Response to Claire's Michigan Smoking Ban: All Fire and No Smoke?

Claire's piece is really fleshed out - multiple interviews from smokers and cafe owners, descriptions of local venues; I really enjoyed reading this piece. One of the things that I enjoyed was that it didn't feel like Claire was trying too hard. In some of my pieces, when I really want someone to get a certain feelings or a certain opinion from my writing, I tend to force it upon them. This piece, however, just tells the story plain and simple, gathers the information, and spits it out on page. I really admire how relaxing the piece was. The transitions in between quotes and sections, the switches between different bars and cafes, was almost unnoticeable - beautiful.

I think part of this is due to the fact that Claire injects herself into the story. She kind of did the same thing with dialogue and description that I tried to do - revealing them in present tense so that the reader has the opportunity to "see" it with you, to experience the piece as she's experiencing it. I really appreciate that, especially since I feel she did a better job of it than I did.

The smoking ban is also a timely and relevant issue. It makes sense to talk about it now and get immediate responses from smokers and owners alike - makes the piece resonate more with the reader. If Claire were to write this piece in two years or so, it wouldn't make for as much of an engaging read. Good stuff. Looking forward to the final draft.

Response to Anna's Park Trades Center

Pretty cool stuff going on in the Park Trades Center. I like how Anna organized the piece: she opens with a few details so that you can begin imagining the building itself, then gives a brief backstory/history, and concludes with multiple descriptions and observations of the various art studios/projects housed within the building. Honestly, I have very little to add.

I suppose I'd like to hear about the flow of the building. Sometimes, when I think "art studio," I think of somewhere quiet, like a museum almost. With so many different studios, I'm left wondering about the foot traffic or the inter-artist relationships between workers/volunteers/artists. Is the place busy? Are there a lot of people? Does it feel vibrant, alive, so creative that it's bursting with energy and enthusiasm, or is it more the museum/collection kind of feel.

Regardless, an excellent draft.

Response to Joel's Meeting the Band draft

I've always like pieces about music. Having played in a couple high school/local bands, I really miss that scene; reading about it is always fun. There were a couple questions I had, however.

1. How many members are in the band, what are their names, and what instruments does each band member play. Because this band seeks to remain undefined/uncategorized, I think knowing their instruments would help give the reader a feel for their kind of music. Maybe.

2. How old are the band members? Are they in school? Are they full-time musicians? Maybe they have part-time jobs. I think I lot of what goes in to maintaining a local band is all the background stuff - all the side jobs and meager checks that allow a band like this to survive in the local music scene.

3. I'm also curious about what kind of venues they play in or where they're from. I assume they're from Kalamazoo, but I'm not sure. I could guess which Kalamazoo venues they prefer, and as I'm imaging said venues, I can try to categorize their sound, their style. If, however, they're playing shows in Grand Rapids or Ann Arbor or Lansing, then I'm lost.

Overall and interesting piece. I'm really excited for Joel to flesh some of this out, maybe include a link to their myspace or purevolume??? If they have one that is.

Response to Jessica's Explanatory Narrative First Draft

Jessica's piece is fantastic. I was carried along through the story, thought the quotes were really indicative of Streeter's personality, his passion - or at least what I believe his personality and his passion to be - and that the overall layout of the paragraphs and the quotations were wonderfully done. There are so few things I'd want to change about this piece. Honestly, I'm not sure I'd want to change any of it.

