The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

2009-09-30T10:00:00.002-04:00

Let's start with Joan Didion, the writer that first encouraged me to explore the realms of creative nonfiction. She says, "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."

Now that the initial research is over (the cold calls and the stuttering, the street interrogations of strangers), I have finally locked down two stories. I should be kicking up my feet and taking deep breaths, if not just for a moment, right? For me, the real fear just begins.

We all have our questions that we map out before we talk to our subjects, maybe on a piece of paper, maybe in our heads, and we think of our conduct and our body language, etc, to put the person we're talking to at ease. But what we can't possibly anticipate are their reactions to these questions, their language, their facial expressions. As documentarians, we can only plan for so much. We have to learn to think on our feet, and find some comfortable medium between clipboard journalist and unlicensed therapist. I am working with two women, both in the process of overcoming extreme adversity. Their answers to my questions are difficult, the types of answers people often turn their ears from. Their stories are hard, almost too hard to imagine. One of the women even asked me, "Why are you interested in such a subject?". I suppose I'm interested because I fear it so much... we as a society fear it so much. We fear the realities of grief, of overcoming adversity. Perhaps these brave women can provide us with some light rarely shed on these issues. And with that, I also need to be mindful of my own psyche, and acknowledge that my conversations with these women are difficult, and that I can grant myself space to process what I've heard. With some awareness of self throughout my time at Salt, I can be true to my subject and true to what I produce.

Anna (Writing Track)

Ode to Strange and Beautiful Moments

2009-09-29T13:59:00.006-04:00

Mark Twain said that "analyzing humor was like dissecting a frog - both die in the
process. These days, we want to try to let them both live". I thought of this quote as I was trying to practice "creative construing" or what positive psychologists call
"finding something meaningful in a hard or new situation". Or asking questions like: If this were happening for a high purpose, what would it be?

I questioned this higher purpose/learning thing when on Sunday I, instead of indulging in the New York Times and strong espresso, was sitting in a house miles from Portland, working on a story about a variety of different motorcycle ministries. I thought to myself, Dear God, how did I get here and why is my head pounding? Outside it was raining cats and dogs and inside, I was claustrophobic, stuck behind two couches, the lighting was terrible, every picture was blurry and the snap of my shutter echoed across the room during every prayer. I felt out of place and recognizing the need for fresh air, was relieved when the time had finally come to exit the building. I asked myself, was I the only person who thought that was strange?

The following day I was relieved to find myself suddenly whisked away to a place that felt a little closer to home. On the collective farm that day, I ate an apple right off the tree and felt the breeze off a beautiful lake. I heard a woman talk of justice and equality and pesticides and living in a community of like-minded people. I weaved in and out of drying laundry and dill plants. I felt the mud seep up over my sandals. I climbed a ladder and sat under the skeleton of a house in progress. I watched two little kids make ice-cream out of dirt and imagined the dirt melting back into the ground. The birds chirped and the leaves rustled. I asked myself, how wide must our eyes be in order to see and feel beauty?

As I wonder about the concept of storytelling, I wonder how I am going to document these very different stories. I wonder how my different levels of curiosity and intrigue will affect me. Beyond my camera, my experiences of two very different slices of life happening within two hours of each other was enough to prove that some moments are truly strange and others are simply beautiful.

Anna (photo track)

The Hunt

2009-09-23T18:05:00.003-04:00

I started grinding my teeth last night. I've never done that before. Several friends of mine have - some even have had to get head gear from their orthodontists to prevent them from getting lock jaw. I guess I've never been that stressed before. Short bursts of stress, yes, but a continuous dull ache of stress that persists throughout the day and into my dreams...that is new. I dreamt of one of my subjects from my mini-ethnography the other night. I awoke with an image in my mind; a photo I wanted to take.

I don't want it to seem like I'm writhing in confused misery. It's actually quite exhilarating - this feeling of uncertainty I'm growing used to - of constantly being on the brink of some big discovery. It's "story lock-down" day on Friday, and I still feel like I'm on story-try-it-out or story-vague-idea-that-will-hopefully-develop-into-amazing-story day. I'm on the hunt.

This feeling, I hope, will bring me closer to my subjects. I'm happen to be pursing a story about people who go hunting for sport - not hunting for animals, but for small boxes of treasure called "caches" that they hide in various places all over the state, using plotted coordinates on a GPS device. It actually exists all over the world, this secret world of "geocaching," and boy, are people passionate about it. I've spent hours over the past two weeks talking with cachers and poring over their online forums, immersing myself in such joys as the "FTF" (First Time Find) - being the first one to find a particular treasure, like an old explorer being the first person to tread on uncharted land. I wonder, what is it about geocaching that enlivens the passions of grown men and women from seemingly all walks of life?

I spoke with a cacher named Dave, from Bangor, about why he thinks people cache. He said that he thinks it's part of human nature to hunt, "whether for food, tools of buried treasure. Humans were the first to explore the Earth and have continued underground, underwater, and into space...geocaching makes it possible for average Joes to participate in these activities while remaining in a safer environment than Lewis and Clark or pirates from the middle ages..." And he's right, I think - following your GPS into the woods isn't exactly like plotting uncharted territory, but somehow it takes you to that same place in your mind, the place where you are hunting, where you are on a quest for discovery.

In creating a radio documentary, there's the idea and then there's the story. I didn't really think about how different they were before I came here. A story encompasses an idea, but it has so much more - it has characters, conflict, a movement from here to there. In class, we talked about fitting our story ideas into the following sentence: "someone does something because, but..." So. Mainers go off on the weekends and hunt for treasure because...a) they have an innate desire to hunt b) they have developed friendships and communities around the sport c)? d)??, but...but what? How does one find a "but"? But TBA.

So, story lock-down. It sounds so harsh, like a prison sentence. While I've made some contacts, and made some plans (on Saturday I'm hitching a ride with a cacher up to a group caching event in the North Woods of Maine), I still feel lost, like I don't quite have the coordinates for my destination. I imagine myself as one of those old time explorers - holding a treasure map with burned edges, clad in pantaloons - hunting and digging, hunting and digging, hoping to find somewhere to mark my "X". So I guess I'll keep doing that. And I'll dream, I'll grind my teeth, and I'll wake again.

Amanda (Radio Track)

Time and Space and Old Orchard Beach

2009-09-23T17:08:00.003-04:00

The first two weeks at Salt have been disorienting. We are a group of students gravitated from all corners of the States, transferred to Maine to tell the stories of its people and therefore the essence of the place. I’m from Georgia. I know I have a lot to learn. We’ve spent a lot of time in classes, going over the mechanics of what is to come, but I’ve felt distant from the task. And although the walls of Salt and the people that fill them are always encouraging, I have felt the need to get out—to see the land and people of Maine.
This is why the Saturdays spent in Old Orchard Beach have felt so invigorating. To visit a place is to feel the movements of its people, to see their constructs and their caverns, to gain access to their transformation over time. On our first day in Old Orchard, the center point of downtown and all that spanned from it seemed weighed down by the overhead grey. Great shapes of steel—the ferris wheel, carts, and arcades, all appeared locked into the land. Maine’s one sandy beach was as idle as rock. The morning was shaken only by the excited drawl of two men eager for the outlet of a camera and microphone, whose faces were leathered and carved with age, and breath was already darkened with whiskey. The place was fragile and I wondered if our notepads, cameras and headphones were stirring its rest. With the passing of the day the streets were quickened, but it felt almost forced by the abrupt arrival and departure of the motorcycle parade. They were just as slow and bumbling as the rest of the tired town.
On the other hand, our second trip to Old Orchard was met with sun and blue sky. Bodies curled over motel balconies and riddled the air with the wide-mouth French of the Quebecois. Little feet clapped the grown and children rang out in laughter. The air was thickened with the smell of fried dough. Our skin was warmed and so was our liking to Old Orchard Beach. The town was breathing and pulsed and weaving with bodies and intersecting streets. Old Orchard was lit. It is this contrast that only demonstrates the vulnerability of this place to the seasons. With the seasons change the people, and through the people a town can transform. The shopkeepers and their beloved tourists will flee for the south or the north, for warmer or colder homes, and will leave behind snow buried streets and steel sculptures of what was, leaving Old Orchard calmed and quiet through winter.
In addition to this the transformation that the town has experienced over the seasons, people’s stories can construct a place that’s been lost over time. A coffee shop waitress with tattoos and blue eyes told us of the Old Orchard Ballroom that, after one too many storms, fell into the sea, taking with it the wood paneled floors, the curtains, and the era. I guess what I’ve gathered from this is that places are amorphous, constantly mutating to the people that live within it.

Aida Curtis, Writing Track.

Mini-Ethnography - Funtown!

2009-09-23T11:44:00.003-04:00

Salt loves trial by fire! In our first week at Salt we dove into a mini-ethnography project for the Approaches and Fieldwork course. The purpose of the mini-ethno is to go out and immerse ourselves in a community, find an interesting story to tell, and learn how to work as a team of photographers, writers, and radio producers. By the first weekend, we were out in the field looking for a story.

My group ended up in Funtown, a family-run amusement park outside the town of Saco. What am amazing experience! We focused on a particular ride called the Astrosphere, a fast and furious ride and visual light show of black lights, strobe lights, spot lights, and projections onto an pressurized dome. The same song, Fire on High by Electric Light Orchestra, has been played for every show since the 70s. The family let us spend two full days that first weekend at the park interviewing and photographing people about Astrosphere. I was amazed at how open and approachable people can be when you overcome your initial fears of invading other people's space.

One question I did have was the issue of finding conflict and tension in telling a compelling story. I didn't quite understand what our professors wanted, especially since our story was about an inanimate object. I began questioning myself: What is conflict? What does it mean to look for conflict in a story? Is it right or ethical to prod or seek conflict when a subject is opening up to you? I don't believe we should direct the conversation so a subject reveals conflict in his/her life. With our mini-ethno, the subject of our story is an amusement park ride. How do we find conflict there?

Due to this mini-ethno, I've had to deconstruct my idea of conflict. It doesn't necessarily have to come in the form of conflict between people. Conflict could come from dealing with the weather, economic hardship, competing against other corporate amusement parks, etc. The Astrosphere as an object does not engage in conflict itself, but it is subject to the trends of culture and weather. But I still question why compelling stories can't just be positive without seeming like fluff pieces? Can't a profile be an engaging story? Don't we need more essentially positive things in life? I am sure these feelings will evolve throughout my time here at Salt!

Adrienne M. (Photography Track)

I know it's not my turn, but I wanted to share this

2009-09-18T00:13:00.005-04:00

Every time I use my milk it reminds me that my story deadline (Sept. 25) is rapidly approaching.

(Leah, photography)

The Salt Hive: Graduation Speech

2009-05-23T10:16:00.003-04:00

I spent a lot of time this semester looking at bees, their hairy thoraxes, shiny translucent wings, and striped dancing abdomens. With their bulging compound eyes, I wondered if they could see multiple images of me, for everywhere I went—even while working on other stories—I seemed to see bees, actual bees and also metaphorical bees. In fact, everything became like bees: cars on the highway didn’t just drive but buzzed passed each other, people in the grocery store foraged for food, and Salt’s identity became clear to me: a beehive. It sort of rolls of the tongue: the Salt Beehive of Documentary Studies.

In the photography track, we have certainly felt like worker bees. We have spent hours upon hours working, sometimes staying up all night to document our subjects playing air guitar, writing illegal graffiti, and patrolling the streets with a K-9 in tow. We have run the length of hundreds of soccer fields, swam in icy ocean water, put thousands of miles on our cars, and learned enough about mussels to deserve PhDs. We have pushed the limits of our cameras, seeking any light in the darkest of situations, from graveyards to dance clubs to the swingers’ bedrooms, all to gather the nectar of our craft: images.

