Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 326: Jana Meisenholder
272 Plays2 years ago
Jana Meisenholder (@addsodium on Twitter) is a journalist whose latest piece appears in The Atavist Magazine.
Sponsor: Libsyn
Social: @CNFPod
Support: patreon.com/cnfpod
Shownotes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Collaboration and Upcoming Publication
00:00:00
Speaker
ACN Ever's exciting editing news from yours truly. My wife is so good at editing that we've kind of teamed up. So if you want two editors for the price of one and you're ready to level up, no matter you're working on a book or an essay or book proposal, anything of that nature, email me and we'll start a dialogue. Also, this is that Atavistian time of the month, so we're going to be talking. There will be some spoilers.
00:00:30
Speaker
in talking with today's guests so if you don't want the story spoiled be sure you're going to magazine.adivis.com to read the latest story this by Jana Meisenholder but if you don't care
00:00:45
Speaker
No worries, okay? We're driving downtown and then he immediately flipped a bitch, I guess you could say. For lack of a better term. It's going to be my teaser quote for this podcast now.
Introduction to Jana Meisenholder and Her Story
00:01:08
Speaker
ACN efforts is the creative nonfiction podcast a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories, you know that and That person you just heard is Jana Meisenholder She's an LA based journalist, but as you can tell by her wonderful accent, she's from Australia
00:01:27
Speaker
That accent in the Irish accent might be my two favorite accents. Jana is this month's featured activist writer, whose piece deals with Andreas Beckett in the Suicide Race. This death-defying horse race of sorts in Omok, Washington. Her story is an incredible character study of her central figure, so we dig into that. What our subjects reveal about us as reporters, in the skeleton, the meat, and the bones.
00:01:57
Speaker
and you'll excuse me if I'm a little out of breath. Hold on.
Host's COVID Experience
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah, I got the COVID. Gave it to my mom too, so that's super cool. I don't know if I gave it to her or she gave it to me, but as of this recording, she hadn't experienced any of the bedridden symptoms that I have had.
00:02:19
Speaker
The other day, I had a 103 fever, and I think that was the nadir of this wonderful experience. So if I sound like shit, more so than usual, I guess that that's my excuse. When I was recording with Johnna, I was sweating profusely. And then when I was recording with Sayward Darby, editor in chief of The Atavist and lead editor of this piece, I was shivering like it was 30 degrees Fahrenheit, faxed, boosted.
00:02:47
Speaker
I wear a mask as often as Bane, and yet the bug still bit me.
00:02:53
Speaker
It's no joke, man. For those who haven't had it, it's like the flu has been going to the gym and it's a wicked swole, bruh.
Social Media Engagement and Podcast Support
00:03:00
Speaker
Keep the conversation going at CNF Pod on Twitter or at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram. Consider heading over to our Patreon page to help support this enterprise. It's a big ask. I realize this. I'm already asking for your time with this show. And on top of that, I have the audacity to ask for $2 or $4 a month.
00:03:21
Speaker
But those dollars, man. Ooh, boy, do they mean a lot. Well, while we're on the topic of money, go to magazine.atavist.com to check out Johnna's story, of course, and consider subscribing for just 25 bucks a year. I don't get any kickbacks, so you can put your cynic hat away, Carl. magazine.atavist.com, com, com.
00:03:43
Speaker
What also means a lot? And boy, do these ever mean a lot. Our kind reviews on Apple Podcasts, if you leave one, I'll read it right here. I think in this era, it's all the more important, especially as writers, to leave reviews for the books we read and the pods we listen to, validates the enterprise. And it might just persuade another CNF-er like you to join our little brigade here in our corner of the internet, like this one from Meg Dom or Dome.
00:04:10
Speaker
I'm not sure how to pronounce that, but here we are, titled Great Blend of Practical and Artistic Gems. I discovered the CNF pod last year on our long road trip and immediately filled my drive time with binging these interviews. What really drew me in is how Brendan
00:04:29
Speaker
is able to ask writerly questions and also gets guests to talk practicalities like day jobs, routines, frustrations. I always walk away having gained more depth on some aspect of writing, an excellent addition to the regular rotation.
00:04:45
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you, Meg. And if you leave a review of that nature, I love giving you credit for it. So we'll read it right here and celebrate you for doing such an awesome thing in service of this podcast. Show notes to this episode and a billion others are apprenthedomare.com. There you can also sign up to my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. First of the month, no spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
00:05:10
Speaker
We're gonna hear from Sayward Darby in just a moment. In my Covidian brain fog, I had selected the wrong microphone. So for the first part, it's just my old school iPhone earbuds as my main mic. For Jana, I have my more professional one, this one that you're hearing right now, even though this is my minor league one, it's not my really good one, back home in Oregon.
00:05:35
Speaker
So, you're in for a rollercoaster audio experience. I can only attribute to a novel coronavirus.
Narrative Structure and Storytelling Techniques
00:05:43
Speaker
So let's do this. I've never heard, or if you did, I forget about this idea of the skeleton, the meat, and the bones.
00:06:01
Speaker
So just walk me through what that means and as an organizing principle to the work.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think that there are obviously a lot of metaphors you can use for narrative nonfiction, and this is one that I definitely use in talking to writers, is that the skeleton of the piece needs to be sturdy, and that skeleton is the narrative, the actual story of what happened.
00:06:31
Speaker
And so you kind of have to start there for the thing to hold together. And so, you know, when I'm working with writers, you know, we always kind of start with those fundamentals, if you will, the bones, and figuring out, you know, how they fit together so that the story stands.
00:06:52
Speaker
And then you start to create muscle and flesh through character and scene and dialogue. And you really start to make something whole and presentable. But at the end of the day, if you were to strip all of that away, the bones would still be there and the story itself would still be strong. And so when I'm talking to folks sometimes,
00:07:20
Speaker
they're kind of like lost in thinking about the muscle and thinking about you know detail here or there or all over and sometimes it's about kind of putting that stuff aside to figure out what what is the what are the bones underneath you know a part of the story or the whole story and and I find that that can be really helpful from an editing standpoint I mean certainly for me when I'm editing I try to identify what I think
00:07:45
Speaker
the skeleton of the pieces, because then it makes my job a lot easier. It's an outline of sorts, where you know that you need to go from this bone to this bone for the thing to hold together. And yeah, it can just be a helpful way of organizing your time and your priorities. And the fact is that once the skeleton is there, that other stuff
00:08:08
Speaker
starts to feel so much more organic, right? Where it's like, Oh, I, you know, I kind of see how to make this fuller, and what what is needed to make it fuller. And, yeah, that's just that that's how my brain works anyway, when I when I think about writing. So, so yeah, I'm glad to hear that she she brought it up in that I hope it made sense to her. It gets to this idea when you have the skeleton in place, then all of the
00:08:36
Speaker
the details that you layer in over it, they feel less gratuitous. They do feel in service of something greater, not because you merely collected the information and it's cool. It does feel like, oh, this ore and this ore are all rowing together versus someone else who's just totally off cadence.
00:08:55
Speaker
Right, exactly. And, you know, to be clear, like, you know, it's always fun when you kind of, and out of the stories allow for this, where you can just kind of wander off for a little while in something. And I don't know what the sort of appropriate metaphor would be in this wider body metaphor for those kinds of things. You know, maybe.
