Jump

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An application for a class: In a paragraph, provide memorable insight into your life that is not addressed in a resume.

My approach to life can be described by my approach to bridge jumping. Take the Dorset Avenue Bridge, for example, from which I jumped in the summer of 2007. There were 20 minutes left in the Longport Beach Patrol scavenger hunt, and the last item on our list was: Jump off a bridge. Photo mid-air required. 12 points. Our group knew everyone else would drive to the mini-golf course in Margate and take a picture on the tiny bridge over a pond on the eighth hole.

There were no extra points for jumping off Dorset, which arches over a winding lagoon in Ventnor Heights, a neighborhood just outside of Atlantic City, N.J. But it didn’t matter. We headed to Dorset. My blood pulsed with pride and competiveness and a boldness that tends to emerge when I want to be perceived as brave. I knew then that I would jump. I hopped up onto the rail, slipped my shirt up over my head and handed my shorts to a friend.

I wanted to let go, without pausing, and disappear into the blackness below. But the water looked shallow from my perch. I envisioned a messy death.

So I ran down the bridge, jumped onto a stranger’s dock and quickly lowered myself into the water to test the depths of where I would land. Satisfied with the water level, I climbed back up the dock and up the side of the bridge to the top.

Only then did I laugh and let myself plummet into that dark water.

9/11

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It’s sixth grade and my classmates and I arrive to art class. The TV is on and we see a burning building and the teacher is crying and we don’t do anything in class that day.

Most of us are pleased about the free class. Though we live in South Jersey, the World Trade Center is a far-off entity we’ve heard of but don’t really understand. It sounds important. But even as we try to enjoy the free period, we can’t ignore this sense that something is happening, that this isn’t just some tragedy in a place somewhere else. So we chatter nervously among ourselves and try to ignore that somber television.

Later, when the second plane hits and Ms. Heiser, whose daughter worked in one of the buildings, collapses and screams in the middle of class and my father, a newspaper editor, sits the family down to explain what he knows, I finally feel the hurt and fear of a nation and my 11-year-old self breaks down and cries.

In history that day, Ms. Moss had told us that we will never forget where we were, what we did, what was said on this day — the way our parents remember when John F. Kennedy is shot. And though I struggled to understand the scope of what happened on Sept. 11, I never did.

Packing

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On the last father/daughter road trip to Missouri:

Katy: (grumpily) I can’t wait until I cannot pack my life away into a car.

Dad: One day you’ll wish to God you could pack your life into a car.

And drive away.

That I can promise you.

Dear Jack

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Dear Jack,

I told you I’d write you a letter before you left for school. And here it is.

You probably thought it would be eloquent. And sappy. And full of epiphanies. It’s not. This is real advice from a sister who would do a couple of things differently if she could. I know you think I’ve turned into a boring old mom, but I’ve learned a few things, you see.

So listen up:

1. The first two weeks of college are very important. Everyone makes the fake friends they are going to hang out with for a couple of months before they find their real friends. We’ll call this the golden friendship window of opportunity. And guess what? It closes. Quickly. Which leads me to point No. 2…

2. Be nice to everybody, especially at the beginning. Seriously. There is going to be a lot of fake shit. Lots of “Hi, my name is Sally. I’m a nursing major and I live on this floor and what’s your name? What’s your major? Oh my god. Oh my god…” HUMOR YOURSELF AND PARTICIPATE. (Yours truly didn’t play this game so well) Be as friendly as possible even if it feels ridiculous. Because after two weeks people settle into friend groups and if you haven’t made any effort to talk to anyone you’ll realize that no one else but you is making any effort to meet new people. So don’t act too cool for school. Pun intended. (See Point No. 1)

3. You are going to go to college and meet people who have never gone to the beach and grew up in Hicksville and wear flannel and shit and you will feel 123123123x cooler than them because you come from an amazing place and have lived a wonderful beachy life and think you are awesome because of it. (And you are) And I know you are going to get to school and hang up the “Watch your children” sign you stole from the beach after the hurricane and wear your patrol gear to class yada yada. (And that’s fine.)

