RED GIRL Reads A Story

THE RED SHOES
by Hans Christian Andersen


ONCE upon a time there was little girl, pretty and dainty. But in summer time she was obliged to go barefooted because she was poor, and in winter she had to wear large wooden shoes, so that her little instep grew quite red.

In the middle of the village lived an old shoemaker's wife; she sat down and made, as well as she could, a pair of little shoes out of some old pieces of red cloth. They were clumsy, but she meant well, for they were intended for the little girl, whose name was Karen.

Karen received the shoes and wore them for the first time on the day of her mother's funeral. They were certainly not suitable for mourning; but she had no others, and so she put her bare feet into them and walked behind the humble coffin.

Just then a large old carriage came by, and in it sat an old lady; she looked at the little girl, and taking pity on her, said to the clergyman, "Look here, if you will give me the little girl, I will take care of her."

Karen believed that this was all on account of the red shoes, but the old lady thought them hideous, and so they were burnt. Karen herself was dressed very neatly and cleanly; she was taught to read and to sew, and people said that she was pretty. But the mirror told her, "You are more than pretty- you are beautiful."

One day the Queen was travelling through that part of the country, and had her little daughter, who was a princess, with her. All the people, amongst them Karen too, streamed towards the castle, where the little princess, in fine white clothes, stood before the window and allowed herself to be stared at. She wore neither a train nor a golden crown, but beautiful red morocco shoes; they were indeed much finer than those which the shoemaker's wife had sewn for little Karen. There is really nothing in the world that can be compared to red shoes!

Karen was now old enough to be confirmed; she received some new clothes, and she was also to have some new shoes. The rich shoemaker in the town took the measure of her little foot in his own room, in which there stood great glass cases full of pretty shoes and white slippers. It all looked very lovely, but the old lady could not see very well, and therefore did not get much pleasure out of it. Amongst the shoes stood a pair of red ones, like those which the princess had worn. How beautiful they were! and the shoemaker said that they had been made for a count's daughter, but that they had not fitted her.

"I suppose they are of shiny leather?" asked the old lady. "They shine so."

"Yes, they do shine," said Karen. They fitted her, and were bought. But the old lady knew nothing of their being red, for she would never have allowed Karen to be confirmed in red shoes, as she was now to be.

Everybody looked at her feet, and the whole of the way from the church door to the choir it seemed to her as if even the ancient figures on the monuments, in their stiff collars and long black robes, had their eyes fixed on her red shoes. It was only of these that she thought when the clergyman laid his hand upon her head and spoke of the holy baptism, of the covenant with God, and told her that she was now to be a grown-up Christian. The organ pealed forth solemnly, and the sweet children's voices mingled with that of their old leader; but Karen thought only of her red shoes. In the afternoon the old lady heard from everybody that Karen had worn red shoes. She said that it was a shocking thing to do, that it was very improper, and that Karen was always to go to church in future in black shoes, even if they were old.

On the following Sunday there was Communion. Karen looked first at the black shoes, then at the red ones- looked at the red ones again, and put them on.

The sun was shining gloriously, so Karen and the old lady went along the footpath through the corn, where it was rather dusty.

At the church door stood an old crippled soldier leaning on a crutch; he had a wonderfully long beard, more red than white, and he bowed down to the ground and asked the old lady whether he might wipe her shoes. Then Karen put out her little foot too. "Dear me, what pretty dancing-shoes!" said the soldier. "Sit fast, when you dance," said he, addressing the shoes, and slapping the soles with his hand.

The old lady gave the soldier some money and then went with Karen into the church.

And all the people inside looked at Karen's red shoes, and all the figures gazed at them; when Karen knelt before the altar and put the golden goblet to her mouth, she thought only of the red shoes. It seemed to her as though they were swimming about in the goblet, and she forgot to sing the psalm, forgot to say the "Lord's Prayer."

Now every one came out of church, and the old lady stepped into her carriage. But just as Karen was lifting up her foot to get in too, the old soldier said: "Dear me, what pretty dancing shoes!" and Karen could not help it, she was obliged to dance a few steps; and when she had once begun, her legs continued to dance. It seemed as if the shoes had got power over them. She danced round the church corner, for she could not stop; the coachman had to run after her and seize her. He lifted her into the carriage, but her feet continued to dance, so that she kicked the good old lady violently. At last they took off her shoes, and her legs were at rest.

At home the shoes were put into the cupboard, but Karen could not help looking at them.

Now the old lady fell ill, and it was said that she would not rise from her bed again. She had to be nursed and waited upon, and this was no one's duty more than Karen's. But there was a grand ball in the town, and Karen was invited. She looked at the red shoes, saying to herself that there was no sin in doing that; she put the red shoes on, thinking there was no harm in that either; and then she went to the ball; and commenced to dance.

But when she wanted to go to the right, the shoes danced to the left, and when she wanted to dance up the room, the shoes danced down the room, down the stairs through the street, and out through the gates of the town. She danced, and was obliged to dance, far out into the dark wood. Suddenly something shone up among the trees, and she believed it was the moon, for it was a face. But it was the old soldier with the red beard; he sat there nodding his head and said: "Dear me, what pretty dancing shoes!"

She was frightened, and wanted to throw the red shoes away; but they stuck fast. She tore off her stockings, but the shoes had grown fast to her feet. She danced and was obliged to go on dancing over field and meadow, in rain and sunshine, by night and by day- but by night it was most horrible.

She danced out into the open churchyard; but the dead there did not dance. They had something better to do than that. She wanted to sit down on the pauper's grave where the bitter fern grows; but for her there was neither peace nor rest. And as she danced past the open church door she saw an angel there in long white robes, with wings reaching from his shoulders down to the earth; his face was stern and grave, and in his hand he held a broad shining sword.

"Dance you shall," said he, "dance in your red shoes till you are pale and cold, till your skin shrivels up and you are a skeleton! Dance you shall, from door to door, and where proud and wicked children live you shall knock, so that they may hear you and fear you! Dance you shall, dance- !"

"Mercy!" cried Karen. But she did not hear what the angel answered, for the shoes carried her through the gate into the fields, along highways and byways, and unceasingly she had to dance.

One morning she danced past a door that she knew well; they were singing a psalm inside, and a coffin was being carried out covered with flowers. Then she knew that she was forsaken by every one and damned by the angel of God.

She danced, and was obliged to go on dancing through the dark night. The shoes bore her away over thorns and stumps till she was all torn and bleeding; she danced away over the heath to a lonely little house. Here, she knew, lived the executioner; and she tapped with her finger at the window and said:

"Come out, come out! I cannot come in, for I must dance."

And the executioner said: "I don't suppose you know who I am. I strike off the heads of the wicked, and I notice that my axe is tingling to do so."

"Don't cut off my head!" said Karen, "for then I could not repent of my sin. But cut off my feet with the red shoes."

And then she confessed all her sin, and the executioner struck off her feet with the red shoes; but the shoes danced away with the little feet across the field into the deep forest.

And he carved her a pair of wooden feet and some crutches, and taught her a psalm which is always sung by sinners; she kissed the hand that guided the axe, and went away over the heath.

"Now, I have suffered enough for the red shoes," she said; "I will go to church, so that people can see me." And she went quickly up to the church-door; but when she came there, the red shoes were dancing before her, and she was frightened, and turned back.

