The Flower District

My time is almost up in New York, and all of a sudden, everything feels more real. I can attribute the perspective shift to my new responsibilities that more closely resemble my ambitions of a future in radio journalism, or living constantly submerged in the news world, or maybe it’s the sobering headlines that comprise that world.

I feel less motivated to explore the city, and find myself watching Al Jazeera with religious observance and listening to hours of radio news commentary every day. My New York Times email alert just popped to my desktop, informing me that a third explosion has rocked the weakest Japanese nuclear plant, and emergency workers have evacuated the site.

I have stayed in the newsroom since International Working Women’s day, and I’m honored with the caliber of projects on which I get to work. One of my proudest moments here was rushing off the 2 express train and up the stairs to my FM radio, and tuning in with my housemates just in time for the distinguished British news director to introduce “Elaine Eze-kell’s” news hour contribution. I’ve produced everything from a St. Patrick’s Day piece about green beer to an interview with a seismologist, just hours after the Japanese earthquake struck. Now I’m working on a one-hour news special that will air the day I leave.

Last Friday, I accompanied by boss to a panel discussion at Alwan for the Arts with Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and Ahdaf Soueif, an Egyptian novelist fresh from Tahrir Square. About one hundred people crammed into the room that only had capacity for half that. For the next two hours, Amy teased delicate vignettes out of Ms. Soueif about the makeshift protest camp in Egypt’s capitol. She spoke about strangers teaching one another how to combat the sear of tear gas by breathing through cloths dipped in vinegar and rinsing their eyes in Pepsi. After the talk, my boss introduced me to Amy, in his exuberant manner, telling her that I wanted to take her job someday. Amy and I both cringed and shook hands.

Although I’ve been working diligently at the station from the beginning, I viewed my internship as a sort of goofy experiment. In January and February, I would go work my butt off on Wall Street, then come back to Chelsea in the evenings and forget the internship until my alarm dragged me out of bed the next morning.Now I feel consumed by the politics, news, responsibilities and upcoming events of the station. I don’t consider myself an emotional person, but grief for the suffering finds its way into my consciousness at all times. It’s a glimpse of an exciting and dynamic life, but perhaps it’s a life that I can’t stomach.

There are many moments of relief. I just finished a two-hour phone conversation with my mother, an Ann Arbor teacher, about the future of education. She reminded me that America has faced moments of crisis before and they always pass as the pendulum swings, and instructed me to go literally smell the hyacinths in 28^th Street’s flower district. I take pleasure in the four mile walk home from work along the Battery Park, The Hudson River and The Chelsea Piers. Corny as it sounds, the statue of liberty shrouded in the evening’s atmosphere gives me goose bumps.

You Can Take The Girl Out Of The Midwest

Today was a day where I felt out of my comfort zone, and then said to myself, "Hey! That's great that you're out of your comfort zone!" but then I still felt uncomfortable. Work has been somewhat frustrating lately because after the fund drive, I am no longer a money-attracting powerhouse intern, but now fall back among the attention-needy masses. I came here to learn about news production, but it seems that it's not enough just to want to help out; in order to be respected or paid attention to, I need to be self sufficient or make a lot of noise. My boss spends his day greasing squeaky wheels, while I try to model discretion, which isn't a great way to learn things.

... I started that entry two nights ago in a bad mood, and waited for a better mood to come along after trying to fix my frustration at work. Turns out, yesterday was International Working Women's Day, and by some puzzling logic, men aren't allowed in the building.

My wishes were quietly answered, and I slid into the newsroom with the other female producers as my boss was out of the building. Right away, they put me to work, interviewing people for that night's newscast. I couldn't believe the ease of compiling stories, writing copy to accompany them and editing .wav files for broadcast. It was a total thrill. I said to one woman that I couldn't believe I had spent so much time behind the scenes, working with the fund drive, when my real niche was here. She answered me that my boss had been hogging me for the extra help.

It's funny how you can't realize the components in a system from within. Had I known that this was the situation, I would have wiggled my way into the news room weeks ago. I drafted up questions, contacted assistants to arrange interviews, researched my subjects, recorded interviews and edited them for three pieces in the news hour. I spoke with the founders of Right Rides, 350.org and the Ms. Foundation to celebrate women's day, as the Egyptian women took to the streets on the ever blaring news television above the computers.

Another bonus to add to the awesome day was I found out I got into the Thailand study abroad program at Kalamazoo (as though I wasn't already spoiled enough).

The weather's transitioning to spring and the city feels like it's waking up. I'm sitting at a raucous cafe in Chelsea where I made the very Midwestern mistake of placing my sunglasses on an empty table to mark my territory as I waited in line. Naturally, when I arrived back to the table with my coffee, the glasses were gone, and someone else had set up shop.

