Tear this up before I send it in...LONG 4-day FEATURE (20 minute read, 100 inch)

Your thoughts...


Four acts, so important, yet so trivial.
Four places, so independent, yet so interdependent.
Four people, so close, yet so apart.
One soccer ball.
Alone, this is just about a man who buys a soccer ball, a man who ships a soccer ball, a woman who runs an internet blog about a soccer ball, a man who drops a soccer ball.
Together, it’s about bringing light to what is otherwise dark, joy to what is otherwise sadness, peace to what is otherwise war.
They are connected by a string that spans two continents, two countries, two philosophies.
At the end of the string is a small boy in Afghanistan, clutching a soccer ball that fell from the heavens. He’ll hold on to that ball like a new father cradles a baby. He’ll look up to the sky and wave at a smiling pilot, the same pilot he might’ve thrown rocks at just weeks before.
At the start of the string is Mitch Gold.

The Purchase

Mitch Gold walks into a Target, makes a beeline to the sporting goods section and picks out a bright, shiny new soccer ball.
"This was my little contribution to maybe one less kid thinking that all the Americans are good for is waging war instead of waging peace," Gold said. "It's like a drop of water in the ocean. But I think we still have to try."
Mitch has already been to two other stores in the last two days, but Toys-R-Us didn’t have the right size and Rite-Aid’s just wouldn’t cut it. Mitch doesn’t champion many random causes these days -- an ACLU card has no place in his wallet and jolly fat men in red suits ringing bells get no more than a glare -- but every so often, something tugs at his heart.
And this yanked, hard.
"I spent quite a few years in the 60s protesting against the Vietnam war, I have been politically motivated for years, I campaigned for Kennedy, campaigned against Nixon," Mitch said. "The net result of what I did then was very hard to measure.
"This is something that's very measurable. I'm firmly convinced that it starts with inviting somebody home to dinner or buying a bag of soccer balls and dropping them down and watching the kids smile, not snarl. Whatever it takes on a one-on-one basis to make them know we're not monsters."
Mitch was not going to short-change this purchase. Not for this cause, not for this ball, not for that boy.
He picks out just the right ball – two, in fact – and strides past the fishing poles and the barbecues and the G.I. Joe's and up to the register. This is a simple visit, no need to stock up on the bulk razor blades or 32-pack of Kleenex.
Mitch has one goal: to give a few kids thousands of miles away a chance to score their own.
"The goal is just to get a little kid a soccer ball," he says without the slightest hint of altruism. "Will this one act of kindness make a large change in the scheme of things? I don't know. We're probably too far gone to make a real change. But it is an act of kindness, and I hope that it will change just one little kid's mind. If you change enough little kids' minds ... what's the ripple effect of one stone thrown in a big pond? You never know what that one act of kindness might bring."
Soccer balls in tow, Mitch heads back to his cubicle at Marsh Private Client Services, less than a block away from the Target.
He strolls into Shane Harkins' office.
























The Shipment

Shane Harkins takes the ball from Mitch’s hands and shakes it -- the hand, not the ball – before tossing it onto a pile of others. There are soccer balls everywhere; volleyballs, too. Wilson meets Nike meets Mikasa. You’d think he owned a sporting-goods store; only thing missing are the tents and the canteens.
He gets a ball, he stores a ball, he deflates a ball, he ships a ball.
He has a ball.
"I can be having the most stressful day, but then someone walks into the office with a big smile on their face, carrying a ball or two," Harkins said. "It lifts your spirits. I have yet to have someone give me a.ball without that grin on their face, that glow in their heart. They all have that sense of joy. They may never see this thing leave the helicopter or see who gets the ball, and I tell them they can write their name or put a message, and some say, "No, I just want to make sure it goes.
"And they walk away with a spring in their step and a smile on their face."
As he talks, you can hear the smile on his face. It's infectious, joyous, sparkling. Even when he talks about the difficulties of the task -- you ever shipped 76 soccer balls? -- he's still smiling.
"When I got to 75, I thought, 'Here's a good time to send them," Harkins said. "I realized Princeton was about out of ammunition. There I was, sticking them with a needle, squeezing the air out of one with my hands while sitting on another. As I'm taking them out of the stacks and I'm deflating them, I'm pretty much re-flooring the floor with my soccer balls. Then people start walking by my office and offer to help. Some other folks said they'd help pay for shipping."
There it is again, that string. People helping people help people. The stories Harkins tells brings a tear to your eye, like the one about the postal worker...
"We went online to look at shipping costs and realized that we'd need a ton of paperwork; customs forms, international gift receipts, everything," Harkins said. "Then we realized that we had to go to the post office and when we got there, the clerk asks, 'What's the deal with all the balls?' We tell him and he says, 'Well, that's great. Let me see what I can do.' When we looked up the costs online, it was $180. He got them shipped for half the price, $90, and that was just one postal employee."
Or the one about the Target clerk.
Visitors from the New York corporate office came to Woodland Hills for a routine visit and casually walked by Harkins office. Of course, mounds of athletic equipment in a small office elicits curiosity, so Harkins tells them the story and off they go to Target.
"She was wheeling her full cart to the front -- 14 balls -- and a dark-skinned, Arab guy was checking them out, asking themabout the balls, and he walks away," Harkins said. "Here they are with a full basket at the checkout stand, and the checker walks away. Five minutes later, the cashier returns with two more soccer balls. Turns out he'd lived on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the clerk pats my coworker on the back and says, "I buy these with my own money. You send them, too."
Those are the stories that kept Shane going, that turned a small push to help a friend into an obsession, the way things tend to become an obsession when passion hitches a ride with necessity. So one ball turned into 14 turned into 76.
"My wife and I sent one soccer ball and just the way it made me feel, I realized I could get other people into this," he said. "I'm the director of IT, so I'm not a big proponent of spamming mailboxes with, 'Get little Suzie a kidney' e-mails. But I really loved this idea, and I wanted to help."
That first e-mail started the firestorm. A coworker at the Newport Beach office clicked on the email -- "I don't ever do this, but..." -- and within a day, got 18 soccer balls. Shane said he knew the project would work that very first day, when one man went desk-to-desk and collected almost 20 balls. That's when he realized, "Wow, this is amazing." That's when he realized that Operation Soccer Chopper was touching people.
"There's a lady in our office who's worked here for years, and she came up to me and said she was impressed with me," Harkins said. "Now, I'm just passing the ball from one person to another, nothing big. She said, 'Well, I grew up in Afghanistan, I don't know if you know. These kids could never afford to get a new soccer ball. They are luxuries that families can't afford. Normally, the kids in a village would pool their money to get a soccer ball they would share.'
"Every time you think you're not making a difference, somebody comes back and reinforces how cool it really is."
That kind of feedback -- the pats on the back, the "What you're doing makes a difference," even simply the knowing smiles -- makes Harkins job in this all the more worthwhile.
Meanwhile, generating the feedback isNicole Soh's job.




