During the whole week she was sad and wept many bitter tears, but when Sunday came again she said: "Now I have suffered and striven enough. I believe I am quite as good as many of those who sit in church and give themselves airs." And so she went boldly on; but she had not got farther than the churchyard gate when she saw the red shoes dancing along before her. Then she became terrified, and turned back and repented right heartily of her sin.

She went to the parsonage, and begged that she might be taken into service there. She would be industrious, she said, and do everything that she could; she did not mind about the wages as long as she had a roof over her, and was with good people. The pastor's wife had pity on her, and took her into service. And she was industrious and thoughtful. She sat quiet and listened when the pastor read aloud from the Bible in the evening. All the children liked her very much, but when they spoke about dress and grandeur and beauty she would shake her head.

On the following Sunday they all went to church, and she was asked whether she wished to go too; but, with tears in her eyes, she looked sadly at her crutches. And then the others went to hear God's Word, but she went alone into her little room; this was only large enough to hold the bed and a chair. Here she sat down with her hymn-book, and as she was reading it with a pious mind, the wind carried the notes of the organ over to her from the church, and in tears she lifted up her face and said: "O God! help me!"

Then the sun shone so brightly, and right before her stood an angel of God in white robes; it was the same one whom she had seen that night at the church-door. He no longer carried the sharp sword, but a beautiful green branch, full of roses; with this he touched the ceiling, which rose up very high, and where he had touched it there shone a golden star. He touched the walls, which opened wide apart, and she saw the organ which was pealing forth; she saw the pictures of the old pastors and their wives, and the congregation sitting in the polished chairs and singing from their hymn-books. The church itself had come to the poor girl in her narrow room, or the room had gone to the church. She sat in the pew with the rest of the pastor's household, and when they had finished the hymn and looked up, they nodded and said, "It was right of you to come, Karen."

"It was mercy," said she.

The organ played and the children's voices in the choir sounded soft and lovely. The bright warm sunshine streamed through the window into the pew where Karen sat, and her heart became so filled with it, so filled with peace and joy, that it broke. Her soul flew on the sunbeams to Heaven, and no one was there who asked after the Red Shoes.

---

The Red Shoes (film)
via Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The Red Shoes (1948) is a feature film about ballet, directed by the British-based team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It tells the story of a young ballerina who joins an established ballet company and becomes the lead dancer in a ballet called The Red Shoes (based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen) about a woman who cannot stop dancing. The film stars Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring and Moira Shearer. The screenplay is by Powell and Pressburger, with additional dialogue by Keith Winter and an uncredited Marius Goring.



Synopsis

Victoria 'Vicky' Page (played by Shearer) is a young, unknown dancer from an aristocratic background. At an after-ballet party, originally staged to provide a means for her to audition for him, she meets Boris Lermontov (Walbrook), the single-minded, ruthless, but charismatic manager of the Ballet Lermontov, who recruits her as a student, where she is taught by, among others, Grisha Lubov (Massine).

After seeing her perform in a matinee performance of Swan Lake[1], Lermontov realises her potential and invites her to go with the company to Paris and Monte Carlo. Lermontov has lost his prima ballerina to marriage and intends to create a title role for Vicky in a new ballet, The Red Shoes. The music is to be written by Julian Craster (Goring) a brilliant young composer engaged as orchestral coach the same day that Vicky was brought into the company.

As the premiere of the ballet approaches, Vicky and Julian lock horns artistically, and then fall in love. The ballet is a success, but when Lermontov learns of their affair, he is furious at Julian for taking Vicky away from dancing. Lermontov had once pronounced backstage that "a dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love will never be a great dancer"—and Vicky had overheard him. Julian refuses to give up Vicky and is fired by Lermontov, and she decides to leave with Julian. They marry, and Lermontov relents on his decision to enforce her contract with the ballet. He permits Vicky to dance where she pleases, but forbids her to perform The Red Shoes and keeps all the music Julian wrote for him, convinced that the young composer will amount to nothing on his own.

Some time later, while joining her aunt for a holiday in Monte Carlo, Vicky is visited on the train by Lermontov. He convinces her to dance in a revival of The Red Shoes, which he had removed from his company's repertoire after the couple left. As she is preparing for the opening night, Julian leaves the premiere of his first opera at Covent Garden to go to Vicky's dressing room at Monte Carlo. He demands that she leave with him. Torn between her love for Julian and her love of ballet, she remains reluctant to perform the ballet while Julian leaves for the railway station. Lermontov assures her that her sorrow will pass and that "life is unimportant".

While being escorted to the stage by her dresser and wearing the red shoes, Vicky suddenly runs out of the theatre. Julian sees her and runs helplessly towards her. She jumps from the balcony — from the same spot where she and Julian first realized their feelings for each other — falling in front of an approaching train. While lying on a stretcher, bloody and battered, Vicky asks Julian to remove the red shoes — just as in the finale of the ballet.

Heartbroken, Lermontov announces that Miss Page will not be able to perform "this or any other night" and says that the company will perform The Red Shoes with a spotlight on the empty space that she would have occupied.


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LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
by Grimm

Once upon a time . . . in the middle of a thick forest stood a small cottage, the home of a pretty little girl known to everyone as Little Red Riding Hood. One day, her Mummy waved her goodbye at the garden gate, saying: "Grandma is ill. Take her this basket of cakes, but be very careful. Keep to the path through the wood and don't ever stop. That way, you will come to no harm."

Little Red Riding Hood kissed her mother and ran off. "Don't worry,' she said, "I'll run all the way to Grandma's without stopping."

Full of good intentions, the little girl made her way through the wood, but she was soon to forget her mother's wise words. "What lovely strawberries! And so red . . ."

Laying her basket on the ground, Little Red Riding Hood bent over the strawberry plants. "They're nice and ripe, and so big! Yummy! Delicious! Just another one. And one more. This is the last . . . Well, this one . . . Mmmm."

The red fruit peeped invitingly through the leaves in the grassy glade, and Little Red Riding Hood ran back and forth popping strawberries into her mouth. Suddenly she remembered her mother, her promise, Grandma and the basket . . . and hurried back towards the path. The basket was still in the grass and, humming to herself, Little Red Riding Hood walked on.

The wood became thicker and thicker. Suddenly a yellow butterfly fluttered down through the trees. Little Red Riding Hood started to chase the butterfly.

"I'll catch you! I'll catch you!" she called. Suddenly she saw some large daisies in the grass.

"Oh, how sweet!" she exclaimed and, thinking of Grandma, she picked a large bunch of flowers.

In the meantime, two wicked eyes were spying on her from behind a tree . . a strange rustling in the woods made Little Red Riding Hood's heart thump.

Now quite afraid she said to herself. "I must find the path and run away from here!"

At last she reached the path again but her heart leapt into her mouth at the sound of a gruff voice which said: "Where ' . . are you going, my pretty girl, all alone in the woods?"

"I'm taking Grandma some cakes. She lives at the end of the path," said Little Riding Hood in a faint voice.

When he heard this, the wolf (for it was the big bad wolf himself) politely asked: "Does Grandma live by herself?"

"Oh, yes," replied Little Red Riding Hood, "and she never opens the door to strangers!"

"Goodbye. Perhaps we'll meet again," replied the wolf. Then he loped away thinking to himself "I'll gobble the grandmother first, then lie in wait for the grandchild!" At last, the cottage came in sight. Knock! Knock! The wolf rapped on the door. --~ "Who's there?" cried Grandma from her bed.

