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The Current Transcript for May 30, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Whoever sent their waste to Malaysia, whether it is plastic waste or whatever ways we will send it back and we will fight back. Even though we are a small country we cannot be bullied by developed countries.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: We are all getting a bit of a lesson from Malaysia these days and before that the Philippines. A wakeup call that the plastic waste being shipped out of Canada is often just foetid plastic garbage and even the stuff that's earmarked for recycling is often turned into nothing more than more garbage. It's not like we haven't heard about the problem with plastics previously. Remember that floating island of plastic in the Pacific? So why can't we pride ourselves from single use plastics. Or can we? We are talking about breaking up with plastic in just a moment. And then: Ever heard of the sport spectator ID scale? It serves to identify someone like this.

SOUNDCLIP

We need the help from the fans. And on that day when we started our full people on Thursday I want every fan to louder than ever they have been right there. The players would feel the energy.

AMT: That is Raptors super fan Nav Bhatia known like all super fans for dedication, jubilation and obsession with their team of choice. We'll meet a man who tracks the super fan phenomenon and we'll hear from some other super fans as well in half an hour. Also today you will meet Jayson Greene. The day the exact moment his world changed is seared into his memory.

SOUNDCLIP

I called back and the first word Susan said were 'Oh Jayson it's so horrible'. And I think I knew just instantaneously that something, something very terrible was about to be revealed.

AMT: Jayson Greene has written an incredibly moving book about the sudden death of his 2 year old daughter in a freak accident in New York City. It is a book full of love and pain and hope and also full of life. The author of Once More We Saw Stars joins me in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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'Little by little': How this woman is saying goodbye to single-use plastics

Guests: Tippi Thole, Sylvain Charlebois, Anne Wilson

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Does plastic packaging influence whether I will purchase something? Currently no. And that's an unfortunate thing. I worry about it after the fact.

VOICE 2: I won't buy something that's wrapped in plastic. Only plastic. Like if it is a frozen product and it's just in plastic. I won't buy that.

VOICE 3: I would say that I'm always looking for alternatives. And then if I can't find an alternative I definitely asked myself like do I really need this product or is there something else that I can use instead. Because it scares the hell out of me, the situation that we're in right now.

AMT: The views of some shoppers in Winnipeg reflecting on their relationship with plastic. It's something that is on more and more people's minds since two Asian countries, Malaysia and the Philippines have raised complaints about huge piles of contaminated plastic waste that Western countries including Canada have been shipping to their shores. It's becoming increasingly clear that not everything we export to be recycled is actually recyclable and that blue bin recycling programs alone will not solve mounting plastic crises. Breaking up altogether with single use plastic could surely make a big difference. But it's not an easy relationship to end. Tippi Thole has been blogging about her efforts to do just that for about a year. Her Web site is called tinytrashcan.com and she joins me from Saint-Constant, Quebec, not far from Montreal. Hello.

TIPPI THOLE: Hi. Good morning.

AMT: tinytrashcan.com, how tiny is your trash can?

TIPPI THOLE: I would say I produce maybe about a cup of trash per week. I mean it can fit in my hand.

AMT: Wow. So what made you take on a challenge to do that?

TIPPI THOLE: So you know once I learned about the plastic pollution crisis I just felt compelled to do something about it. So I decided to start with myself. And while I couldn't drop everything and go clean up the world's oceans I could at least stop contributing to the problem. And I just felt like I couldn't in good conscience continue to use plastic anymore.

AMT: So what did you do, Tippi, tell me what kinds of changes you've made in your life?

TIPPI THOLE: You know I think it was initially I just started looking at what I was turning away and looking at whether or not I could eliminate it completely. And if not was there a better alternative. Was there an alternative that was more easily recyclable than plastic or that was compostable? And so little by little by basically looking at my trash I found all sorts of things that I could remove from the landfill. And it does take some effort at the beginning because you have to look for alternatives. But once you find those alternatives it's really no much harder than what I was doing before. It just becomes the new normal.

AMT: So give me an example like how do you buy groceries?

TIPPI THOLE: Yes. So at traditional or conventional grocery store I will bring my peaceful grocery bags of course. I will forego the produce bags that are offered in the police department. I'll just put my food directly into my cart. I will essentially avoid the whole centre of the store. When I need to buy dry goods I go to bulk stores like Bulk Barn or one of the many zero waste grocery stores that are popping up around Montreal and there I can fill, I can get pastas and beans. I can also even sell like oils vinegar syrups things like that. And I just bring my own containers.

AMT: So you bring your own jars.

TIPPI THOLE: Exactly.

AMT: Okay. What about you bring your own jars to the grocery store too, look for meat and things like that?

TIPPI THOLE: Yes I have. There are more stores that are allowing customers to do that. I think going to Adonis I don't eat very much meat at all but when I do I do bring my own container and have them put it directly in a jar for me.

AMT: And when you first started doing that what was the reaction?

TIPPI THOLE: Well you know it was more a reaction from myself. I just I felt a little uncomfortable I was a little bit shy at first. You know I have never really been denied. So I for the most part the reaction from people has been very positive especially when I explain why I'm doing it. Usually by the end of our interaction the person serving the me the food says you know this is so great. I wish more that this.

AMT: So. So it's really interesting because so much of the packaging that we have comes from our grocery stores.

TIPPI THOLE: Yes. I mean so much. That's what I was discovering is so much of what I was throwing a basis really came in by way of my food.

AMT: What do you do about things like takeout for example?

TIPPI THOLE: I bring my own containers there too. I mean I have something that I call a zero waste kit and that sounds fancy but it really isn't. It's just a spare like closed container a set of utensils and maybe a water bottle, and I can take that when I go and I buy it like fast food or I go to a snack bar and I just ask them to put the food directly into my containers.

AMT: So was this a process or did you like go from one day to the next doing this?

TIPPI THOLE: Well I had been thinking about it for a couple of months before I actually decided to commit to it 100 percent. It was basically my New Year's resolution for January 1st 2018 I just said you know what, enough with the talking about it. I'm actually going to start doing it. And so at that point I committed myself and my son is also involved too, 100 percent to avoiding as much plastic as he possibly could.

AMT: So you're telling me now that your garbage fits in the palm of your hand every week.

TIPPI THOLE: Yes.

AMT: Do you also compost?

TIPPI THOLE: I do. Yes I compost in my backyard. Our city doesn't yet have municipal composting but it's they're supposed to this fall. But I think I'll still continue to compost in my backyard.

AMT: What do you say to people who might want to try what you're doing but they're intimidated by the idea of it?

