Ben's Diary

Happy Holidays! Karen and I are off tonight on our long-postponed honeymoon to southern Africa so I'll be off-line for a couple of weeks. But I'll be gathering stories & will share when I'm back. Till then, wishing you all the joy of the holidays & a very happy New Year.

Update... Two weeks ago, I shared a story from Cambodia about a boy who was left with a gas station attendant as collateral for 0.8 gallons of fuel. Good news from the AP: Ron Dy, 9, has been reunited with his family after the gas seller appealed to the boy's parents through the media. In February, a man claiming to be the boy's uncle told an old woman working at the station that he didn't have $1 for gas and left the boy while he went to get money. He never returned. Now, a happy ending. The young boy cried as he said goodbye to the grandmother who looked after him, saying he wanted to visit her again one day, according to the Light of Cambodia newspaper.

The Real Action Hero. When Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn't get a deal done last week with the California Assembly to pass his plan for the state's wrecked finances, who finished the job? According to a surprisng piece in the LA Times, his wife Maria Shriver came to the rescue. Shriver, who has just returned to work for NBC News, apparently played a key behind-the-scenes role passing the $15 billion bond deal and new spending restrictions while also helping her daughter with a 104 degree fever. Supermom-wife-journalist Shriver flew to Sacramento this week and, the Times says, "her arrival fueled momentum for a deal." The first lady scolded legislators for failing to find common ground in a speech. "I say that if some of these legislators were children, we'd give them a timeout," Shriver said. "… We would teach them that, with every person, you can find common ground; that you should play nicely with them, work to a common goal and work it out." The Times also credits Assemblyman Keith Richman, (R-Northridge), leader of a bipartisan group of moderate legislators, for pressing for more time to resurrect the talks and pass the plan.

Holiday Sale... Big sporting news in New York where Andy Pettitte, a Yankee pitching ace, accepted a $31.5 million, three-year contract with the Houston Astros, leaving the New York after nine seasons and four World Series championships. Yankee fans are very unhappy to lose the lefty, but the city's merciless merchants know just what to do. Check this out... Andy Pettitte.bmp

Nine Lives... Who says cats are the only ones with nine lives. In East Brunswick, NJ an unwanted dog that was put down with drugs, stuffed in a plastic bag and sent through a trash compactor was found alive moments before being buried with 40 tons of trash at a Middlesex County landfill. According to the AP, the five-year-old shepherd-Labrador cross was found clawing through the plastic bag on the back of a garbage truck at the Edgeboro Landfill. Officials say an animal control officer had given the dog two injections, one to sedate it, the other to stop its heart. He listened with a stethoscope for a heartbeat, and not hearing one, placed the body in a plastic bag. "Obviously, it's a miracle," a spokesman for the animal control department said. "It's just amazing it lived through that whole mess." The phone is ringing off the hook at the East Brunswick pound with offers to give the animal a home. The dog has yet to be named, although some people have been calling it Lucky.

Long-Term Planning? What powerful person said the following in an upcoming issue of Reader's Digest? "There's nothing I am worse at than long-term planning. I have never run my life that way. I believe that serendipity or fate or divine intervention has led me to a series of wholly implausible steps in my life. And I've been open to those twists and turns because I didn't have a long-term plan." Correct answer: Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, on whether she will run for public office. Makes you wonder how she manages one of the most difficult jobs in the world that involves, um, long-term planning. Or as Lloyd Grove puts it more bluntly in his NY Daily News column today, the quotation certainly "gives ammo to critics of the Bush administration's postwar performance in Iraq."

Bad Sex... Trust me, writing a love scene is one of the trickiest things in fiction. Think about it: Not only do your mom and sister read the particulars, but so do your wife, colleagues and friends. That's why I always take interest (and breathe a sigh of relief) when the Literary Review of London announces its annual "Bad Sex Prize" for the most inept description of sexual intercourse in a novel. This year's winner is the Indian author Aniruddha Bahal for his novel Bunker 13. According to CNN, Bahal's winning passage describes how the book's hero turns into an "ancient Aryan warlord" when a woman drops her pants to expose a strategically placed swastika. Then as things get started, Bahal writes: "Your RPM is hitting a new high. To wait any longer would be to lose prime time... She picks up a Bugatti's momentum. You want her more at a Volkswagen's steady trot. Squeeze the maximum mileage out of your gallon of gas. But she's eating up the road with all cylinders blazing. You lift her out. You want to try different kinds of fusion." Bahal defeated other nominess including John Updike, Paul Theroux and Paulo Coelho, and flew to London to accept the award from singer Sting in front of a 500-person audience. The prize was started 11 years ago by the late Auberon Waugh, to mock "redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel." Here's another excerpt, as reported in The Guardian: "She's taking off her blouse. It's on the floor. Her breasts are placards for the endomorphically endowed. In spite of yourself a soft whistle of air escapes you. She's taking off her trousers now. They are a heap on the floor. Her panties are white and translucent. You can see the dark hair sticking to them inside. There's a design as well. You gasp." Placards for the endomorphically endowed... Nice touch.

