ForbesOnTech

John MacLean's "The Esperanza Fire; Arson, Murder and the Agony of Engine 57"

If you’re interested in an incredible book on how Southern California wildfires can become untamed killers in mere seconds, look no further than John MacLean’s new book “The Esperanza Fire.”

MacLean’s skill in telling the interrelated stories of arson, murder and the horrific deaths of a US Forest USFS) five-man engine crew that roared through Banning Pass is beyond superlative. I thought It would take two days to read “The Esperanza Fire.”

I was wrong, It’s such a great work, once I picked it up  I couldn’t put it aside. MacLean does the best job I’ve ever seen when it comes to chronicling the ingredients of a classic Southern California fire storms. What makes this story so compelling is MacLean’s reporting on the arson/murder and incident investigations associatedwith this 2006 fire.

But most of all, MacLean doesn’t scrimp when it comes to filling out the characteristics of wild lands firefighters. It’s the character development of this book as well as the detailed reporting that establishes MacLean as the absolute leader in this category of writing.

The task of transmitting the information needed by lay people to understand the complex components of wild lands firestorms isn’t easy, yet it’s become this author’s hallmark.

The 2006 Esperanza Fire which killed five firefighters was deliberately set by an arsonist, Raymond Oyler of Banning, California. Part of the story of this fire was the trial and resulting death sentence met out in a Riverside County,CA, courtroom. The Oyler case was the first time in recent history that an arsonist has received a death sentence, despite the fact that other arson-set
fireshave resulted in the deaths of firefighters or civilians.

MacLean doesn’t spend much time on Ray Oyler’s character development. After reading this book I was left wondering what events in life turned this man into someonew ho started multiple fires. But what Maclean’s book about the Esperanza fire makes very clear is that the possibility that
fire fighters would be burned to death fighting fire never concerns an arsonist.

Some of the reporting in this book is grisly. Descriptions of the discovery of still burning fire fighters bodies are hard to read. The one scene that stands out is a radio call from the captain of another USFS engine from the Idyllwild, CA, area calling for crewmen to bring “their banjos”
(the nickname for Forest service one-gallon water canteens) and then and pouring water on their friends.

Overall, “The Esperanza Fire” is a capstone work by John MacLean. It’s a phenomenal memorial to the five USFS firefighters who perished in this fire and other wild lands firefighters who make life possible for the estimated 1.5 million Californians who live on the chaparral side of the interface between urban sprawl and incendiary manzanita patches.

I recommend this book completely and fervently hope MacLean or  another author such as Joseph Wambaugh someday turn their full attention on USFS Hotshot or smoke jumper crews.—Jim Forbes, from the wilds of Escondido, CA on 03/16/2013.

Note—If the name MacLean sets off sirens, it’s because he is
the son of Norman MacLean, author of “A River Runs Through It” and the grandson
of Missoula, MTl, Presbyterian minister and master trout fisherman John Norman
MacLean. He has written two other works on wild lands fires.

 

Using Google Earth to kickstart Next Generation Storytelling

With a lot of work, and a little bit of video editing magic,Google Earth has the potential to transform story telling. Specifically, satellite views have the potential to draw media audiences directly into a story, providing multiple contextual sources that can b used for dramatic effect or to show
multiple view points.

The best way to explain what I want to do is to go to Google Earth and take a trip up the tributaries that feed the American River in El Dorado and Placer counties in north central California. With readers perched on the Google Earth eagle, I can soar them up and down fast flowing waterways and
over mineral rich escarpments.

The best example of what I want to include in online versions of a book is illustrated by the producers of PBS’ Frontline documentaries who use Google Earth or other satellite imagery to provide
geographic context. On the surface, it seems like a simple task. But  it’s definitely not easy. Simple software that would let users provide over views, fly overs and zoom downs doesn’t  exist for consumers, yet.

Over the last month I’ve experimented with software from Adobe, Microsoft and Apple and come away wanting.

