My speechwriter friends say the best part of the job is getting paid to learn about new things. I dunno. I guess I'm not that nuts about learning about new things. But I do like learning about myself.
For me, the best part of doing journalism is being forced to go so deep, so fast, into the strange mind of another person that you suddenly see the whole world, and your remote place in it, from his life-mangled perspective.
The canoe shop owner sees Chicago as a system of rivers and streams surrounded by buildings wrapped in bridges.
The hairpiece maker believes all humanity's self-esteem could be improved with a billion tiny area rugs.
A suburban mayor seems to go on the assumption that the Big Bang took place in the town square.
And—per my latest story in Lincoln Electric's Arc magazine—a special kind of genius who provides cars for Hollywood, and sees the whole world through a windshield.
I spent a couple days in with Ted Moser this spring, helping him ferry some of his 700 "picture cars" around New Orleans shooting locations for the upcoming HBO show "Quarry."
It was fun driving Moser's cars. Taking his mind for a spin—and getting a distant glimpse at my own in the rear-view—that was good for me, as it always is.
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