Gregory Crouch's Blog, page 28

The official winery of China’s Wings in the USA Today!

In a post I made some months ago, I made Cartograph Wines, run by my dear friends Serena Lourie and Alan Baker, the official winery of China’s Wings.

Well, in exciting and breaking news, here are Serena, Alan, and Cartograph featured in a USA Today article about small businesses using technology to gain a competitive edge.

The story includes a nice video of Laura Petrecca explaining how Serena and Alan are using social media and technology to connect with their customers and promote Cartograph.

And here’s a photo I love of Serena, Alan, and me hamming it up at their tasting room, Garagiste Healdsburg, this past April.

With Serena and Alan and a bottle of Cartograph in April 2012

They make excellent wines — try some for Christmas!

A C-47 that once flew the Hump for CNAC is back in the air!

Exciting stuff! The folks at the Historic Flight Foundation in Everett, Washington, have restored to flying condition a C-47 that once flew the Hump for CNAC, the China National Aviation Corporation.

The airplane began service flying the Hump for CNAC as a C-47 in 1944. It briefly passed through Claire Chennault’s hands in the late 1940s before making it’s way stateside, to Pan American Airways, in 1949. It flew in Pan Am livery as a DC-3 for several years before entering service as an executive transport plane. The Historic Flight Foundation restored in to its full former glory in its Pan Am heyday.

I wished they’d have decided to do it up in CNAC regalia, since it’s probably the only plane that flew for CNAC that’s currently in flying condition, but it’s great to have it back in the air regardless.

If the Historic Flight Foundation can help me match this plane’s registration numbers to its CNAC fleet number, I might be able to match it to some stories that happened in that very airplane. And I’m sure I’ll know some guys who flew it.

Here’s the article about the restoration in Flying magazine.

It’s worth clicking on the Historic Flight Foundation’s website to hear the engine growl they have playing as intro music.

I recommend the Michigan War Studies Review

If you’re interested in military history, I strongly suggest perusing the Michigan War Studies Review, an online scholarly journal affiliated with the Michigan War Studies Group dedicated to reviewing books that treat with military history.

The War Studies Review has 7 years worth of book reviews posted, and they’re superb. Note, they’re book reviews, by subject matter experts, not book summaries, as is most published stuff that tries to pass itself off as reviews online and in print. I’ve sampled quite a number of the reviews, and where they intersect subjects and/or books I’m familiar with, I generally find myself in agreement with their analysis, as in this review of Frank McLynn’s The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph, 1942-1945, or thinking, “Hmmm, maybe I should have considered that…”

Michigan War Studies Group

I had the opportunity to make a China’s Wings presentation to the War Studies Group three weeks ago, which sparked a really rewarding discussion with 12-15 history professors (loosely) affiliated with the University of Michigan. My only regret is that we didn’t have more time. Happily, James Holoka, editor of the War Studies Review, found a subject matter expert willing to review China’s Wings. I’m really looking forward to the criticism.

On the War Studies Group website, I recommend their “Internet Resources” page, which has a long list of links to useful and interesting military-history related websites.

How I organize my non-fiction research

A non-fiction book project generates a colossal volume of information. Keeping it organized is crucial. Here’s a look at how I do it, and an overview of how I’m hoping to use Evernote to do it digitally.

Today, I’m building on yesterday’s post lauding the utility of Evernote. The drawing posted below shows how I’m using Evernote notebooks to organize the various stories I’m researching in the hopes of expanding each one into a book proposal.

The line of boxes down the left side are the different Evernote notebooks I’ve established to hold relevant information.

Proj # 1, 2, and 3 are my three story ideas, and each one set up as a notebook. And since Evernote allows you to nest notebooks inside of other notebooks, in each of the three, I’ve nested the six notebooks I’ve shown growing out of Proj #2. I store the relevant “notes” inside of each one of those six sub-notebooks.

(And since Evernote allows us to attach “tags” to each note, I’m using the tag feature to identify source notes relevant to each story scene. You can attach any number of different tags to a note, which is great if a certain factoid pertains to more than one scene.)

In the notebook “Organizational Stuff”, I’ve created notes for each of the following: bibliography, characters, people to thank, questions, quotes, timelines, and vocabulary.

For everybody who has asked me how I remembered who helped me during the eight years it took to write China’s Wings, here is your answer — I kept a list of names in a Word file. And even then I made one crucial mistake, forgetting to add Tom Lambert and Theresa Ho. An omission that haunts me.)

“Characters” is a list of the names I encounter in my reading. Not all of whom will make it into the final book — indeed, most of them won’t — but my comprehensive list of names helps me recognize relationships between people in the milieu about which I’m writing.

“Questions” are questions I need to answer. “What is an aileron horn?”  for example. “What changed in 1944/1945 that made  Bond want to get Pan Am’s investment out of China?” for another.

“Quotes” holds quotes from other writers or speakers relevant to the topic that I find amusing, helpful, or are things I might want to use as front pieces for chapters or parts of the book.

“Timeline” is a list, in order, of what happened when. Which I find key to answering the absolutely crucial and central question of narrative non-fiction: “What happened?”

“Vocabulary” is where I store definitions and descriptions pertinent to each story’s milieu.

