Of Men, Okapi & Rebels
On the past, present, and future of the pygmy Mbuti people of northeastern Congo. Rosen reports on the ground, in the forest:
“A trip like this may seem strange to you. You could reasonably accuse us of a kind of exoticism. But people travel for lots of reasons. There’s beach tourism, sex tourism, wine tourism. This trip, for me, offered something a lot more interesting: a chance to feed our long fascination with the idea of pre-agrarian society. For 40,000 years, from the rise of behaviorally modern humans until the development of agriculture 9,000 years ago, all of our ancestors had lived somewhat like the Mbuti do today. More than anything, Dan and Chris and I just wanted a glimpse of what that past might have looked like.
“Before joining the Mbuti in the forest, however, we first had to reach Epulu. Though we’d hoped to arrive by nightfall, the going along the washed out dirt road had been slow, and eight hours after leaving the border of Uganda, we still had 50 miles ahead of us. Swallowed by the fast-falling equatorial sunset, our Pajero trudged on into the darkness.”
The Ricky Rubio Experience
The evolution of a Spanish basketball star turned NBA player, from the perspective of a fellow player:
“I was playing in Spain at the time, and was there as the nation slipped into inescapable Rubio-mania. In the grocery store people wanted to talk about him; in our locker room we laughed about the boy who turned the ACB, the second best league in the world, into his personal And1 mixtape. He was the next Pistol Pete, the next Magic. There wasn’t a comparison too far-fetched.
“I remember watching his team, DKV Joventut, on TV and mentioning to a friend that he played so calm and free, so relaxed under immense pressure. And it was striking, the way he played each game as if it was happening in the park before he had to race home to set the table for the family dinner. But it wasn’t just his highlights that fascinated me. He reminded me of the basketball I grew up watching. This was before APBRmetrics and Hollinger’s stats parsed every minutia of detail into digestible numbers, quantifying a lot but inevitably missing the raw, visceral effect of watching a player play. It was a time, in short, when it was easier to see the game purely subjectively, and as art. And it was impossible to see Rubio as anything but an artist.”
Longreads Member Exclusive: The End of a War, the End of an Army
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This week, we're excited to share a Longreads Member Exclusive from Thomas E. Ricks, whose new book is The Generals, published by The Penguin Press. Chapter 21, "The End of a War, the End of an Army," details how the U.S. military and its leadership faltered in the final years of the Vietnam War:
“Often in warfare, it is the first year of fighting that seasons forces, which become more effective as those who survive gain skill, good leaders rise to the top, and units become more cohesive over time. Counterintuitively, as the Vietnam War progressed, the American frontline force weakened. In 1966, remembered Paul Gorman, the battalion he commanded had fourteen senior sergeants who had been in the unit for more than ten years, all of them trained by a legendary sergeant major who had landed at Normandy with the Big Red One. By contrast, he said, five years later, when he was commanding a brigade in the 101st Airborne, good sergeants who could provide the backbone of units, especially by maintaining standards and enforcing discipline, were hard to find. "I didn't have the NCOs [non-commissioned officers]. The NCOs were gone." By 1969, draftees made up 88 percent of the infantry riflemen in Vietnam. Another 10 percent was made up of first term volunteers, meaning that the fighting force was almost entirely inexperienced and often led by novice first term NCOs and officers. In one company in 1970, of two hundred men, only three—the captain, one platoon sergeant, and one squad leader—had been in the Army for more than two years. In addition, because of the rotation policy, units not only arrived green but stayed that way. "After only two months in Vietnam, I had more experience than half the men in Vietnam," recalled one sergeant. There were plenty of career soldiers in Vietnam, but they disproportionately served at higher headquarters, not in line units doing the fighting.”
A Good Deuce
[Fiction] A grieving teen and his friend look for a place to drink:
“‘Hey, you know what? Roy’s grandparents were Nazis.’ Phillip leaned back and took a drink from his beer and put an arm around Veronica. ‘I’m not even kidding. Tell them. Tell them about that time you found the swastika armbands and all that shit in your grandpa’s closet.’
