Mae
Is this a day in-the-life story, a story about bar as a center of a community, a profile of the bar, of you and the clientele, or what? I feel that this lacks a focus and that makes some of the details of the story, although interesting, go nowhere. I think that the most interesting part of the story is the two women, Wheezy and Brenda, as workers who are managing two central places in the middle of a specific neighborhood with specific clientele. It even seems like they might have a relationship with one another given their comments. I bet they have a lot of stories to tell that speak to the area. The last paragraph Brenda’s personality starts coming through and it’s the most lively and interesting part of the piece.
Austin
Your unexpected/unexplained performance might be the key here. I know in class you said you wanted to talk about people who are glbt and some other minority and how they balance, think about, defend, use their identity. Your own experience with this, especially in a setting that moved you to stand up and join in community and connection with other people is perhaps evidence for the success and/or the need of Pulse and/or spaces like the Fire Gallery --or even how roles or the feeling of membership to a certain group or identity is shown to be both positive, a way to make connection, and ludicrous and unfair as is obvious through the way strangers in this space can communicate and connect because they are in boxes and not despite of it. I don’t know how the actual experience was so forgive me if I’m making assumptions. I do think that you should trust your own instincts and experiences here though, especially with how well you can communicate a mood and the reasons people do what they do in social settings.
Toni
This is well written, as are most of your rough drafts of your pieces. Your ability to incorporate quotes and give vivid details is wonderful but I was frustrated sometimes with this piece because I wasn’t sure where you were going or more accurately I suppose, why this topic matters. It is only interesting because you write well but I need convincing of why this is something that we should pay attention to given all the other things you could write about.
Martin
I think that your piece is too individualized, if that makes sense and is a word. The topic could appeal to a wide audience but the way you incorporate yourself somehow closes it off. I think if you spend more time on the dunes or on other characters it might help but try approaching this problem from a different angle. See how far you can get with using yourself and even if you can’t write the whole piece without “I” then at least you will see more clearly where it will actually help strengthen the piece, not just fill and tell. The conflict of someone being an environmentalist and not changing his or her lifestyle completely is pretty widespread, but I think your piece could be more provocative than that.
Regis
Bummer that it didn’t work out for this guy. It must have been hard trying to figure out what angle to take. I think the teamwork thing is interesting but I don’t know if it’s enough. I also think that the entrepreneur kid angle can be interesting but you don’t quite give enough to convince me that that is the whole story either. Bottom line is that I think you can do both and make it intriguing but you need way more detailed attention to character and tighter scenes. There is plenty going on and plenty of people around but no scene or person is very vivid. Keep going with it, I think it can turn into something great.
Elizabeth
It appears that you have several stories running through this rough draft and you haven’t been able to focus or get excited about any of them. The story about race and staff is a totally separate story than one about how students treat security in general. And the ridiculous things parents call about or that security has to deal with every day could be something else as well. Also, the strange close-minded quote from the freshman threw me for an even bigger loop. I think that you should go with what most interests you, what most gets your fingers moving across the keys. Take another angle, do another interview but stick with what is interesting and what you want to write about.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Draft, too long, still has notes in, more interviews coming will shape it more. Would love feedback!
Imagine being a graduate of a 4-year private liberal arts college. Last weekend you stepped across a stage heavily draped in white cloth, shook the president’s hand, and received your laminated and leather-bound diploma in front of family and friends.
Flash forward a few weeks. The horns playing your Alma matter still echo in your ears and the inspiring words of the $2,000/hour commencement speaker (“Go forth with this knowledge bestowed upon you and change the world…”) still mock you. Unemployed and uninsured, you sit down at your mom’s kitchen table and stare at the envelope in front of you. Your first loan repayment is due in 4 weeks.
The bright-eyes of college graduates are looking unusually dim and as the media consistently reports, for exceptionally good reason. Students don’t need someone reporting the really bad and even worse, as the Wall Street Journal did with its recent “The Curse of the Class of 2009.” Graduates are well aware that their money, their time, their education is being called, usually with little finesse, useless.
With the current economic hoo-hah, college, especially of the liberal arts variety, is quickly being discovered to have little to do with getting a job and making a living. Current liberal arts college students, the recently unemployed, and especially recent graduates and are rightly questioning the organization of our education system that led or is leading them down a road to NO JOB.
Evidence of this is in Kalamazoo, a city of about 250,000 in the great depressed state of Michigan. Kalamazoo has been in the news in the last few years for its luck in formally housing an exceptionally rich person interested in education. This anonymous person gave not only students but the entire city an enormous boost, and the Kalamazoo Promise has been heralded as remarkable and innovative by many.
Outwardly, it is not completely apparent that the city is feeling the strain; it’s not the picture of depression as is Detroit , two hours northeast . The roads are often in disrepair but a new skate park, tennis court, and basketball hoop sits next to the public pool. A new multi-million dollar condo complex and award-winning public library sits next to the abandoned Pfizer headquarter buildings. (the company still hasn’t taken down banners proclaiming “the science of being a good neighbor” and "we love where we live.” )
One of the most obviously surviving locals, appearance-wise, is Kalamazoo College, a 4-year private liberal arts college gaining notoriety among elite institutions for its first-year experience, study abroad, and service-learning curriculum. It is one of three main institutions of higher learning: a community college, a private liberal arts college, and a state university.
On the high hill that Kalamazoo College sits on, spacious emerald green lawns kiss red brick streets, flowers bloom, birds sing, young and optimistic intellectuals move on sidewalks sans a single weed in the cracks.
The panic comes from within. The college’s endowment has dropped over 30% and stress over the potential of lost income due to dropping enrollment numbers had the college’s administration putting admissions workers on attack.
Downtown, Kalamazoo Valley Community College is feeling good. They have had record numbers apply and enroll this year. INTERVIEW COMING
ENROLLMENT NUMBERS
What is going on here?
In an economy where getting and having a job is becoming more difficult than ever, critics of the humanities usefulness in preparing students for practical, useful work are getting our attention. It is easy to imagine that college education, both undergraduate and graduate is becoming, as Colombia professor BLANK wrote in the New York Times, is becoming “the Detroit of higher learning,” in the eyes of potential students, their parents, and even those already involved in academia.
Perhaps KVCC, which has majors like BLANK, offers an education that offers certainty that appeals to many in this uncertain time. A narrowly focused, carefully applied education seems to provide a solid anchor and security when things go sour. Perhaps it’s just that it’s cheaper. Maybe the unemployed are going back to school. Most likely it is all of the above.
Should those colleges on the green grassy hills be worried? Should education adapt to market forces? Is it right not to prepare students for obtaining an actual paying job?
Regardless, the liberal arts army is on the defense.
It’s bad though, quite a jungle out there. When graduates, professors, and even current students are questioning their choice of education not because of the lack of quality but because of a lack of practicality, a rumble’s a-coming. An argument for survival will beat an argument for lofty thought everytime. And right now it appears that it is about survival. If college education can’t translate into a better shot at a higher living, SOMETHING HAS TO CHANGE>
It’s a struggle of class and prestige. It’s almost impossible to defend liberal arts philosophy in this economy and this point IN EXISTANCE without sounding like ELITE/ catchy phrase.
It sounds as if those highly educated are freaked out that the educational hierarchy order is being disrupted.
Silently, they are asking questions that have everything to do with class hierarchies: Am I really less valuable/going to have less to show in this economy then people who can repair AC’s or cut hair? As a society we tend to associate prestige with wealth, while simultaneously skewing our definitions of worth away from manual labor.
Joellen Silberman, Vice President of Enrollment at the private liberal arts based Kalamazoo College, is nervous about anyone recommending that liberal arts colleges start “behaving” like community colleges and narrowing the focus of study.
“If you think first about the fact that the definition of liberal arts is, from way back when, what are the skills that a free person, at a time when there were free and non free people, need to live in the world? And then there was a set of manual skills that individuals who were not free needed to learn…so that is where the term first came from, what are those skills?”
This doesn’t help defend liberal arts as entirely mind-opening and open-minded.
From the nation's founding through at least the nineteenth century the liberal arts were reserved for the few who had the resources and leisure to pursue them. A liberal arts education groomed upper-class men to assume what were seen as their natural positions in society—almost all others were excluded by dint of sex, race, and class.
The system is failing. Our upper classes, our upper echelon of students, are being called “cursed.” The stack of rejection letters is growing as they lose their health insurance and write their first loan payment check. Even if their parents are writing the check, there is a lot of head-rubbing going on. (“Didn’t I put my kid on the right path? 1400 SAT score! Math and English honors all the way though high school?! They volunteered at the homeless shelter for God’s sake!”)
Economists now say they have told us for years that it was a fact that the bubble economy was unsustainable and the current young generation would be the first in history to not surpass the standard of living of their parents.
This told-you-so attitude and the very mention of an “economist” is enough by now to makes any college-aged person want to beat their head against a wall. The job market has reached mythical status for recent college graduates. It is a fairy tale, a imaginary place the old folks reminisce about, like drive-ins or the old south.
Flash forward a few weeks. The horns playing your Alma matter still echo in your ears and the inspiring words of the $2,000/hour commencement speaker (“Go forth with this knowledge bestowed upon you and change the world…”) still mock you. Unemployed and uninsured, you sit down at your mom’s kitchen table and stare at the envelope in front of you. Your first loan repayment is due in 4 weeks.
The bright-eyes of college graduates are looking unusually dim and as the media consistently reports, for exceptionally good reason. Students don’t need someone reporting the really bad and even worse, as the Wall Street Journal did with its recent “The Curse of the Class of 2009.” Graduates are well aware that their money, their time, their education is being called, usually with little finesse, useless.
With the current economic hoo-hah, college, especially of the liberal arts variety, is quickly being discovered to have little to do with getting a job and making a living. Current liberal arts college students, the recently unemployed, and especially recent graduates and are rightly questioning the organization of our education system that led or is leading them down a road to NO JOB.
Evidence of this is in Kalamazoo, a city of about 250,000 in the great depressed state of Michigan. Kalamazoo has been in the news in the last few years for its luck in formally housing an exceptionally rich person interested in education. This anonymous person gave not only students but the entire city an enormous boost, and the Kalamazoo Promise has been heralded as remarkable and innovative by many.
