Peter Korchnak. • Words. Design. Art.

Where the Wind Blows

On May 29, 2018

In Central/Eastern Europe, Nonfiction, Travel

When I left my hometown, for university, I thought there were two kinds of people: those who fled and those who stayed. When I left for graduate school five years later, I was convinced there were those who left and those who were left behind. Both times I was wrong.

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Within Slovakia, Košice is famous for many things.

The beautiful historic core draws both accolades and jeers of envy; its crown jewel, St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral, Europe’s eastermost Gothic church, is finally scaffolding-free after nearly 30 years of renovations.

The East Slovak Ironworks, owned by U.S. Steel since 2000, led to a tripling of the city’s population since its construction in 1960.

A top-dog ice hockey team, the oldest marathon in Europe (second oldest in the world after Boston’s), and the slang, which injects into the Slovak many Hungarian, Romani, and Eastern Slovak dialect words, further bolster our intense local patriotism.

But the feature that defines my hometown for us, its residents, is invisible to the eye.

Dispatches from Trump’s America, Day 1: Fear and Truth in the USA

By Peter Korchnak

On January 20, 2017

In Dispatches from Trump's America

Dear Václav,

I hope you are still resting in peace even as the world seems to be circling the drain. A lot has happened in the five years since you left. But I’m not here to gossip.

Before I tell you why I am writing, I should introduce myself. We never met, and you don’t know me in more than an abstract way, as a fellow former compatriot. For 934 short days you were the President of my country—our country—which, of course, no longer exists. A teenager, shy like you, I watched you steer Czechoslovakia through the transition to democracy and hoped to someday do great deeds myself.

I admit, I was mad at you for not doing more to preserve our country. Yet even after Czechoslovakia split like a loaf of bread torn apart by greedy brothers, you continued to inspire me, even if I didn’t care to admit it until much, much later. You did your best to stay above the political fray, you upheld the values you stood for, and you kept speaking out about things that mattered for the sake of humanity. Philosopher President, they called you.

Finding the Right Form to Tell a Story

By Peter Korchnak

On January 24, 2016

In Books, Creative Process

Story does not exist without telling. “The story is in the telling” represents more than a turn of phrase. The story constitutes the What, the content; the telling is the How, the form. The How is the receptacle for the What. The two have to fit perfectly. Only true form gives story life.

This has been on my mind lately as I began writing Bubbles for a Spirit Level [1] mere four years after conception. It took finding the right form to get here.

Emergent Orange and the Metaphoric Properties of Sunset Pictures

By Peter Korchnak

On January 18, 2016

In Nonfiction

A decade ago, Jim Bumgardner discovered that a composite photo averaging any number of any images on Flickr always yields the same color: orange. Bumgardner offered a few theories why what he termed Emergent Orange exists on his blog, Krazy Dad, including:

Colors blue and green do not occupy large areas of most photographs (pictures of sky and greenery aren’t that exciting, are they?), hence the red shift.
Cameras today are calibrated toward warmer colors.
Photos in artificial light or using flash lean spectrally toward yellows and whites.
The sun is a hot yellow star, so daytime photos lean toward its color.
People like to photograph Buddhist monks whose robes are orange.

More recently Bumgardner suggested that the photos reflected “the average chemical composition of the subjects being photographed.” Others have proposed their own theories, each reflecting their professional biases.

Do Sunset Photos Cause Emergent Orange?

As I read The Atlantic article about Bumgardner’s discovery, I thought the explanation was a no-brainer: the phenomenon was caused by the pervasiveness of sunset pictures, whose color profile, of course, leans toward yellows, reds, and oranges (sunrises are similar, if a bit colder in that regard, but they are photographed much more rarely). Perhaps this idea reflects my own bias: as a traveler I have taken a few photos of sunsets myself and seen a fair share of sunset pics on blogs and social media. Not even jumping photos come close to the popularity of sunset photos (332 million search results as I write this).

An Easter Egg in the Middle of Russia?

By Peter Korchnak

On January 11, 2016

In Central/Eastern Europe, Nonfiction

Type the name of any country into Google Maps and the tool will render it in the center of the right-hand two thirds of your screen, likely with a red stroke tracing the international border (a sidebar with photos, quick facts and links covers the left-hand third of the screen). The only exception: Russia. As far as I can tell, this is the only country that appears with the familiar red, tear drop-shaped marker stabbed into its territory.

It made some sense for the largest country in the world, whose 17 million square kilometers far surpass Canada’s 10, to be an exception. At first, I thought the point is the country’s geographic center. But I was wrong: that honor belongs to of the Lake Vivi, some 768 kilometers northeast of the marker, where a large monument and cross indicate the spot. I got curious. What’s going on here?

Why I Write What I Do

By Peter Korchnak

On January 7, 2016

In Creative Process

My first attempt at serious writing comprised a few short stories and a portion of a novel, circa 2002 while I attended graduate school in Leiden, the Netherlands. As a teenager I’d been a huge fan of Stephen King and pledged to write like him some day, so when I decided I wanted to write for real, fiction is what came out. I still have those stories saved up in a digital folder.

Setting out to write a novel changed everything. I had the entire thing outlined from beginning to end; I’d done the research and wrote copious notes (I still have those, too). But when, some five or six chapters into the project, I stepped back and looked at what I’d written, I realized I was creating an almost exact copy of my favorite film, The Garden.

All the stories have already been written. Exploring the matter I learned that it’s common wisdom. Even my epiphany wasn’t original.

Sampling Summer’s Hike-Inspired Beers

By Peter Korchnak

On November 1, 2015

In Freelance

The November issue of the Oregon Beer Growler magazine features my article, “Sampling Summer’s Hike-Inspired Beers,” covering a tapping of beers inspired by nature around Portland.

An unusual pub crawl in Southeast Portland on Oct. 10 proved that the ninth time can be a charm, too. After a series of eight walks that invited “brewers to go on nature hikes and make new beer inspired by edible and medicinal plants on the trail,” eager consumers burned a little more shoe leather as they made the trek from pub to pub during the Beers Made By Walking tapping. Oregon Beer Growler covered the original hikes in the August 2015 issue with the article “A Beer Walk in the Woods” and wanted to follow up on the process.

Continue reading in the Oregon Beer Growler →