Elizabeth: You have a very interesting article, i've always wondered how the security guards approach to student security is like. A few humble suggestions: I think that describing their personalities more would help. There is a lot of emphasis on how being a security guard sucks. how much do they get paid? is this a career choice for them or just temporary? What is the resolution of the story? we are all responsible in the end, but for what? The crime on campus or the attitudes we have? Great first draft!
Jackie: Great start, i think the theme is quite clear. Your piece brings in a lot of different elements, maybe why it is so long, but if you could keep the length i would say it is a well rounded piece that needs a stronger ending, some resolution and more more narrative. It comes off a little cynical, where is the hope?
Martin: Good narrative! The theme of loving something to death i think is the best part of this piece, it would be interesting to see that developed a little more. Also, maybe a description of the actual dune during daytime and what it would mean to the community, real estate, michigan, anyone or preferably everyone, if the dunes dissapeared. But def one of the better narratives here.
Toni: I like the facts and statistics in this piece, they help to frame the piece. It is a strong first draft, but i think that what the final focus is, is a little unclear. The title says wine could save ohio, but why does ohio need saving, is tobacco not profitable? I think you could intertwine the elements of romance, wine and saving ohio more neatly. But great start.
Mae: This could be a good profile of the bar, or of working there, There are a lot of scenes but the theme is escaping me. It could use more structure. how does it compare to working at other bars maybe? how is business since the economy slumped? what is the best selling beer? how often are there fights? what does it all mean, tie it all together.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Another One Bites the Dust
Regis Hanna Jr.
6-1-09
Marin Heinritz
Narrative Journalism
Another One Bites the Dust
It is early, 6:30am, on a Sunday morning late in spring on the football field of Kalamazoo College where a small group of loyal students and friends on a picnic blanket guard and hold on to a beige high altitude balloon connected to a helium tank, that should reach the edge of space before noon. Next to them Noah, his dad and an old man with a long beard, the real crew, work to get the balloon and equipment ready.
Noah Klugman, the architect of this adventure, is a 20 year old computer science major. He is tall with brown shaggy hair and has a mad scientist’s twinkle in his eye as he talks, grinning, about his technological endeavors.
“There are going to be kids with better grades and smarter than me, so my plan is to have something done when I graduate to put on my resume” he explains casually.
Noah grew up reading Dilbert, a comic with satirical office humor about a white-collar engineer, and decided that he never wanted to work in a cubicle. “Kids today are so conditioned to feeling like they get everything they need from classes.”
It takes a gamble to do what he does. “I get b’s and c’s in my math and physics courses” he confesses, “but I also build something every term.”
Among his projects are a laser harp out built out of cardboard and lasers from china, for 35$, and a decoded apple remote for an autonomous robot that dances to “Another one bites the dust”.
His newest project is to send a high altitude balloon to 100,000 feet above the earth’s surface with camera’s attached. It is not the most novel idea, having been done by many students before him, except perhaps that inside the makeshift lunchbox that will be attached to the balloon a High Definition video camera will take footage of the trip in addition to the normal still picture camera that will take pictures every 20 seconds or so. The reason for going through all this trouble? Possibly stunning pictures and video of the boundary between earth and the rest of the universe, and the rewarding cloud nine bliss of 9 weeks work paying off.
Weather conditions the previous night warned of rain and lightning, postponing an already time sensitive project. Noah’s dad, a High-school science teacher for 27 years, has flown out to help him and there probably wont’ be another chance to do it any time soon. “This has become an obsession,” he reflects. Finishing this project would end be the end of an addiction.
Everything seems to be going as planned. He begins to check the radio equipment with the help of John Tucker, the old man with a long beard who is also an amateur hand radio aficionado of Kalamazoo who has generously helped Noah with the radio technical aspects of the project. Attached to the balloon is a GPS whose signal will be converted into audio by a terminal node connector and broadcast far enough for Noah to receive it on the other end and figure out where it is.
Aware that the balloon is no longer inflating, Noah diverts his attention from the radio equipment to check on the frost covered helium tank. The barometer reads empty and the balloon is only about 70% as full as it needs to be. “The helium is probably frozen inside,” he concludes, although with nervousness in his voice. “Lets let it warm up a bit.”
A few minutes later Noah checks the tank again—the barometer still says the tank is empty, and reality is beginning to dawn on us: the tank really is empty, not frozen. Our denial has only wasted us time before the wind picks up and now the project’s fate depends on getting a helium tank early on a Sunday morning, its looking grim.
“When I bought the tank I asked ‘how much does it weigh?’, the lady answered ‘about as much as you girlfriend does passed out drunk.’ That should have tipped me off right there that something was wrong. They ripped me off.”