“It was something I thought I had seen once, and maybe I had or I hadn’t, I wasn’t sure, and when I tried to remember what I had seen in that closet, and I put myself back in that room, all I could smell was talcum powder and see my grandma standing at the window, stiff and straight, staring out at nothing in the weak light, her back to me, the tears streaming because I had said it, I had said names, called her things, told her how my mother would disappear every time she got off the phone with her, my grandmother with her thick accent and twisted language, harsh, guttural, clipped through the phone, and for seventeen years I never once remembered my mother asking me how I felt—not once—how do you feel? Because feelings, she said, were lies. The only truth was in what you could see.”
My Larry Hagman Story
A writer recalls an anecdote about the late I Dream of Jeannie and Dallas actor Larry Hagman:
“Larry Hagman lives in a big house in Malibu where he observes certain rituals which some might call superstitions. One is that he does not speak on Sundays. He whistles. He can whistle in a manner that goes up in pitch at the end. That one means ‘yes.’ He can whistle in a manner that goes down in pitch at the end. That one means ‘no.’ He has a few others but those are the key ones — The whistle for ‘yes’ and the whistle for ‘no.’ Those who know the star know all about this and Fred is well aware. He starts the call by saying, ‘Larry, I know you don’t talk on Sundays but please listen to this…’
“He tells him about the show and how all we want is a day or two of his time. The pay will be $7500, which is more or less standard for a Big Name Star in this kind of gig — or at least it was then. Hagman will be in a sketch or two and he will not be alone in these as Sid Caesar is also a guest. At he mentions Sid Caesar, Silverman unknowingly scratches a long-held itch of Mr. Larry Hagman. Larry grew up watching Sid’s old Your Show of Shows, thinks Caesar is the greatest genius ever on television, and once fantasized about being Carl Reiner or Howie Morris — a second banana supporting player to Sid Caesar.
“When Fred asks, ‘Will you do it?,’ Larry Hagman gives his whistle for ‘yes.’ Fred mishears it as the whistle for ‘no’ and offers $10,000.
“Hagman gives the whistle for ‘yes.’ Fred mishears it as the whistle for ‘no’ and offers $12,500.
“Hagman gives the whistle for ‘yes.’ Fred mishears it as the whistle for ‘no’ and offers $15,000.”
The Internet’s Best Terrible Person Goes to Jail
Hacker Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, an infamous Internet troll, has been convicted of computer crimes for his role in a 2010 breach of AT&T’s customer data. But he also has a surprising number of supporters:
“In spite, or maybe because of, his online notoriety, Auernheimer is good at making real-life friends like Nick with the Buick, and the guy with the private jet—people who can help him out. In person, he exudes a downhome country charm that is so disarming you may not realize he’s been expounding very loudly about Jewish-controlled banks and armed revolution against the U.S. government—that is, until the people in the Starbucks around you start flashing you dirty looks. Auernheimer has found a strong support network in New York, comprised of a colorful group of geeks, bohemian hackers and artists who have helped to keep him off the streets by giving him odd programming jobs and letting him crash on their couches. There is some overlap with Occupy Wall Street, which Auernheimer was involved with briefly, during its height last fall. Auernheimer refers to his New York friends as the only family he has. They clearly adore him for all his peculiarities.
“‘On the one hand he can do and say some really appalling things just for the sake of attention,’ says Meredith L. Patterson, a respected computer scientist and developer. ‘But on the other hand when he’s dealing with somebody who he thinks is genuine and not hypocritical, he’s respectful and genuine towards them.’ Patterson recalls how Auernheimer comforted her after a guy ‘decided to get all grabby’ at a hacker conference this past August in Las Vegas. ‘Of all the people in the world, Weev was genuinely sympathetic and supportive,’ she says.”
