Archive
A Year’s Worth of Writing for Omaha Magazine by Leo Adam Biga
A Year’s Worth of Writing for Omaha Magazine
by Leo Adam Biga
http://omahamagazine.com/articles/author/leo-adam-biga/
(November-December 2017 through November-December 2018)
Life Itself XVII: To All the Writers I’ve Loved Before – 25 Years of Stories About Writers and Writing
Life Itself XVII:
To All the Writers I’ve Loved Before – 25 Years of Stories About Writers and Writing
Noah Diaz making run for his dream at Yale School of Drama and theater companies nationwide
https://leoadambiga.com/2018/08/05/noah-diaz-making…anies-nationwide
Journalist-author Genoways takes micro and macro look at the U.S, food system
https://leoadambiga.com/2018/06/06/journalist-autho…u-s-food-syystem
Things coming full circle for Doug Marr, Phil’s Diner Series and Circle Theatre
https://leoadambiga.com/2018/04/24/things-coming-fu…d-circle-theatre/
Doug Marr and wife Laura Marr
A book a day keeps the blues aways for avid reader and writer Ashley Xiques
https://leoadambiga.com/2017/03/03/a-book-a-day-kee…er-ashley-xiques
Voyager Bud Shaw gives up scalpel for pen
https://leoadambiga.com/2017/04/20/voyager-bud-shaw…-scalpel-for-pen
Kevin Simonson on Interviewing Hunter S. Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut
https://leoadambiga.com/2017/03/05/kevin-simonson-o…nd-kurt-vonnegut/
Literary star Ron Hansen revisits the Old West in new novel “The Kid”
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/08/25/literary-star-ro…ew-novel-the-kid/
Ron Hansen
Noah Diaz:
Metro theater’s man for all seasons and stages
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/07/19/noah-diaz-metro-…asons-and-stages
Old Hollywood hand living in Omaha comes out of the shadows: Screenwriter John Kaye scripted “American Hot Wax” and more
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/01/30/old-hollywood-ha…hot-wax-and-more
Bomb girl Zedeka Poindexter draws on family, food and angst for her poetry
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/03/11/zedeka-poindexte…t-for-her-poetry/
Playwright turned history detective Max Sparber turns identity search inward
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/02/07/playwright-turne…ty-search-inward/
Paul Johnsgard:
A birder’s road less traveled
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/06/24/paul-johnsgard-a…ad-less-traveled
Lew Hunter’s small town Nebraska boy made good in Hollywood story is a doozy
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/02/25/lew-hunters-smal…story-is-a-doozy
Lew Hunter with Francis Ford Coppola
Alesia Lester: A Conversation in the Gossip Salon
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/03/09/alesia-lester-a-…the-gossip-salon/
Hardy’s one-man “A Christmas Carol” highlights Dickens-themed literary festival
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/11/03/hardys-one-man-a…iterary-festival/
Omaha World-Herald columnist Mike Kelly:
A storyteller for all seasons
https://leoadambiga.com/2014/04/02/omaha-world-hera…-for-all-seasons/
Mike Kelly
Creative couple: Bob and Connie Spittler and their shared creative life 60 years in the making
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/12/23/bob-and-connie-s…rs-in-the-making/
A WASP’s racial tightrope resulted in enduring book partially set in 1960s Omaha
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/10/28/a-wasps-racial-t…t-in-1960s-omaha/
Alex Kava:
Bestselling mystery author still going strong
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/11/03/alex-kava-bestse…ill-going-strong/
Yolonda Ross adds writer-director to actress credits; In new movies by Mamet and Sayles as her own “Breaking Night” makes festival circuit
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/02/28/yolonda-ross-add…festival-circuit/
Omahans put spin on Stephen King’s “The Shining” – Jason Levering leads stage adaptation of horror classic to benefit Benson Theatre Project
https://leoadambiga.com/2014/03/17/omahans-put-thei…-theatre-project
Omaha author Timothy Schaffert delivers again with his new novel, “The Swan Gondola”
https://leoadambiga.com/2014/03/07/omaha-author-tim…the-swan-gondola/
Timothy Schaffert
The Omaha Star celebrates 75 years of black woman legacy
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/04/11/the-omaha-star-c…ack-woman-legacy/
Ex-reporter Eileen Wirth pens book on Nebraska women in journalism and their leap from society page to front page
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/03/22/ex-reporter-eile…ge-to-front-page/
Bob Hoig’s unintended entree into journalism leads to career six decades strong
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/01/25/bob-hoigs-uninte…cades-strong-now/
Wounded Knee still battleground for some per new book by journalist-author Stew Magnuson
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/04/20/wounded-knee-sti…or-stew-magnuson/
Omaha native Steve Marantz looks back at city’s ’68 racial divide through prism of hoops in new book, “The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central”
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/04/01/omaha-native-ste…of-omaha-central/
From the heart: Tunette Powell tells it like it is
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/03/10/from-the-heart-t…ls-it-like-it-is/
Finding her voice: Tunette Powell comes out of the dark and into the spotlight
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/01/24/finding-her-voic…to-the-spotlight/
Omowale Akintunde film “Wigger” deconstructs what race means in a faux post-racial world
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/21/deconstructing-w…ost-racial-world/
Beware the Singularity, singing the retribution blues: New works by Rick Dooling
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/10/10/beware-the-singu…-by-rick-dooling/
Richard Dooling
Lit Fest delves into what we fear, how we relate in extremis
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/10/09/lit-fest-delves-…late-in-extremis/
Omaha Lit Fest puts focus on Women Writers and Women in Publishing
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/10/06/omaha-lit-fest-p…en-in-publishing
Omaha Lit Fest Offers a Written Word Feast
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/10/18/omaha-lit-fest-o…itten-word-feast
Writing close to her heart: Author Joy Castro
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/11/23/author-joy-castr…in-two-new-books/
Ron Hull reviews his remarkable life in public television in new memoir
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/10/06/8945/
Ferial Pearson, award-winning educator dedicated to inclusion and social justice, helps students publish the stories of their lives
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/08/25/ferial-pearson-a…s-of-their-lives
Lit Fest brings author Carleen Brice back home flush with success of first novel, “Orange Mint and Honey”
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/07/02/lit-fest-brings-…e-mint-and-honey/
Novel’s mother-daughter thing makes it to the screen
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/10/26/novel’s-mother-d…it-to-the-screen
Carleen Brice
Sun reflection: Revisiting the Omaha Sun’s Pulitzer Prize-winning expose of Boys Town
