I found Aupperlee's articles inspiring like many of you. As Jon so eloquently pointed out, Aaron seems to have a good hold on the craft of his stories. Clearly he has interviewing and writing down to a science and these articles are well put together. But as all of you, my classmates, have focused on the positives of these articles I'm going to try and raise some problematics.
Sometimes these articles make great claims about, say Heroin, that seem sort of unfounded. For instance, in the first in the 3-part heroin series, there is a huge claim about how people can jump from pot to heroin very easily and the way that it is situated in the paper it seems like it is equally easy for someone to move from painkillers to heroin as it is to move from pot to heroin. Furthermore the only example of pot to heroin is from an unamed source who we never hear from again. Why even bring up this issue at all. The article seems to clearly be about people moving from painkillers to opiates with more than one example and great writing and statistics.
I'm also not sure why this needed a three-part series when Aupperlee keeps returning to the same examples over and over again.
In the third part of the series there in the first two paragraphs of the story Aaron sets up a contrast between 2000 when only 80 percent of the people at the rehab center made it through compared to 80 percent 10 years later but does not go on to explain or search for a reason why. Instead he goes back to a story weve already heard. And although some details are new some are not and I'm questioning why he feels the need to give background that any devoted reader of the paper would already know. I feel as though these could have easily been two articles, maybe one, and been even more compelling, less repetitive, and done a better job of asking those big questions.
Again, these are just the questions I had. I also really enjoyed the articles and am looking forward to class.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
My outline and who was my subject again?
Hi Everyone,
The intended publication for my article is Texas Monthly. I had fun writing this article thought it was challenging to fit all the information I found in researching the violence of Juarez in a cohesive way that contributed to the piece. Although my Franklin outline could still use some work and my article could still use some restructuring I see it this way so far:
Main conflict:
Violence threatens organization's ability to continue
A: Casas por Cristo employs passionate individuals
B: Personal experience and testimony convince others
Resolution:
Casas por Cristo finds a way to survive
I'm really looking forward to deepening this article with other perspectives on why people are still coming through first-hand accounts and anecdotes from other builders about Travis and Roberta's passion in follow-up interviews throughout this week. This is, after all, a profile about Travis and Roberta even though my outline stresses the organization. I tried to utilize their history with the organization and its proximity to the events that have threatened the organization's success by profiling Travis and Roberta as an extension of the organization. Does that work? I feel like it does and though the title of this post pokes fun at the difficulty I had in focusing on a particular subject I do believe that this tactic will work.
The intended publication for my article is Texas Monthly. I had fun writing this article thought it was challenging to fit all the information I found in researching the violence of Juarez in a cohesive way that contributed to the piece. Although my Franklin outline could still use some work and my article could still use some restructuring I see it this way so far:
Main conflict:
Violence threatens organization's ability to continue
A: Casas por Cristo employs passionate individuals
B: Personal experience and testimony convince others
Resolution:
Casas por Cristo finds a way to survive
I'm really looking forward to deepening this article with other perspectives on why people are still coming through first-hand accounts and anecdotes from other builders about Travis and Roberta's passion in follow-up interviews throughout this week. This is, after all, a profile about Travis and Roberta even though my outline stresses the organization. I tried to utilize their history with the organization and its proximity to the events that have threatened the organization's success by profiling Travis and Roberta as an extension of the organization. Does that work? I feel like it does and though the title of this post pokes fun at the difficulty I had in focusing on a particular subject I do believe that this tactic will work.
Casas por Cristo Survives
Going out for a Sunday drive is a way of life in El Paso. The powerful spring winds which, fuel dust storms that can block out the sun for much of April, can also push out pollution and provide for perfectly clear days.
A favorite destination for many El Paso drivers is undoubtedly Scenic Dr., a tight-winding two-lane road that curls along the slope of the Franklin Mountains. High above downtown El Paso, Scenic Drive provides breathtaking views of El Paso and Juarez to the south for miles.
Throughout April 2011 Sunday drivers flocking to Scenic Dr. shared their destination with church groups praying with a purpose. Their purpose was an end to the violence in Juarez.
Organized by El Paso for Jesus, an inter-denominational coalition of local Christian ministries, Prayers for Juarez is a campaign that organized a different church group to pray at the observation platform on Scenic Dr for 40 days throughout Lent.
Some pray for Juarez, a city ravaged by a bloody drug-war that has caused a spike in violence since 2008. The city’s murder rate since that time has risen at an astronomical rate, toping 3,000 murders in 2010.