With the nectar back in the hive, we worked to synthesize it into something coherent, something that will feed us—feed our need for human connection, for meaning, for stories beautiful and complex. Sometimes we brought back so much nectar than the Salt hive couldn’t support it. Our computers panicked and our beekeeper-duo Kate and Scott demanded us to be more confident in culling and editing our work.

Though Kate may seem like a queen bee, she is more of our beekeeper. For the queen does not directly control the hive; the queen’s sole function is to serve as the reproducer, laying as many as 2,000 eggs per day! Not Kate’s dream job. Instead, Kate is a watchful beekeeper, who gives her time and advice with a sense of dedication, and honesty. It is true that bees cannot be tamed, and it’s debatable whether or not photography students can be. The best approach to beekeeping and teaching—it seems—is to provide the most conducive environment for success. We thank you, Kate, for your patience with our insecurities, indecision, and stubbornness. We appreciate your commitment to push us to be more thoughtful, considerate, and ethical documentary photographers.

I can speak for all of us to say that we are truly blessed to have Scott as part of the teaching duo. His technical knowledge of digital photography, including his superhuman sense of color and his ability to fix printers and archiving fiascos, has astounded us. We thank you, Scott, for your readiness to assist us and for remaining calm despite many challenges. We appreciate your commitment to introduce us to the work of other photographers and to provide us with context to the wider photography world.

But all of Salt, not just the photography track, feels like a hive. Honeybee have a natural propensity to work together, and none of the stories we produced could have been as successfully achieved without each other’s feedback and support, given in class critiques, on morning jogs, or over happy hour beers. We thank Salt for its emphasis on collaboration and for valuing multimedia. Now is a hard time for honeybees, as beekeepers all over the U.S. report losses as high as 90%. And it’s a difficult time for the media, as newspapers and magazines close their doors. Now is the time for innovation and collaboration, and Salt is providing breeding ground for work and ideas that will sustain storytelling as the platforms and mediums continue to evolve.

As I began to write this this morning, Erin, the master beekeeper, called me to tell me a fellow beekeeper on the West end had a hive that had swarmed up into the tree. When a healthy bee hive sees that it is running out of room to store honey, it knows it is time for a large number to leave and seek to build a new hive to store an adequate supply of honey. I had missed the initial drama—the site of thousands of bees swarming out the doorway of their old hive, rising in the air and swirling about like a tornado funnel, making the noise of a railroad train. When I arrived the hive had clustered in a tight ball high up in the tree. The swarm—with the queen safely inside it—was waiting for the scout bees to tell them where to move.

This is where the bee metaphor begins to break down. The fact is, we all won’t move together to a new place. We’ll go as far apart from each other as Mexico is from West Africa, as Argentina is from Southeast Asia. But it’s true that the time is prime now to find a new home. We must make way for the next group. For inside the old hive that the swarm has left, a new generation of honeybees will soon emerge from their cells.

May Salt continue to provide a conducive creative and supportive space. And may we all continue foraging for stories.

--Briget Ganske and the photography track

Archiving

2009-05-19T09:44:00.003-04:00

Here's a tip for incoming Salties...
Archiving is a pain in the ass since it's being done NOW at the end of the fifteen weeks. Organize your folders and subfolders and properly title your files on the onset of the semester. It will save you time and headache in the long-run.
- Shane... Radio

One From The Vault

2009-05-18T08:43:00.002-04:00

Photograph by Keith Lane

Another late night

2009-05-14T01:39:00.002-04:00

It's 1:40am and there's probably half a dozen of us between the writing and photography class rooms (can't tell with radio, because those doors have been closed for a while). Deadlines loom--for the writers, our long story is due 9am on Friday with no room for wiggling, because they will immediately be plopped into InDesign for the semester's chapbook. The writers had a crash course on InDesign yesterday. Between that and having possible format, story order and cover photos for the chapbook on the whiteboard and helping carry in the stage for graduation earlier tonight, the fact that things are coming to an end here at Salt for the Spring 09 semester is just beginning to come into focus. Wild!

Back to it being 1:40am: this is the second all-nighter I've pulled since college (the last one was last night), and I don't think I've felt this good for a while. There is something energizing, free and inspiring about having something to do that is so important that your body and mind have the capability of staying awake that long.

Amanda
Writing student

Two Pots

2009-05-11T10:32:00.001-04:00

Photograph by Keith Lane

Oh, the places you go.

2009-05-05T12:00:00.005-04:00

Julia stuck in the mud and hitching a ride.

Jess Sheldon
Photography

The Haze

2009-05-04T10:41:00.002-04:00

Photograph by Keith Lane

What I took away from meeting Jad Abumrad.

2009-04-30T00:27:00.014-04:00

Tonight, April 29th, the Boston Museum of Science hosted a listening party of Radio Lab's production: "Space". The event took place in the planetarium. Following the event, everyone gathered in the blue wing for chocolate fountain, twittering performance art by Boston CyberArt and the chance to talk one on one with Radio Labs host and producer, Jad Abumrad.

After we (Salt Radio students) stole him away for a moment for a group picture, I got to ask him some questions...

(Gist): Since he interviews many highly technical people (ie scientists), does he have a unique way of eliciting clarity/brevity or excitement from the subject ("drinking the kool-aid" as he put it).

He confirmed that the "crackpot analogy" method is very handy but you need to be careful with it. You take a big risk of losing credibility with your subject.

Regarding the "kool-aid"...
"[paraphrased: I try not to lose the conversation... the moment we were in together. Much of what you hear on NPR is narration, narration, narration, quote, narration, and so on, ...I dont like that. After you upload the interview, you need to get out and take a walk around the block. You can get lost in the Word script and ProTools. Find the moments that excited you in the piece. Have others listen to those moments and watch their reactions. Those reactions will help you frame the conversation that you found exciting.]"

From this I took away that the excitement was not something to elicit from the interviewee but something to recover from the interviewer.

- Shane ... Radio

P.S. >> Field notes: there was a spaceship from the last Star Wars film hanging overhead in the reception area; one of the ladies from CyberArt, dressed in a black dress and carrying a laptop like a cigarette girl of the 1930's, had a bleeding blister on her heel that looked uncomfortable; the chocolate in the fountain tasted like melted Hersheys yet there were more people around the fountain than were talking with Jad; the cash-bar was $3 for a soda, 5 for a beer, and 7 for a mix drink; chatted with a scientist (Joanna?) about science journalism, she teaches at Harvard {cellular mechanics?};...

Major Writer's Road Block Stress Disorder (MWRBSD)

2009-04-29T13:49:00.003-04:00

Another draft of my long story is due in one hour and eight minutes (and hence, I'm blogging). As I'm trying to write the draft, I have no idea which end is up. Where do I start? What am I trying to say? How do I say it? My story is complex and hard and important. I think my subject is a totally awesome person, and I'm glad I'm writing about him. But I increasingly have the feeling that I am not good enough for the story.

Amanda
Writing student

Field Work.... On Wheels

2009-04-27T20:58:00.001-04:00

After 3 months and nearly 60 plus hours documenting roller-skating rinks, my photography collaborator, Anna, is finally convinced to give skating a whirl! It made us all very happy. She's back on her feet with a camera in her hand, but with an added perspective to her already-excellent documentary photography. Stay tuned everyone, our final show is just around the corner and there's a buzz in the air here at Salt.

Katie Fuller

Writing Student

Burnt Out

2009-04-27T09:57:00.004-04:00

Photograph by Keith Lane

Post-Critique ...It's Destiny

2009-04-25T14:48:00.003-04:00

So the last two days at Salt have been hectic ones. Students from all three tracks spent long, long days (and for some us even nights) trying to get our stories straight! We each had 20 minutes to face our peers and sell the little gems of stories we've been searching for all semester long. If anything, yesterday just enforced that Salt is about telling compelling, true, heartfelt stories about people from all walks of life. Enough mush. After getting that last push from our peers to see our work through til the end of this amazing process, it was time for some fun!

When we went out for post-critique festivities, it was obvious to me that Salt kids (well now, we're adults aren't we..scary!) anyhow, Salties are all in this somewhat transitional phase in our lives, but we share a common cause: to share with the world just how rich our OWN stories are..the stories of ordinary people. Our very own Amanda shared a special tale, that she met a man from India on a train headed to the airport to come here to Portland. Low and behold, this man looked Amanda right in the eyes and said with conviction "You are going from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine?" He asked. Then he said, "That is where your destiny is leading you." After yesterday, I think we all feel a bit like Amanda after this experience. Salt is about more than just our work, it's about meeting others that share a passion for people and their stories. Amanda's story is her own, but in some way it's universal to us all.

Back to work!
xo
Katie
Writing Student.

Busy, Busy Salt Days...

2009-04-22T15:35:00.031-04:00

It's been a very busy week at Salt. Radio and writing students have had their 1st story due and photo students are doing their 2nd major edit of their central story. We are all presenting our stories to the school Thursday and Friday. Yesterday an image and title were voted on to represent the Student Show on May 21st! We are on our way!

Check out these images of writers hard at work late into a Sunday night before their stories were due and some pics of a cupcake break during a busy Salt weekend. Enjoy!

Emphasis on "rough"

2009-04-20T16:02:00.004-04:00

So, Katie and I emailed the rough drafts of our long stories to our classmates and Colin today at 12:20 EST. Amen, Amen! Yea, we forsook sleep and triumphed, triumphed indeed!* We were in the Salt's Red Room last night until around 2 in the morning, powering through 3,000 words that I'm pretty sure won't make it into the final version at the end of the day.

"Two writers in the Red Room, oh yeah, oh yeah," Katie said at one point.

Our friends kept coming into the Red Room, drawn by the sounds of Lady Gaga, the Righteous Brothers, M. Ward, giggling, complaining, and typing.

"What the hell is going on in here," said one of the radio students. They've been pretty cracked out lately with their story due tomorrow, but I think the sight of Katie's postcards littering both of the long tables in the Red Room were a sight. "You guys have totally lost it."

Later that night, I wondered if I should get contacts?

"You're unforgettable with those glasses," Katie said.

Katie's pretty gregarious, and she kept me laughing last night. I probably would have drowned in the misery of my knowledge that I haven't done enough interviews, access may be slipping (or not there), one of my subjects may not sign Salt's release form, and that my story ended up being much more complex than I could have guessed at the beginning of the semester. That we drew the ace and two of hearts ended up a pretty sweet deal.**

And now, onward to the next draft!

By: Amanda, writing.

*My story involves heavy doses of Catholicism.
** To determine when students would have their stories workshopped, Colin had us choose from five cards. I got the deuce.

The Blue Door

2009-04-20T10:27:00.002-04:00

Photograph by Keith Lane

Crunch time

2009-04-19T14:28:00.005-04:00

I am in the Red Room at Salt with a fellow writing student, Katie. The first drafts of our long story are due tomorrow, at high noon, as a desperado from the Old West might say. I'm feeling a little bit desperate right now. Do I have enough information? Enough interviews? Am I going to hit the word count, 3,000 words?

"Oh, I'm going to hit, it's just what I hit it with," Katie says. She says that our writing teacher, Colin, is going to have to take 3,500 words and deal.

Before I came to Salt, I was a freelance newspaper writer for one year. I wrote stories a lot, and it came naturally to me. The words flowed. I haven't written a story since I came here in February. Staring at the page, it's like I've forgotten. Where do I start?

By: Amanda, writing.

Rexall

2009-04-13T10:09:00.003-04:00

Photograph by Keith Lane

Interview inside a Trash Incinerator

2009-04-10T13:10:00.005-04:00

Salt stories will take you to many places you may never expect to visit. While researching a collaborative story, Samuel Allison (Writing), Casey Atkins (Photography), and myself toured MERC (Maine Energy Recovery Company), a trash incinerator located in downtown Biddeford.

Photograph by Casey Atkins.

