Final Writing Process

            I like writing about myself.  I find myself in bizarre places, in funny situations, and I reflect.  I make connections from one experience to another and I want to share those connections with people.  That’s why I write creative nonfiction.  This quarter, I added journalism to the mix.  I reported.  I learned about the concept of timeliness, even if I don’t care about it.  I read other reporters work, this time imagining crafting a complex piece together.

            Though this work, I still do not consider myself a journalist for a few reasons.  First, I don’t like approaching events, situations and relationships as a documenter.  I am an actor, a planner, an organizer, a do-er and a reflector.  I lost my camera on study abroad and never looked back.  If I have time to stop and document at an important event, I am not doing enough.  I am not emerged in the action, enough.  That being said, reporters and recorders are intrinsic to an event, a situation, a movement and relationships.  Information and communication through journalism can be a catalyst.  It can improve lives, inspire movements and grow understandings.  I participate in these aspects of journalism in reflection.  Though I am a mover, I am also a reflector.  After an event, I write down everything from my memory, from my eyes and the new connections I made through observation and conversation.  Through the interviews I conducted in this class, I realized that I can be more strategic about my observations and conversations.  Community members harbor so much information that can be revealed by simply asking questions.  That was my breakthrough of the class.  When I was forced to ask questions about a subject, I realized how easy it is to figure out an answer to a question. 

            I will continue digging up stories and writing narrative non-fiction about those things that I find inspiring, frustrating and confusing in my life.

Northern Michigan With Cherries?

“How many cherries do you think you can fit in your mouth?”  I asked, provokingly.

“More than you,” Jack, my younger brother, sneered back.  He was notorious for his big mouth. 

We were standing between rows of a cherry orchard in Frankfort, Michigan.   My mom dragged us out of Crystal Lake, into the car and out to North Star Organics cherry orchard for a family outing.  While my mother was away filling up her gallon milk jug of cherries, Jack and I were standing under Montmorency tart cherry trees with our empty gallons by our feet.  I reached up in a bunch of cherries, picked the stems off and started popping them in my mouth – one, two, three, four, five.  Jack looked at me and started in on his own bunch.  The first twenty were easy.  I guess we both have really big mouths.  By number twenty-five, we were bending over drooling with my rest of my family circled around us, half cheering, half scolding but mostly disgusted.  By number twenty-eight, I was tucking each cherry into my lips being careful not to choke.  Twenty-nine.  Thirty.  I started laughing.  Jack was still on twenty-five.  I managed to fit a thirty-first cherry in.  Jack fit in his twenty-sixth.  We were both laughing and drooling.  I reached up for another cherry, blindly.  If I stood up I would choke.  I couldn’t stop giggling.  Jack started laughing, too.  I watched him pull back his lip and tuck the twenty-seventh cherry in.  He started laughing and coughing and a cherry pie filling came pouring out of his mouth.  I turned away, pushed my thirty- second cherry in, put my hands over my head like a champion and spit all my cherries out, too.

But this year we wouldn’t dare waste cherries.  In fact, there aren’t enough cherries to waste.  Alan Kobernik, the operator of North Star Organics, reported their cherry harvest is going to be “terrible.”  He continues saying, “There’s really no other world.  There’s pretty much no crop.”  He estimates that he will get about 1 lb of fruit per tree.  He explains it to be the weather: “The 80-degree weather in March was not good. “ Then in April, “everything froze.”  This year it will be “almost impossible to buy a cherry at whole sale.” 

While I am personally concerned about my cherry intake this summer, the ravaging cherry crop has more impact than the absence of cherry related contests.  Everyone can “eat something else” but, “it’s financial,” Kobernik says.  There will be a large impact “for our area.”  Kobernik continues to list the devastation:  “the migrant help – there will be nothing for them to do.  We’re not spending.  All the businesses here aren’t getting that money.” 

