A Real Knowhere Man

By John Griswold

No one had explained what extras could do (choose their own movements to some extent) or could not do (complain or speak to the big names). No one ever said not to look into a camera lens or try to steal a scene. (Of course I knew better than that.) I did not know that most of the main actors were on site. I did not know what determined the length of workdays, or how often water or pee breaks might happen. I did not know yet the tricks some extras used to get on set when it was not their turn, or how many took leftover meals and crafty snacks home to live on as part of their pay.

Essays

Using What You Have

By John Griswold

It is not a small problem, finding the right balance of things in a place to live, including that your time outdoors is not just a walk from house to car.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

News from the Shawnee National Forest

By John Griswold

It has taken a few more years, after the expiration of the order, for the logging to start up again, but the Forest Service has again marked 70 acres of trees to be cut in the steep hills of the Shawnee Forest.

Science & Nature | Dispatches

Getting It Wrong Again

By John Griswold

It was an astonishing moment for me, who never felt settled in what he knew.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

A Memo on My Idea of America

By John Griswold

Everyone past the age of reason carries an internal model of the nation where they live. The model describes, with varying complexity and correspondence to reality, the landscape, climate, cultures, history, vibes, and human possibilities and dangers, including what that person believes they can be in relation to their country, and their expectations for treatment by the government and fellow citizens. If enough people talk about their overlapping models, you might get political parties, widespread patriotism, rebellion, nationalism, or talk of a zeitgeist.

Essays

Recipes for Rascals in Distant Cities: Greens

By John Griswold

I would suggest using an iron skillet, the kind they made before inferior castings. Do I need to say the old ways are often best? Heat it up for five minutes at medium-high as you prep your ingredients.

People & Places | Dispatches

Rich in Proportion to the Number of Things Let Alone

By John Griswold

Crap transference is when people give you things they own, apparently with good intentions, except you do not need or want them, and in fact may not have known they existed.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Every Path Has Multiple Meanings

By John Griswold

I could not tell if the old-timer meant that if I walked fast enough I would not be bitten by bugs, or that he wanted me to get the hell away from him.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Hiking with the Lorax of Shawnee National Forest

By John Griswold

Sam Stearns is a rascal who has seen lively times. Some of those have been while working with other environmentalists—for almost four decades without pay and at significant personal risk—in defense of southeastern Illinois’s Shawnee National Forest, which they hope will become a National Park and the world’s first climate preserve.

Essays

New Documentary on the Artist Jealous of Pee-wee Herman

By John Griswold

Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman, insists on camera that the documentary must not be of the “tears of a clown” variety. It is an admirable attitude, but Matt Wolf’s film, perhaps inevitably, emphasizes Reubens’s problems.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Henry James in St. Louis

By John Griswold

Henry James said, “This vast grey, smoky, extraordinary bourgeois place seems to offer in a ceaseless mild soft rain, no interest and no feature whatever.” The Missouri Historical Society, for their part, has nothing tagged in their online collection for “Henry James.” Touché, maître.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Photographer Joel Meyerowitz Sums the Decades

By John Griswold

Joel Meyerowitz gives a sort of history of America from mid-century to post-9-11. He frames this, as he sits speaking to the camera, with his own experiences on “the street,” illustrated by film footage (it is unclear if it is his) and stills that he shot.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches