A Visit with Patra McSharry Sevastiades, Co-Author of Grace Unbound

Patra McSharry Sevastiades

Patra McSharry Sevastiades is an accomplished author, editor, and advocate whose career bridges publishing, education, and community leadership. She began by editing scientific papers for Soviet émigré scientists before authoring nine acclaimed children's nonfiction books, including The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and The Hoover Dam. Her editorial work includes significant religious texts such as Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation and The Gospel of Love: A Meta-Translation. 

She served as Editorial Director at Rosen Publishing Group in New York and later as Executive Director of the Duluth Library Foundation, championing literacy and civic engagement. A widow of Greek Orthodox priest Fr. Philemon Sevastiades, she now lives in Duluth, Minnesota, with husband Dean Casperson, their blended family of seven children, and nine grandchildren. Her latest work, co-authored in 2025, is Grace Unbound: The Sacred Activism of an Orthodox Bishop, a compelling narrative of faith-inspired social justice through the life of Bishop Demetrios C. Kantzavelos.

 

EN: What was your role with the Duluth Library Foundation and what is the foundation's mission? 

Patra: I worked at the Duluth Library Foundation from 2011 to 2021. In the last several years of my time there, I was the executive director. Before that, I was an independent contractor, a consultant trying to make things happen. The mission of the Duluth Library Foundation was to expand the Library's capacity to purchase materials and offer programs beyond what the city budget allowed, and I'm happy to say we were able to accomplish that owing to the graciousness of generous donors and the success of pursuing grants. 

 

We had an endowment, of course, which grew from $700,000 at the time that I started, to $2.1 million by the time I left. That felt pretty good. Obviously, that has to do with how money is invested and how the market is doing, but it also reflected remarkable bequests and gifts from people with a heart for the library and books. It gave us a capacity to help the Library, as did several fundraising events and campaigns that we ran each year. It was a joy to see the librarians happy with expanded resources and especially to see children and adults enjoying something that the Foundation made possible.

 

EN: What prompted you to ask Santa for a dictionary when you were six?

Patra:  Why did I ask Santa for a dictionary when I was six years old? I liked language. I thought it was fun knowing stuff. I think, too, that to the child I was, a dictionary embodied the idea that life is safe, not chaotic. A dictionary means that a word has a meaning, or meanings, that are predictably the same.

 

EN:  You have published four books for young readers on diverse themes including The Vietnam War Memorial and the Hoover Dam. What inspired you to tackle these projects and what did you learn from writing books targeted to 8-10 year olds?

Patra:  The reason I wrote the children’s books that I did was because there was an opportunity.  Those books needed to be written to round out a series, and I was willing, and I needed to earn more money. It was a way to accomplish those things. It was fun to learn how to write for a certain age. It forced me to simplify my thoughts and boil them down to their essence. I also like learning facts and the often-surprising histories behind each topic.

 

EN: Your career has taken you from studying Russian in Moscow to editing in Washington, DC, and advocating for literacy in the Midwest. How have these diverse experiences shaped your perspective on resilience and adaptability, especially for women navigating multifaceted careers?

Patra:  Looking back, there seems to be rhyme and reason to it, but at the time, it certainly didn't seem like it. Life is full of twists and turns, and you follow your heart and your intuition. Opportunities popped up in moments I didn't expect them. Things happened, and I had to pay the bills. A door would open and I'd walk through it, and unexpected things would happen on the other side of the door. I suppose I don't see that as being unique to women, or to parents. As a parent, I found, part of you has to pay the bills for your children’s sake, they're depending on you. It's not just you or your spouse, but these little faces looking up at you. Necessity and resilience both played a part.

 

I'm grateful there has been so much good in my life. So many doors did open, and there was a kind of a through line that brought me from being a six-year-old wanting a dictionary to studying Russian in college because I loved the work of Dostoevsky, then from translated Russian manuscripts to mainstream publishing, through publishing to my first husband, and from that to raising money for the library, which in turn brought me to my second husband, himself a book collector.

 

I would say this: keep your eyes open. Look for the next opportunity. I often kept my nose to the grindstone and didn’t look up enough to see what else might be possible. I wish I'd done more of that.

 

L to R: Patra Sevastiades, Catherine McSharry and
Bishop Demetrios C. Kantzavelos

EN: Your role as an editorial director in New York involved growing both the team and the number of books published. Can you share a memorable experience from that time where you helped bring a writer’s vision to life, and how did that shape your perspective on the power of storytelling?   