00:09:17
Speaker
some fat, some padding, something that gives it even more of a curve in the best possible way. But I do think that, yeah, what are these details in service of and are they in service of the story that we're trying to tell as opposed to it just so happens to be something I learned and I'm dumping my notebook.
00:09:41
Speaker
And I think, you know, there's an anecdote actually in this story that I think is a good example of this. There's a section where we're talking about Andreas's character, just kind of like who he is as a person, how he presents, like choices he makes. And there was this moment that John witnessed in a car where he like pulls over to the side of the road and chastises this guy for letting a stray dog wander so close to the road. And on the one hand, like it doesn't,
00:10:09
Speaker
have anything to do with the journey of him getting to the starting line of this race. But it so beautifully encapsulates the kind of person that he is. And that's the thing we're focused on at that point. That is the bone that we're focused on right then. And that so beautifully helps fill that out. And this story is a very, very
00:10:34
Speaker
character, you know, it's sort of a narrative profile. And and I think that, you know, details like that, especially just help it pop. And, you know, there's a version of this story. I was actually talking to our art director about it the other day. You know, the photos are this is a very dynamic piece. You know, it's it's about a sporting event and it's about a rather, you know, intense sporting event, to put it lightly called the suicide race. Suicide race. Exactly. But, you know, it's it's
00:11:03
Speaker
even the visualization that our art director came up with is quieter because it's ultimately about the person and the people behind the race and why they do what they do. And I think that one of the nice things in working on this story was that there's kind of the more straightforward feature version that takes place at the race and it's very much focused on the race and the race very much bookends the piece.
00:11:31
Speaker
as opposed to, you know, kind of being the thing throughout. And, you know, this one man's story then becomes the skeleton of the piece. And it's just a really, I don't know, quieter, unique, more unusual like way in, which I was very, very into. And that's, and I should say like, that's how it was pitched. You know, it was really pitched as his story.
00:11:58
Speaker
as opposed to, you know, here is the story of this race. And I, I mean, maybe this is a good example of, you know, how does something go from being, you know, a great magazine feature to something that is for, you know, the activist.
00:12:14
Speaker
Um, and you know, here it was about, uh, you know, how do we, how do we take an individual story and use that to, I mean, first of all, you know, raise these questions of like, is he going to make it? Is he gonna, you know, be a contender? Uh, is he going to get hurt? Is this horse going to get hurt? You know, all of these kind of.
00:12:32
Speaker
questions that we're building into the piece, but also, you know, using him as a lens into, you know, a wider culture and a wider tradition of the race. And I think that, you know, again, there are versions of this story that are more sort of just focused on the race as opposed to an individual. And I really loved John as a choice to focus on Andreas.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah, because it's all the more important when you have something where there is a race at the center of it, or it's a part of the skeleton. But Andreas, you know, he doesn't win the race. So it's not it doesn't have that, that classics or sports arc.
00:13:16
Speaker
So there are boxes that have to be checked along the way, so it's still satisfying even though he doesn't win. So you've already kind of talked about it, but what are some of those boxes that you need to see, given that there's not that payoff of a win at the end?
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. My favorite kind of sports writing and adventure storytelling is less about the excitement of victory than it is about the obsessiveness required to pursue something.
00:13:53
Speaker
Um, so, uh, I mean, two great examples of this, one written, one filmed, um, but Barbarian Days by William Finnegan, you know, I mean, that book is so many different things, but it really is about like a singular obsession because, you know,
00:14:08
Speaker
with surfing as a lifelong quest. And it's kind of a continuous quest, right? It's like you're not seeking one thing. You're kind of seeking a wave over and over and over and over and punishing your body and going to the ends of the earth to find a wave. And there's kind of this
00:14:31
Speaker
circularity to it that, you know, you get the sense we'll never end. And the other one I would mention is Free Solo about Alex Honnold's, you know, attempt to free climb, what is it called? The Wall. The big scary wall in California. El Capito Assembly.
00:14:55
Speaker
Thank you. And, you know, obviously, that is an incredibly shot documentary. And, you know, there's just the harrowing, you know, visual of this guy climbing up a sheer face of rock, you know, without any ropes attached to him. But then, you know, what is really compelling about that movie to me anyway, is, you know, what
00:15:16
Speaker
what kind of mentality is required and what feeds into an obsession with something that is one false move and you die. And so similarly in this story, first of all, we knew and we're obviously giving away the ending, but Andreas does not win the race.
00:15:37
Speaker
But what I was interested in and what John was interested in was the fact that he was so obsessed with even what was required to run the race, that it was less about winning and more about being able to do it. And I kind of love the fact that he didn't win because then we get to see him preparing to do it again. And so many people who run this race, which is a very harrowing thing to do going down, basically,
00:16:07
Speaker
Uh, I mean, it's not El Capitan, but it's a very steep, very steep track. Um, and, uh, and you have, you know, the, however many, how much does a horse weigh? I don't even know a lot. Anywhere probably from depending on the horse, a thoroughbred is like a thousand to 1200 pounds, a quarter horse that has some of the horses in.
00:16:30
Speaker
in the suicide race are, they can be on the higher end just because they have such giant hindquarters. Yes. So we're talking, you know, thousands of pounds. And so, you know, I mean, just the sort of death defying quality of it.
00:16:45
Speaker
what makes a person want to do that? What makes a person want to do it again and again and again? And outside of Andreas, and we obviously are seeing his personal backstory, what led him to be like this and how much of it was innate, how much of it was based on circumstance, which isn't so much a question we answer as much as we sort of start to excavate the pieces of his personality and his experience.
Andreas Beckett's Race and Character Exploration
00:17:14
Speaker
And then you start to see, too, that a lot of the people who he's trying to convince to mentor him so that he can run the race, they're the same way. They run the race again and again and again. And it's so much less about winning than it is about doing it and then doing it again. And so being able to tick off boxes throughout the story about character building, finding ways to do that,
00:17:41
Speaker
that feel very organic to the narrative as well. And so those were really the boxes we were trying to tick. How can we tell the story of the race, tell the story of Andreas' life, and show how these things essentially came to intersect?
00:17:59
Speaker
And so we start on the hill, we start with him galloping toward the edge and then we jump back to his origin story and where he came from and how he came to be something of an outsider in this small native community up near the Canadian border. And so when we were talking about
00:18:20
Speaker
You know, the outline, we talked about how the story was ultimately the story, not of his life, although certainly his life is a big part of it, but really the story of how did he come to be so fixated on the hill, right? How did he become, what do we say, toward the end, you know, kind of the organizing principle of his life. I took the words out of my mouth. That was one of the things I highlighted from this piece. And yeah, it's just one of those things where
00:18:49
Speaker
It's the wireframe through which he hangs his entire year and obsession. And it's something I deeply enjoy reading about because I tend to have a pretty splintered attention span. And I just love people who are so singularly driven and for no glory other than the sheer love of the thing. And it's just I love that so much. And I loved reading about his organizing principle.
00:19:11
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. And that's why like barbarian days I found sort of entrancing while I was reading it because there was this quality of it's not, yeah, I mean, catching the wave is great, but searching for the wave, positioning yourself just so recognizing your errors, trying to get better, hearing about a wave that nobody or so few people have ever been able to. All of these things that it's less about, oh, I'm trying to win something.