Share your life. It is, after all, what makes you, you and what makes you unique. But, essentially, while you are at school, that life is over. Be humble too. Don’t kill people with the I’m-the-beach kid act either. I guess the best way to describe it is don’t be like me and go to school and wear a big fuck you on your forehead because you think you are the coolest because you wear surf shop hoodies and your dad makes surfboards. Don’t let the place you come from own you. Be open to people’s different backgrounds.

Be present.

4. This one is sort of hard to explain, but I’ll try. Don’t feel limited or bogged down in your past. Don’t let it define you. Because you don’t have a past in college. And no one knows anything about you. And often I found people assume you are cooler than you are unless you prove them wrong somehow. Don’t not talk to a girl because in high school you don’t think you could have talked to her. Don’t not go out for some weird ass club just because it would have been weird in high school. High school is over. Kaput. Do whatever you want. Talk to whoever you want. Be whoever you want…

5. But do not ever, under any circumstances, lie about your past. And yes, exagerrating counts. This sounds like a no-brainer. But I promise, it’s surprisingly tempting, especially freshman year when it feels like every interaction is centered around having to define yourself. Don’t do it. 

6. It’s okay to be disappointed. Or unhappy. Or stressed. College is made out to be this like amusement park ride of happiness and freedom, like the fact that your whole life has just been uprooted is supposed to be this seamless process. But one day you are going to have a shit ton of homework and you are going to crave an old friend. Or Mom’s salmon. Or your room. Maybe you’ll just really want to be alone. Or some stupid thing will remind you of the ocean or beach patrol or whatever it is that you miss the most. This feeling will suck. Just know that it is normal and everyone around you is carrying the things that they miss too.

7. If something bothers you about your roommate (that’s reasonable), tell them right away. It’s not fair to tell someone after months of living together that something they do bothers you and expect them to change.

8. I’ll keep this one simple. You’ve been drinking since you were 15. There is absolutely no reason why you should be that THAT freshman. The one who pukes in the community bathroom or is a newly liberated shit show. This unfortunately common species of frosh are pathetic. Leave amateur hour in high school.

9. If JMU has an improv club, you should join. You are the funniest person I know. Join lots of clubs, actually. It’s the best way to meet people that you might share something in common with. Check them all out. Quit later if its not feeling right. Then try something else. I didn’t meet friends in classes. I met them playing field hockey. Or swimming. Or in nerdy situations like journalism clubs.

10. Unless you plan on aceing a class, don’t skip lectures that take attendance. That being said (sorry mom!) don’t put up with classes that waste your time teaching things out of the book you can just read. Skip class and study that subject instead. (Or don’t.)

11. The rest of the world is not as sarcastic as us. This is disappointing, I know. But use sparingly. (You will thank me for this. I promise)

Love ya little brother.  Can’t wait to see you across the deck when JMU and Mizzou converge at East Coast Championships 2012!! (Oh I didn’t tell you? Not doing swim club isn’t an option.)

Katy

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The Paris Review: Ray Bradbury

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I read Fahrenheit 451 when I was 21-years-old. So, it wasn’t the famous novel that drew me to Ray Bradbury.

It was his short stories. I remember his work was included in a sixth grade anthology that my class often had assignments from. I’d always skip to his stories. They were deliberate, tightly packaged and short, with powerful endings like an O’Henry story or a Twilight Zone episode.

I was always left reeling and in thought. So I guess it wasn’t any surprise that an interview by the Paris Review left me much the same way. Here are my favorite excerpts from an interview with a brilliant man and a true writer:

Imagine if sixty years ago, at the start of my writing career, I had thought to write a story about a woman who swallowed a pill and destroyed the Catholic Church, causing the advent of women’s liberation. That story probably would have been laughed at, but it was within the realm of the possible and would have made great science fiction.

~

With Fahrenheit 451, Montag came up to me and said, I’m going crazy. I said, What’s the matter, Montag? I’ve been burning books, he said. I said, Well, don’t you want to anymore? He said, No, I love them. I said, Go do something about it. And he wrote the book for me in nine days.

