Month: September 2015

The Scoops of an 8-Year-Old Reporter

She’ll go digital someday, likely…..

Longreads

For 8-year-old Hilde Lysiak, journalism runs in the family. Her dad, Matt Lysiak, founded independent newspapers in the ’90s and early aughts and reported for the New York Daily News. But The Orange Street News is all Hilde’s doing. In her small town of Selingsgrove, Pennsylvania, Hilde reports on the hardest news she can find–break-ins, robberies and tornado wreckage. When she’s ready to write, she settles down at a diner and outlines her story. Columbia Journalism Review reports:

Today was Selinsgrove’s sixth annual Ta-Ta Trot, a 5K that drew some 2,100 runners and raised more than $71,000 to fight breast cancer—a feel-good story, for sure, but Hilde wasn’t interested. There was hard news to chase.

Two days earlier, a small tornado had torn through town, toppling trees and scattering debris. The street along the river caught the brunt of it, and Hilde had come to survey the damage. She parked her bike, whipped…

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Atomic Summer: An Essay by Joni Tevis

Ah, the good old days…..

Longreads

Joni Tevis | The World Is On Fire: Scrap, Treasure, and Songs of Apocalypse  | Milkweed Editions | May 2015 | 28 minutes (7,494 words)

Below is Joni Tevis’s essay “Damn Cold in February: Buddy Holly, View-Master, and the A-Bomb,” from her book The World Is On Fire, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky. This essay originally appeared in The Diagram.

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How a Black German Woman Discovered Her Grandfather Was a Nazi

I’ve read this story before. Then I couldn’t track it down again until now. Kudos !

Longreads

In a recent issue of Haaretz, Avner Shapira profiled a woman named Jennifer Teege. Teege, a German-born black woman who was given up for adoption as a child, made a shocking family discovery in her late thirties: her biological grandfather was none other than Amon Goeth, a notorious Nazi known to many as a villainous character in the film Schindler’s List (Goeth was played by the actor Ralph Fiennes). Below is an excerpt from the story, detailing Teege’s moment of discovery:

She opens her book [Teege’s 2013 memoir, Amon] by describing the 2008 visit to a library in Hamburg to look for material on coping with depression. While there, she happened to notice a book with a cover photograph of a familiar figure: her biological mother, Monika Hertwig (née Goeth). She immediately withdrew the book, titled “I Have to Love My Father, Right?,” and which was based on an…

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The Radical Pippi Longstocking

A new perspective on a child’s heroine.

Longreads

In Der Spiegel, Claudia Voigt looks at the life of Astrid Lindgren, a Swedish author best known for her Pippi Longstocking books. If you haven’t revisited the books recently, the exuberant Pippi lives on her own, does as she pleases, and describes herself as “the strongest girl in the world.” In short, she’s a radically independent, fabulously liberated leading lady, particularly for a children’s book published in 1945. But what inspired Lindgren to create such an iconoclastic protagonist?

There has been a great deal of research and academic discussion on what induced Lindgren to develop such a revolutionary and modern children’s book character. [Lindgren’s daughter] Karin Nyman remembers all too well that “there was a permanent sense of fear hanging over all of our lives,” even in Sweden. “The world was gripped by horror, and Pippi was a reaction to it. The stories were a way to oppose it, to give us…

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What Would You Do?

Crunch time here…..

Looking to God

The apocalypse has happened. It’s not what you expected. Zombies have taken over the world. It’s up to you to survive. Will you?

City of the undead City of the undead

For today’s Monday Mayhem, I’d like to ask a question. It’s a simple question.

What would you do?

Everyone has a notion one would know what to do when confronted with the inevitable decision of taking a life to save another or oneself. But I ask, would you be capable of such an act? Morality plays a big part in the decision making process. What if the guilt is so unbearable that you couldn’t do it? What if the very person you had to remove from existence was your brother? Your sister? Your mother? Your father? Would you?

Remember, the world has fallen under a full-blown zombie apocalypse. You don’t know if the condition your loved one is suffering is temporary or…

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Blogging – Are you a Blogging Multi – Tasker, Stream of Consciousness, or Somewhere In – Between ?

I lean toward ” Stream of consciousness “. I think. The Lao – Dzu of blogging. Just like in my photography. I either photograph people or monuments, classic cars, stained glass, & such. I can zero in. Then sometimes I just photograph what / whoever gets nearby, & is interesting.

I like fantasy & science – fiction art ( Boris Vallejo as an example )

Models – I may cover them, although I know only a few who aren’t well – known, via the Internet.

Astronomy & associated topics.

Archeology & cultural anthropology.

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror.

Classic films, 1920’s – 1970’s & 80’s.

& a mulligan’s stew of other subjects which will be brought up with only a scintilla of continuity. Oh, & my love of George Gershwin’s ” Rhapsody in Blue “, too.

Comments, suggestions, etc., are always welcome.

Pit Stop

An interesting blog that I’m catching up with after my computer tried to MELT DOWN…… 🙂

Taking it a Step at a Time

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A few days ago, DC was ready and waiting for his transportation to arrive to bring him to work. I was getting ready for work as well. The car arrived a little bit earlier than usual with a substitute driver. DC left and I went back to getting ready. Normally I leave for work about 5 minutes after the car leaves, but because it arrived early and I was not completely ready, it took another 15 minutes to get out of the door.

My car was parked in the driveway behind the house so you can not see it from the front of the house. I drove out, rounded the corner and headed up the driveway to find his transportation car at the top of the driveway. My initial reaction was one of panic. I was sure that something was wrong,  but the driver was just sitting in the car. Then I noticed that DC was already getting out…

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Night of the Supermoon & the Lunar Eclipse !

I saw bits & pieces of it Sunday evening, but it was very cloudy, difficult to get really good photographs. Cloudy, a full – but – eclipsing in an otherwise overcast sky. The only thing missing was the howl of a lonesome wolf in the distance. My mind had supplied the near – perfect soundtrack : The ” Thriller ” soundtrack. You could have a different experience. Like Ray Parker’s ” Ghostbusters ” theme. My alternative soundtrack was King Harvest’s ” Dancing in the Moonlight “.

My photographs weren’t all that great. Photographing the Moon with a camera – phone isn’t always easy. A glass of Plum Sake & a can of Sapporo at a Japanese restaurant I try to frequent probably didn’t help matters either. 🙂 Maybe I’ll include some photos later.

My pictures of full – & – ” Super ” Moons often look like van Gogh’s ” Starry Night ” featured in this post. Trust me on this…..