just “the Park” around here. That’s where my people live, but hey, it’s only a couple miles down Kercheval. The market, alas, is less wonderful. It’s festive and market-like, but with only a few sellers of actual produce — everyone else is hawking bottled gourmet sauces, handmade jewelry and that sort of thing. I bought four lovely-looking Georgia peaches, took them home, bit into one and immediately spit it out. It had that interior mealiness that suggests weeks spent in cold storage, with a dark hint that perhaps it wasn’t even a Georgia peach at all, but maybe one of the loathsome California variety.

Note to California readers: I’m sure the peaches you buy are pretty good, and I expect some defense of home-state produce, so save your protests. The lousy California peaches are all exported to the Midwest, where they sit in supermarkets looking like the platonic ideal of peachiness, truly beautiful specimens. If only they weren’t rock-hard and inedible. I used to buy them and put them in paper bags on my counter, waiting for ripeness to arrive. Ripeness = Godot. When a lovely peach sits for two weeks and can’t soften even incrementally, something very strange is going on.

That was dispiriting. The tradeoff in being able to ride a bike to market is always variety — the Eastern Market has the critical mass of customers to support such local treasures as Mushroom Man, Organic Egg Guy and the vital-to-our-emotional-well-being Gratiot Central Market, for all — and I mean all — your meat needs, but still. It’s six more days to next Saturday, and I really wanted some Georgia peaches.

Even more dispiriting was that the bike ride sapped my energies, and the rhinovirus came in for the kill. What’s less exciting than a summer Saturday night spent at home with a worsening cold? This must be why we pay big bucks for digital cable. Nothing particularly good was on, but hey, “Summer of Sam” was coming around on the Retro channel. I have two major allergies in today’s multiplex — Steven Spielberg and Spike Lee. Where critics see (and say, endlessly) “gifted,” “accomplished” and “national treasure,” I see only “overrated.” But now that Spielberg’s made a movie I can not only stomach but actually enjoyed (”Munich”), it seemed time to see whether my immunity had changed with Lee. “Summer of Sam” it was, then. And the short answer is? No. He still sucks*.

Overdirected? Check. Half-baked script? Check. Casting of capable actors in parts that hogtie their talent? Check. Obscenity-strewn** dialogue scenes that go on three times as long as they need to, until you hold your head in your hands screaming stop stop someone please make it stop? Check. Oh, and wait — is there a Message Stick lying around, and is it used to beat on us at regular intervals? Certainly, yes. Finally, did Roger Ebert ladle an astonishing dollop of praise over the whole mess, as he has over pretty much the whole Lee catalog, proving everyone has his blind spots? Yup. Am I saying there wasn’t one good thing about it? No. I liked Adrien Brody, and I thought the “Baba O’Riley” montage was OK, but then, it’s hard to go wrong with “Baba O’Riley.” So there.

(*”S.O.S.” was made in 1999, so I acknowledge “still” may not be accurate. One always hopes for growth in an artist. I only saw part one of the Katrina thing, and it was OK, but it didn’t make me want to watch parts 2, 3 and 4.)

(**As for “obscenity-strewn,” I yield to no one in my tolerance for rough language, but there’s a point at which it becomes annoying, distracting background noise, especially in an overlong scene, because you want to shake the characters and say, “If you’d stop saying ‘fuck’ so often you could maybe get to the point, you fucking asshole.”)

Enough about my little problems. Bloggage!

