Setting Times stories to music: From Cowboy Junkies to Sinatra
I was talking with one of my old correspondents the other day about a writer’s “voice.” Daily journalism may subdue that voice a bit, but in the Great Reads, I feel very Auntie Mame exclamation-pointish on the matter: Give me more!
He sent me Saul Bellow’s thoughts on the subject:
“It seems to issue from the bosom, from a place beneath the breastbone. It is more musical than verbal, and it is the characteristic signature of a person, of a soul.”
Beyond being beautiful, the quote moved me because it echoed a (slightly loopy) theory of mine: that we all have this musical tuning fork inside us. I’ve always envisioned it running vertically between the ribs, much in the same area as Bellow’s “voice.” And when you hear a song that resonates with your tuning fork, it starts humming.
For me, it’s pure pop with a touch of sadness. Example: “Ceremony,” by New Order. (Yes, the New Order version, not the Joy Division one.) I hear the first notes of that, and ... thrum.
Anyway, in these roundups of the week gone by, I’d like to offer the first paragraphs of each Great Read (or, as they’re known in print, Column One) -- maybe they’ll buy your eye and you can settle in for a good weekend read. And you’ll also get the songs that inspired me while editing the stories, or reading them later if my fellow editor Millie Quan ushered them through. A story-song combo!
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Finding his family’s place in history
At long-ago gatherings of Los Angeles historians, Ernest Marquez was simultaneously impressed and dismayed to meet people who knew more about his rancho ancestors than he did.
A curator from the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History could rattle off in order the names of descendants of Marquez’s great-grandfathers, the holders of the Mexican land grant that encompassed Santa Monica and Rustic canyons and parts of Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica. A genealogist could recite details about more than 200 offspring of Los Angeles’ original pueblo families.
Dazzled by their knowledge, Marquez intensified his search to learn about his clan’s past, a saga of ingenuous rancheros who relinquished property to cover taxes, lost it to eminent domain or sold for pennies on the acre to Americans who grew rich carving up the land to house eager arrivals to the Golden State.
Marquez found that historians had inexplicably left his family out of their great books about Old California. So he learned to forage for facts and artifacts at libraries, antique shows and flea markets. He tapped the knowledge of scholars.
Now, at 89, with a number of books to his credit, this white-haired, mustachioed chronicler is racing against his own mortality to write the definitive narrative of his family’s 244-year connection to the region. He’s also seeking a home for the thousands of items he has collected. His goal is to ensure that his people’s contributions are recognized, however belatedly.
“Historians have ignored my family’s role,” he said. “I want to correct that.”
#storysongs combo: “The Call of the Canyon,” by (a very young) Frank Sinatra.
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Camp for stroke survivors enriches lives
At Alison McKenzie’s summer camp, her counselors organize all the usual activities: arts and crafts, dance lessons, Olympics-style competitions. Like at any summer camp, people blossom, lose their fears, find strength they didn’t know they had and make new friends.
McKenzie’s campers are stroke survivors. Some are in wheelchairs, some can move well but struggle to speak clearly, most are somewhere in between. The youngest is still in his 30s.
As rehab costs soar and outpatient services dwindle, the 10-day Stroke Boot Camp at Chapman University is McKenzie’s solution on a shoestring.
Forget sailboats and tennis courts. There are horses — but they’re made from swimming pool noodles and yarn, used for a walking exercise on Western Day. For Around the World Day, the Great Wall of China is a bunch of gym mats and hurdles about a foot off the floor. On Winter Wonderland Day, there’s a pile of yarn “snowballs” ready for a fight.
Most of the supplies are cobbled together from found items and 99 Cent store bargains. Campers bring their lunches.
McKenzie and her colleagues think that the camp’s intensive, interdisciplinary therapy, combined with camaraderie and plenty of silliness, will make a difference in the lives of people who often face lifelong disabilities, isolation and even a second stroke.
“There are a lot of people out there who are not engaged with the world,” she says, “people who could benefit from intervention and are not getting it.”
#storysongs combo: “You Can Get Better,” by Mull Historical Society. I love this band, but have never been able to persuade a single guy to like them. I feel like Prince Charming with Cinderella’s slipper, hoping it will fit someone.
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Russian leech farm supplies an ancient therapy tool
Yelena Titova shakes a jar holding a few dozen leeches writhing in slightly murky water. When one of them sinks to the bottom, motionless, she plunges her hand in and retrieves the late bloodsucker.
She doesn’t mind when the survivors try to latch on to her — in fact, she quite likes it.