"It's me, Little Red Riding Hood. I've brought you some cakes because you're ill," replied the wolf, trying hard to hide his gruff voice.

"Lift the latch and come in," said Grandma, unaware of anything amiss, till a horrible shadow appeared on the wall. Poor Grandma! For in one bound, the wolf leapt across the room and, in a single mouthful, swallowed the old lady. Soon after, Little Red Riding Hood tapped on the door.

"Grandma, can I come in?" she called.

Now, the wolf had put on the old lady's shawl and cap and slipped into the bed. Trying to imitate Grandma's quavering little voice, he replied: "Open the latch and come in!

"What a deep voice you have," said the little girl in surpnse.

"The better to greet you with," said the wolf.

"Goodness, what big eyes you have."

"The better to see you with."

"And what big hands you have!" exclaimed Little Red Riding Hood, stepping over to the bed.

"The better to hug you with," said the wolf.

"What a big mouth you have," the little girl murmured in a weak voice.

"The better to eat you with!" growled the wolf, and jumping out of bed, he swallowed her up too. Then, with a fat full tummy, he fell fast asleep.

In the meantime, a hunter had emerged from the wood, and on noticing the cottage, he decided to stop and ask for a drink. He had spent a lot of time trying to catch a large wolf that had been terrorizing the neighbourhood, but had lost its tracks. The hunter could hear a strange whistling sound; it seemed to be coming from inside the cottage. He peered through the window ... and saw the large wolf himself, with a fat full tummy, snoring away in Grandma's bed.

"The wolf! He won't get away this time!"

Without making a sound, the hunter carefully loaded his gun and gently opened the window. He pointed the barrel straight at the wolf's head and . . . BANG! The wolf was dead.

"Got you at last!" shouted the hunter in glee. "You'll never frighten anyone agaln.

He cut open the wolf's stomach and to his amazement, out popped Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood, safe and unharmed.

"You arrived just in time," murmured the old lady, quite overcome by all the excitement. ~

"It's safe to go home now," the hunter told Little Red Riding Hood. "The big bad wolf is dead and gone, and there is no danger on the path.

Still scared, the little girl hugged her grandmother. Oh, what a dreadful fright!"

Much later, as dusk was falling, Little Red Riding Hood's mother arrived, all out of breath, worried because her llttle girl had not come home. And when she saw Little Red Riding Hood, safe and sound, she burst into tears of joy.

After thanking the hunter again, Little Red Riding Hood and her mother set off towards the wood. As they walked quickly through the trees, the little girl told her mother: "We must always keep to the path and never stop. That way, we come to no harm!"

---

Additional Information


Get this story and more from Project Gutenberg

Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories
The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1
Language English
EText-No. 19993

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Little Red Riding Hood
A traditional story
via the British Council's LearnEnglish Kids website

Little Red Riding Hood is visiting her Granny. But when she gets to Granny's house, Granny looks very strange! Is it Granny? Or is it the wolf she met in the wood? What will happen to Little Red Riding Hood?

CLICK HERE TO READ AND LISTEN TO THE STORY



Little Red Riding Hood
via Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Little Red Riding Hood is a famous folktale about a young girl's encounter with a wolf. The story has changed much in its history, and been subject to numerous modern adaptations and readings.

View the entire entry.


Little Red Riding Hood Cookie Jar
Patent Image
via About.com Collectibles

I've been overrun with work lately so I've become rather remiss regarding posts. Well, it's high time to rectify the situation. I've decided to devote the next few postings to stories, etc. with RED in the title.

I maintain several blogs and websites but this blog will regain its prominence in the update queue very soon. Thanks for your patience.

Cheese


by Sushma Joshi
via East of the Web


Gopi encountered cheese two years after he came down to Kathmandu.

Prakash Babu was returning from Switzerland. That land of miraculous clocks which always told the time in minute precision, not like the few minutes late, few minutes early time of Nepal. That twin land of mountains, that mirror image of peaks, but so much more Westernized, so much more modern, than Nepal's own mythologically burdened ones. Everybody was sure the mountains of Switzerland must somehow be a little bit better, a little bit nicer, a little bit more civilized, than their own poor, benighted country's. Never mind if Nepal had the tallest ones in the world - who cared about tall when there were more important things to think about, like cleanliness and hygiene. Modernity and precision. Who cared about tall when you could have the cleanest, most sanitized, most modern mountains in the world.

Prakash brought back with him a suitcase full of gifts: cashmere sweaters, Italian leather shoes, quartz watches, wooden birds that popped out of wooden houses and went "Cuckoo!", porcelain figurines holding hoes and buckets in pink and gold. And stuffed into some side pocket of the hard vinyl suitcase was the most important of them all - a grab-bag of airline goodies, embossed on the side with the name of the airline. After all, how could one prove one had flown an airline without one of those bags filled with mustard yellow socks, black eye-strain masks, little plastic containers of orange marmalade, plastic spoons and knives, little mint candies? How convince a country populated with disbelieving skeptics that those claims, indeed, were true? French chocolate was always good, a solid chunk of bitter foreign material melting into your tongue and signifying distance, travel, adventure, truth. But even chocolate, these days, could be bought at some shop, and was no longer a reliable indicator of long and distant travel. The only sure proof, these days, was cheese.

The cheese sent the household in Mahaboudh into a minor furor, and got the neighbors talking even before Prakash Babu arrived. Sharmila, the recent married daughter-in-law, was so excited she boasted haughtily to no one other than Fulmaya, the teashop lady: "Prakash Babu wrote to us, telling us he'll bring some cheese. Cheese from Switzerland, if you can imagine what that is like. But how can Nepalis ever appreciate real cheese, when they haven't even tasted any?" Fulmaya, never one to give up a good piece of gossip, had told the entire neighborhood about the cheese by the end of the morning. "Those Tiwaris will be talking about the cheese - Surjyaland cheese, if you can imagine what that is like," she said, imitating the recent bride's stuck-up tones, "for the next ten years." The old woman who sat in the tiny butcher shop next door snorted. "Yeh, Sanokanchi. Who the fuck does that fool of a girl think she is, anyway? And cheese - that family can stick it up their insides, for all we care. After all, we're never going to see a piece of it, are we? Huh, huh?"

<>

So it was into a neighborhood bursting with rumors and resentment that Gopi, the ten year old cousin who had been brought down from the village to be the household help, stepped out to do his daily chores. His responsibilities included:

1. Carrying the copper tray for the old lady and trotting behind her at the proper pace when she went out to do her morning prayers at five am in the morning.
2. Bringing the wood, the coal, and the kindling so that the daughter-in-law could light the fire.
3. Bringing water from the well to the fifth floor, where the kitchen was located.
4. Cutting the vegetables, cleaning the rice, soaking the lentils, shelling the peas and any other sundry time-consuming tasks that arose in a kitchen with a mortar and pestle and precious little else.
5. Taking care of the younger children, attending to the nitpicky demands of the older ones, and in general, being at the beck and call of anybody else in the household of twenty-four people who felt like taking a stab at him eighteen hours of the day.
6. Shutting up and not speaking, unless spoken to.
7. Taking the blame for everything that went wrong, including acts of God, nature and genetic insanity.
8. Smiling and accept it all with a good grace. ("What did he think this was, some kind of bureaucratic post, where he could sit around and do nothing?").