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/04/28/sun-reflection-r…ose-on-boys-town
Alexander Payne and Kaui Hart Hemmings on the symbiosis behind his film and her novel “The Descendants” and how she helped get Hawaii right
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/01/23/alexander-payne-…get-hawaii-right/
Thy kingdom come: Richard Dooling’s TV teaming with Stephen King
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/08/16/thy-kingdom-come…ith-stephen-king/
Buffalo Bill’s Coming Out Party Courtesy Author-Balladeer Bobby Bridger
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/09/06/buffalo-bills-co…er-bobby-bridger/
The Worth of Things Explored by Sean Doolittle in his New Crime Novel “The Cleanup”
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/07/02/the-worth-of-thi…ovel-the-cleanup/
When Safe Isn’t Safe at All, Author Sean Doolittle Spins a Home Security Cautionary Tale
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/08/19/when-safe-isnt-s…-cautionary-tale/
Acclaimed Author and Nebraska New Wave Literary Leader Timothy Schaffert
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/18/nebraska-new-wav…imothy-schaffert/
A Man of His Words, Nebraska State Poet William Kloefkorn
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/07/07/a-man-of-his-wor…illiam-kloefkorn/
JACOB HANNAH / Lincoln Journal Star
Kurt Andersen’s new novel “True Believers” revisits 1960s through reformed radical breaking her silence
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/07/28/kurt-andersens-n…king-her-silence/
Dissecting Jesse James
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/10/10/dissecting-jesse-james
Ron Hansen’s masterful outlaw blues novel about Jesse James and Robert Ford faithfully interpreted on screen
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/07/27/ron-hansens-mast…preted-on-screen
Playwright Carlos Murillo’s work explores personal mythmaking
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/07/26/playwright-carlo…sonal-mythmaking
The Many Worlds of Science Fiction Author Robert Reed
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/22/the-many-worlds-…thor-robert-reed
He knows it when he sees it: Journalist-social critic Robert Jensen finds patriarchy and white supremacy in porn
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/06/17/i-know-it-when-i…upremacy-in-porn
Litniks Unite! The Downtown Omaha Lit Fest brings writers, artists and readers together in celebration of the written word
Omaha Lit Fest: In praise of writers and their words: Jami Attenberg and Will Clarke among featured authors
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/06/19/omaha-lit-fest-i…featured-authors/
Omaha playwright Beaufield Berry comes into her own with original comedy “Psycho Ex Girlfriend”
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/04/20/omaha-playwright…iend-now-playing/
Omaha Lit Fest: “People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like”
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/10/07/omaha-lit-fest-p…-thing-they-like/
Martin Landau and Nik Fackler discuss working together on “Lovely, Still” and why they believe so strongly in each other and in their new film
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/09/23/martin-landau-an…-in-the-new-film/
Martin Landau and Nik Fackler
“Lovely, Still,” that rare film depicting seniors in all their humanity, earns writer-director Nik Fackler Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/12/03/lovely-still-tha…first-screenplay/
Filmmaker Nik Fackler’s magic realism reaches the big screen in “Lovely, Still”
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/18/when-dreams-that…neath-do-surface
Nik Fackler, the Film Dude Establishes Himself a Major New Cinema Figure with “Lovely, Still”
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/18/the-film-dude-es…ew-cinema-figure/
Writers Joy Castro and Amelia Maria de la Luz Montes explore being women of color who go from poverty to privilege
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/05/12/writers-joy-cast…rty-to-privilege/
Being Jack Moskovitz: Grizzled former civil servant and DJ, now actor and fiction author, still waiting to be discovered
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/09/05/being-jack-mosko…to-be-discovered/
With his new novel, “The Coffins of Little Hope,” Timothy Schaffert’s back delighting in the curiosities of American Gothic
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/04/13/with-his-new-nov…-american-gothic/
Timothy Schaffert Gets Down and Dirty with his New Novel “Devils in the Sugar Shop”
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/08/29/timothy-schaffer…n-the-sugar-shop/
Rachel Shukert’s anything but a travel agent’s recommended guide to a European grand tour
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/09/05/rachel-shukerts-…opean-grand-tour/
Author Rachel Shukert: A nice Jewish girl gone wild and other regrettable stories
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/09/05/author-rachel-sh…rettable-stories/
Rachel Shukert
After whirlwind tenure as Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser goes gently back to the prairie, to where the wild plums grow
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/06/19/after-a-whirlwin…-wild-plums-grow/
Keeper of the Flame: Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/06/19/keeper-of-the-fl…inner-ted-kooser
Ted Kooser
Being Dick Cavett
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/12/04/being-dick-cavett-2/
Homecoming always sweet for Dick Cavett, the entertainment legend whose dreams of show biz Success were fired in Nebraska
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/12/04/homecoming-is-al…ed-in-nebraska-2/
Dick Cavett
Dream catcher Lew Hunter: Screenwriting guru of the Great Plains
http://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/09/dream-catcher-lew-hunter/
Q & A with playwright Caridad Svich, featured artist at Great Plains Theatre Conference
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/02/a-q-a-with-playw…eatre-conference/
Featured Great Plains Theatre Conference playwright Caridad Svich explores bicultural themes
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/05/29/featured-great-p…icultural-themes
Playwright-screenwriter John Guare talks shop on Omaha visit celebrating his acclaimed “Six Degrees of Separation”
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/02/playwright-john-…es-of-separation/
Attention must be paid: Arthur Kopit invokes Arthur Miller to describe Great Plains Theatre Conference focus on the work of playwrights
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/05/29/attention-must-b…s-and-their-work/
Q & A with Edward Albee: His thoughts on the Great Plains Theatre Conference, Jo Ann McDowell, Omaha and preparing a new generation of playwrights
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/05/29/a-q-a-with-edwar…n-of-playwrights/
Great Plains Theatre Conference ushers in new era of Omaha theater
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/05/28/great-plains-the…of-omaha-theater/
John Guare
Hard times ring sweet in the soulful words of singer-songwriter-author Laura Love, daughter of the late jazz man, Preston Love Sr.
