Walkin' in Memphis

Now I've finally learned how to add links here (duh) I'm going to briefly discuss two radically different pieces I have published over the past seven years, both at Salon.

The first is a reported piece from Biloxi, last fall, in the wake of Katrina.

Everything's Broken

It was my attempt to bring attention to a forgotten corner of America. Mississippi is not only one of our poorest and blackest states, it is little understood by people in places like New York and San Francisco. The devastation visited upon Mississippi's Gulf Coast has set the area back at leaast half a generation. No matter how many times I or other writers mention these facts, there is little hope the situation will improve there fast enough to help the most vulnerable hurricane victims recover any semblance of the lives they had before. The only good news out of the area lately is that a trial is underway that may help reveal how insurance companies screwed residents by labeling the hurricane's wind-driven water surge a "flood."

***

As to what any of this has to do with that great song title referenced up top, the answer is nothing at all. I just like that song a lot, that's all...

Read more here: Trial Report.

***

The second of my articles was a profile of Rolling Stone editor, publisher, and owner Jann Wenner.

Wenner's World.

One of my oldest and best friends on the planet, Howard Kohn, called this piece a "love letter" to Jann, and noted that it was one of the kindest articles he'd ever seen about the notoriously difficult Wenner. Jann saw it differently, saying it was mean-spirited. He refused me all access to his files and records, rendering my book contract to write his autobiography a difficult task, at best.

But Jann also told me something that made me sad, and that is, because this link persistently showed up as the top link on Google, his young sons had read it, and he worried they would think ill of him based on what I wrote. If this is true, it was never my intent. I admit the piece is snarky in tone, but Howard was right too -- it is a compasionate portrait of a difficult man. I suspect Jann's sons are fully aware of what I am talking about.