00:19:41
Speaker
as trying to experience something over and over and over. And I, too, am like you. I'm a pretty splintered person, kind of always doing a lot of things at once. And my husband is actually the exact opposite. So he's the kind of person, we were actually just having dinner with a friend last night, and our friend was gobsmacked when my husband said, yeah, you know, I can write for just like 10 or 12 hours straight.
00:20:07
Speaker
I am not that person remotely. It fascinates me, somebody who can be so focused and fixated, and not in a negative way at all. Everything in life starts to distill around this particular
00:20:28
Speaker
experience or task or, you know, in Andreas's case, you know, kind of the training is as much the point and the development, I should say, like the development of relationships. Because so much of this story is about the fact that, you know,
00:20:46
Speaker
He I guess he could have, you know, tried to run the race by himself. But first of all, that would have been exceptionally dangerous. Second of all, that's just not the way it's done. And there's a lot of kind of courtship in this story of him trying to convince the people who are the closest thing
00:21:03
Speaker
the race has to like royalty. The people who know it best, whose families have been running it for the longest time, you know, convincing them that he was worthy of their teaching.
00:21:17
Speaker
That was an aspect of it that I was immediately drawn to when we got the pitch, because I think that there are certainly elements of community, and in this case, a marginalized and traumatized community on the Colville Reservation in Washington State. But then on top of that, there are questions of masculinity.
00:21:40
Speaker
of the bonds of masculinity, because this is a very masculine race. I mean, there have been women who've run it, but it's about male friendship in a lot of ways, and also about male mentorship. And so there were just so many layers to
00:21:59
Speaker
to the story and it was exciting to work on it and figure out how to make all of these kind of subtle pieces of it fit together in this way that keeps you going and keeps you wondering
00:22:14
Speaker
You know, what is going to happen to him? What is going to, and what is, I should also say, you know, the horse JD becomes, you know, a character in its own right. Um, and you know, what's going to happen to JD. Um, and you know, by the end you realize that this is a piece in many ways about loyalty, loyalty to, you know, the people who have helped you, supported you, believed in you, um, you know, loyalty to.
00:22:37
Speaker
the sort of natural elements, in this case, the shape of the landscape that forms the hill that the race is on, and also fealty to the creatures that make it possible to do this. And it's just something really beautiful there, and I think pretty universal. I'm really glad you brought up the dog anecdote, the dog scene. Johnna and I talked about that a bit.
00:23:07
Speaker
And what struck me about it was originally she cut it out of a draft. And we talk about killing your darlings, but in this case, it was a resuscitation of a darling. You advocated to put it back in to the piece, or such was her recollection. So what's that dialogue like? So often, we're concerned with
00:23:32
Speaker
Cut, cut, cut, cut. Gotta leave good stuff on the floor. But in this case, something on the floor, it needed to be back in for the illustration of character.
00:23:42
Speaker
Yeah, it was quite interesting because she turned in the original draft and then we had, I sent a pretty extensive memo about structure. And there was a lot of notebook dumping, which is totally reasonable when you've had this really thrilling, colorful experience getting to know your main character, but the cast of characters around him as well.
00:24:06
Speaker
Um, and place, I should say. And so, you know, one of the things we talked about was making sure that details were in service of the skeleton to kind of like circle back to, uh, the beginning of this conversation. Um, and I loved the dog anecdote. And I don't think that I, I don't remember, I can't imagine that in the memo I said.
00:24:24
Speaker
cut this, you know, I think more so it was, okay, this seems like it could be superfluous. Um, and so when then I saw it was not in the revision and the revision was great. Um, and I started, you know, working through it more line by line. I just kept telling myself, I gotta find a way because to me as a reader, when I read that first draft,
00:24:45
Speaker
That was the moment where I was like, I see who Andreas is. I see the kind of person he is. Incredibly compassionate at the same time, a bit rash. And it just so perfectly made me just see him and understand him. And so I knew that I really wanted to try to work it back in. And so then in the course of editing, we ultimately come to this sort of quieter character building section.
00:25:10
Speaker
that allowed us to put that back in. And I mean, to be clear, I think we would have found a way no matter what. But to me, it was, you know, and look, things wind up on the cutting room floor all the time and you pick them back up and you think about it and you're like, well, maybe, and you toss it back down, you know, whatever it may be. But in this case, it was just such an illuminating piece of information, not even that's doing it, not doing it justice, like it's such a,
00:25:38
Speaker
uh compelling moments that uh you know i i knew that i wanted to put it back in and i think part of it too i will say is that if i recall correctly it was initially told as more of a first person anecdote because it was something that she experienced
00:25:54
Speaker
with him while she was there reporting in person. And so I think one of the things we had kind of talked about is dialing back a bit on some of the first person stuff, letting things
00:26:09
Speaker
stand out for themselves, you know, letting scenes speak for themselves. And so, you know, part of it was also figuring out how to put that scene back in, in such a way that didn't feel like, okay, suddenly we're introducing first person in a way that, you know, doesn't feel natural to the story. And so we had to tighten it a little bit, things like that. But, but, you know, I think
00:26:34
Speaker
I don't know, it just really stands out to me in in the story and stood out to me from, you know, day one of reading the draft. Very nice. Well, we're going to turn this conversation over to Johnna in just a moment. So say we're always a pleasure.
Insights on Storytelling from Sayward Darby
00:26:49
Speaker
And, you know, so great to get your insights on this really fascinating character sketch in a fascinating race. So as always, thanks for the time. Thank you so much, Brendan.
00:27:10
Speaker
Do you have an idea for a great new podcast? You can bring your idea to life and start your podcast today with Libsyn. Our podcast has been on Libsyn for, I don't know, three or four years now. I can't remember, but we switched and we like it.
00:27:26
Speaker
Lipson has everything you need to plan, launch, and grow your own podcast. Lipson provides some of the best resources created by expert podcasters who will show you everything you need to know, like what equipment you should use, how to record great audio, how to get your show onto Apple Podcasts and other popular platforms, and much more.
00:27:46
Speaker
Plus, as a friend of CNF Pod, when you sign up with Libsyn, you get your first month of podcast hosting for free. There has never been a better time than right now for you to start podcasting. Visit libsyn.com and use code F-R-I-E-N-D. That's friend. That's libsyn. L-I-B-S-Y-N.com and use code friend.
00:28:11
Speaker
F-R-I-E-N-D to get started and create your podcast today.
00:28:20
Speaker
All right, now, at long last, it is time to hear from Jana Meisenholder. Before I was set to speak with her a few nights ago, I was thinking I was gonna have to reschedule somehow. I don't know when that was gonna happen, but I was like, ugh. I was feeling pretty damn crummy. And I'm on the East Coast right now, still seeing my mother after her fall and stuff and all that around that.
Host's Resilience During COVID Interview
00:28:45
Speaker
I'm gonna listen to the last week's parting shot for the details if you feel like being super bummed.
