writing project

There’s always a risk in putting an idea out there, online, for everyone to see. But since at this point my blog has 3 readers and counting (from my tally) I think it’s safe to put up a little snippet of my writing project idea.

I thought of it two (or was it three?) nights ago when I was looking up BASE jumping injuries. Really, I ended up looking up deaths, since it turns out they don’t really write newspaper articles about injuries, just casualties.

I was looking it up to see how many people, or around how many people, have died in the sport. I wanted to know how old they were, their experience level, what happened. These kinds of anwers are sometimes hard to find in news articles. For the most part, death in BASE jumping is sensationalized in the media and hard facts are difficult to find.

I probably read 5 or 6 news stories about base jumping deaths, specifically in Switzerland, sometimes about the same person. Then I started to think about the deaths that had occured in the climbing community over the last two eyars (there were several) and of the death of one of Joe’s heroes, Shane McConkey. I thought about how my friend, Taylor, is currently dealing with her boyfriends several injuries after falling from the top of a rock climb.

And I started to wonder about these people’s families – their brothers, sisters, moms, dads, friends, teachers, mentors, peers, children, girlfriends, wives.

BASE jumping, rock climbing, skiing – these can be dangerous sports when pushed to their limits, and every person who attempts them does so understanding that their pursuit of the sport is, in itself, selfish. While their families and loved ones wait at home for them to return, individuals who participate in these sometime extreme sports risk their lives to live on the edge, to follow their dreams, to experience the rush of flight, the clarity of freefall, the calm of intense focus.

But at home, their family worries. Brothers (as one did in an article I read) worry about their siblings dying. Moms wonder if they will outlive their children. Parents wonder if they will soon be raising a child alone. But yet, they still support their loved one. They see the happiness their loved one radiates when they return from their most recent trip. And they say to themselves that might death seems like a possibility, it won’t happen. They’re too safe to die, they think. They are doing it for the right reasons. Their friends will be there for a safety check. If they die, they’ll die doing what they love.

Because to live with someone, to love someone, you have to take them for who they are, these extreme sports become a relationship necessity. You support it, or you pass by the wayside. I don’t know if there is an in-between.

And this is neither good nor bad, but my hypothesis is every loved one of an extreme sport athlete, must constantly compete with their feelings – to support the athlete’s pursuit of what they love and the intense fear of losing that person.

I want to find the wives, the girlfriends, the mothers, fathers and sibling, the friends, and the extreme sport peers.

I want to learn why they do this. Why, after watching a friend die, can they continue. How is it justified? When pressed, do they feel the pursuit is worth dying for?

But more importantly, for the families and loved ones, how did they justify supporting the athlete? What would happen if they hadn’t? What changed after their athlete died? What do they think of the pursuit now – is it worth death? Would they have acted differently? Would that have made any difference?

I wonder about the people behind these fallen athletes – the ones that loved them and raised them. I think that is where the real story lies.

stress

I’m sitting in the house of the family I babysit for at the moment. I am watching their dog, Dexter, for the weekend while the whole family is out of town. I just took him for his evening walk and came back to work on some transcribing (riveting stuff, I tell you).

The past few days, I have been processing the events of the last several weeks, even the last year. See, I’ve been having some serious signs of anxiety – chest pains and numbness and tingling in my arms. Lumps in my throat and back and shoulder aches.

The anxiety really all started a week ago, when Joe was seriously injured in a BASE jumping accident in Switzerland. Since last Tuesday, he’d been in a hospital in Switzerland, sometimes scared, sometimes in pain, sometimes in surgery. He’s lucky to be alive, and he’s in one piece, and expected to walk and thrive again (he’s even continuing with his med school apps while at the hospital) but it’s been very hard to have him away for so long, without the ability to readily contact him.

In the meantime, he and I are going through a bit of a troublesome time – for reasons that are not really for everyone – and it’s been hard to cope with both of these things at the same time. My love for him and my concern for us are, in many ways, at odds. Though we both love each other very much and are committed to each other, it is hard.

Being alone in my apartment doesn’t do much to help. Everything in there reminds me of him, of course! Which is wonderful, because I miss him terribly and wish I could be sitting beside him in the hospital – having his presence in our place comforts me. But it is also awful, because it reminds me that he isn’t there, and that he wont be back for awhile (his take on it is that he’ll be back within 4 weeks if he is lucky, but will be on crutches for several months).

Then in my social life, things are hard. Brandi moved out of town recently, and she was really becoming a great friend – we basically tried to spend at least one day a week with each other. I’m ecstatic for her – she moved in with her boyfriend in a new city – but it’s been hard to try and build up those ties with others. Starting friendships over is very, very difficult on a busy schedule, and I’m very much starting to realize this more and more. (The mom for the family I babysit for has been really awesome though – I love her!) I’m doing my best, especially now that Joe is gone, to fill my schedule, meet people, connect, etc, but it’s kind of rough.