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/01/hard-times-ring-…uthor-laura-love
Gospel playwright Llana Smith enjoys her Big Mama’s time
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/06/07/gospel-playwrigh…r-big-mamas-time
Blizzard Voices:
Stories from the Great White Shroud
https://leoadambiga.com/2018/07/27/blizzard-voices-…eat-white-shroud
Click Westin, back in the screenwriting game again at age 83
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/07/11/click-westin-bac…-again-at-age-83/
“The Bagel: An Immigrant’s Story” – Joan Micklin Silver and Matthew Goodman team up for new documentary
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/03/16/the-bagel-an-imm…documentary-film
Actor Peter Riegert makes fine feature directorial debut with “King of the Corner”
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/05/12/actor-peter-rieg…ng-of-the-corner/
Talking screenwriting with Hollywood heavyweight Hawk Ostby: Omaha Film Festival panelist counts “Children of Men” and “Iron Man” among credits
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/03/02/talking-screenwr…mong-his-credits/
Hawk Ostby
Tempting fate: Patrick Coyle film “Into Temptation” delivers gritty tale of working girl and idealistic priest in search of redemption
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/04/09/tempting-fate-pa…ch-of-redemption/
Otis Twelve’s Radio Days
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/31/otis-twelves-radio-days/
Three old wise men of journalism – Hlavacek, Michaels and Desfor – recall their foreign correspondent careers and reflect on the world today
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/18/three-old-wise-men-of-journalism/
John and Pegge Hlavacek’s globe-trotting adventures as foreign correspondents
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/06/02/john-and-pegge-h…n-correspondents/
John Hlavacek
Preston Love: His voice will not be stilled
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/06/03/preston-love-his…l-not-be-stilled/
Marguerita Washington: The woman behind the Star that never sets
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/08/02/marguerita-washi…-that-never-sets
“Walking Behind to Freedom” – A musical theater examination of race
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/21/walking-behind-t…mination-of-race
Sacred Trust, Author Ron Hansen’s Fiction Explores Moral Struggles
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/07/06/sacred-trust
Jim Taylor, the other half of Hollywood’s top screenwriting team, talks about his work with Alexander Payne
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/06/30/jim-taylor-the-o…lexander-payne-2/
Author, humorist, folklorist Roger Welsch tells the stories of the American soul and soil
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/06/19/author-humorist-…he-american-soul/
From the Archives: Warren Francke – A passion for journalism, teaching and life
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/06/11/from-the-archive…eaching-and-life
Author Scott Muskin – What’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing writing about all this mishigas?
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/12/05/author-scott-mus…ll-this-mishigas/
Vincent Alston’s indie film debut, “For Love of Amy,” is black and white and love all over
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/11/29/vincent-alstons-…nd-love-all-over
Screenwriting adventures of Nebraska native Jon Bokenkamp, author of the scripts “Perfect Stranger” and “Taking Lives'”
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/11/28/screenwriting-ad…ve-jon-bokenkamp/
Murder He Wrote: Reporter-author David Krajicek finds niche as true crime storyteller
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/10/28/murder-he-wrote-…rime-storyteller/
Bobby Bridger’s Rendezvous
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/11/bobby-bridgers-rendezvous/
Nancy Duncan: Her final story
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/09/her-final-story/
Nancy Duncan: Storyteller
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/08/02/nancy-duncan-storyteller/
From the Archives:
Nancy Duncan’s journey to storytelling took circuitous route
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/04/01/from-the-archive…circutious-route
Joan Micklin Silver: Maverick filmmaker helped shape American independent film scene and opened doors for women directors
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/10/10/joan-micklin-sil…-women-directors/
Joan Micklin Silver: Shattering cinema’s glass ceiling
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/18/shattering-cinemas-glass-ceiling/
Joan Micklin Silver
Doug Marr, Diner Theater and keeping the faith
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/06/06/doug-marr-keeping-the-faith/
Short story writer James Reed at work in the literary fields of the imagination
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/09/03/short-story-writ…-the-imagination
Culturalist Kurt Andersen wryly observes the American scene as author, essayist, radio talk show host
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/18/culturalist-kurt-andersen/
Slaying dragons: Author Richard Dooling’s sharp satire cuts deep and quick
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/18/slaying-dragons-rick-dooling/
K
Kurt Andersen
Ted Genoways Gives Voice to Rural Working Class
Ted Genoways
Gives Voice to Rural Working Class
Photography by Bill Sitzmann
Originally appeared in July-August 2018 issue of Omaha Magazine ( http://omahamagazine.com/articles/ted-genoways/)
Award-winning poet, journalist, editor, and author Ted Genoways of Lincoln, Nebraska, has long been recognized for his social justice writing as a contributor to Mother Jones, onEarth, Harper’s and other prestigious publications. While editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, the magazine won numerous national awards.
His recent nonfiction books—The Chain: Farm, Factory and the Fate of Our Food, and This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Farm—expand on his enterprise reporting about the land, the people who work it, and the food we consume from it. The themes of sustainability, big ag versus little ag, over-processing of food, and environmental threats are among many concerns he explores.
He often collaborates on projects with his wife, photographer Mary Anne Andrei.
His penchant for reporting goes back to his boyhood, when he put down stories people told him, even illustrating them, in a stapled “magazine” he produced. His adult work took root in the form of secondhand stories of his paternal grandfather toiling on Nebraska farms and in Omaha meatpacking plants.
His father noted this precociousness with words and made a pact that if young Ted read a book a week selected for him, he could escape chores.
“I thought that was a great deal,” Genoways says. “Reading John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men was the first time I remember being completely hooked. After that, I tore through everything Steinbeck wrote, and it made a huge impact on me. I thought, there’s real power in this—if you can figure out how to do it this well.”