The negative economic impact on local community members and family businesses has the potential to be vast.  Some businesses in Northern Michigan depend on the cherry.  The Cherry Hut is one of these businesses and is located just one town over from North Star Organics.   The Cherry Hut opened as a cherry pie stand in 1922 on the north shore of Crystal Lake.  The stand sold pies, jams, and jellies, all family recipes.  In 1935 it moved to its present day location in on highway 31, a two-lane winding road that follows lake Michigan all the way up the Lower Peninsula.  As a car passes though Beulah, the Cherry Hut’s iconic Jerry Cherry “the smiling pie faced boy” welcomes you to the red and white painted building.  Everything is red and white, the awnings over of the outdoor seating, the flowers baskets hanging out side and the vintage style uniform of the servers.  A red and white decoration aside, the business depends on cherries.  The menu features cherry pies, cherry burgers, cherry chicken salad, cherryade, and cherry frozen yogurt.  Andy Case, the owner, estimates the cherry hut uses about 3000 lbs of cherries a week, baking more than 30,000 pies a year.

This year the cherries we stuffed into our mouths and into Cherry Hut pies are in jeopardy.  Karl Henkel of the Detroit News reported, “80 percent of its tart cherry crop is rippling through Michigan.”  The March warm spell caused fruit trees to blossom early, but early blossoms froze as temperature fluctuated.  It the Montmorency tart cherries that the Cherry Hut needs, that are predicted to yield 20 percent of their regular yield.  They are perfect for pies and cherry mouth-stuffing contests because of their tart flavor and they are a little bit smaller than the sweet cherries.

“It’s going to be challenging this year,” says Case.  “We have enough in our own inventory to get us through June,” he said reassuringly.  All of the Cherry Hut’s cherries are local.  “They’re all Benzie, Leelanau, and Grand Traverse cherries,” Case said naming off local counties.  He agreed that the relationship-based cherry purchasing protects his business.  “We’ve been doing business for local families for so long.  We got a call last week” from a local cherry orchard “that said they would assure us cherries for the rest of our season.”   He added that the “smaller-scale” of the Cherry Hut and the “history helps us out.”

The Cherry Hut might be safe this year but Kobernik, of North Star Organics states, “I think things in the fruit business are going to change.  If this is normal,” he says referring to the weather, “it’s not going to be reliable.”  Kobernik reflects on the problem at hand saying, “We can live without cherries,” but I ask what would that mean for my mouth-stuffing title?

Play.Out.Loud Audio Visual

WATCH ME!

A Mouth Full of Cherries

“How many cherries do you think you can fit in your mouth?”  I said as the antagonist.

“More than you,” Jack, my younger brother, sneered back.  He was notorious for his big mouth. 

Taken After the Contest.
Pictured from Left to Right: Shoshana, Ellen (Me), Jack, Colleen, Drew.

We were standing between rows of a cherry orchard in Frankfort, Michigan.   My mom dragged us out of Crystal Lake, into the car and out to the cherry orchard for a family outing.  While my mother was away filling up her gallon milk jug of cherries, Jack and I were standing under Montmorency tart cherry trees with our empty gallons by our feet.  I reached up in a bunch of cherries, picked the stems off and started popping them in my mouth – one, two, three, four, five.  Jack looked at me and started in on his own bunch.  The first twenty were easy.  I guess we both have really big mouths.  By number twenty-five, I was bending over drooling with my rest of my family circled around us, half cheering, half scolding but mostly disgusted.  By number twenty-eight, I was tucking each cherry into my lips being careful not to choke.  Twenty-nine.  Thirty.  I started laughing.  Jack was still on twenty-five.  I managed to fit a thirty-first cherry in.  Jack fit in his twenty-sixth.  We were both laughing and drooling.  I reached up for another cherry, blindly.  If I stood up I would choke.  I couldn’t stop giggling.  Jack started laughing, too.  I watched him pull back his lip and tuck the twenty-seventh cherry in.  He started laughing and coughing and a cherry pie filling came pouring out of his mouth.  I turned away, pushed my thirty- second cherry in, put my hands over my head like a champion and spit all my cherries out, too. 