- Shane... Radio

Spring berry

2009-04-09T11:35:00.002-04:00

Photograph by Keith Lane

Truth & Radio

2009-04-07T14:51:00.004-04:00

Thought for the Day:
In regards to emphasizing the dramatic elements in a story:
There's the "truth",...
Then there's the truth that you are telling a story on the radio.

- Shane... Radio

To record or not to record?

2009-04-06T18:10:00.005-04:00

What if you are recording an interview and your subject starts breaking down and crying? Some may say the polite and tactful act is to turn off the recorder. DON'T. What I learned this week is that you keep recording because you don't want them to feel like they did something wrong by opening up.

- Shane... Radio

Boxcar red

2009-04-06T11:33:00.003-04:00

Photograph by Keith Lane

How I Transcribe...

2009-03-31T19:39:00.004-04:00

Transcribing Workflow:
1) Import entire interview into ProTools session.
2) If the interview is in multiple WAV files: insert all onto one track, leaving about a 3-5 second gap between files. Exception: Ambient and active sound, don’t add into track.
3) If you have multiple files on the track, select all and normalize. This will even out all the sound variation and reduce the interview to a single WAV file.
4) Import single (normalized) WAV file into Transcriva.
5) Select (on Toolbar) “Speakers” / “Add Speaker” > type name of interviewer, interviewee, and anyone else heard in the recording. TIP: you can color coordinate the speakers.
6) As you listen to the file, select “New Entry” every time a new person speaks. Where it says “Unknown / None”, select the arrow to insert the speaker. If you hear a line that is possibly worthwhile, type a quick line or memo for later.
7) Summarize all the questions and responses.
8) Find your most intriguing sound bites (statements that catch your attention) and transcribe those. Isolate those sound bites in ProTools for later.
9) Transcribe everything else that is relevant to your story.

Hope this helps someone.
- Shane... Radio

Orrs Island

2009-03-31T13:00:00.006-04:00

Photograph by Keith Lane

Made in Maine

2009-03-26T11:14:00.004-04:00

At the scenic turnout on Route 17 in Oquossoc, Maine known as the 'Height of the Land' we got more than just a great view. Apparently, even taxidermists are feeling the economic crunch, displaying their greatest works (see Mr. Fox) anywhere they can. Mr. Fox is turning to the bottle during these tough times. The sun exposure got to him despite his sweet shades. On our return trip to Portland, he was gone.

Katie Fuller
Writer

Jess Sheldon
Photography

Lobster Fog

2009-03-26T11:11:00.007-04:00

Photograph by Keith Lane

Maine Maple Sunday

2009-03-23T13:53:00.004-04:00

Sunday, March 22nd. The second day of spring. Every year the Maple farms around the state open up their farms for the public. A few of us headed out to Merrifeild Farm, in Gorham, to check out this widely attended event.

Later that day we had a brief snow storm. Yeah... you gotta love Maine in March.

And yes indeed, ice cream covered in real maple syrup = euphoria.

-posted by Keith, photography student

Looking back on day 1

2009-03-22T17:15:00.003-04:00

MONDAY: Meet & Greet

10-11: Intro and chat with the Staff in the Red Room and Tour of the place.

I arrived early enough to get a metered parking space next to the school and shuffled on in. A few people were already there. I draped my jacket onto the back of a chair in a room that leaves no guess work as to its designation; The Red Room. Cherry red walls, ceiling, and carpet with black modern-styled furniture... this is the meeting room. I venture down the hall to a kitchenette with coffee brewing and an array of donuts and ceramic mugs waiting to be claimed. Other people started making their way inside and towards the kitchen. Some are recognized by their profile pics on Facebook, most engage in a handshake, name, and program track at Salt; then hoping to remember the other persons name after the exchange. The enthusiasm is thick in the air and the kitchen fills with gab. People waiting and the coffee is not done just yet, but that doesn't stop some from pouring a weaker cup from the large chrome urn. As the kitchenette fills people pour out into the hallway. Somehow the other males attending gravitate towards each other. There are 5 out of 30 and the odds don't really come to mind as much as we joke about why is it males tend to herd together in larger clusters. Soon we are all herded into the red room and introduced to the staff. Donna Galluzzo is the Executive Director. She conducts the majority of this mornings briefing with a thoroughness and succinctness evident of prior performances. Mandy Morrish handles the academic and community affairs. Christine Heinz handles IT, marketing, and financial affairs. After general introductions of the staff, we went around the room introducing ourselves. Then the fun rigmarole of going over policy stuff and getting various logistical paperwork out of the way. Not long after mentioning, "in case of a fire...", the fire alarm goes off and everyone vacates out and across the street. Glad I took my coat with me, there was a bit of a windy bite in the air for a sunny day. Someone else didn't, so I offered my scarf. Who knows how long we will be out there. Standing around wondering what is going on, five firetrucks arrived and one extended its ladder to the roof. After an uneventful wait we were let back inside unaware of what set off the alarm in the first place. We took a tour and got a feel for the layout. Afterward, a group of students got together for lunch and we walked down to O'Natural to continue our conversations and inquiries about each other.

till next time,
Shane... Radio

Scrapping and rushing.

2009-03-18T16:10:00.005-04:00

I am one of those people that put all of my eggs in one basket. The latest instantiation of this regrettable personality trait of mine was my fervent hope that a social service agency treating substance abuse for women here in Portland would let me have access to their clients for one of my stories. I met with their media flak two weeks ago, wrote her a long email explaining what I wanted to do, and we kept following up with each other. I was being compromising (not a word anyone knowing me would use to describe me) about how much time I would likely spend with my subjects, which was their biggest concern. It looked like things were going to work out. I was going to make things work out (a trait my friends would use to describe me).

For things to work out, I was told, I would have had to meet with the executive director and the director of inpatient services. Except, the executive director is in Africa for the next two weeks, and the director of inpatient services on vacation as well. The end of their vacations ran well past my March 29 deadline.

So I had to scrap the story. I am now scrambling to call every single social service agency treating opiate addiction in the state of Maine to get a story idea hammered out. And I keep running into the same roadblock--hesitation on their part about the amount of access I would need for my story.

This getting access crap is like trying to move Heaven and Earth.

By: Amanda Waldroupe, writing.

Stood Up

2009-03-15T19:00:00.004-04:00

I had arranged an interview today with a recovering OxyContin addict. This person told me they had been clean for one year, one week. They were involved in Narcotics Anonymous and volunteering to help people recovering from opiate addiction. I was very excited about this interview. I thought I would meet a potential subject through this person, which would be a huge step forward for my second story. After meeting with this person and hearing their story, they would ascertain that I was a totally reliable and cool person whose contact information they could give to everyone they knew, and I would be gold and everything would be grand.

So there I am sitting at Arabica Coffee waiting for my 11 o'clock appointment with this person. 11:30 rolls by. Noon. I don't know anymore answers for the Boston Globe's Sunday crossword puzzle. It turns 12:30, and I leave. Stood up.

Before I came to Salt, I was a freelance news reporter for one year. I racked my brain before writing this post, trying to remember if someone just never showed up for their interview with me. I can't remember a similar instance. Stood up. A first.

By: Amanda, writing.

No Turning Back

2009-03-13T15:03:00.002-04:00

I spent this week wracking my mind deciding what I was going to write my long, 3000-word story on. The deadline to get a pitch to our writing teacher was today. A parenthetical warning on the syllabus for today's class--"No turning back!"--haunted my mind as I tried to calmly and objectively think about the four stories that were all contenders, tugging at my writer's heart, vying to be the next three months of my life, winner of the Most Time Consuming and My New Love-Hate Relationship prizes. I kept thinking to myself "this one's important, Waldroupe. You wanna publish this, and this is going to be the last time you ever have three months to work on one feature-length story. You can't screw this one up."

As the week went on, I learn that getting access to Oxycontin addicts or English-speaking Iraqi women or women in prison getting ready to re-enter society is going to be a bit trickier than I thought (what are bureaucrats for, after all?). No subjects emerge, key sources don't call or email me back. In the end, I go with the story I have the most access to, and the one I have two interview transcripts for (another thing due in class today). It's also the story my friends tell me sound the most interesting, so that's something. I feel like I have been very dramatic about all this story picking stuff, and I'm not much for drama. The thing about drama is that it seems to always get smacked upside the head by cold, hard logic. Or, in this case, the existence of two interview transcripts.

By: Amanda, writing.

Notes on Observations and Judgments

2009-03-13T14:01:00.005-04:00

Here is a question to ponder...
At what point does an observation become a judgment?
What we choose to observe is a judgment as well as the choice in language we use to describe it. In radio we want to "paint" a visual for our listener. What happens when our description works so well because it may rely on certain stereotypes? I believe one of the biggest fears of a documentarian is confirming a stereotype.
Any thoughts?

Love,
Shane ...Radio

Tales from the Radio Lab

2009-03-13T13:35:00.004-04:00

Almost every class we start by listening to radio pieces by prior Salt students and other unique pieces selected by Rob. This makes me curious to the discussions future students may have about my work. How will people hear me?
Thankfully Rob provides some context.

Today we analyzed beginnings.
Thoughts from the day...
Your first 30-seconds, you're selling the story, not establishing a mystery.
Often times the beginning starts with a thread and you follow that thread. You show "here is how things are and here is how things are different". A mystery leaves a person guessing and thinking ahead rather than letting them listen to what you are presenting. It's hard to start a story with a mystery. You risk losing your listener.

till next time,
Shane... Radio

Winter Portland

2009-03-13T10:20:00.005-04:00

It's March which means the coming of spring birds and leaving of snow. But it's Maine so there's still snow on the ground, the ocean is still quite cold, and my ears strain for the sound of far away loons. Yet despite this winter weather I find myself caught in world of color.

Winter semester at Salt is full of hours spent in the computer lab, discussing story ideas, and most importantly shooting images with my camera. It is within this last act I find myself come alive in a world of grey, winter storms, freezing cold air, and crisp blue morning horizons. As winter changes to spring I slowly transition from photography student to one dedicated to using photography as a means towards creating positive social change. While there is much more work to go the change is truly felt- on all levels.

By: Keith, photography student

Spring 2009, belated

2009-03-11T10:48:00.004-04:00

Just to kick off this semester's blog, here's a taste of the quotes and concepts up on our wall here in the Radio A room:

"I'm not a stalker, I'm a documentarian."

"It's hard to tell because it's jazz."

Disfluency

Prodigious Umms

De-erotify

"Is he the one with the fannypack?"

"Mouth noise is not your friend."

Shovel-ready!

Wince-inducing

Audio Diorama / The Salt Diorama track

"Wow, I'm really excited by that nudging... you guys should be too. Nudging is really intuitive."

"I heard your smile today."

"Bisect the mesa."

"Alright lady, let's folk it up!"

"Smell is like touch... at a distance."

"Just a quick thoughtlet..."

"High five no scenes no focus!!!"

"I misread your blinks."

As you can see, we're trying not to be creepy in our earnest endeavors to document the world around us... but failing miserably. We'll get less creepy soon... we promise.

norman, must we?

2008-12-04T18:14:00.001-05:00

If you are ready to come to grips with the inevitable slipperiness of
most available facts, you come to recognize that realism is not a
direct approach to the truth so much as the most concentrated form of
fantasy."
--Norman Mailer

"Meet Me Anywhere"

2008-11-30T22:20:00.003-05:00

this event is free and open to the public
see you at Salt on thursday 12/11/08 at 5PM

top photo by jennifer leahy
bottom photo by heather noonan

what work is

2008-11-30T22:17:00.002-05:00

click here and noodle around. def check out the videos. i found them great to the point of anxiety-inducement.

Urchin Fishing

2008-11-08T02:56:00.002-05:00

So Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

2008-11-02T17:20:00.005-05:00

Anyone?

Speaking Out, Speaking Up: Why We Tell Stories

2008-11-02T08:55:00.007-05:00

Why do I tell stories? I tell stories because they teach me to listen; to open my eyes, my ears, and my mind to the world around me. They teach me to dig beneath the surface of our lives and search out the truth in every part of our being. Stories serve as a bridge between the past, present, and the future. They are the connection between us all. And somewhere in between the giving and receiving, stories incite our imaginations, inspire change. That is why I tell stories.

