Tripping on meth while watching planes fall into the sea in front of the Hotel del Coronado

(Just kidding…a blog about the reading of The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy, The Jumping-Off Place, and Methland)

                 The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy

The writer, Michael Paterniti, of The
Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy.
Pic from the internet.

The story starts off extremely descriptive. Sometimes I don’t like introductions that are full of details, but in this story it works for me. In class we talked about how the writer would get such explicit detail on the man and the woman making love. I just re-read the part and I really want to know the answer! Unless he talked directly to them, I don’t know who could’ve told him that “the hair [was] standing on their arms” or how they “clasped tightly—their bodies turning as frigid as the ocean.” It makes the story really interesting and its great detail. But as a student of literary journalism and writing literary pieces, I wonder how he gets the information!

As the story starts I couldn’t tell what was happening but for what I found out what it was about, it’s a great intro! I really feel like I had to read the story slowly, because I was confused at points. Like how he lists random things like, “plans for time together and saving the world, for corralling AIDS and feeding the famine-stricken and family reunions.” What he’s trying to list is the backgrounds of all these different people. They’re all on the same plane heading to the same destination, but for different reasons.

I really liked the paragraph of page 27 about how these people are marked with an invisible X. “There were 229 people who owned cars and houses, slept in beds, had bought clothes and gifts for this trip, some with price tags still on them—and then they were gone.” It’s a powerful sentence that reminds us that in any accident where hundreds or thousands of people die, it’s not only a group of people who die, but it’s each individual who had a life and each individual family was affected and hurt by their death.

This must be a reason, too, why the writer described each person as a feature they had or by their occupation and not their names. That way, it doesn’t get too specific by having characters in the story, but more as each person is looked at as having their own life.

                    The Jumping Off Place

                Before the story started, the background information was really interesting. I found it incredible for people not wanting to report (or maybe not knowing how?) about the depression until years into it. The reporters who were doing coverage on the depression before actually reporting it stood out to me. “Their reporting tended to be about the impoverished, the unemployed, and the underprivileged—exactly the groups that the newspapers wanted to avoid.” I like this sentence because usually if there is ANY story that is worth reporting, if it’s ethical, reporters and journalists will jump all over it. It’s interesting and I wonder why exactly. They didn’t want to admit it was a huge problem? They didn’t want to cover the poor? I do not know.



My cousin and I standing in front of Coronado Beach Hotel
in 2010.

As the story started, it was talking about the Coronado Beach Hotel. I was just there last year and he did a great job explaining the appearance. But why was he talking about it? I thought the story was going to be about people jumping off a bridge because of the hard times. I was having a hard time wondering what was going to happen. Over half way through the story, it takes a turn and finally starts talking about the troubles and how people committed suicide from it. Rather than going to the poorhouse, people had been killing themselves.

What I like about the story is that it unexpectedly takes that turn and readers are surprised at the change of context. Was the writer doing this to signify the unexpected depression? I don’t know why the Coronado Beach Hotel was used. It’s on the west coast, but it didn’t seem to make sense to me.

Readings like these have made me slow down and pay more attention. I enjoy stories that are easy to understand and have a smooth path from start to finish. These readings have challenged my ability to take in stories. I like discussing readings in class because then I can hear stuff about the story that I didn’t pick up while I was reading it the first time.

                   Methland



Reding, left, sits next to a man named Jeffrey Rohrick who
has the same description and story as Rolan Jarvis.
Wondering if he used a different name in his story?
Pic from this article.



                I was really looking forward to reading this book about meth, because I don’t know much about it. It’s something I don’t hear about and I don’t do research to answer questions about it. I’ve seen a few key pictures that stick out to me because I saw them when I was younger in school. As I type, I’m watching a documentary on meth that’s on the tv called American Meth. We’re reading about meth and there’s something very mysterious about it! I really enjoy the style of writing that Nick Reding uses. I think the story moves very nicely and it’s interesting how he talks about his perspective on starting the research. Background information also made it helpful for me.

Someone had mentioned in class that they almost felt sympathetic for these meth users in the town when it first started—I agree. I assumed that the users were just run-down drug addicts, when in reality the change in the economy and their jobs affected them. There was money in producing and selling meth.

The description of people who are introduced in the story is very good. It helps put an image in my head, then when they are mentioned again in the story, I can picture who they are. Some of the facts shared in the book have stuck with me. “Like dioxin, meth residue possesses a unique ability to bind to food, countertops, microwave walls, sink basins, and human lung tissue for days after being synthesized.” When it talks about the high can last for up to 12 hours, it is astonishing.

The story Roland Jarvis stuck with everyone in our class. The imagery was so good. I could see the place, hear the sounds, felt the emotion, etc. He went through a near death experience, and he STILL uses. So far I feel like the book has only scratched the surface of the effects of meth. I can’t wait to read more!



                                           

This is a video for the Montana Meth Project



I looked up more information on the Montana Meth Project and is "a large-scale prevention program aimed at significantly reducing first-time meth use through public service messagin, public policy, and community outreach." It was founded in 2005.