National Public Radio: Behind the Voices

I love NPR. It reminds me of driving home from elementary school or to sports practices with my parents. I love human interest shows, such as Fresh Air and This American Life.  And of course the news programs are excellent as well. My professors beg us to NPR  so we will get a feel for good journalism.

So naturally, I was delighted to find , National Public Radio: Behind the Voices. The book gives background and personal information about the voices heard on NPR. My roommate and I immediately flipped to the section on Terry Gross and read some interesting thoughts on her personal life, education and the historybehind her show.

We also read about Ira Glass, who is our secret radio crush.

I also just finished the essay about Michele Norris and was captivated by the stories of her family life and how her growing-up years impacted her career as a journalist.

So if  you spend hours with All Things Considered or Science Friday or Prairie Home Companion, I’d recommend this book.

Remembering Seventh

I’ve been mentoring  at Duniway Middle School, which is one of the main McMinnville middle schools. It’s been an interesting experience so far and I love middle schoolers, so I plan to keep doing it until I leave for England next fall.

Being part of the seventh grade world again is odd. The school is so much different from what middle school was like when I was twelve. There is a police officer on duty for several hours a day. I have to wear a visitor’s badge and sign in and out for each time I enter the building. There is a full-time counseling office with two counselors available for the majority of each day. There are elevators and large wings of the building for each grade. The bell that signals class periods is two deep, robotic buzzes (definitely not like the loud “brrinnnnngggggs!” that I grew up hearing).

I don’t think any of these things are bad. At first I thought the school felt impersonal and cold, but now I realize that the district is trying its best to keep all these amazing kids safe in an efficient manner.

And really, the kids aren’t much different from when I was in middle school. The girls and boys still mostly sit at separate tables. They boys are still shorter and greasier than the girls. Each student has so much energy and passion. They try their best to fit in and look cool, but most of them haven’t realized that it’s “lame” to be excited about learning, so they bounce around in their chairs when they are given a fun activity or project to do. And they all love compliments. I told a girl that she could probably score higher than me on her math test (which isn’t a lie), and her face completely lit up. She tried not to smile, but I saw the corners of her mouth pushing upward.

I guess the main differences that I notice just come from being older. I used to think middle schoolers were bratty and shallow and wild. Now I see that they are these amazing, complex people. A lot of them are dealing with things at home that no person should ever have to face. They witness brokeness at home each night, yet still come to school every morning and think that the world is a pretty cool place. I respect that.

I wish these kids could never grow skeptical of life. I wish they could always stay enthusiastic about school and squirm in their chairs whenever they were assigned a fun project. I wish they could keep their lofty ambitions and their exciting plans (“I want to be the first person in my family to go to college,” a girl told me). Frankly, I know they all won’t. But thankfully, some of them will. And that’s what makes me think that being part of the world, just a little speck on the globe, is pretty amazing.

20 (reasons i love my mom)

1. She is a reader and writer 2. She always seeks to improve herself 3. She continually asks people about themselves 4. She gives special attention to senior citizens and children (two commonly overlooked age groups) 5. She keeps chocolate covered coffee beans from Trader Joes above her closet 6. She cleans my room for me sometimes 7. She loves cooking gourmet food 8. She loves God 9. She supported my choice to become a vegetarian (about a year ago), bought a vegetarian cook book, and makes it a point to make meals that I can eat at least once every time I’m home 10. She lets me sleep in her bed with her when my dad is on business trips 11. She plays piano while she’s cooking and always gets surprised when she doesn’t hear her kitchen timer go off 12. I don’t have to be embarrassed of her (like some of my friends are of their moms) 13. She always picks out classy clothes 14. She knows at least a little about everything 15. She lets me have a glass of wine at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners 16. She loves growing a vegetable garden and loves picking out new varieties of produce from her seed catalogues 17. She stays in shape 18. She cares about my education 19. She is in love with my dad 20. She loves me. And my brothers.