With work, things are hard too. I just took over as managing editor for the South End News – which is really like a kind of dream come true. It is a big task though, and with everything else going on, the difficulty of my responsibilities has been taken to a new level.

Then, a few weeks ago, my grandma died – something that I had prepared myself for, but a devastating loss to my family nonetheless. And just a few weeks before that, Joe experienced his own tragedy in his family that we were dealing with. And money is always a problem. I don’t know if I will be able to continue paying my bills with what I make babysitting and writing. I haven’t been able to freelance any book reviews recently because of how busy I’ve been with everything else. (I’m hoping my job becomes easier as I get the hang of it more and get better at churning out work, but at the moment, it takes up a LOT of time.)

It’s hard, and perhaps impossible, to think about all these things at once, to cope with them and deal.

I also realized, now that Joe is going to be gone for awhile, that I haven’t lived alone in 23 years. I’ve always had roommates or family around. There is a real loneliness, a real…strength, to living alone (even though I know it’s temporary). There is no one to bounce ideas off of, no one to laugh with, no one to hug or fight with. You really must do what you can to get out, to entertain yourself at home, to get your work done so you can go out to play. Companionship is so easy to become accustomed to, and I absolutely did. Weaning myself off of that for the time being is really, very hard. I don’t like it. :(

Needless to say, it’s been a really stressful year since I moved to Boston, and while there have been some huge ups, these downs are overwhelming me.

I know I cant expect perfection from myself – that I can just be as strong as I can, and feel all the things I need to feel, and do the best that I can with what I have. And I’ve been doing a very good job of deep breathing, so there have been no real panic or anxiety attacks – just the symptoms.

This weekend is supposed to be full of fun – going to the climbing gym and pooling off the coast of MA and next week, a movie with a new friend and her girlfriend. I’m hoping getting myself into the gear of doing these things will give me a little boost, will allow me to form some of those relationships that will help keep me strong, that will make my life a little richer, that will sustain me.

For now, though, it’s just deep breathing and doing the best I can. Hopefully Deter can keep me warm at night for the next few days too. Maybe that (along with one of Joe’s shirts for scent) is all I need…

So I’ve been busy…

Around the time I became the part-time writer for the South End News, a part-time employee of Flour Bakery, a one or twice a week babysitter to two beautiful little girls, a freelance book review writer and basically a crazed person, I decided that of all the things I was doing that were taking up my time, social media was the one that could wait.

Yet, while I’ve been away from Twitter and this blog, a ton has happened. In a slightly random order:

1) Aroa Fine Chocolates closed down

2) I moved up from part-time writer to senior staff writer (full-time) and within days of that promotion became the managing editor of the South End News. (NO worries about my boss-he left for greener pastures in Israel). I am now the only person in charge of content.

3) I therefore no longer work at Flour, but just could not stop babysitting those cute kids, so I still do that once a week. I think they are the favorite part of my whole week.

3) My grandma died, last week, after a year of many health issues. We’re all happy she passed, though sad she is gone. It’s brought up a lot of odd, morbid, sad, interesting questions/ideas/concerns that I’m sure I’ll mention in the future. I’ll be heading back to Florida, possibly with Mr. Med–Joe from now on–in tow, for the memorial service.

4) Brandi, my only friend in Boston, is leaving town to go live with her boyfriend in Atlanta. It makes me sad, even though I’m excited for her. I’m making friends, slowly, with my fellow coworkers, Hannah and Kurt, and some of the writers I work with. It’s a fun process.

5) Joe has been applying for med school, and is in the process of secondary applications. this process has made us both, off and on, a little cranky as we work out the craziness of our schedules so that we have some time for each other.

6) My mom and sister came to visit, and it was nice to show both of them the city I live in and the place I now call home.

7) The South End is becoming a special place in my heart, and while I might not be here forever, I am really appreciating the chance to live here, open my eyes to a different world and share the news and people I find through the paper.

That’s all for now. It’s bed time. If you want to see the paper, check out http://www.southendnews.com. I’m also reworking how we (uhm, I) use the Twitter and Facebook pages. So if you use either of those, feel free to check out twitter.com/southendnews and facebook.com/southendnews

Write soon!

Flowers and Chocolates = Mother’s Day

Some of my favorite pictures from an Aroa Fine Chocolate shoot I did on Tuesday morning.

Just trash that city.

Living in Boston (really, being a reporter) has taught me a lot of things–namely things aren’t always what they seem.

Grungy facades say nothing about the miracles happening within building walls.

While people tell the homeless to get a job, some of them can’t read, write or speak English–or even their own language!

