Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

I have enjoyed Ernest Hemingway’s writing all my life. My library at home is filled with his works, starting with “The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway,” a little-known biography of his early years as a newspaper reporter at the Kansas City Star. Though out of print, it is a gem.

A favorite that I read with my son is “The Nick Adams stories,” a collection of short stories about the formative years of an adventurous boy, including his experiences fishing and camping (but also helping to deliver a baby in “Indian Camp”). I have visited the Hemingway House in Key West, with the famous six-toed cats, when I worked in Miami. Hemingway’s death was tragic. The L.A. Times has a retrospective 50 years after his death on July 2 called rethinking Hemingway that provides some interesting insights:

Boozy, boorish and self-besotted, the world-famous writer in Woody Allen’s current hit film, “Midnight in Paris,” is kind of a clown. And, as played by actor Corey Stoll, he’s an instantly recognizable replica of the author of “The Sun Also Rises” and “The Old Man and the Sea.”

He is, of course, Ernest Hemingway. Or rather, he’s the Hemingway caricature handed down to posterity: a hard-drinking, womanizing, big-game trophy-hunting, fame-craving blowhard who pushed his obsession about writing in a lean, mean prose style to the point of self-parody.

But exactly 50 years after the Nobel Prize-winning writer committed suicide at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961, there’s another, more serious and respectable Hemingway still duking it out with this comic imposter in the ring of public perception. Marty Beckerman says that he had both Hemingways in mind while writing his just-published book, “The Heming Way,” a combination of loving tribute and tongue-in-cheek how-to guide for what Beckerman, 28, sees as today’s Facebook generation of timid metrosexual males.

“I think that everybody knows the Hemingway cartoon character, even guys who’ve never read ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and ‘Farewell to Arms,’ ” says Beckerman, a writer for Esquire magazine whose book is subtitled, “How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within… Just Like Papa!”

But Beckerman also wanted his book to remind people of the other Hemingway: intrepid war correspondent, colorful bohemian and virile man of action, whose muscular short stories and novels define modern writing the way Picasso’s paintings define modern art.

“I think there’s a lot of lessons that Hemingway taught that definitely could apply to modern guys,” Beckerman says. “I think that guys today aren’t really living on our own terms and have lost a certain passion. Everything we know comes from Wikipedia, and everything Hemingway knew came from adventure. Get off your iPad and get off your smartphone and go slaughter some bulls and some lions!”

The rest of the article is here.

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County Counsel Mike Jamison is retiring, according to the county’s Friday memo.

“After considerable deliberation I have decided to retire on October 1,” according to his resignation letter. “To that end I hereby submit my resignation as County Counsel effective that date. It has been an honor to serve the County and I have truly enjoyed working with the dedicated and highly competent County staff even during these difficult budget times for local government. While I have been fortunate to have worked for such a well managed and administered county, I feel it is time to pursue personal interests which my professional life, as with most of us, has taken precedence over for many years.”

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Here’s a sneak peek at the Summer issue of FoodWineArt, which we’ll distribute starting next week. A record edition on all counts — so let’s hope the economy is improving. Also, we launched a cool new feature on our companion website, SierraCulture.com: An interactive tour of historic Nevada City and Grass Valley, plotted on Google maps with website links and other information. It is here. It will be useful for tourists and also is offered on our mobile website application, SierraCulture.com/mobile. SacBee.com promotes our website.

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The official Nevada Union High School accreditation report — from a visit on Feb. 28 to March 2 — has confirmed what I wrote about March 16 and afterward: some real leadership concerns.

The metaphor used at the time, “An octopus with no head,” was boiled down into more diplomatic school-speak: “There is little evidence of a collaborative leadership model that promotes decision-making in order to ensure that the established expected schoolwide learning results and academic standards are achieved.”

As a result, NU’s accreditation wasn’t extended to a full six-year term for the first time in its history. It only met the minimum standards and the accreditation committee will return in three years.

I have applauded the recent naming of NUHS Superintendent Marianne Cartan, as I’ve written before, to help spark a needed turnaround. A “fresh way of thinking” helps invigorate any institution.

This very public airing of NU’s accreditation problems should help diffuse some of the unwarranted criticism of Cartan by “good old boys.”

Now it’s time to shine a bright light on the district’s Board of Trustees.

I was glad to see Richard Baker and Wayne Klauer recently elected to the five-member board.

Two more board seats are up next year.

I’m hoping we can find the kind of bright candidates that have good educational credentials (yes, college graduates); have children in the schools; and some experiencing managing challenges.

I also would welcome people who have had this kind of success from outside the community — that we can learn from. We’re still too insular around here.

We have lots of people like this. But all too often people are elected because of their social and political connections in town — and less so their skill sets or experience (AKA “It’s not what you know but who you know.”)

Some highly qualified people are turned away because they don’t have the “right” political or social connections.

One of my ongoing concerns is how school board seats — whether it’s the high-school district or Sierra College — are used as a springboard to higher very political aspirations. We are a partisan bunch around here. It doesn’t help the schools much.

In my mind, there is no excuse for a school like NU not to pass a statewide accreditation with flying colors — at least compared to some counterparts.

We are largely a homogenous school population, with none of the distractions of urban schools: language barriers, gangs, high crime and the like.

There is definitely a problem with parent involvement — in academics more than sports — and we need school leaders who can tackle that. We also need to support the single-parent families. And we’re too sports centric, with almost a “jock” mindset.

Let’s hope that this fiasco at NU — supposedly belonging to the next best school district in California next to Marin County — will bring about needed change.

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