Newsletter: Great Reads: ‘Travels With Charley’ — and with Murphy
Hi there. I'm Kari Howard, and I edit the Great Reads (a.k.a. Column Ones) for the Los Angeles Times.
Two of my biggest loves are narrative journalism and music, and I'm lucky that my days are filled with both: When reading the stories, I get inspired by songs I think fit the article's theme — a soundtrack.
Here are the Great Reads (plus some lowercase great reads) of the past week, plus their soundtracks.
A road trip into the drylands of California
This week we launched one of the cooler projects I've been involved in recently: a road trip across California in this hot, dry summer of drought. Reporter Diana Marcum, who won the feature-writing Pulitzer for her drought narratives last year, has teamed up with marvelous photographer Robert Gauthier. Her water-loving dog, Murphy, is going along for the ride. The launch story had that combination of laughter and sadness that Diana does so well. The last line of this passage will stay with me: "Memories cling to a place like photos on a refrigerator (the truest shrine in most homes). People remember how things used to look and it reminds them of other things that used to be." I think that's going to be a theme in the trip (not that I'd dare predict anything for a project this unpredictable).
Marta Zepeda of Lathrop sits along a row of boat docks on the shore of Bass Lake. The docks are normally floating on about 10 feet of water, but after years of drought, more and more have nothing but sand to rest on.
Marta Zepeda of Lathrop sits along a row of boat docks on the shore of Bass Lake. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The soundtrack: "Airwaves," by Ray LaMontagne. Love his husky voice and the '70s California vibe of this as he sings, "It feels so good to get myself out of the city." This is one of those songs where I've created a Spotify playlist of just one song several times over so I don't have to hit repeat.
'Game of Thrones' meets Comic-Con. Enough said?
It's hard to imagine a better combination than the obsessed-over "Game of Thrones," the madness that is Comic-Con and the wonderful writing of Mary McNamara. I mean, this lead: "Winter came to Comic-Con in the form of 15 black Escalades with a police escort." Mary spent the day with the epic-sized cast of the HBO show -- or, as she wrote, "10 fine actors, one director, an executive producer, 20 members of network media and talent relations, 10 groomers, makeup and hair stylists, more than a dozen assorted managers, personal assistants and friends, and, of course, some lovely but very serious security guys." Loved the bit about the elevator with a bloody floor, which was for the "Walking Dead" gang but worked just as well for "GOT."
"Game of Thrones" cast members get photobombed by Maisie Williams, right, at San Diego Comic-Con. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The soundtrack: "(They Long to Be) Close to You," by Isaac Hayes. So I went to a party last weekend and talked to the DJ for 10 minutes about Isaac Hayes. That's not weird, is it? This is a perfect example of his genius: taking a sweetly romantic Bacharach/David song and making it sexy.
The surfer bullies of Palos Verdes Estates
So many of our stories could be movies. Like this one by Garrett Therolf, about rich, middle-aged surfers who harass "outsiders" daring to encroach on their turf (or surf, as the case may be) in Palos Verdes Estates. They call themselves the Bay Boys, and they don't want anyone else catching the perfect wave in Lunada Bay, whose waves famously unspool as one ridable ribbon. "They are pretty much grown men in little men's mind-set," one person says. "It literally is like a game with kids on a schoolyard to them, and they don't want you playing on their swing set."
A surfer rides a big wave at Lunada Bay, where a local group called the Bay Boys keeps away outsiders.
A surfer rides a big wave at Lunada Bay, where a local group called the Bay Boys keeps away outsiders. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The soundtrack: "Heroes and Villains," by the Beach Boys. OK, so it's an obvious choice, but I'm not going to fight it. Brian Wilson is a beautiful freak of music nature.
How some blind people use sounds to 'see'
It's hard for me to imagine how the mind could work this quickly: You make a clicking sound with your tongue, and in the split second it takes to bounce off an object, you figure out whether the object is solid -- like a wall, say -- or scattered, like the foliage of a tree. That's the thinking behind an unorthodox movement to teach blind people to navigate using those clicks for orientation. It's a human version of the echolocation that bats use. So cool!