I don’t mean to be petulant, but all I want are a simple set of tools that let me easily pan, zoom in and out of aerial views and then weave my story into those rich vistas.

There is software that captures the essence of what I'm searching for. Unfortunately, most of it is designed for virtual tours. TourWrist – a stand out from among last year’s Demo companies is a good example, although it seems to be designed for terrestrial and intrerior design view.

While my story ends up in ground truths, To present a complete package to my readers, I want and need to startin space, zoom down like a hungry bird of prey, and then let my readers soar up
canyons, mountain tops and finally settle down next to rough campsites.

Because Google Earth could be the focusing lens for a new type of storytelling, I believe the best solution will  be a cloud- based applications designed from the beginning to work with Google or other suppliers of satellite and photogrammetry images (including topographic maps).

I also think this is an example of an application that could have an inside track on the race to liquidity. Come on, go ahead and tell me Google, Adobe, Trimble Navigation, or AutoDesk wouldn’t jump right up and snatch this type of an application right from a nice warm incubator.

TO the surveyors in my family, I guess the seed didn’t really fall very far from the theodolite.—Jim Forbes on 1/25/2013

Mark Bowden's The Finish the Killing of Osama Bin Laden--A must read

 

Mark Bowden’s book “TheFinish The Killing of Osama Bin Laden is an outstanding  look at the SEAL’s Raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan that resulted in the death of the world’s most wanted terrorist.

The Finish is very different from other Bowden works such as “Black Hawk Down” and “Killing Pablo” (Escobar) both of which focused on the tactical nature of warfare  or paramilitary police work. What sets Bowden’s latest work apart from other works on the bin Laden raid is that it look s at the strategy and the strategists who planned the raid.

I liked this book because its author clearly points out how members of the military, government agencies and the political leadership carefully winnowed thousands of leads before committing to raid OBL’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The Finish is loaded with the details and partially filled out decision matrixes that went into the raid’s planning. It is not based on sourcing from within SEAL Team Six or the Army’s Night Stalker aviation battalion. Despite this, Bowden is able to put readers right next to the executives and senior managers who planned and presented all sides of the proposed mission.

Mark Bowden’s portrait of the specialized Navy SEALs on this and other raiding parties is not the Hollywood image of buffed up “kill-em-all” frogmen but rather scholarly warriors who maintain mission focus despite frequent rotations in and out of combat operations to their homes in the Continental United States.

Bowden was given access to the president for his latest work. The biggest surprise in the author’s narrative was that the president made bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice a high priority early in his presidency.

Bowden uses comments from military officers and other high level sources to paint President Obama as a measured risk taker who encourages staff to present well-reasoned arguments for and against scenarios, not as someone who obviously shoots from the hip.

The Finish is a book I suspect I’ll loan out to friends who share my interest in world affairs. It deserves a place alongside Steven Coll’s “Ghost Wars” (which  details the US involvement in the war in Afghanistan) that includes a great deal of information on Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.—Jim Forbes on 10/30/2012.

 

 

Off To Best The Elephant-- Loading up for a Field Reporting Trip to Nor Cal and "The Angle"--Reporting a Good Tale-- but no Leaping Lizards or Jumping Frogs Just Yet!