00:28:50
Speaker
Jana is on the west coast and she just started a new job so she couldn't like record any like in the middle of the day when I tend to record a lot of these things so she was like can we do 730 PST I was like all right all right it's gonna be 1030 PST and I was like okay fuck I think I can do that so I was sweating in bed breathing through my mouth going from the bed to the floor and flopping around like a sea lion
00:29:18
Speaker
Right up to the last minute. I'm thinking this isn't gonna happen. There's no way man Like we're gonna have to just do this another time But once we got going I got into the pocket dripping sweat the entire time just everywhere But she put a little fuel in my tank and we got it done So you've been real patient up to this point. So let's do this. Here's Johnna and
00:29:48
Speaker
on your website. I love that you write that you mostly cover character-driven stories about family, culture, true crime, and also reports and writes deep-dived long-form features. So how did you arrive at that as like the central core of what you love to do when it comes to reporting out true stories?
00:30:08
Speaker
Oh man, right off the bat, you ask really good questions and I have to think about my answer. I think true stories can come in different forms. Some people like to write about, you know, murder, mysteries and things like that.
00:30:28
Speaker
And you have this thing that kind of tethers the readers to the story. You have this central incident, which can be thrilling, but I found that sometimes they can also be predictable. And I find if you focus more on the characters and
00:30:49
Speaker
their motivations and they're not necessarily black and white sometimes. They can be both good and bad and two truths can often exist at the same time. It often makes for a more compelling story and it's less predictable and I would point to the Han twins as probably the biggest example of that.
00:31:11
Speaker
I enjoy it. I genuinely enjoy it. And I like things where I get in there and I'm learning something in the process. And I think when I'm focusing on characters, I actually learn a little bit about myself too. And I start questioning my own motives and questioning decisions I've made in my life because I'm focusing on people and the people at the heart of the story.
00:31:36
Speaker
Yeah, and the character and motivation aspect of it too, what struck me there is the great writer, Tracy Kidder, he's big on, whenever you would start a book, for him it was always character first and then worry about everything else.
00:31:53
Speaker
Some people are the other way around. They need to find something kind of cool to cover and then like search out the character. But it's just that he's definitely like if I can find someone who's like kind of cool and charismatic is like then I can really double down on on either a long story or a book.
00:32:10
Speaker
I think with the Rolling Stone article that I did on Black Cowboys, and I honed in specifically on one person, his name is Justin Richard, and he was a cowboy from Texas. He unfortunately got killed by a drunk driver in early 2020. But how I came across that story was both a combination of just him being a very charismatic
00:32:34
Speaker
character and individual, and just the news peg of it with Lil Nas X's song coming out around that time. It was a huge hit. Old Town Road, I think it's called. The Cowboy Song, the one that sort of launched his career.
00:32:57
Speaker
And how I found Justin to be charismatic, and this is so silly, but it was just, he wrote on his Facebook, you know, and this was before I'd even reached out to him and decided like he would be my main character as my journey into black cowboys, was he wrote in capital letters on his Facebook profile.
00:33:22
Speaker
Like, I am amazing with a bunch of exclamation points. And I'm like, I like this energy. Like, this is a good one, I think. That's amazing. Have you read Walter Hernandez's Compton Cowboys?
00:33:39
Speaker
I have the book and I haven't read it, but I did interview Randy from the Compton Cowboys for that story. Yeah. Nice. You know, when that book came out, you know, Walter came on the came on the show. And you know, Walter's a really cool dude and he kind of strikes me as maybe in a repartorial or journalistic kindred spirit to you because you do some documentary film. He's kind of like multimedia, like photography, journaling, like written stuff. I suspect that if you tap into his work, you'll like find like kind of a kindred spirit in a way.
00:34:09
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm, you know, I'm really drawn to the cowboy world, obviously, as you can probably tell, given the latest out of his story. But yeah, just from my own experiences growing up in Australia and going to the Outback and being the only kid of color. I know the rodeos, but yeah.
00:34:37
Speaker
Yeah, so give me a sense of how you arrived at this story for the Atavists about this incredible race and the beating heart at the center of it.
00:34:49
Speaker
Yeah, so from actually that Rolling Stone article, I've built friendships and connections with sources in the cowboy world. And one of them, his name is Brian White. He is a cowboy. And I actually interviewed him for my publication, which is on Medium. It's called Unearthed.
00:35:10
Speaker
I actually interviewed him and he was my very first interview. It's called Oklahoma's Rodeo extraordinaire. He's this fantastic person. He's been a bullfighter. He's a cowboy. He was a football star.
00:35:26
Speaker
And now he actually works in production for Rodeo, so he actually is the camera guy. And so he has an eye for visual aesthetics and seeking out, you know, good things to capture. And he's just also a very, very friendly person and he can talk to anyone. So he basically got asked
00:35:49
Speaker
to do a gig in Omak, Washington, which is where the story takes place. It's basically on a reservation and it's in rural Washington. It's about four hours east of Seattle. He got asked to go out there and he knows from me interviewing him and from me writing the story about
00:36:13
Speaker
Black cowboys that I'm interested in cowboys and cowgirls of color and so he told me I was at the top of this hill and That they go down. It's called the suicide race and I just met this guy and you got to talk to him You're just gonna love him this guy has
00:36:34
Speaker
some kind of energy about him. By then, Brian hadn't known exactly what Andreas' background was. He actually thought he was native, which Andreas is not native. He didn't really know much, but he knew that I would be interested in connecting with Andreas purely based on the fact that
00:36:57
Speaker
This was Andreas' first time. He seemed very excited about going down the hill. He sort of told me he was just looking out into the distance and was standing on top of the hill, so there's something deeper going on there. Hearing Brian tell me that made me think like, okay, there's another reason why this kid is up there doing this. Kid, but he's actually older than me.
00:37:22
Speaker
He looks young for his age. As soon as Brian said that, I literally just booked a flight the next day and flew up to Seattle. It was a struggle to get a rental car because this is the biggest event for this tiny rural town.
00:37:44
Speaker
All the hotels were booked and I actually had to stay in three different motels, you know, on different nights.
00:37:53
Speaker
whatever, I made it work. It was smoky as hell too. I didn't really have, I didn't really pack much stuff. So I was wearing like the same clothes for three days. So, but yeah, I just, I flew up there. I met with Brian and then Brian introduced me to Andreas and Andreas had to use Lauren Martian's ID to get into the beer garden where I was. Cause you have to pick a specific spot to meet. Otherwise you'll get lost on the rodeo grounds. Cause it's, it's.
00:38:19
Speaker
pretty wild out there and I connected with him and we hung out on Friday night at the rodeo after it had wrapped up and everyone was at the beer garden drinking and me and Andres and Brian were just sitting by the bullpen and that's when I just started peppering questions at him and that's when I found out okay he's not native and he's Mexican-American and he had this really interesting background about
Johnna Meisenholder's Storytelling Journey
00:38:47
Speaker
Being a Greyhound baby is what his family calls him. Um, the whole story about how his mom and dad met on the back of a Greyhound bus. And I asked him why he's doing this. And, you know, for hours until one or two AM, we just talked and talked and talked. And then I realized that there was a bigger story here.
00:39:07
Speaker
Now, when you're reporting out the story and you've got a great central figure, for you, as you're looking to report and mine out the story, how do you go about getting to the core of a character and what really motivates them?