Titova’s title is quality-control chief at the International Medical Leech Center, where she has worked for 28 years. But really, she says, she’s a nurturer.
“All our leech growers are women, because you can tend to leeches with love and care only if you have a motherly instinct,” she says. “Men are no good for this job.”
Titova’s breeding facility in this quiet, drab town produces as many as 3 million leeches a year for sale to medical clinics in Russia and nearby countries. Located in an industrial area about 20 miles southeast of Moscow, it’s one of the oldest and largest leech-farming operations in the world.
The creatures may spark revulsion in much of the West, but in Russia, the ancient practice of leech therapy remains a common form of medical care, with tens of thousands of patients undergoing treatment with hirudo medicinalis and their anticoagulant saliva for anything from infertility to high blood pressure.
Because of the higher costs for more modern forms of medication, and a healthy fear of swallowing the bogus pills that have proliferated here, many Russians and their doctors continue to swear by the dark brown worms.
#storysongs combo: “Blood Makes Noise,” by Suzanne Vega. The folksinger rocks out a bit with this one. Not 100% convincing, but I do love the split-second pause in the chorus: “Blood makes ... noise.”
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Father can’t give up the search for his daughter
Chuck Cox was leaving home again. In early summer, he loaded up his black Dodge Ram truck with the big V-8 engine and headed southeast. This time, one of his three surviving adult daughters rode shotgun to answer nonstop calls on his cellphone, with two volunteer private investigators trailing in a van.
Anything to find Susan.
With the certitude of an old investigator, Cox recently sat inside his living room in this Pacific Northwest town, recounting his relentless life on the road, part of the four-year quest to find his third-born daughter.
For a week, after reaching northern Oregon on that June trip, the search party leapfrogged its way along Interstate 84, stopping at every exit on the 485-mile stretch between Pendleton, Ore., and Tremonton, Utah — consulting local police, distributing fliers at gas stations. They examined roadside ditches and woods, trying to think like criminals looking to get rid of a body.
Cox looked strangers in the eyes, shook their hands and introduced himself as the father of Susan Powell, the 28-year-old Utah stockbroker and mother of two whose disappearance in December 2009 made national headlines.
The 58-year-old Cox believes his daughter was abducted and says evidence suggests her husband, Josh Powell, may have disposed of her body somewhere along this mostly isolated stretch of I-84.
The investigator in him surmises that Susan is dead, but the father in him carries on, holding out hope she’s somehow still alive. He wants hikers, road crews and everyone else to be looking for her. “I got a lot of support,” he recalls of the trip. “Most people had heard of Susan. They remembered what happened to her.”
#storysongs combo: “200 More Miles,” by the Cowboy Junkies. “They say that I am crazy, my life wasting on this road/That time will find my dreams scared or dead and cold.”
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South L.A. student finds a different world at Cal
School had always been his safe harbor.
Growing up in one of South Los Angeles’ bleakest, most violent neighborhoods, he learned about the world by watching “Jeopardy” and willed himself to become a straight-A student.
His teachers and his classmates at Jefferson High all rooted for the slight and hopeful African American teenager. He was named the prom king, the most likely to succeed, the senior class salutatorian. He was accepted to UC Berkeley, one of the nation’s most renowned public universities.
A semester later, Kashawn Campbell sat inside a cramped room on a dorm floor that Cal reserves for black students. It was early January, and he stared nervously at his first college transcript.
There wasn’t much good to see.
He had barely passed an introductory science course. In College Writing 1A, his essays — pockmarked with misplaced words and odd phrases — were so weak that he would have to take the class again.
He had never felt this kind of failure, nor felt this insecure. The second term was just days away and he had a 1.7 GPA. If he didn’t improve his grades by school year’s end, he would flunk out.
He tried to stay calm. He promised himself he would beat back the depression that had come in waves those first months of school. He would work harder, be better organized, be more like his roommate and new best friend, Spencer Simpson, who was making college look easy.
On a nearby desk lay a small diary he recently filled with affirmations and goals. He thumbed through it.
“I can do this! I can do this!” he had written. “Let the studying begin! … It’s time for Kashawn’s Comeback!”
This is the story of Kashawn Campbell’s freshman year.
#storysongs combo: “It’s Hard to Get Around the Wind,” by Alex Turner. When he’s with his band the Arctic Monkeys, I can take Turner only in smallish doses. But here: sigh! I listen to this short soundtrack from the movie “Submarine” at least once every few weeks – and over and over when I was editing this story.
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If you have ideas for story-song pairings of your own, tweet the title and artist to @karihow or @LATimesColumn1 with the hashtag #storysongs.
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