Prakash Babu came back on one of those chilly winter mornings when all Gopi wanted to do was curl up and go back to sleep again. But the old woman wouldn't let him. "Gopi!!" she shouted, frantically tucking her wool shawl around herself. "Go fetch a taxi! Go, go! It's almost time for the plane to land." The plane was scheduled to come in at ten in the morning, and it was only seven. A thick mist still hid the milkman as he came by, clinking his milk cans, but Gopi was not going to argue with Mami. The older sons lined the mossy courtyard outside the house and chatted while their mother rushed to get ready.

"Gopi!" The old woman shouted in irritation. "Why are the pots not out here yet?"

"I'm bringing it, Mami," he called out. Mami, he called her. Mother, just like her sons. They were much older than him, and he was more the age of her grandchildren. But he still called her "Mami", an artifice of the wealthy in Kathmandu to give the illusion that their poor cousins were treated like family, not servants. Gopi said "Mami" with the wryness of a ten year old who knows his own place in the world, and who can barely wait to get out of it.

<>

Gopi ran in with two copper pots full of water and put them on either side of the wooden doors. He split some water by accident. Oops. Well, if some brat from the house slipped and fell, he wouldn't be too sorry about it.

"Now go get the taxi. Hurry, hurry, hurry!" said Mami, as she busily sprinkled a little red vermilion and a few pink hibiscus on top of the pot, a big welcome for her prodigal son.

Gopi opened the big, creaking tin gates, and ran down the narrow lane. Taxis were not easy to flag down. Several taxi-drivers, their back seats empty, drove by the frantically waving boy in his scruffy shoes before one small, dented turquoise taxi finally slowed down before him. "Where to, boss?" said the driver. He looked down at Gopi's worn Chinese sneakers, then up at the shirt meant for a grown man hanging on the ten year old body, and spat on the ground.

"The airport," Gopi said. His voice was split between delight at the thought that this arrogant taxi-driver would know he was going to the airport, that exit-way into the heavens of foreign places, and anxiety that the man would not put the meter on and charge him double fare, making the old woman even more angry with him.

"Oh." The man's eyebrows went up in a friendly arch. "Is your man coming from inside or outside?" he asked.

"Outside," said Gopi, nonchalantly staring out of the window. "You'll put the meter on, dai?"
"Alright, alright. And where is he coming from?" asked the taxi driver, checking Gopi's underfed silhouette once more in the overhead mirror.

"Swizzilan."

Gopi swung the tin-gates open for the taxi, then waited for everybody to pile in, including Mami, her three sons and two grandchildren, before squeezing himself into the backseat. Mami, who was generously proportioned, took up more than her fair share of the seat.

"Switzerland!" said the youngest son, releasing the word like a reverent mantra to his little daughter, perched on his knee. "Your uncle's coming back from Switzerland." "What is he bringing us?" Rukmini, her pigtails bouncing up and down, asked excitedly. "He probably ate cowmeat all year long," grumbled the oldest brother from the front seat. "I hope he doesn't bring any cowmeat with him." "Hush, Babu! Don't say these things on this day," Mami admonished, as she rifled in her plastic bag to make sure her marigold garlands and her vermilion were in order.

<>

Gopi loved coming to the airport. He loved to look inside the glass windows that were so transparent he was afraid he would run into them. He loved the smell that people brought with them, the odor of tiredness that had steeped in the pressure of high altitude for hours. And he loved the roar of the planes as they lifted their big bellies and took off, their steel bodies lighter than the sky. He had heard the noise of the planes for the first time a year ago when he had come down to work at the house of his distant relatives in the Valley. The sound was so loud it had made him run and hide behind the old woman. Now he waited for it, loving it and dreading it with equal fervor.

He ran his fingers through the dividers that cut a blood-red, velvet line between the Nepalis and the foreigners. He licked the glass as he watched the radar spin and control the magical landings from the concrete rooftop of the Tribhuwan Airport.

Gopi followed the family out to the roof just in time to see the Royal Nepal airplane circle the Valley, once, twice; an eagle with steel wings missing the tips of the hills, miraculously. Then it landed. Tiny people with tiny ladders ran around, opening the doors. He craned his neck to see Prakash as he got out of the airplane. When he spotted the long, lean body among the faceless crowd, he waved and yelled as loudly as the others.

Prakash Babu came out, waving and smiling. He looked pale but well-fed, that unaccountable look that accompanied people who spent time in foreign countries. "Babu! You've become so thin!" said the old lady as she fell over Prakash, garlanding him with marigold flowers and smothering his forehead in vermilion tika. "Ama. Watch out for my glasses," he said, as he tried to fend off the marigolds as they suddenly pulled off his glasses and left him in a blurry, unfocused void. The old woman loved her third son a lot, Gopi had to say, as he watched the old lady tuck the glasses back on her son's face. She never came to pick up any of her other sons in the airport when they returned from traveling, which they frequently did in the course of their jobs.

<>

But Prakash had also gone away to a foreign country, crossing the ocean. Unlike his brothers, who had only traveled across the border to India, Prakash had gone to Europe. He had been chosen by the government to be one of the Nepalis to go and study at Lausanne's hotel management school in Switzerland. It was a big honor. The country had recently opened its boundaries to the outside world, letting in, for the first time, a small stream of foreigners. In exchange, other countries had graciously offered their support, including Switzerland, which had offered to show Nepalis the rules of commercial hospitality. Tribhuwan airport had only recently been built with a single runway, and cows still grazed around the tarmac before and after the plane landed. It was a time of encounters: a small stream of people poured in from either direction, bringing stories of other worlds, other horizons, other ways of being.

Gopi, tussling with the heavy Samsonite suitcases, noticed that they were papered with small tags and colorful stickers. Swiss Air, Lufthansa, Air India, Royal Nepal. Gopi had no knowledge of English or even his native alphabet, but he knew enough to know that these were the names of the airlines that Prakash Babu had just flown across the world on.

Back in the house, Prakash Babu waited until evening, when all of his four brothers and their wives had come back from work to open up his suitcases. Everybody converged in the old parents' room, including Suntali, the seventy year old cook, and Lati, the woman who washed the dishes in complete silence because she had never learnt how to speak. The room was so crowded there was no room to sit, so Gopi stood by the door and watched. Prakash sat on a bolster in the middle of his parents' room and unpacked, telling them stories. How the plane had been delayed, how his school had been the most famous school in hospitality management, how his professor had given him good marks.

Delay. Management. Professor. The foreign words filled the room along with the smells and crisp colors from the newly opened suitcases. Deliberately, he removed one gift after another from the suitcase. Shiny watches, soft wraps, toys made with real machinery. The gifts tumbled out, each one more enticing, more new, and more unreal than the last object.

<>

"A watch for you, father. The one you asked for," said Prakash.
The old man took a sip of his hot milk, and spat it out of the window. "The milk is too hot," he said. His voice cut across the crowded room with the everyday anger of domestic tyranny. The elder daughter-in-law got up to take the glass. She handed it to Gopi so that he could put it in a bowl of cold water. "What kind of watch?"

"A Rolex, Baba," said the older brother. He touched the links, which were made of solid gold. It was just like the kind they advertised inside the covers of Time magazine, featuring famous tennis players and Olympic swimmers.