The Message

Nicole Soh sits at her computer and stares at her husband. He's smiling back at her, at you, at me, at everyone. He's standing in front of a Black Hawk chopper, tossing a soccer ball in the air, other arm resting on his hip. The sun blinds him from the left, his wedding ring glistens on his hand, the chopper casting a looming shadow over him. Nicole will not touch up this photo, but she will dozens more. Anything to make them better, anything to help her husband.
If anyone started Operation Soccer Chopper, it's Nicole. She'll say it's her husband, but he'll deflect the credit back to her. So much love between the two of them, so much happiness. Say hello to Mike and Carol Brady.
In this operation, Nicole is the point woman. An active member on an internet messageboard about scrapbooking, Nicole was getting sympathetic message after sympathetic message from her girlfriends on the board.
"What can we send?"
"How can we help?"
"Does he need baby wipes? Beef jerky?"
With a PX on his base, Princeton Soh didn't need the essentials. But when he heard that some fellow soldiers had given some Afghani children a football he was just as confused as the kids. "What do these kids know about football? What they need is soccer balls or volleyballs, even."
"When he came up with the idea to give them the balls, I said this is it," Nicole said. "I started the messageboard thread about it and got so many responses. Anything from someone sending a soccerball their kids didn't use anymore to one family sending 100 soccer balls themselves."
Soon, responses were flooding in from all over the place. Nicole immediately realized that this operation was a just cause that people were going to jump on. The few messageboard posts wouldn't cut it. So, with little-to-no blogging experience, she figured, "What the heck?"
And, as someone who knows a thing or two about presenting photos, she knew the value of pictures.
"Because we're all scrapbookers, he knew as a good scrap-booking husband, we'd want photos," she said. "If you look on the blog, the very first page is what he posted. The first part is the first message he sent to the board. Then it spread to people's husbands, girls scouts. We didn't want to make so many people join a scrapbooking board. It just kind of happened that we started the joint e-mail address and the blog."
Joint e-mail address, joint checking account, joint project.
"One of the best things is that even though my husband is thousands of miles away, this is something we do together," Nicole said, her voice bending but not breaking. "I can feel like I'm a part of it. That's good for our marriage. I get to read people's e-mails, I get to see the pictures before anybody else does. It makes him feel like he's not so far away. (For me) it makes him feel closer. It's so difficult to have him gone so much. In the six years we've been at Fort Bragg, he's been gone for three of them. It's difficult to feel like you're part of each other's life from across the ocean."
So Nicole dutifully sits at the computer each day, spreading the message. The messages are usually just status reports, sometimes with pictures. They've gotten people rallied around the cause, spread like a bad cough in a crowded office.
Even the Purdue women's soccer team sent a bunch of balls. Texas A&M joined the party. Auburn, too.
"I got an email from the head coach at Texas A&M," Auburn women's soccer head coach Karen Hoppa said. "He sent an e-mail to all the coaches.It's the first time I've seen something like this. Soccer coaches are a pretty amicable group, and occasionally we get certain requests, but this was the first thing related to the military. I thought it was a great way to show support for our troops, a non-political thing. What a great thing to do, really with little effort from my part. If all I have to do is donate some soccer balls, I thought it was well worth it."
The messages that Princeton posts are always simple, with no political agenda or innuendo. Neither Princeton nor Nicole have a manifesto they're trying to promote, though, Nicole concedes, "Princeton has no political statement except little kids should have toys to play with."
"One of the things he talked to his soldiers with ... they ask, 'Why are we doing this? What are we getting?" she said. "And one said, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful if in 15 years, Afghanistan wins the World Cup and the star player says I owe it all to a soccerball that fell from a Black Hawk?
"Even if one kid decides he's not gonna join the bad guys, then it's all worth it. Who knows what the end result will be? It doesn't have to be the World Cup. One kid who realizes that we are there to help him, that's huge."
And she talks about switching places with anybody in this link -- from buyer to shipper to messenger to dropper -- about if she would like to be in that chopper with her husband.
"The only thing I wish I could experience would be what goes on at the dinner table when one of these kids comes home and says look what I got," she said. "Look what fell from an American helicopter to me. I don't know what happens once it reaches these kids. But as a mom, I can only imagine how I would feel if some stranger out of the goodness of their heart did something nice for my child."
Surprisingly, she doesn't want to be out there in the chopper, like so many others wish they could. She doesn't want to be in the one place where the connection between soldier and citizen is felt.
The one place where the ball falls from the hands of an American and into the hands of an Afghani, descending from the clouds into a blur.
The one place where she could sit shotgun next to Princeton Soh.






















