Poverty Playlist: Journalism roundup
A playlist about journalism is automatically a playlist about poverty, isn’t it? It’s one that hits pretty close to home for me. Here’s the mental list I’ve been keeping for a while about the creators and consumers of the news. Honorable mention goes to Yesterday’s Paper by the Rolling Stones. In the spirit of news [...]
Time and Again
“Time and again, however well we know the landscape of love,
and the little church-yard with lamenting names,
and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others
end: time and again we go out two together,
under the old trees, lie down again and again
between the flowers, face to face with the sky.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
I know I’ve mentioned Pittsburgh’s [...]
Mornings
“Warmth in the early mornin’ chill, my girl
Warmth in the early April.”
I’m not crazy about the morning-times, especially when they show up on Monday after a bit too much carousing on Sunday night.
But sunny days are better than most and the best days of all are when you decide to chalk up your hairstyle as [...]
Skipping toward the Gulag
Screeching sirens startled me awake yesterday morning and the first thing that leaped to my mind was, “Oh god, the Tea Partiers have blown up something important…”
A bit histrionic, I know.
But since the intellectuals who brought us death panels have moved on to spitting, spewing hateful racist epithets, accusing their coworkers of infanticide, heralding the [...]
From the gums of babes…
My mom found this during a spring cleaning/archiving blitz and e-mailed it to me over the weekend. It’s not as precocious a writing sample as my “Declaration of Inde-bedness” and it didn’t help me get into Northwestern like the “Why I Want to be an Astronaut” essay.
But it does tell us two very important things. [...]
You make me want to be a better driver
Here’s my newest, bluest life partner and the albatross ’round my neck.
So far, I’m pleased with the Honda and how it has sailed me smoothly to work and back home again.
But a new car is also a burdensome reminder of money spent before it’s earned and of how things haven’t quite shaped up the way [...]
Having two jobs does have its perks…
Like having two paychecks! And free Diet Coke at my part time job. That’s almost as good as health insurance, ain’t it?
The Ferrari is dead, long live the Ferrari
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
-Atticus Finch [...]
Blur
Working two jobs is simultaneously more and less complicated than I anticipated. I say this, cresting my second full week of high-speed sprinting from bed to metro to car to Virginia and back to bed again. Throw in some fuming over snow detours and chugging of caffeinated beverages and you have a good picture.
I can’t [...]
Toe touchdowns
There’s an agonizing, pivotal moment in every Super Bowl game in which the end-zone is crossed, the ball is fumbled, the flag is thrown. In other words– by the time you realize that you’ve had too much dip and beer, it’s really too late for a fourth-quarter comeback.
Or, in the case of Super Bowl 2010, [...]
Walk away
L’avenir: cette excuse du temps
de nous faire peur;
projet trop vaste, morceau trop grand
pour la bouche du cœur
Qui t’aura jamais attendu, avenir?
Tout le monde s’en va.
Il te suffit d’approfondir
l’absence que l’on a.
-Ranier Maria Rilke
(For non-francophones, Rilke’s poem: The Future: time’s excuse to frighten us; too vast a project, too large a morsel for the heart’s mouth. Future, [...]
The universe is circular and infinite
And we shall meet again in that circular infinity, PBS NewsHour. ‘Cause that’s where I’m headed in a couple of weeks.
[HANKINOTE: This is the last I'll be blogging about the job-to-be. As a strict blog constructionist, I'm returning to the original intent with which I framed this blog in my online publishing class at Medill [...]
Welcome (back) to the working week
“And so I took the job interviewing schizophrenics because it was offered to me and because it was all there seemed to be. And it seemed somehow predestined– a karmic response that could not be avoided…
So I took the job and did the job and my life will never be the same.”
-Scott Carrier
I read part [...]
On the sunny side
I had a pretty exciting interview this morning for a position I probably would’ve scoffed at back when I thought only in terms of “good guys” (newspaper journalists) and “bad guys” (nearly everybody else, except for kittens and orphans).
Opposite day
I felt this deserved documentation. Northwestern University sent me a big ol’ check in the mail yesterday. Sure, it’s just a reimbursement of my expenses for my reporting trip to Hawaii, but it felt nicely topsy-turvy.
So, it being opposite day and all, here’s a little something from Mr. Andrew Bird, Chicagoan and whistler-extraordinaire (and one [...]
Dating ourselves
I woke up Friday morning to call from a potential employer, asking if I could do a phone interview early this week.
I was confused at first because I thought the call was from my dentist’s office. Then I was excited. And then… the crushing dread.Getting this far always leaves me in a worse mental spot than just having my resume ignored or rejected outright.
Poverty Playlist: “Take out some insurance” by Jimmy Reed
You better get some insurance on me, baby.
Take out some insurance on me, baby.
‘Cause if ya ever, ever, said goodbye.
I’m gonna haul right off and die.
The Monday grind
The whole world is moving and I’m standing still. –The Weepies
The great workforce beast lurched forward and out into the snow this morning, as evidenced by all the grumbling on Facebook and Twitter. They stood at bus stops and waited in traffic and swiped metro cards on the way to that glorious first pot from [...]
Adventures in jobland
Don Quixote is a bit of a kindred spirit, save for the unreasonable delusions and deteriorating mental state. I like how he strikes out with no real plan except to react bravely and valliantly to the circumstances he meets along the road. My way, too, has always been to just sally forth in search of what I want, taking the adventures and windmills as they come.
Somehow it’s always works out– in one magically unexpected way or another.
Maybe Next Christmas
Here’s a list of improbables–an idealistic smattering of things I would like but probably won’t get for Christmas.
Hanksgiving and beyond
“I’ve been one poor coorespondent and I’ve been too, too hard to find.
But it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind.”
Hankincents has been on hiatus for the last few months because I somewhat spontaneously uprooted my life and moved halfway across the country to a ghoulishly expensive city where I’ve been splitting my time [...]