"A Rolex?" asked the old man. He took his spectacle case from below his pillow, blew on the glasses to steam them up, then wiped them with a little yellow cloth. Then he put them on his nose and inspected the watch. There was a minute of silence as the family watched the old man.
"First class," he finally pronounced. Prakash looked relieved. It was hard to please his father.

The old man took a long, gurgling pull at his hookah. "But the links are not twenty four karat," he said.

"It's still gold," said the older brother, hastily trying to smooth over the old man's discontent.

"Not real gold." The old man took a long, slow sip of milk. "The milk is too cold."

The oldest daughter-in-law, silent, picked up the steel glass and gave it to Gopi so he could heat it up again.

Prakash had brought a cashmere stole for his mother. The old lady felt the wool, sighed, opened her metal safe with the bunch of keys that hung at her waist, and deposited the cashmere shawl into it. "It's beautiful, babu. It's beautiful," she assured him, in the tone of someone who had given up delighting in small things, and yet still keeps up the pretense. Almost as an afterthought, she pushed her hand deeper into the safe and emerged with a packet of crystallized sugar for the children.

But the children, today, could not be distracted by the mundane sweetness of ordinary treasure. They sat transfixed over unknown, but undoubtedly more important things. There were less flashy but still authentic Swiss watches for the brothers. There was a red and brown toy train that went choo-choo and moved around on little tracks for Prakash's only son. The train, which was eight feet long, had real windows and benches inside, and a steering wheel in the engine cabin in the front. The boy sat in awe as his father handed him the enormous toy.

<>

There were woolen wraps in elegant grey and taupe colors for his sisters-in-law. The women took the wraps and put them on their laps demurely. The grey and green were not particularly beautiful, but there was something in their very dullness that signaled the indefinable stamp of authentic foreignness. The women would wear them proudly, not because the colors made them look good - they didn't - but because they knew everybody would know at once that they had the status of obviously exported items. Later, they would talk at length about the terrible quality, and Prakash Babu's cheapness, and how they were sure he got his own wife a golden chain that he was not showing to the other members of the family. But right now there was no room for complaints. People took what they were given and made sure to look satisfied.
It seemed that the shiny, plastic wrapped packages were coming to an end. The girls were swallowing their disappointment when their uncle delved in his bag once more and came up with five bars of gold and red wrapped chocolate, which he gave to the eldest girl.

"Chocolate," he said. The eldest girl, Rita accepted the bars importantly, glaring at the others in case they tried to grab them out of her hands.

"I want the wrapper," Rukmini said, as she tried to take a bar away from her sister's hand. The wrapper glittered with the silver Alps in the background.

Rita held the bar above her head. "You can have the foil."

"I want the foil!" said Roshana, the youngest.

"We'll split it in three," Rita said as she carefully divided the golden foil into three pieces and handed a piece each to her sisters. The girls folded their little squares of gold for later use and put them inside the pages of their textbooks for maximum safety.

Rita broke off the pieces of chocolate and handed them out. Gopi watched in horrified fascination as brown sludge oozed out of the children’s mouths. Suntali, the old cook, put her square into her mouth, squeezed her face like a dry lemon, and ran to spit it out.

"Give some to Gopi," Mami reminded. Gopi, ten years old and hungry for experiences, could not wait until they handed him, grudgingly, his little square of chocolate. Gopi unwrapped the foil, a shiny, crinkly, golden treasure. It folded up in a neat square, the wrinkles miraculously disappearing as he pressed down on it. He popped the chocolate in his mouth. A faint smell, like that of alcohol, quickly gave way to a thick, bitter sludge on his own tongue.

<>

The taste was so unexpected he wanted to run and spit it out. He looked around. The girls were ecstatic, munching delightedly on the bars and loving it. It would be humiliating if he were the only one among the children to spit it out. He controlled the urge, closed his eyes, did not breathe, and swallowed. He knew the girls would laugh at him if they saw him acting like the old cook. The girls wanted more, but the chocolate had disappeared. They would have to wait for a few months, or a few years, before some relative went away again on a foreign tour.

It seemed that the suitcase had finally emptied. There were no more gifts to be had. Gopi, his taste buds still spinning from some unknown bitterness, felt the dissatisfaction at the bottom of his stomach. Was that all there was to this bounty? What else existed beyond the hard and crisp edges of machine manufactured objects? Why did it feel like the guarantee of an unknown haven had fallen flat on its gold-wrapped promise? He felt the hunger of unfulfilled desires echoing in the hollow depth of his stomach.

There should be something more than this, he thought, as he watching the empty suitcase's lid come down with a slap.

"Oh, I almost forgot," said Prakash Babu, taking out a white, silver wrapped package carefully from a pouch on the side. "Here's cheese."

"Chij!" said the children. Their eyes reflected their longing. Prakash had brought a box of cheese with him last time he came from Switzerland, and the children had tasted it. They had talked about it reverently ever since, dropping the word "chij" in their conversation casually, mysteriously. Gopi, in his ignorance, had been baffled why they kept on referring to that "thing" they had eaten. In Nepali, "chij" means, simply - a thing. How was Gopi to know that the "chij" of the children's conversation was a thing of monumental importance. A thing that was almost ambrosia, almost the food of the gods, only found in faraway spaces. The humble thing-i-ness of the word suddenly traveled to the exotic underworld of the senses and came up packaged in silver foil and cardboard, smelling faintly of time zones and jetlag, coated with the grime of airport lobbies and the sanitized crackle of guilders. The word, suddenly, had status.

<>

Now they eyed the package hungrily as their uncle took it out. They wanted their piece, but they knew they might not get it. There were twenty-six people gathered in that room. Prakash Babu handed over the precious cargo to his mother, relinquishing the responsibility of dividing it. The old lady asked for a knife, and when it was brought to her, cut the small, round white cake in uneven little pieces. The men got the biggest portions. The children got the second biggest. They stuffed the pieces in their mouths hungrily. The white pieces melted like butter in their mouth, gone in a second.

"No, its alright" said the eldest daughter-in-law, when the old lady handed her a piece. The daughters-in-law were ruled by the guidelines of modesty, and could not accept any delicacies. The old lady, who was a devout Brahmin with a strict regimen of dietary taboos, would not eat anything that had been prepared, and therefore polluted, by the taint of the outside world. Tomatoes, onions and garlic were on her list of forbidden foods. She also avoided using glass, since one never knew the status of its profanity. Cheese, therefore, was unacceptable to her on three grounds - one for its public origins, second for its preparation by unknown hands, and third for its association with the dirty act of fermentation.

"Gopi, get me a plate, will you?" said the old lady. Gopi, in a torment of anticipation, ran straight down to the kitchen, grabbed the plate, and was back in a minute. He became hopeful. There were a lot of little white wedges in the plate in front of the old woman. Maybe he would get to taste that thing the children constantly talked about.

A moment later, the cheese was almost gone. On the plate lay one single slice of white cheese. Gopi could not bear it. All the children were munching contentedly. What did it taste like? What was so good about it?

Gopi held his breath. Everybody had had a share, even the old cook, who again spit out her share with the same agonized look on her face. Would Mami give him the last wedge?
"Mami. Can I have the last one?" said Roshana. Roshana, the youngest one, sitting demurely and avoiding, for once, her incessant picking of the scabs of her skinned knee. The one who he towed around in a bicycle and played badminton with all day long. The greedy monkey. She knew Gopi was standing right there by the door. She knew he hadn't had a piece. But what could he do? He couldn't ask for it in the same way she could.