While many are praying for the safety and well being of Juarez’s citizens Roberta and Travis Sanders have found a different way to make a difference. The Sanders’ are full time employees at Casas por Cristo, a non-profit organization based in El Paso that builds houses for families in need living in Juarez and Acuna, Mexico.
Their journey to El Paso starts with Roberta. From a young age Roberta watched her father, a preacher at a church in Mt. Carmel in southern Indiana, take groups of high school students on mission trips to Juarez every year. At the age of 14 she participated in her first Casas por Cristo build and was hooked.
Later, in college, Roberta and Travis started dating and in 2003 Roberta brought Travis on his first build. On that build one of the Casas por Cristo interns, Dan Dolcen, started to talk to Travis and Roberta about the opportunity to intern for a summer.
This is how things happen in Casas por Cristo, through personal testimony and convincing; and despite Roberta’s initial skepticism the two signed up to intern in the summer of 2006. Arriving on may 12th, what awaited them was a crash course in building a house and organizing a youth group.
For Travis “that first summer was kind of a nightmare just because the whole training program is so fast paced.” Within the first four weeks on the job interns had built two houses, co-led two builds, and were prepping to fly solo in week five, leading a church group into Juarez to build a 440 sq. foot house.
But despite the stress, and true to Dolcen’s testimony, the job grew on Travis and he took a full time position with Casas por Cristo. He has worked for Casas ever since and last September, Roberta started working full time.
In that time Travis has seen Juarez change. Less than a year after he started working full-time in El Paso he saw the violence escalate. In his first year on the job Juarez saw 300 deaths and the next year, in 2008, it saw over 1600.
Less than five years after that first summer, shortly after another church group had returned home after praying on scenic drive on a breezy El Paso Night, a local news report filled living rooms around the city with an hope-filled announcement. For the first three months of 2011 the murder rate in Juarez had slowed.
On the report El Paso for Jesus president, Barney Field, claimed that the prayers had been answered. With 183 murders in March the total for the year came to 643, how things had changed since 2007 when 300 murders for the year was a high number.
The Sanders’ have seen the city change in other ways too. Travis recalls that “on the east-side of Juarez, that first summer, I remember how wires scraped the top of our van because they had telephone poles made out of an eight foot two by four with a big U at the top and at least a thousand wires running through the big U. The wires couldn’t have hung hirer than seven feet.”
Now many of the dirt roads have turned to paved ones and on the east side of town, where Travis built most of his houses that first summer, the city has installed power lines and meters on most of the houses. There is also a multi-lane highway that circles the city, making things that used to take two hours to achieve take only 30 minutes. But with that added efficiency comes less traffic for Casas por Cristo.
Field’s prayers may have been answered but 643 murders in three months doesn’t answer one of the biggest challenges for the Sander’s ministry. When the violence first started escalating in 2008 one of Travis’ jobs was to answer the phones. “I remember back then three or four groups a day were calling to cancel. The good news, I think, is that we’ve seemed to bottom out.”
In 2008 Casas por Cristo achieved one of its highest build-rates at 400 homes. Media attention to the violence in Juarez swelled as church groups continued to cancel and Casas por Cristo struggled to reach 200 homes. Since then the organization has hovered just over 150 homes a year.
But while others stop coming some refuse. Among them is Roberta’s dad who still brings down high school students from southern Indiana, though the groups have become smaller.
Meanwhile Casas por Cristo has tightened up their policies. No driving at night, no separating into multiple groups, no going over to Juarez alone. So far these tactics have worked and the organization has not had a single violent interaction in the past five years.
Roberta answers the phones now and people still call with concerns about the violence. So what’s the best tactic in convincing church groups that coming down is worth the risk?, According to Travis it’s “a personal experience. Seeing it first hand and taking it back to their communities. That’s the only way people are going to believe its safe buts its also how you build passion for this ministry.”
To alleviate pressure Casas por Cristo has spread to Acuna, Mexico for those that find Juarez too dangerous and next summer will offer trips Guatemala for those who find Mexico in general too dangerous. But passion remains for Juarez as the Sanders’ explain that certain groups have tried trips to Acuna but come back to Juarez, “I think because they see that the need is so great here” Roberta adds.
If April’s report on the slowed violence proves to continue in the coming months then that will mean that analysts the Autonomous University of Juarez projection of 5,000 murders for 2011 was off this year. Researchers there gather data throughout Juarez, which they use to make statistical projections surrounding various issues around the city. Their projection for 2010 of 3,000 murders came close and other projections, like 8,500 orphans in the city by 2012 echo Roberta’s assertion that the need is great in Juarez.