Outwardly, it is not completely apparent that the city is feeling the strain; it’s not the picture of depression as is Detroit , two hours northeast . The roads are often in disrepair but a new skate park, tennis court, and basketball hoop sits next to the public pool. A new multi-million dollar condo complex and award-winning public library sits next to the abandoned Pfizer headquarter buildings. (the company still hasn’t taken down banners proclaiming “the science of being a good neighbor” and "we love where we live.” )
One of the most obviously surviving locals, appearance-wise, is Kalamazoo College, a 4-year private liberal arts college gaining notoriety among elite institutions for its first-year experience, study abroad, and service-learning curriculum. It is one of three main institutions of higher learning: a community college, a private liberal arts college, and a state university.
On the high hill that Kalamazoo College sits on, spacious emerald green lawns kiss red brick streets, flowers bloom, birds sing, young and optimistic intellectuals move on sidewalks sans a single weed in the cracks.
The panic comes from within. The college’s endowment has dropped over 30% and stress over the potential of lost income due to dropping enrollment numbers had the college’s administration putting admissions workers on attack.
Downtown, Kalamazoo Valley Community College is feeling good. They have had record numbers apply and enroll this year. INTERVIEW COMING
ENROLLMENT NUMBERS
What is going on here?
In an economy where getting and having a job is becoming more difficult than ever, critics of the humanities usefulness in preparing students for practical, useful work are getting our attention. It is easy to imagine that college education, both undergraduate and graduate is becoming, as Colombia professor BLANK wrote in the New York Times, is becoming “the Detroit of higher learning,” in the eyes of potential students, their parents, and even those already involved in academia.
Perhaps KVCC, which has majors like BLANK, offers an education that offers certainty that appeals to many in this uncertain time. A narrowly focused, carefully applied education seems to provide a solid anchor and security when things go sour. Perhaps it’s just that it’s cheaper. Maybe the unemployed are going back to school. Most likely it is all of the above.
Should those colleges on the green grassy hills be worried? Should education adapt to market forces? Is it right not to prepare students for obtaining an actual paying job?
Regardless, the liberal arts army is on the defense.
It’s bad though, quite a jungle out there. When graduates, professors, and even current students are questioning their choice of education not because of the lack of quality but because of a lack of practicality, a rumble’s a-coming. An argument for survival will beat an argument for lofty thought everytime. And right now it appears that it is about survival. If college education can’t translate into a better shot at a higher living, SOMETHING HAS TO CHANGE>
It’s a struggle of class and prestige. It’s almost impossible to defend liberal arts philosophy in this economy and this point IN EXISTANCE without sounding like ELITE/ catchy phrase.
It sounds as if those highly educated are freaked out that the educational hierarchy order is being disrupted.
Silently, they are asking questions that have everything to do with class hierarchies: Am I really less valuable/going to have less to show in this economy then people who can repair AC’s or cut hair? As a society we tend to associate prestige with wealth, while simultaneously skewing our definitions of worth away from manual labor.
Joellen Silberman, Vice President of Enrollment at the private liberal arts based Kalamazoo College, is nervous about anyone recommending that liberal arts colleges start “behaving” like community colleges and narrowing the focus of study.
“If you think first about the fact that the definition of liberal arts is, from way back when, what are the skills that a free person, at a time when there were free and non free people, need to live in the world? And then there was a set of manual skills that individuals who were not free needed to learn…so that is where the term first came from, what are those skills?”
This doesn’t help defend liberal arts as entirely mind-opening and open-minded.
From the nation's founding through at least the nineteenth century the liberal arts were reserved for the few who had the resources and leisure to pursue them. A liberal arts education groomed upper-class men to assume what were seen as their natural positions in society—almost all others were excluded by dint of sex, race, and class.
The system is failing. Our upper classes, our upper echelon of students, are being called “cursed.” The stack of rejection letters is growing as they lose their health insurance and write their first loan payment check. Even if their parents are writing the check, there is a lot of head-rubbing going on. (“Didn’t I put my kid on the right path? 1400 SAT score! Math and English honors all the way though high school?! They volunteered at the homeless shelter for God’s sake!”)
Economists now say they have told us for years that it was a fact that the bubble economy was unsustainable and the current young generation would be the first in history to not surpass the standard of living of their parents.
This told-you-so attitude and the very mention of an “economist” is enough by now to makes any college-aged person want to beat their head against a wall. The job market has reached mythical status for recent college graduates. It is a fairy tale, a imaginary place the old folks reminisce about, like drive-ins or the old south.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Staying Alive
By Jackie Rogers
“We are here to celebrate you. We celebrate us. We celebrate our community by sustaining ourselves through arts and hip-hop culture,” booms a man, one of many people wearing a bright green t-shirt with LIFEISLIVING.ORG across the front, at the microphone.
“We are all part of the environment. We celebrate sustaining the earth and recognize what sustains us,” he finishes and passes the microphone onto the next performer on stage. He starts rapping and beat-boxing. I sit on the warm pavement and wrap my arms around my folded knees.
Little kids run around me and mimic various parts of the diverse and active crowd; the most popular the some white, mostly black and West Harlem Dominican teenagers jumping and spinning on the concrete, practicing and parading their moves in the middle of a break dancing circle. I stand out as a loner under a tree and move over to get a better view and to integrate myself into the lively, sweating scene. The pavement is warm and the crowd swells in unison around the stage, hugging and dancing.
Here in New York and in urban areas across the country, the LIFE IS LIVING campaign is incorporating individuals and communities, mostly youth who are poor and/or of color, who are excluded from the popular green movement, dismissed as inaccessible or irrelevant.
It is catching on. The tremendous energy lifting this movement off the ground is motivating people to assert themselves and their communities as capable and conscious. The individuals and communities represented at the upper upper-west side park in Manhattan are mostly of color. We are in West Harlem, a mostly Dominican community but not far from 125th, where Malcolm X walked and the heart of strongly connected black community works and lives.
The first step of this masterfully philosophical and well-organized campaign is to be an opposite response to all the years of energy put into excluding. It is a disturbing but powerful message that brought these people together.
The people assembled, in New York and elsewhere, are organizing to prove they are alive, conscious. They have a voice, a brain, a community that is and will continue to contribute to the world.
Between swells of people, a woman catches my eye. She is at eye level, behind one of several tables, the majority providing information about local efforts for sustainability. One has a bike made of bamboo, another hundreds of small planters with tiny green shoots to take and grow in your part of the concrete jungle. She smiles at me but turns away, towards the stage. Her bright blue sarong moves as she sways to the booming beats of the performers. All but one of her long dreads are coiled under a yellow head wrap underneath a wide brimmed straw hat. A tribal mask the size of her hand hangs from her neck and she through the hours she often strokes or holds it with her wrinkled fingers as she watches, listens, and moves with the performers. A green coat covers all but one word on her t-shirt, “ACTION.”
Encouraged, I move over until I am sitting on a ledge right beside her table, swinging my feet in her direction.
“I am a queen,” a man roars into the microphone on stage thirty feet in front of her, starting the next phase of the day’s performances, slam poetry from a local group of teens and twenty-somethings. She shouts with laughter and I finally open my mouth and shout over the crowd, asking for her name.
“Janie Franklin,” she says, barely turning her head towards me, “I know that man.” She is still grinning and points to the stage. He finishes and she stops swaying to lean against the table and readjust the flyers advertising a Family Arts Festival into neat piles. They are being held down with one of the planters.
She turns to face me and her eyes hit my face and then move down to the pen I’ve been fiddling with, scribbling notes on a piece of paper I’d found blowing past, and the Frisbee I’d brought and was now using as a clipboard. She reintroduces herself as an employee of the Riverside Park Theatre and hands me one of her flyers.
“AESOP FAMILY FABLES: Reclaiming Our Cultural Memory, One Fable at a Time,” the flyers said in yellow and green bold font, “A jazzed, popped, hip-hopped, beat-boxed version of Aesop’s Fables!”
“Fifty down,” Franklin smiles and sighs, “five hundred more to go.” She is rewriting all of the popular fables, turning “prose into plays” as she puts it. Families will perform their interpretations in a competition.
I ask her what the whole day is about and she pauses for a minute and looks at my pen.
“We are here because people don’t listen, they don’t think we know…we know that we have to come together to make this world a better place…” she answers but trails off as some cheering starts behind us on the only grassy splotch of land. She touches my hand softly and I turn around to look with her encouragement.
On the grass, graffiti artists have set up huge canvasses. We watch as they splatter themselves and those around them with brilliant oranges, greens, blues, and pinks, furiously spraying aerosol cans. Judges walk around and smile and debate the art with the families and groups of friends standing or sprawled out on blankets in the grass. A little boy is break dancing in front of one and a crowd gathers around him cheering, the art acting as a backdrop for his impromptu performance. Each one of the dazzlingly bright pieces incorporates a single word, “ALIVE.”
“I am the power,” whispers the performer at the microphone, “without me there is no fight.”
“We are here to celebrate you. We celebrate us. We celebrate our community by sustaining ourselves through arts and hip-hop culture,” booms a man, one of many people wearing a bright green t-shirt with LIFEISLIVING.ORG across the front, at the microphone.
“We are all part of the environment. We celebrate sustaining the earth and recognize what sustains us,” he finishes and passes the microphone onto the next performer on stage. He starts rapping and beat-boxing. I sit on the warm pavement and wrap my arms around my folded knees.
Little kids run around me and mimic various parts of the diverse and active crowd; the most popular the some white, mostly black and West Harlem Dominican teenagers jumping and spinning on the concrete, practicing and parading their moves in the middle of a break dancing circle. I stand out as a loner under a tree and move over to get a better view and to integrate myself into the lively, sweating scene. The pavement is warm and the crowd swells in unison around the stage, hugging and dancing.
Here in New York and in urban areas across the country, the LIFE IS LIVING campaign is incorporating individuals and communities, mostly youth who are poor and/or of color, who are excluded from the popular green movement, dismissed as inaccessible or irrelevant.
