What I Did Over My Summer Vacation by Meg Donahue

Summer is a bit of a dead time in the department. And by "a bit of" read "a massively." The boss had it in mind that a few of the staff would do different rotations with our partners during the summer as we had time to spare. So that would mean we would spend a week in the photo department of the paper, a week with the radio station, a week with the cops reporters, so on and thusly. Someone called it a way to develop "Cross Departmental Competency" which was a far fancier term than what I was calling it. The Holy-Hell-They're-Going-to-Find-Out-I-Have-No-Idea-What-I'm-Doing-and-Ultimately-Judge-Me-Harshly-Because-of-it Rotation Week was a tiny bit longer of a term and required a big gulp of air halfway through saying it before you could continue, but it was apt as to the panic I had before I started my first rotation.

First rotation,  radio news and features.

You know how people criticize Aaron Sorkin by saying that no one talks in that clipped-quick-one-step-ahead-walking-and-talking-because-I'm-so-busy-I don't-have-time-to-sit-and-talk-because-damnit-I- have-places-to-go dialogue he writes? Fun Fact: It turns out that that is the native language of radio journalists on deadline.

My first assignment went by in a hazy streak of press release, script, voicing and AP style. I was, and remain, positive that it is the worst thing that ever took to the air. Like the Hindenburg of spot news. Ah, but my second assignment was a feature and I know from features. I've covered a decent amount of zoning board meetings and city council meetings but for me that was news, never a story. For me, stories live in the odd and overlooked corners of what doesn't get covered. Being a fan of the odd and overlooked, I naturally was drawn to features where these two flourished.

Before we go any further, I suppose a little back story is in order here. Macon, Georgia is known as the City of Churches. It has over 200 different churches within the city. There are only two mosques. Being as it was Ramadan, I did a story on being Muslim in Macon.

The good thing about journalism is that you are allowed to have short bursts of obsession. For that week Islam was my obsession.

I know the Arabic names of the five daily prayers all Muslims must pray. I know all the synonyms for "Mosque." I know the reasoning behind the fasting of Ramadan. I know they use a lunar, rather than a solar calendar to decide on what day Ramadan will start. I know the life stories of many of the congregants of the mosque. I know the stories they weren't sure they wanted to tell.

Of all this information, maybe 20% went into the actual story. But it was the best 20%.

Then comes the sound editing. We will go into that adventure in the next blog post. Also, I will post the story itself, so you get to see what all this panic and hard work culminated in.    

An Open Letter to My Son of a Bitch Downstairs Neighbor Who Hits His Dog 

Dear Son of a Bitch Downstairs Neighbor,

My name is Meg and I am the person who hates you most in the world. Well, that's not entirely true. You see, I have a strong inclination that your dog (the one you keep out on a two foot by nine foot apartment deck, rain or shine) that he may be the one who hates you most in the world, and with good reason.

When you first moved in you kept me up during the NBA finals shouting about whatever it is people shout about during NBA finals games (you see, I don't care about sports. Just another reason you and I will never be friends). I wrote it off to apartment living and wished you the best. I don't mind that it sounds like you are constantly moving furniture around. Again, we live in rather close quarters and what else could be expected. I mean, it's not like these walls and floors are made of oak, right? 

But what I cannot and will not abide by is your abuse and neglect of your dog. You see, your dog and I have a special bond formed by our shared torment by you. Sadly, the dog is dependent on you for love and food and is at your mercy. Happily, I am not and can afford to tell you the truth. Today, when it rained, I came home to the second saddest howl I've ever heard an animal make. (The saddest howl I've heard was when my own dog was having a stroke. I never want to hear anything like that again.) God knows how long your poor dog had been out in the rain and wind. I came out to hear you slap it with the flat of your hand saying, "Stop it. Stop it." I realized then that not only were you cruel, you are stupid as well. 

I called over my deck with an overly-polite, "Sir? Excuse me, sir?" I was going to bottle my rage and in a laid-back, friendly manner remind you that animals are not to be left out on the apartment decks. In my mind I hoped that you would say to me, "Oh really, I had no idea." Then I would gently tell you about the dog park and how maybe you should take your dog there and how much fun it would be and maybe slip a few pointers in there on how to be a responsible dog owner as well. You wouldn't even realize I'd done it, but you would leave our conversation a changed and kinder man. Instead, you didn't hear me and went back inside. Not surprisingly, my little idea that I was flattering myself with about how I could change you in a five-minute conversation just didn't pan out. Then I started to actually think. 

Maybe you don't know any better way. Maybe when you howled someone hit you and said "Stop it. Stop it." If that's how it was then I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry that no one stepped in and tried to protect you from the cruel and the stupid. Even if I understand where you got your warped reasoning and you have my compassion I still have to try to protect your dog from you. I'm sure you understand. 

Tomorrow I will speak to the apartment manager and call the Humane Society. Hell, I'll repel down the apartment wall and kidnap that dog before I let you hit him again. 

I think you love your dog. I think you have a vague emotional attachment to him that you call 'love.' You just don't know yet that 'love' is just another word for 'responsibility.'  

How I read and why

I take my reading very seriously; I arrange it by seasons. 

Spring is a great time for French writers like Choderlos and Balzac (but not George Sand, she's dead to me. I'll explain another time) and 19th century English writers like the Brontes

Summer is all about the Southern writers and others who live in a humid climate, like Rushdie, O'Conner,Garcia Marquez and Faulkner. 

In the fall I try to go to big American writers like Vonnegut, Ford, Hemingway - although a lot of his stuff takes place in Spain so it works for summer too- Fitzgerald, you know, Americana. 

Winter is the right time. "The right time for what?" you ask. It's the right time for Russians! Chekov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, it's all good. I have found that short stories and poetry are seasonless, they're like a cardigan sweater that way.

Being that it is winter I am attempting (for the fourth winter in a row) to finish The Brothers Karamazov. Don't get me wrong, it's good. No, it's great in the way Russian Lit ought to be great. It is dense with ethical questions like, "To whom do we owe our loyalty, what does it mean to be wise and what, exactly, is love? Can we love on a global level but hate on a very specific level?" Good stuff, right? So why has it taken me four winters to get through and still no end in sight? I don't have a good answer for that. I'd like to say something amazing like, "It has to be savored," but that would be a lie and as someone who has reread the first two hundred pages of "The Brothers Karamazov" FOUR(!) times I can tell you that one of the main themes (I think) is not to believe the lies you tell yourself. 

The truth is, that as I get older I find those ethical questions that I found so fascinating in the abstract, downright annoying in the practical. I think that if you are over the age of thirty you have wondered what love really is. Is it the 'only wanting the best for the other,' or is it the passionate self-destructing flame-out love that that is such a trope (and perhaps for good reason). Can one exist at the same time with the other? As for where our loyalty should lie, is it with the people who created something, or with the thing itself? Example: You get a job, with it comes a mentor. The mentor is fired, do you quit your job?

See? Most everyone has had either these thoughts or these experiences in their lives. Why is it we need to read about some miserable family, in miserable Russia not having the answers either? 

The only reason I can think of is that we don't read fiction for answers. We go to science or math for that. We read fiction (or at least I read fiction) for meaning. Meaning isn't the same as answers. It isn't as cut and dry as that. Meaning changes from one situation or one group of people to the next. It's 5=3 and it is no less right than 5=5. 

So I will trudge back to Russia where Dimitri and Alex and the Elder Zossima have been waiting for me patiently since last winter, snow filling up their boots. I will listen quietly in the background while Dimitri rages about what he is owed and Alex tries to love his family and hope, just hope, that some of the meaning of their story will lend meaning to my own.