Journalist. Author. Educator.
Digital in 2016 will be faster, more intense, and more mobile than it was in 2008, and that has repercussions for how this season’s crop of presidential candidates will behave and how their campaigns will unfold in New Hampshire and beyond.
Here’s my full story in The Boston Globe.
I’ve made plenty of New Year’s resolutions in my life, pledging to eat more vegetable or run marathons or remove the coffee cups from my car at least once a week. (The first two were a success. The last one is, alas, a work in progress.)
This year, I’m trying something a little different and a lot more public. I’m resolving to make 50 essays in 2015 and share them with the world via an email newsletter. (Sign up here.) I’ll also post them here on the blog, but you should get on the mailing list anyway.
Why am I doing this? Because I like a challenge. Because I don’t like how easily my own writing drops to the bottom of my to do list. Because essays and newsletters were both Big Deals in 2014, and mixing them together for 2015 feels like the storytelling equivalent of pairing peanut butter with chocolate.
Much has been written about how good things are right now for the essay as a genre – although there’s still plenty of discussion around what that genre actually is. To me, an essay is like taking a road trip with a companion who’s chatty in all the right ways. Maybe she’ll tell you a story about herself, or describe the strange history of landmarks passed along the way. Whatever the topic, it makes you think.
I’m calling my project Inbox Essay, and here’s how it’s (probably) going to work: I’ll make roughly one essay a week. The topics will vary. You’ll read about current events, my thoughts on the creative process, random ancestors with interesting life stories, pop culture and food. Suggestions will be welcome.
Newsletters will come out on Thursdays. Each issue will contain an original essay, plus links to other things I’ve published, read or thought about that week. Most of these essays will be written, but I’m also planning to try other interpretations of the genre: audio, photo, video.
Please consider coming along for this adventure. You can sign up here.
Seven years ago, I helped tell a Christmas story that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I shared it with my students earlier this month, and I now I’m posting it here.
I’d spent months working with my former boss Mike Pride to interview dozens of local World War II veterans for a series of stories that would eventually become this book. The project focused on the memories of people still living in our community, but we also pulled a handful of narratives from journal entries, poems and letters left behind by veterans when they died.
Such was the case with 1st Lt. Enoch Perkins, who took command of a new B-17 bomber in the final weeks of 1944. Perkins had died about a year before we started our work, but his daughter had a copy of his journal, and she wanted to share some of it with our readers. Perkins was a great writer, and he kept a careful, vivid account of his travels – including an unexpected stopover at Grenier Field in Manchester, NH
Before I go any deeper into the act of human kindness that makes this tale so special, here’s a bit of backstory:
Many of the heavy bombers that helped the Allies win the war were assigned newly-trained flight crews at air fields in the Midwest. Those crews would hopscotch the planes across the U.S., then north to Canada’s east cost. From there, they’d fly to cold, remote airstrips in Iceland and Greenland, eventually landing in Scotland. One of the last places these crews would land on American soil was Grenier.
Perkins remained in Manchester for several days longer than planned because his copilot needed to recover from an ear infection. While he waited, he worked with a few Red Cross volunteers to make sure his crew and, as it turned out, dozens of other airmen would experience some holiday cheer thousands of miles from home.
Here’s the full story as it appeared in the Concord (NH) Monitor. Please take the time to read; you won’t forget it, either.
Meg Heckman 