Ryo Hirosawa, right, pauses to snap a photo with instructor Brian Bushway during a lesson in echolocation to help him examine the environment. Both Hirosawa and Bushway are blind.
Ryo Hirosawa, right, pauses to snap a photo with instructor Brian Bushway during a lesson in echolocation to help him examine the environment. Both Hirosawa and Bushway are blind. (Robert Gauthier, Los Angeles Times)
The soundtrack: "Sound and Vision," by David Bowie. I'm a moderately big Bowie fan but don't tend to listen to the Berlin Trilogy that this is on. Am a sucker instead for "Young Americans," side one. (Yes, lower brow.)
Rival test-fixing mafias — a crazy scandal with a body count
Not many doctors working for a state health department in India get bodyguards. But not many get death threats for blowing the whistle on a massive test-cheating scandal with a growing body count. Whistle-blowers, such as Anand Rai, say that tens of millions of dollars exchanged hands to rig the tests that help determine university slots and civil service jobs. The scandal has grown even more explosive in recent weeks with a string of mysterious deaths. Rai says he won't be cowed by the deaths. When a staffer appeared in his office with glasses of water, he remarked, almost casually, how easy it would be to slip poison into a drink. "You wouldn't even know if it was dissolved," he said.
Because of space and furniture problems at Subhash Higher Secondary School near Badaganpati area, an exam invigilator allowed two examinees to sit on a single bench during a state board exam in Indore, India.
Because of space and furniture problems two examinees are allowed to sit on a single bench during a state board exam in Indore, India. (Hindustan Times)
The soundtrack: "Cheat," by the Clash. Language alert for tender ears: There's an Anglo-Saxon word in the opening bars. But such a great, angry song. Classic line: "Don't use the rules/they're not for you/they're for the fools."
What I'm reading
Want to read a really sweet love story? Click on this. It tells the story of Bucky Bachner and Selma Nadel, and a romance that started in the summer of 1939 in the Bronx. The softly looping turns of the piece totally charmed me. Kudos to the New York Times for its "Summer of Love" series, offering readers a break from hard news. Even the logo for the series -- two pink popsicles leaning against each other -- is sweet.
The London Review of Books is a reliable source for great reads, and what Sinatra fan wouldn't click on a story called "Swoonatra"?The piece is ostensibly a review of the "London" boxed set (which is tremendous), but it's really a deep look at Sinatra. On his sex appeal: "But he obviously gave off some subtle radar peep of rapt carnality, equal parts vulnerable boy-child and lazily virile roué." On his phrasing (the best thing about Sinatra, I think): "With the line 'the mere idea of you' he draws out the word 'mere' as though it were the sweetest qualifier in the world: dissolving 'mere' into 'idea' he makes the very idea of 'mere' sound transcendent. It is subtly erotic and boldly unshowy." And the writer and I have one of the same desert island discs: "Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim."
What's on my bedside table
Once I knew that Diana Marcum was taking Murphy on the road with her for the drought project, I bought a 1962 copy of John Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley," with the name Connie Ramirez written neatly in pencil over the hand-drawn map on the inside cover. I've turned down every other page because they had great lines. Example: "I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation -- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something."
What's on my turntable
Although I spend most of my time listening with headphones to Spotify, sometimes I want to hear the needle touching down on vinyl. That's why I have a turntable in my office — and two at home (one inside, and a battery-powered one outside when the weather's fine — which it usually is in Southern California). This week's vinyl: "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad," by Tammy Wynette. Picked this up at my favorite thrift store for 50 cents last weekend. Who wouldn't buy an album with that title, and with her blond beehive?
Want to chat? Have a great idea for a Great Read? I'm @karihow on Twitter and kari.howard@latimes.com on email.
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