For now Juarez has allies in Roberta and Travis and twelve others who come from around the country with the same cause. And with them they bring their congregations. Groups like Roberta’s father who carry a passion for Juarez and they bring something which, for them, is much stronger. They bring faith.
Friday, April 22, 2011
A Trip Across the Border: round 2
Here is my second attempt at our personal essay. I'm hoping I did a better job of showing rather than telling, let me know what you think. You can find my outline and desired publication under the comments section.
"Please," she begged, "you need to start becoming motivated by something larger than yourself." It was not the first time my mother had given me this lecture, but that did not increase the attention I paid to her. This time it came as my family filed out of our lavished church, a towering building with an ornate green-tiled roof and gold trim that gleamed in the bright desert sun. I stood on the steps craning my gaze to investigate the cause of a billowing plume of smoke rising from amongst the dirt roads and tiny houses across the river.
Inside we had just heard about the newest opportunity to help our 'brothers and sisters' in need across the border. My mother gleamed with excitement as our pastor, father Rick, explained the details of a volunteer day at one of our local missions. I had blocked out as much as I could, pondering which video game I would vegetate in front of once back at home.
My hometown of El Paso, Texas is a city that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border and bottlenecks between the Franklin Mountains and the Juarez Mountains. This is a land marked by dichotomies. Throughout my teens the most stark of these dichotomies came in the fact that El Paso was one of the top five safest cities with a population over 500,000 in the country, while across the Rio Grande (which, that far south is so dry most of the year it's hardly accurate to call it Rio much less Grande) Juarez was frequently referred to as the most dangerous city in the world outside of war zones.
When the crime rate in Juarez first started creating national attention there were few signs that Juarez would soon be the most dangerous city in the world. My own family frequented Juarez to visit Gaby, my godmother, during her decadent ranch-parties. Gaby's parties brought together diverse groups of people but their demeanors remained calm and conversation seldom strayed from congenial topics.
Later, as I began to learn more and more about differences between populations in classes like Geography and World History and I was introduced to the concept of a third-world country, I was still no closer to understanding what about Juarez made it 'third-world' as opposed to the 'developed world' that lay a stone's-throw away in El Paso. The visits to Gaby continued and the signs remained hidden even though the crime-rate increased and Juarez came ever-closer to garnering its morbid record.
In 9th grade I ventured over the river without my family for the first time. On a scorching-hot day my friend Tomas and I scurried over the 'puente-libre' and where Santa Fe avenue met Juarez avenue we ducked into the dim-lit Kentucky Club. The cold air instantly refreshed us as we shuffled into a bright-red booth and surveyed the smoky, crowded room, mariachi music drifiting in from the kitchen.
I struck up conversation about the famous writers who had frequented this bar. Tomas wasn't much of a reader. Names like Kerouac or Hemingway didn't mean much to him. His order of business was getting drunk, so I obliged.
On the way home, as we passed the corner of Juarez and Santa Fe I ignored the small dirt roads of the colonias to my left. Walking back over the bridge my eyes drifted towards the north-east, to the sub-division where my parents now slept, settled in the foothills of the mountains a short two-miles away. My mind wandered to my parents. I was more focused on weather or not I would be grounded for missing curfew than reveling in my new-found independence.
During my Junior year of High School several student-groups at my small, catholic high school had fundraiser to allow for 25 students to participate in 'Casas por Cristo' - a non-profit organization based in Juarez that builds small, two-room homes for families in need living in the extreme poverty of the 'colonias' or small shanty towns that dot the outskirts of Juarez. My mother's demand that I start volunteering still fresh in my mind, I signed up reluctantly.
The next day, just over the bridge our van made a sharp turn at Juarez and Santa Fe and onto dirt roads that made our journey more like a ride on a bronco in the rodeo than a twelve-passenger van. Twenty minutes later we arrived at an empty lot in between two houses that seemed more like haphazard heaps of wood scraps, cardboard, and battered tarps than homes. Looking around I found myself lost despite the fact that our sub-division was still in clear view at the foothills of the Franklins to the north-east.
Throughout the week my classmates and I poured concrete, built a house-frame, installed electricity, put up dry-wall, insulated, and even had time to decorate the new home of the seven-person (and soon to be eight-person) Gonzalez family. Day by day a certain disdain grew inside me whenever I found my eyes drifting towards the shiny rooftops of the mansions which littered our sub-division.
