You are there... or a reasonable facsimile

One of the primary rules of colorful and engaging writing is to actually sample the events and people you are writing about. Include specific details such as concrete examples of sights, sounds, smells, etc. in your account so the reader will interact with it. Trek to the Himalayas and gasp in the non-existent air. Walk Harlem's streets after midnight. Have a baby. Get drunk and end up in intensive care. Not necessarily in that order.

But it ain't easy to do with history. Take the herms. I'm finishing up the third (or fourth or fifth- I can't remember) revision and contnue to read Greek history. I've looked at thousands (or hundreds or scores) of pictures as well. But obviously, some immediacy has faded over the past 2400 years. I'm still trying to figure out why no one heard a thing on the night of the events of June 7, 415BC. Come on. 300 men roam through town smashing noses and dicks off of every available herm and Athenians sleep right through it to be totally amazed at the debris the next AM? In all my digging I find not one word about that. That would be immediacy. What is the sound of one herm smashing?

And the 1776 proxy war in NYC. I got a little closer to that by visiting Bowling Green where King George's fence still stands and put my very hands on it looking uptown along the impressive urban canyon. I touched (illegally- so arrest me) the battered Pitt. Closer still. But it all loses something with the passage of years. It's been buried in concrete and I can't smell the crowd or taste the stout. (Surely they were not sober...) Maybe I did get a whiff of the stout from the derelict on the bench inside the Green, come to think of it. But it was winter and I didn't get too close.

I digress...

But today- a flash of insight and a puff of smoke. I'm stoked. I was reading yet another writer's craft book that had popped full blown out of the head of a writer's conference and devoured an article that was another jab in the ribs to write like a witness. I took it all to heart.

I'd already decided to do Saddam Hussein's statue's demise for the next chapter. I've seen the footage dozens of times and have read all the newspaper accounts and heard the howls of the debunkers of the myth (and with good reason). Geeze. I wish ida been there. With a camera and microphone. But alas, here I was safe and sound with my anti-war banner resting limply against the wall and my valium in hand.

And lo, it came to pass that I realized I could witness the very event itself again and again on youtube! News footage has a long and prosperous life there. I logged on and am happy to say that as soon as I put the damn herms to bed in the next few days, it will be a Baghdad life for me. And all courtesy of the wonders of the internet. With apologies to Jason Blair (who was canned for doing the very same...)

More as things progress.