Patra:   My interest in the power of story and storytelling and shaping it got started when I was working outside of Washington, DC, for Delphic Associates, a “beltway bandit” that secured government contracts seeking information during the Cold War about Soviet science. My boss, Gerry Guensberg, owner and founder, had a vast and growing collection of resumes from Soviet scientists who had immigrated to the United States. The US government might want a paper on Soviet helicopter technology, and Jerry would find a scientist to write it and would submit a proposal. Once the contract was secured, we would commission a paper and then have it translated. 

As a rule, the scientists  are brilliant but usually not great writers. We would have it translated into English and then work with the author to improve it, working by phone and also face to face. We added historical background and political context and made sure the text was clear to the general reader. Then we published it. I discovered that I loved the process, and I loved working with authors.

 

EN:  Can you share a little more about your career as an editor?

Patra: In my experience as an editor, the magical part happens when you help an author see with fresh eyes how their manuscript reads. I remember one particular moment when I had the pleasure of working with Robert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He submitted a short story to our publication, Icarus, a quarterly of international writing, modeled after Granta but for young adults. It was excellent. As was my norm, I wrote a letter complimenting the author on the story and suggested only one small change, to clarify a slightly confusing image of the movement of a fish.

 

Then I called him, as previously agreed, and he was angry at me. He had a point: he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Who was I to suggest a change to his story? I listened to him, and when he was done venting, I said, “I understand what you're saying.” Then I asked, “May I tell you how I understood the sentence as it is written?” 

I read the sentence and told him what had confused me: I couldn’t tell if the fish was in the boat or outside of it. That had made me stop and wonder.

“My concern,” I told him, “is that if a reader stops reading because something is unclear, they might just stop reading and put the book down. I don't want them to put the book down. I want the text to be clear enough that they'll keep reading.”

He listened and perceived that it was in his interest that I made my suggestion, it wasn’t about my ego. “Tell me how you would change it,” he said. I read it to him with my suggested change. “Oh, that's all,” he said. “That's fine.” He was a lovely, gracious person.

That was a great experience. It was and is a pleasure to work with other people and come to a good resolution. It is satisfying to see good ideas get better. 

CONTNUED

Terry Roses' Wonder-Filled Box of Wonders

Terry offers a peek inside the box.

This weekend the much anticipated opening of the Alhambra Theater in West Duluth finally arrived with a vibrant and lively debut featuring magician Terry Roses and his "Box of Wonders." Preceding the Friday evening show, an effusive Bob Boone hosted a special celebration for supporters and contributors, without whom this project would likely never have happened. 

During these weeks before the opening the flurry of activity reminded me of runners making a final kick in a marathon, or race horses galloping down the stretch, hooves pounding and eyes blazing. 

Then suddenly it was here. 

Many of those present at the opening had been here numerous times over the past several years, observing the progress or lending a hand in myriad creative ways. Finally, it was time to take a seat and enjoy this first show of a new era.

THE BOX OF WONDERS

The story, like many tales, begins with a dream. Terry's dream is about a rainbow. We've all heard about the pot of gold that can be found at the rainbow's end, but Terry wondered what might lie at the other end of the rainbow. As it turns out, this is where he discovered the Box of Wonders.

To his great surprise, when he woke from the dream, the Box was sitting there next to his bed. Once he found the Key, he was able to open the box and thereby share the magic he found in the dream.  

Props. The Alhambra, a renovated Vaudeville-era theater, 
added a measure of magical wonderment to the experience.

Ah, how beautiful rainbows can be.

Roses is a master of card wizardly.

One of the tricks performed involved this talking bird (above) 
which predicted what an audience member would roll with a pair of dice.
The bird told us that on the fourth roll Misisipi Mike would role a 12. 

Sure enough, on the Fourth Time Around, he rolled a 12.

Magicians enjoy bringing people up from the audience. This young lady

was asked to select a card without revealing it. Roses spread the cards

on a table, held her wrist and used her own hand to lead him to the card.

Another trick involved a marked coin that would disappear and then 

re-appear inside of what looked like a large ball of string.

Roses showed us "the fastest trick in the world" which involved two 

volunteers selecting cards from a pair of decks which he cocked to

emulate six-shooters. The two chosen cards flew out like bullets. 

Naturally they were the cards we selected.

One of my favorite tricks was a mind-boggler in which two volunteers--

Mary and Frank--were each dealt ten playing cards. They were then 

instructed to re-count and affirm that they each had ten cards.