There are a few things i'm curious about, however. Not necessarily things that should be added or subtracted, but things that make me think - "Wow. I need to know more." First, I really wish I knew what Streeter looked like. I picture him behind a desk. For some reason i put glasses on his face. Who knows? That could be right, but I wish there were some more indications of his person in the piece. Also, since the focus is half on him and half on the acceptance rates/school choices/students/et., I want to know how he has so many connections to these different places, professors, and academics. For example, did he just happen to randomly meet the reader for Michigan or the Dean for Dartmouth? I doubt it - a little bit more on his backstory, maybe his personal education, would be appreciated - not necessary, but appreciated. Unfortunately, even as I'm typing this, I remember that Jess always scraps her first draft and starts all over again. Hopefully these comments will still help. Great job.

writing process for profile 2 - factory

For this piece, I wanted to do another profile, but this time I wanted it to focus on a place instead of a person. A friend of mine wanted me to go explore some abandoned factories with him over in Parchment. I went and was amazed by what I saw - so many football-field sized abandoned mills and factories just waiting to fall down. Seeing that there were so many, had to be fairly important to the people of Parchment. I guess I wanted to bring some of those images to the page.

I wanted to try incorporating myself into the piece as well. I didn't necessarily want to make myself a character, but I wanted to be present. That was fairly difficult. I didn't write it in the past tense, I wanted to write it as if the reader was experiencing things with me. I'm not sure that works out. For example, with dialogue, it was difficult not putting the accompanying text in past tense.

"I had a good day today," Bob said. -vs.- "I had a good day today," Bob says.

Just felt weird is all. Another thing I found difficult was the history of the town. I wanted to make the piece just about the abandoned buildings themselves - what led to their decline, if they still have a purpose in town, what will become of them, etc. I didn't want to make the piece about the city itself - I wasn't really interested in the city, just in the phenomenon of the empty mills and warehouses. At times, it felt like I was cheating my reader out of valuable information, like how Mr. Kindleberger started the factory or his life/work philosophies. Then again, those didn't have immediate relevance with the story. I didn't really care about Mr. Kindleberger, I just cared about how awe-inspiring/creepy/eerie those structures were. I'm sure someone in workshop will want me to have more background information on the subject, but I didn't feel that knowing every historical fact would give the reader a better feeling of the place. Again, that was difficult. I'm not sure how my piece will be received as a result.

Profile 2 - Parchment's abandoned factories (working title)

The factory’s abandoned. My friend and I park the car behind a bush and hop the fence. We walk fifteen feet to the first structure and climb in through a broken window; shards of glass lie on the ground, intermingling with the weeds and shrubs that force their way through slabs of broken concrete underneath our feet. It’s an overcast day; our eyes take a moment to adjust to the natural light. The room we entered smells like rain and insulation, maybe drywall. Trash litters the floor. There are work orders and safety manuals from 1995, grimy 7Up bottles and smashed bricks – what looks like asbestos ceiling tiles piled in a heap near a broken office chair, damp with must and mold. The hallway leading from the room is dark. At the other end there’s a brighter room – must have broken windows like this one. My friend snaps a few photos for his photography class and we move on. He thinks his professor will enjoy the photos he’s taken of Parchment, MI, of the empty industrial sector. He wants the photos to be eerie and quiet; he wants them to awe, to subdue the onlooker into silent disbelief.

Subsequent rooms reveal a variety of objects and images. There’s a wooden ceiling half caved-in near the factory’s south end; looks like there was a fire – ash and blackened wood lie on the floor and cake the walls. On the second floor, a small roof is supported by an intricate web of thin steel beams; light from windows overhead makes the rust look almost vibrant, on fire. A small tree grows outside a second story window, peeking in at us as from its perch atop a first floor roof. Then we find the locker room. Some of the lockers are open; a few have posters or newspaper clippings inside. Others are filled with centerfolds from old nudie-magazines. You can see the outline of her legs, her hips; her eyebrows are visible, and above that her dark hair pools in elegant waves across her right shoulder, but you can’t see her face. The poster must have gotten wet; a navy blue stain of faded magazine print masks her expression, takes her eyes. I can’t tell if she was pretty. The next locker features a newspaper article about the death of Eazy-E. Although the edges of the paper are browned and curling, you can still read the title: “Gangsta’ rapper with AIDS dies.” We leave the building and walk towards another abandoned factory several blocks away.