At last, I’ve completed the basic reading list needed to intelligently report the story I’m working on. The important stuff—raw notes, basic questions, clean maps converted from their native yellowed states into crisp PDFs now exist on a 750 GB backup appliance that’s sitting comfortably and safely in my bright red back pack nestled snuggly against my ThinkPad X61 touch screen portable, and the PDF printouts are in the first tabbed section of my “field notebook” which has grown from one inch to one and a half inches in the last ten days. In addition to sparkly black and white PDFs versions of maps,. I also have quarter-section topo maps of the area where I’m pursuing my winter research. Oh and a nice new warm oversize sleeping bag plus a pink Snuggy. Technology aside, the other essentials for this trip include a digital audio recorder, a large thermos and a new bottle of instant coffee, some granola bars and my winter and snow proof insulated jacket, The battery boosted heated socks are a sop to my age and physical condition. The gloves aren’t battery heated so, I’m also carrying a supply of chemical heating packs. I leave for the California Angle (Nevada County and the town of Alleghany) later this week. I‘ll be up there a couple of days, camping most of the time in my just paid-off Kia hamster van. Reporting stories was always the most enjoyable part of my career and I’m anxious to rekindle that spark. So off I go later this week to the Hills Across from Placerville Where the Winds Set my Soul Free—Jim Forbes Off on a Great Adventure 12/05/2010..

ALChemists of Loss- Quantifying the reaction Ingredients of Recent Economic Disasters

A new book, attempting explain recent massive economic failures has occupied my reading time for the last several weeks.

“Alchemists of Loss” by Kevin Dowd and Martin Hutchinson--is a wide ranging work that makes the point that the wave of recent financial crisis had been swelling years before they broke.

What impresses me about Alchemists is its fine detail and organization.

Dowd and Hutchinson rip the jugular of Keynesian economics, and offer some interesting suggestions on how our economy can avoid repeating the same making the point that government intervention played a pivotal role in the crash of the the US and British economic systems.

While I somewhat agree with the author’s anti-Keynesian premise; I do believe there is a place for government regulation when it serves the greater public good and helps to bolster public confidence in our economic system..

What sets Alchemist’s apart from other anti-Keynesian arguments is the book’s organization. It’s extremely logical and each of its six sections can stand alone.

As an active Varsity cheerleader in the DotCom era, I found the fourth and fifth parts of this book thought provoking. “Alchemists of Loss is a thought provoking end to my summer list. I recommend it highly. But, I’m still waiting for an author to document Silicon Valley in the late 20^th Century.—Jim Forbes on 08/16/2010.

Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure:The Great American Road Trip; a Recommended Read

 

There is small fun book on that focuses in on the Harry Truman post-presidency days that I recommend as the perfect week end read. Called Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: the True Story of s Great American Road Trip, the book is fun, minutely researched and paints an excellent picture of the 33^rd President as he and Bess Truman made  a 2,500 mile road trip in his new Chrysler New Yorker from his home in Independence, MO eastward.

Written by Mathew Algeo, Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure is filled with insight that’s missing in most of the other books about Truman books I’ve read. Allgeo’s detailed and ground truth-based reporting in this work sets this work apart from just about anything that’s ever been written about Truman before.

The premise of this book is so well executed that you sense you’re in the back seat of the Truman’s car\ as they had east from Missouri to the DC area. You glimpse Harry Truman’s love of a powerful car and wife Bess’ reminders to watch the speedometer as the highways and countryside reveal themselves.

The curtain is also lifted on Truman’s seething resentments towards Eisenhower and others in this book, but unlike large biographies, you get glimpses of it and its basis as the miles click by.

I particularly liked this book because the author’s use of  first-hand interviews with people Harry and Bess Truman met on their road trip and because Algeo, more than any other Truman title author uses this book to show what forces shaped America’s last “common man” president. Because of this book, I now understand Truman’s interest in building highways and his deep knowledge of that process.

Harry Truman’s goal in his Great American Road Trip was Philadelphia where he was to deliver a speech to an annual meeting of the Reserve Officer’s Association.(harry Truman was a reservist colonel).Algeo’s section on the speech is  little flat, but he records its high points and does an excellent job of showing Truman’s politeness in the face of adversity, qualities that I believe reinforce the image of our 33^rd President as the last “everyman” to occupy the White House.

Mathew Algeo’s  “Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: the True Story of a Great American Road Trip,” is the perfect long weekend, or vacation read for baby boomers whose lives were impacted by this altogether remarkable and straight shooting Missourian. I recommend it highly. Even though I’m not a MoPar fan

But wait Dude, the end of this trip isn’t in San Dimas..— Jim Forbes on 05/38/2010.