TIPPI THOLE: Yeah I mean I think if you want to start reducing your plastic usage I would say set a goal, like something that's very tangible, and start with one thing. Like maybe commit to eliminating a particular type of plastic that you use all the time like vowing not to buy bottled water anymore or skipping the produce bags, the grocery store or refusing straws at restaurants. And then once you've mastered one item then aim to eliminate another type of plastic. And you know it really becomes a lot easier as you go because once something becomes a habit you don't have to think about it anymore. And I think that's generally what makes it difficult. It's not the action of doing it it's the mental energy that sometimes goes into doing it and once it becomes a habit it's really effortless.

AMT: Well thank you for telling us about all of this.

TIPPI THOLE: You're very welcome.

AMT: That is Tippi sole she blogs about her efforts to lead a waste free life at tinytrash.can.com and we reached her in St. Constant, Quebec. If you're inspired to follow her lead an increasing number of retailers are helping to make it possible from Halifax to Toronto to Victoria. Entrepreneurs are opening smaller grocery stores and retail outlets where you won't see any packaging. You can fill up your own glass bottle from a giant tank of milk. You can scoop bulk cornflakes into a container that you have brought from home. But it isn't solely the specialty stores that are doing this kind of thing. Outlets such as Bulk Barn are getting in on the act. Last month the grocery chain Metro announced it would allow customers in its Quebec stores to bring in reusable containers. What would it take for the entire food distribution system to overhaul that relationship with plastic. As the song says Breaking Up Is Hard To Do. Sylvain Charlebois is a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax and he's going to join us to talk about this. You're in Saskatoon today I guess. So hello.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Good morning.

AMT: Good morning. How hard would it be for grocery stores to break up with single use plastic?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Well it's not easy. I mean we don't. Plastics are therefore a reason to keep our foods safe affordable and it provides us with convenience. But throughout history when the food industry innovates and tries to offer us more convenience, it has often trumped two things, two fundamental aspects of our lives: the environment and our health and we're starting to see that with the plastic issue. A few years ago five years that we've barely talked about plastic it just came all of a sudden very violently I would say and the food industry is really trying to wrap it around this plastic problem because you I mean plastics is keeping our food safe so how do you replace that. And it's an affordable solution as well.

AMT: So what do you think of what Tippy is doing, bringing her own containers for all sorts of things?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Good for her. I mean she did mention in her interview adding this. Adam this is owned by Metro in Quebec and metro and you just mentioned it the Metro decided to become the first grocer to allow people to bring in to bring in their own containers. The challenge there is that there is there is a risk. I mean there's I suspect and it's an implicit moral contract between Metro and its customers because the steering. I mean when you think about pathogens you can't you can't see salmonella. You can't see E. coli or listeria even though they're asking people to bring in clean containers you don't know for sure. And I've actually had discussions with people with allergies. I mean allergens are are critical to a lot of people and you just have one accident with one clerk in one store and you can actually ask someone in deep trouble as a result.

AMT: So what would you be wary of do you buying without sort of plastic packaging when it comes to food safety. Can the word be some things would be fine instead of you know some veggies maybe or things that would be fine anyway but what would you be wary of?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Well Tippy's experience is telling because she is she didn't mention in her interview that she avoids the centre of the store. That's that that really is the problem. I mean packaging is the problem. We see a lot of cities banning bags utensils. To me these measures are more or a distraction or anything else the real problem is boils down to packaging and of course we should mention food service. I mean the food service industry is responsible for a lot of the garbage we see on beaches and everywhere in in nature. But I would say that really though a couple of solutions that would be attractive would be compostable even edible packaging. Technologies do exist but all of these technologies do come at a cost and so are consumers willing to pay more for ecofriendly packaging. That's the question.

AMT: A is it the grocery stores that have to do it or is it the actual food producers?

Is like climate change I don't think one organization can fix the problem. Metro really basically went to a quick and dirty solution I guess to two to plastics it's a solution it's something that they took action which is great. But when I see the plastic issue when we evaluate how problematic that is, you have to adopt a supply chain approach which would mean everyone from fork the consumer back to manufacturing. I mean everyone has to be involved.

AMT: Okay well I'm Sylvain Stay with us. I want to bring someone else in to talk about the challenges of going plastic free. And Wilson is a psychology professor at what Wilfrid Laurier University and she's joining us from Waterloo. Hi, Anne.

ANNE WILSON: Hi good morning.

AMT: Why is it hard for us to stop doing things that we know are not great for us to do that are bad for us like buying excessive plastic?

ANNE WILSON: Yes. Well in psychology one of the most revisited principles that we keep kind of forgetting and then realizing once again once again is that education and awareness isn't enough. So many of us know that those choices aren't the best ones but we're creatures of habit and we live in environments. Especially when we live increasingly busy lives the environments that we live in tend to provide us with the easiest options. So although I think that it's really great when people put a huge amount of effort into setting up their lives to avoid plastics, and I think that Tippi's example is a great one - it makes it very difficult for people to do that when the thing that's out your reach all of the time is the least positive kind of option.

AMT: Well you talk about setting up your life that's kind of key right. You have to think about it ahead of time?

ANNE WILSON: Yes right. So in the moment when we're busy and we're you know on the move and that sort of thing then it's often the easiest thing to do and the one that will default to is to buy something that's disposable or that's plastic. So in the moments where we have some extra time and to really sit down and to think through well what are the habits that I would like to form and what kinds of ways can I set up my own life so that that makes it more possible in the moment. So that kinds of things that I think that Tippi was a very good psychologist the way that she talked about it that setting things up with them having available plastic bags and containers and reusable cups and water bottles and that sort of thing and having those at the ready in the moments when you are going to need them makes it much easier to become a habit.And I'm just wondering how much guilt or shame plays into this I know that when I go to the grocery store and I've forgotten my reusable bags. I start you know unloading the groceries and I start apologizing right away for being, you know, yes I'm going to need plastic bags. Yes, I forgot them you know. And they're in the car. I can actually walk back and get them. So there's two things I'll say about that. One is that shame is actually an emotion that tends to lead people to just sort of turn away from a problem and say oh it's not that big a deal what can I do and that sort of thing but feeling a little bit of guilt in those moments is actually quite motivating. And social norms can really trigger that kind of guilt right where you feel like I look that person is looking at me with reproach because I'm asking for a plastic bag and I know that that's not really what I should do. Even if that doesn't change your behaviour in that one moment it's really likely to be the sort of thing that's going to send you home to try to set up your life better so that you don't do that again in the future.

AMT: Sylvain how much pressure are consumers putting on grocery stores when it comes to packaging?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Sorry it's a lot. And you're seeing it more and more grocers are really trying to figure out how to deal with this. So Metro actually came out first and I think they did that because they wanted to be first and this policy of bringing in your own container only applies to Quebec by the way. They actually have stores in Ontario but he couldn't get the same deal with [unintelligible] and Ontario. Looking at Loblaws and Sobey's and that's a lot of food sold to us. There's trying to figure out how to deal with this. They're looking at ecofriendly packaging to a reusable containers. I'm not sure some of your listeners are familiar with the loop. It's an American company. It's containers and consignment. You basically buy your products in a container. You bring them back to the grocery store like you like your beer bottles. That's another concept happening. But what I'm seeing more and more in Europe in particular are compostable packaging solutions, because it's convenient for everyone. You just need to put that into your compost and you're done.

