Cody

July 3, 1996 - October 15, 2010

Shawn Grady's "Tomorrow We Die"

A dying man hands paramedic Jonathan Trestle a piece of paper with seemingly nonsense scribbles, saying “Give this to Martin.” But the man doesn’t die and discharges himself from the hospital. When Trestle tires to return the paper, he finds the man dead, this time permanently.

Then the man named Martin dies – and his body disappears from the morgue. And then Trestle realizes what the scribbles are all about, and finds himself under arrest and on the run.

Shawn Grady, author of the previously published novel Through the Fire, has written another wild suspense ride through the streets of Reno with Tomorrow We Die. But there are three aspects of his second novel that make it every bit as good as the first one – and even a shade better.

First, Grady draws upon his own experience as a paramedic, to render the action and details of the story vividly real. Instructions at response scenes are barked and received in language that only a paramedic would know and understand, and yet the reader is able to follow closely.

Second, he develops Through the Fire as both a suspense story and a love story. Trestle connects with Naomi, a nurse serving on an emergency medical helicopter and a former girlfriend he walked away from. The romance is rekindled and becomes part of the suspense story.

Third, Grady draws the character of Trestle in complex ways that make him more than only a character is a suspense story. He was to live and deal with an alcoholic father, deal with his own feelings about the death of his mother, find his way back to Naomi, and protect his acceptance into medical school, not to mention deal with several villains and attempts on his life. In the process, Trestle becomes a very three-dimensional and very real character.

Grady’s writing, already solid in his first novel, is even better in Through the Fire. And he tells a first-rate suspense story, too.

Another Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday

Once more, it’s that time of the week, when our intrepid leader Duane Scott officiates at Pleasantly Disturbed Thursdays.

Yesterday, page visits to a blog post I did earlier this month skyrocketed (well, “skyrocketed” may be too strong a term, but my normal number of page visits quadrupled in a day). I couldn’t figure out why – there didn’t appear to be a single source. And then I found out that High Calling Editor Marcus Goodyear had included that post of mine in a Faith in the Workplace newsletter he does for Christianity Today Magazine (online).

Thank you, Marcus. That was an awfully nice thing to do.

In August, something similar (but smaller) happened when someone took a poem I’d posted and linked it in StumbleUpon. Whoosh went the page visits. Thank you, Someone.

I’m familiar with this stuff, and I know this online stuff, but I still get amazed when it happens.

It’s been two weeks since I went to the High Calling editorial team to Laity Lodge near San Antonio (that’s “near” in Texas terms; it was actually about 140 miles away). Since then, the High Calling web site has merged with the High Calling Blogs web site; the combined site is simply The High Calling. I really like the design; and I’ve successfully maneuvered the Drupal platform and actually posted an article this week: Is God More Pleased with My Work than I Am?

Ann Kroeker, one of our number at Laity Lodge, did a blog post this week on the experiences they had at their lodge house (Lodestar) with scorpions. We didn’t have scorpions at our lodge house (Song Bluff). I did have to get rid of a wandering cricket in my bedroom, though. A couple of people closer to the main lodge had experiences with tarantulas. And I was followed by a couple of vultures while hiking one of the trails. (That was a little unnerving; I think I’m on a hike and they think they’re looking at dinner).

I’ve been reading a lot of good stuff lately:


• Billy Coffey’s novel Snow Day was officially published on Monday. It’s storytelling like only Billy Coffey can do it.

• I finished Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, the book we’ve been discussing for The High Calling; my last post on it will be Sunday afternoon.

• I read Three Roads Home, a group of three love story novellas by Travis Thrasher published in 2003.

• I’ve started reading Another Hotel Room: Selected Poems 1988-2008 by Steven Marty Grant.

Thanks to all you who commented on my post yesterday – the one about approaching a tough decision on what to do with our elderly dog. I talked with the vet Wednesday, and we’ve worked out a process for sometime in the next two weeks or so. I was so cool, calm and totally professional with the vet on the phone. I only lost it twice.

Finally, it wouldn't be an official Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday without a new photo of the world’s greatest grandson. My daughter-in-law Stephanie took this picture while trying to fit him for clothes – and she found this hat. So, here’s Cameron in a bear hat.

Tough Decision Ahead

The time is approaching. It will be sooner rather than later. And eventually I will have to decide.

It’s about the dog.

He’s 14+ years old. He arrived in our family when he was about three months old and my youngest was in third grade. Son and I had driven one Friday afternoon from St. Louis to eastern Kansas, spent the night in Lawrence, and then drove the next morning to Emmett, Kansas. The breeder lived on a farm (down a long dirt road from the highway and then over a log bridge), had nine children and raised two kinds of dogs – Papillons (or Toy Spaniels) and Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. We were there for a Cavalier.

He’s been part of the family ever since. Thoeretically he was supposed to be my son’s dog, but parents know how that goes. Actually, my wife and I took the most care of him.

And now he’s 14+. The vet rather cheerfully tells me he has the heart of a five-year-old dog, unusual in a breed prone to heart trouble. But he’s mostly blind (cataracts), mostly deaf, arthritic and with a tendency to have his back legs collapse from underneath him. He gets a pill for anxiety; he has “accidents” if he can’t see either my wife or me in the house. He spends most of his time now in his crate, sleeping.

His little face is almost pure white. At the kennel, they call him the old man.

The youngest, formerly that third grader who’s now graduated from college and working, came in from Kansas City last weekend. He knew it was likely the last time to see the dog. That’s why he came.

So, it’s now time for a decision.

And I don’t want to make it.

I’ve called the vet, and I’m waiting for the return call. My question is: how do I know when it’s time? What do I look for? Do I wait until the infirmities are overwhelming or do I do something sooner? The dog is still getting around, but each day is a little harder.