00:39:24
Speaker
You have to spend as much fucking time as possible with them. And they're not going to tell you because they don't know. They don't know how to really... They're not going to put everything on a platter for you. They're not going to lay it out and say, this is exactly what you need. These are the answers you're looking for. And so there's a hundred plus hours of audio that I recorded. Every time he spoke, I just chucked on my recorder.
00:39:52
Speaker
and sometimes like he would speak and i didn't have my recorder with me so i just like furiously be typing into my phone and he was kind of caught off guard with that but sometimes and i'd have to explain like no no it's okay just keep talking and yeah after that you just sort of
00:40:11
Speaker
I went home and I sort of highlighted the key parts and started framing it in my mind as a reader would think sort of thing, like reading this and get the beginning, middle, the end.
00:40:26
Speaker
you know, the sort of things that would make for a good story. And yeah, it's basically sifting through a bunch of audio and a bunch of sometimes, you know, rambling. And yeah, it took a lot of work. Yeah, of course. When you when you start getting all that information, how did you go about, you know, organizing it given that you had, you know, so much tape? It can be hard to get your head around it.
00:40:56
Speaker
Right. So I actually tried to transcribe it initially. Then I was like, this is just getting out of control. There's too much audio footage here, recording here. And then so I did it through a transcription service called Rev.com. And so that, you know, I was able to download that in PDF form. And because it is dialogue, it's a little easier to sort of speed read. And I literally would just read it and then write it.
00:41:24
Speaker
Actually, it was Sayward who told me this term called the skeleton, the meat and the bones. And the actual title of the document where I'd highlighted all the key points and key milestones in his life and sort of the quotes attached to those things is in my Google document called the skeleton, the meat and the bones. Talk a little bit more about that. I've talked to Sayward a billion times and I've never heard her say that.
00:41:51
Speaker
Um, the skeleton is, I'm sure she can describe it better, but how I understood it was the skeleton is sort of the thing that you can always come back to. Um, the, you know, the backbone of the story and you sort of use that as a guide. Cause, cause again, like there was just so much going on. There's so many things, so many things that, you know, we ended up culling or
00:42:12
Speaker
And you gotta always stick back to that flow and go back to that backbone. And then the meat is like the quotes and the little tidbits that add to that thing. So I guess that's what she was going with that. It was actually a very helpful visual for me, because I literally envisioned a skeleton.
00:42:39
Speaker
And I'd be like, okay, this is the meaty part of the arm. Okay, we'll add that there.
00:42:46
Speaker
And you bring up a great point too, given that you had so much material that you had to cull or leave a lot of good stuff on the cutting room floor, the old classic thing of killing your darlings. So when you're going through and you know you have to cut things that are objectively probably very good scenes, how do you go about making those decisions?
00:43:13
Speaker
Um, honestly, a great editor helps. And that's where say we came in, but, um, before that, and when I wrote my first draft before she, uh, say we'd had laid eyes on it. Um, I thought like a reader would, and I was reading it and being like, Oh, well that was ultimately distracting. And it might be interesting to me, but it doesn't really service the story. So like, for example, um, one of the things was.
00:43:42
Speaker
Um, I stayed at the tribal casino during the duration of my reporting trip and I overheard Mandarin. So I speak Mandarin and I overheard Mandarin and I was like, what the fuck? And then I turned around and they was like.
00:43:58
Speaker
Chinese guys that were at the blackjack tables. And I was just, I was confused, you know, I was just like, why are they in rural Washington? Why are they on a reservation? Like what is going on here? And then I spoke to them and I asked them what they're doing here. So they basically, so they, after Washington, the state legalized marijuana. A lot of
00:44:25
Speaker
laborers from China actually came out to Washington to start pot farms. And so that's how they're sort of making a living and that's what they were doing out here. And I had included that to just sort of paint a landscape of just how Omak is this weird place where people go and hustle and you have different types of people.
00:44:51
Speaker
But yeah, it was just too distracting and I ultimately just left it out. But it was interesting, so that's an example of something that's interesting to me, but it was like, it doesn't service the story at all. Yeah. Well, that takes a lot of skill and experience to be able to do that because, you know, when you do the
00:45:10
Speaker
When you do the work, you do a certain amount of reporting. You're like, I did this work. You went so far as to speak to these men. And so you suddenly feel like you got to throw it in there. But then you ultimately have to show that restraint.
00:45:28
Speaker
Like how did you sort of cultivate that as a or build that as a muscle to really put on like that reader cap be like yeah this like you were saying earlier like this doesn't really serve the story or the readers experience.
00:45:41
Speaker
Oh, you just, you can't have an ego about it. Like, yeah, I spent an hour talking to them and it was time that I could have spent talking, continuing to talk to Andreas. Although like, by that point I'd, you know, talk to him plenty. But yeah, you just can't get married to and get attached to these things because ultimately it's not about you and it's not about
00:46:04
Speaker
you know, what you want out of it because your loyalty is and should be to people who are reading this for the first time. And I sort of mentally have to go back to that place where Brian texted me being like, you gotta come meet this kid on top of this hill, he's doing it for the first time.
00:46:24
Speaker
And thinking back to how I felt in that moment and what I envisioned it at that point. And when I'm reading it, the draft and I'd included all those little weird tidbits. I'm like, eh, that doesn't elicit the same kind of excitement and response that I felt when someone first told me about this, you know? I think it helps that I naturally, I just, I'm okay with letting things go.
00:46:53
Speaker
Give us a sense of, it sounds like you know a thing or two about horses and the connection between rider and horse. Give us an idea of Andreas' connection to JD ahead of this race. That one is really, really special because it was JD's first time too. I met JD on Friday night when I flew up.
00:47:21
Speaker
Before I'd pitched it to the activist, just to get a vibe of like, okay, yeah, I've heard you talk about your horse and whatever, but I want to see for myself. Does he really have trust issues with other people? I'm comfortable around horses. I grew up horse riding.
00:47:38
Speaker
I put my hand out to give JD a treat and he is, he was so skittish. Like I've never met a more skittish, spooky horse. And then immediately, as soon as Andres put that same treat in his hand and went up to him, he took it right off his hand. And Brian, who also has grown up around horses and he's a horse breeder, couldn't connect with JD. JD only trusts Andres, and I think
00:48:06
Speaker
I think there's something special about their relationship and how JD is young, he's five, and Andreas is also quite young compared to the Marshan brothers, and they're both doing this for the first time. It almost feels like JD understood that they were in this together.
00:48:24
Speaker
As Preston says, green on green. It was a really special thing to witness them together, and there is definitely 100% a bond between them that JD doesn't have with anyone else, aside from Indra, Andreas' girlfriend.
00:48:41
Speaker
Yeah, and late in the piece, you know, you write that the suicide race was his being Andreas' organizing principle, the aspect of his life around which all else revolved. And just in your time with him and then watching this race,
00:48:58
Speaker
What was the feeling of how obsessed the people who or how important this race is to this particular community and the people who, like you say, kind of organize their life around it? Yeah. So, I mean, that's two different things because Andres does it for a different reason to the Martians or like any of the native cowboys that do it. And with Andres,
00:49:25
Speaker
You know, you just brought me back to when I was in my hotel and it was winter, so it was like snowy. There's nothing around. It's very desolate. It's kind of depressing. But yeah, you just brought me back to my hotel room because every time that I would come back and go through my notes, always, every time I would ask myself,
00:49:45
Speaker
All right, Jana, you've been at this for a while now. So what is it? What is the thing that keeps him coming back to, you know, this race, this fucking race? Like, what is it about the suicide race? Is he doing it for the glory? Is he like one of those Red Bull adrenaline junkies that he wants to just do it because he wants the thrill? And if so, why? And, you know, he's a pretty reckless and impulsive person.