<>

"Don't eat too much," said her grandmother absently, handing the last wedge over. Gopi felt the disappointment sinking through his body like a small stone as the little girl shoved the cheese into her mouth triumphantly. Kookurni. She knew he had been waiting with longing all evening long. She knew it, and yet she had ignored him like he wasn't even present in the room. Like he didn't exist.

Gopi could not forget the idea of cheese from that moment on. He desired it so much it become a constant longing in his mind, one that accompanied him in his waking and dreaming moments.
That night, he dreamt about cheese. Huge white circles of cheese with giant holes in them hung from his ceiling. His body twitched restlessly as he climbed up the cheese, using the holes as foot-holes, until he got to the top. Then he put his small teeth down and started nibbling his way down, but wait - all the holes were collapsing, and there was no way to climb down. He was like Kalidas, who had cut off the branch he was sitting on and realized too late that he was falling off the tree. The next day, as he sweated in the small plot of land hoeing and planting cauliflower and soybeans, he thought longingly about the soft whiteness in his mouth.

He thought about it for so long, and so much, he knew eventually there was nothing for him to do but get a piece of it. There was only one minor problem - it was so expensive even the rich families did not eat it. Even if I save all the coins that fall into my hand, I won't be able to buy a hundred grams of cheese by the time I die, he thought in despair. The old woman gave him five rupees a month, along with dal-bhatt, lodging and her sons' old clothes in exchange for his labor. The five rupees, which turned to ten, twenty, fifty, hundred, two hundred, and then five hundred over the next ten years, was swallowed up for the daily sustenance of his big family back in the village, from the mustard oil and salt of the daily meals to the tobacco that packed his grandfather's hookah.

A week after he came down from his village to work in the city, he had discovered the existence of Nepal Dairy, an institution that provided the milk to the households of Kathmandu. "Remember the old days when cows were still roaming the streets? The milk was so fresh then," the old folks reminisced, forgetting that the cows, in all likelihood, ate street garbage and provided milk that tasted of their urban diet. In their memories, the cows, the milk, and the extended, joint families took on the hazy glow of nostalgia. Those were the day, bygone, heavenly days when one did not have to drink milk from a bottle. Ah, those were the days. Nobody quite knew where the dairy milk came from, but there were long, dark speculations about its impurities, its dreaded composition, and its strange bluish color.

<>

One of the exotic items that the famous Dairy stocked, along with ice cream, was cheese. Prakash Babu had taken Gopi there once, and had bought him a cone of ice cream. His mouth had almost frozen from the shock of the cold, and the sugar had eaten away at his rotting tooth and given him a piercing moment of pain. A tear had squeezed out of one eye involuntarily with the pain of it all, but he had smiled and said that he liked it. But he still had not tasted cheese.

It took Gopi twenty years to realize his dream. Twenty years, during which he grew older, got married, grew a beard, acquired a strange tic in his speaking pattern, fiercely guarded his ambiguity toward politics, built a house, cremated his father, and reevaluated his revulsion toward that slimy vegetable known as okra. Throughout this period, he also watched an endless stream of relatives fly in and out of Nepal. His nephews and nieces, whom he had helped to put through school, themselves returned from foreign lands with suitcases full of gifts. But his responsibilities, which seemed to grow with each year, were still so binding he could not spare thirty rupees to buy anything other than bare necessities. The desire for cheese turned into a deferred dream, slowly maturing in his mind, year by year. It was almost twenty years after Prakash Babu came from Switzerland before Gopi, who had finally snagged a much coveted job at a hotel, found enough extra money to fulfill his desire. In a bright blue day covered with the purple bruises of jacaranda flowers, Gopi got on his old Chinese bike and cycled toward the city. "I'm going to buy some chij today," he told the old cook as he clanged his way out of the shiny new corrugated tin gate.

"Why do you want to spend money on that demonic food? It smells like rot and tastes like vomit." The old cook was too old to mince her words, but Gopi was not going to let her deter him from his mission.

"I've been waiting for this for almost twenty years, Didi," he confided. "I am not going to stop now."

Lainchowr was almost twenty minutes away. The sun shone down fiercely, but Gopi was so happy to feel the scratchiness of the notes in his chest pocket he sang a family planning jingle all the way to the grilled gates of the Dairy.

<>

Big carts full of bottled milk stood outside in the yard. The whole place smelt of milk slowly turning sour, laced with the heavy rancid odor of old fat. The old world speculations of the impurity of Dairy milk had finally crystallized into fact when the news had finally broken in the newspapers. Gopi had been sitting in front of the television when he heard the news.

The Nepal dairy milk was irradiated with the unknown, almost incomprehensible toxic accident of Chernobyl. Poland, desperate to get rid of its old stock of milk powder, had dumped it on the market of the Third World. A year after the news of the accident had swept the television sets of the world, the citizens of Kathmandu, getting up in the morning to drink their tea and standing on street corners reading newspapers, felt a shock as they realized that fallout was still happening in the "Third World", and that the Third World was them. The news had suddenly become their lives, their stories. It was all a bit unsettling.

The placid, smiling façade of the citizens of Nepal broke, for one brief moment, as they rebelled against this most intimate and intrusive radiation that was entering their bones and their blood. For a brief week, middle class households all over Kathmandu refused to buy milk from the Nepal Dairy Corporation. The bottles piled up outside the yard in Lainchowr, and finally, the chairman, in desperation, came on television and drank an entire bottle of milk straight out of the mouth. He waved the bottled and yelled at the screen: "Look at me! I am drinking this milk! This is the milk that my children are drinking every day!!"

People had been impressed. Not by his lies, or his various claims and assurances his family was drinking Dairy milk. Of course everybody knew that a smart man like him was doing no such thing, and that anybody with a bit of sense, and a bit of money, was buying powdered milk from Australia. No, the people were impressed by the audacity of his performance, the sheer brilliant oratory which was going to force an entire nation to drink irradiated milk, simply because the people in the Corporation had received a generous kickback from the Polish companies. The audacity was delicious. People knew they were being exposed to cancerous substances. At the same time, they had to admire the passion, the drama, the theatre of the absurd. They had to admire the political convictions of leaders, who talked so convincingly and so sincerely and who believed their own stories so much they made their dissenters doubt their own knowledge. So a week after the big commotion, people, having voiced their objections and gotten political protest out of the way, once again went back to the business of living and lined up outside the Dairy to get their daily bottle of slightly bluish milk.

<>

Gopi, who could not be bothered about the futuristic possibilities of irradiated milk, locked his bicycle and walked up to the queue that stretched around the yard to the grilled window. People were lined up to buy their daily rations. The queue, sweating and dusty, shuffled slowly toward the grille. The sweat trickled down his face as he waited. After twenty minutes, his turn finally came.

"Chij, Sauji," said Gopi.

The man, the edges of his blue cotton cuffs lined with black grime, looked him up and down with impatience.

"How much?" he asked. He was a busy man. He did not like small orders.

"Thirty rupees," blurted Gopi.

The man took down a big yellow round of cheese from a shelf above him. Gopi, watching him anxiously, got worried. The cheese, in the dim filtered light, looked yellow. The other cheese had been white. As the man sliced a piece, Gopi asked hesitantly: "Isn't cheese supposed to be white?"

"Yes, well, if you are used to getting yours from Switzerland," said the man with nasty humor.