The Dropper

Princeton Soh is flying his Black Hawk chopper, scanning a desolate Afghani desert. Somewhere in the distance, he spots his target -- a pack of kids working in a field. He creeps his bird closer, closer, trying not to be noticed. But the kids, struggling in the scorching heat just to earn a few dollars that day, spot him. They sprint over, arms waving in the air. Soh flies past and turns around, making his approach.
Lower.
Lower.
Lower.
He tilts the chopper to the right ever so slightly, and his gunner finds the perfect spot to release the mayhem. There, in the low clouds above an Afghani desert, an American soldier stretches his hands out the window, holding not a weapon but a soccer ball.
And then he drops it.
"I think about how we can take things forgranted, and I get one soccer ball and I throw it down to this kid, and it’s just a soccer ball to anybody else," Princeton said from his base in Afghanistan, skipping the mess hall for this conversation. "This kid, down here he gets a ball that fell out of the sky from a helicopter, now he’s thankful for it. He’ll love that ball and take care of that ball better than any kid I know of."
Princeton's days are consumed by systems checks -- engines, flight controls, electrical systems. He starts his day around zero-six-hundred and heads to the mess hall, cleans up and gets ready for the checks. His work on any particular chopper may take a few minutes, may take an hour. As he prepares to man the flight, he gathers his crew and heads to his special locker.
Soccer balls pour out.
"We take anywhere from 20 to 30 balls with us to drop," said Princeton, who estimates he's provided around 500 soccer and volleyballs. " Depending on how many kids gather once we start dropping the balls it could take anywhere from 15 minutes to a half hour to drop all the balls we have. It's very addictive. Once you see a group of kids running toward the helicopter waving their arms, you can't help but want to throw a ball down to them."
Princeton talks most about the smiles.
They are wide and bright and passionate, almost surprising to some of Princeton's fellow soldiers. Princeton and his men have little contact with the local nationals besides the few who work on the base. He said the only times he gets to see children face-to-face is when they're hurt. Communicating with them is even tougher with the language barrier.
And when Princeton started Operation Soccer Chopper with the help of his wife, Nicole, and her internet scrapbooking message board, the kids weren't running empty-handed -- "At first, the kids would throw rocks," Princeton said. "I’m not sure why. I don’t know if they actually meant us any ill will, I think they just thought it was what they were supposed to do."
After a few soccer balls fell into the hands of the Afghani children, word spread amongst the kids. By round three of the mission, kids flocked after Princeton's choppers.
"There are times when we see a lone kid, and he’ll stop and look up, and we’ll say, 'That’s the kid who needs the ball the most," Princeton said. "Nine times out of 10, the problems come when we drop the first two or three balls and the rest of the village sees what’s going on and they start running over. One time, we dropped some balls right next to the school. We emptied the school. If you look real closely, really carefully (at one of the pictures on his blog), there’s a road. On that road, there's a whole bunch of kids trying to get to the field. That’s the school. We probably had a good 100 to 200 kids in the field."
On those drops, when kids assemble under his chopper, all readying themselves from this gift from heaven, Princeton is happy. But he is happiest when he spots that single boy in the field, the boy that will run home to his family with tears running down his face.
"There aren’t any Walmarts here, any Targets," Princeton said. "If they did have a ball, it's probably all old and ratty and warn out. When we drop them brand new ones, it's great. Some of the pictures we can get, you can see that joy.
"There are some things that you don’t realize your thankful for," he continues. "You're never really thankful for hot water until all you have to shower with is cold. You never really thankful for cold water, until there's no water to shower with. I remember coming home and walking into a Sam's Club and being overwhelmed by all the crap we have. Not only do I get a bag of chips, I get 32 bags of chips. And they're flavored. These kids don’t have anything. They can't get medical care. The homes they live in, some of them built with there own hands.
"We’re lucky. Sometimes we forget about that."
As he talks about the luxury stateside and the poverty in Afghanistan, you can almost hear him shaking his head. But he immediately recovers as he talks about the pleasure he and his fellow soldiers get out of Operation Soccer Chopper.
It's almost as if this mission is as much for him as it is for the little kid. A momentary distraction from the rigors of army life, a chance to spread joy where there is mostly sorrow, a chance at -- get this -- fun.
"In a funny way, it feels like we’re doing it for ourselves," he said. "If you could get the feeling from the very first ball drops, that was the most fun thing I’ve ever done. Sure, we’re doing good things here; we do a lot of work and long hours, but we don’t always get to do stuff that’s fun like this. It brightens a soldier's day. (Other units) always ask if they can get a bag of balls, and I'll say, 'No, take two."
Princeton doesn't know if the operation will continue once he's done with his tour of duty, which he says will be sometime early next year. If the replacing unit wants to maintain Operation Soccer Chopper, "It'll be on them to do the coordination. It'll be all up to them."
For now, though, he's taking all the donations he can get. He's almost shocked at the amount of balls that've come in, one at a time or dozens, like the shipments from the Texas A&M, Auburn, Purdue and Davidson College women's soccer teams. He said people have taken this project as their own, all wanting to help.
From Mitch Gold back in Woodland Hills driving to three different stores just to get the right soccer balls
To Shane Harkins at his packed office at Marsh Private Client Services, boxes upon boxes of balls lining his wall.
To his wife, Nicole, stationed at her desk, cropping photos and posting them on the message board and blog, spreading the word.
"The response has been great from everyone," Princeton said. "I'm very grateful for their support and participation. It is because of these people that I get to selfishly witness first-hand the joy and excitement that these kids show when a soccer ball is cradled under their arm."
Four acts, so important, yet so trivial.
Four places, so independent, yet so interdependent.
Four people, so together, yet so alone.
One soccer ball.

 

Nice job - You might consider moving the preface down inside - I tend not to like the phrase "this is a story about..." or related phrases. Just tell the story...draw the reader in. Do you have anything in your notes about the impact the soccer balls have had on relations between the soldiers and the kids, Afghan social service groups etc? I thought it was good.I'm always a sucker for stories that bring a big story down to a local level.