This is why Ari, Dina, Marc and Tracey tell stories:

Pictures from the bear skining weekend

2008-10-28T23:12:00.004-04:00

Here is our cozy camper located next to the goat shed where the bear gored the family goats.

Rachel finishes up the Grady paper by headlamp as I backup my images on my laptop plugged into the solar powered outlets in the camper

Rachel lends a hand in the bear skinning.

Jeff, Oceana's dad, looks at the bear meat resting in cold water in his kitchen sink.

Bear Meat

2008-10-28T15:26:00.002-04:00

I went back to the house to check on Becca, and Oceana greeted me with a red and yellow toy saw.

"I'm cutting your paws off!" she played, sawing back and forth at my wrists.

"Oh, Oce," Becca said, coming over to where we stood on the rug. She got down on her knees to take Oceana in her arms.

That's when I knew how truly surreal the whole situation was. It's one thing for children to play hunter, it's quite another for them to have a dead bear arm soaking in their kitchen sink.

"They are pretending they are not here"

2008-10-23T17:18:00.006-04:00

Well I shot for a total of 25 hours this weekend, no, not including sleeping, and I am still happy, motivated, and excited about my photo essays. That’s the thing about doing something you love, even if you are putting in a five million hour week, its ok because you are so excited and happy to be doing every second of your work. So In addition to having many break throughs with my subject for my personal essay, I had an amazing weekend with my collaborator working on our homesteading essay. On the drive up we had a sort of epiphany about why we were following each family and what we wanted to show in each family. It was like the photo / writing gods were smiling down on us and granting our every wish! We were staying with the family that we wanted to document to show the homesteading community at large. As soon as we got there the community started flooding into our subjects barn to press apples. Within this community was the woman who started the Montville ordinance (the ordinance that we have based our story around and had yet to incorporate in the context of real live people), The man who started the community outreach for economically depressed families who don’t have food to get vouchers for the farmers market, and some homesteaders from the first wave of back to the landers (exactly what Colin had asked Rachel to find). We managed to sit down with all of these people and conduct an interview that lasted for maybe about an hour! It was one of those amazing moments where everything you were searching for just falls into your lap unexpectedly. We now have the glue to hold the pieces of our story together. After this amazing day we sat down to a great diner. One of the great perks about shooting homesteaders is that they love to feed us dinners composed of fresh food they have harvested mostly from their farm. So Rachel and I started to sit down to a meal of chicken (from the farm), kale (from the farm) cooked in apple cider (that we pressed that day), carrots (from the farm), Pork (bartered from a fellow homestead), and some rice from a store. Just as we were about to sit down I explained to Rachel that I needed to get a shot of the dinner table so, we needed to take our place setting away from the table and wait to be served, so that it wouldn’t appear that we were altering the scene. One of the children asked what we were doing and the mom said “they’re pretending they’re not here”. This struck Rachel and I, we both found it ironic and very comical. Of course we were there! And what were we doing by moving our plates? …. calling attention to our presence! I remember Rachel laughing and saying ‘this isn’t documentary’, and I said something to the effect of sometimes you have to sacrifice one truth to show another. I thought this was a really interesting moment, I can see both sides, in fact I’m on both sides, it’s something to ponder I suppose… After our freezing day outside we couldn’t resist a post dinner sauna in the sauna behind the barn that the family had built by hand out of local cedar. Little did we know that this would mean chilling out with our subjects naked, but at this point there was no turning back. Rachel and I rapidly undressed in the cold and modestly sat in the sauna with our towels surrounded by our buck-naked subjects. One of their moms got up to put the kids to bed and asked if we wanted to stay in longer I replied ‘If I were a good documentarian I would shoot you putting your kids to bed” and with that I ran with her and Rachel back to the house through the frost.

-Heather

Rachel pressing apples ( left) and me shooting (right)

shooting in my p.j.'s

Rachel taking feverish field notes

2008-10-19T02:13:00.000-04:00

Mars

2008-10-07T16:53:00.002-04:00

Written in Christmas lights on a garage on Chebeague Island.

campaign literature spotted on my bedroom wall

2008-10-06T14:20:00.001-04:00

barack the note ::

barackthenote.blogspot.com

Campobello, Lubec, and an international eagle.

2008-10-05T22:32:00.003-04:00

Jazzy and I have been hanging out in between Campobello Island and Lubec for the

past few days. I think tonight we officially became regulars when the Canadian border

didn't even ask to see our passports. It's been a busy two days of meeting people, running into

them again, talking, and of course, the ever-exciting building of rapport. We've got enough

rapport to build a house. There is a lot going on here. There's the rift between the older generation and the younger one--the old way of living and fishing and the new: which apparently includes a lot of serious drugs. The high school is shrinking, and might close next year. Yesterday, when hanging out with locals on the back porch of Annabell's bar we spotted

a lone eagle on the pier. Having left Marcus's borrowed long lens in the car I took a word of advice from Kate and used a little shoe leather. I got pretty damn close to the thing before some man came up behind me with a wicked long lens and scared it away. It was exhilirating though, here are some pictures!

Writing Class

2008-10-04T14:48:00.004-04:00

We sit around a wooden table on plastic rolling chairs, regularly discussing the basics of journalism. More as we sink into our stories, we explore taking writing beyond reporting to a place where the reader can sense the scene. Colin said jazz doesn’t happen if you can't play the basic scales.

Friday at the head of the table, an editor from a local paper joined to talk about how he’s survived as a journalist. It was funny for him to sit in our newly renovated bright green room. Back in the day the Casco Bay Weekly lived in our building and our current writing room was called the “wood room”. It was a beat down place people would go to if they needed to talk about things that couldn’t be said in public.

His gave us pitch tips including:

Read publications before you submit. Notice their buzzwords.
Choose an area of interest and read widely on that topic.
Know your angle, and the publication's angle. Always be specific in a pitch.
He compared editors to dogs: a story’s not theirs until they’ve pissed on it. Be flexible when collaborating on a piece.
Don’t lie about access to sources. Be honest about what you can deliver.
Check submission guidelines for each publication.
Some editors prefer phone calls.
Don’t use clips from your college paper.
Pitch things that haven’t happened yet.
To get clips, call editors and offer to cover anything.

He heard our pitches. It was exciting to watch editor wheels in motion, imagining our stories in his paper, and inviting people to follow-up with stories for upcoming issues.

Yet we know, with papers folding all over the world, there is a new media emerging and we wonder what does this new media scene look like and how will it transform the way we tell stories?

Wednesday Mornings

2008-10-03T12:36:00.003-04:00

On Wednesday mornings,

old women with bandanas tied around their white hair

and black, Simalian men

walk the streets on Munjoy Hill.

Poking their heads into blue recycling bins,

they pull out glass bottles and tin cans,

collecting them to take to Hanneford's grocery store

later that day.

Enough change, perhaps, to buy a loaf of bread

or a cup of soup.

Or maybe more--

Maybe, before the sun rises,

while I slumber in my warm bed of down,

one of them comes in his puffy jacket.

And he collects the bottles--

every single one,

and makes his fortune.

He will save the money under his pillow

until there is enough to escape.

To buy a plane ticket out of this icy "Vacationland."

And that is why,

every Wednesday morning,

I hear their empty carts roll from house to house,

and from bin to bin,

criss crossing on the broken cement street.

But I never hear the sound of a bottle drop.

The Imperfect Process

2008-10-03T12:18:00.003-04:00

If you like to plan things out ahead of time, the process of finding covering a story is frustrating, particularly for writing students. That's not to disparage the difficulties that photography and radio students face, but given the amount of time it can take to sit down and hammer out even a 2-3 page article, not to mention refining it after, it can be stressful to not know when the research phase is finished and when you can devote yourself fully to writing.

I guess maybe you get spoiled by college and high school where there is a clean line between one stage and the other, and in this respect the curriculum here at Salt is closer to the real world with all it's messiness. Still, this reality can't be overstated to future Salt students, and they should be well prepared to throw themselves into that glorious mess.

-Marc LeBourdais

superb new york times photo essay

2008-10-01T07:58:00.002-04:00

click here.

there's also a genius article that accompanies the photo essay.

ira glass recently gave a talk on how to tell a story

2008-09-30T17:54:00.003-04:00

...here are his pointers

Builds momentum, slowly but surely. Listeners will hang tight when you build suspense, sequencing one event or step after another. We're all hungering for surprise (the media too).
Features multiple characters. Use different voices (with all their intonations, accents, and other specs) to highlight interplay among characters; otherwise you're doing a monologue -- much less interesting than multiple points of view.
Casts the right storyteller. Whose perspective will shape the most compelling tale?
Is specific. The details -- like the minutia that make up your life -- make it real. Like it or not, that's what 90% of our daily life is made of.
Connects pieces and voices in an overall theme. Make sure to step away here and there to frame events in a context that ties them together. That's your theme.
Uses music to build suspense. For greatest impact, stop the music for a few seconds of silence before your revelation. But make sure the music doesn't overwhelm the teller's voice or distract from the story.

Writing Exercise

2008-09-26T15:59:00.003-04:00

So I'm in school. For writing.

And I'm noticing that anytime the instructor mentions a writing exercise, my jaw tenses, my breath quickens, my mind goes blank. I think of excuses to get out of writing. I think of the reasons this assignment will be too difficult. I procrastinate and over-analyze and sabotage.
I think about switching mid-week to the photography track.

Then I start writing. Maybe a bit hesitantly at first, but then I start breathing, relax my jaw, and let my mind converse with the keyboard.

I write.

And I wonder why I got myself worked up into a state. I mean, I've been writing on my own for years. I've written articles that have been published in actual magazines. And I signed up for this intensive writing course. Of course there is writing involved! And I like writing! And I am very capable of writing whatever comes my way. What's gotten into me?

School.

The introduction of an institution into my everyday habit of scribbling suddenly has the power to turn enjoyment into a source of anxiety. Suddenly the fear of writing poorly on a simple journalism exercise analyzed by classmates seems to weigh more than an editor's critique of a polished article.

Then I remind myself: I like writing. I am here to learn, not impress. I am here to occasionally fail to eventually succeed. I will come out of this institution with an arsenal of kick-ass skills.

It has taken some time to get used to being in classes again. Only this time round I'm 30 and thankful that I'm catching myself in old, limiting habits this first week instead of during finals.

From my perspective, that's the difference between school at 18 and school at 30:
I now know that I don't know everything and not to pretend like I do. I'm ready to peel down the layers, get raw, get uncomfortably close, harness that passion and curiosity within myself I wasn't quite sure what to do with a decade earlier.
I'm ready to listen, absorb, be, live salty.

modified from post on jennygoff.blogspot.com

Chebeague Island

2008-09-25T20:53:00.004-04:00

Marc and I took the 6:30am ferry out to Great Chebeague Island last weekend to observe a "weatherization workshop" that has influenced the angle of our collaborative piece. He recorded and took notes while I shot photos of the folks at the Methodist church making removable storm windows out of simple pieces of pine and plastic. They are surprisingly effective in keeping out cold.

This gave us the idea to pursue the story of what Mainers are doing to prepare for winter. We imagine there are many people getting creative (some out of necessity) with how they are going to deal with high heating oil costs on top of everything else that seems to be going up in cost this season. We're curious to what we'll find, but Chebeague was a great start.

I saw Ahab, and he was wearing cargo shorts

2008-09-25T12:59:00.002-04:00

His wooden leg was obscured by countless useful pockets.

