Best photos

I took the train home to upstate New York, and the leaves were at their prettiest. I brought my camera with me and went for a really long walk. I think my photo skills are improving a lot, thanks to Jim. For every story we write, we have to turn in three photos- 1) a "scene setter" that gives the viewer a sense of being there, 2) a profile that focuses on an individual and conveys something about their style, character or personality and 3) a detail shot, which is supposed to be some observation from the photographer's unique point of view. The detail shot is my favorite to take, because it requires you to look at the little things around you...

 This is a main shopping street in Poughkeepsie, where I got off the train. My parents and I stopped here on our way home so my mom could buy shoes.

There are wild grapes growing that I never noticed before! They are about 1/2 mile down the road, near Mr. Hober's house. Mr. Hober was an old farmer who lived by himself when we moved into the neighborhood. Even in the late 1990's he never had electricity or running water. He used to give my sisters and I ice cream sandwiches in the summer.

 This wire was wrapped around a tree stump on a path near the end of the road. I love how the leaves fell in and around it.

 The pond across from Mr. Hober's house. (My "scene setter").

 The driveway and part of the barn. Stone walls, like the one in the background of this photo, are all over. I think most of them were built by hand.

 This stack of wood was very near the wire and tree stump. Part of me loves looking at the rings and tried to capture them in this picture. It reminds me of the scent of firewood and the idea that winter is coming and bringing cozy fires. Part of me also remembers my dad chopping wood and getting my sisters and I to stack it. Even though I always wore gloves, I would inevitably get splinters :(

 Beautiful fall wreath I saw in Poughkeepsie. Reminds me of Thanksgiving and all the delicious things about fall!











This is part of a rusty old tractor with leaves falling on it. It is so easy to imagine the tractor aging when the dead leaves are sitting on it. It's as if the leaves fall and bring the rust.

Bride's March

Here is the link to my trauma story, which was published on Pavement Pieces, the website for the J-school at NYU. It was a difficult piece to write because the interview was very emotional . I am lucky to have gotten to meet Anna and I am really glad she shared her story with me!
http://pavementpieces.com/to-protest-domestic-abuse-a-7-mile-march/

Unity in Style fashion show

 Last night I went to a fashion show and got to interview Mariel Hemingway! Here's my story:

Giving Planet embraces sustainable approaches to technology and the arts

By Rachel Ohm

NEW YORK- The runway was lined with images of teens in Uganda and Kenya as models walked by wearing African-inspired jewelry.

     The audience came to see the works of Jennifer Chun and other New York designers. They stayed to listen to the reflections of teachers recently returned from schools in Kenya and Uganda, where they taught music, photography and meditation to teens. 

     The Unity in Style benefit fashion show was held Saturday to raise money for the young non-profit organization The Giving Planet, which mentors teens in the arts and uses digital media to connect classrooms around the world, primarily in Africa and southern Asia. 

     “We want teens to see themselves as change agents. We want them to gain a sense of themselves as global citizens. We do that through the mediums of art- through photography, dance and music,” said Marisa Pizzuto, executive director of The Giving Planet. 

     On Saturday night the halls of the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan were filled with music during Unity in Style, featuring the designs of Jennifer Chun, a Long-Island born Korean designer; African-inspired jewelry by Nancy Melet; and others to raise money for The Giving Planet. 

     Supporters of The Giving Planet and teachers who have traveled with the organization mingled over organic hors d’oeuvres and wine. 

     The show was co-hosted by actress Mariel Hemingway and nutrition expert Bobby Williams, both of whom spoke on how technology can fit into the balanced, healthy lives of young people.

     “We live in a modern world and the only way to connect people across the world is through technology,” she said, acknowledging that as much as kids need to “go out and play,” they also need to send text messages in today’s world --

     Just not 400 in a week-- the number Williams sited as average amongst Americans teens. 

     Around the world, teens are becoming increasingly invested in technology and social media-- something that The Giving Planet and its teachers see not only as inevitable, but as the key to sustainability and healthy lifestyles. 

      Karen Wacks is a music therapist and professor at Berkley College of Music in Boston. In May she returned from a trip to Kenya with The Giving Planet, where she taught meditation to teens ages 13 to 21. 

     Wacks is also a musician and was struck by the enthusiasm with which The Giving Planet’s arts-based curriculum was embraced. 

     “Everyone is a musician in Kenya,” she said. “Everyone has music in their life and the kids were so ready for this curriculum.”  

     She said she does not see technology as a distraction from the organic music-making of the teens she worked with, but as a way for them to share with the rest of the world. 

     “Technology is a portal through which The Giving Planet web pages share poetry, music and reflections," she said. 

     Claudia Eliaza, a jazz singer who performed live on Saturday, accompanied Wacks on The Giving Planet trip to Kenya and agreed that despite the ubiquity of cell phones and other technology there existed a deep appreciation for making music.