Terry Roses then said he would remove three cads from Mary's pile 

and transfer them to Frank's. He never touched any of the cards, but

made a "pfffft" type of noise to indicate the sound of cards flitting 

into Frank's pile. When they counted their cards, Mary only had seven 

and Frank had thirteen. This occurred three feet from my eyes. 

Impossible, but it happened. So simple yet so amazing.

Terry showed Misisipi Mike some of the tricks poker cheats use.

Roses used storytelling to knit his disparate parts of his show together.
Part two included scenes about The Quest, Never Enough Time,
the Sands of Time and the Oracle of the Rose. In the end I would say
that everyone present witnessed things they'd never seen before.

Afterwords, much of the audience was welcomed to the stage
for photographs and more.

 

For more:

An Interview with Terry Roses and His Box of Wonders

Is the Rise of Social Media Really a Reprise?

Last week I began reading Is the Internet Changing the Way We Think?, a collection of essays by various thinkers, assembled and edited by John Brockman. The subtitle is The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future. The list of contributors is impressive and the topics explored quite vast.

This blog post was stimulated by June Cohen, director of media, TED Conference, TED Talks. As you might expect, Cohen introduces an idea I had never considered but which so thoroughly resonated with my own observations that it's a wonder I'd never considered it this way before.

When I read the text of June Cohen's TED Talk, it not only struck me as original but also seemed profoundly astute. The title above was taken from the title of her TED Talk: The Rise of Social Media Is Really a Reprise.

In the early days of the Web, when I worked at HotWired, I thought mainly about the new. We were of the future, those of us in that San Francisco loft-champions of new media, new tools, new thinking. But lately I've been thinking more about the old--about those aspects of human character and cognition that remain unchanged by time and technology. Over the past two decades, I've watched as the Internet changed the way we think and changed the way we live. But it hasn't changed us fundamentally. In fact, it may be returning us to the intensely social animals we evolved to be. (EdNote: emphases mine)

Every day, hundreds of millions of people use the Internet to blog, tweet, IM, and Facebook, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And it is. The tools are new, but the behaviors come naturally. Because the rise of social media is a reprise, a return to the natural order.

When you take the long view-when you look at the Internet on an evolutionary timeline-everything we consider "old media" is actually very new. Books and newspapers became common only in the last two hundred years, radio and film in the last hundred, TV in the last fifty. If all of human history were compressed into a single twenty-four-hour day, media as we now know them emerged in the last two minutes before midnight.

Before that, for the vast majority of human history, all media were social media. Media were what happened between people. Whether you think of the proverbial campfire, around which group rituals were performed and mythologies passed on, or of simple everyday interactions (teaching, gossiping, making music, making each other laugh), media were participatory. 

The point, she concludes, is that what we’re witnessing now isn’t a fresh phenomenon. It’s not a groundbreaking surge in human potential, nor the collapse of thoughtful discussion, but instead a return to a more typical historical state. For a short time in the twentieth century, "media" was seen as content crafted by professionals for passive consumption by the masses. Together, we’ve been moving away from that concept.  

Is this part of the reason I've generally found television so off-putting since my junior year in high school?

Humans are innate storytellers, she says, and media have long served as the connective tissue binding our communities. However, in the twentieth century, mass media became so overwhelmingly one-sided that they crowded out other forms of engagement. The allure of television was so captivating, immersive, and isolating that it eroded older, interactive traditions like storytelling, music creation, and even family meals. While TV built a global audience, it dismantled the sense of village life in the process.

  

Then came the Internet. As soon as this technology emerged, we instinctively started rebuilding the types of content and communities we’re naturally drawn to. Content creation no longer required a multi-million dollar studio. YouTube video was a snap to produce and upload for sharing. 

Our ancestors thrived in tight-knit tribes, staying close to friends and keeping their children even closer. They rapidly shared critical, sometimes life-saving information and gathered around fires for rituals and storytelling that strengthened their bonds. Today, we see these same instincts at play. The first thing many of us do with new communication tools is reconnect with our tribe—sending photo emails to our parents or watching our grandchildren via private photo and video catalogs as they grow from infants to maturity.

The upside to social media is that it's accessible and (mostly) easy as pie. 

* * * Cue the ominous background transition music * * *

While I was preparing my thoughts for this blog post a few days ago I noticed the following post from a Facebook friend reminding me that not all is hunky dory in social media paradise, especially in those places where it intersects with the real world we physically live in. I asked for permission to share her experience and observations.