Somebody jokes that we should steal the helium tank in the student development center, but it’s not a practical option. Instead, after a series of phone calls, Noah and his dad race to Meiers, the only store open, which has small helium tanks for 30.00 a piece. It will take at least five or six to fill the rest of the balloon, a hefty additional price, and we don’t know if we have the right nozzle to use them.
In the midst of the calm uncertainty of the project’s fate an elderly stranger who is intrigued by the large balloon, approaches with his Hot Dog dog, named Shiva after the god of destruction and transformation. He is a retired K professor that lives nearby. Although he is unaware of the predicament that hangs over our heads, it is perhaps because he can sense it that he looks out on the horizon as if remembering and says “I’m always surprised how in social projects it often takes the good faith of the whole group to overcome difficulties. It comes down to that critical moment when you have to decide to keep trying or give up.”
It is comforting because although the situation is dire, the people there have not complained once and are still high-spirited. If hope ever made a difference, we had it as an advantage. While we wait the stranger returns with two pots of tea, a show of empathy by someone who somehow understands the situation and wants to help, however little.
Despite the tea, despite our hope, it is no use. They return, and as they walk over Noah gives us a thumb-down. He kneels next to us all, as a coach would in a football team when there is no hope for victory, and asks what he should do, as if he has a choice anymore. But he does.
Stealing the helium tank in the student development center now looks a bit more enticing, albeit criminal. Rather than risk jail for his project, he goes out on a limb to make one last attempt to get helium. He dials 411 and tracks down Brian Dietz, head of student development, hoping that a phone call to his home at 8:00am Sunday is not too inappropriate to ask for a favor……and it pays off—at a moment when we had all but given up.
We return with a full tank of helium and this brilliant stroke of luck has given everyone an electric excitement. People repeat over and over their astonishment that this has somehow worked out. As the balloon fills, Noah tries to finish the preparations that he had begun before. He checks, and double checks everything—it would be a damn shame to mess up now.
Now ready, the balloon is about 7 feet in diameter and has a rope that extends 20 feet long, like the tail of a kite, with a camera equipped lunch box at the end. The balloon should expand to a maximum of 25 feet in diameter (the atmospheric pressure decreases as it ascends), and then explode, as the cameras begin their descent with the help of a small parachute. Where it will land, nobody knows, but it could be as far as Ohio and as dangerous a location as a highway, where cars would destroy the equipment.
A line of six people hold on to the balloon and rope, from one end to the other, and walk down triumphantly to the center of the football field. On a count to three, they all begin to let go when something unexpected happens. The balloon’s initial ascent it so quick that it jerks the rope, and with enough strength to separate it from the camera equipped lunchbox. In an instant our triumph has turned to sorrow and we all watch helplessly as the balloon climbs higher and higher, no longer with purpose.
Its too painful to say anything and too painful to be silent, but silence gives more peace and so its quiet for a few dark moments, in which we all futilely fight the inevitable—to grudgingly accept this terrible fate. There is no stroke of luck this time. It is bewildering.
Although Noah will not get an F in some class for this failure, nor will he be castigated by some superior, it is still painful. Although he has will still have an internship this summer helping NASA program the flight software for the Mars Rover, there are few words for remedy. Everything is packed up silently, disappointingly resolved that this is just another amateur scientific project that bit the dust.
6-1-09
Marin Heinritz
Narrative Journalism
Another One Bites the Dust
It is early, 6:30am, on a Sunday morning late in spring on the football field of Kalamazoo College where a small group of loyal students and friends on a picnic blanket guard and hold on to a beige high altitude balloon connected to a helium tank, that should reach the edge of space before noon. Next to them Noah, his dad and an old man with a long beard, the real crew, work to get the balloon and equipment ready.
Noah Klugman, the architect of this adventure, is a 20 year old computer science major. He is tall with brown shaggy hair and has a mad scientist’s twinkle in his eye as he talks, grinning, about his technological endeavors.
“There are going to be kids with better grades and smarter than me, so my plan is to have something done when I graduate to put on my resume” he explains casually.
Noah grew up reading Dilbert, a comic with satirical office humor about a white-collar engineer, and decided that he never wanted to work in a cubicle. “Kids today are so conditioned to feeling like they get everything they need from classes.”
It takes a gamble to do what he does. “I get b’s and c’s in my math and physics courses” he confesses, “but I also build something every term.”
Among his projects are a laser harp out built out of cardboard and lasers from china, for 35$, and a decoded apple remote for an autonomous robot that dances to “Another one bites the dust”.
His newest project is to send a high altitude balloon to 100,000 feet above the earth’s surface with camera’s attached. It is not the most novel idea, having been done by many students before him, except perhaps that inside the makeshift lunchbox that will be attached to the balloon a High Definition video camera will take footage of the trip in addition to the normal still picture camera that will take pictures every 20 seconds or so. The reason for going through all this trouble? Possibly stunning pictures and video of the boundary between earth and the rest of the universe, and the rewarding cloud nine bliss of 9 weeks work paying off.