AMT: Anne, you wanted to get in there on this as well.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Oh yes. Just that when we talk about the psychology of habit building I think that that's an important part of it. But the fact is the more that we can have our environment set up to make those also easy and convenient choices, the more people will do it even if it's not something that's necessarily centre of their own minds. So the more that people pressure both grocery stores and food producers and also you know support government policy is to really try to make these kinds of changes, the more we can actually set up the environment in a way that more people even the people who aren't taking the time to change their whole lives around these issues that the most convenient options are going to be ones that are less harmful.

AMT: Sylvain, you're working with some start-ups on packaging aren't you?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: I am. Yes. And we have to look at the economics of packaging and and I'll be honest with you it's very hard because you see a lot of start-ups with really great products innovative products. They want to remain competitive but as they launch their business they're looking at your ecofriendly packaging which often costs 30-40-50 percent more. And so that actually would price them out of the market. And so they're really compelled to look at packaging that may be less ecofriendly. And this is really what I think is at the core of this issue. The economics of plastics. How much more people are willing to pay? Food safety measures have been around for decades but we all know that nobody wants to pay more for food safety because they just expect it. As consumers we expect it. With the environmental factor now coming on board are people willing to pay more to save the planet? And that's really the real question. And really when you're looking at food prices, of course you have to look at food security if you actually try to save the planet and make food too expensive that then you're basically penalizing people with less means.

AMT: So and what role does government have in all of this?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: I would say Anne's point about education and awareness is a good one I do believe that sometimes we think that people can learn quick. I agree we're creatures of ours I do believe that governments should play a role around innovation and the commercialization of new ecofriendly packaging solutions there. The technologies are there. I mean they're everywhere. It's just a matter of making them affordable for companies to use them. And I would say that that's the one thing that governments could do.

AMT: Okay. We have to leave it there. Thank you both for your thoughts today.

ANNE WILSON: No problem.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Thank you.

AMT: That is Sylvain Charlebois a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax he's in our Saskatoon studio. Anne Wilson is a psychology professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. She's in Waterloo Ontario. Let us know what you think if you have started to do some of this as well, what you think about the packaging. Again, a lot of our packaging our disposable packaging, plastic packaging comes out of grocery stores. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent click on the contact link and stay with us right after the news. Tonight is game 1 of the NBA Finals featuring your Toronto Raptors. It's a big day for fans. It's a super big day for super fans. We have a super panel coming up. We want to know what makes a super fan tick. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Cancelling plans and spending thousands: Meet the sports superfans going all out

Guests: Syd Davy, Sommer Blackman, George Dohrmann

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, New York journalist Jayson Greene was used to writing about music until something tragic happened, something no parent should ever have to live through. He is my guest in half an hour to talk about losing a child and the long road back from that unimaginable grief. But first probing the zeal appeal of the super fan.

SOUNDCLIP

I can tell you is gonna be crazy. It's gonna be crazy here tomorrow. It's gonna be crazy here on Sunday. It's gonna be crazy here for a few days because that's the mentality of our fan base and we know it's across the world. That's something special about here.

AMT: Masai Ujiri is the Toronto Raptors general manager and ahead of tonight's game, one of the NBA Finals, the excitement around his team is palpable and contagious. As with any exciting team with a chance to win it all the Raptors are attracting plenty of new fans right now. In fact the bandwagon is pretty well overflowing with them. But in the world of sports there are fans. And then there were super fans. You know the ones. Their faces painted in team colours their cheers and jeers just a little louder. Their devotion unwavering. Super fans such as Nav Bhatia.

SOUNDCLIP

This moment is a very special moment because events like this bring us together. In the end of the day that bring us together. When you see those 10-12 thousand people of different colours, different faiths, different vendor standing there. And every time there is a basket they're hugging each other. They don't even know each other but they're hugging.

AMT: That is Raptors superfan now Battier who has not missed a single Raptors home game in the franchise's 24 year history. As we stand just hours from the tip off of Game One against the Golden State Warriors we wanted to know what it means to take fandom to another level, regardless of the sport. So we're going to hear from an expert on super fandom in a few moments because there are experts on super fandom. But first I have a pair of super fans with me Syd Davy is a super fan of football's Minnesota Vikings. He joins us from Vancouver. Sommer Blackman is a Toronto Raptors super fan and she's with me in our Toronto studio. Hi. Good morning to you both.

SYD DAVY: Good morning.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: Good morning.

AMT: Sommer I'm going to start with you and I just want to note that you came in with your Raptors baseball cap baseball cap for your Raptors as and a Raptors shirt. I think you guys both like purple. We'll get to that. But how are you feeling tonight? It's a big game.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: I'm very nervous. I've been waiting for this for 25 years. This is something that a lot of people are anticipating and we're just over the moon for this moment for the Raptors. We feel just as much excitement in this moment as they do.

AMT: How would you describe the role of the Toronto Raptors in your life?

SOMMER BLACKMAN: That's a good question. For me the Raptors are like a family member a family member that you see them struggling in whatever they're trying to accomplish and they keep getting better but they keep getting set back and keep getting better and then they finally got to that moment. So it's like watching a child go to a graduation or you know somebody go through something amazing in their life and you just want to be there for them.

AMT: How old were you when you started following the Raptors?

SOMMER BLACKMAN: I was 10 so my sister credits trying to get me into the raptors. And when they had their naming contest we both came up with the name the Toronto Towers and we did this illustration of the Toronto landscape with the CN Tower and all the different buildings. My sister thought no that's not good enough. So we entered both of our drawings because hers was way better than mine.

AMT: So it started there and you've been following ever since.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: Ever since you know through the extreme lows you know they've had a ton of those. And finally we're at the highs in high school. I play basketball as well. I was nicknamed Inspector Gadget because I have a really long arm. So I was that point guard who they would pass the ball to to make sure they get that layup in in university. I went away to law school in the UK so it was really hard for me to keep up with the games. But you know I stayed up really late just to make sure I watched all of them.

AMT: You found a way.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: I found anyway that I could.

AMT: Was just going to ask you if it ever interfered with your life. But I guess the answer is yes.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: Oh my goodness. Yes definitely.

AMT: Like you've said no to things that you could make sure you were watching the game.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: Anna Maria let me tell you. So people would invite me to things and I would have to tell them you know what I'm really sorry but the Raptors are playing today so we're going to have to either reschedule or we're going to have to mesh our plans into this Raptors game, so we can watch it together or you can watch me watch it and then we can have our plan.

AMT: In other words like they have to bend to this or they're dead to you.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: I don't want to say that but you know it's kind of like that.