So today, in the interest of reminding myself that I was no longer in Kansas or Cleveland or Menlo Park, I went on a boat ride and it was grand. I popped some Dramamine (bad experience traveling to the Channel Islands), dressed in layers, grabbed my knit hat, and dropped 15 bucks on the Mailboat run. With some of my fellow Salters on the bow (see previous post for a much more factual and informative account of the trip), I merrily recounted the story of being so drugged up on a trip to Prince Edward Island, I slept through many meals and a whale sighting. Then, of course, one hour into the unbelievably smooth ride this morning, the Dramamine hit me and I started to nod off. Damn! Foiled again!

The trip was lovely, although it’s hard to take those islands seriously. They’re too picturesque. All of their chairs are made of wood and painted white. There are hammocks and swings tied to branches that hang over the ocean. You imagine everyone who lives in these houses spends time reading Thoreau and gathering moss. They apparently really enjoy soda though, as a large proportion of the freight getting dropped off on the islands was two liter bottles of Pepsi. I got a bit sun-kissed, and felt very touristy (I didn’t do a good job of dissembling: walking up the ramp to the boat I blurted, “Look at me! I’m in Maine!” Seriously.) Highlights included watching a puppy on board the boat chase its tail, taking off my hat at the behest of a man who wanted his wife to make him one just like it, and nearly talking myself into buying a $3 bar of lemon verbena soap in the “Island Treasures” gift shop. I resisted.

Although this is definitely the pinnacle of my Maine-specific activity, I have not been short on adventures since I moved to Portland. After following a couple dead-end leads for stories, last week I found myself in Alfred, Maine. You may have heard of it: in 1837, an elephant named Old Bet was shot to death there. I did not know this going down. In order to find it out, I had to embed myself in the culture. I asked myself: What would Lord Peter Wimsey do (WWLPWD)? Having forgot my monocle in London, I settled on chatting up a local hairdresser… while getting my hair cut. Good idea? No. Kim, who has a hair salon in the back of her home, had terrible allergies and was struggling with them a great deal while chopping at my formerly beautiful locks. Do I sound bitter? It’s not that big a deal. She did make a phone call for me which got me sitting in the kitchen with this amazing couple, who gave me the run down on old Alfred, including elephant story. However, I ended the day empty handed and bare headed.

Even if I didn’t end up with a story after all that, it did increase my confidence to be able to find one somewhere. After another week filled with anxiety, I may have finally landed on something...

The Mail Boat

2008-09-24T22:49:00.003-04:00

Four Salt Students Board the Mail Boat
Exhibit A: Evidence of Human Struggle
“Early settlers,” the mail boat Captain explained, “Thought there was an island in Casco Bay for every day of the year.”

In our narrated tour, the Captain refers to Long Island as a town, seceded from Portland in 1993. Islanders are paying high property taxes that reflect real estate values paid by out of state residents – making it difficult for long-time residents to keep their homes. Long Island didn’t feel Portland was offering proportionate resources in return for the big tax payout, so they launched a revolution. For more information visit their historical society, who preserved every inch of national media coverage.

A couple people got off at each island, but most had no mail. Little Diamond Island got a package from Ethan Allen. Diamond Cove got a box of fish. Chebeague Island got hefty shipments of Pepsi products, and I wonder what establishment placed the order. I encountered no watering hole – just a craft gift shop, a few varieties of apple trees, a machine graveyard for the old and rusty in someone’s yard.

Might as well ride the mail boat and see the bay while it’s still warm enough to breathe. Barely a sense of each unique island’s character from the mail boat; just a glimpse of lobster trap buoyed waters, playful seals, clues that life still exists beyond the urban.

Just Love the Work

2008-09-24T08:17:00.003-04:00

I am chagrined to admit i have yet to read EAT PRAY LOVE. That said, I do feel secure in saying that Elizabeth Gilbert's talk yesterday was devastatingly perfect. I've never heard such a flawless and candid raconteur. Her talk was conversational, hilarious, pleasingly discursive, poignant, and (above all) off-the-cuff. It was one of those rare moments in life when the speaker and audience are totally locked in with each other.

One of the themes of the talk was Creativity. I found her discussing the subject in a previous interview, and i thought it might be useful to post here.

best, ari.
----

Elizabeth Gilbert says...

I can't get behind the ambition to be "discovered" as much as I can get behind the ambition to write beautifully and honorably and steadfastly. Here's what I believe about creativity. I believe that creativity is a living force that thrums wildly through this world and expresses itself through us. I believe that talent (the force by which ephemeral creativity gets manifested into the physical world through our hands) is a mighty and holy gift. I believe that, if you have a talent (or even if you think you do, or maybe even if you just hope you do), that you should treat that talent with the highest reverence and love.

Don't flip out, in other words, and murder your gift through narcissism, insecurity, addiction, competitiveness, ambition or mediocrity. Frankly -- don't be a jerk. Just get busy, get serious, get down to it and write something, for heaven's sake. Try to get out of your own way. Creativity itself doesn't care at all about results -- the only thing it craves is the PROCESS. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless. Just love the work.

Moose in the fieldwork

2008-09-22T20:26:00.002-04:00

I'm up here in moose country. I've been recording for 16 hours. I'm beat. Just beat. This moose hunt story consumes my every waking thought. Considering I only slept four and a half hours last night, that's a lot of hours. The story is evolving into something much more complex and even more interesting and compelling than I expected.
The food options up here are letting me down. I need to remember to drink more water. I've been covered in woolen clothing, top to bottom, and there's more time to put in yet. It was 34 degrees this morning. It only got up to 56 at noon time.
Did I say how in love I am with all this? I cried from joy twice today. The beauty of old men and their deeply held friendships. All the wide open land, potato fields and their farmers. The huntress. She's on a worthy journey. Somehow I'm lucky enough to be here. So damn lucky.

Beat Report: Politics & Lawmaking

2008-09-19T20:15:00.005-04:00

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to quickly make an update of recent news concerning my beat (Maine politics and lawmaking.) We've been assigned beats in Colin's writing class as a way to update each other in case anyone is still looking for story ideas.

Maine Republican favors legalizing marijuana
http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2008/09/19/maine_republican_favors_legalizing_marijuana/

Senate fund building of Destroyer in Bath
http://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/C2639F76FC2B6D26852574C90056B871?Opendocument

Political overtones a part of union conflict
http://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/280694C3BCCC3AC2852574C9004F5BA0?Opendocument

Senator Chris Dodd will speak at this year's annual Jackson-Jefferson dinner, the largest Maine Democrats' gathering in the state
largesthttp://news.mainetoday.com/updates/033178.html

Maine's former governor king endorses Obama last friday
http://seacoastonline.com/articles/20080912-NEWS-80912023

Obama campaign announces "Maine Republicans for Obama"
http://seacoastonline.com/articles/20080903-NEWS-80903045

Our First Man-On-The-Street Interview

2008-09-19T09:20:00.005-04:00

For our man-on-the-street interview excersize, my partners and I set out with the question, "Are you doing anything different to prepare for winter this year?" We were armed with facts and trivia about the high cost of heating oil, in addition to higher costs of food and gasoline, added to the fact that the Farmer's Almanac (a semi-reliable source, I admit) predicts a colder than usual winter this year. We got some interesting answers. One woman just smiled and said heat was included with her rent. Another guy refused to be interviewed saying he wasn't doing anything and didn't want to talk about it. I found a woman who had just moved here from Colorado and was facing her first Maine winter with oil heat. She gave me some very thoughtful answers in our 3-minute interview, and for a moment I was wishing I were in the radio track instead of photography (I've since come to my senses). But it was incredibly fun. The Sony recorders are beautiful pieces of equipment, and I've decided to impose myself on any radio student I can find who will show me something about ProTools. It can only be an asset to know this software in a multimedia world.

In this photo: Natasha Haverty, radio student 2008, interviewing a guy named Aaron, and Jenny Goff, writing track, 2008. Photo by me, Claire Houston.

Weezer

2008-09-17T20:58:00.008-04:00

i just watched a video/autobiography from Weezer' lead singer, rivers cuomo, and i thought it showed how elastic the boundaries of documentary can be. personally, i feel this video is documentary, and i especially love how primitive it is. the video might seem a bit playful/given what we know about the band's sensibilities, but the story he is telling is real and true.

...i dont think it's any great work of art, but i do think it tells a story.

watch the video here

The County

2008-09-17T20:42:00.003-04:00

I'm road tripping it up to Allagash, solo, this weekend. I think there's a story up there. I'm going to the Allagash Town Hall meeting. I'm a bit nervous, but I seem to always find a way to connect with people when actually presented with unusually circumstances.
I'm ready for the road. The way the road lets your mind rest and wander.

tension, release

2008-09-16T17:17:00.005-04:00

I've been walking around for days with a throbbing headache, and an anxiety-riddled heart. It's early in the semester, and producing a story seems thrilling, but unattainable. Emotional involvement in my schoolwork aside, something's "going around" -- herbal teas and throat lozenges are ubiquitous--and it's possible I'm tracing my discomfort to the wrong source.

Regardless, listening to radio pieces at the start of each class offers a respite--a time to get out of my own head, when I'm guaranteed to think clearly (maybe even aptly!) about story construction, scene-setting. Eyes closed, it's a pleasure to listen and not to speak.

Today we discussed one of Joe Richman's "Radio Diaries" featuring a teenager with Tourette's alternately reflecting on (and succumbing to) his disorder. Rob identified this juxtaposition as "tension and release." I hold my pounding head at the temples, take note.

doing documentary

2008-09-16T08:02:00.004-04:00

...i just read the following:

"All [documentarians] share a common goal: to engage an audience in the wonder of actuality, creatively interpreted."

First Days at Salt

2008-09-15T14:57:00.006-04:00

Landed in Portland the night before class started. 3/4 of the way finished unpacking my things, the semester is off to a quick start.

Day two of class, Eloise and I walked along the Eastern Promenade asking people what they thought about the sky. For a simple exercise to test our new recorders, we gathered some elaborate responses. One man talked about the joy it brings him to swim in these waters year-round for every reason from building his immune system to conversing with the sky about falling. Not the typical response to our question, but I think there's something to it. When getting to know a place, I'm apt to dive-in. Based on the strange looks I've been getting from dog-walkers on the beach, not a common activity in these parts to swim in cold weather.

Trying to be outside because the weather is already shifting to fall. Found a quiet spot on Peaks Island to build a rock castle. I saw Andy Goldworthy's "River's and Tides" this summer and I think he makes a good point about needing to understand the rocks of a place before you get to building walls.

Back to finding a story.

last day - ish

2008-05-15T19:03:00.003-04:00

i guess technically i'm speechless. i keep wanted to blurt out how fucking great this semester has been. but that's not really it. not really how i'm feeling. i just keep looking around at the photo walls empty, our desks blank. my minidiscs counted and filed. and hope i have the guts to start again from scratch on a whole new project without the immediate support of my salties. what a pleasure it's been. booya.

COPS

2008-05-09T14:02:00.006-04:00

did you ever notice that COPS tells non-narrated stories?..

or that Oprah commercial is looping the cheers and whoops in the background of the announcer...

and that news clip cuts away from the Man On the Street when the producers need to edit his comments...

I hadn't.
It's all becoming so clear as I work on my story. I'm scrutinizing every bit of media that I come across...

2008-05-08T13:53:00.000-04:00

You want me to edit what?

is this joy or pain?

2008-05-05T16:59:00.003-04:00

I'm importing tape from my fabulous and wonderful subjects. They were going to be my first story but became my second so we've been working together on and off for months. And they've been absolutely fabulous, candid, inviting funny. And now I'm cursing myself, and them in a fit of pro tools madness. UGH! Why did he cough in the background! I'm screwed! Why was I too shy to fiddle with my levels during the most golden interview ever? She's so QUIET! That room.. that BUZZZZ.

Putting tape into pro tools, it's so exciting, but it kills me. It's like, everything comes together and falls apart at the same time: listen to the story unfold!! but my golden quote is muffled, or tape recorded on different days just sounds funny together.. Do audiences even notice this stuff?