Happy Birthday (Dec. 10), Momma! XOXO

Recent reads

The Nanny Diaries

The writing wasn’t brilliant and this book will probably never be considered as great literature. But it was a fast read and the authors created strong characters and realistic, fascinating  interactions between those characters. I cried at the end, which is not a usual occurence for me. I haven’t seen the movie yet and don’t know if I will.

Humble Boy

This is the first play I’ve read since high school.  It was only about 100 pages, but it those pages are crammed with character development, depth, humor and tragedy. I loved the connection between bees and the characters. I would love to see a production of this piece. The stage directions leave a lot of room for director interpretation, so watching the play would be a completely different experience than reading it.

Another step toward my goal

I saw the inner-workings of the Democrat-Herald on Saturday. I’m writing a case study on Steve Lundeberg’s article, “Who Killed Harvey Hamilton.” He graciously agreed to let me interview (a.ka., interrogate him for almost two hours) about the article and journalism in general.

When I first arrived, he guided me through the newsroom. He probably wanted to gag when I sighed. (“This is amazing!”)

Steve also showed me the actual printing press. The room smelt like oil and ink and dust.  Almost like my hands smell after holding a single paper for awhile, except 100 times stronger. The machine wasn’t printing as we looked at it, so I could see yards of paper, frozen throughout different stages of the assembly process.  

After that, we sat in the conference room for the interview. I tried to imagine myself, five years in the future, sitting in a room for a real meeting. The vision was pretty weak. Especially when I thought about how my mom had dropped me off for the interview (we shared a ride into town to save gas…I promise that I drive myself places on a daily basis without parental guidance.). 

Anyway, Mr. Lundeberg answered all my questions and gave me a new perspective on reporting and editing. It made me slightly nervous to interview someone who interviews people for a living, but I still really enjoyed the experience. As I talked to him, I realized that journalism is something I want to be immersed in for a quite a long time. Some days, I feel self-conscious about my writing. I don’t always take time to edit my blogs. I still get lots of red marks on the first drafts of my Linfield Review articles. Sometimes, I don’t know how to give stories life and dimension. Other times, I don’t know what questions will cause people to be the most candid and helpful versions of themselves.

I’m things will sort themselves out with hard work and dedication. And who knows? One day, if I try hard enough, I might get to sit at a conference table with a master’s degree under my belt, knowing that my mom didn’t drop me off for the meeting.

——–

P.S.  I noticed that Mr. Lundeberg mentioned the interview in a post of his own.

Free Facials

A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from an unknown number. A woman addressed me as “Jonah” and informed me that I was the winner of the Mary Kay grand prize drawing. “Bring some friends, and they can have free facials, too!” the woman said.

 Rain soaked through our sweatshirts as Sarah, Radha and I walked into the church building. A woman with too much make-up and a badge that said “Victory” led us into a basement. There were Mary Kay posters plastered to the front of the room. A group of women were already sitting at tables with Styrofoam make-up trays in front of them.

Victory was not the only Mary-Kay employee at the gathering. About five make-up caked consultants hovered around the room. Some of them were harassing one of the consultants for wearing slacks to the meeting. “The handbook says skirts,” they joked.

Except it wasn’t a friendly type of joking. It reminded me of the way people sometimes use prayer requests as a passive aggressive way to gossip.

 The “evening of pampering” began with a 30 minute Mary Kay consultant meeting. They discussed the importance of making sales goals, the awards they could win if they sold X amount of products, and the amount of fun they had at their recent convention. The other guests looked confused and my friends looked at me as if I had betrayed them by inviting them to a Mary Kay meeting. I looked at them apologetically.

The Mary Kay meeting continued as the consultants swore in a new member. The new employee came to the front of the room, put her hand on her heart, and repeated and inane pledge. (“I will put myself first and use my products as an extension of my love for women and for beauty!” )

I tried to make the taste of throw-up go away as I watched them crown her with a sparkling tiara from Claires.

