"I love all of you!"

Photos by Stacy LaBarge. Caption from Esquire magazine: Top left: Ruins of the Fastrip in the immediate aftermath. The people in the middle are waiting for others to emerge out of the cooler, which was smashed almost to the ground. To the far right, Corey, in white, is helping Isaac, who lost a flip-flip, steer clear of wreckage. Top right: A man walking on East Twentieth Street toward downtown. All life looked destroyed for miles. Bottom: The group reunited five weeks after the tornado on the spot at East Twentieth Street and Duquense where the Fastrip and cooler once stood. The lot has been cleared and a new Fastrip has been built on the existing foundation and footprint. 

"Heavenly Father!" "I love you all!" "I love everyone!" "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" "I love all of you!" by Luke Dittrich
Esquire, October 2011

So, I'm still doing that thing where I'm catching up on all of the magazines I haven't read in the past year or so. I picked this issue up and as I started reading, I realized I read most of the stories before (i.e. Chris Jones' profile on Justin Timberlake was pretty excellent), and I couldn't remember why I saved it until I got to Luke Dittrich's story about 24 survivors of the tornado that tore through the town of Joplin, Mo. in May 2011.

I always meant to read it, and more so after Dittrich won the National Magazine Award for it in the feature writing category earlier this year.

I can't say enough about Luke Dittrich ... I am in just complete awe of his work. This is a sentiment shared by many in the industry so I am hardly unique in saying this, but still, I must say it.

Any time I doubt I want to do this or need to remember why, I just need to read and remember his work—his meticulous, careful, careful reporting, the phrasing of his words, the storytelling, his ability to grab the reader until the story's done.

Must read.

Update 11/24/12

About a week after I wrote this blog post, Luke Dittrich e-mailed to tell me he loved & appreciated what I wrote. I freaked out. I remember I was having a crappy day, and I received it at the end before I left for work and it just made everything better, instantly. I'm not sure how he found my post (I think my tagging his name had to do with it?) but him e-mailing me to tell him I made his day was definitely the coolest thing to happen that week!

"There was a time when you couldn't get me out of there."

The Silent Season of a Hero by Gay Talese

So excited to tackle this book. The only story from this collection I've read is "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." Really liked this one about a few days in the life of Joe DiMaggio, who 25 years after the peak of his career became a pretty lonely, solitary, sad man.

"Everywhere he goes the questions seem the same, as if he has some special vision into the future of new heroes, and everywhere he goes, too, older men grab his hand and feel his arm and predict that he could still go out there and hit one, and the smile on DiMaggio's face is genuine. He tries hard to remain as he was--he diets, he takes steam baths, he is careful; and flabby men in the locker rooms of golf clubs sometimes steal peeks at him when he steps out of the shower, observing the tight muscles across his chest, the flat stomach, the long sinewy legs. He has a young man's body, very pale and little hair; his face is dark and lined, however, parched by the sun of several seasons. Still he is always an impressive figure at banquets such as this--an immortal, sportswriters called him, and that is how they have written about him and others like him, rarely suggesting that such heroes might ever be prone to the ills of mortal men, carousing, drinking, scheming; to suggest this would destroy the myth, would disillusion small boys, would infuriate rich men who own ball clubs and to whom baseball is a business dedicated to profit and in pursuit of which they trade mediocre players' flesh as casually as boys trade players' pictures on bubble-gum cards."

"The reporters waited silently then DiMaggio walked slowly into the cage and picked up Mantle's bat. He took his position at the plate, but obviously it was not the classic DiMaggio stance; he was holding the bat about two inches from the knob, his feet were not so far apart, and, when DiMaggio took a cut at Benson's first pitch, fouling it, there was none of that ferocious follow through, the blurred bat did not come whipping all the way around, the No. 5 was not stretched full across his broad back.
Di Maggio fouled Benson's second pitch, then he connected solidly with the third, the fourth, the fifth. He was just meeting the ball easily, however, not smashing it, and Benson called out, "I didn't know you were a choke hitter, Joe."
"I am now," DiMaggio said, getting ready for another pitch.
He hit three more squarely enough, and then he swung again and there was a hollow sound.
"Ohhh," DiMaggio yelled, dropping his bat, his fingers stung. "I was waiting for that one." He left the batting cage rubbing his hands together. The reporters watched him. Nobody said anything. Then DiMaggio said to one of them, not in anger nor in sadness, but merely as a simply stated fact, "There was a time when you couldn't get me out of there."

Franco smiles his ungrudgingly adolescent smile, a grin as terminally satisfying as the last healthy squeeze on a tube of toothpaste.

Me and my friend Kathleen laughed to the point of tears and aching stomachs the other day from reading this list of the 25 funniest analogies.

As I read through Esquire's September 2010 issue, I noticed this line from Tom Chiarella's "The Itinerant Artist," a profile on James Franco:

"When asked what he's reading, Franco smiles his ungrudgingly adolescent smile, a grin as terminally satisfying as the last healthy squeeze on a tube of toothpaste." (p. 124).

Wonderful.