Once the walls of the house were up I immediately became concerned. I continually tried imagining what seven bodies would look like crammed inside this tiny home, marching my friends in and out to have a firm example. Juan, our stock young guide, reassured me that this was far superior to what the Gonzalez family had now. I wasn't convinced but the house was almost done and would have to do.
Soon, I found myself not wanting to leave at the end of the day. As the sun began to dwindle over the dusty streets I was strangely drawn to the place that many were working so hard to leave or improve. We were beginning to make friends with the neighborhood boys and our ride home every night was a bitter reminder that they would soon be but distant memories.
Returning home at night, covered from head to toe in dirt, I was confronted with trivial issues. "Your getting the couch dirty, go take a shower, your filthy," my mother would exclaim, chasing me into the bathroom. Five minutes later a banging would come at the door as my sister would whine, "Patrick, you've been in there forever. I have an important date. Patrick!" Her booming shouts were hopeless, my mind was fixed back at the Gonzalez'.
At the end of the week I watched in amazement as a young couple raising three children, a nephew, and a younger sister arrived on a foggy April morning, tears streaming down their faces, to see their new home. My fears that what we had built would certainly be inadequate for such a big family were washed away as I received heart-felt hugs accompanied by sobs of gratitude from each and every member of the family.
After unveiling the house we gathered down the street to pray in front of the neighborhood's modest adobe-roof home. We prayed for an end to poverty and to the violence that ravaged Juarez. I would no longer ignore the opportunities father Rick presented in mass, I resolved.
On the ride home it wasn't the thought of my mother's looming punishment for not cleaning my room that filled my mind, it was the image of the crying Gonzalez family.
As we crested the apex of the bridge I had crossed so many times before, my eyes were no longer focused on the mansions that surrounded my own home. Rather, my eyes were pressed up against the window, my gaze focused on the dirt roads to the south-west.
"Please," she begged, "you need to start becoming motivated by something larger than yourself." It was not the first time my mother had given me this lecture, but that did not increase the attention I paid to her. This time it came as my family filed out of our lavished church, a towering building with an ornate green-tiled roof and gold trim that gleamed in the bright desert sun. I stood on the steps craning my gaze to investigate the cause of a billowing plume of smoke rising from amongst the dirt roads and tiny houses across the river.
Inside we had just heard about the newest opportunity to help our 'brothers and sisters' in need across the border. My mother gleamed with excitement as our pastor, father Rick, explained the details of a volunteer day at one of our local missions. I had blocked out as much as I could, pondering which video game I would vegetate in front of once back at home.
My hometown of El Paso, Texas is a city that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border and bottlenecks between the Franklin Mountains and the Juarez Mountains. This is a land marked by dichotomies. Throughout my teens the most stark of these dichotomies came in the fact that El Paso was one of the top five safest cities with a population over 500,000 in the country, while across the Rio Grande (which, that far south is so dry most of the year it's hardly accurate to call it Rio much less Grande) Juarez was frequently referred to as the most dangerous city in the world outside of war zones.
When the crime rate in Juarez first started creating national attention there were few signs that Juarez would soon be the most dangerous city in the world. My own family frequented Juarez to visit Gaby, my godmother, during her decadent ranch-parties. Gaby's parties brought together diverse groups of people but their demeanors remained calm and conversation seldom strayed from congenial topics.
Later, as I began to learn more and more about differences between populations in classes like Geography and World History and I was introduced to the concept of a third-world country, I was still no closer to understanding what about Juarez made it 'third-world' as opposed to the 'developed world' that lay a stone's-throw away in El Paso. The visits to Gaby continued and the signs remained hidden even though the crime-rate increased and Juarez came ever-closer to garnering its morbid record.
In 9th grade I ventured over the river without my family for the first time. On a scorching-hot day my friend Tomas and I scurried over the 'puente-libre' and where Santa Fe avenue met Juarez avenue we ducked into the dim-lit Kentucky Club. The cold air instantly refreshed us as we shuffled into a bright-red booth and surveyed the smoky, crowded room, mariachi music drifiting in from the kitchen.
I struck up conversation about the famous writers who had frequented this bar. Tomas wasn't much of a reader. Names like Kerouac or Hemingway didn't mean much to him. His order of business was getting drunk, so I obliged.