“Come girls,” the leader said. “We’ll go into another room and let Victory give these ladies an evening of fun.” They sauntered out as one of them turned a C.D player on and shut the door. Victory smiled at us. I looked closely to see if her make-up would crack. A Mary-Kay theme song floated through the air from the C.D. player. Seriously.

 Victory instructed everyone to start applying cleanser. As we rubbed our faces, she told us that we could earn a ticket every time we asked a question about Mary Kay products. “You can use your tickets for a raffle at the end,” Victory said. I almost pulled out my student ID card to make sure that I wasn’t a fifth grader.

 “I HAVE A QUESTION!” a voice squawked. The voice belonged to a woman in her 40’s. Not a fifth grader. “Why is it a good idea to wash our faces?” she asked.

 “Well,” Victory said, handing her a ticket. “We want to get rid of dead skin cells and icky germs.”

The squawky woman continued to ask ridiculous questions for the remainder of the evening.

 “Can the moisturizer be used on the rest of our bodies?”

 “You how your elbows get dry when you rest them on tables? Well, can we use the cream to help that?”

“Why is it a good idea to take off your make-up before bed?”

 Someone really wanted to win some raffle prizes.

 After the facials were finished, the rest of the consultants came back for the raffle prizes. We were instructed to say, “Mary Kay!” if our number was called.

 Guess who won every. single . prize.

 After she screamed “MARY KAAYYYYY!” for the fifth consecutive time, I suddenly snapped.

 “OKAY!” I accidentally barked.

 Luckily, only a few people heard me. Sqwaker woman was too busy collecting a bottle of wrinkle-reducing cream to hear.

The meeting ended with a reading from a book by Mary Kay and a closing pledge. Yes, there were hand motions.

 Note: Do not be offended. I know people who are consultants for various beauty and home companies (Including Mary Kay). I have never seen them wearing tiaras or giving away tickets. And they don’t have make-up caked faces. Just saying.

A Milestone

(Sappy Hallmark Moment Alert)

I’m pretty sure I just passed some kind of academic milestone. I wrote my first paper that went over 20 pages.  It was a whopping  150, actually.

I’ve always been into sports, but I have to say that making it to state in volleyball or beating a running PR has never given me the sense of relief and accomplishment I’m feeling right now.

I signed up for Mass Communication 275 (Information Gathering) because I had to. It’s a core requirement for all mass comm. majors at Linfield. There are horror stories floating around campus about the class. Even non-majors know about the beast that is Information Gathering.  The purpose of the class is to strength students in AP (Associated Press) style, APA style and research tactics.

We each had to choose a public policy issue to research for the entire semester. I chose to write about genetically modified food. This topic eventually evolved into GM food labeling. I’m now a strong supporter of food labels. Especially labels indicating that a food contains genetically modified organisms.  I’d write more about my new convictions, but I just spent a semester doing that.

The first few weeks of class were painful. Everyone’s weekly 7-page weekly assignments were covered in red ink. One week, I failed an assignment because I accidentally gathered the wrong type of sources. I burst into unexpected tears at random intervals throughout the rest of the day.

As the class progressed, the exhaustion and work levels did not decrease. However, I started becoming more interested in my mass communication major. I read the New York Times several times a week, worked hard at The Linfield Review and paid more attention to grammar and AP style. My topic also pushed me to love life science. I actually care about genes and plants and agriculture now.

The two weeks before the major project was due were the worst. I started dreaming about different sections of my annotated bibliography. Seriously. Thanksgiving break was joke. I took a short break to eat dinner on Thanksgiving Day, but I worked continuously for the rest of the break.

The project was due two days after break. I remember talking to a kid in my literature class about the week. He visited his girlfriend in Mexico. They taught orphans English lessons and read “To Kill a Mockingbird” together on the beach every evening. I fought the urge to fly across the table and choke him. However, I was too exhausted and sleep deprived.

