Peter Osnos on the podcast, American Dippers in the mountains
Osnos talks books, presidents, and "repositioning;" American Dippers are "aquatic songbirds"
Greetings from Tabernash, Colorado. Lorin and I drove up here from Austin for a speaking engagement. It’s a joy to be in the mountains (the elevation here is about 8,300 feet) and to hike in cool weather among aspen trees. We have more driving and travel in store over the next couple of weeks. Thus, a short blast today, with two items:
Peter Osnos on the podcast talking about An Especially Good View
A pair of American Dippers, aka, "water ouzels"
Photo above is of an American Dipper in Nason Creek, Washington. Credit: GregTheBusker
Peter Osnos talks about his long career in journalism, publishing, and the future of media
By any measure, Peter Osnos has had a remarkable life. His career in journalism and publishing spans more than 50 years and includes, most recently, his memoir, An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen.
In this week’s episode of the Power Hungry Podcast, I talk with Osnos about his family’s remarkable escape from Warsaw in 1939, his stints as a reporter in Vietnam and Russia, why former Russian dissident Natan Sharansky is his personal hero, media trends, and publishing books by four presidents: Obama, Carter, Clinton, and Trump.
I will not pretend to be an impartial observer. Peter founded PublicAffairs, which has published all six of my books. Thus, I am grateful to him for giving me such a great opportunity. Since we first met about 20 years ago to talk about what would be my first book, Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron, I have talked to Peter many times. I knew some of his history, but I did not know just how remarkable his life story is. His parents escaped the Nazis in Poland, he was born in Mumbai, came to the U.S. as an infant, was raised in New York City, and then went on to be a top reporter at the Washington Post and after that, to a long career in book publishing. His memoir is filled with bold-faced names. As he told me in the podcast, Bill Clinton was “infuriatingly undisciplined.” Vernon Jordan was “truly a massively charismatic figure.”
We also talked about how the media business has changed. He said that the distribution of media has changed from one dominated by publisher push to consumer pull. Big media outlets are “no longer supported by advertising. Distribution is supported by the engagement of subscribers. And that’s a fundamental change,” he said. Osnos, who is now 77 years old, recently started a new imprint called Platform Books, which published his memoir. He said he has several projects in the queue in what he calls a “repositioning phase...I don’t like the term retirement because retirement implies you’re done.”
It was a fun conversation. Give it a listen.
Cinclus mexicanus in the Colorado high country
On Tuesday, while driving on US 40 toward Winter Park, we made a short stop at a small campground on the south side of the road. The campground was next to West Fork Clear Creek. Within five minutes of getting out of the car, we spotted a bird I was hoping to see on this trip: the American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus). In fact, we saw two of them: a parent and a juvenile. The baby bird was following its mother (or maybe it was the father) as they worked their way along the freezing water in the creek.
Plenty of birds are more beautiful than the American Dipper. But few have more interesting behavior. Here’s how Allaboutbirds.org, describes it: “A chunky bird of western streams, the American Dipper is North America's only truly aquatic songbird. It catches all of its food underwater in swiftly flowing streams by swimming and walking on the stream bottom.” According to Wikipedia, the American Dipper has an “extra eyelid called a ‘nictitating membrane’ that allows it to see underwater, and scales that close its nostrils when submerged. Dippers also produce more oil than most birds, which may help keep them warmer when seeking food underwater.”
Lorin and I first saw the American Dipper about four years ago in a stream near Wolf Creek Pass in southern Colorado. I recall it distinctly because we had never seen the species before. We spent about an hour that day watching the Dipper jump in and out of the water looking for food. Sometimes known as a “water ouzel” it feeds on aquatic insects including dragonfly nymphs, small crayfish and caddisfly larvae.
If you have a chance to travel near high mountain streams, be on the lookout for American Dippers.
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