Not Just A Hat Rack

This and That...

Sir Edmund Hillary passed away yesterday. Ironically, I was working on a 2008 trekking preview for Snow Lion, including an ascent up the "Hillary Route" to Everest Base Camp, when I learned the news. It's safe to say that the company, and the Himalayan trekking industry, would not exist, at least in their present form, if it were not for the gentle 6'5" beekeeper whose humanitarian work on behalf of the Sherpas is immeasurable. "Nothing Venture, Nothing Win" was the book-length biography I read as a teenager and has inspired me to back down from no challenge ever since.

The current issue of Runner's World has a gripping series of stories on the 2007 Chicago and New York Marathons. Two of the largest races in the country, both were marked by tragedy. The magazine took a Newsweek style approach to understanding the factors that led to the cancellation of the Chicago race several hours in, due to extreme heat conditions. Then, editor Amby Burfoot spent several days following up on the death of U.S. marathoning star Ryan Shay at the Olympic Trials in New York City. Good stuff, whether you run or not. Speaking of running, it's Disney Marathon weekend in Orlando. Mrs. 'Hat Rack is going after another personal first. She'll run the Half Marathon on Saturday and the Full Marathon on Sunday (that's 39.3 miles in all) - all in pursuit of a medal shaped liked Goofy. That is goofy. But we love her!

Kevin Sites' In the Hot Zone is worth a read, folks. And not just because we both graduated from Medill, Northwestern's journalism school! He visited 20+ war zones in one calendar year including the obvious ones, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, etc. He also checked in on the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, the tenuous ceasefire in Congo, monks vs the military in Burma/Myanmar, the aftermath of war in Vietnam and Laos, etc. I'm in awe of his dedication to shed light (and hope) on some of the most depressing examples of humankind's dark side. I think I'd have post-traumatic stress disorder. I bought it in the Fall, which makes it's references to events from last July all the more remarkable. You don't get much more current than this in a widely published book these days!

I talked to RSL GM Garth Lagerwey this week in anticipation of my next Salt Lake Tribune column next week, which will be on the MLS SuperDraft... He should be in Florida by now at the Player Combine. Knowing the pressures of the chair in which he sits, its challenges, and the passion that you have to bring to it, I'm rooting for him.

I'm also rooting for the Red Rocks. Utah's nationally ranked women's gymnastics team takes on nemesis and defending NCAA champion Georgia tonight at Huntsman Center. I won't make it, but if you're in the neighborhood and have never attended a meet, don't miss it! Arrive early - this one might sell out. (That's right, 16,000 people at a gymnastics meet. Gotta love it!)

Books That Make a Difference in the World

I purchased a used copy of the AP Style Guide (I have two freelance writing assignments ... and counting!) at Barnes & Noble's website today. I learned that I was actually purchasing it from Better World Books, an online bookstore which uses its proceeds to fund literacy programs around the world. How cool is that?

I learned that this company is the brainchild of some Notre Dame grads who decided to make some money selling their textbooks at the end of a school year. Having been successful, they launched a campus-wide book drive and raised $8,000 for a local community learning center. Several years and more than $2,000,000 in funding raised, they're still at it. I'm impressed.

Law of Dreams

Peter Behrens' coming-to-America novel Law of Dreams follows a poor Irish farmboy through potato-famine era tragedy and misery.  It's a satisfying country byway of a tale with a gripping storyline.  A veritable stew of characters enter and exit the narrative, constantly encouraging the reader to question their motives, sincerity and fate.  A reader is never quite sure whether it's worth "rooting" for any character.

Fergus O'Brien is the yo ung protagonist who flees the farm his family has worked when the potatoes come up black.  Sent to a "workhouse", he doesn't last there long either.  He is called by the road, by a life incompatible with staying anywhere, and days of chasing and pursuing follow.  He pursues opportunity.  He chases food.  He seeks women, companionship.  He follows dreams.  But, mostly he flees stillness.  Like the quiet wake of a slowed ocean liner in a riverway, Fergus leaves a trail of corpses, suffering and greed.

"The world is strangers," Behrens writes as he introduces us to plenty.  He opens with  Carmichael, the farmer, with his comely daughter Phoebe.  Murty Larry befriends Fergus in the workhouse.  Luke leads an Oliver Twist street urchin army called the Bog Boys.  Mary runs Shea's Dragon, a Irish outpost with a lyrical sound and a lurid story.  Muck Muldoon fights man and horse - he's a bare-knuckled villain of a boss.  Molly is with Muck.  William Ormsby is the sage traveler with tales of Indians encountered, vanquished or married.  Behrens keeps them coming.  They appear in the road like oncoming carriages.  And by and large they pass, some leaving an indelible mark on Fergus, some like a deep bruise fester under the skin.

Law of Dreams is a journey well worth the cost of passage.  Reviewers consider it a well-researched voyage of historical fiction.  For me, it's an emotional snapshot, carefully written, of a doomed generation of Irish souls.

Is courage just the awareness that gestures, journeys, lives have intrinsic shape, and must, one way or another, be completed?  That there is a path to be followed, literally to the death?  Awareness is harsh but better than being unaware, never sensing a path.  Better than a life of stunts, false starts, dead ends.  Better than the irredeemable ugliness of the halfhearted.  Better than feeling there is no shape to anything - there is.  The world knows itself.