Hi Everyone,
Here are a few updates (and a video). Hope you are all doing well.
Book Update
The book is a memoir of my time coaching basketball in Namibia and the life-lessons I learned (and, perhaps, taught).
In the last update I wrote about the idea of being ninety percent done or only sixty percent. I’m pretty certain that I am now ninety percent done and am in the editing, polishing, and connecting phase. I’ve been tightening up sentences, setting up the call-backs, and connecting the narrative to the broader meaning.
That last part, connecting meaning to narrative, is, at the moment, the greatest challenge. I’m trying to walk a tricky line in that I hope the book is about how we are all connected along with the lessons I learned coaching basketball along with an engaging and, hopefully, suspenseful story of an underdog playoff run.
All the ingredients are there, I’m just not sure of the proportions.
To give you an idea, here are three “deleted” paragraphs and what I’m attempting to do in each…
(Introduce the reader to a different world…)
To fly to Namibia from the U.S. you board Flight 204, a 10:40 AM South African Airways flight, from JFK and, sixteen hours later, having crossed the Atlantic, you arrive at O.R. Tambo Airport in Johannesburg. Tambo is four floors of cylindrical airport and, to find your flight to Windhoek, you descend to the first floor, away from the shops and private lounges. Once on the first floor, past the darkened kiosks and empty waiting areas, you’ll find a poorly lit gate for your flight on an Embraer ERJ-135, a thirty-seven seater, two hours, over mostly red desert and yellow savannah.
(Set-up a narrative call-back…)
Working on a play we never used in a game was fun. It signaled to the team that what we do was different. It also helped with team building as the players looked at me like, “Okay, Coach, let’s work some more on that play we never run.” Plus there was that one-in-a-million chance that we might actually use it in a game.
(Imbue the work with some greater meaning…)
Sometimes during meditation I dwell on the interconnectedness of all things. We are here, on a blue marble, floating in endless space.
I know the narrative is there. Now it’s a matter of smoothing in the rest, like mixing toppings into a Blizzard from DQ.
As I’ve written before, having time to let each draft settle is key. I hope to be finished by the end of this month but who knows.
There is no timetable so there is no rush.
For fun, I use Canva to mess around and create book titles and covers. Here’s the latest. Not sure if this will be the final title…
Podcast Update
The most popular podcast of June was an interview with a former intern of mine, Asia Millette. Asia graduated from Amherst College at the age of 20 and from Rutgers Law at 22. She is now a Public Defender in Brooklyn.
Our conversation is about what she has seen, and not seen, in her eight years in Brooklyn:
I have rarely seen justice done in… the system of oppression that is the criminal legal system. I don’t call it the criminal justice system because it’s not just.
Coming this Thursday I have an interview with two former students from the Mississippi Delta.
Pawley’s Island
Two weeks ago I was on vacation with extended family at Pawley’s Island in South Carolina. The weather was lovely and we had a house on the beach. Here’s a little video I put together for Tik-Tok:
That’s all from my side. I’m back in New York now and headed to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday.
Have a great week.