~

I don’t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That’s a different thing. If you behave every day of your life to the top of your genetics, what can you do? Test it. Find out. You don’t know—you haven’t done it yet. You must live life at the top of your voice! At the top of your lungs shout and listen to the echoes. I learned a lesson years ago. I had some wonderful Swedish meatballs at my mother’s table with my dad and my brother and when I finished I pushed back from the table and said, God! That was beautiful. And my brother said, No, it was good. See the difference? Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad—you did it. At the end of the week you’ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I’ll be damned, it’s been a good year.

~

INTERVIEWER What do you think of e-books and Amazon’s Kindle? BRADBURY Those aren’t books. You can’t hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn’t do that for you. I’m sorry.

~

If you don’t have a sense of humor, you don’t have a marriage. In that film Love Story, there’s a line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Love means saying you’re sorry every day for some little thing or other. You make a mistake. I forgot the lightbulbs. I didn’t bring this from the store and I’m sorry. You know? So being able to accept responsibility, but above all having a sense of humor, so that anything that happens can have its amusing side.

First Impressions of Google+

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Or how my journey into Google’s new social media project reminded me that nothing dies on the Internet…

Friday: I spend downtime in the office researching Google+ — reading the Huffington Post’s 6 Things Google+ has that Facebook doesn’t, studying screen shots of the website and reading commentary on the new social media project on various blogs.

Originally skeptic and feeling a surprising sense of loyalty to Facebook (a website I have begrudgingly accepted as a part of my life and career), I’m surprised it sounds so…cool.

Granted, Google fails to convince me that Hangouts aren’t creepy (can you kick someone out of open video chats?), but the idea of Circles, which allow users to make distinctions between what content people can see, is ingenious.

Weekend: Contemplation. Can I really maintain another social media site? Are people actually using said social media site? And: please, oh please, let it be uncomplicated.

Monday: By Monday, I am convinced that I will join for the following reasons:

  • You know, that journalism thing. Chances are, keeping track of popular opinion and new trends in addition to networking and sourcing opportunities will lead me to the site anyway.
  • An unrelenting curiosity. Often associated with the above.
  • Facebook, which informs me others are giving Google+ a shot. (I pause to wonder if this is ironic.)
  • The apparent difference between “joining Circles” on Google+ and “friending” someone on Facebook. (Adding someone to your Circles on the former doesn’t require any effort on the person you are adding; it just allows you access to their public information. So is Google+ more like an interactive RSS feed than Facebook’s build-an-army-of-exclusive-friends-opportunity?)
  • Googling, “Can I delete Google+?” Unlike Facebook, Google+ can be deleted.

Sold.

Convinced I can back out if I want to, and deciding not to delay the inevitable, I give it a try.

Here’s the part where I join and have an unexpected run-in with…

I type in my name and birthday and click Join Google+.

The first things I notice on my empty profile page are Google-generated suggested users.

My suggestions? Jacqui Banaszynski, a fellow J-schooler and a priest I just interviewed for a recent story about the pro-life movement.

And while I know I signed up for this, watching my Gmail contacts streamed into Google+ suggestions instantly makes me a little nervous.

I think it’s the priest.

He is someone I’ve had a brief and professional relationship with, who doesn’t even have a Google+ account, but can now receive content from my social media site via email with a click of the Share button that is glowing beside his head.

Yes, yes I know he can’t see my content unless I decide to share it. Yes, I know that’s the whole point of Google+.  And that’s nice.

But his smiling picture on the side of my screen makes me feel like I’ve already made a connection I don’t want, though I understand we’re not connected yet. (And all this before I’ve even tapped into Circles!)

Here I feel pressure to make myself interesting and bail on the bio…

A little unsettled, I move on to the bio page. It looks like Facebook’s.

Truth be told, I’m exhausted of these things. I can only make myself sound charming, sophisticated, down-to-earth and interesting in so many ways.

After checking out some other profiles, I’m glad to see that many people haven’t filled in their bios yet either. Maybe they are over self-obsessed explanations. Maybe they haven’t decided what identity they’d like to embody on this website yet.

I can’t decide either, so I focus on occupation. But apparently, employment doesn’t mean internships, because I can’t specify months of the year as I list the various positions I’ve held in the last three years. So for now, The Columbia Missourian and Philadelphia City Paper both say 2010, which is misleading because I didn’t work at either newspaper for a full year.

*Note to Google, work on this.