Reading classics by Hemingway, Faulkner, and other great authors followed. The work of muckrakers such as Upton Sinclair made an impression. “But those Steinbeck books,” he says, “have always really stuck with me, and I go back to them and they really hold up.”
Exposing injustice—just as Steinbeck did with migrants and Sinclair did with immigrants—is what Genoways does. Nebraska Wesleyan professors Jim Schaffer and the late state poet of Nebraska William Kloefkorn influenced his journalism and poetry, respectively. Genoways doesn’t make hard and fast distinctions between the two forms. Regardless of genre, he practices a form of advocacy journalism but always in service of the truth.
“I’m always starting with the facts and trying to understand how they fit together,” he says. “There’s no question I’ve got a point of view. But I don’t show up with preconceived notions of what the story is.”
He’s drawn to “stories of people at the mercy of the system,” he says, admitting, “I’m interested in the little guy and in how people fight back against the powers that be.”
While working at the Minnesota State Historical Society Press, Genoways released a book of poems,Bullroarer: A Sequence, about his grandfather, and edited Cheri Register’s book Daughter of a Meatpacker. At the Virginia Quarterly, he looked into worker illnesses at a Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota, and the glut of Latinos at a Hormel plant in Fremont, Nebraska. He found a correlation between unsafe conditions due to ever-faster production lines—where only immigrants are willing to do the job—and the pressures brought to bear on company towns with influxes of Spanish-speaking workers and their families, some of them undocumented.
That led to examining the impact “a corporate level decision to run the line faster in order to increase production has up and down the supply chain” and on entire communities.
“That’s become an ongoing fascination for me,” Genoways says. “I can’t seem to stop coming back to what’s happening in meatpacking towns, which really seem to be on the front line of a lot of change in this country.”
The heated controversy around TransCanada Corp.’s plans for the Keystone XL pipeline ended up as the backdrop for his book, This Blessed Earth. He found “the specter of a foreign corporation coming and taking land by eminent domain” from legacy farmers and ranchers “and telling them they had to take on this environmental risk with few or no guarantees” to be yet another challenge weighing on the backs of producers.
His focus became a fifth-generation Nebraska farm family, the Hammonds, who grow soybeans, and how their struggles mirror all family farmers in terms of “how big to get and how much risk to assume.”
“They were especially intriguing because they were building this solar and wind-powered barn right in the path KXL decided to cross their land, and that seemed like a pretty great metaphor for that kind of defiance,” he says.
Pipeline or not, small farmers have plenty to worry about.
“Right now, everything in ag is geared toward getting bigger,” Genoways says. “The question facing the entire industry is: How big is big enough? What do we lose when we force farmers off the land or make them into businessmen more than stewards of the land? To my eye, you lose agri-CULTURE and are left with agri-BUSINESS.”
Farming as a way of life is endangered.
“Nebraska lost a thousand farms in 2017,” he says. “Those properties will be absorbed by larger operations. The ground will still be farmed. The connection between farmer and farm will be further stretched and strained. That’s the way everything has gone, and it’s how everything is likely to continue. Agribusiness interests argue these trends move us toward maximum yield with improved sustainability. But it also means decisions are made by fewer and fewer people. Mistakes and misjudgments are magnified. So we not only lose the culture of independence and responsibility that built rural communities, but grow more dependent on a version of America run by corporations.”
Chronicling the Hammonds left indelible takeaways—one being the varied skills farming requires.
“We saw them harvest a field of soybeans while keeping an eye on the futures trading and calling around to elevators to check on prices; they were making market decisions as sophisticated as any commodities trader,” Genoways says. “This is one of the major pressures on family farms. To survive, you have to be able to repair your own center pivot or broken tractor, but also be a savvy business owner—adapting early to technological changes and diversifying to insulate your operation.”
The Hammonds weathered the storm.
“They are doing well. They got good news when the Public Service Commission only approved the alternate route for KXL,” he says.
Meanwhile, Genoways sees an American food system in need of reform.
“We would benefit mightily from a national food policy,” he says. “How can you explain subsidizing production of junk food and simultaneously spending on obesity education? How do we justify unsustainable volumes of meat while counseling people to eat less meat? If we really want people to improve their eating habits, we should provide economic incentives in that direction.”
Visit tedgenoways.com for more information.
This article was printed in the July/August 2018 edition of Omaha Magazine.
Life Itself IX: Media and related articles from the analog past to today’s digital era
Ariel Roblin
Mike Kelly
Howard Silber
Warren Buffett, left, and Stan Lipsey at the Omaha Sun in the 1970s.
Doug Wesselmann, aka Otis Twelve
Lisa Haselton’s interview with writer Leo Adam Biga
Thanks to author Lisa Haselton for featuring this interview with me on her popular blog Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews. Be sure to visit her site and support it. She has a wealth of rich content related to authors, books and other writing things.
Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews
Award-winning blog for book reviews, author interviews, and anything writing-related.
Interview with writer Leo Adam Biga
Writer Leo Adam Biga joins me to chat about his film book–
“Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film”:
Bio:
Author-journalist-blogger Leo Adam Biga resides in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. His articles appear in various newspapers and magazines as well as on his popular blog, leoadambiga.com, and Facebook page, My Inside Stories. His work has been recognized by his peers at the local, regional and national levels. He was the 2015 recipient of the Andy Award for international journalism from his alma mater, the University of Nebraska at Omaha. That grant supported his reporting mission to Uganda and Rwanda, Africa in the company of professional world boxing Terence Crawford of Omaha and Pipeline Worldwide director Jamie Nollette.
Biga is the author of several books, including “Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film” and “Crossing Bridges: A Priest’s Uplifting Life Among the Downtrodden”. Biga’s reporting and writing about Payne has made him a recognized expert on the Oscar-winning filmmaker (“Sideways“, “Nebraska”) from Omaha. His latest book is “Nebraska Methodist College at 125: Scaling New Heights” – a history of the Omaha-base college of nursing and allied health celebrating 125 years.