Big Baby... According to the AP, an Omaha woman has given birth to a 14-pound, 3-ounce girl named Virginia. The mom, Jirong Long, required a Caesarean section to deliver Virginia, the largest baby ever recorded at Creighton University Medical Center in its 130-year history. (By the by, my grandfather Dr. Philip Romonek was a graduate of Creighton University). Doctors say Virginia's size is surprising because mom and dad aren't big people. Mom is 5 feet 4 and weighed 130 pounds before pregnancy. Dad is 5-9 and weighs 160 pounds. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest baby ever delivered was a boy weighing 23 pounds, 12 ounces in Seville, Ohio, in 1879.

Gas Prices... A friend in the news business shared this Reuters story from Cambodia where a man who forgot his wallet at a gas station ended up paying for a gallon of fuel with ... his nephew. The nine-year-old, Dy, had been on a trip with his uncle in March 2002 to track down his father in the war-torn southeast Asian nation. However, their motorcycle ran out of gas and after filling up at a roadside station, the uncle realized he had no money. Eventually he convinced the old lady at the station to take his nephew as a guarantee he would return with the cash -- about $1.5O. Nearly two years later, she is still waiting -- but has opted to keep the youngster. "I have decided to take care of him and raise him as my own grandson," she said.

God Bless America... The incredible odyssey of former Army Private Jessica Lynch continues ... from captivity in Iraq to two-hour NBC mini-series to bestselling author (with Rick Bragg) to 90-minute ABC News special with Diane Sawyer to sit-down interview on TODAY with Katie Couric. What next? Believe it or not, Lynch will break the traditional bottle of champagne across the bow of the newest Carnival "Fun Ship" named "Miracle" next February in Jacksonville, Florida. "In appreciation for Miss Lynch serving as godmother of the Carnival Miracle, Carnival is pleased to make a significant contribution to the Jessica Lynch Foundation," the company said in a PR release. Lynch established the foundation to assist children of soldiers who have either served in the military or were killed on duty. She also plans to use the foundation to benefit Wirt County, West Virginia where she lives.

Angry in Superior. Word is streaming in from friends in Superior, Nebraska, where today's page one New York Times piece ("Amid Dying Towns of Rural Plains, One Makes A Stand") has stung like a bitter winter wind. Lew Hunter, a wise and wonderful resident (and legendary former UCLA screenwriting professor), e-mailed this morning with a blistering review: The reporter "talked to nearly every negative person in Superior," Lew wrote. "What an unbalanced infuriating study.... The sucker didn't interview one high school person who was positive and most share a 180 degree view of the ones reported." Lew added: "God knows we have negatives. God knows we have positives. Enough positives that with a gun, you could not get Pamela (his delightful wife) or myself or eighty percent of the citizens, including some of the negative people in this report, to move back to 'the big city.' You, of all people, know how much most of the people in Superior love this town."

The Middle of Everywhere. As many of you know, The Man Who Ate the 747 was set in a tiny town called Superior, Nebraska, located smack dab in the heartland of America. I visited many times for research and worked hard to paint an accurate portrait of a prairie community fighting for survival but gradually blowing away in the wind. Today, little old Superior made the front page (and two full inside pages) of The New York Times in a bleak and long-awaited piece by Timothy Egan. As an honorary citizen (Superior's slogan -- "The Middle of Everywhere" -- is borrowed from my book), I'm glad to see so much ink and attention focused on the real problems afflicting many small communities on the plains. It's also good to see a few pals quoted (and photographed) in the article, like Bill Blauvelt (editor of the local newspaper) and Sylvia and Donn Crilly, who moved back to Superior from the Bay Area. For anyone who loves small town life, the facts in the story are disquieting. For instance, among teenagers, there is now a higher level of illicit drug use in rural areas than in cities or suburbs. But Superior is fighting back on many fronts, and Nebraska's governor calls the town's creative efforts a model for the rest of the state. In the end, Egan gets it absolutely right when he says: "if they can't make it here ... they can't make it anywhere on the prairie."