AMT: Syd Davy Minnesota not even your hometown. How did a Winnipeg guy become obsessed with this team?

SYD DAVY: Well basically how I got involved with Minnesota Vikings is Bud Grant. Bud Grant used to coach the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He was like my childhood hero. He went to Puerto Rico championships as the head coach of the big blue bombers. He played for the winter Big Blue Bombers. In 1967 when he went to the Minnesota Vikings that pretty much made me a leaf long waiting for him.

AMT: And what was involved in getting to the games from Winnipeg?

SYD DAVY: Well the toughest part was making sure I always was able to get the time off from work. Being a locomotive engineer for 35 years at CP rail. But the trips to Minneapolis every game that they played we were pretty much at, l like for the 29 years that I lived in Winnipeg we made a thousand mile round trip. Every game. We missed seven games and 29 years and actually just in the driving alone, there was over three hundred thousand miles for the time that I lived in Winnipeg. I know that I live in Vancouver. I drive to Seattle and then I fly out of Seattle. So it still takes me eight hours to get there but you know it's a little easier trip. You don't have to drive all the way there and all the way back.

AMT: You know even Sommer is impressed with this. I can tell by the look on her face. How much money do you think you've spent being a super fan?

SYD DAVY: I try not to think of about that. I budget 16000 dollars a year to go to the games for me and my wife and we seldom ever come close to staying within our budget. It gets tough. But you know if it's somebody that you love that much you find a way to do it. You do with those other things in your life, so you can do this and you know I learned how to do that my entire life. When I got married my wife said to me I know that Vikings is your passion. No we're married we can afford to have season tickets if you'd like to. I said 'Oh my God I can't believe you said that'. And we get season tickets then, 86, and we've been going ever since.

AMT: Boy did you pick the right partner.

SYD DAVY: Did I ever and she is a bomber fan too.

AMT: So Sommer I know you've got that like the shirt on and the hat. But do you do more when you go to a game like you get even more dressed up? Do you put on special makeup or anything like that?

SOMMER BLACKMAN: So I'm really into fashion and style so I like to match my lipstick to whatever I'm wearing which is mainly probably a jersey. But in terms of attending a game and being there and my behaviour it's a problem because there are other people around who aren't as excited as I am. And I'm quite rambunctious when I watch these games. So I just have to alert them when I get to a game I say 'Excuse me. Nice to meet you. I'm just letting you know that I'm really rambunctious. I like to wave my hands up really high. I like to shout at the refs after making a bad call. I like to hurl things' - well I don't hurl things but in my head I like to hurl things and make sure that people know like we need to give the Raptors this kind of energy so they know that we're here for them and they know that we want them to play well.

AMT: And when you're rambunctious what if there's like sort of a moment of like you don't want to disturb anything. Are there times when you just stay quiet in anticipation?

SOMMER BLACKMAN: Definitely. So a prime example of this is game six when the Raptors play the Milwaukee Bucks. I was at a bar in younger Dundas Square and it was really rowdy really exciting and in the last six minutes is when the Raptors started to surge and make their lead and start to win. And I got really quiet because I wasn't sure if this was actually happening or if this was a dream. So my friends were around me. They were like 'Are you okay?' I'm like I'm fine I just have to concentrate and send them positive vibes.

AMT: Focus focus.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: Focus. And you know when in the final seconds when they actually won everybody in the bar was you know they had their phones up to the big screen to make sure that they caught the moment. And in that moment I wanted to do that too. My hands were trembling. I actually couldn't do it. So I put my phone down. I stood in the moment. I held on tight to the railing that was beside me and I watched it happened and I just stayed still. Everybody was cheering and you know jumping up and down I just stood still. I was numb. I shed tears. It was just such an amazing moment.

AMT: I want to ask Syd about his rambunctious side because said you take on a whole different persona and it's quite elaborate. You want to tell us who - I had to get my head around this - 100 percent cheese free. Mr. 100 percent cheese free. What is that about?

SYD DAVY: Well was basically a dig at the Green Bay Packers in 1986 was the guy named Frank Bruno. His mother was real Paul Stringer coach in Wisconsin. And he went he took one of the foam pieces of the coach and cut into cheese wedge and painted it orange and put it on his head and started wearing it to games that started the cheese hat in Minnesota. I mean in Green Bay. And they kind of bothered me a lot. You know that was my first year a season ticket holder and then I came up with a 100 percent cheese free shirt. I came up with that idea originally back when I used to work out in the gym. You know I would go two hours a day to try to keep my size up, but doing that I always wear a shirt with 100 percent steroid free on the back to piss off the steroid users in the gym. There was always 100 percent clean on my life. So the cheese hat come out. I just thought hey I'm going to we're 100 percent cheese free in my bag and jab them my entire life and I've done that like at the draft party in Nashville. I was there and we're in the inner circle so like we're on TV every time.

AMT: OK. And it's not solely the T-shirt you've got purple and yellow face paint. You got a Viking hat on. You've got chain mail around your shoulders. It's pretty elaborate.

SYD DAVY: Well I'm a Viking and I dress like a Viking and I'm president of Working World Order. We have 400 members. We have our own section in the stadium. We have 110 seats together and you know it's crazy. Our cheerleaders are like unbelievable. In 86 we won the national championship for tailgating in the speech which is absolutely crazy. I don't know if you ever tailgated before but it's a totally different story in the United States than it is in Canada for football anyway.

AMT: Well Canadians are getting permission to tailgate in parts of Ontario now.

SYD DAVY: The problem with Canada is they have the fire laws where you can have barbecues they have the liquor laws you can't drink, so it pretty much impossible to tailgate considering eating and drinking are the mean things to tailgating.

AMT: And Syed, Vikings superstar Randy Moss you caught him in your arms at one point. Just briefly tell me, you caught him like you literally like caught him as he fell? Caught him what?

SYD DAVY: No he'd score a touchdown and then he'd run in my end zone. So that's front row seats in the end zone and he would jump to me, and there's a 10 foot high walls would catch him underneath his shoulder pads then pull him up on the wall, sit him on the wall, celebrate with him. And then after celebrating with him and lure him back out to the fields so he wouldn't get injured. And every time that I call him the Minnesota Vikings once, so he considered me like his good luck charm. So every time I catch him he'd jump to me and then even after he left Minnesota he went to New England. He played me go to New England for a game of money football and he got me front row seats in New England and he jumped me on Wednesday football October 20th, 2008 against the Denver Broncos.

SYD DAVY: Well when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame he invited you along didn't he?

SYD DAVY: Yeah. And even when he was put into the ring of honour in Minnesota he called me up on a stage when he's putting the ring on water. It's just an awesome guy. Me and him we've had such a great relationship you know for the last 21 years, it's just crazy. I remember would I first started catching him. They put in the paper 'super freak the 100 percent you free becomes [unintelligible] touch down tradition' postage don't tradition and just kept going and then they were stopped.