 

Re: Tear this up before I send it in...LONG 4-day FEATURE (20 minute read, 100 i

My thanks to M. Snuka for sharing this with us.

S'fly and I have PMed about this story, but I'm very interested in finding out what others think.

It's ambitious and I believe he's off to a good start, but I have some thoughts on how better to get where he wants to go.

Let us know what you think.

 

Re: Tear this up before I send it in...LONG 4-day FEATURE (20 minute read, 100 i

Mr. Snuka,

Congrats, first off, on the ambition and artistry of this piece. My favorite stories have always been the ones that remind us of how the human race is threaded together by something as simple as our love of sport. Regardless of what makes us so different -- gender, race, age, geography, economic status -- our desires, our empathy and our shared love of something as simple as a soccer ball makes us one. This is true whether you live in South Carolina, South Baltimore, Southern California or Southern Afghanistan. Kudos to you for attempting to weave together that message.

I agree with Mr. jgmacg and Mr. Oregon in that I think you have a very good outline here of what you want this piece to be. Having recently attempted and published lengthy narrative with four sections and four different characters, I definitely consider us kindred spirits. However, let me offer some thoughts and suggestions in the spirit of our workshop:

1. My first thought when reading this piece this morning was that I wasn't certain that it needed to be told in a four-day format, as your thread title suggests. Certainly I think it can be told that way, and your bosses may in fact insist that it be told in that format because the mere idea of a 100-inch story causes them to wake up screaming in the middle of the night, drowning in a cold sweat, muttering something about focus groups, market research and short attention spans. However, what you're attempting is what newspapers call a serial. And while there are exceptions to the rule, generally a serial needs to ask a question in the beginning of the piece, and then each step must bring us closer to the answer, typically with some measure of suspense along the way. The end of each section needs to make you want to pick up the paper again tomorrow to see what happens next, kind of like a Harry Potter novel, or (forgive me for saying so) The Da Vinci Code. Does this story have that driving question and distinct parts that can stand on their own each day? It's just something to think about. I'm not even sure of the answer. If it is broken up into four days, then each section needs to have, at the beginning, some of kind minor callback or explanation of the previous parts. Not a straight forward nutgraph, per se, but a reminder of what's been told. The one constant in this story is the soccer ball, the needle that threads these people together. So each day after Day 1 needs to begin, I think, we a picture of this ball (or balls) and tell us whose hands it has traveled through. If nothing else, it helps give readers a frame of reference if they happened to miss Part 1 or Part 2.

2. When you read over this story again, pay close attention to the quotes. I think, right now, it's quote heavy. The information is those quotes is necessary, but that information can be told in YOUR words, in a much better way, and will also give your best quotes both strength and intensity. Let's use the first section as an example. What if it were rewritten to look something like this...

Mitch Gold walks into a Target, and makes a beeline to the sporting goods section. He has already been to two other stores in the last two days. Neither had what he wanted. But in front of him now is a bright, shiny soccer ball, leather, plastic and thread, stitched together in a factory on the other side of the world and shipped to the United States. To Mitch, it represents hope.

Mitch doesn’t champion many causes these days. Certainly not like he did in the 1960s, when he protested the Vietnam war, campaigning first for John F. Kennedy and then against Richard Nixon. Politics, for the most part, have lost their appeal. But this soccer ball represents something measurable, something concrete. Much as he wanted, he couldn't easily invite a child growing up in Afghanistan into his home, sit him down for dinner and explain that most Americans, ones like Mitch, weren't monsters. That they wanted to wage peace, not war. But this soccer ball could be his tiny contribution, his attempt to put a smile on the faces of the next generation of Afghani boys, smothering, in the process, some of the hatred that years of war had produced.

"It's like a drop of water in the ocean," Gold said. "But I think we still have to try."

I think there are a lot of places like that where you can sharpen and tighten the story by only quoting the best possible stuff. When I first started writing longer stories, I used quote people at great length, because I wanted to PROVE to people I'd done these lengthy, IMPORTANT interviews. Slowly, over time, I realized that technique slowed down the story. It didn't give my subjects a distinctive voice, it watered down their voice. Read over this and after each quote, ask yourself: Can I say this better, and quicker, than the subject does? How much of this is boilerplate and how much of it is their voice shining through? The best feature writers -- Gary Smith, Tom Junod, etc, -- might interview 50 people for a story and end up with countless hours of quotes in their notebook. Smith might use four quotes from his subject in an entire story. But they're always the best quotes.

3. This is something that's very important, fairly simple, but something I always seem to neglect in my first draft.

What do your characters look like?

Mr. jgmacg mentioned this to me recently about one of my stories, and it was like a light bulb when off in my head. We need to be able to SEE Mitch Gold, Shane Harkins, Nicole and Princeton Soh. Even tiny little details about their face, their arms, their hairstyle can speak volumes. Consider this brief passage from Stop Time, Frank Conroy's memoir (another jgmacg recommendation from the Professional Readings thread I'm currently zipping through) where he describes his mother for the first time while he sits the backseat of her car. It says a lot in very few sentences.

In front, my mother, rather tall for a woman, with an abundance of blond hair and wide, cleanly cut features. She radiated the robust freshness of a farm girl -- her forebearers were, in fact, Danish country people -- missing ideal Scandinavian beauty only because her face lacked suggestiveness. Studying it you noticed that things were a little too big. She was handsome rather than beautiful, but for all that, men's heads never failed to turn.