    “One thing I learned very quickly was that clearly Kenya is such a musical country,” she said. “Music surrounds the people-- they do it before they eat; they sing when they tie their shoes, when they go to bed.” 

     One of Eliaza’s greatest memories of Kenya was teaching the song “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent to the teens, many of whom she continues to keep in touch with via Facebook. One, a student named Victor, is now directing his own play and others she says are busy with auditions and their own music ventures. 

     “There are so many great non-profits that go out and do great work,” Eliaza said. “But it’s the sustainability aspect that drew me to The Giving Planet. I feel like I’ve helped them to become leaders and to use their voices in positive ways.” 

Yvonne said: 

     Nice job. This is a really interesting event, and you have some great detail.

     Some things to work on: 

          Specificity and focus. This article lacks focus. It jumps around from place to place, especially toward the beginning. I’m not really sure what the purpose of the article is because there is not a solid nut graph.

          Be careful of quotation formatting. I know it’s often hard to choose the best part of a quote, but you need to do that. Keep them brief and powerful.

          Dashes, in general, should be Em dashes ( — ). You used hyphens ( - ) instead, which are not interchangeable. Be careful of that.

     Otherwise, keep up the great work! 

     I want you to rewrite this and make it more specific, write a nutgraph and format your quotes right.

     You are very talented so I want to make sure you fix these mistakes…nutgraphs are the point of your story..you can review the chapter in the carole rich book or review the handouts I sent you…so fix this and send it back to me.

She is sooo tough! I've never been told to re-write, but I know this is tremendously helpful and will make me a better writer! Thanks, Yvonne!

 Jim says this was my best runway photo, so here it is. I need to learn to edit photos (i.e. not submit all of them...) so I am only putting up my best three!

 Guests mingled over hors d'oeuvres and wine at the Metropolitan Pavilion Saturday. The Unity in Style Fashion Show was held to benefit The Giving Planet, a non-profit organization that encourages young people to share music and art through digital technology.

The Eliaza String Quartet performed Saturday at the Metropolitan Pavilion in front of a slideshow of teens in Africa with The Giving Planet. Jazz singer Claudia Eliaza traveled to Kenya to share her music through the non-profit organization and shared her experience- and her voice- at a benefit fashion show.  

Headed to the Bronx!

Last weekend I traveled to the Bronx for an assignment on trauma reporting. We were instructed to write about trauma- any deeply stressful or shocking event or physical injury. I contacted a family friend who works at an ESL center in the South Bronx for ideas. She was able to set me up with an interview with a co-worker who became involved in a domestic violence situation (thank you Mary!!!). I spent pretty much the entire weekend in the Bronx between traveling for the interview on Friday and then returning on Sunday, when I realized that my story coincided with the annual Bride's March, a protest against domestic violence. I had to go! In between, I was able to visit Van Cortland Park, which is one of my favorite spots in the city. Here are some pictures I took- I'l post the story as soon as I get the corrections back from Yvonne. 

 Somehow I found this sign, then got lost for about 2 hours, then found the park!

 Gorgeousssss!!!!

 It looks so empty without cross-country runners haha!

My afternoon in Van Cortland was perfect! I bought this book for two dollars on the street and an apple at a farmer's market on 149th- Yum! 

Maker's Faire

Last Saturday I went to the Maker's Faire in Queens. Rachel Wise, who is a third-semester student and the editor of Pavement Pieces, edited my piece this week. Here it is with her comments:

NEW YORK- Imagine being able to step onto a life-size version of your favorite board game, ride a bicycle disguised as a fish or grow grass on your car.
       Meet the Makers.  These artists and inventors capitalized on their do-it-yourself attitudes to make their dreams- no matter how silly they might seem- a reality. From across the country, they traveled to Queens this weekend for a celebration of craftiness and creativity at the New York Hall of Science.

        “The Maker Faire is about curiosity, creativity and inventiveness. That’s the crux of scientific discovery and at the heart of the Maker movement,” said Margaret Honey, the President and CEO of the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI).

        The event has been held in San Mateo, Calif. since 2006 and this year expanded to Detroit and New York. Both visitors to the Faire and the Makers themselves embraced the do-it-yourself attitude. Exhibit booths were decorated with reminders to recycle and children worked at craft stations making bird houses from bottle caps. 

      "We just want to crush things," said Kelly Detorent of Oakland, Calif., a Maker who has been traveling with the Life-Size Mousetrap across the country. He explained that the fair is more about the ingenuity of ideas rather than their practicality.  

        Nim Lee, a Brooklyn-based scientist and artist, was at the Faire showing the Fish Bicycle, a bicycle decorated with pink sparkling spandex and surrounded by a wooden frame the size of a car. She originally designed the costume with her husband for the New York Aquarium’s Mermaid Parade, held every summer in Coney Island.