The writer is developing the Nebraska Screen Heritage Project as a multimedia celebration of native Nebraskans in the film and television industry. He is also developing a book about Omaha’s Black Sports Legends.
Welcome, Leo. Please tell us about your current release.
Articles and essays take you deep inside Alexander Payne’s creative process. This second edition includes significant new material related to his last film “Nebraska” and his highly anticipated new film “Downsizing,” It also features the addition of a Discussion Guide with Index.
Payne fans will appreciate the extensive interviews-stories that follow the arc of the writer-director’s career from brash upstart to consummate filmmaker at the head of the Indiewood movement.
Film historian Thomas Schatz (“The Genius of the System”):
“This is without question the single best study of Alexander Payne’s films, as well as the filmmaker himself and his filmmaking process. In charting the first two decades of Payne’s remarkable career, Leo Adam Biga pieces together an indelible portrait of an independent American artist, and one that’s conveyed largely in the filmmaker’s own words.”
Leonard Maltin:
“Alexander Payne is one of American cinema’s leading lights. How fortunate we are that Leo Biga has chronicled his rise to success so thoroughly.”
Alexander Payne:
“Throughout many years of being interviewed, I find Mr. Biga’s articles about me to be the most complete and perceptive of any journalist’s anywhere. They ring true to me, even in critique, in a way that reveals the depth of his talent in observation, understanding and expression.”
What inspired you to write this book?
In covering Alexander Payne more than a decade and a half I accumulated a large body of work about someone I saw go from a promising newcomer few heard of and whose first two films were not much seen to an accomplished filmmaker recognized around the world. The book collects my journalism about Payne and his journey in film, thereby preserving my work about him in an enduring, hard-bound fashion and thereby contributing my take on this important film artist.
Excerpt from “Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film”:
Even though Alexander Payne demonstrates time and again that commercial considerations mean very little to him, following the breakaway success of The Descendants (2011) there was every reasonable expectation he might lean a bit more again in the direction of mainstream with his next film. I say again because I count The Descendants as a conventional, even mainstream work even though its protagonist rails against his comatose wife and sets out to wreck the life of the man she was cheating with, all the while trying not to lose it with his two grieving daughters in tow.
Payne soon quashed any notion of playing it safe when he announced the small, insular back roads comedy-drama Nebraska (2013) as his new feature project. It did not help its bottom line chances that the film is set in rural Nebraska, which for most filmgoers may as well be the dark side of the moon for its unfamiliarity, remoteness, and perceived barrenness. Indeed, if Nebraska conjures any image at all it is of endless cornfields, cows, and monotonously flat, uninspired scenery. When the story laid over such a setting features a confused, depressed old cuss alienated from family and friends and wandering around in a bleak wasteland made even bleaker by black and white photography and desolate late fall, post-harvest locations, it does not exactly engender excitement. The prospect of a dour, feel-bad experience devoid of life and color does not get tongues a-wagging to generate the all important buzz that sells tickets.
Of course, anyone who has seen Nebraska knows the film is not the downer it may appear to be from glimpsing a thirty second trailer or hearing a thirty second sound bite, but that it is ultimately a sweet, deeply affecting film filled with familiar truths amid its very Nebraskaesque yet also quite universal archetypes.
Payne’s insistence on shooting in black and white was a completely legitimate aesthetic choice given the storyline and tone of this stark, autumnal mood piece about an old man having his last hurrah. But it also meant a definite disadvantage in appealing to average or general movie fans, many of whom automatically pass on any non-color film.
Compounding the aversion that many moviegoers have with black and white is the fact that most studio executives, distributors, and theater bookers share this aversion, not on aesthetic grounds, but based on the long-held, much repeated argument that black and white films fare poorly at the box office. Of course, there is a self- fulfilling prophecy at work here that starts with studio resistance and reluctance to greenlight black and white features and even when a studio does approve the rare black and white entry executives seem to half-heartedly market and release these pics. It is almost as if the bean counters are out to perversely prove a point, even at the risk of injuring the chances of one of their own pictures at finding a sizable audience. Then when the picture lags, it gives the powerbrokers the platform to say, I told you so. No wonder then – and this is assuming the argument is true – most black and white flicks don’t perform well compared with their color counterparts. Except, how does one arrive at anything like a fair comparison of films based on color versus black and white? Even if the films under review are of the same genre and released in the same period, each is individually, intrinsically its own experience and any comparison inevitably ends up being a futile apples and oranges debate. Besides, there are exceptions to the supposed rule that all black and white films struggle. From the 1970s on The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, Young Frankenstein, Manhattan, Raging Bull, Schindler’s List, Ed Wood, and The Artist are among the black and white films to have found wide success. It is admittedly a short list but it does prove black and white need not be a death sentence.
To no one’s surprise Paramount did what practically any studio would have done in the same situation, which was to fight Payne on the black and white decision. In no uncertain terms Payne wanted to make Nebraska in black and white and just as adamantly the studio wanted no part of it. He pushed and they pushed back. He would not compromise his vision because from the moment he first read Bob Nelson’s screenplay he clearly saw in his mind’s eye the world of this story play out in in shades of black and white. It just fit. It fit the characters and the settings and the emotions and as far as he was concerned that was that. No questions asked. No concessions made.
What exciting story are you working on next?
At any given time there are interesting journalism and other narrative-based projects that arise. Much of my work as a journalist entails writing about various arts-culture subjects. I also write a fair amount on social justice issues. On occasion I travel for my work. I once went to North Dakota to research a set of stories about a campus serving developmentally disabled individuals. I participated in a baseball tour of the Midwest that resulted in a first-person story I wrote about the tour group’s visits to various baseball shrines and stadiums in a five-state region. I spent a week on the set of Alexander Payne’s Sideways in the Santa Barbara region and wrote a series of stories from that experience. I traveled with a group of folks from Omaha to the first Obama inauguration in D.C. and filed a story about that. I have been out to Los Angeles a number of times related to my reporting on Payne and his films. In 2015 I received a grant for international journalism that funded my reporting mission to Uganda and Rwanda, Africa with world boxing champion Terence Crawford. This past summer I made my first visits to the American South and I wrote a number of posts about the experiences on my blog and Facebook page. In 2017 I hope to travel to New York or Toronto for the North American premiere of Payne’s new film Downsizing starring Matt Damon.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I suppose I began thinking that way in college, though I didn’t do all that much writing then. it really wasn’t until some years after college, having worked in public relations and then beginning to freelance as a journalist, that I identified as a writer. But it still took me a few years to say the words “I am a writer” without stumbling over them.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
Yes, I do write full-time. Like most writers, much of my time is not taken up with writing per se, but rather with the different things that prepare me to write (interviews, research) and sustain my writing (pitching, marketing). There’s a fair amount of correspondence and phone conversation that takes place between myself and editors.