Another yokel moment was explaining to my boss that I thought bickering and standing up for yourself against people gossiping behind your back was a waste of time, and that ones work speaks for itself. He told me to find a new career pathway.

One cultural difference I notice here is a lot more people having ego battles in day-to-day life. Either in the workplace, or overheard, I listen to so many people partaking in meaningless dialogues where their main prerogative seems to be preventing their counterpart finding any flaw or ignorance within them. This makes for insubstantial conversations that make me want to withdraw from speaking, lest I end up in some passive aggressive battle over indie music I didn't sign up for.

I love the black and white differences between New York "time is money" and Costa Rican "pura vida" culture. Living in the two places have given me so much perspective on human behavior, and I can't wait to see what Thailand has in store.

***Listen to my contributing interview on today's news hour at 17:55.***

The Quietest Place in Manhattan

I missed last week’s entry in the whirlwind of my teacher, parents and friends visiting, so allow me to catch up.

The politics of the moment are braiding into an extraordinary narrative. I interviewed with my boss last December, the same week that Julian Assange published the largest batch of Wikileak cables, and now everywhere from the Middle East to the Midwest in engulfed in political upheaval.

My morning routine of waking up at 7 to catch Democracy Now’s news hour is an energizing motivator for the day’s work. I can imagine the thrill of someday waking with the satisfaction of knowing that I helped unfurl the day’s headlines for the sleepy-eyed, coffee-sipping nation.

This morning, a man from the NYPD security force gave our floor a twenty-minute lecture on “non-fire emergencies.” Listening to him list off evacuation policies suddenly made the tenth floor seem a lot high than I had previously perceived it. I cannot imagine what this city must have been on September 11, 2001.

The office has stopped serving as a professional environment, and has become social one where a lot of work happens to be accomplished. Something about my colleagues wearing sweatpants to work makes it difficult to maintain the icy wall of protocol. Instead, the station is a warm, although at times high-stress, workplace. There’s a level of political and social commonality that is implicit with a desire to work or volunteer at the station. The water cooler conversations range from the hidden powers of the mind to Egypt’s future concerning the Muslim Brotherhood with a curious lack of distinction in tone.

I’m quite fond of the disc jockeys, volunteers, editors, and managers. I have reason to believe the feeling is mutual, as a man at work who affectionately calls me jewel handed me a two-page poem ("U just keep on jewelling us up/pouring journalistic goodies N2 our cup"). I hope, although doubt, that the kindness and good humor at the station are reflective of the entire field of journalism.

My parents were invited up to see the office last Thursday. I was working in my boss’ office when I heard him say, “Hey, those two white people must be your folks.” It was strange to see them though the window, like Harry Potter paper dolls accidentally placed on a Lion King background. At any rate, I was very happy to see them, and we all went out to lunch with my boss who gave me the afternoon and Friday off. Bingo!

My parents and I had a power-tourist weekend of food, drink, museums, galleries, sightseeing and plays. A weekend here without financial restriction is very different from a normal weekend.

The highlight among the flurry of stimulation was visiting The Earth Room in SoHo, where my uncle’s childhood friend curates a studio filled with three feet of rich soil that covers all but an observation hall. The exhibit has existed for over thirty years, making it a rare token of stability in a neighborhood that reinvents itself every six months. I expected pretense, but found peace in the room that smelled of life. Bill, the curator, had a profound sense of well being that stemmed from living in harmony with this mass of dirt that he has maintained over the last two decades by raking and watering once a week. He said the soil’s acoustic properties make The Earth Room the quietest place in Manhattan.

The Age of Ophiuchus

Today I woke up early, walked to work while squinting down the sunrise, pondered the enormity of the city of New York, performed my internly duties, schlepped home on the 2 train after sundown and went to a concert in SoHo. Today was very similar to every other day here.

It’s been getting easier and easier to melt into the expressionless masses, but this weekend, my friends Ryan and Gus came to see the city, and they helped refresh my perspective. I see so many astounding things in a day here, that I schellack myself with a layer of tedium so that I don’t have a stroke every time I step outside.

We went to Chinatown where thousands of people thronged in ribbon-clogged streets around dragon floats and acrobats to celebrate the New Year. A man tied a live, five pound carp to a stick to which he also strung kale and red envelopes filled with money and wagged it over the beer-guzzling ceremonial fighters. I took cues from my friends’ mien and reminded myself to let in the cool things.

At two that night, a man followed us with a guitar on the vacant L train, plunking and howling “Come Together.” He was the first person I’ve given any money to. It felt good.

At work, I drafted up a tee-shirt design for the Al Jazeera partnership and their special combined Egypt coverage. The day Mubarak’s regime fell, my boss took me uptown on an adventure to seek evidence of the crumbling world. When we didn’t find any at the 110^th Street Egyptian Embassy, we went out for sushi in Brooklyn instead.