It is catching on. The tremendous energy lifting this movement off the ground is motivating people to assert themselves and their communities as capable and conscious. The individuals and communities represented at the upper upper-west side park in Manhattan are mostly of color. We are in West Harlem, a mostly Dominican community but not far from 125th, where Malcolm X walked and the heart of strongly connected black community works and lives.
The first step of this masterfully philosophical and well-organized campaign is to be an opposite response to all the years of energy put into excluding. It is a disturbing but powerful message that brought these people together.
The people assembled, in New York and elsewhere, are organizing to prove they are alive, conscious. They have a voice, a brain, a community that is and will continue to contribute to the world.
Between swells of people, a woman catches my eye. She is at eye level, behind one of several tables, the majority providing information about local efforts for sustainability. One has a bike made of bamboo, another hundreds of small planters with tiny green shoots to take and grow in your part of the concrete jungle. She smiles at me but turns away, towards the stage. Her bright blue sarong moves as she sways to the booming beats of the performers. All but one of her long dreads are coiled under a yellow head wrap underneath a wide brimmed straw hat. A tribal mask the size of her hand hangs from her neck and she through the hours she often strokes or holds it with her wrinkled fingers as she watches, listens, and moves with the performers. A green coat covers all but one word on her t-shirt, “ACTION.”
Encouraged, I move over until I am sitting on a ledge right beside her table, swinging my feet in her direction.
“I am a queen,” a man roars into the microphone on stage thirty feet in front of her, starting the next phase of the day’s performances, slam poetry from a local group of teens and twenty-somethings. She shouts with laughter and I finally open my mouth and shout over the crowd, asking for her name.
“Janie Franklin,” she says, barely turning her head towards me, “I know that man.” She is still grinning and points to the stage. He finishes and she stops swaying to lean against the table and readjust the flyers advertising a Family Arts Festival into neat piles. They are being held down with one of the planters.
She turns to face me and her eyes hit my face and then move down to the pen I’ve been fiddling with, scribbling notes on a piece of paper I’d found blowing past, and the Frisbee I’d brought and was now using as a clipboard. She reintroduces herself as an employee of the Riverside Park Theatre and hands me one of her flyers.
“AESOP FAMILY FABLES: Reclaiming Our Cultural Memory, One Fable at a Time,” the flyers said in yellow and green bold font, “A jazzed, popped, hip-hopped, beat-boxed version of Aesop’s Fables!”
“Fifty down,” Franklin smiles and sighs, “five hundred more to go.” She is rewriting all of the popular fables, turning “prose into plays” as she puts it. Families will perform their interpretations in a competition.
I ask her what the whole day is about and she pauses for a minute and looks at my pen.
“We are here because people don’t listen, they don’t think we know…we know that we have to come together to make this world a better place…” she answers but trails off as some cheering starts behind us on the only grassy splotch of land. She touches my hand softly and I turn around to look with her encouragement.
On the grass, graffiti artists have set up huge canvasses. We watch as they splatter themselves and those around them with brilliant oranges, greens, blues, and pinks, furiously spraying aerosol cans. Judges walk around and smile and debate the art with the families and groups of friends standing or sprawled out on blankets in the grass. A little boy is break dancing in front of one and a crowd gathers around him cheering, the art acting as a backdrop for his impromptu performance. Each one of the dazzlingly bright pieces incorporates a single word, “ALIVE.”
“I am the power,” whispers the performer at the microphone, “without me there is no fight.”
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Profile Pitch
Profile Pitch Idea:
http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2009/05/kvcc_expects_large_enrollment.html
The above story highlights huge enrollment numbers for KVCC. We know that K College is fighting to keep their enrollment levels steady. One obvious explanation is the economy. Are there any others? Is this a negative development? What does community college offer students that a “liberal arts” private college doesn’t? Is it more practical and is it paying off?
I would love to talk to both K people and KVCC people (staff and students) about this development and look to connect it to both the economy and how our education system could and should change, not in depth but in practicality.
Here is a link to a recent NY Times Op-Ed that has made me think a lot about education reform.
It is called ‘End the University as We Know It”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2009/05/kvcc_expects_large_enrollment.html
The above story highlights huge enrollment numbers for KVCC. We know that K College is fighting to keep their enrollment levels steady. One obvious explanation is the economy. Are there any others? Is this a negative development? What does community college offer students that a “liberal arts” private college doesn’t? Is it more practical and is it paying off?
I would love to talk to both K people and KVCC people (staff and students) about this development and look to connect it to both the economy and how our education system could and should change, not in depth but in practicality.
Here is a link to a recent NY Times Op-Ed that has made me think a lot about education reform.
It is called ‘End the University as We Know It”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
Reading Response
Conover's "The Road is Very Unfair" was exactly the type of writing I would love to do someday. It takes little to no funding, requires travel, hanging out, and observation, and has a political, social edge. I am starting to really appreciate the telling of story as a way of informing, making a political statement, without using explicit critical commentary. Marin told me last week that I need to get away from feeling like everything I write has to make a statement, be important, and write to tell the story in a way that speaks for itself. I think what she meant was not that what I write shouldn't be important (in terms of subject) but that I, myself, should not have to be important in everything I write.
This is a good lesson to learn and one that parallels with some of the stuff in the Ethics reading from Telling True Stories. I think by being focused on making some sort of statement, I often "change the story" and manipulate what is really happening to what I either want to be happening or what I can be critical of, both pretty unethical if I am still claiming to be writing a representation of some one or some place.
To continue about Ted Conover, his style, at least in "The Road is Very Unfair," appears to tell the story of what it really is to be a truck driver, driving across parts of Africa in the midst of an AIDS epidemic, while also including "I" but not making the story about him and his political position. The result is a piece that informs and doesn't alienate any readers, it draws them into the piece to share and experience what he shared and experienced. It lets the characters, the main people in the piece, be fully developed and individuals in their own right.
I love Conover's use of quotes through-out the piece, I wonder if he recorded or wrote down furiously, or just knew these people so well by the end that he could recall those conversations easily (I imagine this is the case). He also did a great job of letting the readers know he was legit- small duffel bag was all he carried, etc- but also reminded us that we could trust him and relate to his experience because he still was a newcomer, a Westerner, someone who was learning as he went as well (relationship with girlfriend in US, condom cost comparison, etc.) He shows us how he navigates, answers the questions before we ask them.
This is a good lesson to learn and one that parallels with some of the stuff in the Ethics reading from Telling True Stories. I think by being focused on making some sort of statement, I often "change the story" and manipulate what is really happening to what I either want to be happening or what I can be critical of, both pretty unethical if I am still claiming to be writing a representation of some one or some place.
To continue about Ted Conover, his style, at least in "The Road is Very Unfair," appears to tell the story of what it really is to be a truck driver, driving across parts of Africa in the midst of an AIDS epidemic, while also including "I" but not making the story about him and his political position. The result is a piece that informs and doesn't alienate any readers, it draws them into the piece to share and experience what he shared and experienced. It lets the characters, the main people in the piece, be fully developed and individuals in their own right.
I love Conover's use of quotes through-out the piece, I wonder if he recorded or wrote down furiously, or just knew these people so well by the end that he could recall those conversations easily (I imagine this is the case). He also did a great job of letting the readers know he was legit- small duffel bag was all he carried, etc- but also reminded us that we could trust him and relate to his experience because he still was a newcomer, a Westerner, someone who was learning as he went as well (relationship with girlfriend in US, condom cost comparison, etc.) He shows us how he navigates, answers the questions before we ask them.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Responses to Group
Mae-
I think this has potential but I want to know where you think the story is. Is it more about the bar or the patrons or your relationship with the bar and the patrons? It has to be more clear where you are going from the beginning—what exactly are you profiling? I think I way you can do that is by really showing rather then telling. I bet the bar would be really fun and interesting to describe—although it might be a challenge to see it the way someone who had never been in there would since you grew up there. Maybe start by sitting in there and really describing what stands out to you the most- a particular patron, the mood of the setting, or maybe your dad, the owner??? It seems by the end you are about to start profiling him.
Austin-
Are you profiling the place or the hours you and other people might eat? We might have a similar problem in our first drafts, nothing excited us, nothing really stood out, we took the wrong angle, and we need to move on or find something more specific and/or more interesting to write about. Of course your descriptions are well written and thorough but they can’t save a profile that has no clear purpose as of yet. Keep working, I’ll go back with you for more research si quieries.
Regis-
I think you should try writing a version of this without you in it. Although I can tell you personally skateboard and have particular feelings about skateboarding and how its viewed by non-skateboarders, I think your piece would be more powerful without the “I”—or at least is worth a shot. Give me more description too, the history of skateboarding is good but you need a lot of SHOWING of the actual skate zoo and the people in it to balance it. Also, before you start writing again, figure out your focus. Is it on a particular skater—Gerald? The skate zoo as a space that represents a misinterpreted sport? Good start, way to get through the length and way to pick an interesting place.
Elizabeth-
I’m glad you were brave and wrote about the “lining up process.” Your descriptions throughout the whole piece were good and I think you should keep most of them. I do think you could inject more humor into the piece, like you did when you told the story outloud. We know that the humor is there because we were all rolling with laughter- it was YOUR voice that told the story that made us laugh…so I know you can do it. Also, your lead has the right idea but I think it needs some reshaping and rewording. Overall really wonderful story and you included a lot of information that was all interesting.
Toni-
Reading your stories, even your drafts, is effortless. You have a wonderful fluid and detailed style. For most of this piece that is true but the ending (last 3 paragraphs) I have a lot of questions about the purpose of some details and where you wanted to go. What is most interesting to me is the journey to Kalamazoo and the restaurant—the history of working in so many places in the fields, and why kalamazoo proved to be the place to stay and succeed.
Martin-
There is a some interesting stuff in here and a lot of you filling in with observations about how you feel, think, relate to the place. That can be good, and parts where your voice comes in is really fun, funny, interesting, but make sure you are doing it in the right places for the right reasons. I know I used my voice as filler in my non-exciting uninteresting piece-without-a-point, and I don’t think you need to do that because you have some interesting leads. I don’t know if you feel comfortable, but the AA thing would be great to go into—smoking is social and Fourth Coast is almost more of a smokehouse than a coffee one. That was more interesting to me and I think you started to flesh that out in your last paragraph.