"Here we have either Dairy or yak cheese. Which one do you want?"

Yak was an animal that was relatively familiar and yet unknown. For a hill-born and bred man like Gopi, the thought of yak became tainted with dangerous, unknown taboos.

"I'll take the Dairy cheese," he answered hesitantly.

The man, exasperated with the slow decision, sliced a swift slice, scraped off the edges, and then wrapped the rest in a piece of newspaper.

"What else?" He said, as he handed over the cheese.

"This is enough," said Gopi, his voice reflecting dread as he handed over his hoard of crisp bank-notes. He could not wait to put it in his mouth. At the same time, now that the thing was in his hand, he was afraid to find out. What if it did not come up to his expectations?

The yard was crowded with people fighting to get to the front of the line before the bottles ran out, which they frequently did. Gopi walked outside, clutching his precious cheese in one hand, towing his bike with another. A mangy dog came loping up as he came outside, putting a warm, wet muzzle toward his plastic bag. "Ja! Ja!" Gopi yelled at the animal. The dog, sensing an imminent beating, loped away mournfully into the distance.

<>

Gopi propped his bike on the wall that surrounded the Royal Palace, and pulled himself up on a low ledge. He slowly unwrapped the precious package. Inside was a big triangle of off-white chij. He picked it up on one edge, and slowly carried it toward his mouth. It smelt faintly repulsive, but Gopi wasn't going to let a smell stop him from tasting this thing now.

He bit into it. His teeth went through, softly, satisfyingly. He felt his saliva swirl around it. A slight taste now, of some moldy, sweaty, fungi-like thing in his mouth. He chewed some more, but the taste started to get worse, more intense, moving from fungi to decomposing milkfat, from decomposing milkfat to dirty laundry, from dirty laundry to some existential hollow, vomit-inducing thing in his mouth. In horror, he swallowed.

The swallowing was a gag reaction in the wrong direction. As soon as he swallowed, his body reacted, and his stomach reacted, and he started gagging and retching by the walls of the Royal Palace. He retched, and he retched, until all the cheese finally came out of him. He wiped his mouth of the yellow slime. He looked around in shame to see nobody had seen him throwing up. Gopi had eaten the thing, but it felt almost as if it wasn't him who had eaten it - it had eaten him. All the longings at the hollow of his stomach had disgorged with the yellow slime. He slowly wiped his forehead, tied a small scarf around his neck, and cycled his way back to the house.

by Charles Lambert



The Crack
via East of the Web

Well, as you know, I've been away for awhile but I'm back now. Expect regular posts and a bit of spit and polish in the blog's overall appearance.

Thanks for waiting friends. I've missed you.

It's been yet another loooooooong stretch between posts. I hope you will forgive me. This blog is very important to me but extremely pressing personal and professional matters forced me to place it on the back burner for a while. Well, if you'll bear with me just a bit more, we'll have the site beaming with brilliance.

Back in October 2006, I outlined intended changes:

Refine the Focus
My blogging style has been very scattered. It makes me appear to be a jumbled mess (which, at times, is probably accurate). However, the purpose of this blog was AND is to tell stories, to write stories, to read stories, to view stories and to listen to stories. I need to get back to that.

Revise the Layout
Since I believe the content should be the primary focus, I will stick to the minimalist look but elements will be added to make site navigation easier. (I might dress up the color a bit, too.)

Add some Cool Features
Podcasting and vidcasting (just the bees knees) and other cool tech will make this a hot site.

Okay, so you have the list AGAIN, let's watch some magic happen!!

An un-talent contest seeks out the worst possible performers. The results are… oddly riveting. Also, a review of A Sense of the World and Anna Maria Flechero.

As many of you know by now, I LOVE This American Life AND I have a not so secret crush on Ira Glass. Now, I get to see him whenever I want because HE'S ON TV.

Surprisingly, I actually missed the big television debut but I watched it online at Showtime (hint: click Ira's picture to get to the site)

Here's what others have to say about Ira's foray beyond the booth.

The New York Times
Arts / Television
A Radio Host Tries His Voice on Television
By DAVID CARR
Published: March 21, 2007
Can Ira Glass bring “This American Life” to a new medium without the show losing its old charms?

Few approaches to telling stories would seem less suited to modern television than that of the radio show “This American Life”: Tales unfold at a pace set by the normal speaking voice, the driving ethos is one of empathy, and when the epiphanies come, they seem to arrive of their own accord. It isn’t exactly “Flavor of Love.”

As a popular feature on public radio, “This American Life” and its host, Ira Glass, have used this simple method to engage the listener with normal people who just happen to be abnormally interesting.

Mr. Glass is a radio wonk who got his start as a 19-year-old intern at National Public Radio. He has since worked as an audiotape editor, a newscast writer and an education reporter. He became known for having a light, fanciful touch with common folks, and in 1995 he was asked if he had any ideas for a local show in Chicago. What eventually came to be “This American Life” gradually gained steam, winning most of the significant radio awards along the way. It brought a kind of radio majesty to the prosaic, the significant and the weird: kids frolicking at summer camp, love in wartime between a soldier and a prisoner, or a woman who goes to a Bible class really to hear its message and is unnerved by the violence underlying many of its stories.

Each radio show has a theme and unfolds in a series of acts, with guidance from Mr. Glass, whose nasal voice could belong to a cerebral grad student if it weren’t for the compelling stories it appears alongside.

Whether the show can be made visible without losing its charms is a question that will be answered tomorrow night at 10:30 Eastern and Pacific times (9:30, Central time), when a television version of the broadcast begins on Showtime. Sitting in the series’s office in Chelsea, Mr. Glass said plenty of people had their doubts, he chief among them. “We went into the pilot not convinced that it could work at all,” he said. “In fact, we asked for assurances from Showtime and got it in our contract with them that if we thought it didn’t work, that at the end of the pilot, even though they would have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, then we could ask them to kill it.”

There had been false starts with broadcast networks, underwhelming attempts, and Mr. Glass said there was always the fear that the ineffable magic of the radio show might be rubbed out by a hail of production notes from television executives. And there was a new vocabulary, this one visual, to master.

“There were a couple of points in making this pilot that I was surprised by the expressiveness of television and what the images could add,” Mr. Glass said. “We are not snobs about TV. We all watch TV, we talk about TV, but we had all worked all our lives in radio, and I have never had the experience in radio of thinking, ‘Oh, if I only had a camera, I could get this across.’ ”

He said they were, in the end, “looking for interesting pictures to talk over.” The series, directed by Christopher Wilcha, with photography by Adam Beckman, succeeds by coming up with a template that is receptive to all manner of images. The closest analogue is probably an Errol Morris movie, in which the images don’t always relate directly to what is being said, but add narrative and texture of their own. In one of the Showtime episodes, a story about a 14-year-old boy who decides he will never, ever fall in love uses slow-motion photography of the girls he goes to school with to capture their allure while he remains oblivious.

“I think the process was initially frustrating for the people who had worked in radio,” Mr. Wilcha said. “They did not want to bend what was working on radio to the needs of the medium, so I had to shoot it and cut it so that they could see it didn’t work. ‘This American Life’ always has a moment of realization, and once we all figured out a way to translate that to TV, we all got excited.” (The radio version of the show will continue to run.)