And what will I do when it's over?

So to procrastinate I'm listening to the fun tape, the tape that wont make it in. Of Andrew at the autism walk, jokingly running into street signs and pretending to hit his head (twice) "nevah gets old" he said. Or of the kids on the trampoline "Marissa's gonna give me the wedgie!! ah!"

The normal stuff. I'm gonna miss those kids.

boogie-down

2008-04-24T19:39:00.002-04:00

We're sitting here....its almost 8pm and we should all really be transcribing. Boo. But instead, we're consulting each other regarding NYC neighborhoods (for summer sublets, that is). Should Erin live in Bklyn or the Boogie-down? Ahhh, the problems of a successful (with phenomenal internship) Saltie. The truth is, we're all doing fine but some of us have 6 hours of tape of transcribe (and yes, that would be me).

So I better get back to it.....just gotta check my email first.

i gatta bounce

2008-04-16T21:42:00.002-04:00

Yeah! I'm bouncing! Bouncing! My headphones are hanging around my neck and my very first radio story is bouncing in real time onto a cd... or something... i dont know exactly what it's doing but i'm done! i did it! For salt radio, I'm erin! what torture! and fun! i'm so freaking proud of myself. it's not perfect. but i told a story. with sound. and words. and noises. bouncing! bouncing! bouncing!

satire

2008-04-14T11:52:00.003-04:00

hey, what's wrong with a little satire anyway. sometimes it's just called for. are you talking about me john allen??!?!? about my lobster guy? paranoid over here...

so salt teaches documentary. and i stumbled across this guy who (essentially) schemes, and whose ideas are kind of ridiculous (i.e. ending human lobster consumption internationally.) and now i'm telling his story - or perhaps even just a story ABOUT him. no, it doesn't get deep. no excuses. but im going with: fairness to the listener, they deserve a chuckle. and can draw their own conclusions about his psychology.

over 'n out.

............dude........

2008-04-08T17:33:00.003-04:00

This shit is hard....I'm realizing more and more that I'm a writer trapped in the body of someone in radio....Radio is so challenging and rewarding because you are making a story based partly on supposition but also an informal logic. You are required to be morally and ethically sound but also tell a story with conflict and drama, two devices that aren't necessarily rooted in logic. Plus the audience only gets to hear you once. Someone in my class has a great story with a great character who is unfortunately naive in the most aggravating way; my first inclination is to satirize, but that's something left for a.....well...........satire, or a "mockumentary". I like those a lot, because you don't have to be as truthful as you would normally be. I've also started smoking again; I'm not proud of it but cancer just tastes so good. Sweet, sweet cancer. In fact, I don't think I've eaten anything today, cause I've been busy plowing through tobacco and coffee. Transcribing.......makes you want to rip your arm off and beat a small child over the head. Not really, but it's crossed my mind.

Also, not everyone has a story. You hear that a lot. "Everyone's got a story". Not true. Some people are boring and willing to let their lives coast until a dream comes and takes them away to a happy place. Don't follow these people. Find someone who tells stories that make everyone listen. Like elderly people. Maine has the greatest old folk you've ever seen. I'd do a story about some guy's enema if he made me laugh, which after the day I've had, shouldn't be that hard to do. Enough whining. I'm gonna go buy some smokes and transcribe...

Crazy Times

2008-03-27T21:38:00.003-04:00

Wow. It's a rough week here at Salt. Radio-wise, I am up to my ears in scripts, revisions, transcriptions, tape, and extra pro-tools assignments. No Joke. At least my work is going well in terms of story development. I've been working with a group of contemplative nuns up in Waterville and that has been a stunningly incredible experience. In a few weeks, I'll jump in an 18-wheeler with my second story subject....a female truck driver. We'll be on the road between 3 and 5 days and at this point, I'm just concerned about keeping my equipment charged. Although showering in a truck stop should create some fantastic cocktail party convo...

Back to the grind....

All coiled up and hissin'

2008-03-18T20:27:00.002-04:00

Today I watched an older gentleman rearrange the manikins in the front window of the men’s clothing store across from the radio room. For ten minutes. I watched him circle the three figures, tuck in, tuck out, unbutton, rebutton, armless sleeve in pocket just like so. He dropped to his knees to cuff the pants and pulled himself up. His back hurt. I could tell. He was still adjusting when I decided to walk away. On my walk home I saw a woman lip syncing to REO Speedwagon with her windows down, two elderly women with the same jacket and shade of lipstick, a boy galloping (literally, galloping) down Munjoy hill, and three firemen with tired eyes slumped in chairs facing the large window that looks out at Congress at the fire station.

Earlier today John asked us if we are pleased with our SALT stories and what our fantasy stories are. I remembered the story ideas I had prior to arriving in Portland, of the stories I hope to tell when I leave Portland, and how greatly disparate they are from the story I have found myself dedicated to. I returned to the question that has been haunting me since I became enamored with Sally Rollins. Why am I telling this story? Why am I enamored with this woman? In fact, what is the story? There is this woman, who is lonely, who fills her days with little tasks, cat detective novels, and stuffed animals, or, “stuffies”… She knows repetition and routine and she has lived with over two hundred cats in the last twenty years. And-- how can I responsibly portray her loneliness, expose her loneliness, while also relishing the somewhat sensational moments of being really grossed out by her living situation?

(Maybe I am intrigued because I haven’t known routine or repetition, ever really, or a crippling loneliness. I have been transient for a while now, and it’s exciting, but I can’t imagine a time when I will not be in limbo. This is daunting.)

Can I relate the excitement to accompany her as she bleaches 19 litter boxes, or watch her fill twenty-some odd dishes with Purina? At seven o’clock in the morning? Yes, the anticipation of observing a woman clean cat shit has kept me up at night. Am I pleased with this story? With menial tasks instead of speed or suspense, politics or action?

I am tired, dueling mono and insomnia and an eagerness to stay engaged despite them. But the sleepy delirium is leaving me a bit more contemplative. And it is making me stare at things for prolonged periods of time. Like the guy in the window. And wonder about the ladies that enjoy the same lip rouge. And what that girl is remembering when she mouths “When I said that I loved you, I meant that I loved you forever” (I remembered Tommy Wystup, this friend from high school that had an affinity for crapper Mercedes and cheesy power ballads.) I’m finding that although my energy levels are sub par, I am still able to do what I came here to do—indulge in curiosities about the small things, the way we fill our days, the things, like loneliness, we all recognize that make us human and are, simply, interesting.

The Storm Before the Lul

2008-03-17T10:39:00.002-04:00

One thing I never expected at Salt was to have time. But it seems as quickly as it began, the stories that have filled my proverbial sails have begun to luff. I find myself with enough time to shuffle out of bed, shower at a reasonable pace, make coffee at home, consider applying for an internship, and even sit and think thoughts.

This is how the wind leaves ones sails:

Your subject goes in to rehab and you are told politely but firmly that you cannot follow or have any contact for two weeks by the powers that be at said rehab center.

Your subject continues to do very little and then you are told by the subject's significant other that one of two story angles should not be pursued because it would be both unpleasant and because your subject's personality is perhaps a large part of the problem of why there is a conflict. And you suspected this but it is now confirmed.

Your subject lives far away! Its hard to drive three hours one direction and not devote at least 12 hours documenting the goings on of that life. Oh, and your car is all screwed up.

I'm sure or at least hoping that the next time a I write I'll be up to my neck in goings-on, and that this post will seem a silly and premature concern about things not turning out. However when you are here it is easy to, at times, worry quickly, panic completely, and feel like you could take on the world. But when you start out throwing yourself into something full force only to find that even then there are situations and events you can't control, there are people that will stop you, and so many unforeseen circumstances, the deceleration of the momentum you expected becomes a lesson in itself. And that's one I never considered.

No Praise. No Blame. Just so.

2008-03-16T11:14:00.000-04:00

I've been spending quite a lot of time up in
Waterville at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament,
interviewing sisters one at a time. Last week, I
spent a good afternoon with Sister Elizabeth Madden.
We sat for a few hours recounting her past with me
inquiring about her decision to join a religious
order. She invited me to lunch and I enjoyed my time
at the long wooden table, getting to know the other
sisters. One older woman, Sister Mary Emmanuel (who
must be around 90), sat hunched at the end of the
table. I had to scream in order for her to understand
our conversation (reminded me of my dear Oma). She
remembered to me that she once had a "lovely Jewish
friend" and asked whether I was religious. I
mentioned to the sisters that my mother used to
encourage me to sample different religious services if
I was curious. I used to go to Spanish mass with my
good friend Andrea and her mother (one of my other
mothers, I like to say) Ligia. My only instructions
were: "Don't kneel. Don't take communion." Sweet
Andrea used to sit in the pew with me when the rest of
the Church was kneeling. I'll never forget those
moments and I thank my mother for encouraging such
exploration. If anything, it helped me to better
understand my own traditions and my own Jewish religious
identity. The sisters were amazed by my mother's
openness and noted that "she is quite a woman." Of
course, I agreed. :)

We enjoyed chatting and at the end of our lunch, I was
not sure how to say goodbye, A handshake? A hug? A
kiss on the cheek? I decided an affectionate grab of
the shoulder would be most appropriate. As I lay my
hand on the bony Sister Mary Emmanuel, she grabbed it
and lay it across her cheek, kissing it before finally
releasing.

Very moved, I knelt down to speak face to face:
"Sister Mary Emmanuel, I'll see you next week."

"You never know dear. You never know."

Her smile was radiant and I couldn't help but nod.

Sister Elizabeth and I spent our last hour together
discussing "the tragedy" of 1996. She was in the
other North American convent in Pueblo, Colorado at
the time of the murders. She remembers being
interviewed by an ABC affiliate reporter who asked:

"Don't you hate this man? This man who killed your
sisters...Don't you hate him?"

She responded: "How can I hate him? I don't even know
him."

She looked at me after recounting this story,
obviously concerned about the young reporter: "He must
have been very young, dear."

My last question for Sister Elizabeth rounded out our
late afternoon conversation about forgiveness. I
wondered if she had a verse or a saying or a mantra
that she visited when experiencing trouble forgiving.

Within three minutes of my asking, she responded: "I
actually love this Buddhist quote...and I cannot
remember the writer. It is very simple. She sat up
straight and cleared her throat before saying....

No praise. No blame. Just so.

No praise. No blame. Just so."

She repeated it three times and I think I must have
been holding my breath. After she finished, I let out
a huge sigh and pushed stop. An incredible interview
to say the very least.

Instead of attaching a radio piece this week, I want
you to explore one of my favorite new websites.
Mediastorm.org is a phenomenal site that blends
photography and audio to tell stories. With pieces
ranging from issues in Africa to drugs in NYC, this is
a website you should visit often.

I have signed up for a "soundslides" workshop here at
Salt which will teach me the software to create such
pieces as these; a new and very exciting webtool that
I hope to be able to use in my work.

Check it out at:
www.mediastorm.org

Roller Coaster

2008-03-16T10:25:00.003-04:00

Man, this place fucks with you. Every day is a new high or low. Yesterday I felt at my highest, most proud. I was taking room tone, rolling from the time I walked up to my subjects to the time i left, I even used that lumberous, fluffy dog mic to block the wind while we took the Peak's Island Ferry. I was getting great ambience, quotes and action. I was enjoying my subjects and they were enjoying me. I wore my headphones the whole time (after another recent blunder) and felt really "on".

Only to have the rug pulled out from under me a few hours later when i realized my stupid bravado had gotten the best of me and i lost some valuable tape due to a stupid technical mistake (called not hitting record.)

I'm so dissapointed in myself. I lost sleep over it.

Salt really puts you face to face with your talents and your weaknesses on a day to day basis. It is painful and exhilerating. Painful and completely exhilerating.