On the way home, as we passed the corner of Juarez and Santa Fe I ignored the small dirt roads of the colonias to my left. Walking back over the bridge my eyes drifted towards the north-east, to the sub-division where my parents now slept, settled in the foothills of the mountains a short two-miles away. My mind wandered to my parents. I was more focused on weather or not I would be grounded for missing curfew than reveling in my new-found independence.
During my Junior year of High School several student-groups at my small, catholic high school had fundraiser to allow for 25 students to participate in 'Casas por Cristo' - a non-profit organization based in Juarez that builds small, two-room homes for families in need living in the extreme poverty of the 'colonias' or small shanty towns that dot the outskirts of Juarez. My mother's demand that I start volunteering still fresh in my mind, I signed up reluctantly.
The next day, just over the bridge our van made a sharp turn at Juarez and Santa Fe and onto dirt roads that made our journey more like a ride on a bronco in the rodeo than a twelve-passenger van. Twenty minutes later we arrived at an empty lot in between two houses that seemed more like haphazard heaps of wood scraps, cardboard, and battered tarps than homes. Looking around I found myself lost despite the fact that our sub-division was still in clear view at the foothills of the Franklins to the north-east.
Throughout the week my classmates and I poured concrete, built a house-frame, installed electricity, put up dry-wall, insulated, and even had time to decorate the new home of the seven-person (and soon to be eight-person) Gonzalez family. Day by day a certain disdain grew inside me whenever I found my eyes drifting towards the shiny rooftops of the mansions which littered our sub-division.
Once the walls of the house were up I immediately became concerned. I continually tried imagining what seven bodies would look like crammed inside this tiny home, marching my friends in and out to have a firm example. Juan, our stock young guide, reassured me that this was far superior to what the Gonzalez family had now. I wasn't convinced but the house was almost done and would have to do.
Soon, I found myself not wanting to leave at the end of the day. As the sun began to dwindle over the dusty streets I was strangely drawn to the place that many were working so hard to leave or improve. We were beginning to make friends with the neighborhood boys and our ride home every night was a bitter reminder that they would soon be but distant memories.
Returning home at night, covered from head to toe in dirt, I was confronted with trivial issues. "Your getting the couch dirty, go take a shower, your filthy," my mother would exclaim, chasing me into the bathroom. Five minutes later a banging would come at the door as my sister would whine, "Patrick, you've been in there forever. I have an important date. Patrick!" Her booming shouts were hopeless, my mind was fixed back at the Gonzalez'.
At the end of the week I watched in amazement as a young couple raising three children, a nephew, and a younger sister arrived on a foggy April morning, tears streaming down their faces, to see their new home. My fears that what we had built would certainly be inadequate for such a big family were washed away as I received heart-felt hugs accompanied by sobs of gratitude from each and every member of the family.
After unveiling the house we gathered down the street to pray in front of the neighborhood's modest adobe-roof home. We prayed for an end to poverty and to the violence that ravaged Juarez. I would no longer ignore the opportunities father Rick presented in mass, I resolved.
On the ride home it wasn't the thought of my mother's looming punishment for not cleaning my room that filled my mind, it was the image of the crying Gonzalez family.
As we crested the apex of the bridge I had crossed so many times before, my eyes were no longer focused on the mansions that surrounded my own home. Rather, my eyes were pressed up against the window, my gaze focused on the dirt roads to the south-west.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Rory Mcllroy is still the man in my book.
Greetings,
I know I already posted the article that I we will discuss tomorrow as a part of my "choose your own assignment." I did, though, want to show you all another point of inspiration for me this week. I think this is an excellent piece of narrative writing and the author takes some great fictional liberties in places not typically reserved for sports writers. I thought it was significant to post this article because after reading it I made up a statistic in my mind that no one has ever lead the masters for 4 days and won. I found out from a friend, though, that this is not the case and I realized that this article internalized the feelings I felt everytime I watched a young player break down on the final 18 holes at Augusta after leading the previous three rounds. I grew up watching the Masters every year with my dad and this article brought me back to the emotion of a player unraveling under pressure before my eyes after a single fowl up. But most of all I think that the article does so by showing, not telling - a piece of the narrative process I am still working on.
I know I already posted the article that I we will discuss tomorrow as a part of my "choose your own assignment." I did, though, want to show you all another point of inspiration for me this week. I think this is an excellent piece of narrative writing and the author takes some great fictional liberties in places not typically reserved for sports writers. I thought it was significant to post this article because after reading it I made up a statistic in my mind that no one has ever lead the masters for 4 days and won. I found out from a friend, though, that this is not the case and I realized that this article internalized the feelings I felt everytime I watched a young player break down on the final 18 holes at Augusta after leading the previous three rounds. I grew up watching the Masters every year with my dad and this article brought me back to the emotion of a player unraveling under pressure before my eyes after a single fowl up. But most of all I think that the article does so by showing, not telling - a piece of the narrative process I am still working on.