I went to a Tate Lecture at McFarlin at SMU featuring journalist Soledad O'Brien. I really like her and watched her on NBC and CNN many years ago. Anyhow, I was sitting in the 3rd balcony because I bought a General Admission ticket. It was terrible up there. I had a nice seat picked out and a few seconds before it started, a lady with a high hairdo sat in front of me so I moved. But I didn't know the lady down from her and now to the side of me on the lower row was going to be playing a game on her phone the whole night. Well, I shut her down by asking her to dim her phone or turn it off thank you. She did. Then a man in front of her had his going but he was reading about Soledad and turned it off pretty quickly. Then another lady kept checking her phone the whole lecture, but at least she had dimmed hers and was just quickly checking. Then when the lecture was over but the question and answer session was beginning, many people got up and left. I guess that's ok but I think it is in poor taste. During the questions (the lights were up), that first lady had dimmed her phone but was scrolling FB. LOL. I enjoyed the lecture but will pay for a decent ticket on the floor next time. My take is that people are addicted to their phones and are rude. But we all knew that. I just am surprised time and time again for some reason. --Denise Costello*

*Denise Costello is a connoisseur of the arts and literature, and an authority in all things Hemingway  

A Postmodern Prophet: Hemingway's Insights Applied to the Gaza Conflict

I was re-introduced to Hemingway in the late '70s through his first collection of short stories titled In Our Time. I was stunned by the power of Hemingway's prose. Though I'd never worn glasses, the stories there were like being a grandma who gets hit in the face with a fist, glasses flying across the room from the impact. I read the book continuously two-and-a-half times through. The description of the doctor in one scene of The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife is so loaded with tension, yet achieved with sleight of hand, never once saying the guy was mad or outraged, or any such thing... it is nothing short of miraculous how he accomplishes so much with such simple prose.

I'd read Old Man and the Sea in high school, but it wasn't till years later that I came to appreciate Hemingway as a writer. The first Hemingway novel that followed my return to classic literature during this period in my life was For Whom the Bell Tolls with its setting being the Spanish Civil War. The hero's quest turns out to be a futile mission. The characters are vividly drawn, and tragic. Can one man make a difference? Robert Jordan believes he can.

The Spanish Civil War was a major turning point in the rise of fascism in Europe. It was notable for its pillaging of a section of European real estate in order to try out new war technologies. Franco fascists were not armed with Mussolini's planes for nothing. Hitler and friends watched with avid interest as the peoples were subjugated. Technology, not ideology, proved the winning variable in this situation.

In the novel, idealism and realism collide. Pablo, the local leader of a small guerilla band of anti-fascists, represents one shade of realism. Pilar, his wife, epitomizes another. Robert Jordan, the American teacher who has joined the war effort, is the idealist.

What really happened in Spain has still not fully been understood. The events of that time were significant, though soon lost in the shadows and mists of the world war that followed. Orwell lost his faith in communist socialism as a result of things he saw. Others were appalled by fascism's jackboot horrors. Picasso was inspired by the destruction of a town called Guernica to paint his famous statement decrying the brutality of this kind of "total war," which the U.S. continued to carry out in Viet Nam, and which we see daily now in the current tragedy called Gaza.

What follows here is an excerpt from one of Michael Mazza's reviews at amazon.com. I find reading reviews to be a mentally stimulating exercise. Movie reviews at imdb.com and the Amazon reviews are frequently cogent, insightful offerings from people who are thinking at least a little beneath the surface of things. For intellectually stimulating debate read the comments at the end of articles at a site called Unherd. 

"Hemingway offers a grim and graphic look at the brutality of 20th century warfare. War is not glamorized or sanitized, and atrocities are described in unflinching detail. The characters explore the ethics of killing in war. As the story progresses, Hemingway skillfully peels back the layers of Jordan and other characters to reveal their psychological wounds. But the book is not all about pain and violence. In the midst of war Hemingway finds the joy and beauty that keep his characters going. He also incorporates storytelling as a powerful motif in the book; his characters share stories with each other, recall missing untold stories, or resist a story too hard to bear."

In short, Hemingway laces the personal stories into the larger story, thereby making the whole more intimate and memorable. 

Storytelling has connections with so many facets of society today. Genealogists are no longer satisfied with identifying the roots of their family tree. They dig for stories about their ancestors. In marketing, ad agencies push companies to not simply promote the brand, but to showcase your "brand story." In selling, you're missiong the boat if you don't use storytelling to make the sale. In politics, "feel good" sound bytes are used to make candidates appear more human and caring. 

