form meeting function

The New York Times reported today on the new design for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/arts/design/04muse.html?em. 

I am not quite sure why, but I’ve always found cross-section diagrams to be irresistibly interesting. 

 

 

 

What I learned about writing at the World Journalism Institute…

…write with less words, and write it FASTER.

 

I’m practicing this.

from the BIG CITY to the small town

After living in one of the busiest areas in Manhattan for three weeks, my small hometown seems…smaller. In fact, the contrasts are endless. I’ll summarize a few of them:

• According to starbucks.com, I had my choice of 213 Starbucks Coffee stores within a five-mile radius of my Herald Square apartment. In contrast, the lone Starbucks in my village is about seven miles from its nearest sister store. Though perhaps more easily accessible, my village Starbucks has never failed to offer me an open table. Unfortunately – or fortunately –  I’ve had far more interesting evenings at the NYC locations. Through the window of a Sixth Avenue store, a stranger asked me (with gestures) to accompany him uptown. …Since I hadn’t finished my coffee, I declined.

• Sidewalk navigation in Manhattan is an art, or a sport. If you grew up in a small town where you never learned how to use your elbows as shoving mechanisms, then good luck to you. In New York, you’ll get walked on. 

• Eye contact, friendly smiles, and acknowledging “hellos” are commonplace in a small town. Any less, and you’ll be deemed snobbish. In Manhattan, the opposite is the rule. New Yorkers pick out the tourists by their goofy grins, attempting convey that “This is New York, people. Here, we’re too busy to smile, and much too busy to give an acknowledging nod. So, please, get out of my way. My coffee’s getting cold, my blackberry is buzzing, and the R train is pulling into the station.”

• In my town, the dig for the bones of Jimmy Hoffa counts as the closest thing to a celebrity sighting we’ve had recently. In NYC, the celebs inhabit Park Avenue apartments and take their kids to Central Park. At a breakfast diner on Lexington, I looked up from my waffles to see Julia Roberts leading one of her twins to the restroom. Yes it’s true: even celebrities eat waffles. 

• Fashionable thing to do after work in Manhattan – put on a nice dress and head to the club for wine, cheese, and intellectual conversation. …Fashionable thing to do after work in a small Michigan village – throw on your Red Wings jersey and head to the park with your lawn chair to hear some country music and to swap post-playoff recaps. 

• New York City boasts some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, and some of the oldest. The Flat Iron building in Manhattan, stands as an architectural marvel and historic landmark. At one time, the structure claimed the title of tallest New York City building. …We have our own version of the Flat Iron building in my town. It also has claimed a record in our village annals as the first three-story structure to grace the “skyline.” You never know, perhaps in a hundred years or so our first three-story building will have been dwarfed by a few dozen more skyscrapers.

Paul Miller: Professional Blogger

Visit this site to see a multimedia presentation my classmates and I produced at the World Journalism Institute.

 

Selling Tickets for a Better Life

Salesmen amble over the sidewalk’s grimy stone tiles with a pacing rhythm. Ignored with a quick shove, frowning figures in charcoal suits attack the entrance to Starbucks.

Veteran New Yorkers resent their presence, but tour bus reps aren’t preying on the locals. Instead, they look for those dazed tourists who might want to buy a ticket to see famous city sights from the top of a double-decker bus. In exchange for the sale, the ticket-sellers will receive a commission, a small sum that will edge them one step closer to their respective dreams.

Underneath the shadow of the Empire State Building’s garish construction scaffolds, Michael Dompreh and his fellow salesmen in jackets of varied primary colors represent three competing tour bus companies. The ruby, azure and canary colored buses that pull to the curb depict marketplace capitalism in large format.

On a frantic 5th Avenue in New York City, Michael Dompreh competes with rival salesmen to sell tour bus tickets to herds of tourists eager to capture familiar postcard images on their cameras.

Dompreh has been competing against the odds all of his life. He left his home in Ghana to come and earn money for pharmacy school in Florida next year.

Clad in a citrus yellow jacket, he and coworkers attempt to persuade tourists to buy $39 tickets to the CitySights bus tour before they are convinced by the enemy.

But it is rainy in Manhattan, and Dompreh hasn’t sold many tickets today.

This job is a stepping-stone for him, as it is for many others on the corner of 5th Avenue and 33rd Street. “I go from work to home to study, back to work,”said Dompreh.