This builds on the Practicing History and Some of My Best Friends posts I made last January, and on June’s How the Sausage Got Made, which describe and illustrate the decidedly low-tech organizational technique I used for China’s Wings.  Indeed, I’m thinking Evernote’s notebooks and notes are going to largely replace the 4×6 cards I used for China’s Wings.

This is what the final pile of China’s Wings research looked like. I’m thinking Evernote might replace a significant portion of that — and make it a hell of a lot more portable, which means that for my next project I’ll be less trapped in my office than I was while writing China’s Wings.

If you have any questions — or suggestions as to how I might do this better — please don’t hesitate to make contact.

In my next post, I’ll probably talk about how I take notes to fill the various “sources” notebooks…

 

Powerful research tool

I know Evernote isn’t new software, so those digital savants among you are probably already aware of it, but it’s new to me, and it’s changing my life.

I’ve never stumped for a product that wasn’t a book on my website before, and I promise I won’t do it often, but please forgive me for recommending Evernote. I’m finding it to be incredibly helpful, and I want my friends to know about it.

Amazingly, it’s free.

It was introduced to me about two weeks ago by my friend Bo White at the University of Michigan, where I’d gone to give a presentation about China’s Wings to the Michigan War Studies Group and one on Enduring Patagonia to the English Department’s Mountaineering Culture Studies Group, organized by the indomitable and fascinating Amrita Dhar. (And I’d be happy to speak at your university, too, should you be interested.)

Anyway, back to Evernote.

“Remember Everything” is their motto, and it is proving to be exactly the digital tool I wish I’d had at my disposal when I was researching China’s Wings. I’ve got the program downloaded to my computer and the Evernote App downloaded to my iPhone, and Evernote more-or-less instantly synchs data between the two. ( Evernote data apparently lives in a cloud.) I’m finding it incredibly useful to have the full body of my research available to me wherever I have cell phone reception.

I’m also using it to keep my to-do lists, lists of books I want to read, movies I want to watch, websites I’d like to revisit, and I’m sure I’ll use it for a whole host of other things as my understanding of its scope improves. (For to-do lists, the data synch between iPhone and home computer is fantastic.)

In my next post, I’ll show how I’ve used Evernote to organize my book research.

And people, please bring this sort of thing to my attention if you think there’s a tool out there that I ought to be using. (I’m looking at you, Tom Lambert!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving.

CNAC Forever!

Cheers,

Greg

The Honey Trap

In support of the delight I’m taking in every salacious detail of the General Petraeus/Paula Broadwell scandal, aka “Generals who can’t control their privates,” I’m posing a link to Philip Knightly’s History of the Honey Trap article posted at foreignpolicy.com.

All In!

 

Ghosts of WWII

Here’s an article about the Ghosts of War project operated by Dutch historian Jo Teeuwisse in which he blends photos taken during the Second World War with photos taken on the same spot today.

Enjoy — it’s fascinating stuff! It’s also well-worth following the links in the article to Teeuwisse’s other Ghosts projects.

China’s Wings and the U.S. Marine Corps

The top two photos — Corporal Josh Taylor of the United States 1st Marine Division reading China’s Wings during his recently completed tour in Afghanistan — spark a pair of connections for me. The first is to Corporal Taylor himself, whose father, Gary Taylor of Grand Prairie, Texas, served in my rifle platoon when I was the platoon leader of 1/A Co./5-21 Infantry. I hung out with Gary and his wife Tracy after a China’s Wings event in Houston a few months ago — the first time I’d seen them since 1992. Also joining us that night was Roderick McKenzie, another member of 1st Platoon. In 1989, we all invaded Panama together. It was a memorable evening, and for me, pretty inspiring to see how well Gary and Rod have done for themselves after their stint in the Army. A few years ago, I remember Gary running down the details of his family’s tradition of military service, and it left me stunned — the Taylor family has chewed a measurable percentage of the 20th Century’s worst dirt. And now with Josh on active service, some of the 21st Century’s. The bottom two pics show the three of us in Houston this past July, and 1st Platoon in Panama.

I especially enjoyed the time spent with Gary’s wife, Tracy… she was fun, and funny, and so NICE, and I’ve got to admit, that wasn’t the impression I’d formed of her back at Fort Ord. I learned the reason why in Houston — apparently, in 1988, with the Texas oil industry in a severe slump, Gary had gone off and joined the Army without talking to her about it.

“Yeah, I was pretty much pissed off all three of those years,” Tracy quipped that night.

The second China’s Wings connection to these photos is through Tracy Devine, my editor. Her father was a 1st Division Marine in World War Two and participated in the division’s bloody fight for the island of Peliliu — which he described as “that hellhole” in a brief email correspondence.

Perhaps unjustly, I’m taking quite a bit of pride in both connections.

ChinaFile & China’s Wings

Exciting new China-centric website!

The Center on U.S. – China Relations at the Asia Society is publishing an exciting new English-language online magazine about China and Sino-American relations. It’s called ChinaFile, at www.chinafile.com, and the website is currently in beta test.

It looks like it’ll grow into an excellent place to keep up-to-date with the latest China news.

The website has a whole section devoted to books about China, and they were good enough to post a China’s Wings page and interview me about the book. Here’s the link to the three-minute video.

It was fun getting interviewed in front of a MIG-15 in Chinese regalia!