After my father retired in his sixties, he pursued a number of hobbies, one of which was wood-working. On my window sill, sit a few of the candlesticks he made in his workshop in Florida.
These few pieces currently make my unfinished room in California feel more like a home.
So what is “home” anyway? Anyone who’s moved around a lot in their life knows what I’ve come to believe, which is that home is a place that summons your memories. For some people that can be almost anyplace, actually.
In the near future, I hope to hang some paintings in here as well. Some were made by my daughters and there’s plenty of wall space to accommodate them.
Whether the huge lithograph that hung in my living room in San Francisco for many years will fit here is unknown. It’s a giant print of the cover of Rolling Stone from the 1975 edition of “The Inside Story” of Patty Hearst and the SLA by Howard Kohn and David Weir.
That story has followed me around for over 45 years, wherever I go or whatever I do. When you produce something like that early in your career, you can never quite get over it, beyond it, or away from it, for better or worse.
But from a strictly journalistic perspective, it was just another story, albeit a significant one as far as everyone else was concerned. To my partner and me, it was basically (please forgive this metaphor) an animal we hunted for an extended period.
It had left tracks; we followed the tracks and when it came into clear view we bagged it.
Lots of people today don’t like that way of describing investigative reporting. They prefer something more civilized, I suppose, but Howard and I grew up in the country and we were familiar with hunting from an early age.
All of this is a bit hard to translate to people who grew up in urban environments. And it sounds a lot more brutal than it actually was in practice.
But I’ve never stopped describing it that way, even though it cost me a job in academia once upon a time. (More on that in my memoir, if I ever write it.)
Throughout most of our history as a species, homo sapiens existed as a hunter-gatherer animal. Today almost nobody lives that way, but a few of the traditions, instincts and skills from that period of our evolution persist.
I suspect more than few of my fellow old investigative journalists agree with me.
TODAY’s NEWS:
Democracy is on the brink of disaster. For voters, it’s politics as usual. (WP)
Cyprus reportedly discovers a Covid variant that combines omicron and delta (CNBC)
As More Teachers’ Unions Push for Remote Schooling, Parents Worry. So Do Democrats. — Chicago teachers have voted to go remote. Other unions are agitating for change. For Democrats, who promised to keep schools open, the tensions are a distinctly unwelcome development. (NYT)
Closing schools again won’t stop omicron. It’ll just hurt kids. (WP)
Classes for Chicago students are in limbo as teachers, mayor wrangle over omicron (NPR)
Exhausted parents face another wave of shutdowns in schools (WP)
U.S., Japan agree to keep troops on base to curb Covid spread (AP)
School board race shows how extremists on far right are shifting to local campaigns for power (WP)
Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs (Financial Times)
No More Working for Jerks! — For almost two years, couches have been cubicles. Colleagues are instant message avatars. And people are reconsidering how much they should have to put up with from a boss. (NYT)
Republican leaders bar journalists from Iowa Senate floor, worrying press advocates (WP)
New texts reveal the influence of Fox News hosts on Trump’s White House (WP)
Taliban Detain Prominent Critic, Intensifying Crackdown on Dissent —
The Taliban have arrested Faizullah Jalal, a Kabul university professor who gained national fame for berating a senior official on television, in a sign of the intensifying crackdown on critics of Afghanistan’s new regime. (WSJ)
Baby lost in chaos of Afghanistan airlift found, returned to family (Reuters)
Kazakhstan detains 6,000 in security forces crackdown after protests (Financial Times)
A Soldier Sent a Letter to His Mom in 1945. It Was Just Delivered. — A letter from a 22-year-old U.S. Army sergeant serving in Germany was finally delivered last month to his widow in Woburn, Mass. (NYT)
Eccentric Exoplanet Discovered: Sub-Neptune Planet Orbiting in “Habitable Zone” of Red Dwarf Star (SciTechDaily)
Child Weirded Out After Bumping Into Teacher Outside Laptop (The Onion)
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