AMT: What do you think Sommer?

SOMMER BLACKMAN: That's amazing. Like I wish that I could take you know Kyle Lowry or Serge Ibaka out for a roadie because that would be amazing.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: After Randy Moss this year catching Adrian Peterson. And this year Stefon Diggs says he wants to start jumping to me after touchdowns to keep the luck going or whatever. I'm looking forward to it.

AMT: So I want to bring someone else into this conversation. He's been listening in. His name is George Dohrmann. He's the author of Superfans: Into the Heart of Obsessive Sports Fandom. He's in Ashland Oregon. Hi George.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: Actually he wrote a segment on me.

AMT: Well there you go. Hi George.

GEORGE DOHRMANN: Hi. How are you?

AMT: I'm well. I'm wonder what you're thinking as you're listening.

GEORGE DOHRMANN: Well you know I said next I am going to have a chapter in my book about the Viking World Order that the group that he founded. And you know you hear the different talking about like a family members or the amount of time and money they're devoting to their team and you know that these people are super fans. We think of them when we think of it that really diehard fans.

AMT: And there's an index that, it's called a sports spectator identification scale, what is that?

GEORGE DOHRMANN: So a guy named Dan Juan a psychologist at Murray State in Kentucky studies fans. He's the sort of the foremost psychologist studying fan behaviour and he came up with this scale. It's. You answer some questions simple questions you kind of do a scale. And you put a number essentially on questions like how often you wear a parole of your team, you know one through eight kind of thing and then you get a score. And at the end you can use his scale to say how strong or highly identified a sports fan you are.

AMT: And what are the things that set super fans apart from fans? We've heard some of it today obviously but on that scale.

GEORGE DOHRMANN: I think the question really to ask somebody when you want to know how big a fan they are is to ask them. And it's hard for them to answer. But this is the question which is how much of your identity is wrapped up in your fandom of a team. So you hear Sommer talk about the things that they do for the team; the money they spend, the time, the consideration that they gave, that their partner gave when they were getting married. So very clearly when you say who are you, one of the first things you list, maybe it's your job maybe it's your religion or your location, but you say I'm also a Vikings fan, or I'm also a Raptors fan. So if you are a highly identified fan if a huge part of your identity is made up of being a supporter of that team you are absolutely a super fan.

AMT: Are you a super fan, George?

GEORGE DOHRMANN: I am. I am a super kind of a very niche super fandom but I'm a super fandom of the U.S. men's national soccer team. That's the one team. I'm a fan of other teams and I've taken the SSIS and scored kind of in the middle. But when it comes to that one team, when it comes to when World Cups roll around and things like that, I score as high I'm sure I Syd would for the Vikings.

AMT: And you're a fan of the worriers as well the Golden State Warriors. Is that true?

GEORGE DOHRMANN: I hate to say that but yes I grew up in Northern California and I'm probably just a notch below super fan of the Warriors, just my obsession is not as strong as it is with the with the soccer team, but yes. I didn't want to say that but yes I am a lawyer.

AMT: I'm not sure summer who really likes this. She's like shaking her head and looking ahead wondering what are we doing here. Sommer, can talk to me a little bit about that. You know there are people who jump on the bandwagon when the going gets good. What do you think of those people?

SOMMER BLACKMAN: You know, to be honest I don't mind it. I feel like the Raptors work off of energy. So the more energy that's positive that the Raptors receive from everyone - whether they're a superfan rather they're a regular fan whether they're you know for somebody who's watched the Raptors maybe three times in their life or even for somebody who's not even a Raptors fan. They didn't even like the Raptors before and now they're like Oh they're good Now let me jump on that bandwagon - I do not mind. I feel like we need, and I say we as in the Raptors and this whole city, we need to show them that we're all there for them so that they could play the best basketball of their lives.

AMT: Syd what do you think of that jumping on the bandwagon thing?

SYD DAVY: Well you know every sport has bandwagon fans. Every single sport. Once the team starts doing good people love them with teams start doing crappy people hate them. And that is the bandwagon where bands that really show their displeasure for teams most of all like a true fan that really loves their team very seldom will we'll show displeasure on their team. And then there's the bandwagon fans that just think they have a right to show their displeasure because they think 'I spent all this money. I can show my displeasure. Well my opinion that's not a fan but you know I think a little bit different because I've become the fan face of my team around the world. So it's I could never ever leave a stadium before the end of a game. If I did that, people, their mouth would just drop open.

AMT: George did you find a difference, a gender difference in fans?

GEORGE DOHRMANN: So there are giant differences in the studies that have been done mostly in how fans react to their team winning and losing and also how they become fans. So you know generally speaking males are indoctrinated into fandom. They become fans at a really young age. It does happen with women as the way with Sommer. But generally speaking that happens more with men. Women tend to find fandom a little bit later and they often find it for different reasons. So women are more likely to just really enjoy the aesthetics of a sport. So just watching Kawhi Leonard is awesome because he's such a beautiful athlete and he's so good at his craft something like that. There's also the social element is more important typically with women so you know someone might not be a big fan of the Raptors but they really like those parties that they throw at their house. It all comes together to watch them. And then the last thing that's sort of interesting but probably unsurprising is women's self-esteem is not impacted by their team's wins and losses as men. So men, when their team loses, their self-esteem often dips heavily. Whereas women are less. They are less likely to you know feel a blow to their self-esteem when a team loses.

SYD DAVY: I can add one thing to that over the last 10 years women in sports have just gone through the roof. I tell you women as far as sports fans watch them kick it up such a notch in the NFL in the last 10 years. That's incredible.

AMT: This summer you've got to weigh in here I can see you like your mind is turning.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: No I'm just thinking about I guess the self-esteem or I guess the emotional impact that the Raptors have had in my life. I could tell you that whenever they lose or whenever they're in a tense moment in a game and they eventually lose are they eventually win, I could definitely tell you my self-esteem and myself feeling definitely goes up or down depending on if they win or lose. So you know Raptors games they tend to go pretty late. Past my bedtime. And if they lose I'm devastated. I can't go to sleep. I feel it. If they win I also can't go to sleep because I'm riled up. But I want to continue celebrating. And in terms of the social element of taking these games in with friends and having parties, a lot of these games if I'm not actually in the arena I'm in my room cheering by myself and doing this by myself. So I that's social element for me I guess it doesn't really match.

AMT: We can't talk about the Raptors superfans and leave Drake out of the conversation summer that turns out the NBA. The NBA has spoken to the Raptors about having Drake toned down some of his antics on the sidelines what do you think about that?

SOMMER BLACKMAN: To be honest if I were at courtside just like Drake I probably doing the exact same things he was doing, minus the massaging Nick Nurse's you know shoulders. I think that's one of the things that the NBA you know took issue with but other than that everything else that he's doing, I'm all for it. I think he should continue. I think the fans love it and the super fans absolutely love it.