Each night, he studies science and pharmacy textbooks to prepare himself for school. Even though he could have stayed in Ghana and studied at a university with a full government scholarship, he chose a half-tuition scholarship that would allow him to come to the United States.

“There’s more opportunity here,” Dompreh says in a soft-spoken voice. He said that he might consider going back to Ghana once he finishes his degree, but he does not regret his decision to come and pursues his goal relentlessly –as he does with his customers.

The rest of the CitySights tour bus team relies on Dompreh to help close sales. If he sees a coworker in conversation with tourists, he is quick to lend his persuasive tactics.

Even so, Dompreh largely keeps to himself. “I just talk to everybody and say ‘Hi, hi’ but I’m not close to them,”he said.

Commenting on how he gains instant rapport with potential customers, Dompreh said, “Sometimes you have to build trust with them.”

He will try and strike up conversations with tourists. He’ll try to convince them that the CitySights tour is a more economic and comprehensive buy than the Grayline or Big City tour lines.

While the three tour lines that converge on 5^th Avenue do vary slightly, all of them shuttle people from landmark to landmark, providing quick, drive-by photo opportunities.

“Everybody wants to see the Statue of Liberty,”said Koffi Amedonou, salesman for the Grayline tour bus company. Even back home, he explained, the Statue of Liberty is famous.

Amedonou has been selling bus tickets for three years. Originally from Togo, he eventually wants to go into international business and return home.

He cites the reality of his commission job. “It’s a good job. Everyone wants to make money,”he said.

After successfully pursuing a four-year degree in marketing at a university in Togo, the twenty-six year old had a tough time adjusting to his American sales job. “I don’t like it; I’ve been many years to school,”he said.

Dompreh is more skeptical of people’s desire to see famous New York landmarks. Speaking of the Statue of Liberty, Dompreh said, “They want to see it because it’s popular. They see it on the television. ”

Regardless of the reasons tourists want to see these sights, it is apparent that these tour lines are a lucrative and competitive business. Uniquely tailored tours are the trend. Controversy stirred in 1999 when the Sex and the City bus tour line was introduced. This tour takes Sarah Jessica Parker enthusiasts past the supposed places made famous by HBO’s popular drama.

 In a survey on tourism between 1998 and 2006, The New York City Board of Tourism reported that visitors spent a record $24.7 billion in 2006 in the city.

Tour bus companies recognize that an influx of visitors is good for business, and each line attempts to corner the market. On a practical level more tourists represent the possibility for a heftier week’s wages.

 According to Rob Mckuhan, a salesman for Big Taxi Tours, he encounters a lot of unfriendly walkers. But if he persists, he can make more than $700 per week selling tickets in the busy summer or Christmas seasons.

In between pitches, Dompreh and the rest of the CitySights salesmen huddle and crack jokes with their opponents. The atmosphere seems lighthearted, but when tourists turn up a hint of focused desperation appears in their eyes.

 

 

 

 

Socrates in the City

This past week, I had the opportunity to attend a great event in New York. The evening highlighted Michael Ward and his new book, Planet Narnia. Ward addressed a full room at the Union League Club in Manhattan, giving listeners a short taste of his groundbreaking work.

C.S. Lewis enthusiasts and scholars have long tried to analyze lewis’ use of symbolism in “The Narnia Chronicles,” a series of seven children’s books that recount the history and adventures of a mythic land named Narnia. Ward believes he has finally cracked the code, and many agree with him. Planet Narnia proposes that the seven books correspond to seven mythical heavenly bodies. In his address, Ward made a persuasive case for his theory and answered many questions that come up in my mind every time I re-read the Chronicles of Narnia. 

Hosted by an intelligently comedic Eric Metaxas, it was a pleasure to attend the event with hundreds of other Socrates and the City-goers. Clearly, C.S. Lewis still has plenty of fan.

Story from the Street

I conducted my first on-the-street interview this week. Sent up to the metropolitan jungle from the safety of the Empire State Building fortress, I started news hunting. In a matter of minutes, I found myself in friendly conversation with a tour bus ticket-seller. A few questions later, Michael Dompreh was telling me his story. He grew up in Ghana. An excellent scholar, his government awarded him a full scholarship to a university in the country. Instead, he chose to a half-scholarship to study the United States. Now he competes for commissioned sales against other salesmen six days a week on the corner of 5^th Avenue and 34^th Street in Manhattan.