The buildings, offices, and warehouses in this part of the mill were more recently abandoned. I find a photo album sitting in a cubicle. It starts with pictures of a company picnic. There’s one shot of a woman in a yellow shirt with Urkel glasses standing next to a pig roast. Another with children playing outside; one child has a water balloon in his hand. He’s three or four years old in the picture – must be in his late teens now. As I move farther into the album, the pictures become more damaged; water and dust makes the photos look like someone’s colored in the rims with waxy crayons – oranges, yellows, reds, and purples. We make our way into a tall building framed by smokestacks. As I walk inside, I feel as though I’ve stepped into a Tim Burton film. The metal beams supporting the structure are dark and rusted. The center of the building is left open, looking up towards broken windows five stories overhead. Yellow stairway railings pop against the darkness; they climb from the floor to the ceiling, no breaks leading into other rooms or offices, just upwards into nothing. I am astounded; it's almost frightening - the magnitude of this particular building, the men who worked here, the machines. We leave through a pair of large bay doors. The hinges are rusted through, forcing the door to remain perpetually open – industrial rigamortis, I suppose.

A week later I have an interview with Curt Flowers, the city clerk of Parchment, MI. Curt is somewhere in his late fifties and is slightly paunchy. He’s bald with patches of gray hair lining his temples, has a trim white mustache, and sports a pair of thin framed glasses. As a young man, Curt worked in the paper mills that gave Parchment its name.

“I think everyone in town worked there at one time or another,” Curt chuckles to himself. He was in the lab for two years with quality control. As pulp was shipped to the factories to make paper, Curt would check them and make sure they were up to standard. I ask him how the mills shut down. “Labor is cheaper in the south" he replies casually ", and a lot of the equipment gets antiquated. Eventually, they decided it was just not an optional thing.”

Curt shows me several architectural sketches and designs that illustrate the city’s plan to build new neighborhoods and houses where the factories now stand. Sometime within the next five years, bulldozers and cranes will tear down these longstanding monuments of Parchment’s industrial past; for the first time in its 101 year history, the factories – withered husks though they may be – will be missing. As he speaks, I can’t help but feel Curt’s confliction. Like other citizens of Parchment, he has a strong empathetic connection to the city’s namesake. The mills are more than empty buildings.

“Suddenly, it was just quieter in town, there was always the hum of the mill there,” he smirks in fond remembrance. “I can remember laying in bed at night, cause I live just up there, a couple blocks up the hill, and if it’s summer and you had the windows open, I could hear the guys driving the mill trucks, and you could hear them “beep beep” at semis and stuff like that. Some people would say it’s noise, ‘It’s disturbing me,’ or ‘It’s bothering me,’ but now I wish I heard that again, because that would mean the place was up and running.”

Response to Anna's "Of Mormons and (Gay) Marriage"

I really like the opening of this article - giving an engaging mystery-like opening to the issue of Mormons and gay marriage, and using said issue to introduce Karger; I was fascinated/intrigued from the outset.

It's crazy that Karger was once the bad guy behind the scenes in Republican politics, but now he's using that knowledge to aid gays and fight against Mormons. wtf. you really can't make that kind of stuff up ... maybe they should make a movie. Anyway, Mencimer does a great job of bringing all of these aspects into the article; she captures the heart of the story within the first several paragraphs and never lets go.

Mencimer also does a great job of injecting certain details into the piece that may or may not be incredibly relevant, but that flesh out the story as a whole; for example, Nancy Reagan being very "gay-friendly" or Karger's attempts to save the Boom Boom Room. Mencimer really captures Karger's personality through small details and anecdotes like these. She chooses her quotes with care; they shed light on Karger's humor, his relative disposition towards certain subjects - "Karger may be a gay man fighting a movement that considers him an offense to God, but he is first and foremost a political operator. He shook Brown's hand and joked with NOM's lawyer about his impending deposition. Afterward, leaving the building, Karger was buoyant. 'If I had a budget, I'd be dangerous,' he said with a big smile." A genuinely good read.