Man recovering after hitting cow with snowmobile

There are occasionally news headlines that while engaging interest and raising questions, also threaten to be anticlimactic when one reads the full story. Consider the following example from this morning:

Man recovering after hitting cow with snowmobile

Certainly this headline provokes curiosity: What were the circumstances of this incident? Was there intent involved, either on the part of the man or the cow? Does “with snowmobile” refer to the man or to the cow? If the man were the one “with snowmobile,” was he riding it, or did he just pick it up and whack the cow with it? Did the cow retaliate? What were the nature and extent of the man’s injuries? And was the cow hurt? There are any number of intriguing possibilities here. But of course if one reads through the brief story that follows, those possibilities become rather tepid:

Authorities say a northeast Iowa man continues to recover after a weekend accident where he struck a cow while riding a snowmobile. The accident happened Christmas evening in rural Fayette County north of Clermont.

A Ski-Doo snowmobile driven by 49-year-old Kevin Mack of Fayette was southbound on a snowmobile trail when a cow crossed onto the trail and was struck by Mack. Mack was taken by ambulance to the West Union hospital to be treated for unspecified injuries. The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate the accident.

So it was a riding accident, not a bar fight, and while we know a Ski-Doo snowmobile was the model involved, we don’t know what the “unspecified injuries” were to Kevin Mack, let alone what, if any, injuries were suffered by the unnamed cow. I sometimes think it would be much more entertaining – and informative – to just read the headlines, skip the stories altogether, and let my imagination create a much more satisfying world.

Memory and Literary Nonfiction

I have a hard time tolerating those literary nonfiction writers (and teachers) who demand that every detail of a personal essay – every image, every piece of dialogue, every thought or emotion at the time – be precisely accurate, as it actually happened, as if it were a finely pixilated digital photograph. The “literature of reality” (as it is sometimes called, begging the question) requires devotion to a photographic (and phonographic and aromatic) rendition of experience. (This is an issue that has been actively engaged in the genre for at least a few decades; the most prominent being Lee Gutkin, the author, teacher, and editor of Creative Nonfiction.) Consider this passage from Jonathon Starke’s “The Wound” (Brevity 34):

I looked from the horse over to my brother, who was holding the trailer door open with a hip, both hands gripped together at his stomach. He was seven, two years older than me, but always afraid to get near something like this. I stepped closer to the horse.

. . .

Teddy walked over. He ground his teeth together so hard I could see the muscles in his jaw wriggle. He took the bucket up high in his hands. I didn’t know what was coming, what he was capable of, so I tucked my head in my arms and closed my eyes. Teddy growled and dumped the water over me. Then he threw the bucket into the dirt and took me by the arm. Teddy dragged me over to the horse with the stranger and the other men right behind.

"This funny?” he said, letting go of my arm and taking hold of the horse’s reins. He jerked hard on them so the horse’s neck was pulled. “You think this is goddamn funny?”

No doubt the title of the essay, “The Wound,” is meant as a metaphor for the traumatic effect of this experience on the then five-year-old author. But could it have really been so traumatic as to etch it onto his immature mind in such perfect detail for all of these years? How his brother was holding the trailer door open, gripping his stomach? How Teddy was grinding his teeth, growling, tossing the bucket into the dirt? How Teddy jerked the reins and said exactly the words “You think this is goddamn funny?”

Perhaps. But I seriously doubt it, if only based on my own memories of being five years old. Or rather memory. All I have from that age is one fleeting image of lying down on one of those woven cotton mats for a nap in kindergarten. The next memory I retain (and a more traumatic one) is from two years later, running from our duplex after getting into a fight with my mother (over what I have no idea), punching my fist through the front picture window, and fleeing down the alley, only to finally, at the end of the block, see the blood dripping from my hand. What happened after that, I don’t recall. I do, though, still have a scar on the back of my right hand.