I think this has potential but I want to know where you think the story is. Is it more about the bar or the patrons or your relationship with the bar and the patrons? It has to be more clear where you are going from the beginning—what exactly are you profiling? I think I way you can do that is by really showing rather then telling. I bet the bar would be really fun and interesting to describe—although it might be a challenge to see it the way someone who had never been in there would since you grew up there. Maybe start by sitting in there and really describing what stands out to you the most- a particular patron, the mood of the setting, or maybe your dad, the owner??? It seems by the end you are about to start profiling him.
Austin-
Are you profiling the place or the hours you and other people might eat? We might have a similar problem in our first drafts, nothing excited us, nothing really stood out, we took the wrong angle, and we need to move on or find something more specific and/or more interesting to write about. Of course your descriptions are well written and thorough but they can’t save a profile that has no clear purpose as of yet. Keep working, I’ll go back with you for more research si quieries.
Regis-
I think you should try writing a version of this without you in it. Although I can tell you personally skateboard and have particular feelings about skateboarding and how its viewed by non-skateboarders, I think your piece would be more powerful without the “I”—or at least is worth a shot. Give me more description too, the history of skateboarding is good but you need a lot of SHOWING of the actual skate zoo and the people in it to balance it. Also, before you start writing again, figure out your focus. Is it on a particular skater—Gerald? The skate zoo as a space that represents a misinterpreted sport? Good start, way to get through the length and way to pick an interesting place.
Elizabeth-
I’m glad you were brave and wrote about the “lining up process.” Your descriptions throughout the whole piece were good and I think you should keep most of them. I do think you could inject more humor into the piece, like you did when you told the story outloud. We know that the humor is there because we were all rolling with laughter- it was YOUR voice that told the story that made us laugh…so I know you can do it. Also, your lead has the right idea but I think it needs some reshaping and rewording. Overall really wonderful story and you included a lot of information that was all interesting.
Toni-
Reading your stories, even your drafts, is effortless. You have a wonderful fluid and detailed style. For most of this piece that is true but the ending (last 3 paragraphs) I have a lot of questions about the purpose of some details and where you wanted to go. What is most interesting to me is the journey to Kalamazoo and the restaurant—the history of working in so many places in the fields, and why kalamazoo proved to be the place to stay and succeed.
Martin-
There is a some interesting stuff in here and a lot of you filling in with observations about how you feel, think, relate to the place. That can be good, and parts where your voice comes in is really fun, funny, interesting, but make sure you are doing it in the right places for the right reasons. I know I used my voice as filler in my non-exciting uninteresting piece-without-a-point, and I don’t think you need to do that because you have some interesting leads. I don’t know if you feel comfortable, but the AA thing would be great to go into—smoking is social and Fourth Coast is almost more of a smokehouse than a coffee one. That was more interesting to me and I think you started to flesh that out in your last paragraph.
Sorry group
SOOO... there is nothing from my interview worth writing about. I might go with the same base idea but go find a totally new person and place. Sorry for the poor poor read.
Monday, May 4, 2009
STRUGGGGGGGGGGGLING
I know Marin said no incompletes but I can't make this happen. I am going to keep working on it and hopefully have a better shape for it by tonight.
QUESTIONS: Can I make this something? Is there anything intriguing about college health centers? What IS intriguing?
Not a single smudged finger print dirties the wall of the waiting room, the magazines all say 2009, and a chemical new carpet smell still lingers. Lisa Ailstock, the Director of Health Services at Kalamazoo College, smiles and directs me through a doorway and down an equally shiny hallway.
Entering her office, it’s obvious she’s a busy woman. Her desk looks well-organized but only because it’s stacked with what I imagine to be every filing contraption available at Staples; all are full of loose paper, files, or books.
A private liberal arts college is not where Ailstock thought she would find her niche. Her career started serving Kalamazoo’s low-income population in a clinic setting. Her resume is filled with experience in the public health sector, serving those without a lot of options in the American health care system. She sees her profession as a way to serve. The Tagore quote “I slept and dreamt that life was joy, I woke and saw that life was service, I acted and behold service was joy," is at the bottom of every email.
As she spent more time as Physician’s Assistant at Kalamazoo’s Family Health Center, she became better schooled in local health clinic politics. Eventually, Ailstock left the FHC to co-start her own practice when bureaucracy started to get in the way of the mission. ……..“We tried to keep costs low, taking Medicaid, insured patients”
“Thanks, we really are excited to have all this space…” she beams when I compliment the sterile new offices. The Health Center recently moved into a portion of the new student center. Actually, I missed the Health Centers of my first years, where I had begun my intimate relationship with Lisa, the kind of intimacy created by seeing someone every few months in the midst of some sexual or emotional crisis, usually both at the same time.
As the main provider of healthcare at Kalamazoo College, she knows more about me and many of my peers than a lot of our closest friends. She’s seen us, physically and emotionally, in ways that we hope to never see ourselves.
If a medical professional wanted to serve those who are most in need in the, no one would think they would end up working at a private liberal-arts college. But she has found that the college population is definitely and uniquely in need of a certain kind of healthcare because they are at a very interesting and exciting moment in their lives.
“I love the students and the student issues”
The students drew her in to a new way of looking at serving a population in need.
QUOTE.
Being a healthcare provider at a college is to guide a lot of students taking the first steps on their own in terms of reproductive care.
She has gotten involved in the politics of repro., rights on behalf of students.
A 2005 federal law financially dissuaded pharmaceutical companies from selling their products to these pharmacies at slashed prices. College women were particularly affected. Students previously paying under $15 a month for birth control now face the unpleasant choice of either budgeting over $50 a month or switching to cheaper and less effective methods. As colleges experienced double or triple contraceptive price increases, the likelihood of women switching to cheaper and less effective methods considerably increased.
.QUOTE
Mental health? She was very into helping students through mental crises as well.Another unique, or really critical (in terms of time in their lives and first independent choices) aspect of serving college students?
“students here particularly are hard on themselves”
“I think there is an incredible amount of isolation”
“I can have one student in a room…” 27:00 minutes
“This is a neuro-transmitting, chemical…”
QUESTIONS: Can I make this something? Is there anything intriguing about college health centers? What IS intriguing?
Not a single smudged finger print dirties the wall of the waiting room, the magazines all say 2009, and a chemical new carpet smell still lingers. Lisa Ailstock, the Director of Health Services at Kalamazoo College, smiles and directs me through a doorway and down an equally shiny hallway.
Entering her office, it’s obvious she’s a busy woman. Her desk looks well-organized but only because it’s stacked with what I imagine to be every filing contraption available at Staples; all are full of loose paper, files, or books.
A private liberal arts college is not where Ailstock thought she would find her niche. Her career started serving Kalamazoo’s low-income population in a clinic setting. Her resume is filled with experience in the public health sector, serving those without a lot of options in the American health care system. She sees her profession as a way to serve. The Tagore quote “I slept and dreamt that life was joy, I woke and saw that life was service, I acted and behold service was joy," is at the bottom of every email.
As she spent more time as Physician’s Assistant at Kalamazoo’s Family Health Center, she became better schooled in local health clinic politics. Eventually, Ailstock left the FHC to co-start her own practice when bureaucracy started to get in the way of the mission. ……..“We tried to keep costs low, taking Medicaid, insured patients”
“Thanks, we really are excited to have all this space…” she beams when I compliment the sterile new offices. The Health Center recently moved into a portion of the new student center. Actually, I missed the Health Centers of my first years, where I had begun my intimate relationship with Lisa, the kind of intimacy created by seeing someone every few months in the midst of some sexual or emotional crisis, usually both at the same time.
As the main provider of healthcare at Kalamazoo College, she knows more about me and many of my peers than a lot of our closest friends. She’s seen us, physically and emotionally, in ways that we hope to never see ourselves.
If a medical professional wanted to serve those who are most in need in the, no one would think they would end up working at a private liberal-arts college. But she has found that the college population is definitely and uniquely in need of a certain kind of healthcare because they are at a very interesting and exciting moment in their lives.
“I love the students and the student issues”
The students drew her in to a new way of looking at serving a population in need.
QUOTE.
Being a healthcare provider at a college is to guide a lot of students taking the first steps on their own in terms of reproductive care.
She has gotten involved in the politics of repro., rights on behalf of students.
A 2005 federal law financially dissuaded pharmaceutical companies from selling their products to these pharmacies at slashed prices. College women were particularly affected. Students previously paying under $15 a month for birth control now face the unpleasant choice of either budgeting over $50 a month or switching to cheaper and less effective methods. As colleges experienced double or triple contraceptive price increases, the likelihood of women switching to cheaper and less effective methods considerably increased.
.QUOTE
Mental health? She was very into helping students through mental crises as well.Another unique, or really critical (in terms of time in their lives and first independent choices) aspect of serving college students?
“students here particularly are hard on themselves”
“I think there is an incredible amount of isolation”
“I can have one student in a room…” 27:00 minutes
“This is a neuro-transmitting, chemical…”
PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER
Although I will understand if you don't have time. I have been writing and I just can't make a damn story out of this. I'm going to keep trying and post what I have by a later time tonight.
Thanks.
j
Thanks.
j
Monday, April 27, 2009
Reading Response
I enjoyed Tom French's Sequencing: Text as Line and I don't know why. Before, very recently in fact, it was hard to stomach an essay on writing that dealt with structure, especially if within the essay there was some sort of bulletting, outlining, or numbering. It is a good sign, I suppose, that I now find this useful, entertaining even and that somewhere in my brain little neurons are lighting up and energetically digesting and even applying the information to something I am currently working on. For example, every time someone we read reiterates the zoom in, zoom out concept, I think about the major problem with most of my work- a lack of show, too much tell. Having a name for what I can do to remedy that problem is useful and I think about the process I took to improve my personal essay, adding details, imagining scenes, using my memories to zoom into that time in my life, using perspective to zoom out. It gives power to my writing. That is why I like it, I suppose, I feel more in control and of course we all like to feel in control.