In Gaza, efforts are being made to get the stories out that will energize the world to take action. Israel uses stories from the horror of October 7--and resurrected Holocaust narratives--to justify the brutality of its response.

When the tragedy of this current war in the Middle East is over, I'm certain there will be new stories told for years to come.

What Creators Want and Why They Can't Have It

A Lecture by Catalyst Executive Director Philip Gilpin

There's nothing like a good dose of reality to help sift out the serious dreamers from the halfhearted hopefuls in any field of endeavor. Whether artists or writers, inventors or entrepreneurs, you've no doubt seen a bit of that baloney known as Get Rich Quick and Be Famous. There seems to be an abundance of it on Medium right now. "How to start from scratch and get a six figure income in one year." Blahahahaha. (All you need to do is buy their book.)

All this to say, there really are careers in writing, art, invention and entrepreneurship. It involves understanding the rules of the game, a willingness to roll up your sleeves, and follow a plan.

The Catalyst Content Festival has made its new home here in Duluth with the serious aim of helping creatives understand the rules of the game. Wednesday evening was the first of a series of lectures designed to show the way.

Just before a screening at the Zinema, October 2019. 

As nearly everyone is well aware, the game has changed. Traditional television models of 22 minute and 48 minute shows with slots for commercials is being eclipsed by streaming content and episodic projects that stretch for years. How the new stories are being created is part of what Gilpin spoke about Tuesday evening in Mitchell Auditorium.

He began by stating that the process can be distilled to four steps. Pitch, Develop, Production and Post-Production. The total time from pitch to distribution is typically three years.

One of the most important lessons I gathered from Catalyst last fall was reiterated Tuesday. Television is a relationship-based business. It's not the same as selling a script to a studio and your done. Creatives and execs work together for years. Will you be easy to work with?

Agents
I have an agent joke that I will tell you some time if you ask. (Stop me if you've heard it.) It's about a screenwriter whose house has been destroyed in a fire.

Some people wonder what the purpose of an agent is. In part, it provides legal protection for networks, studios and buyers. I will give this example from the publishing industry.

At my first writers conference an exec from a publishing house told how they do not even open unsolicited game submissions any more. (This was 1983.) The reason being that in one year they received eight game concept submissions involving The Chronicles of Narnia. They already had a Chronicles of Narnia game in development and returned all eight. When their game was published, one of these eight sued, saying their idea was stolen.

It's gotta be a drag to have to deal with that stuff.

Agents are in communication with studios and producers, and know what is being sought. Therefore, they serve the function of vetting material before it is brought in for consideration.

Agents also fight on the artist's behalf to make sure they do not get bullied or taken advantage of. Most writers do not know what is the going rate for work that's been created or developed. Agents are not lawyers, though.

Gilpin noted that there are two kinds of agents: Lazy ones and Aggressive ones.

Legal Basics

Photo taken during Catalyst workshop in October.

At some point in early in their careers writers wrestle with the matter of trust regarding their original ideas and creative work. I've known a few who will not hare what they have written for fear of it getting stolen.

Copyright laws in the U.S. are designed to protect creatives. As soon as you create it, it is copyrighted. Nevertheless, proving it in court is another thing. Therefore it is important to have a "chain of title" that shows the idea is yours to begin with. This keeps someone else from selling your script to the studio.

In this business, lawyers do most of the work, including copyrights and music clearances. According to Gilpin a lot of business is conducted without agents at all but through networking with industry friends.

Expectations
As in any endeavor it's important to set realistic expectations. Much has changed since the days when theaters and three networks ruled the world. The aim was to produce a show that would gain as wide an audience as possible.

Nowadays shows are being developed for very specific demographics and narrow niches. For this reason, ask yourself:
1) How specific is your show?
2) How original?
3) Who is your audience?
You can no longer say, "This show is for the 18-45 year old demographic. That's simply not going to cut it.

Photo: Cirina Catania

Competition Among Giants
With streaming media and the crumbling of time constraints on programs, there's more variety than ever. And from the buyer's end of things a lot of competition due to the consolidation that has taken place.
AT&T / Time Warner / HBO are now one block.
Comcast / NBC and Disney / ABC / Fox are the competition.
Notice that there is no TV channel anymore that is separate from the broader universe of streaming media.