It's obviously going to be hard to come up with something that simple and yet descriptive, but you can use those same techniques. I want to know if Mitch Gold has jowls, or a mustache, or if he is handsome, or if he's bald, or if he hates his job and loves his family and or if he's all alone in the world except for this soccer ball. I want to see the creases in Shane Harkins forehead, or see Princeton Soh's buzz cut. Deep voice? High voice? How did Princeton get such an interesting and unusual name? How did he and Nicole fall in love? This story is about how one soccer ball can thread together so many different kinds of people, and so by painting a picture of those people with little, telling details, you can highlight their differences but illustrate how they're united by their kindness. You use the word "alone" at the end to describe these four people. Nicole is alone because she doesn't have her husband. Princeton is alone because he's on the other side of the world, flying helicopters. Are Shane and Mitch alone? I don't know. Maybe. I want to know, even if it's just one or two sentences, a little bit more personal information about the first two characters. How old are they? Does Nicole sit at her computer, scrapbooking and blogging, as a way of dealing with Princeton's absence? What does Mitch do for a living? Try to use specific, telling details. If this story is going to run in four parts, that's absolutely necessary. Mitch has to be as compelling as Princeton, even if his act is less glamorous, if he's going to be his own part.

4. I have some other thoughts about this piece that I can and will share in the coming days after a few others chime in (and after I run do some July 4th laundry, and hamburger eating), but one last thing I'd like you to think about is the ending. I think this image, from your first few paragraphs, is a rich, natural conclusion to this story.

At the end of the string is a small boy, clutching a soccer ball that fell from the heavens. He’ll hold on to that ball like a new father cradles a baby. He’ll look up to the sky and wave at a smiling pilot.

We can't know what happens to the soccer ball after it leaves Soh's helicopter. But I think that's a natural conclusion to this narrative, because it's the end of the journey. A quick reminder of whose hands it has passed through to get here, and then maybe a scene where we see it falling into the kid's arms, and like Soh's said, the kids often cry when they get the soccer balls. That image says more than words every could. However, if you want to keep your current ending, I think you want to rearrange the order of a few words so that each sentence echoes the previous one.

Here is how you currently have it:

Four acts, so important, yet so trivial.
Four places, so independent, yet so interdependent.
Four people, so together, yet so alone.
One soccer ball.

Here is how just flipping the words lines the sentences up a bit better.

Four acts, so trivial, yet so important.
Four places, so independent, yet so interdependent.
Four people, so alone, yet so together.
One soccer ball.

Trivial-indepedent-alone suggest one thing.
Important-interdependent-together suggest the opposite. Just lining them up in order will help sharpen your point.

Again, Snuka, I want to congratulate you on what is already a very nice piece, full of beautiful writing, wonderful acts of kindness and powerful messages. Each little tweak and tightening will only strengthen its themes from this point forward. I fear some of my comments are a bit rushed because Mrs. Double Down is giving me grief over the state of my laundry hamper, but I'll be happy to go into more detail at another time. Thank you very much for sharing it with us.

 

Thanks, DD, for your terrific insights. Snuka's off to a flying start.

I've rung the dinner bell for the rest of the Justice League as well, Superfly, so expect some more workshoppin' in the next few days.

 

WOW folks, what help you've provided. All of you I consider colleagues, teachers, friends and your help is going to make this something special. I've already started on a new beginning, which I post shortly. Thanks again so much!!!

 

Any better?

Four acts, so important, yet so trivial.
Four places, so independent, yet so interdependent.
Four people, so close, yet so apart.
One soccer ball.
Alone, this is just about a man who buys a soccer ball, a man who ships a soccer ball, a woman who runs an internet blog about a soccer ball, a man who drops a soccer ball.
Together, it’s about bringing light to what is otherwise dark, joy to what is otherwise sadness, peace to what is otherwise war.
They are connected by a chain that links two continents, two countries, two armies.
At the end of the chain is a small boy in Afghanistan, clutching a soccer ball that fell from the heavens. He’ll hold on to that ball like a new father cradles a baby. He’ll look up to the sky, smile and wave at Princeton Soh, an army pilot who sits in his Black Hawk helicopter. Princeton will smile and wave back, knowing that the ball the ball that his crew chief just dropped from 200 feet in the air has found its target.
The chain that ends with the small boy starts back in Woodland Hills, but it also started in College Station, Texas, and West Lafayette, Indiana, and Auburn, Alabama. It starts with something as insignificant as the purchase of the ball.
For some, that $30 investment simply represents their effort in what they consider a good cause. For others, like Mitch Gold of Thousand Oaks, it means much more.
But the ball still must be shipped. That's where Shane Harkins comes in. Shane works with Mitch but is married to Tonya, and when she read on an internet message board that a soldier in Afghanistan was dropping soccer balls to Afghani children, she wanted to help. An initial purchase of one ball turned into a mission to collect dozens more, and Shane's company-wide e-mail has landed him -- well, no, landed various children in Afghanistan -- more than 75 balls.
So Mitch is chained to Shane who's chained to Nicole, the woman who posted that thread on the message board. It was a simple plea to the other women of "Scrapshare" who'd asked how they could help a soldier overseas. Nicole didn't ask for magazines or video games, but for soccer and volleyballs.
That's what her husband, Princeton, would want the most. Not for himself, though, but for the children.
Roughly 500 balls later, this chain is still going strong, with little chance of weakening. Because of people like Princeton. Because of people like Nicole. Because of people like Shane.
Because of people like Mitch.