I also enjoyed Guillermoprieto's discussion of why he uses "I" to tell the truth in his stories. He claims that it helps to push readers out of their comfort zones, to see and taste and hear just as he did. It makes it real, it makes it alive and TRUE. Along that same vein, however, I also think it is way easier to seem as if you are telling the truth if you use "I." It is hard to argue with the subject, the author, if they have been there, tasting a food you have never tasted, describing its flavor. You have to take their world on the facial expressions of the accused mass murderer and what they might mean. The use of "I" is a big responsibility--you are taking the reader into your world and shaping it, manipulating it, sometimes quite deliberately.
I thought "Memory" was a good story for examples of creating characters and setting and also for using direct quotes. Marin, did you pick this piece for Marni? I am looking forward to the discussion in class. :)
I also enjoyed Guillermoprieto's discussion of why he uses "I" to tell the truth in his stories. He claims that it helps to push readers out of their comfort zones, to see and taste and hear just as he did. It makes it real, it makes it alive and TRUE. Along that same vein, however, I also think it is way easier to seem as if you are telling the truth if you use "I." It is hard to argue with the subject, the author, if they have been there, tasting a food you have never tasted, describing its flavor. You have to take their world on the facial expressions of the accused mass murderer and what they might mean. The use of "I" is a big responsibility--you are taking the reader into your world and shaping it, manipulating it, sometimes quite deliberately.
I thought "Memory" was a good story for examples of creating characters and setting and also for using direct quotes. Marin, did you pick this piece for Marni? I am looking forward to the discussion in class. :)
Forgot to Post Updated Personal Piece...here it is.
Outline:
Complication: Chaos numbs youth.
1. Anxiety drives world.
2. Parents disappoint me.
3. Connection restores feeling.
Resolution: Determination overrides numbness
YOUNG HEARTS RUN FREE: SELF PRESERVATION IS WHATS REALLY GOING ON TODAY
Jacqueline Rogers
It was 36 hours in, and I was kissing Ryon from the Puerto Rico delegation. It was exhilarating, hot—I felt his lips on mine and my back pressed up against a wall in a blindingly white bright stairwell, drunk on the feeling of release from the numbing of my nerves by fear, disappointment, and anxiety.
We arrived in Washington D.C. three days earlier, over one hundred high school students from the continental United States and Puerto Rico. It was September of 2002 and I had jumped at the chance to escape home for a few days by accepting a nomination to participate in the Anti-Defamation League’s National Youth Leadership Mission to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The first day I sat down in a row of empty chairs and looked around the room. I was among my peers, bright-eyed youth who were supposed to feel inspired by global violence and carry the weight of potential world peace on their shoulders. In the front of the room, survivors of the Holocaust sat quietly, hands in lap, watching a mix of hope and hormones bustle and shriek in every corner. Stern-looking Secret Service stood behind them, enveloping the room with a tension that cut through the youthful energy and excitement. Workshop leaders, practiced professionals enshrined in suits and self-importance bustled around directing groups of students here and there, their range of emotion limited to two facial expressions. The serious listening face: eyes intent, lips pursed, eyebrows squeezed down and together, and the lecture face: eyebrows up, eyes huge and dilated, forehead wrinkled, mouth open and moving incessantly.
We were to be ambassadors of peace and justice, the suits preached, a serious job description in the relatively recent arrival of the post 9/11 world. Still growing breasts and managing awkwardly long limbs, it wasn’t too soon for our parents, grandfathers, and grandmothers to pass on the burden of their mismanaged history, to capitalize on the anxious energy that the loss of more than 3000 lives on American soil had bolstered to a new height, terror level red: time to panic.
We were told how vital it is that human beings exist in an orderly world where injustice is addressed, and a sense of security radiates. Life is now less secure, less certain, they said, and we had to understand.
I was recently sixteen. I understood.
The tumultuous summer preceding dulled my expectations of the adult world and activated a mode of self-preservation that I existed in for several months. My mother and father had located each other as the fourth point on the axis of evil and decided to share their hatred and disappointment in one another with me and the rest of the world. The sight of both of them grasping for their share or more of a previously combined pool of money, resources, and dignity had made me exhausted, unreceptive, and unwilling to take the chance of relying on anyone. I’d also lost my virginity that July, just a week after my sobbing mother had parked me outside the ice cream store to tell me about my dad filing for divorce. Her head slumped forward. Big tears plopped onto the steering wheel. She was so ashamed, she said, so ashamed and so sorry. I didn’t cry when she told me and I didn’t feel anything at all towards Rob the next week, even as he hovered over me and told me he loved me. A serious emotion, a serious relationship didn’t make sense. I wondered about compassion and if I could feel it.
Two months later, there I was, the florescent lights on the white paint blinding me and warm cheeks, nose, and lips pressed on mine. I shut my eyes, parted my lips, and tried not to smile so hard I would have to stop.
It wasn’t about him, although he was certainly a tan and beautiful young man. I was bouncing back, destroying my disappointment, my bitterness, my vulnerability with a sense of purpose and some human connection; it was a direct challenge to my parents and the other adults who made a conference on humanity necessary in a world of six billion humans.
Emotionally, intellectually, and physically my 16-year-old nerves, mind, and lips were jolted to a point of bursting. I want to feel this awake my entire life, I thought, I’m going to fight for this feeling.
Eight years later and eight years deeper in the politics of fear, I find myself having to fight harder than ever not to slip back into numbness.
I am not too much older now than I was then but already I feel that ability to live in the moment, to bounce back from fear with hope and energy, dripping from my trembling fully-grown fingers and swirling down into the numbingly anxious busyness of adult life. We graduate from college, or we get jobs, or we graduate and go back to school, leave the country or move back home, and never escape a world where self-preservation and the regulation of passion, of emotion, is required.
My generation, the generation who remembers vividly snipers and 9/11, Columbine and Katrina, the generation that can look around their classrooms and see so many of their peers on depression, anxiety, focus, or hyperactivity medications, is a generation that understands what it is to be both emotionally full and empty.
We were watching. We watched the destruction as we learned to assimilate, as wide-eyed kids, pre-teens, adolescents, and young adults, staring at the television, learning to distrust the world, to withdraw and self-preserve as keepers of our own fragile hearts, minds, souls.
We are overloading our brain and from an early age—the zombification of our youth. And we will only heal the world as we heal ourselves, by waking up and reaching out to connect and find the substance amidst the chaos.
I am counting on my peers, as we transition into adulthood, to remember their moments, their passion, and their reasons to fight.
I’ll be fighting. But I already know I’ll be alright. Bright white stairwells still turn me on.
Complication: Chaos numbs youth.
1. Anxiety drives world.
2. Parents disappoint me.
3. Connection restores feeling.
Resolution: Determination overrides numbness
YOUNG HEARTS RUN FREE: SELF PRESERVATION IS WHATS REALLY GOING ON TODAY
Jacqueline Rogers
It was 36 hours in, and I was kissing Ryon from the Puerto Rico delegation. It was exhilarating, hot—I felt his lips on mine and my back pressed up against a wall in a blindingly white bright stairwell, drunk on the feeling of release from the numbing of my nerves by fear, disappointment, and anxiety.
We arrived in Washington D.C. three days earlier, over one hundred high school students from the continental United States and Puerto Rico. It was September of 2002 and I had jumped at the chance to escape home for a few days by accepting a nomination to participate in the Anti-Defamation League’s National Youth Leadership Mission to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The first day I sat down in a row of empty chairs and looked around the room. I was among my peers, bright-eyed youth who were supposed to feel inspired by global violence and carry the weight of potential world peace on their shoulders. In the front of the room, survivors of the Holocaust sat quietly, hands in lap, watching a mix of hope and hormones bustle and shriek in every corner. Stern-looking Secret Service stood behind them, enveloping the room with a tension that cut through the youthful energy and excitement. Workshop leaders, practiced professionals enshrined in suits and self-importance bustled around directing groups of students here and there, their range of emotion limited to two facial expressions. The serious listening face: eyes intent, lips pursed, eyebrows squeezed down and together, and the lecture face: eyebrows up, eyes huge and dilated, forehead wrinkled, mouth open and moving incessantly.
We were to be ambassadors of peace and justice, the suits preached, a serious job description in the relatively recent arrival of the post 9/11 world. Still growing breasts and managing awkwardly long limbs, it wasn’t too soon for our parents, grandfathers, and grandmothers to pass on the burden of their mismanaged history, to capitalize on the anxious energy that the loss of more than 3000 lives on American soil had bolstered to a new height, terror level red: time to panic.
We were told how vital it is that human beings exist in an orderly world where injustice is addressed, and a sense of security radiates. Life is now less secure, less certain, they said, and we had to understand.
I was recently sixteen. I understood.
The tumultuous summer preceding dulled my expectations of the adult world and activated a mode of self-preservation that I existed in for several months. My mother and father had located each other as the fourth point on the axis of evil and decided to share their hatred and disappointment in one another with me and the rest of the world. The sight of both of them grasping for their share or more of a previously combined pool of money, resources, and dignity had made me exhausted, unreceptive, and unwilling to take the chance of relying on anyone. I’d also lost my virginity that July, just a week after my sobbing mother had parked me outside the ice cream store to tell me about my dad filing for divorce. Her head slumped forward. Big tears plopped onto the steering wheel. She was so ashamed, she said, so ashamed and so sorry. I didn’t cry when she told me and I didn’t feel anything at all towards Rob the next week, even as he hovered over me and told me he loved me. A serious emotion, a serious relationship didn’t make sense. I wondered about compassion and if I could feel it.
Two months later, there I was, the florescent lights on the white paint blinding me and warm cheeks, nose, and lips pressed on mine. I shut my eyes, parted my lips, and tried not to smile so hard I would have to stop.
It wasn’t about him, although he was certainly a tan and beautiful young man. I was bouncing back, destroying my disappointment, my bitterness, my vulnerability with a sense of purpose and some human connection; it was a direct challenge to my parents and the other adults who made a conference on humanity necessary in a world of six billion humans.
Emotionally, intellectually, and physically my 16-year-old nerves, mind, and lips were jolted to a point of bursting. I want to feel this awake my entire life, I thought, I’m going to fight for this feeling.