I forgot how much I enjoy drawing, and the office seemed happy with the shirt design. It feels good to help out and exceed their expectations by doing little side projects like organizing disheveled CD storage areas or running the phone pledge room, but I hope I’m not just training to become a great intern.

Sometimes I tell myself to be more assertive about wanting to get my hands dirty with the production side of the station, but it’s difficult when I’m already working so hard for so many hours and everyone seems so appreciative of my help. The general manager is always talking about hiring me out of college, and today my boss even suggested that I take part in a promotional photo shoot for the station as the “face of the future.”

Meanwhile the GOP released their version of the budget, which includes defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Try as we might, I doubt places like this can stay afloat with only the support of Viewers Like You. This prospect, combined with my own insecurities over my potential in the field, paints an uncertain horizon before my daily thrill of waking up and pretending to have the job I want.

At any rate, as the best fund drive pitchers teach me with every boisterous exclamation, self-doubt won’t get me anywhere. I’ll keep faith that one day, I might actually get to face the future as “the face of the future.”

The Only Left, Left

I’m already one third through with my time here. That seems impossible. Everyone else in my program is staying here through the end of the school year- roughly twice as long as I am- so I try to double their anxiety over clobbering their New York bucket lists. My main focus and majority of my time is spent at work from sunrise to sunset, but instead of kicking back with my Netflix and cat as I do at home, as soon as I push through the door at work, my stress revolves out and my plans for the night replace them.

The catch is that I always have to leave for work again in eleven hours, so there’s a lot of pressure on making sure I choose the very most fun thing to do that night. This leads to a significant amount of multi-tasking. For example, right now I’m writing this as I watch the Super Bowl (pausing for commercial breaks, of course).

Work is offering me a lot more responsibility than I anticipated. I work 45 hours a week, which I just realized is the longest time I’ve spent anywhere in the context of work. So far, I must say that it beats the heck out of waitressing. Less tips, more humanity.

The manager at the station told me that organizing the staff is near impossible because it’s an office filled with anarchists and everyone refuses to conform to traditional workplace norms. There’s a poster I’m fond of by the coffee machine that says, “Pacifists need a clean kitchen just like everyone else.” This element of the station carves out demand for the type of intern who compulsively cleans offices because she can’t stand staring at the coffee sloshed over the walls and three year old review copies of CDs with no cover art.

Other than writing and recording several promos that I hear broadcast daily in the station, the most exciting thing I’ve done was write a press release for Al Jazeera’s partnership with the station. The Egypt and Tunisia uprisings have drawn more attention to the under-broadcast news network, which my station serendipitously began streaming back in December.

As I google it now, the press release was picked up by seven news blogs in the last two days. It’s a powerful feeling to see your own words copied, pasted, and distributed without anyone confirming the details. It emphasizes the importance of triple checking your facts; a low grade seems so trivial compared to the curdling realization of a gaff in print.

As my housemate said, as far as she can tell, a lot of professional jobs in the media are amalgams of thousands of little tasks, and your success is based on your track record. So far so good, although I did accidentally post my boss’ cell phone number to one of the press releases and now he thinks he’ll have to change his number.

There are moments of frantic improvisation in the office, but the final product always streams from the transmitter smooth as glass. I wonder if all news outlets are so manic within. I’d like to see Terry Gross uprooting her desk over the sound quality on her John Waters interview.

Friday night is always a cathartic end to the workweek. My (short) friend Molly and I decided go to an Irish pub after work called Molly Wee. (That’s how big this city is; I’m still looking for a bar called Elaine Directionless.) Everyone at the Wee was from Ireland, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself by ordering some Merkin drink, so Molly texted her Irish bartender friend for a suggestion. He responded with an “Irish Kiss” which not only embarrassed me, when the barkeep got the wrong idea, but also landed me with an eight dollar green and syrupy concoction and a syrupy recollection of the rest of the night. Next time, I’ll stick to a Shirley Temple.

Merrily, Merrily

Week two’s over in New York, and the most reoccurring thought I’ve had is “I’ve been duped.” After a fall quarter of waking up, toiling away on homework before class, wolfing down some rice and beans after class in order to get straight to homework so that I can fall asleep on time to finish my homework the next morning, I feel like I’ve emerged from a stinky subway platform, and into a proverbial city of real life.

It occurred to me that my affinity for this city is equal parts lack of homework and legitimate love for New York itself. Since I last wrote, I sat in on a meeting with former British MP and Scottish Parliament hopeful, “Gorgeous” George Galloway, saw the Budapest Festival Orchestra play the Lincoln Center, ate raw octopus wasabi ceviche, attended a warrior paint party, went to an experimental music and dance performance, took the metro to Coney Island to eat Uighur food, went on an epic thrift store excursion, met the only reporter present at the MLK shooting, read the New York Times cover to cover, and walked from Wall Street to Chelsea all while working 40 hours a week… because I didn’t have homework! It is glorious. I realize that expounding over 10 pages about Hawtorne’s bacchic symbolism in Maypole of Merry Mount might help me develop my… wait, what?! I don’t regret going to school, but I am less distressed and more adrenalized for graduation with every day I spend devouring this city.