Choose Your Own Assignment
Hi Everyone,
I found this essay in Brevity. I like it because I believe it says a lot with very little. Enjoy.
Duplex
For a moment, I wanted to call him back. I wanted to know who he was. Who he wanted on the other end. What would happen when the voice on the voicemail was gone? Would he be gone? If I deleted the message, switched off the phone, would the man on the other end cease to exist?
He said: “This—I wish I knew the right things to say, but I don’t. I miss you, Samantha. I still love you and I need to see you. Please.”
The click of the line going dead, of the message ending, rattled in my head, like everything else had been scooped out. I folded the cell phone and placed it on the desk. Things that were supposed to be permanent felt inconstant. The children outside laughed and called out words in Spanish that I could not understand. I opened a blank document and hoped writing would be a distraction. The screen was white and I felt sick. Downstairs, at the back door, Charlie scratched to go outside. The tabby meowed. They carried on in this way, teasing one another.
I found this essay in Brevity. I like it because I believe it says a lot with very little. Enjoy.
Duplex
By Danny Goodman 
The person on my voicemail was a man. His voice was high, higher than most men’s voices I’d heard before, and he spoke slowly, as if reading off of cue cards. I didn’t know when the call came in. My cell phone never rang. Rather, in that late morning, the phone vibrated, informing me of an awaiting message. A voicemail.
He started: “Hello? I think this is your number. I hope it is.”
I was in the kitchen, looking out over my small garden. The weather in Park Slope had turned cold, with the temperature dropping thirty degrees overnight. It was an unusually bitter autumn. Charlie, my black Labrador, played in the snowy backyard, barking at a neighborhood tabby. My wife, Samantha, was at work, and I had grown accustomed to having the house to myself during the day. In the evenings I worked as an editor, and I imagined Samantha, too, valued the undisturbed time. I pressed the phone against my ear.
He said: “I’ve been wanting to call.”
A crash came from outside. I opened the backdoor to find earth and terracotta spread from fence to door. Charlie stared up at me, tail wagging and mouth open. He looked like he was smiling. His thin legs trembled in the snow. I turned and pointed into the house; I made my stern face. Charlie ran past, nails clicking against the hardwood floor. I shut the door and began the voicemail again. The second sentence struck me this time—whose number did he think this was? The greeting lacked my voice, telling callers in a robotic, female voice that they had reached this number and to please leave a message. The caller, it seemed, thought the number was correct.
He said: “I’m not really sure what to say, though. It’s been a long time. I hope you’re well.”
The man didn’t say his name. This meant, I assumed, that the intended recipient of the message should recognize his high, almost shrill voice. A pause came, and I heard clanking in the background, repetitive and echoey, like the ping of a baseball against an aluminum bat. I didn’t know what this meant. I imagined a college baseball player, tall and sinewy, sneaking away from batting practice long enough to call. Twelve seconds of ambient sound filled the line.
He said: “You should call me sometime. My number hasn’t changed.”
Our small Brooklyn house was a duplex. I walked upstairs, phone still pressed to my ear, to begin my day; my desk was there, mostly due to the unspoiled light that poured in through the large bedroom windows. I spent mornings and afternoons writing and storyboarding and staring out those windows at the South Slope. The neighborhood was middle class and largely Hispanic, a stark contrast to those living in the multi-million-dollar brownstones just a few blocks north. The buildings and residents hadn’t changed in years, leaving the area one of the few pockets of the city, at the time, to remain. I sat down and turned on my computer. The neighbor’s children, Edgar and Lola, played hide-and-seek on 21st Street. I liked that little had changed over the years.
For a moment, I wanted to call him back. I wanted to know who he was. Who he wanted on the other end. What would happen when the voice on the voicemail was gone? Would he be gone? If I deleted the message, switched off the phone, would the man on the other end cease to exist?
He said: “This—I wish I knew the right things to say, but I don’t. I miss you, Samantha. I still love you and I need to see you. Please.”