The Cherry Hut, Beulah, MI

We’ve never been civilized around cherries.  They are seductive – red, sweet and juicy.  And since we were up north, no one asked us to be civilized.  The same seductive quality to the cherries sells cherry pies.  There’s never left over pies.  The place to buy cherries pies Up North is the Cherry Hut.  Famous for their cherry pies the Cherry Hut opened as a stand in 1922 on the north shore of Crystal Lake.  The stand sold pies, jams, and jellies, all family recipes.  In 1935 it moved to its present day location in on highway 31, a two-lane winding road that follows lake Michigan all the way up the Lower Peninsula.  As a car passes though Beulah, the Cherry Hut’s iconic Jerry Cherry “the smiling pie faced boy” welcomes you to the red and white painted building.  Everything is red and white, the awnings over of the outdoor seating, the flowers baskets hanging out side and the vintage style uniform of the servers.  Red and white decorations aside, the business is cherries.  There are, of course, cherry pies, but also cherry burgers, cherry chicken salad, cherryade, and cherry frozen yogurt.  Andy Case, the owner, estimates the cherry hut uses about 3000 lbs of cherries a week, baking more than 30,000 pies a year.  I bet Jack and I could take those on, if we had the chance.

Cherry Hut Cherry Pies

This year the cherries we stuffed into our mouths and into Cherry Hut pies are in jeopardy.  Karl Henkel of the Detroit News reported “80 percent of its tart cherry crop is rippling through Michigan.”  The March warm spell caused fruit trees to blossom early, but early blossoms froze as temperature fluctuated.  It the Montmorency tart cherries that the Cherry Hut needs, that are predicted to yield 20 percent of their regular yield.  They are perfect for pies and cherry mouth-stuffing contests because of their tart flavor and they are a little bit smaller than the sweet cherries so we could fit more in our mouths.

“It’s going to be challenging this year,” says Case.  “We have enough in our own inventory to get us through June.  We’ve been doing business for local families for so long.  “We got a call last week” from a local cherry orchard “that said they would assure us cherries for the rest of our season.”  All of the Cherry Hut’s cherries are local.  “They’re all Benzie, Leelanau, and Grand Traverse cherries,” Case said naming off local counties.  He agreed that the relationship-based cherry purchasing protects his business, he added that the “smaller-scale” and the “history helps us out.”

Cherry pies and tradition is preserved despite the unusual March weather.  Celebrate with a cherry pie or a mouth-stuffing contest.

Kidnapping

OMG - the narrator's dad was kidnapped!  She didn't tell us until 5 minutes in.  I was shocked and completely drawn in.  I loved the Spanish because it was authentic voice.  However, I have some Spanish background so the information was accessible to me and I wasn't thrown by not understanding it.

Overall, I think the radio program was well reported.  It was an interesting angel to start talking about the prevalence of kidnappings based on media, but became intensely interesting when the victims' and family members' voices were included.

FRENCH FRIES, WHATT

I was impressed that Osker was able to write this story without being very critical of the industrial food system and globalization.  Even the idea of calling the major cities in eastern Asia the dragons is pretty twisted. Wowzers.

Anyway, I didn't love the narrative form.  The author threw a whole bunch of facts at the reader and I lost of narrative arc.  This frustrated me because it seemed like a straightforward idea with linear steps.. following a potato from place to place.  Also, the first part of the story is very disconnected from the end of it - maybe symbolic of the system but it sorta throws a reader.

Play.Out.Loud

During class exchange a Kalamazoo College there is a flow of students from building to building.  The sidewalks get crowded.  The intersection where Thompson meets Academy is claimed by pedestrians and cars loose priority.  There is a chatter of exchanges.  The doors to the library and the fine arts building open and close with a syncopated beat and recently, to harmonize it all, there has been piano music. 

            It is difficult to miss the bright orange piano outside of the Fine Arts Building (FAB) first because of its bright color but more spectacularly the talent of student pianist draw attention to it.  Pianist on campus are no longer hidden in the underground practice rooms in the basement of the FAB.  Though the piano has found a home on Kalamazoo College’s campus, it is not owned by Kalamazoo College.  The Gilmore Keyboard Festival, informally the Gilmore, temporarily installed the orange piano and twelve others equally bright in color in Kalamazoo, Portage and Battle Creek the piano for community use.  The art instillation project is titled Play.Out.Loud and will run from April 26^th to May 12^th, 2012.