SYD DAVY: Damn right. I think Drake is fantastic. I think he's an ambassador for the NBA in Canada and the Raptors right now. I tell you they've got Canada's heart rate now. And we're back and Drake he'll tell you that much right now.

AMT: Okay. George do you want to add since you are a Golden State fan, what chance do you think the Raptors have?

GEORGE DOHRMANN: I just think it depends on Kevin Durant. I think if Kevin Durant comes back you know by game four, then I think the Warriors will ultimately win this year and win a long series you know six seven games. If Kevin Durant doesn't come back I actually think that the Raptors just have too many defenders and too much versatility and they actually would win again, a long series like six or seven.

AMT: We're almost out of time but Sommer you get the last word today.

SOMMER BLACKMAN: Well do you pressure. So I really think they can actually take this and I think this because they're the underdogs. Nobody thought that they were going to win against Milwaukee. Nobody really thought that they were going to win a win against Philadelphia when they you know they continuously beat us. I just think it's their passion their drive. They've been striving for this for 25 years. I think it's our time.

AMT: Okay well you got a long day I'm going to let you go. Thank you everyone I've been speaking with Syd Davy. He's a super fan of the Minnesota Vikings He's in Vancouver. Sommer Blackmon is a Toronto Raptors super fan she's in Toronto. George Dohrmann is the author of Superfans: Into the Heart of Obsessive Sports fans and fandom. He's in Ashland Oregon. This is The Current.

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Following death of his 2-year-old daughter, this author had to find 'a way to live in the world again'

Guest: Jayson Greene

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Between the Bars by Elliott Smith]

AMT: A beautiful melody. The song is Between the Bars by Elliott Smith and it's a song that is special to journalist Jayson Greene. He used to sing it to his daughter Greta between the bars of her crib. He would change the lyrics up a bit to make them a little more kid friendly, a little less dark, but the melody remained the same.

SOUNDCLIP

[More from Between the Bars by Elliot Smith]

AMT: Today Between the Bars is a bittersweet memory for Jayson Greene. He's on the other side now of an unimaginable experience, the experience of losing a child. Greta was just a toddler, two years old, when she died in a most unimaginable way. Sitting on a sidewalk bench in New York City with her grandmother, she was struck by a falling brick. Jayson and his wife Stacy were plunged into a deep well of grief that day. Emerging from it took years. Now he has written about that journey in a hauntingly beautiful new book. It's called Once More We Saw Stars. Jayson Greene is with me from New York. Hello.

JAYSON GREENE: Hello Anna Maria.

AMT: I'm just wondering how you listen to that music that you used to sing to your daughter when you hear it now.

JAYSON GREENE: Well it sounds like something I'm singing to my daughter now. It doesn't even sound like a song that I ever listened to on my own or that I ever associated with a man named Elliott Smith. It is a lullaby now and it always will be, so whenever I hear it all I can think about is rocking my daughter to sleep.

AMT: Can you introduce us to your daughter Greta? Can you help us see her?

JAYSON GREENE: Of course. So my daughter Greta, as you said, she was two years and 17 days when she when she was struck. She started talking so early. We had a joke as a family because from a very early age she was obsessed with dogs. She would walk up to the biggest dog you ever seen and want to pet it. And so- this is when she was like 13 months, 12 months. We knew we were going to have to get her a dog someday. We lived in an apartment, though. We weren't looking to get her a dog tomorrow. So we had this joke between the two of us that when she was old enough to tell us 'I want a puppy', then we do it. But the joke was on us because Greta told us she wanted a puppy, as in she said 'I want a puppy' when she was 14 months old. And so then we had to say, all right well now it's got to be a longer sentence because we're not ready to get a dog now. She was very very very very very verbal from a very early age and we got to hear so much of what she thought. And we're so grateful for that, thinking about it now, that she could just observe so much about the world around her, about us. She could tell us if one of us seemed irritated or tired or anything really. And she could do it in a full sentence. And you know I'd be fixing dinner or something and she would say 'Daddy what's wrong with you?' And I'd be like 'oh nothing, Greta, I'm just a little bit - I don't know - preoccupied or worried' or whatever it was and she'd say 'It's okay daddy'. And she'd come pat me on the shoulder. She was such an observant little girl.

AMT: So tell us about that weekend when she went to your mother in law's place.

JAYSON GREENE: It was just a normal date night really. We were hoping to go out to dinner and sleep in a little bit and then pick Greta up again. Greta loved to spend the night at her grandmother's apartment. This is Stacy's mother Susan. She lived at the time on the Upper West Side and she had probably spent the night there three or maybe even four times before and it was always a party. They would stay up way too late. They'd eat popcorn. They'd go for walks around the block. So that Saturday came. We dropped her off and went to dinner and slept in the next morning and we woke up we were texting with Stacy's mother who was sending us cute little updates from their morning together. They had torn apart the apartment. There was stuff all over the floor. And Susan just texted us saying we're having the time of our lives here. So you guys can do whatever you want, if you want to come now, if you want to have an afternoon, you should do that. And Stacy and I sort of sat in our apartment for a minute and said maybe we'll go see a movie and then we'll pick her up after that. And we were on our way out Wednesday to checked her phone just a little bit habitually the way you do and notice that she had missed a phone call from Susan. And Susan didn't really tend to call us when she had Greta. I mean she texted us updates but a phone call was highly unusual and she had left a voicemail. And Stacy said 'Oh that seems odd'. And you know I checked my phone too and saw that she'd called me too. And so I mean we were worried. So I called back and the first word Susan said were 'Oh Jason it's so horrible'. And I think I knew just instantaneously that something very terrible was about to be revealed. It was hard for Susan to communicate. She was in shock. She and Greta had gone for a walk around the corner, literally just around the corner from her building, to visit some seniors who lived at a senior centre around there. Greta loved to visit them and they had taken a moment to sit on the bench there because it was a nice day, it was a beautiful day actually, when a chunk of brick fell loose from a windowsill. It was on the eighth floor. There was a scary s shaped crack there and we learned later that the inspector had falsified his safety report and had never observed the building. So nobody knew it was there. Actually I should correct myself. Someone did know because we found out, again, after the accident, that a different inspector who was working on a nearby building had looked over and noticed this S shaped crack and been alarmed by it. But no one in a position to do anything ever noticed. So this chunk of brick, a fairly large chunk, fell down eight stories and hit Greta in the head and a smaller chunk hit Susan in the legs. And somewhere in the immediate aftermath of that is when Susan tried to call us. We drove up without really talking to the Hospital and the only thing I remember is Stacy saying she has to be okay. She just has to. There is no other option. And we got to the hospital and when we went in I think that's when we knew for sure. We went into a room and saw her on the table, and I'll never forget it as long as I live. Even as I don't remember all the details - I think that my mind protected my heart from observing too much about her in that state - but unfortunately I retain some very vivid flashes of that moment.