The night before the project was due, two classmates and I worked on formatting our projects. Formatting a 150 page project takes about 5 hours. We joked a lot to keep each other sane. When I finally printed my project, I held the warm paper up to my face. Right in the middle of the library. It was 12:30, so nobody noticed, but I wouldn’t have cared if they did. I walked home in the dark. It was really misty  so I held the stack of papers against my chest. I kept whispering, “I did it. I did it. I did it.” I remember thinking that the way I felt had to be a million times better than how my literature class friend felt about his break.  He probably doesn’t agree.

The next day, my professor, who is an excellent teacher and advisor but usually a terrible encourager, went to each person in the class. He picked up their stack of papers, held it in the air and let the project slam down onto the table in front of him. “Listen to that sound,” he said. “It’s one of the best sounds in the world. Be proud.”

Really. It was the best sound in the world. And I was proud.

a crocodile of math professors opens to swallow me

Excerpt from Parliament Hill Fields by Syliva Plath.

From the linked ponds that my eyes wince

And brim; the city melts like sugar.

A crocodile of small girls

Knotting and stopping, ill-assorted in blue uniforms,

Opens to swallow me. I’m a stone, a stick.

One child drops a barrette of pink plastic;

None of them seem to notice.

Their shrill, gravelly gossip’s funneled off.

Now silence after silence offers itself.

The wind stops my breath like a bandage.

Look up the whole poem and read it. Because it deserves to be read in a fluid manner. These are just my two favorite stanzas, so I had to post them. I feel so cheesy when I read poems that I love. I probably look a lot like Anne Shirley in the opening scene of the BBC film. Especially lately. I’ve noticed that my love for literature and writing has intensified during the past few months. I positive why this is,  but reading poems has almost become a craving lately.

It probably started when I got an e-mail last week from the Registrar’s office, telling me that I needed to fulfill my math proficiency requirement this spring. I felt like breaking my computer as I read the message. Most Linfield students arrived on campus prepared to take college-level calculus. I arrived with the ability to count on my fingers and use skip counting songs as tools to attack multiplication problems. I still remember sitting in my advisor’s office after taking Linfield’s math placement test. He pulled out my folder and set it between us on his desk.

“We both know you scored low on this test. You probably knew it while you were taking the test and I knew it because I looked at your SAT scores. “

He went on to tell me that I was lucky that my verbal and writing scores had been high, because I “certainly wouldn’t have been considered for my math scores.” 

Thankfully, this didn’t depress me. I have been a math-reject since the beginning of my existence. My father, who is an engineer, probably feels sad when he sees me doing things like measuring objects by using  my index finger.

After I received the Registrar’s notice, my creative writing advisor (not my mass communication advisor who had seen my test scores) e-mailed me with a similar message. He even recommended a class for me. It’s called, “Great Ideas in Math.”  Here is the course description, because it made me smile: (Yes, there must be others like me in this world. )

Description: The beauty and significance of mathematics in the history of human thought. Focus on concepts of fairness, distribution of power, infinity, and chaos. The impact of mathematics on human knowing, its strengths and limitations. Prerequisites: high school algebra I and geometry, or equivalent. Satisfies mathematics proficiency requirement. Preference for registration will be given to students who have not fulfilled the mathematics proficiency requirement. NOTE: Not for General Science majors. 3 credits (QR) Location: MELR 202

Until the class starts, I’ll be brushing up on my skip counting skills:

More October snapshots

 1. I had been sitting in a coffee shop, working on a literature report all Sat. afternoon. I’m not sure if it was the caffeine or the joy that reading Fern Hill brings me, but I suddenly got the urge to pierce my ear lobes. Immediately. So I rushed back to my room, burst through the door, and informed my roommate that we needed to go to the Salem Center. Sarah, who is always up for adventure but who is also much more responsible than me, got directions from McMinnville to the mall and checked the times that piercing parlors would be open. About an hour later, I perched in a chair- which I had to share with a teddy bear- at Claire’s and watched as an employee loaded a piercing gun with my earrings. “Don’t count to three,” I begged the lady, “just go for it.” Sarah stood by me the whole time and tried not to laugh at the fact that I was a college student getting my ears pierced in a pink, preteen store. Last January, I had the cartilage on my right ear pierced ( in a non-preteen store, even!) and I have to say that getting my lobes pierced was a much less painful experience.