My writing schedule depends on what else I have going on in terms of interviews and such. It also depends on what kind of writing I’m doing . If it’s a book, I try to plan writing on certain days and even during certain times of the day when I know I’ll be able to devote some undivided attention to the project. If it’s an article, then it’s a bit more haphazard and directed in part by deadlines. If it’s a blog or Facebook post, then it’s much more in the moment and as the spirit moves me. With any of these forms of writing though, I might be at the keyboard in the morning, afternoon or evening.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
As a nonfiction writer I depend on primary interviews for my source material and I am a stickler for recording all my interviews and transcribing them myself.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I don’t recall ever really thinking in those terms as a child. I am also sure I would never have considered being a writer if not for some teachers in elementary and high school who encouraged me. There were a couple professors in college who also influenced me to follow this path.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Most of my original writing these days is actually done for my blog and Facebook page. But those sites also serve as an archive and new platform for my previously published work. If your readers want a real sense for who I am as a person and as a writer, I encourage them to visit those sites.
Links:
Thank you for being here today, Leo.
Posted by Lisa Haselton at 12:02 AM
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Labels: Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film, Arts, author interview,Entertainment, Film, Leo Adam Biga
About Lisa
Lisa Haselton
I’m a NH native and love New England. I love writing about the region, exploring it on foot, on my bicycle, and in my car. There are so many small communities and fun and interesting people in this area, that I could be here a lifetime and not do all it is I want to do. 🙂
I’m a writer because I have a passion for words. I write YA and adult fiction, favoring all flavors of mysteries and I enjoy dark fiction. I belong to Sisters in Crime and Sisters in Crime – New England (SinCNE) and I’m a regular contributor to the SinCNE blog. My favorite mystery writing conference is the annual New England Crime Bakeheld each November in Boston.
I interview authors at Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews. All reviews are my own opinion. For interviews, you can contact me at ReviewsAndInterviews (at) gmail (dot) com.
I’m a moderator at The Writer’s Chatroom that hosts live chats with guest authors on Sunday nights 7-9PM EST. Join the e-mail list to get notifications of upcoming guests, then stop in and join the conversation!
Links to check out
- Advice to Writers
- All Freelance Writing
- Chris Brogan – Learn How Human Business Works
- Dallas Woodburn’s Writing Life
- Damnation Books
- Funds for Writers
- Jungle Red Writers
- Lisa Jackson, writer and editor
- Live Fearless
- Live to Write, Write to Live
- Married with Luggage
- New England Crime Bake Conference
- Sisters in Crime – New England
- Susan Nye – Around the Table
- The Graveyard Shift
- The Renegade Writer
- The Writer’s Chatroom
- Wicked Cozy Authors
- Working Writers’ Coach
My Small Business Story
To all the writers I’ve loved before…
To all the writers I’ve loved before…
If you’re a longtime follower, then you know by now I like making lists. It’s not that I don’t have anything better to do, it’s just that it helps give my mind a focused distraction from whatever the real task at hand is, which is usually a writing project or two or three or four…Oh, well, you get the idea.
So, the other day I began listing out as many of the writers I’ve written about over the years that I could recall. I knew it would be a long list, but it turned out longer than I expected. I mean, it’s a very broad and impressive group of writers, some of whom don’t make their living as writers, But in any case they are variously journalists, essayists, poets, novelists, biographers, memoirists and in many instances combinations of these things. I interviewed them all and in most cases wrote profile of them as well. In some cases I quoted them as part of more general features related to their work or project or program. I enjoy speaking to and writing about fellow soldiers of the craft. Read their names below and see how many you recognize and if you’ve read anything by them. Most are Nebraska native or transplant authors but a fair number are not from here.
There are some Pulitzer, National Book Award, Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Poet Laureate and other writing prize nominees and winners among their ranks.
Before I release you to the list, please note that the names are not listed in any particular order – just when their occurred to me. And you can find what they spoke to me about and what I wrote about them and their work by visiting my blog, https://leoadambiga.com/:
Ron Hansen
Richard Dooling
Timothy Schaffert
Rachel Shukert
Beaufield Berry
Ellen Struve
Max Sparber
Summer Miller
Denise Chapman
Scott Working
Kevin Lawler
Doug Marr
James Reed
Robert Reed
Bobby Bridger
Ted Kooser
William Kloefkorn
Roger Welsch
Dick Cavett
Milton Kleinberg
Jack Moskovitz
Joy Castro
Zedeka Poindexter
John Hardy
Stew Magnuson
Colleen Reilly
Warren Francke
Sean Doolittle
Alex Kava
David Krajicek
Michael Kelly
Lew Hunter
Alexander Payne
Jim Taylor
Carleen Brice
Tekla Ali Johnson
Jami Attenberg
Scott Muskin
Will Clarke
Faith Ringold
Isabel Wilkerson
Jon Bokenkamp
Nik Fackler
Eileen Wirth
Kurt Andersen
Edward Albee
Arthur Kopit
Mac Wellman
John Guare
Caridad Savich
Kia Corthron
Megan Terry
Jo Ann Schmidman
Larry Williams
John Nagl
Howard Silber
Robert Jensen
Otis Wesselman
Preston Love Sr.