Here my past hits me in the face — in neat little photo albums…

I decide not to worry about it too hard, because I’m distracted by the photo album section. Namely, I already have several, despite not having uploaded any photos yet.

There’s the photos I’ve posted to a private Blogger called “Parti Pak Goes to College”, that as the title may suggest, is private for a reason —  it documents the college adventures of five of my high school friends at various universities across the country. (Hey, it’s easier than calling five people to tell the same story and Blogger has some nice, scenic backgrounds these days.)

And there they are, all lined up nicely in a neat little photo albums with that familiar share button next to it.

No thanks.

Every photo I’ve ever included in any Blogger post is there, actually, including pictures from blogs I’ve deleted. There are all the multiple pictures of starting blocks that I experimented with as headers on my blog, The Starting Block, which was originally hosted on Blogger before its current WordPress host.

I haven’t seen these photos in years. Weird.

Here I discover Circles; they make so much sense…

On to Circles. I’m already in two. Apparently you don’t have to actually be on Google+ to be in someone’s circles? This I need to figure out.

I start adding. The majority of my suggested viewers are J-schoolers. So I make a circle and label it “J-schoolers.” I decide to make a different one for “Mizzou faculty.”

Drag and drop.

This is easy enough. I even smile. This part makes sense.

I move onto the wall. I realize I’ve called it a wall. I wonder what the Google term is for that-place-where-you-share-stuff.

No one’s posting anything, save for a few. Jim MacMillan quickly dominates my news feed stream. Not to fear, however. A recent Google+ post by an avid Google fan suggests that this simply means I’m using the website incorrectly. After raving about the wealth of information at her fingertips, she writes:

My friends, however, don’t seem to be having the same Google+ experience I am. My tendency so far has been to add as many people with as many interesting views as possible to my Circles, and then to read voraciously and respond all over the place. Meanwhile, my real-life friends are complaining that there’s not enough content to appease them, and I’m the only one dominating their Streams. Why is this happening for them? I think it comes from a fundamental set of expectations about moving from Facebook to Google+. People are treating their Google+ accounts just like Facebook accounts. And I think that’s a doomed approach.

Here I find an empty wasteland of profiles…

Determined not to see my circles as “friends,” I prepare to add randoms to my circles. But I’m not sure where to find people interesting without knowing that they are interesting.

And their profiles are no help. I read that scrimping on bio information is actually Google+ suicide, as many people search for contacts by topic or interests.  But I still can’t seem to figure out how to do that. Help?

I look at other profiles to determine what people claim they are interested in. I see the typical smiling profile pictures and some basic information. A few have jumped on the bandwagon and clearly have some neat posts. But in terms of sharing information, many people’s pages are empty wastelands of white.

It’s like everyone is waiting at the sidelines, eager to see where the game is going, but not ready to jump in and play yet.

And in the end, I’m not too worried about it. Google+ will catch on or it won’t. I have more to explore on the site (Sparks? Huddles?) and I suspect its numbers will continue to increase.

Here I explain my new sense of caution with social media, while admitting that I have no real intentions of stopping…

That’s not what bothers me slightly as I sign off with a small idea of what Google+ is about.

Mostly, my exploration into Google+ serves as a simple reminder —

Nothing dies on the Internet, whether it’s private, public, in your circle or my circle, locked in privacy protection or deleted.

And as I stand perched on the sideline with everyone else who isn’t quite sure how to use Google+, this is what I think of:

I may be able to differentiate what I share and who I share it with, but I worry about a day when I might want to take all this sharing back.

It’s a tired message, I know, and a duh-duh statement. I feel like a lame version of Rooney Mara in The Social Network. (The Internet’s not written in pencil, Mark, it’s written in ink!)

Perhaps I’m just overwhelmed by the idea of another social media site. And, don’t get me wrong, I’m genuinely excited and intrigued to see where Google+ goes and experiment with Circles to share and absorb news…(Disclaimer I fully intend to blast this post through Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to see what happens.)

But this time, unlike my enthusiastic, if not impulsive dabbles in Facebook and Blogger and WordPress and Twitter and LinkedIn, I’m feeling sort of comfortable on the sidelines.

I’m hesitant to fill that white abyss.