The click of the line going dead, of the message ending, rattled in my head, like everything else had been scooped out. I folded the cell phone and placed it on the desk. Things that were supposed to be permanent felt inconstant. The children outside laughed and called out words in Spanish that I could not understand. I opened a blank document and hoped writing would be a distraction. The screen was white and I felt sick. Downstairs, at the back door, Charlie scratched to go outside. The tabby meowed. They carried on in this way, teasing one another.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
I was raised in a unique place. My hometown of El Paso, Texas is a city that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border and bottlenecks in between the Franklin Mountains and the Juarez Mountains. This is a land marked by dichotomies. Throughout my teens the most stark of these dichotomies came in the fact that El Paso was one of the top five safest cities with a population over 500,00 in the country, while across the Rio Grande (which, that far south, is so dry most of the year it’s hardly accurate to call it Rio much less Grande) Juarez was frequently referred to as the most dangerous city in the world outside of war zones.
When this stigma first started becoming commonplace, Juarez showed few signs of being the most dangerous city in the world to those who didn’t know what they were looking for. My own family made the five-minute trip from our home into Juarez fairly frequently. In high school the recreational aspects of Juarez became more appealing and I began to venture across the river on my own. Wandering the dim-lit taverns of ‘the strip’ and drinking among the same bars as the likes of Hemmingway and the Grateful Dead gave me a sense of independence I carry to this day.
Still though, as I began to learn more and more about differences between populations in classes like Geography and World History, and words like ‘third-world country’ started becoming active pieces of my vocabulary – I was still no closer to understanding what about Juarez made it ‘third-world’ as apposed to the ‘developed world’ that lay a stone’s-throw away in El Paso. It was not until later in my high-school career that the harsh realities of just how different El Paso and Juarez are would catch up with me.
My junior year of high school brought about the opportunity to visit Juarez in a different capacity than I was used to. Members of several student groups had fundraised enough to allow for 25 students to participate in ‘Casas por Cristo’ – a non-profit organization based in Juarez that builds small, two-room homes for families in need living in the shanty-towns, called Anapara, at the outskirts of town. My mother’s demand that I start volunteering still fresh in my mind, I signed up reluctantly.
The next day, a five minute drive from school and few short feet into Juarez our van made a sharp turn onto dirt roads that made our journey more like a ride on a bronco in the rodeo than a twelve-passenger van. Twenty minutes later we arrived at an empty lot in between two houses composed almost entirely of wood scraps and cardboard. Looking around I found myself lost despite the fact that my neighborhood was in clear sight on the horizon to the north.
Over the next three days my classmates and I poured concrete, built a house-frame, installed pluming, put up dry-wall, insulated, and even had time to decorate the new house of the seven-person (and soon to be eight-person) Gonzalez family. I watched in amazement as a young couple raising three children, a nephew, and a younger sister arrived on a foggy morning, tears streaming down their faces, to see their new home.
My fears that what we had built would certainly be inadequate for such a big family were washed away as I received heart-felt hugs accompanied by sobs of gratitude from each and every member of the family. These sentiments were reinforced as our trip-leader, Juan, revealed the application of the family to the ‘Casas por Cristo’ program, which included a snapshot of their previous, tiny, one-room house, scrapped together with found objects.
It was a different person riding back towards the comforts of the ‘developed world’ in my body that afternoon. I nearly chuckled in disbelief as I thought about the fact that as a child, on my way to school, I had driven a mere 100 yards from the site where we built the Gonzalez’ home. Despite my proximity to the desolate living conditions of Anapara on a dailiy basis it took the kind of experiences that ‘casas por cristo’ offered me to change the way I thought about the differences between El Paso and Juarez.
The disparities between these two cities suddenly hit me square in face, and there was no place to hide. I became uniquely aware of the ridiculous fact that two-million plus dollar homes stood a mere half of a mile from the Gonzalez’. This new knowledge changed my trajectory in life. I could no longer ignore my privilege. This change was subtle at first, a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that let me know: athletics, friends, and grades weren’t enough anymore. I ignored this voice inside my head at first, continuing my plans to swim in college and focus on myself rather than others. I chose Kalamazoo College accordingly, the small up-and-coming division-three swimming program and when I arrived at school proceeded to focus on swimming above all priorities in my life.
As I looked around at the opportunities available to me, though, I was not satisfied with the physical challenge that swimming provided me. I wanted to be challenged emotionally, intellectually, and most of all, in a way that used my position of privilege to benefit others. Last spring, my former teammates placed forth at nationals – the best finish the men’s swimming program has ever seen – without me. I looked on, content with my decision to quit the team.