Eight years later and eight years deeper in the politics of fear, I find myself having to fight harder than ever not to slip back into numbness.
I am not too much older now than I was then but already I feel that ability to live in the moment, to bounce back from fear with hope and energy, dripping from my trembling fully-grown fingers and swirling down into the numbingly anxious busyness of adult life. We graduate from college, or we get jobs, or we graduate and go back to school, leave the country or move back home, and never escape a world where self-preservation and the regulation of passion, of emotion, is required.
My generation, the generation who remembers vividly snipers and 9/11, Columbine and Katrina, the generation that can look around their classrooms and see so many of their peers on depression, anxiety, focus, or hyperactivity medications, is a generation that understands what it is to be both emotionally full and empty.
We were watching. We watched the destruction as we learned to assimilate, as wide-eyed kids, pre-teens, adolescents, and young adults, staring at the television, learning to distrust the world, to withdraw and self-preserve as keepers of our own fragile hearts, minds, souls.
We are overloading our brain and from an early age—the zombification of our youth. And we will only heal the world as we heal ourselves, by waking up and reaching out to connect and find the substance amidst the chaos.
I am counting on my peers, as we transition into adulthood, to remember their moments, their passion, and their reasons to fight.
I’ll be fighting. But I already know I’ll be alright. Bright white stairwells still turn me on.
PROFILE....feedback please?
So....Here is what has been going on. Pretty sure the computer place doesn't exist anymore, if it ever did, big bummer. I think instead I am going to profile the student health center with a focus on reproductive health and the politics that have changed the price and availability of different products over the last administration. I have an interview with Lisa who I know personally fought to have changes made for students to lower the price when it skyrocketed. This is where I will go into the interview from but I am hoping more info/conflict will come out of it. Anyone have anything specific they'd like to see/ask? Think this is a good idea?
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Response to classmates pieces
Austin's:
It is a morbid piece but it is really interesting and would be hard to write about without falling into traps. Specifically, I liked the interviews with the kids who were friends with the people who had killed themselves and also the progression of time in the piece. If it had been as long without the progression of time, it would have been a bust. It made me want to know more, which is good for the author but I almost was frustrated at the end that I didn't get a better idea of the total social, political, and economic scene in that part of the world. Of course, he does do some of that, and he had to find a balance between the sensational details of the suicides, the interviews, and the whole picture in limited words. Overall, good piece and I enjoyed reading it.
Emily's:
What a great example of a profile! It makes me wonder how I am ever going to write one of my own, it seems you really have to spend time, a lot of time, and have a clear vision of the conflict before you start. From there, you can move around and give background to fill everything out and make it about LIFE not just the conflict. This is so perfect for what your general writing theme/interest has been too, emily, nice find.
Lindsey:
This was a nice piece because it was clearly relevant and political but still a profile of a place at a specific point in time. It was helpful to read because it was a length that we will probably be writing our pieces and had a narrow focus.
It is a morbid piece but it is really interesting and would be hard to write about without falling into traps. Specifically, I liked the interviews with the kids who were friends with the people who had killed themselves and also the progression of time in the piece. If it had been as long without the progression of time, it would have been a bust. It made me want to know more, which is good for the author but I almost was frustrated at the end that I didn't get a better idea of the total social, political, and economic scene in that part of the world. Of course, he does do some of that, and he had to find a balance between the sensational details of the suicides, the interviews, and the whole picture in limited words. Overall, good piece and I enjoyed reading it.
Emily's:
What a great example of a profile! It makes me wonder how I am ever going to write one of my own, it seems you really have to spend time, a lot of time, and have a clear vision of the conflict before you start. From there, you can move around and give background to fill everything out and make it about LIFE not just the conflict. This is so perfect for what your general writing theme/interest has been too, emily, nice find.
Lindsey:
This was a nice piece because it was clearly relevant and political but still a profile of a place at a specific point in time. It was helpful to read because it was a length that we will probably be writing our pieces and had a narrow focus.
Reading Response
I was so completely absorbed in this weeks readings from Literary Journalism book. They were two completely different reads, two completely different moods and structures, but both incredibly interesting and moving and very well-written. The first, "American Male Age 10," made me think about changing the way I approach our next piece. Which, given my ongoing anxiety with deciding what the hell to write about, did not help my decisiveness, but excited me about the profile in a way I hadn't been before. It was a way of doing a profile that is a lot more appealing to me then some of the pieces we've read. I don't know why but profiling a place or a making a more general statement (i.e. about American Males Age 10) is a lot more appealing, or probably just way less intimidating, then profiling a specific person. Even though A.M. Age 10 was about a specific little boy, it was also about gender, about broader issues that are relevant. I loved that.
Secondly, the story of Trina was very interesting and uniquely structured. The author put herself into it in a way that I would have really not supported if I had heard a pitch for the story. I think it was necessary to put "I" into it but I was worried through the whole thing that it would end up becoming about the author and not about Trina. I am interested to hear what others think about this.
Secondly, the story of Trina was very interesting and uniquely structured. The author put herself into it in a way that I would have really not supported if I had heard a pitch for the story. I think it was necessary to put "I" into it but I was worried through the whole thing that it would end up becoming about the author and not about Trina. I am interested to hear what others think about this.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Profile Pitch NOT
I am stressing out about this assignment. I have a list of places but I don't know how to pick because I can't even imagine how I would start and I don't know if there is a real story. I though this was interesting though. What do you all think?
http://www.mlive.com/kalamabrew/index.ssf/2009/04/the_muskegon_brewing_and_disti.html
Maybe I could do something closer to home with Bell's, but I don't think they are having trouble, even with the economy. I think there might be a more interesting story in there but its lost on me now.
http://www.mlive.com/kalamabrew/index.ssf/2009/04/the_muskegon_brewing_and_disti.html
Maybe I could do something closer to home with Bell's, but I don't think they are having trouble, even with the economy. I think there might be a more interesting story in there but its lost on me now.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Reading Response
I really love Jon Franklin's book, especially the structure and outline chapters, which is amazing considering I have strongly resisted any previous direction on either of those subjects. His approach made a lot of sense--the whole book was so practical and I had no choice but to respect it. The piece that struck fear into my heart the most was on page 92, "For it is here, in the coldly logical prefrontal realm of the mind and not in the heart, that the secrets of the masters are kept," AHHHH logic and order are not my friend! However, Franklin made it simple, gave me a process that was almost underwhelming, and allowed me to look at the pieces I was reading (trying to find one to share with you all) in a new light. It made me ask different questions, about both my writing and the writing of others. This, I think Franklin would agree, is going to make me a better more thoughtful writer overall.
Monday, April 13, 2009
For Wednesday- "Of Rajas and Rollers" by A.A. Gill
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/11/rajasthan200811?currentPage=1
This piece is about 5 months old but I hope you enjoy it. For the past several days I've been reading and saving stories I like, the past few hours on Vanity Fair's website bookmarking one after another. This was the third piece I read by this author A.A. Gill and really enjoyed. While we seem to have similar interests (I was always drawn in my the title and only later noticed the author) which undoubtedly pulled me in to his work, I also found his writing captured my attention from the lede and I continued without much effort or pause until the nicely circular, or at least reflective/satisfying ending.
If you have time, read and comment before class so I can focus on what more intrigues you about the piece. I personally enjoyed it because I am interested in how US/European writers write about India, having studied abroad there.
I hope you enjoy it.
ps. i'll figure out how to put links in, but for now copy/paste it? thanks.
This piece is about 5 months old but I hope you enjoy it. For the past several days I've been reading and saving stories I like, the past few hours on Vanity Fair's website bookmarking one after another. This was the third piece I read by this author A.A. Gill and really enjoyed. While we seem to have similar interests (I was always drawn in my the title and only later noticed the author) which undoubtedly pulled me in to his work, I also found his writing captured my attention from the lede and I continued without much effort or pause until the nicely circular, or at least reflective/satisfying ending.
If you have time, read and comment before class so I can focus on what more intrigues you about the piece. I personally enjoyed it because I am interested in how US/European writers write about India, having studied abroad there.
I hope you enjoy it.
ps. i'll figure out how to put links in, but for now copy/paste it? thanks.
Before I post what you have to read...
I am going to post some others that I also thought were very interesting or really well-written or both... Some were too long to make you all read for Wednesday, some were too similar to things I read/was interested in in Arts Journalism and I wanted to push myself into something different. They are still all good and I wanted to offer up some good reading I found after searching the internet for good narratives for wayyyy too long.
Here you go:
1. long but super interesting- Alex Shoumatoff sneaks into the the most elite good ol' boys club you can imagine to investigate reports of the likes of the Bushies, Rockefellers, and Basses cutting down the Redwoods in California: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/05/bohemian-grove200905
2. not the newest story idea but good use of quotes and very entertaining- Melanie Berliet visits 3 plastic surgeons to see what surgeries they try to sell to her 5'9 120 pound frame
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/02/plastic-surgery200902?currentPage=2
3. another way of approaching a story, take on a piece of it yourself- Rich Cohen grows facial hair to become part of the story, and to better tell the story of Hitler's infamous mustache
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/11/cohen200711?printable=true¤tPage=all
4. quick read, disgusted author, lots of attitude- tourists take a sex and the city bus with A.A. Gill there to judge them
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/sex_and_the_city200901?currentPage=2
All these are from vanity fair, although there are a lot of other good places to find stories. I decided to stick to VF for fear of being overwhelmed. Enjoy!
(My post/link to read for class to come...)
Here you go:
1. long but super interesting- Alex Shoumatoff sneaks into the the most elite good ol' boys club you can imagine to investigate reports of the likes of the Bushies, Rockefellers, and Basses cutting down the Redwoods in California: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/05/bohemian-grove200905
2. not the newest story idea but good use of quotes and very entertaining- Melanie Berliet visits 3 plastic surgeons to see what surgeries they try to sell to her 5'9 120 pound frame
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/02/plastic-surgery200902?currentPage=2
3. another way of approaching a story, take on a piece of it yourself- Rich Cohen grows facial hair to become part of the story, and to better tell the story of Hitler's infamous mustache
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/11/cohen200711?printable=true¤tPage=all
4. quick read, disgusted author, lots of attitude- tourists take a sex and the city bus with A.A. Gill there to judge them
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/sex_and_the_city200901?currentPage=2
All these are from vanity fair, although there are a lot of other good places to find stories. I decided to stick to VF for fear of being overwhelmed. Enjoy!