Evil, evil, evil, evil, stupid: A surgeon general’s report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration’s policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

A declaration: I don’t give a fat rat’s ass about Hillary Clinton’s cleavage — I have my own to worry about — but evidently others do. Thousands of words were spent in the last week discussing whether the junior senator from New York did or did not display uncontrovertible evidence that yes, she does indeed possess a pair of breasts, but by far, the stupidest of all came, fittingly, from Dan Quayle’s former aide Lisa Schiffren. She, mind you, also doesn’t give a fat rat’s ass about Hillary’s cleavage, although being a Republican wife and mother, she puts it more delicately: I overcame my desire to comment on this tempest earlier this week. But then she does — it’s “legit” to talk about the big C, she opines — and then ends with one of those sorority sister, it’s-for-your-own-good-that-I’m-saying-this lemon shake-ups:

But let’s be real here. The fact is, Hillary was wearing a fairly low cut summer top. She was not displaying cleavage, as the shot on Drudge indicates. Someone else wearing the same outfit might have done. But Hillary Clinton does not have cleavage to display. Period. Indeed, Hillary never forgave her mother-in-law, Virginia Kelly for pointing this out decades ago to the young Bill Clinton, a cleavage man if ever there was one. So…it’s OK to discuss something that doesn’t exist? Thanks, girlfriend.

And now, because I believe in saving the most important, depressing, vein-opening stuff for after the trivial, whiny, vein-opening stuff about bad peaches, crappy movies and cleavage, “Inside the Surge,” excellent photos and video from Guardian photographer Sean Smith, embedded with U.S. Marines in Iraq. Just about as depressing as you’d imagine. But required viewing.

Did you know that if you use Google Chat — and I do — it saves a copy of every single chat you have? I didn’t, until this morning:

10:17 AM me: The headline of the week comes from the Daily Mail:
I WENT TO THE DOCTOR WITH A COUGH AND ENDED UP HAVING A LEG AMPUTATED
Runner up:
Burns: eeeewwwwwww.
me: BABY’S LIFE WAS SLIPPING AWAY WHILE MIDWIVES WERE BUYING A TAKEAWAY
Next runner-up:
WOMAN TRAPPED ON FAULTY SUNBED FOR THREE HOURS
10:18 AM Burns: life is too gruesome sometimes.
me: “The son is working for the Daily Mail, it’s a steady job but he wants to be paperback writer.”
Burns: paperback…writerrrrrr…
rrrrr.
oh yeah
doo wah

That was from May 2006. What will the biographers of the future do with this information? Is there nothing Google doesn’t know about us?

I feel stupider already.

I don’t feel good today. Woke up with a cold. I hate summer colds. They make me write short sentences. So don’t expect much.

In my spare time I’m noodling around with a piece of fiction that requires me to channel the writing voice of one of my characters. The character is a blowhard, and crafting a distinct voice for him is harder than I thought it would be. If only I could get the Allen County GOP chairman to write more guest columns for the Fort Wayne newspapers; they’re textbook lessons in blowhard-y prose:

It’s time to put an end to the wave of speculation and rumors surrounding the Fort Wayne mayoral campaign. The Allen County GOP stands steadfastly and whole-heartedly behind our candidate for mayor, Matt Kelty. We will work diligently to spread his message and to make him the next leader of our city.

All political parties at some point suffer from a schism caused by a primary in which two or more qualified candidates seek the nomination. This obviously leaves some of the party’s members with bruised feelings. I deeply respect people who have yet to come on board; however, they should realize that the train on the track to victory has left the station. I am very hopeful that these individuals will be waiting at the next stop as the Kelty train heads toward the November election.

The chairman is a lawyer, and lawyers tend to talk — and write — as though they’re paid by the word, with a $100 bonus for every adverb they can sneak in:

Kelty is a man of integrity and character whose message deserves more attention than it gets. Too much has been said about the primary election and who had his or her picture taken with whom. Conspiracy theorists have speculated about supposed smoky backroom deals; these accusations are entirely false and reflect unfamiliarity with the primary election process.

Never use one complimentary adjective when you can use two; never use a simple and unshaded word (”false”) without an unnecessary modifier (”entirely”).

Can’t forget those passive-voice hoedowns:

With the Republican and Democratic candidates having been selected, the county parties now become involved. I have arranged with Republican Party stalwarts meetings where we have fostered camaraderie between the party and the 2007 GOP slate, headed by Kelty, and I’ve asked entrepreneur extraordinaire Don Willis to set up focus groups between Kelty and influential members of the party.

