Writing Process for Final Piece

I tried to make a lot of changes on this final draft. I interviewed a guy named Mr. Chadderdon. He used to work in the mill (for 50 years. crazy!) and is writing a book on this history of Parchment. I think his interview will be pretty valuable - hope I put good quotes and descriptions of his in the piece.

I wanted to make my friend (Mark) and I larger characters in the story. I included details about K-College so the reader would know why we were there: Mark for his photography class, me for my journalism class.

And then that brings us to audience... When I was trying to get interviews and figure out Parchment's "abandoned factory" situation, I wanted to find out for myself. As a K-College student, who lives mere miles from Parchment, I admittedly knew absolutely nothing of the city. In fact, I had no idea Parchment existed until Mark took me out there to take some photos. Consequently, I think Mark and I are members of our own audience - K-College students. I imagine this being more of an Index-type article, geared towards K-students who oftentimes have no idea of the goings-on outside the K-bubble. I added little details about myself and our class, as well as mentions of K, that I feel relate my character and Mark's character a little better. Hopefully, these details will give our characters a bit more meaning in the profile - bring it a little closer to home for K students who may be reading this.

I am a couple hundred words over the limit on this piece, however. But when I read through my adventures in the factory, the details I've gathered, and the recorded interview I dissected, it didn't feel right discarding certain portions that would've made the piece shorter. I did drop several of the factory details - the locker room scene, "Eazy-E dying from Aids." But I feel i got enough details of the factory in the piece so that the profile was informative, but not overbearing. Hopefully, you all enjoy it. Thanks for a fun quarter.

Final Piece --- Parchment: The Complications of Industrial Rigor Mortis

My friend Mark and I park the car behind a bush and hop the fence. Mark’s got his camera ready – he’s been scouring the outskirts of Kalamazoo for weeks now, searching for artistic inspiration. A week ago he found the plant in Parchment, Michigan. It’s abandoned, has been for years by the look of it. But he didn’t want to go in by himself, so he dragged me along – pulled me outside the K-College bubble for some academic exploring. 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. 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. Mark snaps a few shots for his photography class and we move on. He thinks his professor will enjoy the photos he’s taken of the city’s empty industrial sector. As I follow him into the next room, questions fill my mind – who worked here and what was made; why was this facility abandoned?

A trip to parchment.org – the city’s website – answers a number of my questions. For example, in 1909, Jacob Kindleberger started the Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment Company a few miles north of Kalamazoo; “The company made parchment paper and hence the City’s name of Parchment,” reports the site. There are photos of employees and old buildings, paragraphs describing Kindleberger’s plans for the community. In 1939, the 184 citizens of Parchment voted to become a 5^th class city – then their history stops. The website has nothing left to say about . . . well, anything that happened after 1939, let alone the circumstances that led to the decline of local mills.

I call the city directly and arrange an interview with Curt Flowers, Parchment’s city clerk. Curt is slightly paunchy, somewhere in his late fifties. He’s bald on top with gray hair lining either temple, 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, and made sure that incoming pulp was up to code. I ask him why the mills shut down. “The mill was started by one person and run by one person,” he replies matter-of-factly, “but then when that person died, when Mr. Kindleberger died, the mill combined with another company, and other conglomerates buy it, and then a lot of the equipment gets antiquated. Most of the buildings have been empty since 2000, I think. It just got too expensive.”

Curt shows me several architectural sketches that illustrate the city’s plan to build new neighborhoods where the empty buildings stand. Within the next five years, bulldozers and cranes will tear down the longstanding monuments of Parchment’s industrial past, and for the first time in its 101 year history, the factories – withered husks though they may be – will be gone. 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 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.”

I ask Curt if he knows anyone in town that could have more information regarding the history of the mill. He refers me to an older gentleman named Joseph Chadderdon. I arrange an interview with Mr. Chadderdon at his home on the outskirts of Parchment. He answers the door in faded jeans and a collared shirt; his eyes are milky blue, cloudy. Mr. Chadderdon is 90 years old; he worked as a lab technician in the mill for 50 of those years, and is writing a book about the history of Parchment that he hopes will be available sometime this summer.

“Kindleberger treated his employees like family,” Mr. Chadderdon says, “and if you got a job here, you had a job for life. He planned the city, expanded the plants – there was nothing out here before he came.” I ask Mr. Chadderdon about the decline of the mills, and what that meant for Parchment, “The Paper City.”