        “We’re both avid bike riders and we got a really good response from it,” she said as visitors lined up to ride her bike.

       Lee acknowledged that a costume for your bicycle is not very practical, but she is still working on getting a patent for her invention. She said that she hopes it can be used by conservation agencies to attract attention to causes such as the environment and recycling.

        Amy Caterina, a photographer from Santa Cruz, Calif. traveled to the Maker Faire to show “Pseudo-Sod Car Cover,” a knit car cover that she hand-knit to look like grass. 
       Catrina spoke to how the project developed out of her close family ties.  She designed the cover for her Toyota Echo, the first car she owned and that her father bought for her shortly before losing his job at a company that went out of business. She learned to knit from her grandmother and was inspired to make a grass-like car cover by her longing for a lawn after moving from her home in Niagara Falls to dry southern California.
       “This is about the do-it-yourself movement. I teach photography and I always have students who want a studio.  I tell them they don’t have to spend a ton of money.  Go to Home Depot, get some boards, clamp them together.  That’s a studio,” she said. 
        She added that one of the most rewarding parts of the Faire was watching children rest their heads on the knit car cover and seeing visitors interact with the pieces. 

        One of the most popular was sponsored by Martha Stewart Living and featured cardboard cut-out butterflies for visitors to make.  They could be spotted sticking out of backpacks and resting on tables besides heaping plates of paella and watermelon smoothies.

       Sasha Mace-Abdelgelli, of New Jersey, tucked her butterfly into a hat she made herself from cardboard and a paper bag. It looked fantastic as she watched the giant mousetrap crush a 10-year old taxi.

       “I couldn’t find any sunscreen,” she said. “So I went to this recycling craft station and made myself a hat.”

And Rachel said...

Rachel:

Overall, a good Daybook article. You have a nice writing style that is clean and organized. And I can tell you did a great job reporting/interviewing.

Some things to keep in mind: Read your AP Stylebook and memorize some of the key things you use most often. But what’s even more important that style is consistency. Even if you mess up, it’s better to have only one version instead of multiple. It’s important to pay close attention to the little details. 

This is also a bit too long for a Daybook. I cut out a few grafs that didn’t really add anything to the story. 

One small thing most editors will tell you: Don’t put two spaces between sentences. Whether your copy is posted to a website or printed in a paper/mag, an editor will have to go in and remove every extra space. So it’s helpful if you work on breaking that habit now.

Also, I think your structure would have been stronger is you led with the details. Put the info about the quirky projects up front. Lead with the examples, and then go into what they were and who the artists were. That would keep people more interested than starting with general statements about this movement.

Keep up the good work! -Rachel…

Photos!!!!

 New York Science Center. This is where the Maker's Faire was held and the site of the 1960 World's Fair.

 I met this guy at the giant mouse-trap and he was really enthusiastic about bacon. His tie (which you can't see because of the wind) has pigs getting slaughtered on it...

 Some bottle caps that a little kid spilled on the ground....

 These flags were near the fish- bicycle...

Got my first and very own press pass! Yay!

Central Park

On Monday I traveled to the Upper West Side to report on the U.N. summit. I talked to a few people and took some pictures. Then I went for a walk in Central Park <3 and practiced my photography... 

Boring.

 Slightly less so.

 Mixing it up with a shot not at eye level.

 The first leaves to change color. This made me SO HAPPY! Love love love Central Park <3.

 View of the lake and the skyline from the jogging track.

 Every time I'm here I think about how much I miss running. So I try to be artsy ....

 Sometimes it works.... sometimes not so much.

I think this is the hotel where John Lennon used to stay? Not sure but its close to Strawberry Fields.   

Sukkah City

      Saturday was a gorgeous fall afternoon and after consulting Daybook and debating between Billy Elliot auditions on Broadway and the Sukkah city competition, I decided to explore the sukkah, mostly because it was at 5 p.m. (as opposed to 9 on a Saturday morning). I was really proud of myself because I decided to bike the 5.85 miles to Gowanus Studio Space in Park Slope and saw so much! Yay exercise. I didn't even get lost on the way! I also avoided the G, which is the worst. Subway. Ever.
       I also got my camera fixed this week. Yay! So I was able to practice taking pictures- mostly in my apartment- still need to work on remembering to take the camera with me. I also got a recorder, which makes a world of difference in conducting interviews. It was a huge relief to not have to be scrambling to take notes and I was able to focus on talking to my subjects. It was also really helpful for me to hear and remember the interview questions I asked.
      I had a great time reporting this week's assignment but I'm a little frustrated with my writing. I didn't quite make deadline, which is supposed to be 12 hours after the event. I had a bit of a time lapse between going to the art studio at 5 p.m. and Union Square at 9.5o. During this time (meant for transcribing my interviews...) I decided to get drinks in the Village with some friends and then headed over to Union Square to watch the rest of the installation. It was really cool to see the crowds that the exhibit drew in Union Square around midnight!  Here's the story....