When I first arrived, I found New York impossible to grasp. Even while thousands of feet above the lights in an airplane, you can never look upon the city as a whole. This intimidated me at first, but its vastness is accepted rather than conquered by tourists and locals alike. Ironically, it takes less cognitive effort to navigate the city on the serpentine tangle of metro lines than day-to-day transportation in Ann Arbor. I find I can slip on my headphones, space out and even sing along, reveling in my anonymity. I am one in eight million gliding with the current and no one gives a damn. As soon as I assumed this nonchalance, people started asking me for directions daily.

Home, by contrast, is a six-story den filled with warm light and conversation [pictured]. Kids in the program have internships ranging from ballet administration, to sports journalism at The Daily News, to working for Saturday Night Live’s music department. Everyone comes home tired and filled with funny stories. Apparently Nicki Minaj rolls very deep, and Peewee Herman invokes intense consternation upon contact.

I have yet to meet any major celebrities on the job with Pacifica, but it’s exhilarating all the same. Today, the doorman called me “Zeke,” and I felt like a Wall Street fat cat riding the high-speed elevator up to the tenth floor. The fund drive starts tomorrow, so we’re nearing the home stretch on collecting counter-culture premiums to offer listeners. That has taken up most of my time over the last couple weeks, and the strange fruits of my labor are arriving in boxes labeled “Curing Cancer from the Inside Out” and “The Mafia Principle of Global Hegemony.”

Tomorrow, the phone lines open for what is sure to be nine hours of hardcore fund driving (whatever that might entail), but for now, I’m off with a couple housemates to sip tea and stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge.

First Week, First Impressions

It's been two weekends and one workweek since I began my New York Arts Program internship. I’m living in a partitioned townhouse smack in the middle of Chelsea with 30 other art interns from the Midwest and Texas. My roommate from K, Emily Townsend, and I are rooming together again. We managed to squeeze our belongings from our old, spacious room at K into a closet with barely enough space for our single bunk bed. With the tapestries on the wall, familiar books on the shelves and goofy conversations, it feels like a hornet hive tucked into the heart of the world’s busiest city. Our front stoop view of Times Square makes Trowbridge’s vista of the library or downtown Kalamazoo seem like doll houses. The drag racing, drunken fighting and sirens never sleep, but with our curtains drawn and guitar plucking, we do.

I have come to appreciate the tameness of the city of Kalamazoo since my arrival, as I realized how little class work I could justify completing in this electric environment. Last weekend, some housemates and I bought tickets to a “surprise guest” comedy show two blocks away. After squeezing into the standing room area, Aziz Ansari from Parks And Recreation strolled onstage and explained he would be playing Carnegie Hall the next night and wanted to fine tune his act. While walking home and recovering from an hour of snorting laughter, we ran into Ben Stiller’s film crew shooting a movie one block from our front door.

I started work on Wednesday at a station that broadcasts throughout the tri-state area. The office overlooks the East River. The location in the heart of corporate America is ironic for the self-described hippies at the station, but walking into the studio is walking into a world apart. Although I’m only just getting to know my colleagues, they all seem engaging and diverse. My official boss, the station’s program director, is a former stand-up comedian with a long ponytail who swears at his emails.

February is fund drive month at the station. For now, my daily responsibilities include tracking down materials to offer donors as “premiums.” It’s the simple things, like contacting publishers at the behest of my boss that inform me about what a future in public radio journalism might hold.

Each day, my workload builds as I attempt to reverse my Midwestern reputation (not that I’m actually sure how that characterizes me; all I know is the inflection people use while they say, Oh, so you’re from Mi-chi-gan…)

On Thursday, I wrote two promotional spots (one in Spanish) to be read on air. Although my dyslexia and air-fright prevent me from desiring a career as a live host, I have to admit it’s exhilarating to imagine my voice enveloping New York from the station’s signal atop the Empire State Building.

My boss is a cool-headed director and I enjoy compiling information onto spreadsheets in his office while watching the radio world rotate through his door. So far, I can tell that each day, there are fires to put out, and each day something interesting falls into your lap. In only three workdays, two hosts couldn’t come into the station for their shifts, they squeezed a ten-person funk band into the tiny studio for a live performance, and while I was on my way to the Democracy Now! studio, I found out the entire crew had shipped off to Sundance with only a moment’s notice, all of which led to raucous moments of improvisation.

Above the clamor in the office, I can always hear the station’s output, which gives me this meta experience of watching the future product assembling while enjoying the manufactured good, as though from the future. Tune in online and listen with me.