Fire on the Moutain: A Great Wild Lands Firefighting Read.

Most  book genres have their captains.  Mine include: Joseph Wambaugh for nonfiction crime and dark cop humor; Elmore Leonard for mysteries; Fredrick Forsythe for twisty  Intrigue; W.E.B. Griffin for military fiction; The late Leland Fredrick Cooley for historical fiction as well as David McCullough and Doris Kearns Goodwin for biographies.

But when it comes to outdoor writing on family name stands heads and shoulders above any others; MacLean.

If the name MacLean quietly resonates  in the back of your mind, or conjures up the odor of a clean mountain stream or fresh caught trout being gently put  into your woven cane creel, it’s because Norman MacLean (author of the autobiographical “A River Runs Through It”) is the clan’s patriarch writer.

But as much as I love a good coming of age fishing yarn, I love the MacLean family’s writing on wildfires and wild lands firefighters even more. The MacLean family has produced four works on this topic beginning with Norman MacLean’s “Young Men and Fire” (which took a thorough look at one of the US Forest Service’s first modern era firefighting tragedies, the near complete loss of a Smoke Jumper string in the Mann Gulch (Montana) Fire in 1949.

Norman’s son, John continues the tradition of wild lands firefighting, writing four books on the subject. The one that stands out like a flaming sequoia in a forest of less stately evergreens  is “Fire on the Mountain, The True Story of The South Canyon Fire.

Popularly known as “the Storm King Fire” this Western Slope Rocky Mountain Fire has the horrific distinction of killing 14 wild lands fire fighters, including the near complete loss of a highly trained U.S. Forest Service Hot Shot crew from Prineville OR.

MacLean has the uncanny ability to put you on the lines with fire crews, and his writing is so intense you can almost smell the acrid odor of Gambel oaks torching off in the blazing scrub around the crews. It’s not the technical flora descriptions that sets this book apart from a forest of other works that have been written recently about US Forest Service and bureau of Land Management Crews, it’s a reporter’s passionate telling of the lives lost in the fire and in the mistakes made by the numerous bureaucracies and petty fiefdoms that now govern wild lands’ firefighting.

What’s remarkable about “Fire on the Mountain, The True Story of The South Canyon Fire.” is the granular detail MacLean puts into the telling of his story. He doesn’t pull punches  and he has an outdoorsman’s talent for pointing out the small details that compound to turn an slightly beyond the ordinary wild fire into a terrible tragedy.

Fire on the Mountain wasn’t an instant book written in fury after the tragedy in western Colorado. The author has said he spent about five years on the project. This work is not a dispassionate recounting of incident reports or participant’s memories. The one section that stands out in my mind is MacLean’s thinly disguised disappointment when after action reports shifted the blame for the tragedy onto the victims. And it’s in this section that the author gives voice to the 14 firefighters who lost their lives in this blaze.

Norman MacLean’s Fire on the Mountain doesn’t portray wild lands firefighters as members of some sort of latter day foreign legion. He provides great images of the individual Hot Shot firefighters, heliattack crews and Smoke Jumpers as dedicated professionals whose exemplary “Can Do” code defines a unique profession.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to see the immediate benefit of great reporting and dedication to a beat. I also think it would be a good read for any parent whose late adolescent children are contemplating employment in wild lands firefighting. GO ahead, add it to your collection.—Jim Forbes 03/13/2010.

Refining the Technological Ingredients for Field Research; My First Book

Packing for field research has me thinking about what I really need to have with me, what type of computing or photographic equipment I need to tote,  and more importantly what  software really fits with what I need to do while working away from my comfortable networked home.