(My post/link to read for class to come...)
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Response to Reading/Writing Process
It was hard to pick a story, MY story, for this assignment. The memories I have about events in my life is very, dare I say, sacred in their existence as they are in my head, in the context of my life. I knew this but I would never have described it this way before going on a little trip down memory lane for this assignment. I struggled writing about anything that seemed important enough to try simply because writing boxes the memory in, each word and sentence represents my memory and it never seems quite right, quite complete. This made me so uncomfortable. My memories include such a rush of feeling that I don't think I have the talent with words to convey and it scares me to put a beginning, middle and end to the complexity of the experience.
The reading for this week were intimidating. This is, of course, partially why I was having anxiety about writing our first piece. First of all, writing about ourselves is scary. In Arts Journalism, we wrote about an expression of culture and our opinion of that expression was in the piece but not our whole selves. The use of "I" as Phillip Lopate points out, is important but difficult. My fear was normal, Lopate pointed out, and I'm quite the coward--I need to push myself. At the same time, there is a certain boundary that can't be crossed if a writer doesn't want to be narcissistic, self-indulgent, and irrelevant. I was criticized many-a-times by my journalism-degreed mother (I just found out that was her major in college, so weird I didn't know that) for being melodramatic. I can't decide if I had such a hard time writing about myself because I was afraid of judgment or if I really struggle with self-expression. It is so HARD to put feeling into words, especially since examples don't come naturally to me. Concrete thinking is not my strength.
Also, a piece that was inspiring but I didn't use much for the writing of this first narrative was Gay Talese's, Delving into Private Lives. Her description of what journalism should be about is very romantic and I love it. It makes me renew my dream of travel-writing, of finding stories in places that are unfamiliar (even in the US) to us not just physically but because we have fallen into a pattern of reporting and writing, a pre-designated idea of what is interesting. I thought Talese was awesome and dreamy.
The reading for this week were intimidating. This is, of course, partially why I was having anxiety about writing our first piece. First of all, writing about ourselves is scary. In Arts Journalism, we wrote about an expression of culture and our opinion of that expression was in the piece but not our whole selves. The use of "I" as Phillip Lopate points out, is important but difficult. My fear was normal, Lopate pointed out, and I'm quite the coward--I need to push myself. At the same time, there is a certain boundary that can't be crossed if a writer doesn't want to be narcissistic, self-indulgent, and irrelevant. I was criticized many-a-times by my journalism-degreed mother (I just found out that was her major in college, so weird I didn't know that) for being melodramatic. I can't decide if I had such a hard time writing about myself because I was afraid of judgment or if I really struggle with self-expression. It is so HARD to put feeling into words, especially since examples don't come naturally to me. Concrete thinking is not my strength.
Also, a piece that was inspiring but I didn't use much for the writing of this first narrative was Gay Talese's, Delving into Private Lives. Her description of what journalism should be about is very romantic and I love it. It makes me renew my dream of travel-writing, of finding stories in places that are unfamiliar (even in the US) to us not just physically but because we have fallen into a pattern of reporting and writing, a pre-designated idea of what is interesting. I thought Talese was awesome and dreamy.
My Comments for My Group Members
Elizabeth
Really interesting piece, Elizabeth. It was relevant even though I myself am not engaged, I get the feeling of the bigger struggle here. I do think that it could be clarified, if you look at the notes on your piece. Is this really about generational difference, or political ideology, the death (or maintenance despite lots of change) of a powerful institution, or a conflict between feminism, the idea of what it is to be an educated woman, and marriage as the alternative way of being a woman. I think you can do more than one of these themes in this piece but it needs one of them to stronger, or maybe one of them to be the one the reader is sure that YOU are most concerned about. Style-wise, I really love when you get into descriptive passages and more quotes/examples would really fill the piece out, give it more authority. I’m sure more examples will come out when you decide on the central theme. Overall, I can’t wait to read it again in a few weeks! Really great.
Martin
Strong writing as always Martin, especially near the end. I really felt something emotionally coming out of the piece that hit me with a lot of oomph. Your examples are also beautiful, very smooth scenes that you transition in and out of very naturally. This is a lot to give, to feel, to experience in one piece and it seems as if it could have been hard to write at times, but that is what makes it easy to connect to and appreciate. Do you think you could give this piece more of a definite scene or theme? The hospital, as an almost happy place for you, could be explored more in contrast with pain, of both you and your mother. Pain, your pain that you feel now for being more aware of your mother’s, or in contrast with your mother’s (physical struggle v. purely emotional struggle), could be something to go deeper into if you feel comfortable. This is strong stuff, Martin. Bravo.
Austin
I know you so I can hear your voice in my head perfectly. And even if someone didn’t know you, if you read it aloud, they would certainly get your tone, attitude. I am wondering how clear it would be, however, if this was published and read by someone that isn’t our peer and doesn’t have our high level of proficiency in sarcasm and dry ass humor. Not that this piece is supposed to be humorous in its entirety but it rests on (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) knowing that there is a tension, for you, between being gay (loving men) and being homosexual (either fitting a stereotype of what it means to love men by coincidence, that’s who you are, or intention, that’s who you think you’re supposed to be)…. Is that what you want this piece to be about? Or is it about you setting a standard for others you want to date that is really for yourself? Or both? Style-wise, I love how you write. I love especially your description of the perfect man. You always blend description and tone (voice?) to perfection—I know exactly what attitude you have and I’m feeling it with you as I read the piece.
Brittany
This sounds so incredibly rough. I think being physically injured can put a huge stress on your mental state and that is well described here. I do want to know why you put that much pressure on yourself. Of course there are many high schoolers who are ambitious and feel pressure/stress, but yours seems very extreme, especially given your physical condition. What was your relationship with your physical injury, with your body at the time? Was there a level of frustration that operated from the fact that your physical injury was affecting you the strongest mentally? Put another way, I want more examples showing me how you felt, not just telling. I want to get it more, I want to see the internal conflict, the body/mind conflict, and I want to be able to relate to it more. Your flow is nice, it was easy to read, very clear.
Regis
Very entertaining stories, and you are close to a unifying theme-it just needs to be obvious earlier and run its course throughout the whole piece. The story should be proof of your assertion, your theme, a feeling, lesson, etc.—the story isn’t the whole piece, it doesn’t quite speak for itself. I really wanted more details about Panama life, especially Panama politics. What were you doing there? How differently did you look? DESCRIBE/SHOW contrasts between you and your American/Gringoisms and life in Panama. That will be really interesting—what year was this/what age are you? What did your parents do when the car was stolen, was it a culture shock thing for them too—did they have a hard time dealing with beaurocracy b/c they were Americans, or was it easier? I can’t wait to hear more details, get a fuller picture of this time in your life.
Mae
Take that last paragraph and run with it. This piece is super relevant and can me even more so with a little restructuring and some more attention to answering that “why” question at the end. Maybe put that why questions close to the beginning and use the examples for your mom/sis/you to help answer. Think about the examples you use- they are about physical and emotional triggers-- panicking from something physical (dirty hands, pen on your neck) and panicking because of worry about disappointing or being a bad mother. What does this mean to you? What does being on medication mean to you? Is your mom/sis on medication? Do you know any men with the same problem and is this relevant to you?
Toni
Doing it all, controlling your body and your busy schedule—women get this. I think your writing is clear as day, your examples smooth and well-placed, your use of quotes mostly flawless and always useful. I knew how you felt, you really SHOWED it to me, and I could relate on some level almost everytime you described/explained the scenes. Do you want this piece to be about control, about food, about womanhood and perfectionism? Do you want it to be about how a general culture shift in how we look at food is manifesting itself in a troubling way in your own life, macro/micro universe style? I think all you need is to know how you want to end, the point you want to make. I think this is incredible writing Toni and with some tweaking can be very relevant and poignant.
Really interesting piece, Elizabeth. It was relevant even though I myself am not engaged, I get the feeling of the bigger struggle here. I do think that it could be clarified, if you look at the notes on your piece. Is this really about generational difference, or political ideology, the death (or maintenance despite lots of change) of a powerful institution, or a conflict between feminism, the idea of what it is to be an educated woman, and marriage as the alternative way of being a woman. I think you can do more than one of these themes in this piece but it needs one of them to stronger, or maybe one of them to be the one the reader is sure that YOU are most concerned about. Style-wise, I really love when you get into descriptive passages and more quotes/examples would really fill the piece out, give it more authority. I’m sure more examples will come out when you decide on the central theme. Overall, I can’t wait to read it again in a few weeks! Really great.
Martin
Strong writing as always Martin, especially near the end. I really felt something emotionally coming out of the piece that hit me with a lot of oomph. Your examples are also beautiful, very smooth scenes that you transition in and out of very naturally. This is a lot to give, to feel, to experience in one piece and it seems as if it could have been hard to write at times, but that is what makes it easy to connect to and appreciate. Do you think you could give this piece more of a definite scene or theme? The hospital, as an almost happy place for you, could be explored more in contrast with pain, of both you and your mother. Pain, your pain that you feel now for being more aware of your mother’s, or in contrast with your mother’s (physical struggle v. purely emotional struggle), could be something to go deeper into if you feel comfortable. This is strong stuff, Martin. Bravo.
Austin
I know you so I can hear your voice in my head perfectly. And even if someone didn’t know you, if you read it aloud, they would certainly get your tone, attitude. I am wondering how clear it would be, however, if this was published and read by someone that isn’t our peer and doesn’t have our high level of proficiency in sarcasm and dry ass humor. Not that this piece is supposed to be humorous in its entirety but it rests on (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) knowing that there is a tension, for you, between being gay (loving men) and being homosexual (either fitting a stereotype of what it means to love men by coincidence, that’s who you are, or intention, that’s who you think you’re supposed to be)…. Is that what you want this piece to be about? Or is it about you setting a standard for others you want to date that is really for yourself? Or both? Style-wise, I love how you write. I love especially your description of the perfect man. You always blend description and tone (voice?) to perfection—I know exactly what attitude you have and I’m feeling it with you as I read the piece.