Laura Love
Robert Nelson
Joan Micklin Silver
Howard Rosenberg
Thom Sibbitt
John Kaye
Lou Leviticus
Dan Mirvish
James Marshall Crotty
Matt Mason
Nancy Rips
Bill Ramsey
Betty Dineen Shrier
David O. Russell
Jason Levering
Hawk Ostby
Bob Hoig
Ron Hull
Patrick Jones
Rebecca Rotert
My Year in Review (as determined by the folks at Facebook)
My Year in Review (as determined by the folks at Facebook): It’s actually a pretty good representation of 2015.
It was a very good year…
A year of milestones and firsts, of familiar and new faces, of long distance and closer to home travels, of ongoing and emerging projects. Good health and good friends. Many blessings. Much gratitude.
Happy holidays and may 2016 bring us all peace of mind and heart.
!['I only just now became aware of this fine review of my Alexander Payne book that appeared in a 2014 issue of the Great Plains Quarterly journal. The review is by the noted novelist and short story writer Brent Spencer, who teaches at Creighton University. Thanks, Brent, for your attentive and articulate consideration of my work. Read the review below.
NOTE: I am still hopeful a new edition of my Payne book will come out in the next year or two. it would feature the additon of my extensive writing about Payne's Nebraska. I have a major university press mulling it over now.
Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film—A Reporter’s Perspective, 1998–2012 by @[1690777260:2048:Leo Adam Biga]
Review by Brent Spencer
From: Great Plains Quarterly
Volume 34, Number 2, Spring 2014
In Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film—A Reporter’s Perspective 1998–2012, Leo Adam Biga writes about the major American filmmaker Alexander Payne from the perspective of a fellow townsman. The Omaha reporter began covering Payne from the start of the filmmaker’s career, and in fact, even earlier than that. Long before Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, and Cannes award-winner Nebraska, Biga was instrumental in arranging a local showing of an early (student) film of Payne’s The Passion of Martin. From that moment on, Payne’s filmmaking career took off, with the reporter in hot pursuit.
Biga’s book contains a collection of the journalist’s writings. The approach, which might have proven to be patchwork, instead allows the reader to follow the growth of the artist over time. Young filmmakers often ask how successful filmmakers made it to that point. Biga’s book may be the best answer to this question, at least as far as Payne is concerned. Biga presents the artist from his earliest days as a hometown boy to his first days in Tinseltown as a scuffling outsider to his heyday as an insider working with Hollywood’s brightest stars.
If there is a problem with Biga’s approach, it is that it occasionally leads to redundancy. The pieces were originally written separately, for different publications, and are presented as such. This means that an essay will sometimes cover the same material as a previous one. Some selections were clearly written as announcements of special showings of films. But the occasional drawback of this approach is counterbalanced by the feeling you get that the artist’s career is taking shape right before your eyes, from the showing of a student film in an Omaha storefront theater to a Hollywood premiere.
Perhaps the most intriguing feature of the book is Biga’s success at getting Payne to speak candidly about every step in the filmmaking process. These detailed insights include the challenges of developing material from conception to script, finding financing, moderating the mayhem of shooting a movie, and undertaking the slow, monk-like work of editing. Biga is clearly a fan (the book comes with an endorsement from Payne himself), but he’s a fan with his eyes wide open.'](https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/t31.0-0/p480x480/11698974_10200574953971575_7380164938074896068_o.jpg)
!['MORE AFRICA TALES MEDIA
I joined @[1619391711:2048:Jamie Fox Nollette] and @[100001709629160:2048:Terence Crawford] for a taping of KETV's "Chronicle" public affairs program with host Rob McCartney. Stay tuned for the date and time when the show will air. Photo courtesy KETV.'](https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/t31.0-8/s720x720/11895041_10200655434463537_2065898640647327480_o.jpg)
!['Pam, having enchilidas tonight with our friends @[584511938:2048:Linda M. Garcia Perez] and @[1567029979:2048:Jose Francisco Garcia]. I couldn't make it. Hoping they send her home with an extra enchilida. Enjoy honey.'](https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-0/q83/s600x600/11038864_10200740278184577_2799446387615869609_n.jpg?oh=d47ee16d9958b2334f2f82ccc58b1b0b&oe=57115A87)
!['HOMETOWN HERO TERENCE CRAWFORD ON VERGE OF GREATNESS AND BECOMING BOXING'S NEXT SUPERSTAR
When hometown hero and reigning WBO world welterweight champion @[100001709629160:2048:Terence Crawford] takes care of business as expected against challenger Dierry Jean Saturday night (Oct. 24) at the CenturyLink, everything then opens up for him. The scuttlebutt is that he would fight Manny Pacquiao or, should he come out of retirement, Floyd Mayweather, in which case Terence would be fighting for the chance to be boxing's next great superstar. TopRank has already indicated they are looking to hand off the baton of King of Boxing to the right candidate and they are clearly grooming Terence to be that guy.
Anyone who knows Terence understands that he has been preparing for this nearly all his life. Nothing fazes him because he's come through a lot to get here and ever since getting shot in the head back in 2008 he's made boxing, outside of family, his singular focus. And now that he's already gotten this far there is no one and nothing that he will let stand in his way, not if he has anything to say or do about it.
In a way, he really doesn't have anything left to prove, other than showing that he truly belongs among the pantheon of contemporary and perhaps even all-time boxing greats. Only time will tell there. But it does appear he will get his opportunity to make his mark and knowing him he will take full advantage of it.
I have written before how Terence is in a long line of outstanding athletes to come out of North Omaha to do great things at high levels. In terms of boxers from here, he stands alone, with nobody really even close. Among all athletes from North O, I argue that he is the most accomplished in his sport since Bob Gibson dominated for the St. Louis Cardinals in the late 1960s-early 1970s. A case could be made for Gale Sayers as well. In terms of the most beloved, Bud's only close competition is Bob Boozer, Johnny Rodgers and Ahman Green, and maybe Maurtice Ivy.
It has been fascinating to see how in such a short period of time, ever since he won his first title as a lightweight in 2014 and subsequently defended that title twice in Omaha before huge crowds, he has won over such a large cross-section of folks. He has single-handedly resurrected the sport of boxing here and put this town on the national and international boxing map, thus giving this place one more thing to take pride in. And at 28 he may be the best known living Nebraskan now outside of Warren Buffett and Alexander Payne.