"such is life"

2008-03-14T20:03:00.002-04:00

Well, I'll keep this one simple. The past three weeks I did not contribute any images to the walls of the third floor critique room. That did not feel good. I could only imagine what might be there, which was an exercise in destroying a certain amount of self confidence (um..like a whole lot of it). Things do not fall in ones lap, as some may say, they take time and effort to work.

But now, it seems as if things have come together in such a way where I can look forward again into what feels like a great opportunity. I am relieved, and excited (to see what I can do with these stories) AND to see what everyone else does!

Now the question is, is it ok to gchat with your subject? Haha.

Radio, Radio...

2008-03-13T17:10:00.002-04:00

We are now in week six...Almost halfway there, and I've preserved some more precious tape and have decided that what I'm doing is almost certainly challenging and rewarding. I have yet to really sit down and have the more personal, dynamic interview with the subjects I am following, ( is that not the word I should be using? ) but I've established, to a degree, a level of understanding and trust, and they are all extremely passionate, inspired, and intelligent people. My arm hurts from holding a microphone "like a lollipop" in front of someone I'm trying to get to know.....but it feels so, so right..

Today I drove to Hiram, Maine, which put me on a beautiful scenic route. ( Hiram was this biblical dude who totally ruled the kingdom of Tyre, which is now the fourth largest city in Lebanon ).......Every state has a set of chain stores or gas stations that reminds you where you are. It's Kum & Go in Iowa, Pump & Pak in South Dakota, Sinclair- you can find these out west, particularly on the border of Colorado and Nebraska, and they are famous (?) for their giant green dinosaurs. In Oxford County, Maine, there are Valero gas stations. I had to stop there and get some Valero deli sandwiches and some gas.

Sitting down with a subject that I'd met only briefly after almost three weeks of e-mails and phone calls helps me actualize my story and what it's about. It's almost as if it takes me until that moment where the mic is turned on and my subject is speaking that I realize what this story could be. Questions are less anxiety-prone and more emphatic.

The more I do this, the more my confidence grows, and the more my interviewees respond with color and nuance. Scenes start falling together. I can log tape and start imagining where quotes will be positioned and what sounds fit as descriptive ambiance. I'm really into film, so I think it's fun to listen to what you've recorded and imagine writing a screenplay to a story that someone might find neat. And I say neat because even if that someone feigns exuberance after listening to my feature, I'll be happy in knowing that they got something out of it.

Side note: Portland drivers are some of the worst I've ever seen. No one uses their blinkers, and they drive out into the middle of an intersection, waiting, knowing that you are going to brake, even at high speeds, while they try to blend aimlessly into the oncoming traffic. Also, for prospective students: Move out to Maine a month before your program starts. Drive around and look for people and stories, read Studs Terkel, and figure out a way to tentatively imagine how something you're interested in could be turned into a story. Write, read, and research Maine everyday. Get up every morning early and go to bed late, and enjoy the wonderful coffee that the downtown Portland area has to offer, the morning or in the evening. Just don't stop working. That too, feels so, so right.....Lastly, when you're driving to meet your subjects, drive at high speeds and listen to Exodus. You will completely forget what you're doing and feel like an outlaw, and that's "the way life should be"..

Learning the Equipment or, How to Bake a Cake

2008-03-12T14:00:00.004-04:00

A big part of the radio program here is learning to work with Pro Tools, a professional audio editing system. Prior to coming to Salt, I was using a free program called Audacity, which didn't have a lot of bells and whistles and was overall kind of clunky, but got the job done in a pinch. The best way to describe this editing upgrade is to say that I was fairly comfortable driving a Yugo and now I’m learning to drive a Ferrari. The first Pro Tools class wigged me out a little bit, but now I’m getting used to it, and there have been a few moments in the last week or so when I began to realize that Pro Tools is actually growing on me. Like, I might even want to ask it out and take it to the prom.

That’s not to say that Pro Tools is not without its quirks. During our first class the tutor told us, “once you save a file, don’t move it - you need to keep it safely within the file where it’s stored.” That is what he said.

What I heard was, “don’t do anything crazy, but once you save it you can keep copies of it wherever you like and nothing bad will happen.”

So this is what I did: I finished my project and saved it to the main file drive, where it had been since it was created. THEN I thought, but what if something happens to this file? I should open up the file again, click ’save as’ and save a second copy to my desktop. I am nothing if not cautious.

Now, a single finished Pro Tools file has lots of bits within it - it has not only saved your finished piece, but it has saved every change, every cut, every deletion, and (this is the beauty of Pro Tools) it will allow you to go get that information back if you ever decide that you really want that bit of audio after all. All of those ‘bits’ are saved within a larger file, of which your finished piece is just a single tiny bit. In order to allow your finished piece to stand on its own you pretty much need to export it out of Pro Tools as an .mp3 file or a .wav file or whatever, and then you can save it wherever you like. (I could be wrong on that, but I’m just a fifth week radio student, so you’ll have to forgive me on this one.)

When I took just my finished piece and saved it to my desktop, I did something bad. Here is the best way to explain it:

Go into your kitchen. Bake a cake from scratch. Mix together all of the ingredients and stick it in the oven. When it’s done, take it directly out to your guests in the living room and endeavor to serve it. Now imagine that when you put this cake down you discover that you no longer have a beautiful finished cake….now you have a cup of sugar in the living room, two cups of flour in the bedroom, a dollop of frosting on your nose, and three eggs somewhere else. Maybe in the bathroom or at the end of the driveway, it's hard to say for sure. OH NO.

When I clicked on the saved file on my desktop Pro Tools said something like, “wow, all your files are now completely scattered, you really screwed yourself on this one, would you like me to fix this by baking your cake back up again, and do you promise never to do this again?”

I said yes, Pro Tools re-linked all my files, and I got my cake back. It was all just a wee bit stressful, however, and while I’m not going to let this interfere with my growing crush on Pro Tools, it does mean I might wait another few dates before endeavoring to get to third base.

week 4 was mine

2008-03-01T13:36:00.004-05:00

On the walk home the other night, I had written this elaborate post in my head about how this past Thursday was the 4 week anniversary of the day my best friend and I crammed so much of my stuff into suitcases and boxes, had one last "family dinner" with my baby roommate Kevy (he's 20), and drove to the San Francisco airport to take the red-eye to Portland on my way to begin this new adventure at the Salt Institute ("is that place real" was the common reaction when telling friends and family where I was headed).

Instead of uploading said post, I spent the better part of Thursday afternoon at Brighton FirstCare finding out I have mono. Yes mono, the most fun of illnesses, one with no cure, just some vague instructions from my doctor about drinking fluids and no clear answer as to exactly how contagious I really am. "Well, if you feel like going to school, you can, just be careful about sneezing on people..."

So now I'm the second kid at Salt to get mono. What a small world we inhabit. At least I found out I was contagious after Erin spent the afternoon at the clinic with me (sorry about that - I'll totally make it up to you!)

It's not so bad. Worst thing was I had to reschedule meetings so I'm a week behind. And week 4 was going to be my week. Kind of lame. But now week 5 better watch out, I'm coming for you.

Low Salt Self Esteem

2008-02-27T13:21:00.003-05:00

i have low Salt self esteem today. i feel like my wheels are spinning, im not getting anywhere. i wonder if this radio thing is a skill i can learn, or if it's maybe a talent i just dont have. maybe this is just a plane old, lame old, cliched quarter life crisis. the funny thing is that something is going to take off any minute and my story telling esteem will be soaring again. This sitting and waiting - for people to get back in touch, for meeting dates to draw near... makes me feel like i'm missing something, missing out on something.

Documenting My Decision

2008-02-27T03:36:00.004-05:00

I've found myself in both bingo halls and Buddhist temples this past week. Let me explain to you a little about how I arrived here.

I drove out here from Michigan a day before classes began at Salt after squeezing all of my belongings into a 10x10 storage unit and leaving them behind. I had made a conscious decision to come to Maine with a clean slate and to open myself up to a new set of experiences and skills that I had believed would be discovered in the field. Since arriving, I have been living in my lightly furnished room atop Munjoy Hill, only surrounded by very few of my personal belongings. I've taken notice to the fact that the walls of all apartments on Munjoy Hill have been cast with a vibrant array of colors by their occupants and my apartment is no exception. These mismatched pale pink and yellow walls that encapsulate my bedroom became a blank template for me to decorate with mementos of my experience here at Salt. Unintentionally, I have created a visual timeline of my progresses here and one that documents my cultural exploration of Maine. It began as I posted above my bed the first Polaroid images that I had shot well before 8 a.m. on my first Saturday in the program while in Gardiner, Maine. I had been inside the A-1 diner with my group at the start of our mini ethnography exercise that Jessica described, and it was when I really recall the reality of my decision to move and attend Salt sinking in. Slowly, I have added to these images as each moment progresses and I become more deeply enmeshed in the life of Mainers. Next to these series of Polaroid images I have included my winning Bingo card that I earned in Old Orchard Beach as I followed a story into the lives of residents of this currently sleepy summer tourist destination. Next to this hangs an image that was handed to me two days ago as a gift from a Monk at the only Buddhist temple in the state of Maine that my writing partner and I spent some time getting to know. Today, I have added an image that my fellow Salt student, Erica, very kindly printed and mailed to me of myself that she had shot on my first non-Salt related Portland outing.

I look forward to furthering my explorations into the area and simultaneously collecting images that represent these experiences to hang on the wall. Perhaps I will use these additions to later include in the blog and to create a visual reference for you all as to just where this semester has led me. I’m a photo student, so that’s how I should be telling my stories anyway, no? :]

Wowsa!

2008-02-26T20:30:00.002-05:00

After a year of leisurely making lattes in Chi-town, and memorizing bones and how the human heart functions (for nursing school prerequisites)... I'm not sure how I even ended up here besides whimsy and a fat loan, and the fact that I was seriously missing taking photographs and living in a dark room, but here it goes:

So how DOES one find a subject? How does one go about finding someone interesting, someone willing, someone, perhaps, Compelling, to photograph day in and day out? And, ok, lets just say you find someone that is willing to let you "tell their story,".....it is even more scary once you find that person knowing that you need to do it well.... How do we go about trusting ourselves and each other to do the right thing, to be honest, yet empathetic? And, what is the end result in telling these stories? Do they work to break down boundaries between people? Do they create understanding? What happens when a photograph is framed and put on a wall out of context? Is it really ok to put your camera in the face of a grieving woman? Is it ok to sell that photograph? Is it really alright to continue to contact a person you might want to document who keeps telling you no? Am I the only neurotic one?

A few bad things: I should tell you that my stupid enlarger wasn't set up and then didn't work. That frustrated me, and though I tried to exercise patience, What the hell? By the end of the third week (out of fifteen) I finally have a lovely enlarger that works and looks like a space ship. But for three weeks I could not tell if it was my ineptitude at printing (which it so very well may be) or a bum enlarger. I definitely felt, at moments, like the "dreaded eleventh student." Um, yikes.

Then, I think I have several good leads, friends of friends of friends, you know, interesting people doing interesting things, and I make a plan to drive to Bar Harbor to meet with people, and when I say a plan, I mean, I made verbal agreements with two different folks, and by the time I get to the lovely Bar Harbor (after driving in some crazy rain and fog) all agreements are off. No, I did not cry, Neil, but that is only because I had done enough crying already due to the fact that my sweet cat had only days before been diagnosed as terminally ill and I felt incredibly guilty about dragging her in a Uhaul across the country from Chicago to Portland to go to Salt- so I was all cried out for that moment. Nevertheless, as it was the first day of the third week and we were supposed to have a story by the end of that week, I felt spending 8 hours in a car was a big fat waste of my time, contemplative and beautiful and foggy as it may have been.

But then, ah, THE INTERNETZZZZ. Yes, thats right. Thank you, thank you, the internetz for helping me find someone I would have never found otherwise. I have to say now that I've "found" my story, or my potential story, or whatever that means, I am losing more sleep than ever worrying about messing it up. However, I am thankful to be doing this kind of work in a community where I trust that peers and teachers alike are going to say what they think. So, I'm going to keep working hard, and keep trying to trust my instincts.

