Beasley Hall Happenings

#1: Sister Helen Prejean, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness of The Death Penalty, will speak at Brite Divinity School’s Fifth Roman Catholic Lecture on Tuesday, March 2, at 7 p.m. in Ed Landreth Auditorium. Topic is “The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.”

#2:This course will explore the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4 from different critical perspectives, ranging from the Lord’s Prayer’s earliest version, history on how the Prayer came about, and its literary background to the more contemporary perspectives relating to social justice and liberation reflected in it. Happens 2/27 from 8:30 a.m. to 1:45 p.m.

New Profile- Dr. Andria Timmer, Anthropologist/ Personal Profile Analysis

Ultimately, I had a rather difficult time of identifying a unifying theme for this profile on Dr. Timmer. She was very interesting and very accommodating and nice to interview. I hope I wasn't too corny or cliche coming up with her being a humanitarian because, although it sounds overdone and elementary- it really it who she is.

I tried multiple times to contact her former colleague and career inspiration Dr. John Hartigan, an anthropology professor at UT, but he never responded to my attempts. It's a shame, really, because I have no doubt he would've been a great source and very informative.

Dr. Timmer was rather guarded on some details concerning her family and she effectively sidestepped a few of my questions, which greatly piqued my interest, but I didn't want to lose the interview or control over it, so I kind of let her go. In hindsight, I guess I wish I would've pressed her a bit harder for the answers to those personal questions. I would've loved to have heard more about her young son and about the chance meeting between she and her husband.

Overall, I felt I was very true to Timmer and her personality and describing her love for her profession.

Bookstore Trip

I discovered so many previously unknown things on my bookstore trip, it's embarrassing.

While flipping through the "sell to" bible, a.k.a, the 2009 Writer's Market, I probably wrote down 15 magazines I was interested in sending content to.

Just a few:

'Broken Pencil Magazine': an alternative, "conformity-challenging," angsty little zine,

'Briarpatch': a social justice/peace-centered zine,

'Ignite Your Faith': a Christian magazine geared toward high school kids looking for Christian colleges,

'Hope for Women': a Christian zine concerning personal inspirational features and stories,

'Skirt': an alternative women's fashion/feminist-leaning zine.

And many of them have more than "$" by their titles, denoting the fact that they pay well. YAY!

I also encountered a few books about writing that I'd honestly love to own and added to my 'buy' list.

1.) "On Writing Well," by Zinsser

2.) "Make a Scene," by Rosenfeld

3.) "Artful Editor," by Bell

4.) "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life," by Lamott

5.) "On Writing," by Stephen King (Stephen King- is it scary?! Haha, yeah I know...)

6.) "The Interviewer's Handbook: A Guerilla Guide: Techniques & Tactics for Reporters and Writers," by Brady

7.) "International Journalist: Issues and Dangers of Global Reporting," by Herbert

8.) "Writing Narrative Journalism : Inside the Writer's Mind," by Bloom

9.) "The Journalist's Craft : A Guide to Writing Better Stories," by Jackson

10.) "How to Write for Magazines: Consumers, Trade and Web," by Harrison

Psychic Savanna: A Profile

Psychic Savanna Feature.docx

Analysis of Psychic Profile

I feel like lack of time (or time management) was my biggest obstacle in writing this profile. My subject was extremely interesting- there's really no way to make a psychic uninteresting- but I feel that if I would've planned better, I would've been better able to prepare myself for the abnormality of the woman herself and found someone else to talk to about her. Her manner in general was very intimidating and I felt myself fall victim to her persona of "all-knowing" psychic. I really liked the descriptive passages in the profile and felt I was very accurate in that respect. Also, I liked the way my descriptions of Savanna herself wrote themselves out; they were accurate and almost under-embellished in many respects; I wanted to capture the woman, herself, in her home, her place of business, and in her current state.

My biggest regret is not getting another source to talk about Savanna with. I know I'm going to be dinged for that in my grade, but I deserve it. My only chance came with the other client that came in to see Savanna, but she spoke nothing but Spanish and my conversational Spanish is very sub-par; there was no way I could've interviewed her about her psychic meetings and experiences with Savanna. I should have fleshed someone out to talk to, but I didn't plan accordingly for that situation.

Overall, I feel okay about my work. I think it might be a bit news story- feeling in its set-up and maybe a bit of its reading and that's unfortunately a consequence of me writing so many news stories lately. Hopefully as the class goes on and I gain more experience I can capture the idea and the essence of writing feature stories with descriptive, non-newsy, well-crafted story lines and appropriate quotes.