I’m not ashamed to admit I’m kind of a hardware focused guy. SO until I buy a Lenovo Skylight in about four months, I’ve settled on a platform experience has taught me to trust: A Lenovo ThinkPad X60 with a communications centric configuration Specifically, excellent Wi-Fi that’s as noted for its range as it is its reliability in connecting to disparate 802.11 networks, plus an integrated EvDo Modem that lets me attach to Verizon’s data network using an inexpensive day pass. On top of that it has a keyboard I can pound on for hours on end without worrying about punching a key switch out f its mounting. But even that’s not enough for my communications needs while I’m up between Marysville and Quincy, CA, researching the topic that interests me. And having gone through multiple evacuations in front of fast moving wildfires, Skype s the one communications program that I’ve come to rely on as much as my cellphone. But I do have one wish when it comes to Skype. I want a handset that can be recharged through a USB cable and which does not require I tote along a separate AC adapter. I’m reasonably sure at least one Skype phone with this feature is in the works, and Im hopeful it will be delivered before I make my second research trip late this spring.

Although I use a beta version of Office 2010, I’d hesitant about relying on any beta application for something as important as original research.  But I’m willing to put my faith in Microsoft, knowing that if I need to, I can easily switch over to with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Of course the big qualifier here is if I can hit an internet connection (which explains the importance of communication features in the portable I’ll be taking on this first trip.

Although I’m taking two digital cameras, I don’t intend on doing photo editing in the field.  I want to reserve task for my home desktop (an HPO TouchSmart 600) which has a big screen plus the raw horsepower and graphics capability to make short shrift of a processor-intensive purpose. I  do plan on offloading any photos I take to illustrate my story or help me remember something on the CLickFree backup appliance that’s part of the technology I’m taking into the field and I’m toying with the idea of buying a digital camcorder for this project as soon as I get my tax return. But there is some technology I need to learn to use for this project,. I want to geotag photos of locations and add short metadata files to help me remember details behind the photo. I’m sure there’s technology available that does this, so I’d appreciate pointers from anyone who reads this.

Thus far all of my field gear fits nicely in the back of my Kia Soul hamster van. If I decide to car camp, I can move my box of technology to the front seat, Fold down the back seats and stretch out in the back of my van, with more than enough room left over for my trusted guard dog, “Perro” (an 11 pound deer head Chihuahua of curious parentage).

I’ve told only a few friends what I want to write about, but several of my high school chums remember my interest in this topic as we backpacked the San Gabriel Mountains while we were teens.

But looking at this project, I’m more excited about it than I have been about anything since I produced the Demo technology showcase events. And I owe my confidence in being able to see the project through to a specific mentor, who encouraged me to follow my dream of being a writer years and years ago.  My eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Ruth Trumble, deserves to be remembered for inspiring so many of us baby boomers all those years ago. To the her memory, I say “thanks for showing me the way.”—Jim Forbes March 07,2010.

  

Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead-- an Atlantic Monthly Article that Beats Most Books by Social Media Consultants

In between bouts of weeding my two vegetable gardens and preemptively fighting leaf curl on my Avalon peach trees, I read a lot. My goal is to read two books a week. And while much of what I read is to prepare me for a book project I want to begin later this year, I remain intrigued by books attempting to link business practices with social media and customer-centric marketing.

I was deep into blogger/communications consultant Brian Solis’ new book, Engage, when I came across this month’s Atlantic Magazine, which has an all-too brief article on the business practices of the Grateful Dead. Written by the Atlantic’s Joshua Green, the piece is a must read for anyone who is professionally or personally involved in using social media to engage customers. Green suggests that in the age of customer centric marketing and direct connections with consumers, many businesses could benefit from how the Dead engaged its fans/customers. He also believes that the Dead Archives—which are at the University of California, Santa Cruz’ campus could be mined for future marketing books.

Green’s examples of how the Dead directly engaged its customers and profited from that experience is a good tale. More importantly it beats just about anything I’ve read recently that’s been written by any of the self-anointed social media gurus.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/management-secrets-of-the-grateful-dead/7918/

The Dead as management models? Dude, they just keep on trickin’—Jim Forbes on 03/05/2010.