 

The Purchase

Mitch Gold walks into a Target and makes a beeline to the sporting goods section.
He's already been to two other stores in the last two days, both times leaving empty-handed. Just that effort is painful, courtesy of four hip replacement surgeries. At 59, Mitch has a face that looks decades younger, a body that feels decades older. His soft eyes scan the aisles, hoping, praying, that this is his last stop.
There it is, a soccer ball, eye-level, which is a good thing as even stretching elicits a groan.
Bright, shiny, made in Singapore, sold in America and soon to be shipped to Afghanistan, the plastic ball represents hope. Moreso, it symbolizes a connection between an average American citizen and a young Afghani boy.
Mitch no longer champions many causes, like he did when he was a teenager in the 1960s, campaigning for Kennedy, against Nixon. He remains politically motivated, an outspoken critic of not just the war on terror, but all wars. To him, wars only result in bloodshed, only disaster, never in prolonged peace.
But those days in the 60s, when he would sit in his radio studio as a college DJ, playing all the latest rock-n'-roll just to anger the establishment at Upsala College in East Orange, N.J., are long past. All that rallying, all that picketing resulted in little satisfaction. He still regrets that he can't tangibly measure the net result of his younger actions.
But this, this can be measured. Much as he'd love to, he can't exactly invite an Afghani child into his home, serve him a plate of hot dogs and baked beans and explain that most Americans, ones like himself, aren't monsters. That they wanted to wage peace, not war.
This little soccer ball, an investment of $15, could be his small contribution, his only chance to put a smile on the face of one small boy, instead of a gun in his hand.
"It's like a drop of water in the ocean," Gold said. "But I think we still have to try."
So he provides his small link in this chain, and it's the first link.
Without a ball from Mitch, like so many others, Shane Harkins has no ball to send to Princeton Soh over in Afghanistan. Mitch considers his link insignificant -- much like Shane Harkins considers his, Nicole Soh considers hers and Princeton Soh considers his -- and, essentially, he only has one goal.
To give a few kids thousands of miles away a chance to score their own.
"Will this one act of kindness make a large change in the scheme of things?" Mitch says. "I don't know. We're probably too far gone to make a real change. But it is an act of kindness, and I hope that it will change just one little kid's mind. You never know what that one act of kindness might bring."
So he takes his purchase, two soccer balls, back to the office. Mitch works at Marsh Private Client Services, and while he enjoys his job, it's days like these that send him home hours later still smiling. It can be something as little as bringing a stack of Dodgers baseball cards and giving them to coworkers who have young kids. something as insignificant as buying a couple boxes of Thin Mints from a girl scout who's come to the office.
Two years ago, word spread that a female coworker had brain cancer. Mitch bought several yellow Livestrong bracelets in support, part of a company-wide effort that numbered in the thousands.
Mitch still wears his, though it's joined by a pink bracelet for breast cancer and a magenta bracelet for leukemia and a black one bracelet that says, "I Did Not Vote for Bush."
Clearly, he does not support the war. Clearly, he does support the troops.
Starting with those soccer balls, which he's carried into Shane Harkins' office.

 

The Shipment


Shane Harkins open his door and smiles at Mitch Gold, who's standing there clutching two brand new soccer balls.
Shane is the second link in a chain that stretches from Woodland Hills, California, to the desert fields of

Afghanistan; Mitch is the first.
They are joined in a mission -- Operation Soccer Chopper -- to provide soccer balls to children in the middle of

a war, children who don't have much chance to get soccer balls for themselves.
The project was started in XXX by Princeton Soh and his wife, Nicole, who first thought of asking her friends on

an internet message board to send soccer and volleyballs overseas, where Princeton and his crews would drop them

to the kids. They would represent not just friendship and optimism, but peace. They would say without words,

"We're here to help you, not to hurt you."
But before Princeton can drop a soccer ball, he has to have some to drop. How's 76?
Shane Harkins's contribution -- via coworkers like Mitch and other friends -- represents almost 20 percent of

Princeton's haul. The mission has become an integral part of Shane's life, so when he grabs the ball from Mitch's

hand and shakes it -- the hand, not the ball -- before tossing it onto a pile of others, he smiles right back at

Mitch.
It's a smallish smile, hidden behind a goatee. But Shane's eyes sparkle more than his teeth, and you know it's

genuine. As he hurls the ball onto the file, he surveys his office.
The director of Information Technology for Marsh Private Client Services, an insurance brokerage firm, Shane's

office looks like he's the director of Information Technology for an insurance brokerage firm. Computer cords --

red, yellow, blue, white -- line the walls, spreading like tentacles. A low buzz eminates from the room, humming

like a thousand bees in unison.
The only thing that stands out are the balls -- red, yellow, blue, white -- which, too, line the walls. There are

soccer balls everywhere; volleyballs, too. Wilson meets Nike meets Mikasa. You’d think he owned a sporting-goods

store; only thing missing are the tents and the canteens.
The pile of balls are really a heap of hope, as each orb will land in the hands of a small boy in Afghanistan.
But Shane's hope isn't just for that boy, it's for himself.
Every so often, he'll wake up in the middle of the night and "scare the hell out of my wife." He'll think back to

1990, when he crept across another desert, Saudi Arabia, where he served in the U.S. Air Force. He'll remember

his awful assignment, field mortuary specialist, which sounds about a hundredth as terrifying as it actually was.

His role as he puts it? "Bag 'em, tag 'em, put 'em together and send 'em home."
So when he says he knows what Princeton's going through in Afghanistan, when he says that Operation Soccer

Chopper is a worthwhile cause, he isn't speaking in grand terms.
"Having been there for the first one, having seen the effects that war has on soldiers, I feel it, I relive it,"

Harkins said. "But for me, this is a positive spin to any of that. To think, 'Man, if I could have done something

like that while I was there.' That's what makes what Princeton's doing so much more important. it would have made

it so much better what I was doing for me.
"You can see it in his blog, and you can see it in the eyes of the guys who work with him. 'Yeah, we're stuck in

the desert, but here's some way that we can make a positive impact on the world.' That's why I really took to

this story. I can relate."
He connects with Princeton's story on another level, also.
Four years ago, with his wife, Tonya, having just given birth to a baby, Shane moved the family to Fort Worth,

Texas, to help with Tonya's ailing father. He once lived in Southern California, where he drove to work, his old

commute surely taking just as long as his current. Three weeks a month, Harkins catches a red-eye flight at