“Well, Kindleberger died about 1950, and then his assistant, Ralph Hayward, had a heart attack less than a year later, and no one else was ready to run the plant. The board of directors hired Dwight Stocker as manager – he was an outside hire, I’m not very kind to him in my book,” he smirks. “He partnered the plant with another paper company, then a gravel company out in California. These other companies pulled the plant into debt, then unions got involved. Ultimately, bad business and shoddy management cost us the mills. I’m gonna miss the buildings; I think a lot of people are. But times change and people move on. I’ve lived a long life, I’ve seen a lot of changes come and go –that’s the way life is.”

After our interview, I drive back to the abandoned plant and hop a fence; feels like I need to see it one more time before I write an article. I think my journalism class will like the piece; details of a city they never knew existed, just miles from campus. This part of the mill is full of offices – maybe upper management? I find a photo album sitting in a cubicle. It’s filled with pictures of a company picnic. There’s a 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. As I move further 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. Someone left these photos behind – packed up their things, left their cubicle, and abandoned them. I can only assume they’ve forgotten about them by now, that they don’t dwell on lost possessions like an album, or a mill. I suppose Mr. Chadderdon’s right – times change and people move on; that’s the way life is.

Tim Cutting: The Face of Monaco Bay (multimedia presentation)

Small note - the video is only 2:30 minutes, not the entire 25 minutes that are displayed on the video timer. Sorry about the confusion. My bad. Enjoy.

Response to Simona's "A Course in Michigan's Migrant Housing"

Simona has a great intro that flows really well into the background of her excursion - great combination of narrative and necessary information. Man, and once Mike's character is introduced, the suspense just builds and builds, especially after talking about the vicious dogs and deserted buildings. I wish we would've had some quotes from Mike. meh. Regardless, excellent narrative. I'm very impressed.

Ultimately, Simona's piece does more than tell a story and relate facts; it exposes a relevant, timely issue that affects the community - the safety, physical health, and socioeconomic conditions of migrant workers. I have few negative things to say - that's a first.

Response to Steven's "Sunday Morning"

I really enjoy the detail. From the opening of this piece, the descriptions of the church and the saints, the fellow church-goers and the priests are very telling. In a religious context, I feel like I'm getting to know these people.

Curious - if this piece were written by a religious person, and not by an atheist, I wonder if such intricate details would've been captured. I think Steven's disjuncture with organized religion is what makes this piece relevant, the inherent conflict of the story.

I'm curious to see what Steven gathers from Greek-fest, but I hope he doesn't throw away some of his more intricate descriptions. I felt like I'm saw the details as he saw them - I don't want the piece to lose that feeling.

Response to Marina's "Women and the Arts at Kalamazoo College"

I'm intrigued by Marina's explanatory narrative - she uses Shakespeare's "the tempest," Fox, and Marshall as a way to narrow her focus -- feminism/female strength on campus. As a reader, I'm conflicted; I saw the tempest, I've even discussed the reversed gender roles in several of my classes, but we never included feminism in the discussion. Should I probe into the focus, question its relevance or its truth - as a reader, I'm able to do so, but as a classmate, should I just comment on her organization ... or... whatever?

I suppose, because the statements I'd want explained are quotes, I can't question the focus itself. These quotes aren't Marina's, they are her subjects. I guess I'd want more explicit details of how "the tempest" was an example of feminism. More specifically, how the roles were played differently than the male versions would've been, or how the relationships between the characters had changed. For example, changing Prospero from male to female, doesn't necessarily explain how Prospero changed from a "tyrant" to a "strong, female matriarch"; gender change doesn't explain such an incredible transformation...

Response to Andrea's profile rough draft

I enjoyed Andrea's profile, but it led to several intriguing questions. First, I wanted to know who else is a part of Lisa's life, besides her daughter of course. She must have had friends before she was unable to work. Where are they; have they abandoned her as a result of her condition? Also - falling out with her sister? Living homeless with a daughter in tow? There's a lot of rich information here, a million stories to delve into. I know that's difficult, especially considering the 1,000 word limit, but it feels like this profile is barely scratching the surface of something deeper, greater.

Also, for the majority of the article, I was unsure of Mira's age. The reader has a general understanding near the end of the profile, since it's revealed that she's currently attending KVCC, but I wish it would've been addressed earlier.

I appreciate the quotes; I feel that they're well placed. I really like the primary focus, that Lisa has a masters degree but is unable to work. She has fallen incredibly far, and now her daughter is conflicted. Interesting. Very interesting. I look forward to reading the final draft.