Weather conditions the previous night warned of rain and lightning, postponing an already time sensitive project. Noah’s dad, a High-school science teacher for 27 years, has flown out to help him and there probably wont’ be another chance to do it any time soon. “This has become an obsession,” he reflects. Finishing this project would end be the end of an addiction.
Everything seems to be going as planned. He begins to check the radio equipment with the help of John Tucker, the old man with a long beard who is also an amateur hand radio aficionado of Kalamazoo who has generously helped Noah with the radio technical aspects of the project. Attached to the balloon is a GPS whose signal will be converted into audio by a terminal node connector and broadcast far enough for Noah to receive it on the other end and figure out where it is.
Aware that the balloon is no longer inflating, Noah diverts his attention from the radio equipment to check on the frost covered helium tank. The barometer reads empty and the balloon is only about 70% as full as it needs to be. “The helium is probably frozen inside,” he concludes, although with nervousness in his voice. “Lets let it warm up a bit.”
A few minutes later Noah checks the tank again—the barometer still says the tank is empty, and reality is beginning to dawn on us: the tank really is empty, not frozen. Our denial has only wasted us time before the wind picks up and now the project’s fate depends on getting a helium tank early on a Sunday morning, its looking grim.
“When I bought the tank I asked ‘how much does it weigh?’, the lady answered ‘about as much as you girlfriend does passed out drunk.’ That should have tipped me off right there that something was wrong. They ripped me off.”
Somebody jokes that we should steal the helium tank in the student development center, but it’s not a practical option. Instead, after a series of phone calls, Noah and his dad race to Meiers, the only store open, which has small helium tanks for 30.00 a piece. It will take at least five or six to fill the rest of the balloon, a hefty additional price, and we don’t know if we have the right nozzle to use them.
In the midst of the calm uncertainty of the project’s fate an elderly stranger who is intrigued by the large balloon, approaches with his Hot Dog dog, named Shiva after the god of destruction and transformation. He is a retired K professor that lives nearby. Although he is unaware of the predicament that hangs over our heads, it is perhaps because he can sense it that he looks out on the horizon as if remembering and says “I’m always surprised how in social projects it often takes the good faith of the whole group to overcome difficulties. It comes down to that critical moment when you have to decide to keep trying or give up.”
It is comforting because although the situation is dire, the people there have not complained once and are still high-spirited. If hope ever made a difference, we had it as an advantage. While we wait the stranger returns with two pots of tea, a show of empathy by someone who somehow understands the situation and wants to help, however little.
Despite the tea, despite our hope, it is no use. They return, and as they walk over Noah gives us a thumb-down. He kneels next to us all, as a coach would in a football team when there is no hope for victory, and asks what he should do, as if he has a choice anymore. But he does.
Stealing the helium tank in the student development center now looks a bit more enticing, albeit criminal. Rather than risk jail for his project, he goes out on a limb to make one last attempt to get helium. He dials 411 and tracks down Brian Dietz, head of student development, hoping that a phone call to his home at 8:00am Sunday is not too inappropriate to ask for a favor……and it pays off—at a moment when we had all but given up.
We return with a full tank of helium and this brilliant stroke of luck has given everyone an electric excitement. People repeat over and over their astonishment that this has somehow worked out. As the balloon fills, Noah tries to finish the preparations that he had begun before. He checks, and double checks everything—it would be a damn shame to mess up now.
Now ready, the balloon is about 7 feet in diameter and has a rope that extends 20 feet long, like the tail of a kite, with a camera equipped lunch box at the end. The balloon should expand to a maximum of 25 feet in diameter (the atmospheric pressure decreases as it ascends), and then explode, as the cameras begin their descent with the help of a small parachute. Where it will land, nobody knows, but it could be as far as Ohio and as dangerous a location as a highway, where cars would destroy the equipment.
A line of six people hold on to the balloon and rope, from one end to the other, and walk down triumphantly to the center of the football field. On a count to three, they all begin to let go when something unexpected happens. The balloon’s initial ascent it so quick that it jerks the rope, and with enough strength to separate it from the camera equipped lunchbox. In an instant our triumph has turned to sorrow and we all watch helplessly as the balloon climbs higher and higher, no longer with purpose.
Its too painful to say anything and too painful to be silent, but silence gives more peace and so its quiet for a few dark moments, in which we all futilely fight the inevitable—to grudgingly accept this terrible fate. There is no stroke of luck this time. It is bewildering.
Although Noah will not get an F in some class for this failure, nor will he be castigated by some superior, it is still painful. Although he has will still have an internship this summer helping NASA program the flight software for the Mars Rover, there are few words for remedy. Everything is packed up silently, disappointingly resolved that this is just another amateur scientific project that bit the dust.
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