I could go on, but you amateur editors out there have the links and can make merry all you want. Writing is hard, and not everyone has a knack for it. It’s as much in the ear as anywhere else, and you either hear the music or you don’t. Miles Davis knew which notes not to play. If only everyone could write like “Kind of Blue.” The chairman should listen to “So What” and try again.

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” — Stephen King.

Awk. Back to bed.

People keep telling me I need to “network” more, digitally. OK. So now I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook. Can someone explain what I’m supposed to do next? (If you want to be my close personal friend, I’m ID’d by my tiresome, 19th-century-lady-painter byline these days — Nancy Nall Derringer.)

Also, a housekeeping note for those who didn’t see it yesterday: Comments are now editable, at least for 30 minutes after posting.

Excuse the obvious weak witticism, but it seems as though the wheels have come off the Tour de France. Painful as it may be for fans like Danny and ex-champs like Saint Lance — who is no doubt nervously contemplating his future as a saint, once his “I never tested positive” starts to sound like “they had to drop the charges because there was a typo in the warrant” — I say: Good. Let the wheels come off. It’s time. The whole sport — lots of sports — seems to be soaked in chemicals, and if we’re going to pay anything but lip service to the idea of getting them clean, there are going to be a lot of downhill wrecks in the Pyrenees, so to speak.

When I was a lucky, lucky journalism fellow at the University of Michigan a couple-three years ago, we were privileged to have Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, as a seminar speaker one night. It was an eye-opener, to say the least; it’s safe to say Pound has few illusions about just how dirty amateur and professional sports are these days. During the question period, someone asked why we don’t just call off the war on drugs in sports. Let them take drugs that grow their legs longer and hands larger and shrivel their testicles and whatever else, as long as it’s transparent. Pound was unimpressed with this argument, and pointed out the obvious problems, and then mentioned the biggie: What would you do about kids?

We forget it’s not only jerseys and sneakers that youthful admirers of athletes go in for. When I was in high school — and recall, I graduated in 1975 — there was a boy on the football team who seemed to explode over the summer, turning into the Incredible Hulk in a matter of weeks. It was an open secret he was taking steroids, and everyone knew where he got them — from his father, the doctor. When I started going to the gym after college, one of the trainers gave me the rundown on how the bodybuilders got their drugs: They went to Scioto Downs, the trotting venue, and spoke to certain veterinarians.

If a high-school kid from an upper-middle-class family is willing to take drugs, if a no-name bodybuilder with no hope of competing with the likes of Frank Zane will medicate just to impress girls (or other guys) in bars, then why even doubt that a pro, with millions on the line every day, would do it?

As for the other sports scandals of the moment — NBA officials working for the mob, dog-fighting aficionados in the NFL, what-evuh — I just throw up my hands.

[Pause.]

Just got off the phone with Lance Mannion. We were discussing “Mad Men” and went off on a tangent about how faces, and bodies, change through the decades. He didn’t think “Mad Men” got the faces quite right, although they certainly nailed the set design. The latter is so nailed it’s almost distracting — you find yourself saying, “Hey! A puu-puu platter!” insted of listening to the dialogue, but I expect that will abate with time. Faces and bodies change gradually and we don’t notice them until we do. Look at a picture of the crowds at Woodstock — everyone is skinny but untoned, the way people used to be when obesity was rare and thin was simply average. (I will give “Mad Men” this, though — a scene in a burlesque club featured a woman who not only stripped, but had a few rolls of fat at her waist. Once again, I miss my era.)

Anyway, this sort of comes back around to the Tour de France (I think). If we really flush drugs out of sports — and I’m not sure we can, or can even come close — we’re going to have to recalibrate not only our record books, but our eyes. The upside: Baseball players that look like Babe Ruth again.

