Alex and Nazanin contemplating their newborn nephew Benno.

Alex & Adam’s story “The Giant Pool of Money” has just been named one of the top ten pieces of journalism in the past decade. The list was compiled by the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU; they started with eighty nominees, and a very distinguished panel of judges selected the top ten, including books by Barbara Ehrenreich, Jane Mayer, Lawrence Wright and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, and Pulitzer-winning newspaper journalism from the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Washington Post. Alex & Adam’s story, which ran as a full-hour episode of This American Life in May, 2008, was the first really good explanation of what was still being called “the subprime mortgage crisis”; it became the most-downloaded episode in the history of the show.

Introducing the list, NYU Journalism Professor Mitchell Stephens said “Ten years ago New York University, using some of the same judges, selected ‘the Top 100 Works of Journalism of the Twentieth Century in the United States.‘ It is our belief that the best journalism of the first decade of the twenty-first century belongs in that company.”

Like I said, pretty good company. Congratulations, Alex and Adam!

First, the DuPont/Columbia Award; then, the George Polk Award; now, the Peabody. In broadcast journalism, those are the three biggies, and the Peabody is arguably the biggest of them all. Joan and I are bursting with joy for you, Alex and Adam. We knew that show was good work, spectacularly good work, when we first heard it, and it’s good to see that judgment confirmed. Keep it up.

(Thanks to Adam’s dad for the photo.)

Ace was an unlikely object of attachment. Aside from his handsomeness, he had nothing much to commend him as a pet; not much in the way of curiosity, or friendliness, or personality. Rabbits are prey animals; as Alex observed, they behave as if anything that moves intends to eat them. Their bodies bend in just one plane, to move very fast in a straight line, and they are not at all sinuous, like a cat. Ace was cute, after his fashion; he lost his fearfulness enough to come to us when we came into his room, sit up on his haunches, and beg for a favorite treat: a styrofoam-like corn log. He’d take it gently in his teeth, drop to all fours, and promptly lose complete interest in us.

Still, we were attached to Ace, at least enough to get choked up and shed some tears when we had him euthanized this morning. Over just a couple of days, he stopped using his litter box, became drastically constipated, stopped eating and urinating, and lost control of one hind leg and one front leg. But his ears were erect to the end, and, as he sat trembling in the banana box in which we carried him to the vet, he appeared to relax as Joan scratched his forehead – the only physical attention he ever seemed to respond to. The vet assured us that the euthanasia was carried out painlessly, and asked us if we wanted Ace cremated and his ashes saved in a ceramic urn. We said, “No, we’ll just take the body home”, which seemed to surprise the vet, and which saved us $230. We received the carcass in a cardboard box, neatly taped up, and just a few hours ago, I gave Ace a proper burial in the dumpster behind the Brew House. I would be happy with a similar disposal of my carcass, but, alas, that won’t be an option for those left to handle the matter.

Ace’s passing has left me pondering. I’m leading a study group in the teachings of the Buddha, and one issue that’s caused a lot of discussion is the matter of karma and rebirth. If the Buddha was speaking literally and with true knowledge, as I think is likely, then Ace’s birth as a rabbit is likely the result of unwholesome karma by some divine or human being back in time – perhaps a person whose bullying behavior as a schoolboy resulted in rebirth as a fearful timid being in the animal realm. But as rabbit lives go, Ace’s was a fortunate one. He was never caged, never tormented, kept warm in the winter and moved to an air-conditioned room through the hot days of summer. And he lived a long life. He was probably nine years old when he died, and the vet told us that most domestic rabbits don’t live much past five or six. He was lively and, as far as we could tell, happy until just a few days ago. So there must have been some mitigating karma in the chain.

And the question then becomes, how does a fortunately born rabbit act with wholesome intention, so that, next time around, he might achieve an even more fortunate birth – move one or two steps up in the chain of beings? Was Ace, perhaps, less destructive than his animal instincts would lead him to be; did he intentionally not destroy the more valuable books on the lowest shelves of his room, or did he make a special effort to keep his stool in the litter box? Did the very slight affection he seemed to display for us demonstrate something like generosity and respect for beings closer to enlightenment than he was? I hope so; if there is some karmic principle that determines the luck of the draw, I hope that Ace has achieved a yet more fortunate birth, one that brings him closer to release from the dukkha that characterizes all samsaric existence.

There are all sorts of other thoughts that Ace’s death has set shimmering in my mind. One concerns that lingering attachment. It was clear, from the vet’s response to us, that we were demonstrating considerably more equanimity in the face of Ace’s imminent demise than most of the people she dealt with. She might even have found us a bit callous. But we shed tears. It’s clear that I am far from ready to abandon completely and without reserve my clinging to the things in this world in which I have found pleasure.

I had another thought, entirely political and non-buddhistic. In assenting to Ace’s euthanasia, I am convinced that we acted rightly and in the old rabbit’s best interests. Both law and the opinion of the multitude support us in that (although I am sure that there are those who would dissent). Now, why is it proper to help an animal, a pet, to evade the worst pangs of the dying process, but it is not proper to so so for a human being? Why may we not help a loved one to an easeful death, even with their conscious assent, even in response to their heartfelt pleading? Why are we are forced by law to prolong a painful and terminal process beyond all natural limits? Why must we maintain the pain of those who are dying and of those who love them? Why can’t we imagine a way to allow responsible euthanasia for those who have requested it, either in conscious pain or with foresight in advance of their inevitable decline?

Those are important questions, more important and more momentous than the question of why those who inherit my carcass can’t deposit it in the nearest dumpster or leave it in the woods for scavengers to transmute to fertilizing shit.

Now, returning one last time to those tears. Is it, in fact, Ace that I remain attached to, or did his passing stimulate tears in response to a much deeper and more karmically disastrous attachment? Let me close by quoting Gerard Manley Hopkin’s magical poem:

Listen. You will be enlightened and entertained; you don’t get a chance like that often.

(Disclaimer: My son is one of the producers of the show.)

We put her body in an old pillow case that we no longer used, one that she had slept on many times. We weighted it with rocks, sailed with our friends (and hers) the Hudsons, out to the deep water between the Head of the Cape and Pond Island, and released her, to be reclaimed by the waters that she spent so many hours, over the years, watching, with who knows what emotion or comprehension.

Melissa was a good cat; gentle with kids, responsive, easy on the furniture. She was a patient traveler and loved her annual visits to Maine. Up until a few years ago, she’d be out at night up here, hunting in the woods and eating what she caught. She was companionable; not a lap sitter, but one who sat beside you and purred when you stroked her. Whenever possible, she was where we were, sleeping on my bed or my office desk or the porch glider or her basket on the kitchen work table. She seems to have enjoyed our company, and we enjoyed hers.

We will miss her. Here is a movie we made of her unceremonious burial in beautiful Penobscot Bay.

In his Manifesto, Alex talks about how to determine whether you’re onto something that has a chance to succeed as a story.

Alex gives lots of examples. He also includes links to three stories that his students have produced as class assignments. The first assignment was to produce an audio profile; I was particularly moved by Nazanin Rafsanjani’s story of a woman trying to live on minimum wage. Partway in, the story drops suddenly into one of the most clear-eyed and un-self-pitying introspections I’ve heard. Gripping work. I’m looking forward to following the class over the next couple of months, to see how they develop under Alex’s tutelage.