Paul Sullivan hosts P.S. I Love Music series

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Brooklin-resident Paul Sullivan likes to tell a good story.

The acclaimed composer and pianist laughs as he explains the sorry state of his Grammy award — pieced together with scotch tape after a dramatic fall onto concrete. He jumps out of his seat to tell the story of the time he played the Blue Danube Waltz at a party in Leonard Bernstein’s living room in New York City years ago.

With an imaginary cigarette in one hand and an imaginary drink in the other, he imitates Bernstein, who dashed over to the piano and commanded him to play the song at the proper tempo — Sullivan had been speeding it up to keep the dance going.

“How many people have been yelled at by Lenny Bernstein?” Sullivan says breathlessly, the experience still bringing a happy smile to his face.

It’s these reflections on a diverse and successful career, as well as the reflections of the talented artists he’s grown to call friends, that Sullivan hopes to share with Maine audiences at the Stonington Opera House’s “P.S. I Love Music” series.

The June 19 live concert aims to combine performance, story-telling and conversation in the style of the Prairie Home Companion or Marian McPartland’s WICN show Piano Jazz. Another performance is scheduled for October.

“I want the listeners to feel like they are backstage with this variety of musicians,” Sullivan said. “It’s access to a world that you wouldn’t have access to.”

Joining Sullivan at the event are Orland singing sensation 16-year-old Rosie Upton, 16, cellist Eugene Friesen of the Paul Winter Consort and Lorin Hollander, a former child prodigy whose 50-year career has allowed him to perform all over the world.

Sullivan hopes the show will highlight what musicians often talk about when they gather to “jam”: anecdotes, embarrassments, inner-thoughts while performing, future goals and how they make the music that so many people love. Audience members will also have the opportunity to ask questions of the performers.

The recorded concert will be produced by the Stonington Opera House, edited and packaged to be sold and broadcasted on the radio. Though this is the first time he’ll participate in a show like this, Sullivan has delved into many facets of music-making.

Born in Boston, Sullivan started playing the piano by age 3; though he said he struggled to reach the keys.

“Music for me was like a language I always understood,” Sullivan said. “I always felt like I knew what it meant and I could communicate in it.” His first gig was in kindergarten, playing the march calling kids to and from recess and sometimes performing for his classmates during “quiet time.”

After graduating from Yale, Sullivan quickly found work in New York City, composing for ballet performances and Broadway productions and playing at jazz clubs. After twelve years in the city, Sullivan fell in love with Maine on an impromptu drive through New England and moved to Brooklin with his wife, Jillson, in 1988.

Together they continued to build Sullivan’s music company — River Music — the name Sullivan chose to represent the culmination of his many talents: composing, playing, performing, arranging, writing.

In 2006, Sullivan won a Grammy for Silver Solstice, an album created by the Paul Winter Consort. He’s produced 13 albums, played with the Boston Pops and the Philadelphia Orchestra, won 5th place in the International Songwriting Competition for his song “Whisper” and wrote the music for a performance piece called “A Terrible Beauty,” which was performed off-Broadway in May 2010.

His music style runs the gamut; his music celebrates jazz, nature-sounds, cinema, choral and even his Irish heritage. Picking a genre for his music still stumps Sullivan.

“I’ve spent my whole career wondering what to call my music,” he said. But Sullivan feels strongly that any art should have purpose and work to connect people. Music, he said, by its very nature does this.

“Music-making is story-telling,” Sullivan said. “You have to be saying something.”

Tickets to the P.S. I Love Music show are $15. (Island students are free.) To purchase tickets or get more information, call (207) 367-2788 or visit www.operahousearts.org.

 Published in the Ellsworth American, June 16, 2011

#Snowflower

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Today, the Huffington Post asked their Twitter followers to tweet about a woman who has changed their lives and include the hashtag #snowflower (based on the upcoming movie Snow Flower and the Secret Fan). My reply somehow managed to get into a slideshow of responses on their website.

Not something to take too seriously, (especially since I have a sneaky suspicion that my quick response had more to do with it than any sort of creativity) but its cool to be able to share my thoughts about my best friend to the Twitterverse. You know, in 140 characters.


Maine

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