When you have to worry about paying for groceries or paying for heat, paying for your child’s school supplies or your electrical bill, maybe recycling and healthy eating aren’t at the top of your list.

I realize now that there is more to the story than the dirty cover–and I try to judge less and understand more as I unwrap the city lives I don’t understand well enough.

But today, I was angry by an act of what I felt was pure selfishness. For all the trash that gets knocked over and spills into the streets, for all the homeless who rummage through garbage hoping for a lucky break, there shouldn’t be careless people who through their empty cigarette containers into the streets because the next trash can is blocks away.

If you can help it (and I sure most people can), stop littering. It’s ruining my walk to work, to the gym, to the bakery and ruining the city. It’s gross.

Rejected

Well, tonight was the first night I got ejected from an event on which I was writing a story.

I had just gotten back (late–surprise!) from a slackline session with this woman, Adi Carter, who has some pretty fabulous yoga slacking moves, as well as her friend Reg and fun ole Brandi :).

I rushed to take a shower, threw on my new and fabulous pencil skirt, rushed to dry the front of my hair, threw on make up, put on my (mini) heels and rushed down the street.

When I arrived, I sensed trouble right away. The women at the table selling tickets were looking at me a little oddly when I asked to see the program director. When he came around, I said something to the effect of “Let’s get crackin’ with the questions!” (It was nothing like that, don’t worry.)

To which he responded, do you have your ticket?

Now, to a normal person, that seems reasonable, but as some background, the last event/fundraiser I went to, I was not, in any way, shape or form asked to pay. The one before that, I did pay, to which my editor told me, “As a member of the press, you shouldn’t have to worry about paying.” In fact, most of the events I go to (some of which are paid events) the event planner is usually so stoked a newspaper is covering it that no one ever mentions money or tickets.

Which is why I didn’t call and didn’t worry whatsoever about the idea of tickets, bracelets, or payment.

But Mr. Program Manager (very nicely) told me I’d have to pay $75 for my general admission ticket. With a kind of apologetic, kind of we-think-you’re-lying smile, I was wondering if maybe he was just misinformed.

So, I asked to talk to a superior. To which I was told they would say the same thing.

So I called my editor, who sounded a bit shocked at the fact they weren’t letting me in and who told me that if that was the case, I should probably head home and enjoy the rest of my night.
Unfortunately, I wore Brandi out at slacklining and Mr. Med is in what we now call “neuro mode” (named for the horrible Neurobiology class that took over his life for 8 weeks over Christmas) studying for his test next Friday. Hence, no one to really hang out with.

So I sit, heels kicked off, pencil skirt and tucked-in white, see-through. polka dot blouse all rumpled and black cotton jacket slipping off my shoulder with no prospects except drinking beer, watching tv, and/or reading a bookn for the rest of the night. Not too shabby!

Cheers!

Easter Bag

Me, the morning before Easter morning.

A good-sported Mr. Med planned an Easter egg hunt in line with the many many many easter egg hunts of my past. This is how it always begins:

Breakfast with Socrates

I enjoy quotes. Those little snippets that put a situation, a thought, a feeling into words in such an apt way. Maybe I like quotes because my thoughts often don’t arrange themselves as eloquently as others have arranged them before me.

Every so often I find a book passage that also has this same eloquence, and this was the case in the last book I reviewed, Breakfast with Socrates.

Breakfast with Socrates is a book by Robert Rowland Smith. Smith walks us through a typical day–from waking up, to traveling to work, to having sex, to eating dinner, and while we travel through our day, he unfolds a philosophical discussion of the ordinary things to do. He examines why we dress ourselves up for work, why we struggle with whether or not we should buy the lunch we just ate with our parents, and why the simple act of waking up confirms our own existence.

Though the entire thing was fabulous (except for maybe the chapter on going shopping), there was a section of the book called “reading a book” that I really loved. Here’s are a few excerpts:

“…a book is like an orchestral score, with you, the reader, a conductor who teases sounds form a page that would otherwise remain mute. You wake the dead thing into like. true, those sounds are heard only as a dumb show in the front of your mind, never actually shattering the air to make themselves audible, but without your silent consent conjuring those words would languish more silently still, dormant. However, this act of worldly resurrection on your part (a magic of its own) comes at a cost. For the words that you breath from their papery, ghost-like state into life must, like photographic negatives, pass through a medium, a solvent, before you can register them as such, before they become properly legible. That medium is your mind.

So what, you may ask, is the problem? Well, because the book you’re reading can’t release any meaning without your mind to coax it out, the book suffers the same limits that you do: it can mean only as much as your mind is capable of letting it mean. because, in other words, it’s your mind and no one else’s that does the reading, the meaning you get will be your own.