 2. I’ve been listening to NPR as a way to relieve stress about my Information Gathering class. I’m not sure why listening to journalism helps take my mind off my journalism homework, but there’s something comforting about good old Terry Gross and Ira Glass. This American Life is my new favorite show. How can you not love it? Same for Fresh Air.

3. I think blood drives are turning into my new hobby or something. I was sitting in class this morning and could barely stay awake as the professor droned on about cubic inches and other topics that reminded me of math. So I pulled out my planner and wrote a quick to-do list. On the bottom of the list, I wrote, “Search for blood drives in McMinnville.” I know it’s weird. But what is even weirder is that I got home after class and googled it. I’m planning on going to the Veteran’s Day blood drive at the local air & space museum. I told my mom all this, and she said it was “sick.” I guess we can’t all love volunteerism and philanthropy.

4. I know I chose the right majors. Yesterday, I was sitting in my Critical Methods of Literature Study class and found myself wanting to curl up in a poem and die because the conversation was so wonderful. After spending most of the class analyzing “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas, we had a conversation about the criteria that people use to identify “good literature.” We were in a heated debate about reader-response criticism and new criticism, when one boy raised his hand and said that he had a difficult time using new criticism. “I want to feel something when I read. I want it to be an intimate experience,” he said. “If we start letting a list of guidelines (new criticism) dictate the way we classify literature, we might as well be in a math class. I HATE MATHY THINGS!” he exclaimed. Everyone (even supporters of new criticism) nodded their heads in approval and smiled. I looked around the room and knew I was in the right college and classroom and major. Amen for hating mathy things!

October is about Greek Food

 I just had the best Greek-food experience ever. Last night a group of Linfield kids piled in a van and went to Greek Cusina, which is a Greek restaurant in Portland (  around the riverfront & downtown area).

When we arrived, everyone felt a bit uncomfortable in the Birkenstocks and designer flannel shirts they had come in. The fake-hippy look didn’t blend with the quiet, candle-lit setting.

However, the waiter promptly whisked us upstairs. There were already a few larger groups sitting at long, wooden tables with heavy benches. A bachelorette party, which was infused with feather boas and fancy drinks, was already in full swing. We had barely ordered our meals before live music started playing. A chubby, olive-skinned Greek man started pulling people from their seats to the dance floor. Everyone in the room gathered around the floor, held hands, and started learning these crazy, Greek dance moves. It was hard to keep a grip on some peoples’ hands because everyone was sweating so much. Good thing I’m not afraid of germs.

“RIGHT! LEFT! RIGHT! SLIDE! SLIDE! OPAHHH!” the dance instructor shouted.

At one point, each person had to jump in the middle of the circle and do a “free-style” dance. It was amazing to see everyone from a 60-year-old man, to a mother, to college students, to a bride-to-be, bust out their best moves.

After letting us eat our delicious food, the dance instructor started handing out ceramic plates for a plate-smashing ceremony.

The people with plates stood in the middle of the dance floor while the whole room counted to three in Greek.

Shards of white plates flew everywhere as everyone screamed and clapped.

Another great thing about the evening? Linfield has an activity program that allows students to do things like this for incredibly inexpensive prices. 20 dollars of food, an evening of dancing, and transportation only cost each person $2. My grandma would have been delighted!

Have a happy week and embrace the rest of October. (There are a pair sparkly fairy wings hanging in my little dorm-room closet,  which are just waiting to be worn for a Halloween party next weekend. Too bad there are newspaper articles and stacks of homework that have to completed before then…)