(Sarah) The Joys of a Walkable City

So the past week has been intense, educational, and amazing. I managed to get up for class on Tuesday, which was a large all radio people class. In the afternoon we got our recording gear, which I'm very excited about. That night I went with some people to see Chris Hedges, a former war journalist and writer for the New York Times. His speech was great and very inspirational. He said something which I hope to guide my future journalistic career, "You can be passionate, outraged about injustice, and still tell the truth."
The next day I met up with my friend Rob to go do our on the street interviews about the local music scene. Before we did that, we grabbed a bite to eat where we were spontaneously joined by Caty. In the course of the meal we found out that the Empire bar does not serve chocolate milk. This does not actually matter, obviously, but it was a rather funny moment. Anyway, after that Rob and I went down to Fore St, which has a lot of bars. I found out, that even on a rainy, Wednesday night in February in Maine, there are always people outside of bars smoking cigarettes. This should probably be a noted journalistic footnote in my mind from now on. Need people? Go to the bars. The answers to our questions about the local scene were mostly pretty boring, except for the group of punk kids crouched on a stoop, and in particular the guy who went on a bizarre rant about political music that, despite having nothing to do with race, ended with the line "I swear I'm not 100% racist." We also met a man standing outside an Irish pub named Shawn T. McGuiness.
The next day we had our first ethics of documentary course. This is taught by a prof who basically screams "why yes I am a professor" in his entire demeanor. We watched a film about a documentary photographer who does all his photography in Appalachia. I hung out at Salt for a few hours afterwards, where I had a pretty awesome conversation about comics, and then had Pro-Tools training course. Being that I already know how to use Pro-Tools it was pretty boring, but I have to say, I've never been the one person with computer program experience. That was a bit bizarre. That night I came back and found out Hampshire had divested from Israel. I'll get to my opinions on that later.
Friday we had our first small radio course. My prof, Rob, seems really awesome. He's a pretty funny guy and seems to just know everything about radio. The class itself is seven people, and so far everyone in it seems pretty cool. We listened to some great radio pieces and discussed they're content and editing. We also discussed our ideas for our documentaries. I was thinking about doing my first doc on the opposition to the marriage equality movement in Maine. However, in passing I mentioned queer resistance to same-sex marriage. The class seemed deeply surprised that that exists, and the more people I've talked to, the more it's become clear to me that that is a highly unknown opinion outside of certain circles. So now I think that I would like to find an active member of the queer community in Maine, who does not support same-sex marriage, and do a documentary on that person. I went and had a delicious omelette at Rob's place and then came back to Salt to play the on the street interview of the punk kid who's not racist. After that I went out with my mini-ethnography group to discuss our plan of attack for Sunday. I was supposed to go to this angry poetry thing, but instead, I stayed in and watched Dollhouse, a choice I am not at all ashamed of.
Saturday I went walking around town with Rob and we found this great park with a natural ice skating rink. I also, finally, did a proper grocery shopping trip, and now I have more food than I know what to do with.
Sunday was by far the most interesting day so far. I got up early, and went to Salt, where everyone was meeting to do our one day mini-ethnographies. The assignment was to go to an assigned town and find a story in a day. My group was heading to South Portland. Before hand I had researched churches in the area and found that there was a service at the church of the Nazarene that had a band playing at it. So, after a delicious breakfast at Mr. Bagel, my group split up. Casey and I went to church, Anna, Caty, and Amanda went to the mall. So, we arrived at the church and almost immediately, I began interviewing these two teens who were hanging outside in the lobby, one of whom was the pastor's daughter. I then interviewed a bunch of older members of the church and then recorded the entire church service. It was basically my first time going into what is a completely foreign environment for myself and recording it. The service used tons of multi-media formats and it was clearly designed to be more accessible to younger people. This church was not struggling to retain it's membership, I was told that approximately 250 people have joined in the past five years. I interviewed the pastor, who told me that the media was a very conscious decision to keep the church relevant and that in tough times people turn to God. Overall, it was a very interesting morning.
Casey and I, then went back to the mall to meet the rest of our group. We did some more recording there and then headed to the movies. At the movies we did some interviews outside, and then headed in to see if we could record. We were informed that in order to do that we would have had had to have called before. However, after we continued to talk to the manager, she called her boss and we were given permission. A great lesson in perseverance. After the movies we headed back to Salt, where the whole group discussed the events of the day. I was definitely the only person to have sat through a whole church service.
After that Caty, Autumn, and I went to go find chocolate. We walked a lot, with Caty claiming to know of a good place. However, we basically ended up in a dead end where we had to walk across a big snow bank to get to where we needed to go. Now, this snowbank look solid, but it was not and after walking on it a bit, I fell through, down to my hip, as did Autumn. I grew up in Wisconsin, a bit of snow to me is nothing, no biggie, but Autumn grew up in Texas, and boy did she scream when she fell though. Why yes, I do get sick satisfaction watching people from warm areas deal with winter. We decided to turn around at that moment and go to coldstone. After that, we headed to Rob's place where he was throwing a pot luck that included some lobster he had bought that day. A bunch of people showed up and it was overall a very good time.
Today I've done almost nothing, but I will be going to Salt to watch Religilous later, which I'm pretty excited about.
Ok, so I supposed I should talk about the divestment. It's certainly an interesting time to not be at Hampshire. I'm pretty happy that we did divest, even though I did not sign the petition. I'm worried about the mixed messages that are being sent out. I can tell you that people not at Hampshire are confused as to what is going on. Frankly, I'm angry at the trustees at their blatant attempt at trying to have their cake and eat it too. I wonder what the economic fallout for Hampshire will be from this, but I don't think that it'll be as severe as some do. I do kind of wish I could be there, though, just to witness such an event in Hampshire history first hand.