California WildWoman

My students today often have an idealized vision of what reporting is like, imagining it to be glamorous and filled with celebrities and lunches. To bring their feet to Earth, I share some of my coverage and tell them the story behind it. What you’re about to read was written after a major airline crash. My editor ran it the next day as an explanation of what it’s like to cover a disaster, a type of reporting that few freelancers ever encounter or seek. A lot of people think that reporters are heartless. I hope this convinces you otherwise.

The grassy hillside holds a plain stone memorial, but passengers flying overhead see no other trace of one of the worst air disasters in U.S. history.

Yet the scars surely remain, because every new crash renews the pain — even for a reporter.

My memory has buried the details of the assignments, but I vividly recall with slight shame what it was like to cover the crash — shame, because I cried. And I wasn’t the only veteran reporter who did. The crash happened on a stormy August evening at the edge of Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Mich. A Northwest Airlines MD-82, bound for Phoenix, tipped sideways after lifting off a northeast runway, clipping street lights and trees and sliding to rest in a fireball at a freeway underpass.

The next day, I reported from the scene as rescue workers counted 156 dead. The sole survivor, a 4-year-old girl, supposedly had been found shielded from the inferno by her mother’s body.

When the crash occurred, I had been in Memphis, Tenn., where my newspaper, The Arizona Republic, had assigned me to cover the 10th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. With the last story filed, I had hunted up a Mexican dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Mississippi, then had settled into my room to watch “Blue Hawaii” on television.

About 9 p.m., a news bulletin about the crash interrupted the movie. I thought first of how horrifying the scene must be. Detroit was my hometown, and my dad had taken us as kids to the airport nearly every summer Sunday to watch airplanes take off and land.

Then I thought about whom I might know on the plane. My stomach churned. The phone rang. An editor told me to get to Detroit any way I could to cover the crash. Two other reporters and a photographer would fly there More

When you ask writers to name their biggest faults, procrastination lands at the top of the heap. They beat themselves up and call themselves failures because they justcan’t seem get going.

Photo copyright Aleksei Vert

The problem, however, probably isn’t failure. It’s more likely to be perfection. The desire to turn out a single perfect draft can backfire into inability to start.

How to get past the roadblocks? Lower your standards. “It’s easy to write,” poet William Stafford wrote in “Writing the Australian Crawl.” “You just shouldn’t have standards that inhibit you from writing.”

Some of the standards that hold us back:

The belief that the place to start writing is the beginning of the piece. When you get stuck at the beginning, try starting at the middle. Or divide the story into sections and start with one of them. Then return to writing the beginning. You may find that your lead emerged in the middle, and you can move it up.

Fear of typing sloppy copy. It’s not necessary to get all of the spelling, grammar and organization right on the first pass. That’s why you More

As the longest day of the year approaches, we enter the best nights to watch the sky. There’s something timeless about sitting outdoors wrapped in a warm breeze,

Let’s howl!

losing yourself in the depth of the stars. People have done it for centuries – but not in the city!

Yesterday at dusk, I spotted Venus in the west. I’ve seen Venus before, or what I thought was Venus until it began moving into the landing pattern for Ontario International Airport. The dot last evening stayed put and brilliant as the peach-color sunset faded to night.

On many nights, I look up and float into a pool of stars. It feels like I’m 16 again, lying on the beach on Manitou Island, stunned by seeing for the first time uncountable pinpoints of light creating the blanket above me. I forget that a cute guy in faded jeans sings folk songs at the bonfire; I don’t hear Lake Michigan gently curling to the shore. All I think is that on the night this starlight was created, some ancient shepherd looked up to wonder at the stars above him.

In California, my county created a dark sky ordinance for unincorporated areas like mine. By law, no porch lights can spill onto neighbors’ property, More