Nantucket, Massachusetts (Winter 2008)
January 27th, 2008
Truckin’
Ask anyone. I'm not a huge fan of The Grateful Dead.
At the moment, though -- traveling seventy miles-per-hour on the Pennsylvania Turnpike some 37 miles west of Harrisburg -- "Truckin'" is kinda' doin' it for me.
Earlier, I remarked to my brother -- who is a huge Deadhead, so huge that the only CDs he brought on this trip are The Dead -- that, while Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir can clearly sing, there's something grating about their voices. And I'm not about to retract that.
But cruising through the Allegheny Mountains in the dark ...
Black & Gold
My brother is a quote machine.
"I haven't had a three dollar beers since college!"
After last night's $6 room service Iron City bottles, I understand and appreciate his enthusiasm. We're at Doubleday's on Sixth Street in downtown Pittsburgh, our third bar of the night. Every one of 'em have been absolutely throbbing with Steeler fans.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
Our first stop on day two of shooting our doc, "Mister Rogers & Me" (you can read all about Chris and my shoot at "Making 'Mister Rogers & Me'") was called ...
The Optimism Of The Will
"My name is Benjamin Wagner," I said, firmly shaking Bill Moyers' hand. "I am the young man with the fire in his belly who has been doggedly pursuing you for my deep and simple documentary about my relationship with Mister Rogers."
"Oh yes," he said, looking up from under his glasses. "Oh yes."
* * *
I was leading a meeting on viral marketing late this afternoon when the email hit my inbox. "Seems Bill is taking action on the UWS!" Abbi wrote. She had happened upon a blurb about the PBS documentarian's activism against Upper West
...
The Blessings
Chris and I were standing outside of NPR's Studio 3A listening to South-African singer-songwriter Vusi Mahlasela perform on "Talk of the Nation." Moments prior, we had interviewed the incomparable Susan Stamberg, and hours before that, "Meet The Press" host, Tim Russert.
As Vusi, to whom we had just been introduced by our gracious NPR hostess Gemma Hooley, broke into the plaintive, spine-tingling chorus of "Silang Mabele" ("The Beauty of Our Land"), I steadied myself against the glass and thought, "Mine is a blessed life."
Our day of
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Come Together
My mother met Mister Rogers on the beach behind her rental cottage. She was sitting in an old beach chair reading. Mister Rogers was taking his afternoon swim in Madaket Bay.
The year after he died, I decided to preserve his memory (and entice my brother to bring his family to Nantucket the following summer) by creating a race: The Mister Rogers Memorial Triathlon.
The course consists of a half-mile swim in the waters adjacent to his Crooked House, a twelve mile bike ride to/from the end of Madaket Road, and a three mile run to/from
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Gardening At Night
I'm out to dinner with my mom. She's been a Istanbul for the last three weeks, so there's a fair amount of catching up to do.
A lot has happened, but mostly, I wanted to tell her about progress on my Mr. Rogers documentary.
Mrs. Rogers gave me her blessing for the project two years ago, but said I had to get approval from Family Communications first. So I've been tentatively reaching out to FCI, the company that produced "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" and now manages his intellectual property, ever since. But only since March, when
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Things Behind The Sun
This has not been my favorite year. I've had some major lows, and a dearth of real highs. But I was digging through The Daily Journal in an attempt to assemble a Top Ten Moments of 2004, when I made a fairly major discovery. It's not the big moments that change your life. It's the little ones.
There have been dozens of them this year, most of which are scarcely worth noting. Like I said, little moments: sunrise over Malibu, running with the dolphins in Naples, shooting stars in Nantucket, sunset over The Upper West, the hammock in my
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Profit & Loss
This morning I ran a coupla' miles to the start of the Gridiron Classic with my brother and Jennifer, then ran the 5k race with Jonathan and Fran, then -- my celly blowin' up with multiple calls from my boss -- ran some seventy blocks home.
A small change had to be made to MTVNews.com, but he couldn't reach anyone. Which isn't a good thing, as we're always on call. It is the news business, after all. So he was -- rightfully -- pretty torqued. I took some (well-deserved) heat, and got my as into the office where I found the story we'd
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First Annual Mister Rogers Madaket Triathlon
The inaugural staging of the Mister Rogers Madaket Triathlon went off without a hitch today. I finished with a new course record -- heck, the only recorded course time, ever -- of 1:26:19.
It was a blustery 60 degrees, windy and full-on rainy when I sprinted down the dunes and into the bay. I've never swam in such chop. I lost sight of the buoy almost immediately, and was way off course when I finally saw it through the waves. As the water fell away, deeper and colder, I kept reminding myself, 'Dude, Mr. Rogers swam here all the time.
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