AMT: And you understood.

JAYSON GREENE: I understood. I think Stacy did too. There are some things that just can't be denied. And from then on we were just kind of in this purgatory in the hospital. We waited for a while. They were going to give her a brain scan, an MRI. We were waiting for the results of that and when she never came back from that room we went over and knocked on the door and we found that it was empty. And that's when we were told that she'd had a brain bleed and they'd rushed her to emergency surgery. So that's why started thinking about, okay, if she survives this she'll be severely compromised most likely. By then we had told some friends, my wife texted some close friends of ours something like 'Greta has been hurt and I don't know if she's going to be okay'. And they came to join us. And so did my brother in law and his fiancée. And we waited until the surgeon came out. He told us that the day they'd remove portions of her skull to allow for swelling but that it was a very ominous injury. So it was a slow process of being led into this world where each new piece of information established more incontrovertibly than the last, that what had happened to our daughter was probably irreversible and that each new step of that process brought with us more reckoning with the idea that when we left the hospital Greta probably wasn't coming with us. And we still had to wait a couple of more hours until we were let into the pick you - the pediatric intensive care unit - and that's what the doctor told us the prognosis was fatal. And then we were given the decision to donate her organs or not. People have asked us if that was a terribly difficult choice for us to make and I could honestly tell them that for the two of us it was not. We thought that this was a way that maybe something meaningful could come from something that seemed inherently and completely meaningless.

AMT: You also described that whole process of organ donation as stressful in and of itself, uh?

JAYSON GREENE: Well first I think I should say that I would be an organ donor again. I would always be an organ donor. But I found myself in this strange bureaucratic world where everything was so formalized and it had to be. But then we were answering these strange questions on a questionnaire about our daughter's life. The questionnaire was made for any and all patients who might be donating organs that included grown men and women. So despite the fact that the answers were obvious, we still had to answer questions about whether or not our daughter was a drug user or had been pregnant before or was sexually active. And it was almost as if we were closing off all these portals to her possible futures, good or bad, as we answered them. And they had to check those boxes and then we had to wait because they had to find I mean - there's a long list of potential recipients and phone calls had to be made. So we had to wait by Greta's bedside and she had to be kept stable for another 24 to 48 hours. So yes that was incredibly odd. But looking back on it choosing to do that gave us a little bit more time in the presence of our daughter. And it meant that there was time for my parents to fly in from where they were on vacation. And my brother to arrive from Colorado and we could be a family and pass that threshold together. So in an odd way I was grateful for that.

AMT: You described the weeks and months after gratis death as living in a bubble that occasionally bursts and then reforms. Talk to me a little bit about that.

JAYSON GREENE: Yes I think that's more about the relationship between your trauma and all your other feelings which don't always remember that you're traumatized. Your impulse to laugh doesn't always remember that your only child has just died. Your impulse to make jokes or to enjoy food or to enjoy a sunny day. They're not always connected up to all the parts of you that are processing the news that you're grieving. You wouldn't imagine that a person in your state could ever be helpless with laughter about anything. You know there were moments when I was helpless with laughter. We were remembering - Stacy's family and I were remembering - this moment when there was confusion that's almost not worth describing but that where I thought a family member was visiting us and I sent my brother in law to go retrieve them and they weren't coming. And it turns out that I had sent him to wait for himself. You know just this silly moment where no one knew what was going on and everyone was standing around waiting and no one understood anything. And somehow that struck us as inherently hilarious because it felt like this metaphor for our existence at the moment. And we were laughing, tears streaming down our faces from laughter. And then all of a sudden, snap. It was like we would remember in the moment that we were grieving. And that was this membrane between those two states of being between sort of normal or life as before and life after. I think when I wrote about this idea of a bubble it was more about the sort of permeability between those two states.

AMT: How do you think your process of grieving dealing with Greta's death was different from Stacy's?

JAYSON GREENE: Stacy had a little bit more of a nuanced understanding of what the world could do. And so while she grieved Greta intensely and she did of course have to process what that meant for her world, I don't think it was- I don't think she went through this philosophical sort of wringer that I put myself into to make sense of everything.

AMT: You write at one point that you ask her, before Greta died, did you think the world was a good safe place.

JAYSON GREENE: Right. I think I needed to know if her world view was shattered like mine was because that was something that was very rupturing for me was this idea that something could literally fall from the sky and kill you. Kill your daughter. Bad things could fall out of the sky.

AMT: And I want to talk to you about that. At one point you see this as the screaming inside of me. You write about your anger and I feel it coming off the page the, grief, the heaviness of the grief. And you say at one point you're not in a with a group of people, the two of you, in a bereavement group and you say even in this room with these people you're the rock star of grief. Nobody wants to be you.

AMT: I was careful with that feeling. Whenever anyone brings that sort of feeling up within the book I've been careful to qualify it because that was self-pity.

AMT: That's fair enough to feel that in grief is it not?

JAYSON GREENE: It is absolutely. And self-pity you know is a natural feeling and I would never want to cast a negative light on someone's grieving process or my own. But I think that that voice in my head, the function it played was sort of mocking voice and it was the part of me that pitied us for this the awfulness of our circumstances. And the reason that I'm at pains to sort of couch that language is because what I learned was that self-pity helped me not at all. Self-pity help me feel more alone and feeling more alone was exactly what I did not need. I did not need help in thinking that we had been chosen by the universe in some way and that no one could ever understand our pain, because that is, for me, those were dangerous voices. Those were voices that were seductive but where did where did they lead me? They led me into a deep and sort of spiralling depression and what I wanted was to find a way to live in the world again. And in fact what I learned at this great retreat was that in fact that was not. I was not a rock star of grief. The thought that I might be a rock star of grief was the loneliest and saddest feeling that I could have at that moment. But then we learned about the stories of people who had lost children to suicide or to murder or to drug overdoses. We learned of people's losses and they felt just as massive in that room as ours did. And there was comfort to be had there. So while I did indulge in self-pity I had to move through it in order to heal.

AMT: How did you and Stacy end up at that grief retreat in New Mexico? How does that happen?