Dallas-Fortworth Airport to Burbank, gets in a rental car and drives to Woodland Hills.
When Tonya told him about Nicole Soh's request -- members of the Scrapshare message board had offered to send

personal items to her husband in Afghanistan, but Nicole asked instead for balls to help jumpstart Operation

Soccer Chopper -- Shane looked at the project as a way not just to help a fellow soldier, but to bond with his

wife.
"Like Tonya said, for her, it's the only thing she can do to help," Shane said with his wife chiming in in the

background. "This is something for her, too. Even in Texas, I've deflated balls, carried them with me in the

suticase, flown them to California and shipped them to Afghanistan."
Shane starts to laugh when he describes the ball that currently sits in his suitcase. It's painted red, white and

blue, the Stars and Stripes. It's also the fourth of July, Independence Day.
But there are a lot of smiles these days for Shane.
He gets a ball, he stores a ball, he deflates a ball, he ships a ball.
He has a ball.
"I can be having the most stressful day, but then someone walks into the office with a big smile on their face,

carrying a ball or two," Harkins said. "It lifts your spirits. I have yet to have someone give me a ball without

that grin on their face, that glow in their heart. They may never see this thing leave the helicopter or see who

gets the ball, and I tell them they can write their name or put a message, and some say, "No, I just want to make

sure it goes.
"And they walk away with a spring in their step and a smile on their face."
One by one, the coworkers walked into his office, holding one, two, ten balls. His original goal back in April

was 100 balls. When he got to 75 in early June he thought it was a good time to pack them. He realized that

Princeton must be running low on balls, running out of ammo.
So there he sat, sticking each soccer ball with a needle, squeezing the air out of one with his hands while

sitting on another. People offered to help, a crew of deflators, re-flooring his office with soccer balls.
Then people started offering to pay for shipping.
There it is again, that chain. People helping people help people. The stories Harkins tells are not for those

without Kleenex, like the one about the postal worker...
Before Shane sent the soccer balls, he went online to look at the price. Shane's boss at his office, Barry Wolfe,

offered to pay for the shipping, but Shane didn't want to bombard his boss with an obscene price. In figuring the

costs, Shane realized he'd have to actually go down to the post office, what with the customs forms and

international gift receipts.
"When we got there, the clerk asks, 'What's the deal with all the balls?'" Shane said. "We tell him and he says,

'Well, that's great. Let me see what I can do.' When we looked up the costs online, it was $180. He got them

shipped for half the price, $90, and that was just one postal employee."
Or the story about the Target clerk...
Visitors from Marsh's New York corporate office came to Woodland Hills for a routine visit and casually walked by

Harkins' office. Of course, seeing mounds of athletic equipment in a small office elicits curiosity, so Harkins

told them the story of Operation Soccer Chopper.
They immediately walked across the street to Target.
After clearing the shelf, grabbing 14 soccer balls, one of the Marsh corporate visitors wheeled her cart to a

check-out register. A dark-skinned man stood behind the scanner, inquiring about the balls. He tells them to stay

at the counter and walks away, returning five minutes later carrying two more balls.
The man once lived on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"I buy these with my own money," the Target clerk tells Shane's coworker, "you send them for me, too."

 

The Message



Nicole Soh sits at her computer and smiles at her husband. He's smiling back at her. He's standing in front of a

Black Hawk chopper, tossing a soccer ball in the air, other arm resting on his hip. The sun blinds him from the

left, his wedding ring glistens on his hand, the chopper casting a looming shadow. Nicole will not touch up this

photo, but she will dozens more.
From behind her desk at her home in Fort Bragg, N.C., Nicole plays her part in Operation Soccer Chopper. Like

Mitch Gold, who purchased two soccer balls, and Shane Harkins, who's shipped 76 including Mitch's, Nicole Soh

provides the third link in a chain.
Nicole first conceived of Operation Soccer Chopper when fellow members of an internet scrapbooking message board,

Scrapshare, offered to send items to her husband, Princeton, who is stationed in Afghanistan.
"What can we send?"
"How can we help?"
"Does he need baby wipes? Beef jerky?"
With a PX on his base, Princeton Soh didn't need the essentials. But when he heard that some fellow soldiers had

given some Afghani children a football he was just as confused as the kids. "What do these kids know about

football? What they need is soccer balls or volleyballs, even."
Princeton and Nicole figured that soccer balls and volleyballs can be used without many additional essentials.

You don't need a bat or cleats or pads or a hoop to play either sport; a couple of rocks to form a goal will do

for soccer.
As excited as Princeton was for the diversion from army life, Nicole was equally amped at the task. She sent out

a feeler, a single thread asking for support, and was overwhelmed when it came pouring in. Soon, responses were

flooding in from all over the place. Nicole quickly realized that people shared in the excitement of the project,

but she didn't want so many people to have to join the Scrapshare message board for information.
With no previous blogging experience, she teamed with Princeton to start the Operation Soccer Chopper Blog

