Dave Blanchard
@blanchardd
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Supervising editor at @NPR's Wild Card. Formers: @planetmoney, @npratc, @MorningEdition, @OPB. dblanchard at https://t.co/tCh11uFKnW
Washington, DC
Joined March 2011
Logging back on after years of Twitter silence to share this new show we're making with the world. Wild Card is an interview show unlike any other with a host who is the best in the business. Follow us and enjoy! First ep is out Thurs.
Well, here it is! We made a new thing! It's an interview show like you've never heard before. First episode drops Thursday. Listen and subscribe!
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I wrote this remembrance for the writer Barry Lopez, who died Friday. I think often of the lesson he took from beaver sticks he'd find on walks. "I imagined the beaver were saying 'What the hell's wrong with you? You get back in there and do your work.'"
npr.org
Lopez — who won a National Book Award in 1986 for Arctic Dreams — wrote about his travels to far places. But his writings aren't just travelogues, they remind us of how precious life on Earth is.
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When I spoke to Lopez's friend John Luther Adams for the obit, he shared one I hadn't seen before, but is a new favorite: "If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive" /end.
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He'd be the first to say his work isn't for everyone. But if you like any of this, I found this essay (and the collection it comes from, "About This Life") an excellent introduction to his work:
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He told me last year, "The Achilles heel of consciousness is that we forget. We forget what we stand for. We forget to maintain good relations with the people around us. The reason for story is to repair the damage that forgetting always does.".
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This is the first passage of his that really grabbed me. It’s about watching the light reflect off the McKenzie River. Still puzzling this one out
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“The therapeutic dimensions of a relationship to place.” This is walking in the woods of the Pacific Northwest for me.
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He talked about "patterns" a lot. His meaning still remains a bit of a mystery to me: "A writer is not really a wise person necessarily. They just understand how to make a pattern that makes other people feel in closer touch with what you might call the holy that's in them.".
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He had many lovely friendships with visual artists. In a talk with painter Rick Bartow, he once said, "I do the same thing as a writer as you do as a painter. I'm looking for a pattern . I'm just listening for a rhythm of language that makes something happen.".
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Clearcuts in forests are "as off-putting as patches of mange on a dog." The wind in Antarctica is a "beast" that "wallops and scours the mountains".
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His metaphors were beautiful, often explaining nature by way of nature. A cloudy sky contains "grays of pigeon feathers, of slate and pearls." Packs of hammerhead sharks in the Galapagos move "like swans milling on a city park pond." Raindrops are the size of honeybees.
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As sad as the conditions of Lopez's passing were, he also offered so much hope, lightness and grace in his work. A thread of some of my favorite Lopez-isms 1/x.
Lopez wrote often about the threat of climate change, and, in a sad irony, he was forced to leave his home in September because of the unusually powerful wildfires in Oregon. His wife told me, "The fire was a blow he never could recover from."
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Lopez's friend and collaborator, composer John Luther Adams, put it this way: "it is nothing less than tragic that this man, who was such a strong, clear voice of warning about global warming has died as a as a climate refugee. There's no other way of putting it.".
Lopez wrote often about the threat of climate change, and, in a sad irony, he was forced to leave his home in September because of the unusually powerful wildfires in Oregon. His wife told me, "The fire was a blow he never could recover from."
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Lopez wrote often about the threat of climate change, and, in a sad irony, he was forced to leave his home in September because of the unusually powerful wildfires in Oregon. His wife told me, "The fire was a blow he never could recover from."
npr.org
Lopez — who won a National Book Award in 1986 for Arctic Dreams — wrote about his travels to far places. But his writings aren't just travelogues, they remind us of how precious life on Earth is.
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NPR's remembrance:
npr.org
Lopez — who won a National Book Award in 1986 for Arctic Dreams — wrote about his travels to far places. But his writings aren't just travelogues, they remind us of how precious life on Earth is.
NPR has confirmed that the National Book Award winning author Barry Lopez died Christmas Day. He had been battling prostate cancer since 2013.
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NPR has confirmed that the National Book Award winning author Barry Lopez died Christmas Day. He had been battling prostate cancer since 2013.
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Tune into @npratc today to hear @arishapiro's interview with @RaphaelBW about the surreal, hilarious, neurotic and deeply human worlds he constructs.
The new book of short stories by @BoJackHorseman creator @RaphaelBW is amazing throughout. But one of the most beautiful parts is the last line of the acknowledgments:
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The new book of short stories by @BoJackHorseman creator @RaphaelBW is amazing throughout. But one of the most beautiful parts is the last line of the acknowledgments:
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One astonishing takeaway from the biodiversity report: livestock grazing accounts for about *25 percent* of the world’s ice-free land:
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