I’m sorry that I’ve been away from any kind of meaningful regular blogging lately. I’ve been really busy with my Times piece, and schoolwork, and the like.
Firstly, six Pitcairners have been convicted of rape. What a crazy story. Still looking forward to reading Serpent in Paradise.
Anyhow, so much has happened in the last week, I barely know where to begin.
Monday:
So we had RW1 last Monday, as usual. And as usual we discussed our assignment for the week, which in this case was “race relations/ethnicity in the neighborhood.” We were supposed to find some sort of story relating to that. I originally had thought about doing a really boring piece about the intersection in Crown Heights that has mostly Lubavitcher Jews on the south side and mostly West Indians on the north side. However, sometimes Prof. Gissler will call students at random times and suggest a story to cover.
Such was the case on Monday. About an hour after class, I got the call. The story? A spree of 19 sites of swastika graffiti markings on synagogues, Jewish centers and a few police cars in Brooklyn, but with a few in Queens.
So after figuring out how to get where I need to go, and where one of these sites are, I get on the subway, and I’m out there following an hour subway ride, I’m out in South Brooklyn by about 5 pm. I met up by accident with Elias Okach the charismatic Kenyan that I met early on in the semester. He’d been sent out on the same assignment and was getting a crash course in Judaism — hey, at least I knew the difference between Sephardic and Ashkenazi. We spent the next few hours talking to various congregants about how they felt, and some local residents, gathering various bits of information. By about 8:30 pm or so, I got another call from Prof. Gissler. The perpetrator had been caught: it was a woman. He had her address, it was in Bay Ridge. I had thought about taking a cab to get there, but I didn’t want to spend the money, not to mention the fact that I didn’t have enough money. I estimated it would be about $20 at least. So I busted out with my iBook, located a WiFi signal, and pulled up the NYC bus map. I was able to determine that there was a bus line near to where I was, which would take me to a subway line. A 10 minute walk, a bus, a Turkish dšner kebab and two subways later, I was in Bay Ridge.
It was just after 10 pm when I arrived at 101st St. I walked by a bar that was showing Game 5 of the ALCS on their TVs, and I gritted my teeth that I would have to miss the end of this historic baseball game in the name of reporting some wacky anti-Semetic lady in Bay Ridge. Passing a television journalist conclude her broadcast saying that the woman (Russian Orthodox), had been divorced from a Jewish man who had recently remarried and she just flipped out and decided to paint swastikas everywhere, you know, like you do. I wasn’t able to confirm this from anyone that night, but a few minutes later a resident let me into the building and I talked with the superintendent who told me that the woman was pretty wacked out and in the past had thrown dishes, perfume bottles and a new television set out of her fourth floor apartment. Another time she had also stolen potted plants from the neighborhood and had brought them back to the building. So she was obviously wacked out.
With these amazing details in my notebook, all that I had to do was to write my 500 word story before midnight. I had nearly 90 minutes to complete the task, not to mention a baseball game to watch. So, I plopped myself down in the bar and fired up the iBook again. The waiter informed me that the kitchen was closed. So I ordered a mango vodka martini. And to my great fortune, there was a weak WiFi node accessible from the bar. I watched the Red Sox win it in the 14th, downed my martini, typed up my story and had it filed at 11:50 pm. I love it things just come together like that.
I didn’t make it home until close to 1:30 am.
Thursday:
I began my five-week “Skills of the Journalist” course, in radio. The idea is to expose journalism students to other media that they are not used to. So the magazine students take new media, the newspaper kids take television, the radio kids take magazine, et cetera. It meets for four hours a week for the next five weeks and by the end of it, we’re supposed to have some idea of how to put a radio piece together.
I’m really excited by this class, given that if I wasn’t a print journalist, I’d do radio. I have a lot of respect for radio journalism and appreciate good radio (like this). When I’m not listening to my iPod, I’m listening to NPR pretty much constantly. Our class is taught by Rick Karr (a tech journalist as well!) and Tony Dec.
Our first course involved getting a crash course in using a shoulder-mounted tape recorder (yes, people still use cassettes, apparently). We talked about mic placement, recording levels, and how to use the headphones to make sure that you’re actually recording. They sent us out onto campus where we (our 15-person class) interviewed each other so we could get a feel for the equipment. Next week we’ll start on our first assignment, a two minute “profile of a place.” I’ve settled on Koronet pizza, the late-night cheap pizzeria on 110th/Broadway. (For those of you in Berkeley, think of Top Dog, but for pizza, but with not as much libertarian propaganda and a lot less attitude, and a bit more space and you sorta have what Koronet is like.) I’m very much looking forward to working on this piece. (Rebekah, you’d be proud!)
Weekend:
On Friday I headed up to Hartford, to hang with Martin while Heidi was off in Switzerland. Chinese bus all the way. I listened to back editions of the Dawn and Drew Show on my iPod most of the way. I got to meet Martin’s girlfriend of five months (that I only just found out about), Abby. Saturday, after finding out that Martin’s Saturday schedule had changed for the sixth time (he had work –> he had the SAT II –> he had the ACT –> the ACT was the following weekend –> he still wanted to go to Boston –> he didn’t want to come to Boston after all), I went to Boston on my own, and met Sina for lunch at Bartley’s in Cambridge, MA. Quality burgers indeed. I had the David Ortiz burger (aka a bacon cheeseburger). Their frappŽs (which Bostoners apparently call “fraps”) are excellent, but their fries could use some work.
Following a late lunch, I headed over to Smith College to visit Rachel Balsham, where we saw a Gertrude Stein play and caught the last half of the World Series, Game 1. Drove a half hour south back to Hartford, spent 45 minutes getting lost in downtown Hartford, and finally made it back to the house in West Hartford.
Sunday was spent driving to the southeastern corner of the state, New London, where I was doing the last interview for my Times’ piece. I still find it weird that I drove through most of a state this weekend. Not much happening in New London on a Sunday. I got us both grinders from Franklin Giant Grinders in Little Italy, Hartford.
Today:
We had RW1 as usual, and the subject line comes from Prof. Gissler, who said this in regards to he and his wife’s 50th wedding anniversary this past weekend. I’ve never heard someone use “bling-bling” and “Tiffany’s” in the same sentence before.
This week, interviews for class stories (RW1 and RW2), gotta work on my internship apps, and my Macworld story that’s due next week.
Times piece comes out on Thursday. Should be up online by Wednesday evening, east coast time!