What kept me content were the memories of my experience four years ago. The tears of the Gonzalez family, the tight squeezes of the children who had running water for the first time in the life, and the smiling faces of the neighborhood children who we played soccer with at lunchtime all continue to eternalize the strength of the grave discrepancies in wealth and opportunity that mark this country and this world. Those memories will never leave me and neither will my desire to level the playing field and to expose those discrepancies to anyone who will listen.
When this stigma first started becoming commonplace, Juarez showed few signs of being the most dangerous city in the world to those who didn’t know what they were looking for. My own family made the five-minute trip from our home into Juarez fairly frequently. In high school the recreational aspects of Juarez became more appealing and I began to venture across the river on my own. Wandering the dim-lit taverns of ‘the strip’ and drinking among the same bars as the likes of Hemmingway and the Grateful Dead gave me a sense of independence I carry to this day.
Still though, as I began to learn more and more about differences between populations in classes like Geography and World History, and words like ‘third-world country’ started becoming active pieces of my vocabulary – I was still no closer to understanding what about Juarez made it ‘third-world’ as apposed to the ‘developed world’ that lay a stone’s-throw away in El Paso. It was not until later in my high-school career that the harsh realities of just how different El Paso and Juarez are would catch up with me.
My junior year of high school brought about the opportunity to visit Juarez in a different capacity than I was used to. Members of several student groups had fundraised enough to allow for 25 students to participate in ‘Casas por Cristo’ – a non-profit organization based in Juarez that builds small, two-room homes for families in need living in the shanty-towns, called Anapara, at the outskirts of town. My mother’s demand that I start volunteering still fresh in my mind, I signed up reluctantly.
The next day, a five minute drive from school and few short feet into Juarez our van made a sharp turn onto dirt roads that made our journey more like a ride on a bronco in the rodeo than a twelve-passenger van. Twenty minutes later we arrived at an empty lot in between two houses composed almost entirely of wood scraps and cardboard. Looking around I found myself lost despite the fact that my neighborhood was in clear sight on the horizon to the north.
Over the next three days my classmates and I poured concrete, built a house-frame, installed pluming, put up dry-wall, insulated, and even had time to decorate the new house of the seven-person (and soon to be eight-person) Gonzalez family. I watched in amazement as a young couple raising three children, a nephew, and a younger sister arrived on a foggy morning, tears streaming down their faces, to see their new home.
My fears that what we had built would certainly be inadequate for such a big family were washed away as I received heart-felt hugs accompanied by sobs of gratitude from each and every member of the family. These sentiments were reinforced as our trip-leader, Juan, revealed the application of the family to the ‘Casas por Cristo’ program, which included a snapshot of their previous, tiny, one-room house, scrapped together with found objects.
It was a different person riding back towards the comforts of the ‘developed world’ in my body that afternoon. I nearly chuckled in disbelief as I thought about the fact that as a child, on my way to school, I had driven a mere 100 yards from the site where we built the Gonzalez’ home. Despite my proximity to the desolate living conditions of Anapara on a dailiy basis it took the kind of experiences that ‘casas por cristo’ offered me to change the way I thought about the differences between El Paso and Juarez.
The disparities between these two cities suddenly hit me square in face, and there was no place to hide. I became uniquely aware of the ridiculous fact that two-million plus dollar homes stood a mere half of a mile from the Gonzalez’. This new knowledge changed my trajectory in life. I could no longer ignore my privilege. This change was subtle at first, a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that let me know: athletics, friends, and grades weren’t enough anymore. I ignored this voice inside my head at first, continuing my plans to swim in college and focus on myself rather than others. I chose Kalamazoo College accordingly, the small up-and-coming division-three swimming program and when I arrived at school proceeded to focus on swimming above all priorities in my life.
As I looked around at the opportunities available to me, though, I was not satisfied with the physical challenge that swimming provided me. I wanted to be challenged emotionally, intellectually, and most of all, in a way that used my position of privilege to benefit others. Last spring, my former teammates placed forth at nationals – the best finish the men’s swimming program has ever seen – without me. I looked on, content with my decision to quit the team.
What kept me content were the memories of my experience four years ago. The tears of the Gonzalez family, the tight squeezes of the children who had running water for the first time in the life, and the smiling faces of the neighborhood children who we played soccer with at lunchtime all continue to eternalize the strength of the grave discrepancies in wealth and opportunity that mark this country and this world. Those memories will never leave me and neither will my desire to level the playing field and to expose those discrepancies to anyone who will listen.
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