The America of the title is a big tapestry, taking its viewers from a pig farm with olfactory charms that lay the camera crew low, to the Lower East Side, where a smarmy art hipster punks a nascent rock band by manufacturing a fan base. Mr. Glass was greeted as a conquering rock star in various American cities during a recent live tour, and Showtime is hoping that the rabid, embedded fan base of “This American Life” — as well as the tsunami of media coverage generated by reporters who love to write about someone who actually tells real, live stories — will give it visibility in a cluttered television universe.

“This is sort of the heart of what we do in terms of trying to get attention with quality shows,” Robert Greenblatt, president of entertainment at Showtime, said. “This is a show that was created by a visionary using a deceptively simple process. As I have told the people that work here, this is Ira’s show, and he needs to do it. If he wants help or advice from us, he can have it, but it is his show.”

In the first episode a rancher makes the unfortunate decision to have the family’s pet bull, Chance, cloned. (Like many “This American Life” tales, it’s a long story.) Second Chance — think Cujo with bad genes and very long, pointy horns — eventually gores Ralph, his owner, and badly. Ralph makes a nice little speech from his hospital bed about getting back on the bull, so to speak, Mr. Glass said, “but then there is this moment afterwards when there is this look of complete vulnerability and utter weariness that crosses his face.”

“That look gives you so much more information about the character than we could ever get across in the radio piece,” Mr. Glass said.

The series has no dominant visual aesthetic: “We knew what we did not want it to look like,” he said, sitting in a corner office just off a common area that contained both an old wooden radio and a massive flat-screen television. “We knew that we didn’t want it to look like reality television or a documentary.”

Instead the television show is a mosh-up of visual styles, with short animation, found video, highly formal interior shots and expansive exteriors. What connects the shows — both the television and radio versions — is an uncommon empathy for subject. Viewers often find themselves rooting for whoever is featured going through the traditional arc of setup, epiphany and denouement.

Each episode opens with Mr. Glass inhabiting television conventions, sitting at a desk in a suit with coffee mug and pencils at the ready. But the desk is a movable feast, plopped in front of a booming subdivision for a show on growth spurts and in front of ominous nuclear power-plant cooling towers for an show on unintended consequences.

The six episodes, most containing two or three acts, never find themselves in service to television conventions. There is the Virginia politician who deploys what he calls “radical honesty” in a doomed election, a hot dog stand in Chicago that serves up racial invective, and the faithful in the desert who look for God’s face in a Polaroid.

“We want to do people on a human scale without a lot of shouting,” Mr. Glass said. “The subjects don’t need to be exemplars of some national trend. They can just be people with interesting stories.”


More Written Elsewhere...

Men.Style.com
Radio on the TV
Showtime for Ira Glass

March 20, 2007

TV: After weeks of working the press like, well, someone who's from the for-profit side of things, Ira Glass, above left, brings his This American Life shtick to Showtime Thursday. The first episode features both an ungrateful cow and New York pranksters Improv Everywhere. IE's brethren in the downtown comedy scene, the Whitest Kids U'Know, turn up on Fuse tonight, while Friday brings the premiere of VH1's Acceptable TV, which showcases content from Time's Person of the Year. We'll see if you is all you is cracked up to be.

Psst. You can not so secretly crush on Ira, too. Get the wallpaper or the icons.

Theoretically, this writer writes but let's see how others do it. Where shall we go today?

1. The Writing Show
   Where writing is always the story.
   
   This blog looks like a great resource. Here's a snapshot of what you'll find on the site:
   
   Sample Author’s Book Marketing Questionnaire
   A Few Lessons Learned from Publishing in America
   Doing Research for Hollywood
   GETTING PUBLISHED, WITH JEAN TENNANT
   GETTING PUBLISHED, WITH MARK LESLIE
   How to Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal
   Newsletter
   Press Releases
   TV Interview Tips for Authors
   What A Newsletter Can Do for You
   Writing Exercises
   
   The blog also includes podcasts of interviews with (God love 'em) actual WRITERS. Here's a podcast related to short story writing: Podcast: About Short Stories With author Nancy O. Greene, author of the collection Portraits in the Dark. Join Nancy and host Paula B. for a fascinating talk about short stories, including:
   
   What the characteristics of short stories are
   How creating character in short stories differs from working in the novel
   Whether it’s easier or more difficult to write a short story than a novel
   Why some famous authors take so long to write short stories
   Whether the short story is in decline
   How to put together a compelling short story collection
   Why Nancy writes short stories
   What some of her favorite short stories are.
   
   Date: March 5, 2007
   Running time: 01:01:27
   The interview: http://writingshow.com/podcasts/Nancy_Greene.mp3
   
   Nancy Greene’s Web sites: Portraits.bravehost.com; Writersgroupblog.wordpress.com
   
   Listen to The Writing Show's complete podcast collection in Odeo: http://odeo.com/channel/7166/view
   



2. Writing and Humanistic Studies
   MIT OpenCourseWare is a large-scale, Web-based electronic publishing initiative.
   
   MIT OCW's goals are to provide free, searchable, access to MIT's course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world; and to extend the reach and impact of MIT OCW and the "opencourseware" concept.
   
   The MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies gives students the opportunity to learn the techniques, forms, and traditions of several kinds of writing, from basic expository prose to more advanced forms of non-fictional prose, fiction and poetry, science writing, scientific and technical communication and digital media.
   
   Click the link above for a complete listing of courses. Here's one I find interesting:
   
   21W.730-2 The Creative Spark, Fall 2004
   
   Course Description
   
   "Creative activity (isn't) the icing on the cake. Human creativity is the cake." (Jerry Hirschberg)
   
   Creativity - "the mastery of information and skills in the service of dreams" (Hirschberg) - is much prized in the arts, science, business and the classroom. What does the creative process look like? Under what conditions does it flourish - what ignites the creative spark? Attempting to answer these questions, this class explores ways creativity has been understood in Western culture: what we prize and fear about creativity and its wellsprings; how writers, artists, scientists and inventors have described their own creative processes; how psychologists and philosophers have theorized it; ways in which creativity has been represented in Western culture, particularly in 20th century films; and creativity in everyday life, including our own lives. [...]
   
   THE CREATIVE SPARK
   FALL 2004
   
   Homework #1
   
   1) WRITE a letter to me introducing yourself to me as a writer: What’s your relationship to writing? What are your hopes (and fears?) for this class? What happened with you and writing in high school (or elsewhere)? Anything else about you & writing you want to tell me? (e.g., is English your second language, writing you’ve done on your own, what you like to read . . .)
   
   1-1½ pages, word processed, single-spaced with space between paragraphs
   
   2) READ Didion’s “Why I Write,” Updike’s “Why Write?”, and Louis Menand’s “Bad Comma.” Updike is a novelist and short story writer who has also written a considerable amount of literary criticism and essays on general topics, from Ted Williams’ last time at bat to the genesis of Mickey Mouse’s ears; he is one of the major American writers of the second half of the 20th century. “Why Write,” like Didion’s “Why I Write,” was originally a talk. Didion is a highly-regarded novelist and essayist of the late 20th century with an especially distinctive voice. Menand teaches at Harvard and writes literary and cultural criticism for the New Yorker magazine.
   
   Select a brief passage—a sentence or two—from one of these three pieces and respond to it. NOTE: I am not asking you to explain the passage but to amplify it, extend it, question it, talk back to it—in short, to think about it in relation to something you know or have experienced.
   
   1 page double-spaced.