Brittany
This sounds so incredibly rough. I think being physically injured can put a huge stress on your mental state and that is well described here. I do want to know why you put that much pressure on yourself. Of course there are many high schoolers who are ambitious and feel pressure/stress, but yours seems very extreme, especially given your physical condition. What was your relationship with your physical injury, with your body at the time? Was there a level of frustration that operated from the fact that your physical injury was affecting you the strongest mentally? Put another way, I want more examples showing me how you felt, not just telling. I want to get it more, I want to see the internal conflict, the body/mind conflict, and I want to be able to relate to it more. Your flow is nice, it was easy to read, very clear.
Regis
Very entertaining stories, and you are close to a unifying theme-it just needs to be obvious earlier and run its course throughout the whole piece. The story should be proof of your assertion, your theme, a feeling, lesson, etc.—the story isn’t the whole piece, it doesn’t quite speak for itself. I really wanted more details about Panama life, especially Panama politics. What were you doing there? How differently did you look? DESCRIBE/SHOW contrasts between you and your American/Gringoisms and life in Panama. That will be really interesting—what year was this/what age are you? What did your parents do when the car was stolen, was it a culture shock thing for them too—did they have a hard time dealing with beaurocracy b/c they were Americans, or was it easier? I can’t wait to hear more details, get a fuller picture of this time in your life.
Mae
Take that last paragraph and run with it. This piece is super relevant and can me even more so with a little restructuring and some more attention to answering that “why” question at the end. Maybe put that why questions close to the beginning and use the examples for your mom/sis/you to help answer. Think about the examples you use- they are about physical and emotional triggers-- panicking from something physical (dirty hands, pen on your neck) and panicking because of worry about disappointing or being a bad mother. What does this mean to you? What does being on medication mean to you? Is your mom/sis on medication? Do you know any men with the same problem and is this relevant to you?
Toni
Doing it all, controlling your body and your busy schedule—women get this. I think your writing is clear as day, your examples smooth and well-placed, your use of quotes mostly flawless and always useful. I knew how you felt, you really SHOWED it to me, and I could relate on some level almost everytime you described/explained the scenes. Do you want this piece to be about control, about food, about womanhood and perfectionism? Do you want it to be about how a general culture shift in how we look at food is manifesting itself in a troubling way in your own life, macro/micro universe style? I think all you need is to know how you want to end, the point you want to make. I think this is incredible writing Toni and with some tweaking can be very relevant and poignant.
Monday, April 6, 2009
YOUNG HEARTS RUN FREE: SELF PRESERVATION IS WHATS REALLY GOING ON TODAY
VERY UNFINISHED
We had arrived in Washington D.C., ten of us from each of the major cities around the country, totaling just over one hundred high school students from the continental united states and Puerto Rico. It was September of 2002 and I had accepted a nomination to participate in the Anti-Defamation League’s National Youth Leadership Mission to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I remember the Secret Service swarming and encircling the area at the first stops, the hotel and Pennsylvania Avenue, at once exciting and alarming. We chatted with each other and stared at our six ancient companions, survivors of the Holocaust, delighting in our new sense of self-importance but fearing the reality—the infamous sniper was still picking people off at gas stations around D.C.
We were to be ambassadors of peace and justice, a serious job description in the relatively recent arrival of the post 9/11 world. I was among my peers, bright-eyed youth who are supposed to feel inspired by global violence and carry the weight of potential world peace on their shoulders. Still growing breasts and managing awkwardly long limbs, it wasn’t too soon for our grandfathers and grandmothers to pass on the burden of their mismanaged history, to capitalize on the anxious energy that only the loss of more than 3000 lives on American soil had produced.
The mission of the 96 hours was to learn about the Holocaust and to apply these lessons to modern-day issues of bigotry and intolerance in America. The programs leaders and Holocaust survivors led us in 18-hour days filled with workshops on the importance of fueling frustrations into a dialogue that emphasizes diversity, action, and open communication.
We were told how vital it is that human beings exist in an orderly world where injustice is addressed, and a sense of security radiates. Life is now less secure, less certain, they said, and we had to understand.
I understood.
The tumultuous summer preceding had dulled my expectations of people and activated a mode of self-preservation that I existed in for several months. My mother and father had located each other as the fourth point on the axis of evil and had decided to share their hatred and disappointment in one another with me and the rest of the world. The sight of both of them grasping for their share or more of a previously combined pool of money, resources, and dignity had made me exhausted, unreceptive, and unwilling to take the chance of relying on anyone else to take care of me. I’d also lost my virginity that July, just a week after my sobbing mother had parked me outside the ice cream store to tell me about my dad filing for divorce. She was so ashamed, she said, so ashamed and so sorry. I didn’t cry when she told me and I didn’t feel anything at all towards Rob the next week. I wondered about my ability to feel compassion.
But I found passion again. I recovered feeling in my body and mind that September in D.C..
It was 36 hours in, and I was kissing Ryon from the Puerto Rico delegation. It was exhilarating—in between the most fascinating and intellectually stimulating conversations of my life, I feeling his lips on mine and my back pressed up against a wall in a white bright stairwell, drunk on the feeling of release from the numbing of my nerves by fear, disappointment, and anxiety.
It wasn’t about him, although he was certainly a tan and beautiful young man. I was bouncing back, destroying my disappointment, my bitterness, my vulnerability with a sense of purpose and some human connection.
Emotionally, intellectually, and physically my 16-year-old nerves, mind, and lips were jolted to a point of bursting. I want to feel this awake my entire life, I thought, I’m going to fight for this feeling.
Eight years later and eight years deeper in the politics of fear, I find myself having to fight harder than ever not to slip back into numbness.
My generation, the generation who remembers vividly snipers and 9/11, Columbine and Katrina, the generation that can look around their classrooms and see so many of their peers on depression, anxiety, focus, or hyperactivity medications, is a generation that understands what it is to be both emotionally full and empty.
( I am not too much older now than I was then but already I feel that ability to live in the moment, to bounce back from fear with hope and energy, dripping from my trembling fingers and swirling down into the numbingly anxious busyness of adult life. We graduate from college, or we get jobs, or we graduate and go back to school, leave the country or move back home, and never escape a world where self-preservation and the regulation of passion, of emotion, is required. ) ?
.
We had arrived in Washington D.C., ten of us from each of the major cities around the country, totaling just over one hundred high school students from the continental united states and Puerto Rico. It was September of 2002 and I had accepted a nomination to participate in the Anti-Defamation League’s National Youth Leadership Mission to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I remember the Secret Service swarming and encircling the area at the first stops, the hotel and Pennsylvania Avenue, at once exciting and alarming. We chatted with each other and stared at our six ancient companions, survivors of the Holocaust, delighting in our new sense of self-importance but fearing the reality—the infamous sniper was still picking people off at gas stations around D.C.
We were to be ambassadors of peace and justice, a serious job description in the relatively recent arrival of the post 9/11 world. I was among my peers, bright-eyed youth who are supposed to feel inspired by global violence and carry the weight of potential world peace on their shoulders. Still growing breasts and managing awkwardly long limbs, it wasn’t too soon for our grandfathers and grandmothers to pass on the burden of their mismanaged history, to capitalize on the anxious energy that only the loss of more than 3000 lives on American soil had produced.
The mission of the 96 hours was to learn about the Holocaust and to apply these lessons to modern-day issues of bigotry and intolerance in America. The programs leaders and Holocaust survivors led us in 18-hour days filled with workshops on the importance of fueling frustrations into a dialogue that emphasizes diversity, action, and open communication.
We were told how vital it is that human beings exist in an orderly world where injustice is addressed, and a sense of security radiates. Life is now less secure, less certain, they said, and we had to understand.
I understood.
The tumultuous summer preceding had dulled my expectations of people and activated a mode of self-preservation that I existed in for several months. My mother and father had located each other as the fourth point on the axis of evil and had decided to share their hatred and disappointment in one another with me and the rest of the world. The sight of both of them grasping for their share or more of a previously combined pool of money, resources, and dignity had made me exhausted, unreceptive, and unwilling to take the chance of relying on anyone else to take care of me. I’d also lost my virginity that July, just a week after my sobbing mother had parked me outside the ice cream store to tell me about my dad filing for divorce. She was so ashamed, she said, so ashamed and so sorry. I didn’t cry when she told me and I didn’t feel anything at all towards Rob the next week. I wondered about my ability to feel compassion.
But I found passion again. I recovered feeling in my body and mind that September in D.C..
It was 36 hours in, and I was kissing Ryon from the Puerto Rico delegation. It was exhilarating—in between the most fascinating and intellectually stimulating conversations of my life, I feeling his lips on mine and my back pressed up against a wall in a white bright stairwell, drunk on the feeling of release from the numbing of my nerves by fear, disappointment, and anxiety.
It wasn’t about him, although he was certainly a tan and beautiful young man. I was bouncing back, destroying my disappointment, my bitterness, my vulnerability with a sense of purpose and some human connection.
Emotionally, intellectually, and physically my 16-year-old nerves, mind, and lips were jolted to a point of bursting. I want to feel this awake my entire life, I thought, I’m going to fight for this feeling.
Eight years later and eight years deeper in the politics of fear, I find myself having to fight harder than ever not to slip back into numbness.
My generation, the generation who remembers vividly snipers and 9/11, Columbine and Katrina, the generation that can look around their classrooms and see so many of their peers on depression, anxiety, focus, or hyperactivity medications, is a generation that understands what it is to be both emotionally full and empty.
( I am not too much older now than I was then but already I feel that ability to live in the moment, to bounce back from fear with hope and energy, dripping from my trembling fingers and swirling down into the numbingly anxious busyness of adult life. We graduate from college, or we get jobs, or we graduate and go back to school, leave the country or move back home, and never escape a world where self-preservation and the regulation of passion, of emotion, is required. ) ?
.
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