Again, perhaps Starke has a more vivid memory of his childhood than me (and, I suspect, you). But my guess would be that he would explain his narrative as being “true to the spirit of the experience,” as most writers, teachers, and students of literary nonfiction would probably agree. Reality – and thus “the literature of reality” – is elusive in memory. Recall is selective (personal) from the outset. And over time it foregrounds and suppresses, smooths and roughs, illuminates and obscures. The literary (or creative) of nonfiction is the aesthetic embellishment of memory, of experience, true not just to the spirit of the experience but more important to the point of remembering – and relating – the experience in the first place.

Snow Storm

I ventured out this morning for my daily four-mile sojourn at the height of this morning’s snow storm, perfect weather – 26 degrees, no wind, a heavy light snow. Quiet, little traffic, few others out, the occasional whiff of wood smoke. It’s one of my favorite times to be out walking. Of course, I’m sure that some who happened to be looking out their windows and saw me, bundled and trudging through the blizzard, thought me mad. Certainly my wife did as she asked upon my return, snow falling from my cap, ice caking my beard, if I had “really been out in that.” Yes, I had been out in that, through that. I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but I can understand why European Christians chose the cold blanket of winter to celebrate their savior’s birth (despite all evidence that if it happened at all, it happened in the heat and dust of summer). Winter may well be a conventional symbol for death, but for me, especially when I can enjoy the comfort of a heavy snow without (as today) being required to drive in it, the season becomes wonderfully enlivening.

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Snow-Storm"

Christmas Tree

We put up our Christmas tree last night. By “we” I mean, of course, my wife. For our nearly 25 years of marriage, the putting up of the Christmas was more or less a family affair. When the kids were still living with us, we would all head out to the tree lot to find the just perfect tree. (One year we actually went to a tree farm in the fall, marked our tree, and then returned a couple of weeks before Christmas to cut it and transport it back to our house. Why we only did that once I don’t recall, though I imagine it had to do with differences of opinion, cursing, and threats of an angry Santa.) When the kids were gone, my wife and I continued to share the responsibility of selecting the perfect (at least on the lot) tree. But once home, our responsibilities diverged: I was the one who would haul the tree from the car into the house, saw off the trunk and trim the lower branches to fit the stand, position in the house (floor or table), and string the lights aesthetically around the outer branches. My wife would clear the corner or table for the tree, hold the door as I brought the tree in, retreat to some distant vestibule as I struggled and sweat and cursed to fit the tree in the stand as straight as a crooked trunk could be, and then return to adorn the tannenbaum with the mass of ornaments, mostly personal, not commercial, we’ve collected over the decades. And I would offer encouragement, sitting in my chair, drinking a beer.

Three years ago, we entered a new, more enlightened era – we bought an artificial tree. By “we” I mean, of course, I. What a revelation! No more traipsing through the frigid night of the Christmas tree lot, no more hauling the tree in from the car, sawing off the trunk, trimming the limbs, muscling it into the stand, trying to get it straight. Note that all of these tasks were mine before. Now all that’s left to me is the stringing of the lights, offering encouragement, and drinking beer. And last year I had the brilliant idea of just leaving the string on lights on the tree – no reason to take them off – so my only obligation to the ritual (though the residue of the tradition remains) is to drag the tree down from the attic and place it on the table. And have a beer.

O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Thy leaves are so unchanging!

WikiLeaks

What I’ve found curious about the WikiLeaks story of the past few weeks is how the focus – at least in the U.S. – has been on whether the online publisher of the leaks (Julian Assange) is a champion of transparency, or whether he should be hanged, disemboweled, beheaded, drawn and quartered, and what remains left for the crows. Very little attention – at least in the U.S. – has been on what is revealed in the diplomatic cables leaked. For that you have to go to foreign outlets such as the London Guardian, where you can find a log of the revelations from the leaks, arranged by date and newspaper (note the dearth of U.S. papers). Here are just a few of the revelations that I wish had been reported on and discussed in this country:

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• Saudi Arabia put pressure on the US to attack Iran. Other Arab allies also secretly agitated for military action against Tehran.

• Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.

• China is ready to accept Korean unification and is distancing itself from North Korea which it describes as behaving like a "spoiled child". Cables say Kim Jong-il is a "flabby old chap" losing his grip and drinking.

• US and British diplomats fear that Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme could lead to terrorists obtaining fissile material, or a devastating nuclear exchange with India. Also, small teams of US special forces have been operating secretly inside Pakistan's tribal areas, with Pakistani government approval. And the US concluded that Pakistani troops were responsible for a spate of extra-judicial killings in the Swat Valley and tribal belt, but decided not to comment publicly.

• The US ambassador to Pakistan said the Pakistani army is covertly sponsoring four major militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban and the Mumbai attackers, Laskar-e-Taiba (LeT), and "no amount of money" will change the policy. Also, US diplomats discovered hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Pakistan earmarked for fighting Islamist militants was not used for that purpose.

• Zardari claimed that the brother of Pakistan's opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, "tipped off" LeT about impending UN sanctions after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, allowing the group to empty its bank accounts. British diplomats feared India would respond with force to the attacks but the US thought the UK was "over-reacting".

• Russia is a "virtual mafia state" with rampant corruption and scant separation between the activities of the government and organised crime. Vladimir Putin is accused of amassing "illicit proceeds" from his time in office, which various sources allege are hidden overseas. And he was likely to have known about the operation in London to murder the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, Washington's top diplomat in Europe alleged.

• British and US officials colluded to manoeuvre around a proposed ban on cluster bombs, allowing the US to keep the munitions on British territory, regardless of whether a treaty forbidding their use was implemented. Parliament was kept in the dark about the secret agreement, approved by then-foreign secretary David Miliband.

• One of the biggest objectives at the US embassy in Madrid over the past seven years has been trying to get the criminal case dropped against three US soldiers accused of the killing of a Spanish television cameraman in Baghdad. Telecinco cameraman José Couso was killed on 8 April 2003 during a tank shelling of the Hotel Palestine where he and other journalists were staying while they were covering the Iraq war.

•The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is erratic, emotional and prone to believing paranoid conspiracy theories, according to frustrated diplomats and foreign statesmen. He has also been accused by his own ministers of complicity in criminal activity, including ordering the physical intimidation of the top official in charge of leading negotiations with the Taliban.

•Afghanistan emerges as a land where bribery, extortion and embezzlement are the norm. Describing the likely lineup of Afghanistan's new cabinet last January, the US embassy noted that the agriculture minister, Asif Rahimi, "appears to be the only minister that was confirmed about whom no allegations of bribery exist".

• A potential "environmental disaster" was kept secret by the US last year when a large consignment of highly enriched uranium in Libya came close to cracking open and leaking radioactive material into the atmosphere.

• Senior Obama administration officials say many millions of dollars are flowing largely unimpeded to extremist groups worldwide and they have received little help in stopping this from allies in the Middle East.

• The cables reveal that a week after Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, assured a top US state department official that his country was not sending weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Obama administration lodged a confidential protest accusing Damascus of doing precisely that.

• The US and China worked together to prevent European nations from reaching an agreement at last year's climate summit in Copenhagen.

• Revelations that US officials put pressure on Germany not to arrest Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in the 2003 kidnapping of a German citizen mistakenly identified as a terrorist.

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This is just a small number of the cable revelations. Most of the revelations aren’t revelations at all, but rather things we all knew already (Putin’s the real power in Russia, Gadafi’s a nut). And that is the main problem with the leaks, the scatter-shot and massiveness of them. It would have been much more discerning for WikiLeaks (or world newspapers) to much more selectively release the cables according to the topics (Afghanistan, Iraq, China, etc.). As a result of the “dump,” the story (at least in this country) became the “crime” of the leaks and not the content of them.