Getting Ready for My First Book Project-- Tchnology That Goes With Me Into the Field

My mind has been taken up recently by a book idea that’s been building since I first became a reporter more than four decades ago.

I’ve always questioned whether or not I could turn out a non-fiction book on this specific subject and without realizing it, I’ve come to the decision that it’s time to start in earnest. I’m not going to give the title away in my blog, but this topic is something most of my friends and family have watched me immerse myself in since childhood.

Sitting to my left are three mid-sized boxes of research material including a lot of quantitative data on the subject. Pouring over the data I’ve come to realize that the topic for this book may be as viable today as it was over 150 years ago. Making sense of the numbers behind this subject hasn’t been easy, but watching the totals accumulate reinforces my growing belief that there’s a good book in this topic.

Crunching numbers has never been one of my strengths, but now I’ve reached the point where it’s time  to connect faces and stories and tales of explorations succeeded and failed to the numbers. It’s this part of the project that’s exciting to me.  The next phase is field research and proof of my preparation for this phase sits in a corner of my garage.

 To wit: out in a corner of my garage sit several boxes loaded with an insulated sleeping bag, an inflatable mattress, portable battery operated air pump, a new Sherpa stove, several old blackened by years of camping pots and pans, a small tent,, tarps and collapsible table chairs and my aged Coleman lantern. In a much sturdier wooden box are a mini CD recorder, cameras, a portable printer, and sundry electronic paraphernalia needed to use my computers, cell phones and GPS systems for days on end away from an electrical outlet. Oh and in an old briefcase that’s part of my pile I have an annotated collection of quarter sectional maps for drainages and geographic features that feed the mineral rich districts of northern California.

I’m not packing for a six week hump through the wilds of California, but I recognize the need to be prepared for things that might pop up unexpectedly—such as the need to pull a couple of big trout from Fuller Lake or to punch holes in a tin can from 100 feet away or so with my ancient Ruger .22 or the even older Tokarev semi-automatic pistol I brought home from Vietnam as a war trophy. I also have four volumes of Kevin Starr’s California historical works to keep my engaged while I do my field research.

I have my route all laid out on a Auto Club map of California, and my notepads, pens  and pencils are packed in my briefcase with my annotated maps.

I’m using technology to reduce the amount of paper I need to take into the field. High on this list is ClickFree’s back up appliance, which contains much of my text-based research and contact info, then comes my beloved Lenovo X60 ultra-portable with its integrated Verizon data networking card. And just in case there’s I’ve forgotten a file, I’m using a second backup solution that I can access from anywhere I have an Internet connection. I’ve been using Seagate technology’s Free Agent USB-based Free Agent backup device for several months in addition to ClickFree’s device. I love them both but it’s the addition of the networkable FreeAgent DockStar networking adapter that’s let me focus more on research and forget worrying that I left something behind when I start my research up in the northern part of the state on both sides of highway 49/

There are two things that are foregone conclusions as I move my research away from academic and commercial sources and into the field: The first is that my needing to access something back on my home network is a given; Secondly, that piece of information invariably will be in  the one folder I didn’t copy to the backup device I take into the field. That’s where Seagate’s DockStar networking adapter saves my bacon.

I’m trying to keep the amount of stuff I haul up to Northern California on this trip manageable.

But what really excites me is meeting 21st Century Argonauts tramping California’s riverbeds, mountains and hills in search of presumed fortunes.

I’ve waited all my life to research and write this.  At last, the boy from Azusa now in the autumn of his years has come full circle but has the skills and material to put the story to paper.

And the story has been there in plain sight all these years, just waiting for me to begin tromping the Hills of Placerville, where the winds and the tales of hopeful fortunes waft free. At long last I’m almost ready to write my first book. Jim Forbes on 2/23/2010.