‘I Pretty Much Wanted to Die’
From Sepinwall’s new book, the story of the making of ABC’s hit series Lost:
“The creation of Lost defies nearly everything we know about how successful television shows — or great ones — are made. The idea for Lost came not from a writer, but a network executive. The first writer on the project got fired. The replacement creative team had a fraction of the usual time to write, cast, and produce a pilot episode. The executive who had championed the show was himself fired before it ever aired. One of the two creators all but quit the moment the pilot was finished. Nearly every creative decision at the start of the show was made under the assumption that it would never succeed. Everyone believed it was too weird, too dense, too unusual to work. And it may have been. But it worked, anyway.
“Lost, a show thrown together in a rush and snakebit by top-level turnover, was an enormous hit right from the start (it’s the highest rated of any series discussed in this book). It was among the most thrilling, surprising, memorable dramas in the history of American network television, and at its best could go toe-to-toe with much of what was happening on cable during this period.”
Courage and Survival
The Legends of the Fall author and poet on aging:
“Obviously I need courage to deal with my current dysfunctional body. And religion? The bible says that the kingdom of God is within you. If so, I haven’t noticed it lately. I’m not making light of devotion or a mother praying to bring her baby back to life after it’s been cut out of the stomach of an anaconda in Venezuela. Human suffering has to be the largest of all question marks. You must beware of hope, a radically dangerous emotion. Hope can roll over and crush you. I went to a dozen doctors last winter in Tucson for shingles relief and each time I had a wide-eyed Midwestern hope and faith that was promptly smeared. Hope is a bourgeois Tinker Bell toy that can transform into a guard dog of the most vicious nature. You raise your expectations then are gutted like a deer. However, if you need to say a little prayer, go ahead and moisten your lips for the deaf gods, although it’s like fly fishing in a sewer: ‘Raise your chin, o son of man, your doom is around the next corner on the left.'”
Labor, Interrupted
Getting to the root of the rising C-section rate for births in the U.S.:
“One clue may lie in what some experts call ‘cascading interventions’—medical actions that lead to other medical actions that evolve into more invasive steps, including C-sections. Inducing labor, for example—in which a provider tries to stimulate a pregnant woman’s contractions through synthetic hormones or by stripping part of the membrane from her uterine wall—has been found to increase the likelihood of cesareans in first-time mothers.
“Continuous electronic fetal monitoring (CFM), which tracks a baby’s heart rate throughout labor, is also associated with higher cesarean rates. ‘It was hypothesized,’ Ecker explains, ‘that [CFM, developed in the late 1960s] would reduce rates of cerebral palsy.’ Based on this hypothesis, the technology became widely used. In the great majority of U.S. hospitals, CFM is standard care; a 2005 study found that 87 percent of laboring American women were attached to monitors most or all of the time. Meanwhile, Ecker adds, studies found that CFM had not reduced the incidence of cerebral palsy. But CFM did seem to increase C-section rates, he says: doctors were ‘seeing these wiggles and squiggles’—changes in fetal heart rate—’that they weren’t seeing before.’ They would get nervous and conclude, ‘We’ve got to do something about it. Let’s do a C-section.'”
Foster
[Fiction] A young Irish girl goes to live with her aunt and uncle:
“Early on a Sunday, after first Mass in Clonegal, my father, instead of taking me home, drives deep into Wexford toward the coast, where my mother’s people came from. It is a hot August day, bright, with patches of shade and greenish sudden light along the road. We pass through the village of Shillelagh, where my father lost our red shorthorn in a game of forty-five, and on past the mart in Carnew, where the man who won her sold her not long afterward. My father throws his hat on the passenger seat, winds down the window, and smokes. I shake the plaits out of my hair and lie flat on the back seat, looking up through the rear window. I wonder what it will be like, this place belonging to the Kinsellas. I see a tall woman standing over me, making me drink milk still hot from the cow. I see another, less likely version of her, in an apron, pouring pancake batter into a frying pan, asking would I like another, the way my mother sometimes does when she is in good humor. The man will be her size. He will take me to town on the tractor and buy me red lemonade and crisps. Or he’ll make me clean out sheds and pick stones and pull ragweed and docks out of the fields. I wonder if they live in an old farmhouse or a new bungalow, whether they will have an outhouse or an indoor bathroom, with a toilet and running water.”
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