Plaschke nails the spirit of Thanksgiving without even trying . . . . .

naw buck, i just wanted to make sure he wasn't BP before i ripped him a new asshole for not noticing the connection.

BP had to see the connection to thanksgiving, didn't he?

 

Of course he did. The fact that it ran on Thanksgiving -- without explicitly making the connection -- made it work even better than if it had run on a random AP-mandatory day or something.

Great subject, great story, great day to run it on. Trifecta.

 

great story. thanks for posting

 

Based on the responses here, an honest question for a weekend craft discussion: what makes this a good piece?

 

Interesting, the Plaschke column and the Reilly column on another thread, both dealing with the dispossessed looking in on the haves....but Plaschke's works and Reilly's doesn't, mostly because Plaschke develops a real SC-Ricky human connection -- yeah, he's dealing in warm-and-fuzzy but he never falls into Albom treacle -- whereas Reilly's glances off the icy surface at Ohio State.

I wish I had a better sense of Plaschke's reporting. I wanted him on the bus with Ricky one morning and in the East LA house with the mother. Maybe he did that; there are good details. But he didn't show us he did it; this one called for more than a phone interview.

 

What a great image. I felt like I was right there. That's part of it for me, jgmacg.

 

For me, jgmacg, Plaschke told the story without delving into cheap parlor tricks, which Reilly does all the fucking time. Plaschke let the story flow and didn't put people into roles, whereas Reilly sort of painted OSU and its athletic department as part of the reason that Columbus' less fortunate are strugging.

 

Speaking of great images ... Tomas' newest Stevie avatar is making my monkey verrrrrry nervous.

 

what's funny is, when i changed my 'tar from the turkey mug, i wondered what i should switch to. i honestly (roughly interpreted) thought: "bat will enjoy pulling another stevie from the vault. i may as well make him happy."

always thinking about your happiness, my friend, always.

 

Solid effort and yeah, it is great to see a story that doesn't scream out this is a Thanksgiving story.

 

It may just be me getting old, but does anyone else feel like they've read this piece - done many times, in many ways - before?