      NEW YORK- What may be built on top of a camel, cannot be made of food and must provide more shade than sunlight in the daytime? 

Over the last five months teams of architects from around the world sought to find out by designing traditional Jewish huts called sukkahs, simultaneously exploring the parameters of ancient law and modern New York building code. 

In its first year, Sukkah City is an architectural competition drawing over 600 entries from around the globe, 12 of which were installed Saturday night in Union Square and which will be auctioned off after a week long display to benefit Housing Works. 

“There’s two sets of rules, one Jewish law, halacha, which has got a lot of whimsy, its like, ‘can be made out of the side of a whale, can be made in a tree,’ and then there’s the other law, the Department of Building of New York City. Its two sets of laws, both of which we treat as if they were given by God and the architects love the constraints,” said Roger Bennett, co-organizer of the competition and the founder of sponsoring organization Reboot. 

Traditionally, the sukkah is a hut built by Orthodox Jews for the fall harvest festival of Sukkot and commemorating the wandering of the Israelites in the desert.  The contest’s keeping with Jewish law was a challenge welcomed by the architects, who saw a chance to push the limits of innovation. 

“When there are too many rules, there are no rules. There’s room for interpretation.  The sukkah can be built on a river’s boat, but what is a river’s boat? A river’s boat is just a shell, a closed natural shape,” said Marc Fornes, a Brooklyn architect and finalist in the contest. 

Fornes said his participation was part of research he is doing on complex geometries. He produced a network of nodes that he described as a sort of upside down tree with unique branches interwoven into three roots reaching towards the stars. 

The piece is delicate, made of paper-thin strips of wood that it took volunteers ten days to assemble.  The team, mostly twenty-something hipsters, worked frantically yet cautiously to dissemble and load Fornes fragile piece, which has no name, onto a truck for transport to Union Square on Saturday.

For young architects, the contest is a learning forum and a chance to work with some of the best in the field, including a panel of world-renowned jurors. 

Mengchan Tang, who graduated from the University of Toronto’s school of architecture last year and now works in Manhattan, said he was excited for the chance to collaborate with Fornes, who is originally from France and is known for his innovation in conceptual design. 

“This specific piece isn’t functionary, but it’s a manifestation of his idea; an experiment to see what works and what doesn’t,” he said. 

Using architecture as a forum, the contest keeps in mind the mission of Reboot, an organization that Bennett says is trying to engage new generations in Jewish rituals. 

The design team of Bobak Bryan and Henry Grosman explained how the Jewish law inspired them. One of the rules is that at night one must be able to see the stars from within the sukkah. 

Their piece, titled ‘Fractured Bubble’ and made of plywood and hemp rope, was assembled by student volunteers for transport to Union Square, a place that despite being the heartbeat of downtown Manhattan, will become the forum for testing the rules of ancient Jewish law.

“In New York City you don’t really get to see the stars, but one of the things we were thinking about is how the city itself functions as the stars. If you can go somewhere and stop, which is really hard to do in New York, you can find that same sense of wonderment,” said Bryan. 

“It’s kind of the same as being in the desert and looking at the stars and feeling really tiny,” added Grosman. 

It’s an interesting interpretation of the rules, but pretty accurate judging by the crowds of people gathered in Union Square around midnight on Saturday and staring in wonder- not at the stars but at the architects and teams assembling their sukkahs. 

The photos: 

I didn't get lost!

BK. 

This was one of the two sukkahs being prepared for transport from Gowanus Studio. It was super delicate but the architect still let me touch it! His name was Marc and he was French. Tres cool. 

A view of Brooklyn through the "Fractured Bubble." 

"Fractured Bubble" being loaded for transport to Union Square. This is also the photo that I decided to use with the story, mainly because the people give a sense of scale to the sukkah.

These flowers were the victims not only of my negligence but also photo experimentation ... Sorry mom. 

Some art I bought in Union Square....

Where it all goes down. 

And this is what Jim said....

Hi Rachel,

       Everybody got off to a good start at finding their own events this week, getting in place and interviewing people. That's not always as easy as it sounds for students who are new to the practice.

      Your piece is full of interesting observations, but the order is very difficult to follow.

      Your photo was clear, with a simple juxtaposition of the people vs. the sukkah, but your story left me wanting to see more, and to see people engaging with them, maybe working on them or carrying them, or whatever more they were doing.

      You brought a lot of information this week, but it will have a lot more punch with a little organization.

      This was an improvement, but we want to improve at least as much every week.

Cheers,

Jim