No, this is not the worst decision I’ve ever faced. But it feels something like that.

And I’m making it the usual way – by trying to avoid making it.

I will eventually do what’s best for the dog, and I already know what that is. But there may still be a few weeks yet.

Surely.

But not much longer than that.


Over at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray had been hosting a jam on a number of topics related to faith. Last week, the topic was “Can Faith Change Your Personality?” This week, the topic is “making tough decisions.”
 
Photograph: Me and Cody, about three years ago, by Janet Young. Used with permission.

Airports Are Odd Places

Airports are odd places,
a smash of humanity battling
through document check,
(shoes off) (belt off) (coat off),
then imaging or pat down or
wand down and now even
a liquid wand check like they
don’t trust the water bottle
you just bought at the newsstand.
Then you sit and wait,
forced to listen to 17 cell phone
conversations, all shouted,
16 of which are
because people are bored
and forgot how to wait or
forgot how to read.
Finally! you line up,
assuming the flight’s on time,
and you crush into the aluminum
cylinder, fighting for that two by
one space in the overhead bin,
to fly at 450 miles an
hour to a destination of
hope or despair.
Time to board.

This poem has been submitted to One Stop Poetry for One Shot Wednesday. The post and links will be live at 4 p.m. central time today.

Photograph: People Mover, O'Hare Airport, by Peter Griffin. Used with permission by Public Domain Pictures.

Billy Coffey's "Snow Day"

Peter Boyd wakes up and sees a heavy snow falling outside. He decides to call in to the factory with a snow day, and he looks forward to not thinking about impending layoffs. His wife Abby sends him out into the snow to the store for bread and milk. And Peter walks right into life.

Author Billy Coffey has a singular ability to tell a story “true,” and in Snow Day, his first novel, he not only tells his story true, he tells stories within the story just as true. And he tells them well: how scars and a limp can be beautiful; how winning a lottery ticket can be both tragic and redemptive; why one can lose his faith in the face of overwhelming human devastation; and what one can learn from one’s children.

Those are only a few of the stories he tells as the drama of Peter’s impending layoff unfolds. These are stories about brokenness. Not brokenness made whole, but brokenness made livable and breathable, brokenness found in life.

If you read Coffey’s blog, you will know more about Snow Day than you realize. Yes, this is a novel, but it is also Billy Coffey’s life, and it is that life he tells so well from that small town in the mountains in Virginia. He draws the universal from the particular, often in a surprising, unexpected way. And we know these characters in the novel because we know people just like them, and because we are people just like them. He creates them all with fine detail, so that we can hear the elderly man calling for help in the big box “Super Mart” and see the disbelief followed by joy on the face of a six-year-old who finds the best Christmas present ever.

Coffey writes with a vulnerability and openness that’s humbling both to himself and the reader. There’s a sweet tenderness about his characters – even the unlovable ones – and his story.

Snow Day is a quiet story, a humbling story, a story about people we know and ultimately a story about ourselves.

The Sticky Stories of Billy Coffey

I wrote speeches for corporate executives for a long time, and now, more often than not, I’m writing speeches for myself. And while substance is absolutely critical, I learned long ago that you can write the most brilliant speeches with the most brilliant thoughts imaginable – but if you want people to remember them, you need to have stories.

And not just any kind of kinds, but personal ones, stories that surprise and entertain and help make the point of what the speaker was talking about. Many speakers often asked for “a good joke” but they were usually the people who hadn’t heard any good ones themselves and would tell jokes poorly, or at least not well. Humor is always a dangerous thing in a speech; the safest humor is always self-deprecating, allowing listeners to laugh with you and at you. Not many executives are comfortable with that, however.

In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath and Dan Heath talk about the three kinds of stories that help ideas stick: challenge plot stories, where a formidable challenge has to be overcome (they give the example of David and Goliath); connection plot stories, in which people develop a relationship that bridges a gap (consider Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan); and creativity plot stories, in which someone makes a mental breakthrough, solves a problem or does something really innovative (the story of the apple falling on Isaac Newton’s head, for example).

For stickiness, those three types cover the waterfront. I speak from personal (and unexpected) experience. I gave a talk in June at a conference of university public relations people, and the person who introduced me had done their homework. I was speaking on corporate use of social media, but the introducer included one thing about me – that I edited an online poetry journal called TweetSpeak Poetry. Guess what all the questions were about at the end?

If you need to see examples of sticky stories – where you can find all three kinds the Heath brothers talk about in one place, you need to look at the blog site of Billy Coffey.

You want to find stories that include a challenge? They’re there. Or stories that make connections? Look no further. Or stories where people do unexpected and creative things? You’ve got them with this blog.

Billy Coffey, a writer in Virginia, tells what I call true stories. He watches and listens, and he carries a notebook around to record notes. He overhears conversations; he remembers stories from high school. He recalls people when he first knew them and what they became, and how they handled success and defeat and victory and tragedy.

Some of the stories he tells include all three types of stickiness. There about challenges, connections and creativity. Not once have I known a story of his to disappoint or fall flat.

Tomorrow is the official publication date of his first novel, Snow Day. There’s a Facebook party scheduled; see his blog for details. I will be posting my review of the novel tomorrow as well. (Earlier today, Jennifer Dukes-Lee interviewed Billy Coffey about the novel.)

But you can be assured of this: Snow Day is sticky, exactly the kind of sticky described in Made to Stick.

Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Made To Stick over at The High Calling. Last week's discussion can be found here.


Previous blog posts in this series:

On Simple: The One Time Something I Did Went Viral

On Unexpected: Singing Opera in Journalism Class

On Credible: As Concrete – as Air

On Concrete: It Was All in the Numbers

On Emotional: An Engineer Got Emotional