The Scourge of the Plastic Bag

Writing doesn’t always mean developing a book or an article. Writing can also mean composing a letter, especially of the persuasive variety that relates to a cause you’re passionate about.

In the last year I’ve done a lot of research on plastic in our environment. For example: The global use of plastic bags amounts to at least 100 billion bags a year, according to the Film and Bag Federation. Other groups contend that number is far higher, approaching 100 billion plastic bags per year in the United States alone. The environmental impact of so much plastic is staggering, particularly given the fact that a petroleum-based bag takes 1,000 years to degrade. Even worse, plastic bags don’t degrade completely, but break down into smaller, toxic particles.

Those are harrowing statistics and I began carrying a canvas bag for all of my smaller trips, particularly to our neighborhood CVS Pharmacy, where I shop several times a week. Employees quickly got used to me showing up with my own bag and often noted that they too, would use a canvas or cloth bag if they could find one of the appropriate size. (I use a Holland America cruise bag which measures a roomy 17 1//2” wide and 12” deep).

Today I began writing letters, starting with the CVS Corporation to persuade them to offer cloth bags with their logo to customers and employees. Next on my list is Minnesota-based Target Corporation, another company that like CVS prides themselves on community involvement and corporate responsibility. I would argue that being an environmentally responsible citizen is part of that equation as well.

This is just the beginning – I have a list of organizations and companies I’d like the opportunity to meet with and discuss how they might become more environmentally responsible, starting with ways to greatly reduce or eliminate plastic bags and other petroleum-based products like plastic bottles, plates, containers, etc. I have no idea what kind of success I’ll have, although I believe the time is right. But what I do know is that the process can’t begin without writing a letter.

Fantastical "Memoirs"

In less than a week, two authors have admitted to fabricating memoirs. Margaret B. Jones, a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, confessed Love and Consequences, her memoir of growing up in South Central LA as a foster child raised among drug-running gangbangers is complete fiction. The same is true of Misha Defonseca’s Holocaust memoir, Misha: A Memoire of The Holocaust Years, detailing her horrific childhood living with wild wolves, trekking 1,900 miles across Europe, and killing a German soldier in self-defense.

Before we run out and blame the victims, might over-anxious agents and publishers looking for fantastical “true” stories bear part of the blame? Every writer knows landing an agent is tough, but more and more it seems the stories that make it into print, particularly under the category of “memoir” are beyond belief. From the moment I heard the episodes recounted as true in James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, I was suspicious. Not because Northwest Airlines immediately refuted his account of boarding a plane battered and bloody, but because it simply did not ring true. As Stephen King noted in an Entertainment Weekly column later that year, he didn’t buy it either, because King wrote (I’m paraphrasing here) addicts are the best liars the world has ever seen.

Still, agents and publishers gobbled up all three of the stories and apparently without question. And maybe that’s the real problem – knowing that agents and publishers can’t get enough of bizarre “memoirs” (the more outrageous the better) some authors are more than willing to bend their words to tell great fiction they then pass off as “truth”. In the end the public and authors who write legitimate memoirs suffer. Agents and publishers would do the industry as a whole a favor to investigate before they print.

The Rake Ceases Publication

In another sign of changing reader habits and disappearing print publications, the Minneapolis-based magazine The Rake is ceasing publication. As recently as two months ago, The Rake was featured in one of the e-zines of freelance writing markets I subscribe to. The March 2008 issue currently on the stands will be the magazine's last.

The Rake's web site will remain, however; out of 16 employees only one will stay on to oversee online operations. This is another sad aspect in the vastly changing world of writing and print publications. Editor Tom Bartel noted that declining ad revenues are the main culprit for The Rake's demise, but its small size also made it vulnerable.

And The Oscar Goes To . . .

Women and Minnesota have a lot to be proud of this Oscar season. Four women have been nominated in the screenwriting categories (the most ever) and former Minnesotans on the list include Joel and Ethan Coen and Diablo Cody. My picks for the main categories are below. And the Oscar goes to . . . .

Best Picture
Joel and Ethan Coen’s cinematic version of No Country for Old Men

Best Actor
Daniel Day Lewis – There Will Be Blood

Best Actress
Julie Christie – Away From Her

Best Supporting Actor
Javier Bardem – No Country for Old Men

Best Supporting Actress
Rudy Dee – American Gangster

Best Director
Joel and Ethan Coen – No Country for Old Men

Best Adapted Screenplay
Joel and Ethan Coen – No Country for Old Men

Best Original Screenplay
Diablo Cody - Juno

Northern Illinois University Shooting

Any multiple shooting is tragic, (and there have been so many lately) but even more so when the images being broadcast around the world are so personal and familiar. We lived in the DeKalb, IL area for 11 years before moving to Minnesota. My husband worked on the NIU campus at the Newman Center and I spent several years working at the university as well.

To see places you’ve lived and worked, and people you’ve known become part of a national tragedy is truly devastating. One NIU student interviewed said a shooting like this shouldn’t happen here. True, but it shouldn’t happen anywhere. And yet it does, with increasing frequency, touching more lives.

In December the mass shooting at Westroads Mall in Omaha was close to home because Nebraska is my home state. This time it’s even closer. What’s been interesting over the last few months is the silence on the part of gun control advocates with each new shooting. But perhaps they don’t need to say anything, and let the mounting toll of victims tell the story.

Juno Rules

Juno, the small independent film about a smart, sweet, and ultimately wise beyond her year’s teenager who makes some unconventional choices after she gets pregnant, sailed past the $100 million mark and is still going strong.

Made for a paltry $6.5 million, the film and its heroine has become the rare cultural phenomenon that speaks directly to teenage girls, their mothers, sisters, even their fathers and brothers. If Hollywood has an ounce of common sense, the studios will FINALLY get the message that women are movie-goers too.

If Hollywood isn’t quite ready to trash the business model that targets the majority of movies towards adolescent males, then studios at the very least need to get serious about providing well-made, relevant entertainment for a female audience, from teenagers on into adulthood. With Diablo Cody’s smart, sassy, script about the choices one young girl makes, perhaps the studios will at last understand that women matter. And we matter a lot.

Four women were nominated for Oscars in the Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay categories, all with great stories to tell and various perspectives to tell them from. They deserve the chance to tell those stories and others. Juno rules and here’s to ushering in a change of thought that’s long overdue.

A Screenwriter's Dream

It was a Hollywood screenwriter’s dream. In one corner, The New England Patriots looking for football immortality with a perfect season and Super Bowl victory; the stellar quarterback with the leading man good looks and model girlfriend; the gruff coach with questionable methods; history was in the making.

In the opposing corner the New York Giants, a scrappy band of players who had finished the regular 2007 season 10-6 then started playing like champions in the playoffs; a good but not great quarterback just this side of nerdy, still under the shadow of a talented and much more famous older brother; the odds totally against them.

And as in the best of underdog vs. the powerhouse scripts, the New York Giants came together and stopped the mighty Pats in their tracks, pulled a miracle catch out of thin air, and won Super Bowl 42. Cue the theme from Rocky and roll the credits. Only this time it was true.