00:50:15
Speaker
He'll just do dumb things and I've heard people say that he'll do dumb things like he'll climb a tree and
00:50:24
Speaker
Like when he was a kid, he'd climbed a tree and like broke his arm and like just little things like that. And he just like get a quad bike and just go off a cliff. But I felt like with this, there was something deeper. And at first I was like sort of psychoanalyzing it and being like, oh, maybe it's because he needs approval from his
00:50:47
Speaker
you know, his parents, because especially his biological dad who he didn't meet till he was in his 20s. But honestly, I think it's just at a certain point, we all need a sense of purpose. And I think he just wants his life to matter. And I think that's why he does it. And there isn't some specific example. And speaking about being married to a concept, I was having a hard time letting go.
00:51:13
Speaker
just being like, oh he wants to do it because it means something to him. I was like, no, no, no, there must be some deeper psychological reason to this. But it really is a combination of things that made him feel like I have to make sure my life matters. Like seeing his friend die, seeing his aunt and uncle die. Speaking of
00:51:34
Speaker
Indra, his girlfriend, she told me the story about when they went mountain biking a few years ago. She sent me the video, actually, and this also didn't make it in the piece, but he flew off and landed face first and had a concussion, knocked all his teeth out. That's why his teeth are kind of broken at the front. Ever since then, she's always been worried about him.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah, she ultimately supported this decision because she understood there was a deeper meaning to it. You're constantly surrounded by death, destruction, and you didn't have the greatest relationship with your family.
00:52:18
Speaker
you're 30 and you found out your dad has schizophrenia and you worried you might get that too. And he just wants his life to mean something. He wants to leave a legacy behind, as we all do. And there is some common feeling between his motivation, what I just described, and the Martians. And I think maybe that's another reason why they sort of took him in. They also lost
00:52:48
Speaker
people in their lives, and they're also surrounded by death, suicide, and things like that, and they need to do something that makes their life matter, and they can leave a legacy, and it gives their life meaning, and you sort of come out stronger, and the hill is just a representation of how they feel about all that. It's not just about going on a horse and going down a hill.
00:53:18
Speaker
Everyone has a story, everyone, every single one on that up there has a story. Well, when you speak of him feeling like he needs to have purpose in his life or for his life to have purpose, in this kind of work and the stuff that you do, be it film or written journalism of this nature, what's the purpose that you're seeking?
00:53:45
Speaker
I think I was in ESL until high school, and I think I had to prove to myself that I could string sentences together. Say what makes this piece really shine. She really, really does. She really polished it up for me.
00:54:03
Speaker
But I do deserve some credit with how I was able to sort of put together the main pieces. And that means something to me because I grew up in an agricultural part of Brisbane, which is in Queensland, Australia on the east side of the country.
00:54:30
Speaker
And it's farmlands, so a lot of the farm areas is a lot of, you know, white kids, so actually I was one of the very few Asian kids in my school and so ESL was like, I got plucked out of my classroom and I would go and
00:54:51
Speaker
You know go with the ESL teacher who was actually very lovely and I must want to track her down and send her this story, but Oh, yeah, you gotta do that. Yeah, that'd be cool, right? Yeah, but yeah, it was like a very singling out sort of moment and I've always just wanted to do better with the English language and just
00:55:16
Speaker
really prove that I can tell a good story. Cause it's in my head, you know, like I can tell good stories in my head, but putting it onto paper and making it eloquent and making it easy to read that you're just consistently, you know, keeping people engaged is a whole different thing.
00:55:33
Speaker
And it's more impactful that way when you can do that instead of just keeping it all in your head and telling it over drinks with your friends or something. This format that the Adivis has is just a beautiful way of storytelling. So that's where I get a lot of my meaningfulness.
00:55:58
Speaker
As a general thing of finding purpose, I think it's just being able to tell good stories and particularly stories that haven't been told before. And going back to the unpredictable nature of stories, I like that too because it's unexpected and maybe people don't expect that from me.
00:56:22
Speaker
I get a lot of meaning from being able to just tell impactful good stories featuring underdogs and interesting complex characters who have a lot of twists and turns.
00:56:42
Speaker
Yeah. Well, you know, kind of getting back to, you know, Andreas in his The Suicide Race being his organizing principle, you're kind of alluding to it. But I just want to dig in just a little deeper about like, you know, what would you identify in your work as your organizing principle? Damn, you ask really good questions. It's my COVID fever dream. I don't know. I don't know.
00:57:10
Speaker
No, I like it. You should always be sick. No, I'm kidding. That's hilarious.
00:57:22
Speaker
I want my, oh God, this is such like a trope, but I want my mom's sacrifice to mean something. Like all that she sacrificed to bring us to Australia. I want that to mean something. And I ultimately above that and above, because I'm a grown woman and I don't need my mom's approval all the time anymore, but I ultimately also want my life to have meaning.
00:57:52
Speaker
You're an immigrant kid and you don't speak the language. Sometimes your voice isn't totally heard. And so I spent a lot of my childhood feeling unheard and now I finally sort of get to feel heard, um, you know, through this, through journalism.
00:58:09
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's yeah, that's incredibly profound. It's a way like you're saying it's a for being, I don't know, invisible in a sense. And now, yeah, and now you're you've got not only do you have some platform, but you're able to broadcast from it and say, like, listen, I am I am here. I have value. I have I have something to say, be it my story or other people's stories. But it's still it's your voice that you're finding.
00:58:40
Speaker
Right, right. And I don't want to make it me, me, me, you know, and these, the people that I'm finding for these stories, like Andreas, the Hahn twins, Justin, like they are the vehicles for this, for the storytelling. But in order to tell a good story, I feel like I'm saying story a lot, but in order for me to do a good job of it, I am having to mine certain things from my personal life. And so inherently, I am
00:59:08
Speaker
I am becoming more heard through these people, through the characters, if that makes sense. Yeah, it kind of goes back to what we were saying, how the people that we're drawn to and draw the covering actually reflect something inside of us, and that's why we're drawn to them. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:59:30
Speaker
Yeah. And it is, you know, journalism isn't always super academia-y. Like it is sometimes a little bit psychological and personal and intimate. Oh, for sure. You're having to dig into your own sort of situation to try and better understand the sources and try to understand what questions you should be asking and
00:59:58
Speaker
And picking up on stuff is, it was very intuitive too. And that comes from experience. That comes from somewhere, you know, like that comes from your own struggles or whatever, whatever it is.
01:00:10
Speaker
Yeah, and to your point of using personal experience to imbue your reporting with a certain color. That can only be Jana, for instance. That's your worldview. So your reporting, your eye is informed by who you are and your experiences. And I think what you've alluded to is doing that without being self-indulgent.
01:00:36
Speaker
Yeah, so that's a hard skill to learn to not put the spotlight on yourself. So how have you cultivated that sense of you can make something personal without it being too navel-gazy?