            Although it is the first time a project like this has been organized in Kalamazoo, many cities have similar instillations.  The Play.Out.Loud project is modeled after British artist Luke Jerram’s international piano instillation titled, “Play Me, I’m Yours.”  Jerram began installing pianos in major cities in 2008 and has since installed over three hundred pianos in cities like Sydney, Barcelona, Paris, New York and Los Angles with the simple message, “Play Me, I’m Yours.”

            The philosophy behind the pianos in Kalamazoo is a bit different.  Mary McCormick, the Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, caught wind of Jerram’s art project and thought that the Gilmore and Kalamazoo could recreate this idea in a way that would involve the community and recreate the Gilmore’s image in process.  “One of my personal goals” McCormick explains, “is for the street piano project to dispel any misconceptions about the Gilmore; that it’s only for people that are very knowledge about classical music.  It’s for enjoying music in general and we really wanted to so something that brought the music out of the concert hall and into the community.  We’ve had students say that they didn’t think that the Gilmore was cool until they saw the pianos outside and now they have a whole different impression.”

            It’s not only the students that have been more engaged in the Gilmore through the Play.Out.Loud project.  Lots of Kalamazoo community members donated time and resources to the project.  McCormick started by contacting community members attempting to sell pianos on Craigslist and asked them if they would consider donating to the Gilmore.  “Most people said ‘if you’ll move it, absolutely’” McCormick reported.  “Once we found these pianos we couldn’t just except any piano,” she added.  “The piano tuner had to go out to all these people’s homes and make certain that it was good enough.  We have about four pianos we couldn’t accept.  It would have been too expensive to repair them to get them in good working order.”  Once the pianos were secured, Park Trades Center, a studio art complex, donated studio space to store and prep them.  Douglas & Sons, a locally owned paint store, donated paint.  Homestead Furniture and Cabinetry, a local woodworking business, helped fix piano benches and legs.  H & H Painting, a local painting company, primed the pianos and volunteers put the colors on them.  The community has come together in order for this project to come alive.  “It’s been a project that involved a lot of people but everyone that we’ve approached has been really excited about it,” remarked McCormick.

            The nature of the project organized by the Gilmore Keyboard Festival is by the community for the community.  McCormick speaks for the Gilmore organizers saying, “One of our goals is to make piano or just music in general something that the community is talking about during the festival so that’s it’s a community conversation.”  The bright colors of the pianos make them approachable.  The pianos’ placement in public places like hospitals, Western Michigan University, outside of the Kalamazoo Public Library and at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art, that are frequented by diverse races, ages and socio-economic classes grant access to community members that may not have access to a piano.  Play.Out.Loud. is attempting to directly address what McCormick calls the “intimidation factor.”  “There are people my age, I’ll be 60 next year,” that are intimidated by the Gilmore, “because they think I’m not a musician. I’m not trained.  I don’t know classical music.  I can’t go.  I can’t participate.  And that’s so not true.  Number one to attend classical music concerts you don’t need to know classical music to enjoy the sound.  The pianos placed around town are not only creating access to music on site but are attempting to change the way the community view the Gilmore Keyboard Festival.  McCormick hopes because of the pianos more community members feel invited to attend the classical music events at the festival. 

McCormick also sings praise of the musicians playing different music at the festival. “We have so many artists that are not classic musicians just different pianist from so many different genres that are just incredible.”  A few notable artists are Robert Glasper and Conrad Tao.  Glasper just came out with a CD, Black Radio, that’s on the top of the charts.  He was featured in articles in magazines like Downbeat Magazine and Jazz Times.  He was on David Letterman accompanied by Lupe Fiasco and Bilal and interviewed by Jay Leno.  Had different rap artist on his CD.  Conrad Tao made Forbes’ “30 Under 30 in Music: The Youngest Stars In The Music Business,” list.  He was the only classical musician on the list alongside other musicians like Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, and Adele.   He performed with the Detroit Symphony in January.  The reviews were said he was a phenomenal.  Student tickets are five dollars for Glasper, Tao and many other musicians.

Like the musicians at the Gilmore this year, the Play.Out.Loud pianos are attempting to change the way Kalamazoo residents are engaging with music.  The community is donating time, resources and energy to create more access to public music through pianos.  McCormick stresses that with the Play.Out.Loud project, “We’re not asking for you to buy a ticket.  It’s just free.  So just enjoy!”