"These behemoths aren't sure what will work these days," Gilpin said.

It reminds me of the book publishing world of the Sixties. Until then every major publishing house had a religious books division. With the advent of the Jesus People movement and resurgence of grass roots Fundamentalism, the secular publishing houses produced a string of books that missed the target completely.  As a result numerous Christian publishers rose up from within this Christian sub-culture to satisfy the unsatisfied hunger in this category.

What's going to work during the upcoming decade is an unknown, but my thinking here is that if you pay attention you may see areas where there are voids that need to be filled.

Gilpin pointed out that the mergers cited above have resulted in layoffs, with the result that studios are scared to sink big bucks into riskier projects. The need for new creative work is strong though. There were 500 new shows introduced last year. These shows take time to produce, and there are bottlenecks.

Bottleneck 1: There's a shortage of "showrunners." (Executive Producers)
Bottleneck 2: There's a finite number of locations where there's enough production talent to carry out the work.

Catalyst is hoping that Minnesota can become one of these locations.

Prospects
Is it difficult or just hopeless for newcomers to break in?

It's not hopeless, but it is difficult. The more you understand the process, the more likely you will achieve success. You have to decide where you fit. Some creatives write treatments and sell their ideas whereas others stay with a project all the way from start to finish. In either case the axiom holds true: Content Is King.

We can't predict the future, but storytelling is central to all.

Truly original concepts are a difficult gamble. And yet, they happen. Focus on good stories. Stories have captured our imaginations since the beginning of time.

Postscript
For an example of a Pitch Deck that became a major program, visit
http://www.zen134237.zen.co.uk/Stranger_Things/Stranger_Things_-_Bible.pdf

Pros and Cons of the Storytelling Epidemic

If you're in marketing and advertising, you can't help but to have noticed how big the word  "storytelling" has become. It's almost as if it were the word of the year.

There's no question stories have power. Stories connect with people. And you've got to admit that reading the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis is far more interesting than reading all those lists in the Book of Leviticus.

In the marketing world you might even find people who say that without a good story you can't succeed.

This is one of the reasons so many marketers love the new opportunities generated by social media. You get verbal stories, video stories, visual stories (Infographics) and personal stories. It's in your face everywhere you look these. In fact, "Stories" is the latest technique Facebook is using to keep people engaged. It's not enough to tell stories on your Wall. Now you can almost effortlessly keep "adding" to "your story" in that Stories box.

This past week I brought home a book from the library called The Art of Immersion by Frank Rose. I picked it up because the cover design looked interesting and the title intriguing. When I got home I noticed the subtitle: How the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories.

The prologue begins by noting how anthropologists have observed that storytelling is a fundamental part of being human. He writes, "Just as the brain perceives patterns in the visual forms of nature--a face, a figure, a flower--and in sound, so it detects patterns in sound."

Then he goes on to share the results of a 1944 study in which 34 college students were shown a short film and asked what was happening. Essentially it was two triangles and a circle moving on a two dimensional surface. There was also a stationary rectangle partially open on one side.

What was striking is how nearly every student began creating a narrative about what they imagined was going on. Two men fighting for a woman? All kinds of storylines emerged, including the emotions of these "characters."

How strange.

So it is that our brain is constantly connecting dots to create narratives.

Another book that I brought home from the library this week is also about stories. It's titled Republic of Lies by Anna Merlan. The subtitle is American Conspiracy Theories and Their Surprising Rise To Power.

The Amazon blurb calls it "riveting tour through the landscape and meaning of modern conspiracy theories, exploring the causes and tenacity of this American malady, from Birthers to Pizzagate and beyond."

I've only just started this one, but the Prologue certainly sets you up to want to read more. Author Anna Merlan begins by telling readers about a Caribbean cruise she went on. The ship's passengers were all members of various conspiracy groups. Because she was not a member of a conspiracy group, some passengers thought she was possibly FBI. Once an idea like that gets planted, it can be hard to dislodge.

Three quarters of the reviews are 5 star, but the one star reviewers are out there, one calling it nothing more than a a rant.

I only mention the book because of the previous illustration above which shows how our minds create stories. How many conspiracy theories are based on connections between events and how many are simply a mental construct in which disparate pieces seem to fit the story?

I think of the constellations in our night sky. Here's a cluster of stars, three of them serving to be the belt, and very lightly a knife sheath. At some point in human history he was given a name, The Hunter, or Orion. There are several stories about Orion in Greek Mythology. How this batch of stars came to be a basket of stories is itself quite intriguing. (You can read more about Orion here.)