OK, bloggage:

I’m not sure why Tim Goeglein is so prolific of late. When I worked for the paper, it seemed he only submitted his stupid guest op-ed columns three or four times a year, and here we’ve had three or four in that many months. Someone in a past comment thread speculated he’s keeping his name in front of the public in preparation for a run for office, but I’m not so sure — the subject matter’s all wrong. Of course, as a loyal soldier, he’s destined for the wingnut-welfare gravy train, but I don’t know which car he wants to ride in. Last month he lamented the tragic underappreciation of his favorite operatic composer, and this month he turns his attention to…John Wayne?

If we could scale down the pantheon of 20th Century actors to those with screen personas so resonant that their images remain available via plaster busts and lamps still sold in novelty stores decades after their deaths, John Wayne, whose centenary is this year, shares that particular down-market upper-tier.

Ummm, OK. Whatever. That’s his lead, by the way. I’ve never seen a John Wayne lamp, have you? I guess “down-market upper-tier” is a joke.

Wayne’s big-hearted, tough-guy screen personality was just as much a creation as a few others, but the boy who was born Marion Michael Morrison in Iowa 100 years ago, was seeking validation that did not exist in his disturbing home life when he was growing up.

I’m not sure what he’s saying here. That a movie star’s “screen personality” might not be a 100 percent organic reflection of their actual personality, just like “a few” others? Stop the presses.

There’s more, but lord, I don’t have time for this crap. Just know it contains the phrases “mitigation-free,” “near-perfect baroque cohesion” and “an out-of-door sort of spirit.” I don’t think Garry Wills is losing any sleep tonight.

It’s easy to remember when I took my first get-on-a-plane-and-fly-somewhere vacation with a parent. It was the summer of 1968, and my mom took my sister and me to Nassau. (My mom was frugal but not cheap, so we went to the Bahamas in summer.) I was dragged through a number of British forts and other historical sites, but basically it was a beach vacation. I met a girl at the pool about my age, and we played together. She was from Chicago. Later my mother told me her parents were fleeing the expected anarchy of the Democratic Convention, and I guess they had the right idea.

Anyway, I guess we’ve been dragging Kate here and there with us on our travels, but I figure now is when things start to sink in. Taking a toddler to Paris only makes sense if the price of a sitter exceeds the plane fare. Or maybe not. But that’s been my experience.

Since this trip was en famille, we knew certain activities would be inevitable. It’s cruel to take a kid to New York and not let them see Times Square. Which is to say, you are going to the Statue of Liberty. The good news is: It’s not so bad. There’s some actual history there — on Ellis Island, anyway — and even though the security is even stricter than the airports’, it’s worth a visit. Of course, it’s a National Historic Landmark, and hence run by the government, so the emphasis is on learning and explanation. I had a lively chat with a ranger who told me about the new security perimeter, and how the statue’s arm got speared by her crown in the Black Tom explosion, and how even though you can’t climb up to the crown anymore, you probably don’t want to anyway, because it’s hot and smelly inside. Wandering through the accompanying exhibits, Kate found a sister who shares her affliction, the heartbreak of Morton’s Toe. I’d hoped for some dawning realization of the breadth and depth of the immigrant story, but you know kids — it’s all about them.

The same cannot be said of the city’s other big tourist magnet, the Empire State Building. It’s a joke, isn’t it, about how many people live in New York and have never been to the top? Let me tell you something: That’s because New Yorkers are smart. It was undoubtedly the low point of the trip, a money-extraction racket start to finish and anticlimactic to boot. If you ever visit the city and feel the urge to see where King Kong frolicked, look at it from the sidewalk. Or else, this: Catch a cab to the airport and board the next flight to Chicago. From O’Hare, make your way downtown and choose any of the tall buildings with public observatories at the top; I recommend the Hancock tower, although the Sears is nice, too. Go up, look around, take your time, snap some pictures. Then come down, return to the airport, fly back to Manhattan. The elapsed time will be approximately what it would have taken to get through the Empire State line, and you’ll have seen Lake Michigan in the bargain. Trust me on this.