01:00:52
Speaker
So I'll give you an example, because it's actually in the story. That scene where Andres flips the U-turn to chase down the dog that was trailing behind the man. Holy moly, that was a whole thing. I was in the car. Really? Wow. Yeah, so we were just driving down into town because we were going to sit at the Mexican restaurant downtown and
01:01:17
Speaker
do the recording, like do the interviews because we just needed to change the scenery because we'd been talking for hours at that point. So we were driving downtown and then he immediately flipped a bitch, I guess you could say, for lack of a better term. It's going to be my teaser quote for this podcast now.
01:01:39
Speaker
The car was screeching and he just pulled into this parking lot and then immediately my instinct was to turn my recorder on. So I actually had this whole exchange and I was like, slow down, slow down, please slow down. He just jumped out of the car and you can hear the car door slam and then the
01:01:57
Speaker
Ding, ding, ding, because the seatbelt or whatever is not on. And he runs up to the guy and I thought he was just going to be like, hey man, do you know why there's a stray dog following you? But immediately goes out of the car, confronts this guy, starts swearing at him.
01:02:20
Speaker
And you can hear it on the recording. He's like, what the fuck man? What are you doing? And it was just an intense moment. I'm not used to people like confronting other people like that. It was jarring and I didn't know what to expect, but I left the recorder on and then he picked up this dog, dropped it in my lap and then kept driving into town and then said, I need to stop by somewhere. I guess he needed to run an errand. He had to pick up.
01:02:47
Speaker
a check for whatever reason. And so he went into this glass repair shop, the one that Dan Yaksik used to own. And he left me in the car for almost an hour with the dog and the dog was whimpering. And I just left a recorder on.
01:03:08
Speaker
because I was expecting Andres to come back and I was sitting in the car wondering what the hell is going on. And then eventually he came back out. Well, I texted him and I went in and I was like, hey, what's going on? And then he eventually came back out and that's just who Andres is. You just can't sit him down in one place. So that's
01:03:32
Speaker
That's another thing, you know, it was very difficult to interview at times, but yeah, so he left me with this dog and we put that story in there because I found out through Indra that, you know, Andres made an effort to afterwards to reunite the dog with the owner through Facebook. They put it through the local Facebook.
01:03:57
Speaker
group and I was there when he dropped the dog off to Indra's sister's house and no one was home and he took a shot and I smelled it on his breath and so that's why we talk about the apple pie moonshine and yeah we I actually took that story out in the second draft that scene out in the second draft because I'm like ah this is I'm making it too much about me
01:04:17
Speaker
You know, but you can still tell a good story without saying without because in that scene, actually, there's no me, there's no like first person or whatever. Like, there's yeah, it's just the story itself. And it's assumed I was there. But.
01:04:36
Speaker
that was saved with helping me. She actually put that story back in and she actually changed it around so that we're not making it too navel-gazy. But she really liked that story, that scene, because it paints a picture of who Andres is, this reckless, sort of daredevil, adrenaline-junkie kid who's
01:04:58
Speaker
who's sort of like Mother Teresa underneath all that, he wants to reunite the dog with the owner. And so we ended up putting it back in, but yeah, that's an example of something that I felt was too navel-gazy. But if you just change out the words and you don't have to say, I was this, I was that, you can still, you know, include a good example without being too self-indulgent.
01:05:25
Speaker
Well, yeah, the the eye or your presence is more it's implicit. It's felt versus just being like hit over the head. You're like, yes, this is I was here and the dog was in my lap and I was trying to console it. And it's like, OK, you know, if you had gone in that direction and be like, OK, you know, is is this in service of what you're doing? But it's like, but it's not. It's not that way. Right. Right. And, you know, sometimes it puts people off.
01:05:54
Speaker
if you make it too much about yourself. Oh, 100%. The fact that you brought up this dog, the dog anecdote, I had a sentence highlighted just after that, and you were talking about how his impulses are, that he's very impulsive, and you write that. That's the thing about Andreas' impulses. They're almost always in service of what to his mind is the right thing to do.
01:06:21
Speaker
So it was a very like, it was a very show versus tell moment where like it was all that action really showed us like, you know, this impulsivity was really in service of something else. That dog needed help. Right, right. And it sort of connected, you know, because he probably saw himself in the stray dog. And I picked up on that and I sort of
01:06:46
Speaker
I didn't realize, and that's why I stuck it out and just sat with the whimpering dog. I was panning this dog, telling myself, no, no, this is good. There's something bigger here. Just wait for it.
01:07:03
Speaker
Just be patient. There's something there that's going to come out of this. And it wasn't until later when we dropped off the dog and then I had dinner with Indra, I think one of the nights and she told me, yeah, we reunited the dog with its owner. And then that's when it clicked. But sometimes in the moment, you don't know. You don't know what the fuck you're doing there. You don't know if you're wasting your time. That's freelance journalism, though, I think.
01:07:31
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. You got to fill the notebook, fill the recorder, and it's only after you get all that material that you start looking over your notes that you can then start to metabolize what you've got. And be like, okay, this at the time didn't seem like anything, but actually this has a ton of meaning.
Editorial Decisions and Reporting Insights
01:07:52
Speaker
This I thought might have, but turns out it doesn't. So yeah, that's kind of the fun part of it once you start getting all the material.
01:07:59
Speaker
Yeah. And I had to train my brain because you can't predict the future and you don't have some assurance that this would all be worth it. So I had to train my brain to be like, no, no, this is the bigger picture here. This potentially could be like this. And I'd like play out the scene in my head of how it could look in a story and, you know, why someone would want to read this and like why it would make sense to like hang out with the, with the scruffy little dog and like, yeah, I don't know. It.
01:08:25
Speaker
You just always got to think 10 steps ahead and envision the larger picture. Do you find yourself writing in your head as you're reporting it out? You're imagining where it could possibly go and you're like, all right, I'm almost like a dress rehearsal. Not even a dress rehearsal, but a rehearsal.
01:08:47
Speaker
I absorb, absorb, absorb like a sponge, and then I go back to my hotel room or whatever and do the skeleton, the bones thing. And then I did that before with my other stories before Saywood, but now I have a name for it. And then I would sort of start structuring it in my head, even though that's not necessarily the structure we ended up with, but it does help paint a picture. And I think it helps that I do things chronologically too, like I kind of paint
01:09:17
Speaker
paint it in my head, like his milestones, what led him to this point, what led him to the next point. And yeah, doing it chronologically is helpful.
01:09:30
Speaker
Oh, for sure. But yeah, you do open the piece sort of right at the right at the hill at the top of the hill before the drop. And then you kind of back it up and start going like, you know, more linearly and everything. Say where it's particularly good at a really good hook at the top of the story. Was that something you envisioned or was she like, how about we start at the top of the hill? No, that was completely.
01:10:01
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not even going to sugarcoat that one. No, she deserves total credit. She's so good at that. She's so good at structuring. I got her notes back, and she was like, do this here, do this here. I'd already had the top of the hill scene, but she moved it to the very front.
01:10:23
Speaker
Yes. Genius. Why didn't I do that? All right. Well, John, I love ending these conversations by asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind for listeners that can be anything from, I know, a brand of coffee to a fanny pack to a brand of socks you're really tickled by. So I'd extend that to you. What might you recommend for the listeners out there as we bring this podcast down for a landing?