The trigger for this blog post, though, was a blog post by Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman. Hoffman acknowledges the power of stories, noting that a good story is memorable. What concerns him, however, is when marketing decisions are made on anecdotal evidence instead of actual data. 

That's a point directed toward the marketers in my audience. Check out Bob Hoffman's The Danger In Storytelling.

* * * *
And with that, I bid adieu.

Those Pesky Dead Flies in the Perfume (When Success and Shame Go Hand-In-Hand)

“Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain.” — Bob Dylan

The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes has so many thought-provoking verses. One of my favorites is Ecclesiastes 10:1 which goes like this:

“As a dead fly gives perfume a bad smell,
 So a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.”

The longer one lives, the more opportunities one gets to experience this seemingly universal conundrum. Why is it that so many of our heroic or gratifying experiences get marred by a dead fly in the ointment? Here is a stroy from my life, by way of illustration.

A Hero, Sort Of

When I was a kid, playing baseball was something I lived for. It seems like we played every day while I was growing up, whiffle ball, baseball, Little League, Pony League and sandlot, stickball in the streets. I went out for baseball in high school playing on the Freshman team, Jr. Varsity and eventually got a Varsity letter in my Junior year.

Mr. Dennison, our JV coach, seemed to like my hustle and my sophomore year I started the first game at shortstop, but struck out twice against a kid with a mean curve ball. There were other infielders and Mr. Dennison left me on the bench the second game. He was looking us over, getting a feel for how we'd perform in game situations.

In the third game I also started on the bench, which is not where you really want to be. The opposing pitcher was a hefty fireballer but he was also a bit wild, and in the late innings, after a strong base hit and an error he walked the bases loaded. Coach D. came over and said, “Think you can hit this kid?”

I said, “No problem,” and I believed it.

I loosened up and planted myself in the batter’s box waiting for the pitch. He fired it chest high down the middle and I smashed it over three hundred feet down the left field line, foul. Strike one.

There was a big sign out in left field that had the numeral 300 in black letters on white background. As the ball flew past that I knew exactly what it meant. Now I knew I could get around on him. I used a 33" bat and loved the sound it made when you connected, and that one connected. After checking the bases he started his motion and once again fired the ball in like a cannon.

I once read an article about Henry Aaron that noted how quick his wrists were, so I did special exercises that one of our coaches showed us in order to strengthen our wrists and improve their quickness. And when I swung the bat, once again it struck the ball with force and sent it flying out over the left fielders head past the 300 foot marker, again just foul.

Roger Maris, who broke Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a season, was a left-handed hitter who played in the original Yankee Stadium where the right field fence curled in to 297 feet. Many of his homers were no further than I was hitting them that day. So now it’s bases loaded, the count two strikes. I told myself to hold back just a tad, determined to keep it in play. We were down by two runs and it seemed important to come through so I could earn my spot as a starter.

The pitch was, of course, another speedball, since that was the pitch he relied on. I remember it being a little high, but I was on it. Crack! You could tell by the sound it was a goner, this time flying out to right center field between and beyond the outfielders. The first run already scored before I reached first. As I rounded second I could see an outfielder had retrieved the ball. I was tearing toward third and the kid coaching raised his hands signaling me… to what? Was that a signal to slide or to stop?

I executed a beautiful slide, but was a foot short of third. Somehow I thought the ball was already on its way so I tried to stretch my foot, but I was still short. In point of fact, I had enough time to stand up, knock the dirt off my uniform and take a step onto the bag, but thinking the ball was incoming I just kept stretching.

Finally the ball arrived, the third baseman tagged me out, and when I got up to go get my glove — it was the third out — the whole team was laughing. To everyone watching it was hilarious. Or rather, hilariously stupid, depending on your point of view.

I did earn my spot as a starter, and by the end of the season had the fewest strikeouts on the team, second best batting average and a lot of good memories. That ridiculous moment trying to stretch my leg a foot was like a dead fly in the ointment though. It’s impossible to think of that game-winning drive without recalling the silly way it ended. There’s something humiliating about such public stupidity.

Which brings to mind the time I jumped out of a moving car thinking I would impress a lass I had a crush on. Alas.

The Untold Story of the Talking Book Is Quite a Story + 10 Insights I Never Considered Before.