JAYSON GREENE: How does that happen. That's a good question because it did not happen in a very straightforward way and I think it's endemic to sort of our search for meaning, after Greta died, that we found Golden Willow retreat not on a list of resources, not directly from someone who had been through what we'd been through and had been there. We found Golden Willow through sleuthing process that started with a graphic novel shortly after Greta died there was a beautiful graphic novel published by a man named Tom Hart he and his wife Lila Corman who is an illustrator lost their daughter Rosalie to sudden unexplained death syndrome when she was about Greta's age. And he wrote this book called Rosalie lightning and it was sort of detailing their grief process. And it was one of the first things that Stacy and I read after Greta died that felt like it contains some perspective and - hope is too strong a word - but it was a healing book to read and it basically charted their journey. And at one point there is- I mean it's a graphic novel so it's illustrated where you know there are this cartoon place that they visit in New Mexico. And it seemed like the two of them had this had this meaningful experience there. And so my wife was saying well what do you think the place was that they went to, and I'm like I don't know. It's in a book how we ever find it. And she started Googling New Mexico grief retreat and Golden Willow came up. She looked into it and it's this place run by a man named Ted Wired who lost multiple people or in a very short span of time. His story is truly breathtaking and awful to contemplate. And he founded this place. We booked it blind and we went there blind and we had this immensely powerful spiritual journey that occurred while we were there that we spent the rest of the year trying to sort of make sense of. It gave us so much enlightenment. And when we were leaving on our final morning in this place we were flipping through the guest, and we flipped back a few years and lo and behold there was an illustration. And it was a Rosaline and we had indeed arrived at the exact same grief retreat as the people before us and so we felt like we were sort of following in someone's footsteps. And the fact that we were casting about in the dark and came up with these experiences I think speaks to in some ways this larger feeling that everyone has. Like who's ever done this before? How can you ever make sense of such a thing? Where are all the others? And I think that was that impulse that led me to write this book. You know I wanted to shine some light and I don't use those terms to imply that I have this blinding light of insight I can shine, but I have my story and I think that the more stories you have testifying to this experience the more chance there is that someone going through it will not feel as alone in the moment.

AMT: I think you're right. I think you're right. I'll admit to you first of all I never have started crying at the very minute I start reading a book, and I read a lot of books. But in following you through your story of your grief, you and Stacey and your grief you learned a lot and you teach us a lot. We live in a world where people don't know what to say they don't like. You make the point that you had friends who could be there with you and other friends who were uncomfortable and you could sense it. Like when someone suffers such a profound loss, what do we need to know about what we say, what we do when we are the people who are on the fringes of that?

JAYSON GREENE: I can't say that everyone needs the same thing but I think there are some constants. Nobody wants to feel completely alone. And I think that what I was most grateful for from our friends was that nobody allowed us to feel alone. And it's a tricky balance because you don't always feel like entertaining or having company around, but people stayed close. They weren't badgering us every five minutes to see how we were doing but we always felt that they were close. And most importantly they seemed to understand that you are not there to say something enlightening to the person grieving, that impulse is so strong and I feel it. People said beautiful things that they spoke from their heart but no one succumb to the urge to try and teach us what it meant. I think people can understandably be very afraid that they're going to inflict more harm somehow but I still think that you can go more wrong by not being there than by being there.

AMT: You have a son now.

JAYSON GREENE: I do.

AMT: How old is he?

JAYSON GREENE: He is two and a half. He's going to be this summer in August actually.

AMT: Harrison.

JAYSON GREENE: Yes. Harrison.

AMT: What do you tell him about Greta?

JAYSON GREENE: He's a little young yet for us to be having abstract conversations about who Greta is but we have pictures of her and we have an oil painting of her that sort of lives in our living room. He knows if you point to that painting and ask who it is he says 'that's Greta'. He has a couple of stuffed animals we recently brought out. They were in a bag of gratis things and there was like a pink sheep and a little duck and one other bear. And we gave them to him and we said these are Greta's. And now when he has them he said 'I want Greta's stuffies. I want Greta's bear. I want Greta's sheep'. So he's very comfortable saying her name. And he also has a picture of her at school. He goes to a little day-care/pre-school and every is every kid who goes there has a little family corner and they have pictures of their parents, their mommy or their daddy or whoever. And so we had a sort of conversation, Stacy and I, about who would be in Harrison's family corner. And we ultimately settled on photos of me and of her and his grandmother and a few other family members and then we took a picture of the oil painting and that was there too. And so he knows I think in some sense he knows that Greta is his sister and she's not quite here the way others are.

AMT: Has all of this changed the way you move in the world, how you see things as you walk down the street?

JAYSON GREENE: How could it not. I. I see the world differently in every way. I think I'm much less inclined to project into the future for good or for ill because I truly understand now how little we know of what we'll find there. As far as my physical environment I think that when we decided to stay in New York there was a sense in which we had to make peace with our environment. Something had fallen out of the sky and killed our child. Now we could be afraid of everything because anything could happen and if something is seemingly innocent as a bench in front of a senior centre could be deadly, then why go anywhere. Or we could acknowledge that it was supremely unlikely and we could choose to be afraid of nothing instead of everything. I think when we chose to have a child again we basically signed ourselves up for that ladder. We had to be afraid of nothing.

AMT: Where did you get that title, Once More We Saw Stars?

JAYSON GREENE: The title comes from Dante's Inferno. It's the last line of the inferno. Virgil and Dante have descended to the bottom of hell. They've seen Lucifer in the frozen lake. They've seen every manner of horror on their way down, seen unimaginable things and then they've made their arduous journey all the way back up. And they are in a passageway about to exit hell. But they are still for all intents and purposes in the underworld and they look up and there's a little round aperture and through that round aperture, the line is: 'through around aperture. We saw some of the beautiful things that heaven bears. And then once again saw the stars'. And so they can see just a tiny cut out of the stars from where they are. And it felt like it spoke to our journey down to the bottom of our grief and despair and it spoke to our eventual journey back out. And so once I found that phrase it started out with me thinking about the inferno in general. And then you know I looked at the first line which was in a dark wood and I thought oh that's powerful but also that's not quite the story. That's only half of it. I looked at the last line and I said Oh that's actually our story and that's how I ended up with the title.

AMT: And that is your story. Once you saw stars. You're a wise man.

JAYSON GREENE: Oh thank you so much.

AMT: I'm sorry we had to meet like this.

JAYSON GREENE: Well I you know I'm glad you invited me to talk though. I'm always glad to have a chance to talk to people about Greta. So I'm thankful.

AMT: We started with a song. You have another song now In Spite of Ourselves, you sing to Harrison?

JAYSON GREENE: I do. Not so much anymore but he knows it very well. I sang it to him when he was first born and it has a different sort of connotation. That's a song basically about happiness against impossible odds, seemingly impossible odds. "In spite of ourselves we'll end up sitting on a rainbow", and the last line is "there won't be nothing but big old hearts dancing in our eyes", which is a promise right. There won't be. That's the future you don't actually know but you're saying there will be because you want to believe it and you want the person who's saying it to believe it even more. And so that became our song.

AMT: We're going to go out on that song, Jayson Greene. Thank you.

JAYSON GREENE: Thank you.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: In spite of ourselves by John Prine and Iris Dement]

AMT: Jayson Greene is the author of Once More We Saw Stars. And we're listening to the song In Spite of Ourselves by John Prine and Iris Dement. That's our program for today stay with Radio One for Q I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: In Spite of Ourselves]

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Thursday May 30, 2019 Full Transcript

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