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.”
Friday, May 22, 2009
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
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