Omaha has gotten behind him and his passion for his hometown and for his North O community in a way that I don't think anyone could have predicted. It's very heartwarming to see, He already had a strong team around him in his Team Crawford crew of managers, coaches and trainers and now a whole team of advisers has come on board to help guide him and protect his earnings and to help him realize his vision for the B&B Boxing Academy. At Wednesday's meet-up down at the gym, there was an incredibly diverse mix of people present – B&B members, neighborhood residents, family, friends, movers and shakers and media, of course. Lots and lots of media.
The Omaha World-Herald has reported about Terence's heart for community and others and those are threads I've been writing about for some time. I have helped frame the B&B Boxing Academy story and I traveled with Terence and his close friend and former teacher, @[1619391711:2048:Jamie Fox Nollette] to Uganda and Rwanda, Africa to see first-hand his curiosity about and concern for people in need in the Motherland. I hope to follow more of his journey as time goes by.
Read my extensive reporting and writing about Terence at-
https://leoadambiga.com/tag/terence-crawford/
I will be covering his fight against Jean and so look for my impressions about that fight and many more things about Terence and his ever evolving story in future posts and articles.'](https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-0/s600x600/12039372_10200852100220058_326535901349247407_n.jpg?oh=f87b25e7d91756b4f2f87d1e4aa00c5d&oe=56D6E1C8)
!['EXCERPT FROM MY UPCOMING NEW STORY ABOUT TERENCE CRAWFORD
IN THE NEXT REVIVE OMAHA MAGAZINE
@[100001709629160:2048:Terence Crawford] cemented his status as King of Omaha Sports Figures by dispatching Dierry Jean in a WBO super lightweight bout on October 24 before 11,000 hometown fans at the CenturyLink Center arena.
Crawford, who's quickly become The People's Champ, imposed his will on the game but overmatched contender from Canada. He dropped Jean three times and had him in serious trouble again when awarded a 10th round technical knockout. The Omaha native carried the fight from the opening bell, using superior boxing skills and decisive height and reach advantages to repeatedly back Jean against the ropes and in the corners, landing nearly at will when pressing the action. The few times Dierry managed an attack, Crawford countered with combination barrages that left the challenger bloodied and bruised.
The end was never in doubt because Crawford was never in trouble. It was just a matter of when Derry would go or when the referee would stop the scheduled 12-rounder.
The event marked another coronation for Crawford, who's gone from a hungry kid just looking for a shot to a mature champion on the cusp of being one of his sport's highest paid big names. Along the way he's captured the hearts and minds of a city he's proud to call his own. From the moment this local hero entered the arena that night amidst entourage members holding aloft his two title belts, the fighter exuded the confidence and star quality associated with sports icons.
In the days before the fight Jean and his manager called out Crawford, vowing to take his lightweight belt to Canada. When Jean trash talked during the bout Crawford first let his fists do the talking before variously chirping back, stomping the canvas and smiling at the crowd as if to say, "I've got this" and "He's mine."
During the HBO interview just after the fight's conclusion Crawford taunted Jean and his manager in the ring with, "Did you get what you were looking for?" The crowd erupted in cheers. He also got a big response when he answered commentator Max Kellerman's question about the source of his fierce fighting nature with, "Where I'm from…" and gestured to friends and family who share the same neighborhood he does. He also expressed love for all the support Omaha gives him. The way he handled everything, from the crowd to the media to Jean, and still took care of business showed a professional athlete with real poise and presence. The more the spotlight shines on him, the more the boxing world discovers he's also a humanitarian with a deep commitment to his community.
At the post-fight press conference, where WBO head Bob Arum sat next to him and all but crowned him the fight organization's next superstar, Crawford was the calm, confident picture of Boxing's Next Big Thing. Crawford's already the toast of this town.
READ THE ENTIRE STORY IN THE NEXT REVIVE OMAHA and
LOOK FOR IT, TOO, ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE MY INSIDE STORIES AND ON MY BLOG, LEOADAMBIGA.COM'](https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-0/s600x600/12196186_10200877284969661_1134190349754642721_n.jpg?oh=eb5af3b85f8b4377e31320ebef6eb726&oe=5719270E)
!['RANDOM INSPIRATION Got a call out of the blue yesterday afternoon from an 86-year-old man in Omaha. He's a retired Jewish American retailer. He'd just finished reading my November Reader cover story about The Education of a WASP and the segregation issues that plagued Omaha. He just wanted to share how much he enjoyed it and how he felt it needed to be seen by more people. [ 374 more words. ]
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/11/19/random-inspiration'](https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xla1/v/t1.0-0/p480x480/12241543_10200912545611155_3992960899687896090_n.jpg?oh=f67590bc9a3217ec2ebc57dbef468a66&oe=570CFB17)
NEARING A PERSONAL SOCIAL MEDIA MILESTONE
NEARING A PERSONAL SOCIAL MEDIA MILESTONE
As my blog nears 500,000 unique visits – that’s half a million – in the span of just over five years since I launched the site, I am grateful that so many folks have discovered or in some cases rediscovered my work. I never imagined this platform could reach so many people, but it has, and without my ever paying a cent to advertise it. Those visits have all come through word of mouth and searches. To all those who support my work, thank you. if you’re already following my blog, Leo Adam Biga’s My Inside Stories at leoadambiga.com, thanks for the follow, If you’d like to become a follower, please do. My blog also feeds into my Facebook page, My Inside Stories, which I invite you to Like if you already haven’t.
My stories and posts about people, their passions and their magnificent obsessions are meant to entertain, inform, inspire. Explore and enjoy.
My Inside Stories
My blog, leoadambiga.com, features my stories about people, their passions and their magnificent obsessions. The blog also feeds into my Facebook page, My Inside Stories-
https://www.facebook.com/LeoAdamBiga/.
However you access my work, thank you for showing interest in what I do. If you like what you see, please Follow and Like.
Happy holiday!
Leo Adam Biga's My Inside Stories 