Now here's whats been amazing; Spending a day with awesome salt students at Jimmy Worthing's Smelt fishing camp in Gardiner for our mini-ethnography. That was a day I never anticipated having, and it was oh, so much fun. I loved every minute of it. Even buying extra socks at Rite Aid had its charm. The point is, when would I have ever had the gall to walk down to the little shacks on the river and see who was inside? NEVER. Nope, thats not the kind of person I am. Salt is bringing on the adventure. And now I am invited into someone's home. Its crazy and amazing and also, extremely difficult. I'm just waiting (chomping at the bit!) to see what happens next. Plus, I gotta find that moose.

...Now go, children!!!

2008-02-25T21:08:00.005-05:00

Here at the SIDS, or the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, we are told that what we are doing somehow has some sort of pervasive edge to it, and I'm inclined to believe it, but to a degree. We create cultural journalism, something like the stuff you might you hear on NPR. Do you listen to NPR? Yeah, I could probably benefit from more listening, but for right now, we're learning how to talk to people. That's right. It's one thing to converse with your friends, but another to research a story idea-or person, as I like to call it- and get them to divulge, over time, little details and visions of the past they share with few other people. Of course, I'm inclined to believe, as someone close to Salt intimated today, that people are into themselves and would love nothing more than to sit down and talk about themselves. Just visit your average idiot's Myspace page; people write mini-diaries, disclose their favorite movies, music, books they've never read, because they'd love for you to believe that they're way more intelligent than they really are. Either way, we are selfish creatures, and listening objectively is something that takes patience and tolerance, virtues many people refuse to implement into their daily lives.
What we have to do is be respectfully forceful with our subjects: bug the shit out of them in a knowing, self-conscious fashion, keenly aware that though your subject of choice might love the idea of talking about themselves endlessly, they might also experience something with the semblance of annoyance or aggravation. It's a thin line, and we get to toy with both sides, all while trying to perfect our craft. Our dialogue must be formal but casual, friendly but not cloying, interested but not over-analyzed. At the moment I am following two filmmakers for my first story; I've found this particular story of special interest, as I am complete cinemaniac. However, ethically, I can't let that passion get in the way; my subjects own interests are first and foremost, and I'm OK with that.
Part of me believes that if you've got a story, you should just tell it yourself. There's an axiom in the documentary studies that suggests that you are giving a voice to the voiceless, but if people are so inclined to talk about themselves, why wouldn't they just do it on their own? Doing so, of course, might result in something reeking of pretension, but I believe that no one can tell your story better than yourself. Maybe that decision comes from the somewhat nerve-racking process of finding your story in the first place, but it is something I think about everyday. What we do here..Do we really, over the course of three months, spend quality time with our subjects? Cultural journalists who work within the framework of the documentary approach might spend a year, sometimes more, gathering up enough information to accurately portray an engaging, emotionally rich story with depth and character. At times, I wish the program at Salt were a full year, and then I realize that, very soon, I'm going to be spending fifteen hours a day logging twenty hours of tape in order to create a six minute story. It's exciting, but a kind of demanding situation I'm not completely prepared for. I've been working in a natural and organic foods Co-op for three and a half years; my subjects drink wheatgrass and think dessert is great when its a pile of oat groats sitting in front of them. Still, it's a testament to the power of people that there might, or will, I should say, always be stories available for others to tell.
That's all for now. I should be logging tape, but I've got an absolutely awful slasher movie to watch.

The streets get salty...

2008-02-24T16:12:00.002-05:00

We radio people have been vox poppin' the streets of Portland.

Basically, we approach strangers and ask them to answer a question (a question we have undoubtedly labored over for hours and hours). Once the tape is gathered, we load it into the trusty Macs and chisel away. One minute and thirty seconds later, we've got a beautiful piece of radio. Well, I could not be further from that point. Pro-tools still scares me but I'm hoping to overcome my fears within the next 24 hours. I'll keep you posted...

holy intrusion town

2008-02-21T18:40:00.005-05:00

today i had a major wakeup call about the level of... "intimacy" required to make or tell the kind of stories that move me the most. i always loved the black and white documentary photos I saw in LIFE magazine (though i can't remember the last time i picked up an issue, i know i had LIFE photos taped on my wall in high school). i dream of making a 6 minute radio story that.. would make people leave their engine running in the driveway to finish listening to a story. and after watching War Photographer, and reading the taking-stock paper for one of my favorite radio stories from last semester, i realize that inches away from the face of the starving baby, crying widow, ranting activist, wrinkly war veteran, dying friend, is somebody cranking and clicking a camera or holding a puffy intrusive microphone hoping to capture the juiciest/truest/revelatory moments on film or tape. obsessing over the intrusion of this work is not contructive and if i think about it too long, even paralyzing. but i think, finally, 3 weeks in, i realized this is going to be harder than i thought. how bout that, amigos?

Moda Bella

2008-02-18T18:09:00.003-05:00

After spending time with the town's resident tailoress (Amber was born in NY but got to Maine as FAST as she could!!), we followed her suggestion and hit the local dress shop on Main Street. "You'll be transported....you won't believe you're in Maine." We weren't sure if that was the theme we were aiming for (assignment: document a story in the life and typical day of a Mainer in Gardiner) but we figured a little chat wouldn't hurt.

We stepped into Moda Bella and were instantly greeted by various ladies of different ages (all stunningly attractive). We explained that Amber had sent us and before we knew it, we were chatting with a former Miss Maine USA, a former Miss Maine International, and the dress entrepreneur to all the pageant ladies of Vacationland. And in GARDINER? Diane Tucker explained that her store had become a "destination boutique."

Many asked her to move to Portland or Bangor but she felt attached to Gardiner;

"I am good to Gardiner and Gardiner is good to me."

RaeAnn was at Moda Bella to pick out her dress for Miss Maine International 2008, a title she aims to capture since she was first runner-up last year. SOCLOSE. She talked to me for a bit and explained her coaches were on their way.....and I looked confused: "Coaches to prepare me for the pageant."

They have coaches?

Naturally they have coaches.... Let's just say that our posse learned quite a bit about the ins and outs of pageant life in Maine in that tiny shop. We watched a delegate pick her gown, we heard wistful stories of national competitions past, we understood the business ethic of a former nurse-turned-retail-queen, and heard it straight from the mouths of the team of married coaches, Heather (a former Miss Maine and Mrs Maine) and Marty;

"Some girls play soccer, some play pageants. And let me tell ya... is it NOT all about the shopping...."

Taking it to the Streets: Salt Mini-Ethno Spring 2008

2008-02-11T13:47:00.000-05:00

My name is Jessica and I'll be blogging quite frequently. Not only do I find it cathartic, I love remembering events through writing. It is a true form of processing, brutally honest and exciting all at the same time. I'm studying radio here at Salt. I've dabbled in audio for quite some time, in the process gathering voluminous amounts of oral histories. Despite my love for recording, I always hit a block at second base. How do I edit? How do I tell a story in sound? How do I pitch? What keeps someone hooked and what makes them pick-up a magazine and block out my voice?

Salt will answer these questions and so much more. It is the first time I am surrounded by many people who love documentary as much as I do. We sat silently through our first group film-screening. I could tell this was a special audience...and I was very happy to be sitting among these people.

Well what do we do, you may wonder? Thought I'd write about our crazy first weekend as students....where faculty chooses a random town in what our radio director Rob Rosenthal migh call "East Jesus." Luckily it was a beautiful town with a lot of potential. Gardiner is about 50 minutes north of Portland nestled near Augusta. I arrived with the other women in my group (two photogs, one writer, and me bringing up the radio end) and we hit Main Street after two strong cups of coffee at the local A1 Diner. Looking for something a bit darker, we drove to the funeral parlor and knocked on the door....for 2 minutes. No answer. Sadness. I was truly interested in the person who does make-up but from the tire tracks in the driveway, it was obvious someone had departed earlier that morning. From the funeral parlor, we drove around.....outside of town and past a working farm, within town and past a home-based beautyshop. Very Steel Magnolias. Unfortunately she was closed and uninterested in speaking with us.

We went to Reny's at the suggestion of Gen, the writer in our group. A Mainer born and bred, she explained that we might want to speak with someone who had been working at Reny's for quite some time. Bingo. Sounded good to the rest to us. As we waited for Lurena, the 75yr. old who spent the past 20 yrs at the shop, we went to the community board and started making phone calls. A canine behavioral specialist. Environmentally safe pest control. Hypnotherapist. While these were potentially alluring subjects, either people were not home or were not able to accomodate four ethnographers for the day. The pest man said we wouldn't fit in his truck. Another strike.

Lurena arrived at 9:30am and suggested we speak with her cousin, the 80 yr. old cook at A1 (where we had breakfast). She called, he wasn't home. We trudged down the street feeling a bit dejected (at least I did). We walked past a pawn shop and almost walked in....but spotted fellow Salties in the window. I peeked around the corner and saw a tiny sign "Kennebec Tailoring: Locally Owned and Operated."

We walked in.....

The Burning of the Drafts

2007-12-23T11:10:00.000-05:00

It's been nearly two weeks now since the writers gathered at Pamela's house to celebrate the completion of our stories. After a long weekend of final revisions and line-edits, we turned in our articles on Monday morning, and in the evening we headed to South Portland for a burrito dinner and a ritual to conclude the semester.

As the writers arrived, we piled thick sheaves of computer paper in a large basket and a cardboard box. After we had stuffed our bellies, we pulled on our boots and winter coats and took a walk in the snow to visit one of our writing instructors, Michaela, who lives a few blocks from Pam.

You can see Beth on the left cheerfully carrying the basket of drafts. Rebecca carried a large candleholder, which we used to begin lighting the drafts on fire, parading through the streets with our mini-torches. At Michaela's we broke into a rousing rendition of "We love you Michaela, oh yes we do," which effectively drew her out of the house to watch us singing and dancing around a burning pile of papers as a few people played flutes and sticks and shakers.

Our next stop was Munjoy Hill where our second instructor Scott lives. It took a lot of longer for him to come outside (what was he afraid of?), but he eventually joined us and we happily serenaded him with "For he's a jolly good fellow." Megan played fire patrol, dumping an armful of snow on the dying flames and making sure to stomp out every remaining ember.

We were so close to the Eastern Prom that it only made sense to walk down to the beach for a final burning of the remaining drafts. You'd think after two large fires and a lot of small torches the drafts would be gone, but we still had a heavy pile of them (proof of our laborious, semester-long narrative efforts). Down by the water on the slim stretch of beach not covered in snow, the papers met their final fiery end. We tossed crumpled drafts into the flames saying "this one is for all those hours of t.v. I had to watch with my subject" and "this one is for being told [by my subject] that I was a bad listener" and...well, and a few other things I won't mention here.

In the end, the flames died out, and we made our slow trudging way through the snow back up the hill, bidding one another good-bye. The evening marked the end of a shared process--that of discovering and learning to tell good stories--so it seems only fitting now that the evening itself should go down in Salt history as a story of its own.

A Face for Radio

2007-12-10T22:19:00.000-05:00

This semester, a bunch of us radio students have been abusing the cameras on our fancy computers. Here are some of my favorites, swiped off facebook.

Speaking of facebook, you should join our group! And, while you're at it, become our MySpace friend! Otherwise, you might not really exist... or, something.

Ahhh! Last week at Salt! Ahhhh!

Ethics, anyone?

2007-12-08T09:41:00.001-05:00

We went to see a movie last night to forget about all the work that needs to be done for our show next week. I don't know if it was a subconscious thing, but we ended up watching a movie that summed up our struggle as documentarians pretty well. Instead of escaping, we ended up addressing our issues head-on. This is a must-see for anyone who's interested in attending Salt. We couldn't stop talking about it the whole walk home.