It’s a situation that itself bears different interpretations. If you can’t be sure that you’ve read the book as such, only that you’ve shaken the words into a meaning for you, like the pattern of tea leaves that remain in your cup, you have at least created a world that makes sense in you own terms. you’ve made it mean something for you, which is what, all things considered, meaning is: there’s no meaning in general; meaning occurs when something broad, abstract, nebulous, or unfounded gets drawn down, when it switches from being a roving, sketchy monster to becoming your own pet, and one that looks like you. Which is partly why the world that you generate out of the book you’re reading keeps you in isolation. And we all know the feeling of wanting to dive back into the novel we’ve got on the go, escaping from the people around us. Even if they are reading the very same publication, there;s somethings special, and comforting, about our own relationship with it, which we’d prefer to keep to ourselves. On the other hand, when your feeling about a  book is mirrored by another reader, there’s a wonderful complicity, as if you’d both been involved in a life-changing event that no one who wasn’t there would understand. Sharing an interpretation is like sharing history.”

Love it.

GLBT Civil Rights, Equality

I am smack dag in the middle of the convergence of 3 projects, which together include 3 articles and 4 press releases all due to different people within the next day or two.

So, I decided to blog.

I recently attended an event for the South End News. It was a GLBT protest/party.

The protest concerned the fact that gay and lesbian groups (and presumably bisexual and transgender ones as well) were not permitted to march in Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

This decision by parade organizers was then cemeneted by the Supreme Court in 1995. It was decided the organizers had a right to decide who could march.

Aside from having participants like Steve Grossman (former national chair of DNC) and many state legislators in attendance, the event focused on an issue that is growing more near and dear to my heart: equality.

I think it’s very easy to close your eyes to things that matter. There is a lot to do in a day. A lot of respnsibilities–work, children, school, commuting, free time, personal developement, relationships. Sometimes things like the environment (which I’ll get to in a later post) and health care and GLBT rights and hunger and peace and homelessness get lost in the shuffle.

Unlike lawmakers and those in government, we do not devote our day to coming up with better ideas, or bette rules and guidelines.

So it was good, when reporting on this event, to be reminded of the fact that for many people, everywhere, GLBT issues are a huge part of their lives.

They can’t get married, get health benefits, visit each other in the hospital. They aren’t accepted by the community, can’t  get a job where they are harassed, don’t feel safe walking down the street. they can’t march in parades, or declare themselves in the military, or come out without feeling like they’ve somehow disappointed their friends, family or community.

I’m thankful to those who fight this fight daily–who join organizations, who participate protests, who make their voices heard in Congress and across the country.

It’s a hard truth that sometimes, all I can offer is my voice, my encouragement, my promise to debate and discuss with those who need to be swayed. I promise to stand up for what is right and do what I can.

In terms of laws being enacted to support gay marriage, gay rights, I stand behind those.

One man that night, who was running for State Senator to fill Scott Brown’s now-vacant seat, said that he recently spoke with a woman who was enraged that her senator, or lawmaker, axed a referendum that put gay marriage to a vote–she wanted her chance to vote against it.

And this man’s response to her was something like this:, “Since when have American’s ever been allowed to vote on something that should be a basic civil right? It isn’t their place, or their privilege to do so, and I will always axe any referendum that would permit it.”

Digital Divide is bigger than I thought

If you listen to the media, or to Twitter, or to any technology column, the direction is obvious: more social media, more online services, more technology.

If I searched myself, I would find myself wanting more capabilities, more companies I could reach online, more information when I search, and more online article available.

But I would also find a love of hard-copied books. Of finding my favorite pages and quotes. Of underlining with my pen. Of marking the pages I found interesting. Of printing out my articles so I can properly edit them. Of pasting and taping pictures and magazine articles to posterboard. Of hanging pictures up on the wall.

And so, I find that as much as I love technology, love twitter, love facebook, love online, love my iphone, that those things in no way, shape or form replace or even really substitute the hard copy.

I started to come to these conclusions over the last week after attending a Boston Public Library Board of Trustees meeting. I attended it to write an article about it for the South End News, where I now work as a part-time Staff Writer (hallelujah!).

At the meeting, where President Amy Ryan said that the libraries were moving to put more services online, offer more digital archives, etc, there was an outcry. People  (admittedly, older generations) didn’t want more computers. they didn’t want the ability to search online.They wanted to walk into a library with their child. They wanted to check out books. They wanted a librarian they could trust with their children. They wanted a physical location their children could go to be safe off the streets.

And so I wonder if there is a bigger truth to the idea of a digital divide. If not only do some people not have access to digital services, but some would be safer without it. Are the wealthy and the able pushing digital online and social media things because they don’t have something to lose if the physicality of services drops away? What about those that do?

I know I’ve been missing in action for awhile, but if anyone is still out there, what do you think?