The rest of the trip was pretty free-form. We wandered uptown and down, stumbled onto a movie set, ate ridiculously rich rice pudding, went to the Guggenheim, the Museum of Natural History (very fine, but second banana to the Field, IMO) and a nearby shop called Maxilla & Mandible, where we considered buying a witty bit of taxidermy — a single squirrel severed at the waist, each half adorning one of a pair of bookends. (That is, until we heard the price, which seemed a bit steep for a squirrel.) Hoped for “Hairspray” at the TKTS booth, but settled for “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”

And we met our old pal and colleague Scott at some Belgian beer garden near Washington Square, which was sort of amusing, considering the closest thing we have to a local here in Detroit is the Cadieux Cafe, another Belgian bar. That there were two outside Belgium seemed stunning. Later we wandered to the square and Kate got dragooned into some street theater; a freelance acrobat did a somersault over her head, and I dropped a fiver in his bucket, in thanks for not killing her.

By far, one of the worst things about this new chapter in our lives — with its higher cost of living and unpredictable finances — has been the curtailing of our travel. No matter where you live, you need to get away sometimes and clear all the crap out of your head. Change the scenery. Gaze upon a new landscape. Be here now. And so on. It was a welcome trip, and I needed it.

Bloggage returns tomorrow. We have a new Tim Goeglein column to deconstruct, and fun to be had everywhere.

I give up. I’ve composed, and pitched, at least four posts in the last 24 hours. So consider this a placeholder until I get the kinks out.

Yes, we had a nice time. Look, we exposed our daughter to modern art. She’s still fretting over a video installation that disturbed her. They say that used to happen with Picasso. Whatever.

The trip was fine, but the traveling was hell. Weather bought us an extra night in Newark, aka the Paris of the Chemical-Waste Belt.

More later. Let’s see if this Flickr-blog thing works.

On edit: Not crazy about it.

Friends, every so often the well goes dry. Or rather, the well still has water in it, but another client is thirsty. Or it’s time for vacation. Or something. Anyway, that’s me, today — all three. I have a big project that must go into rubber-burning mode, we’re leaving town for a few days, and honestly, I feel a bit empty of things to say, other than the usual repetition, old stories and snark.

So it’s off to NYC with the fam, and I’m leaving the laptop behind. E-mail might be a possibility, but don’t count on it. If you need to reach me, call me on my cell. If I know you, you already have the number.

We’re not leaving until tomorrow, so I’ll be e-mailable until late tonight.

People have been asking all week: What’s your agenda? Good lord, it’s New York — you don’t need one. You just walk out of the subway and let the wind fill your sails. But seeing as how we’ll have a kid in tow, I expect the agenda will have at least some of the stuff only tourists do — Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, “Hairspray.” I also hope to have a drink with young Zach; now that he’s a tycoon, he can pick up the check. Kate is hoping we catch the Cash Cab. Alan will amble along with us, thinking his thoughts, as is his habit. I’m just hoping we avoid al Qaeda’s Summer o’ Terror Tour. Also, Northwest Airlines’ Summer o’ Five-Hour Runway Delays.

So that’s it. Back Tuesday.

Dispatches from journalism’s Z-Team at the Muncie Star Press. It’s an editorial about the revival of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, and it reads, in part:

Whether a listener’s preference is for Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly (on the right) or Al Frankel and Roger Moore (on the left), no one can argue that in 2007 there aren’t plenty of media outlets to suit every taste.

The name screwups are only part of teh funny, for me. I also like how they felt the need to point out which side of the political spectrum each pair falls on. The Muncie Star Press: Overexplaining the obvious since whenever we hired the current team of editorial writers.

(I’d tip my hat to Reverent & Free, but I don’t wear one.)