(address at story's end).
"Because we're all scrapbookers, he knew as a good scrapbooking husband, we'd want photos," she said.
The pictures take awhile to load, but the time is worth it. One by one they pop up. Four pilots holding a rainbow

of soccer balls. Two hands jutting out of a chopper, a ball in the distance, kids beneath with arms waving.
And the one of Princeton tossing a soccer ball in the air, one arm on his hip. He's smiling, right at Nicole, she

thinks.
"One of the best things is that even though my husband is thousands of miles away, this is something we do

together," Nicole said, her voice bending but not breaking. "I can feel like I'm a part of it. I get to read

people's e-mails, I get to see the pictures before anybody else does."
So, even though her husband is so far away, he's still close to her. Sure, they talk every day at around the same

time, but Operation Soccer Chopper gives them another connection. With Princeton gone three out of the six years

they've lived in Fort Bragg, Nicole said that It's difficult to feel like they're part of each other's life from

across the ocean.
But when she looks at those pictures, Princeton's right with her. That makes her job -- spreading the message of

the mission -- so much easier. The messages are usually just status reports, sometimes with pictures. They've

gotten people rallied around the cause, spread like a bad rumor in a high school.
Even the Purdue women's soccer team sent a bunch of balls. Texas A&M joined the party. Auburn, too.
"I got an email from the head coach at Texas A&M, who's wife is also on the message board," Auburn women's soccer

head coach Karen Hoppa said. "He sent an e-mail to all the coaches. It's the first time I've seen something like

this. Soccer coaches are a pretty amicable group, and occasionally we get certain requests, but this was the

first thing related to the military. I thought it was a great way to show support for our troops, a non-political

thing. What a great thing to do, really with little effort from my part. If all I have to do is donate some

soccer balls, I thought it was well worth it."
The messages that Princeton posts are always simple, with no political agenda. Neither Princeton nor Nicole have

a manifesto they're trying to promote, though, Nicole concedes Princeton does believe in "no political statement

except,'Little kids should have toys to play with.'"
"One of the things he talked to his soldiers with... they ask, 'Why are we doing this? What are we getting?’” she

said. “And one said, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful if in 15 years, Afghanistan wins the World Cup and the star player

says I owe it all to a soccer ball that fell from a Black Hawk?’
"Even if one kid decides he's not gonna join the bad guys, then it's all worth it. Who knows what the end result

will be? It doesn't have to be the World Cup. One kid who realizes that we are there to help him, that's huge."
And she talks about switching places with anybody in this chain -- from buyer to shipper to messenger to dropper

-- about if she would like to be in that chopper with her husband.
"The only thing I wish I could experience would be what goes on at the dinner table when one of these kids comes

home and says look what I got," she said. "Look what fell from an American helicopter to me. I don't know what

happens once it reaches these kids. But as a mom, I can only imagine how I would feel if some stranger out of the

goodness of their heart did something nice for my child."

 

I saw the Avenging Ampersand reflected against the clouds, and I hurried to the Workshop as soon as I could!

Snuka, like everyone else has said, you're well on your way. This is a good and important story, and you should feel happy about it.

I also know you're getting pushed in all sorts of directions by everybody, because writing is subjective; there's no right or wrong here, just opinions offered up.

So, here's mine, for what it's worth:

For me, the top is unnecessary. DanOregon makes the point higher up -- I, too, am not a big fan of intros that seek to explain the story. It's like Oliver Stone beating you over the head, THIS IS THE POINT! I think that underestimates readers. I also think it makes this story sound like so much heavy lifting to read. The beginning doesn't pique my curiosity. It makes me think I know already where this story is going.

My feeling is, instead, you start with the guys in the helicopter. I think we see Princeton Soh, flying over the brown mountains of Afghanistan, headset on, dark eyes forward, hair cut short, the beat of the rotors drowning out everything else in this landscape of desolation. We don't know who he is, we don't know his mission. (You don't have to give away everything to your readers; keep some secrets... And because of the times we live in, most of your readers will assume he's about to deliver bombs.) But then -- WTF? -- from out of this helicopter comes not a bomb, but a soccer ball. And like a scene in a film, we see that soccer ball, falling to earth, sprialing, pushed along by the beat of the Black Hawk's rotors.

I don't think we even see the kid yet. I think all we see is the ball. That's a surprising start. It's not what we're expecting. And it also leads the reader along -- I can't imagine many people reading that kind of top and not wondering why the hell Black Hawks are dropping soccer balls onto Afghanistan. I mean, that's gold.

Then we get into your perfectly constructed middle -- you don't need much there, a little dusting. So, we see the ball, in its last flight, falling -- we might even see it in slow-motion, with music swelling in the background, if you write its descent just right -- and then we see Mitch Gold, in the Target, looking for a ball on the shelf.

And so on.

Until we get to the end of your story, when we're rewarded for making this journey along with the people we've met and the ball that's now falling again out of the helicopter, where we last saw it, dropping to earth.

Now we get the payoff: We see the ball landing, in the arms of a boy, who holds on to it the way a father cradles a baby.

Like DD suggested, I think that's your ending -- with your writing, and with our boy.

Again, just my feelings -- how I would do it. Doesn't mean I'm right. Just something for you to think about.

But I really believe that this story is so good, it just needs to be told. No gimmicks, to tricks. Just told.

Thanks for posting.

 

I'm not in the Justice League, but if you want a view from a former Defender:

LOVE the reporting. Amazing work tracking down these stories, endeavoring to tell these stories, and getting this whol thing don. Absolutely spectacular work, a job you likely had to stick with for quite a while. Hold your head up high.

That said . . . . the story smacks of a youngster trying too hard with the language. The intro lost me in the third sentence, but I scrolled down the thread, saw who responded, and I will read anything jcmagc and Jones take the time to respect and critique. It's structured too much, too much chronological, too much "He smiles at her, at you, at me . . ." cheese thrown in unnecessarily. And I personally am not a fan of "you ever . . . ?" asides to the reader. There are better ways of saying that without trying to be Gary Smith. No crime in trying your best to seek the most clever turns of phrase when you have a wonderful story like this to write, but I agree with Jones: this story can tell itself.

Your first edit did a good job of minimizing some of the overwriting. Of course, readers (and often, those who give awards) eat up those little phrases.

Just about all of the individual stories could have led, except maybe the ball purchase. I like the idea of dividing it up into sections, but maybe start with one, find a spot to cut away in the middle, go tell the other stories, then come full circle. I like the blogger for the framing, since she and her husband play such key roles.

But you should pursue this story as best you see fit, because ultimately it's your name on it. And the reportage alone means it's something special.