01:10:53
Speaker
Blunstones shoes. They're an Australian brand. It's apparently really popular in Israel for whatever reason. There's actually an article about it somewhere, but Blunstones are very durable. They are... I'm not sponsored already.
01:11:11
Speaker
They're expensive but mine have lasted me about 10 years and I actually wore them to the rodeo for this story and they didn't break down and I climbed rocks and I went hiking and I was in the river and I was on top of the hill and I was at the bottom of the hill and I was everywhere and not one scratch so go get your blunnies.
01:11:35
Speaker
You're a footwear influencer now, Johnna. Yeah. A shoe-shiller, whatever. A shill. A shoe-shill. A shoe-shill. Very nice. And one last thing, Johnna. Where can people find you online and get more familiar with you and your work if they're not already familiar with it? I have a website and that has links to my little publication and the work I've done. And I also have an email address in there.
01:12:04
Speaker
I need to get better at using Twitter, but yeah. But do you though? Do I? Probably not. Well, very nice. Well, Johnna, this was so great to talk to you about this piece you did and about your approach to the work.
Gratitude and Reflections on Personal Challenges
01:12:20
Speaker
And this was wonderful. I really appreciate you carving out the time to do it. And it was really a pleasure to speak with you. Thanks for hopping on the pod. Thank you so much, Brendan. And thanks for asking thoughtful and thought provoking and awesome questions. And I hope you feel better.
01:12:38
Speaker
Oh boy. As always, big thanks to Sayward Darby, Johnna, and of course you, the CNF and listener, I make the show for you, you know that, but maybe in the early days I could be guilty of saying I made it for myself and making the show that I most wanted to listen to. I guess it's still true to some extent, right? But you get to a certain point where it has to be about more than just yourself.
01:13:02
Speaker
So honestly, I make this show for you, and I hope you still continue to dig it after all these years, man. Dig it.
01:13:11
Speaker
If you have some income worth disposing, go to magazine.adivis.com to subscribe for 25 bucks, I think. Incredible deal. You have a dozen stories, access to the full archive, beautifully designed. I mean, if I sound like I'm just two salesmen-like, I don't care. I don't get any kickbacks from this.
01:13:35
Speaker
I love what Sayward and Jonah and all the designers and the editors and the fact checkers do. It's the kind of storytelling I love. Writing for the activist would be a bucket list item, but I don't think I could do it since I have this little thing with them. I think it would be a conflict of interest, but maybe one day when the podcast is dead.
01:14:00
Speaker
So, point being, if you have a little extra money, consider subscribing to them. And if you have some, like an extra little bit of coffee money, go to patreon.com slash cnfpod, window shop, $2 or $4 a month.
01:14:16
Speaker
is all I asked. I've been a little lazy regarding the transcripts and such, but shit's been bonkers. And I've been crying too much to think about much anything else besides sadness. So as some of you know,
01:14:32
Speaker
My mom is now in this rehab center after a fall, which wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for her dementia. But without short-term memories, she's in this constant loop of, how did I get here? And then fear and panic, and my God, the depression. And she just feels like she's been disposed of, thrown aside, and she just can't kind of function with 100% autonomy.
01:15:02
Speaker
So Sunday, July 24th in the evening, I start feeling a little weird, a little bit achy. And I was peeing like every like 20 to 30 minutes. And I wasn't even drinking that much water, but it was just like constant. And my wife complains of my overactive bladder like it's an affront to her character. But this was something altogether different.
01:15:24
Speaker
By Monday morning, my joints were starting to feel brittle. I had a sore throat. The skin was starting to get achy. I'm like, oh boy. And my wife Googled about COVID and excessive urination. And apparently it's a thing. So now I was like, fuck. So I go to Rite Aid.
01:15:44
Speaker
to get some rapid COVID tests. And the pharmacist hooked me up with 16 of these fuckers, eight for me and eight for my wife because health insurance, I guess. So I'm flush with COVID tests. So if you need one, go to patreon.com slash CNF pod and get a COVID test. JK, JK, JK.
01:16:03
Speaker
I got back to my sisters and I read the instructions and tickled my sinuses for 30 seconds, did all the things, dripped the solution onto the card, and it was comical how fast the positive strip lit up. I still waited the 15 minutes because I was like, maybe that thing goes away. Nope. It was like, fuck you, you've got COVID.
01:16:25
Speaker
Had to call the place where my mom's staying, and she's got like one functioning lung, and she's 83 years old, and COVID feasts on that demo. So they tested her, boom, she's positive. They took her to the third floor to isolate her, and she apparently thought the nurse was going to throw her out the window, like seriously. That's the dementia thing.
01:16:49
Speaker
The nurse gets me on the phone to try to settle her down, and she's in this panic. And I'm like, hey, Mom, listen, I tested positive this morning. I called the place. I'm like, I was worried about you. So they tested you. It turns out you're positive. So they're just isolating you on this floor. And they're moving you because you've got this thing. And she says, can I trust this nurse? And this nurse, Jen, she sounded super sweet on the phone.
01:17:14
Speaker
I'm like, yes, she's very sweet and you're in very good hands and she was, all right, like if you say I can trust her, I will trust her. I'm like, yes, you can definitely trust her. So then, you know, part ways on the phone. So far, mom hasn't had any real symptoms, nothing like I've been wrestling with this week. She just had the cough I was worried about.
01:17:38
Speaker
Late last week, it's a bit of a wheezy cough, but aside from that, knock on wood. Nothing severe. Let's put it that way. At last, my sister came back from her trip with her daughter so she can visit my mom now, now that I can't for at least 10 days.
01:18:02
Speaker
I have to admit and I feel kind of awful saying this but given how emotionally wrung out I've been the last two weeks like getting sick and not being able to see my mom for a Short time is something of a relief Like I needed a forced break from the intensity of it all like I'm weary putting that on the record But it's but it's been kind of killing me, you know
01:18:27
Speaker
And you want to know the real fucking kicker? For all the stress, for all the days I couldn't get down a bite of food because of stress and nerves and sadness, for the gallons of tears that I just poured out of my face, for being away from my wife and home and dogs,
01:18:44
Speaker
My sister said, Mom has little to no memory of me being there. It's like, oh, all that bleeding. Was it for nothing? But not in the moment. But she has that single moment that she can hang on, to be it fleeting as it is. And I have to when we have to live with the sum total of the moments as they start to pull your nose under the water.
01:19:13
Speaker
And as I record this, I was supposed to be on a plane back to Oregon and now I'm here for at least another week before I can safely fly again and then consider next steps regarding my mom's care and the long-term plan for her living post-rehab. And my sister has been incredible with, you know, just getting me food, coffees, just incredible hospitality. She's wired like that. She's incredible like that.
01:19:40
Speaker
Anyway, in the end, I'll have been away, I think, for nearly a month on paper. That doesn't sound like much, but when you haven't had so much as a hug from someone in three weeks, when all you've wanted was a fucking hug because you're on this island,
01:19:56
Speaker
and then you get this goddamn mutant flu and you can't be within spitting distance of anyone for 10 more days you can still you can start to feel your sanity start to fray you know if you could man maybe just send send a digital hug my way and if you can do interview see ya
01:20:47
Speaker
you