Found this in a book I’m reading, Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938-1946. I paid $.60 for it, used on Amazon.

This particular copy has been bought and sold many times. There are notes in the margins. They read like critical rhetorical notes, which seems odd in a book of collected journalism. Maybe the book was used for a reporting class like the note says. Maybe those were the pages the owner had to read. One of the owners, anyway. The book has layers and layers of used book stickers common to college bookstores. Seven layers, each telling a story of a high sale price and a pittance for their return at the end of the term. Those stickers are the adhesive geology of some professor who found value in the text and taught from it over and over.

I’m a third of the way through the book and have found two or three stories I’d like to use in class. Or, in a different time, would have enjoyed reading with a professor. I imagine both as small seminars where everyone is incredibly sharp and talkative and asks a lot of questions. What a great special topics of journalism class it would be.

And I began to wonder: How are we going to collate this generation’s batch of excellent reporting? Will there be a book edition?

Rainy day today. Woke up to clouds and they just kept rolling in, piling on top of one another, the day growing dark and deeper and darker until finally one bumped into another and dipped over the full capacity of the cloud. Rained for hours, cold and quiet.

It rained a little more than a half an inch, which should help our extreme drought. A little more than seven percent of the state remains in the dark red on the climatology maps. We’ve been there for more than two years. Rain, even the kind pushed in by the cold, is always welcome.

In the evening we strolled into the movie theater. Rainy days are good for that, too. We watched Argo. Based on a true story. Not without historical inaccuracies. The two best scenes were strictly cinema:

“Nobody is good-looking enough to play me,” Mr. Mendez said with a laugh. “But really, he did a fine job. A lot of the things I told him he took to heart. Especially those moments where you have concern, those 15 seconds of reviewing your plan internally.

“Your gut tells you if it’s going to be OK or not — and if you ignore that, you probably will get into trouble. I saw Ben do that on the screen. The audience just sees him not talking, but I knew exactly what he was doing.”

Like many movies based on actual events, “Argo” takes a number of dramatic liberties. In the film, the rescue mission is called off the night before the six Americans leave Iran; the group makes a nerve-wracking, in-disguise visit to a crowded and noisy Tehran bazaar; Iranian police cars and a truck full of rifle-wielding militants chase the getaway plane on the tarmac.

Though those scenes make “Argo” more suspenseful, that kind of action didn’t happen.

It played to the Hollywood formula, and thus you knew the outcome, but still it gets you in all the right spots.

Here’s an interview with the guy that inspired the Ben Affleck character, Tony Mendez:

It is storytelling of a different kind, but still good storytelling. It is … taut. The editing does the trick.

Thanks for being so generous with your time. Do come back tomorrow. There will be … something.