As any follower of this blog knows, I'm a reader of talking books while commuting. There have been occasions over the years when someone will make a dismissive remark about listening to books is not really reading. Though the mildly abrasive dismissal would be disregarded as floof, it eventually became clear to me over time that listening to books is not considered real reading in some circles.

So I found it quite delightful to discover a whole book devoted to this matter, which I'd been listening to, I mean reading, this past week during my commute. The Untold Story of the Talking Book is Matthew Rubery's contribution to the debate, recounting the history of audio books beginning with Thomas Edison's recording of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on a tinfoil surface that could be played by phonograph in 1877. Today's audiobook industry is a billion dollar business.

What's fascinating in this story is how many different arguments arose along the way, and how many funny predictions about the future were generated by this "new" technology. For example, there were some who said audio books would replace printed books. In retrospect we see a lot of similarity between that prediction and the kinds of statements made with other inventions. Radio would disappear eventually when eclipsed by television, supposedly. Television would disappear when the Internet was in full swing. Retail stores will disappear when eclipsed by Amazon.

The author was in part motivated to research the topic because he himself liked audio books but was self-conscious about saying so in light of the nay-sayers. Here are a few of the insights that stuck with me after reading this audio book.

1. Edison expected the "talking book" to take of faster than it did. Ultimately it was half a century before the first full length novel had been recorded and reproduced.

2. Though many blind people welcomed talking books, there were also braille readers who felt listening to audio books wasn't really reading. Even though only 15% or so of blind people could read braille, there were some who quite opposed to the idea. Reading braille requires "deciphering code" which is more like deciphering letters on a page.

3. After World War 1 there were many soldiers who had been left blind as a result of injuries. Audio books were an easier way to "read" than having to learn braille. This became the impetus for the acceptance of audio book recordings, in album form at that time.

What was interesting, though, is that there were only a couple hundred soldier who had become blind. Even though there were tens of thousands of blind people already hungry for this new technology, it was sympathy for these newly blinded that pulled on the heartstrings of the masses to fund the mass recording of audio books.

4. The next debate had to do with censorship. Some books should not be made available to the blind, like Flaubert's Madame Bovary. But then, who has the authority to decide what was decent and indecent?

5. Which led to the next debate regarding one of the advantages of braille. No one would know what book I was reading under the covers, whereas if I'm listening to audio books...

6. The logistics of shipping and storage of audio books could be a problem. One novel could be 80 discs. War and Peace and the Bible were closer to 200.

EdNote: The first time I read the Bible through I found the book of Leviticus to be quite tedious. Because I had a blind friend who had a full set of albums of the Bible on recorded discs, read by Alexander Scourby, I borrowed the Book of Leviticus to listen to. I tethered my mind to the reader and forced myself to plow through. It worked!

EdNote 2: This experience taught me how storytelling is much easier to engage with than blah-blah-blah data. Whether you're in advertising, PR, sales or sipping a brew with your best friend's girl, stories will be much more engaging than "just the facts, ma'am."

7. The whole debate about whether a talking book is a book led to a reminder that throughout human history the village storyteller passed the tribe's knowledge on orally. Gutenberg and the printing press was a relatively modern development. If the Pentateuch was indeed scribed by Moses, as is claimed for itself, then everything that he recorded must have been passed down to him orally.

8. Another fascinating thought was this one. The author points out that the introduction of every new technology calls into question the previous competing technologies and causes us to think more deeply about both. Folk guitars and electric guitars, for example. In Hollywood, "talkies" did indeed eclipse silent films, but Michael Crichton was wrong when in the mid-nineties he told the National Press Club that the Internet would eliminate television.

9. Some argued against audio books because the listener would be more passive. Reading requires engagement, or so they said. (Are you still with me?)

10. One more major battle area had to do with how the books were read. Should they be read by professional actors or by straight readers who do not "add" to the reading? What about sound effects, as in radio theater? Does this add or interfere? (Personally, I totally dislike it.) Much debate swirled around many of these decisions.

* * * *
In short, I had no idea there were so many dimensions to this story. Today we have downloadable books on Audible and iTunes, CDs and streaming audio. One sci fi writer, a contemporary of Jules Verne, had a story in which people had audio books in their hats which they could listen to wherever they went. A Sony Walkman? It seemed fantastical at the time.

Bottom Line: If you don't want to call audio books reading, fine. They are great companions anyways. I just finished a biography of James Madison the week before, a president we seem to know so little about today, yet whose ideas are totally embedded in the founding fibers of our nation. But that's a story for another day.

Here's Matthew Rubery's book on Amazon.com