 Perhaps the most striking aspect of this interview is the irony of his position. This man may have a better understanding of the significance of these famed landmarks than many of the tourists who have come to see the Statue of Liberty with the same resolve as if to check something off a list….one of the thousand places to see before I die.

 In many ways, this man’s life encapsulates far more of what we term “American ideals” than any of us will lay ever really understand. For eight hours a day, he sells tickets to earn money to go to pharmacy school. After work, he goes straight home to study in preparation for school. He’s left Ghana and the promise of a full-ride scholarship to come here and peddle tickets to well-off tourists. To him, this is opportunity. Michael Dompreh’s chosen path is a set of circumstances we would call dismal. As a passerby last week, I dismissed him and his coworkers, their presence being a nuisance to my journey towards class. After learning Dompreh’s story, my perspective has changed a bit.

 

Looking at the big picture

 For as squeamish as our culture acts towards politically incorrect generalizations, we’ve ironically ignored the persistence of some among the media and their attempts to perpetuate hefty stereotypes. To illustrate this point, what’s the first word that comes to mind when I say: George W. Bush…?

 

You thought, “cowboy.” Right?

Or perhaps, “tongue-tied”…

 Undoubtedly, we could come up with many other political or popular figures who have been portrayed in a largely one-sided manner. But why should we remain satisfied with generalized caricatures of people? As writers, we have the capacity to paint full portraits, to delve into a better understanding of the people who shape our culture – whether we like it or not.

 

 In an article entitled “Frank Sinarra has a Cold,” Gay Talese wrote an inspiringly rich examination of one of America’s most popular entertainers. Using anecdotes, observations and accounts, Talese helped readers come to a greater understanding of the famed Hollywood figure. Such an endeavor takes work. The great lengths and hours to compile the profile are evident. But the product examines so many facets of Sinatra that you can’t help but feel as if you know him after reading the article.

 

 Such in-depth description may make it harder for us to polarize people, to love or hate them. Nonetheless, Talese wrote a kind of profile that accomplishes its purpose; it uncovered stereotypes and humanized an icon.

 

 

Can I See that Again?

I’ve discovered that there are a lot of people in New York City.

 

 The former statement isn’t groundbreaking – I realize this. But sometimes it takes a new paradigm, a new way of looking at things, to hammer home a fact you thought you already believed in the first place

 

 For example, I don’t think I ever really comprehended the vast number of people that could congregate in one place; that is, until I stood at the curb on 34^th street yesterday and witnessed every person in Manhattan attempt to crowd down the same sidewalk. I learned something I already knew, but the experience shocked me anyway.

 

 In the same way, as stories of the 1994 Rwandan genocide trickled into my consciousness, I never stopped to consider the tragedy. When the Hutu tribe in Rwanda began a swift program of genocide, attempting to eliminate the Tutsi people down to the last mother and child, about 800,000 people died.

 

 On the other side of the globe, we are so immune to that kind of suffering and tumult, but some like Philip Gourevitch have made it their mission to convey the kind of waste and horror as a result of these massacres. His book, We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow we Will be Killed, is a tough read. Yet paying attention to books like this will help us see the world with new awareness. It helps break down our walls of cynicism and allows us to better comprehend that which we may have tried to ignore. 

Only you can prevent aimlessness

Faulkner’s “The Bear” provides readers with an example of the merits of obsession – unless you are a PETA advocate. Among my peers, I note a trend of apathy. I don’t pretend to be an expert on current events, but many of my contemporaries and class comrades shock me with proud purposelessness. Political campaign talk will be scarce, but we can dissect last week’s American Idol until the sun goes down. 

Perhaps we would do well as students to take a lesson from the boy in “The Bear.” He formed an ambitious goal. His obsession led him to acquire skills as a woodsman, skills which were beyond his years. Through his quest this boy gained maturity and wisdom, not just Boy Scout badges. A focused goal allowed him to reap broader rewards. Obsessing gave him substance and truth.

 Like the boy in Faulkner’s story, we could all benefit from some directed obsession. Let’s not wander the woods. Instead my generation, my Christian counterparts, need to start hunting. We need to prepare and struggle to pursue righteousness. Such a process should be hard; that’s the point. We have been conditioned to make life as easy for ourselves as possible. Ultimately, is such a pattern really profitable? A more important question, is such a pattern really biblical? Active pursuit of a goal is inevitably scary. But let’s not let self-doubt corner us into a life of aimlessness. Sam Fathers advised the boy in the story, “Be scared…You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.”