Nonogirl Radio

Quick Reflections on 2007

The end of the year is always a special time for me, a time to reflect back on the people who have shared with me and the things I've learned. This year's end brought even more reflection as I thought long and hard about what I've accomplished in my media work over the past 12 years in San Francisco and where I want to take these skills and how I want to develop.

Enough of my cheap rent, day job slacking. Now is the time for me to step up. I don't know anything about this guy I'm quoting, but I like his sentiment:

"Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-and melting like a snowflake...”
-- Francis Bacon, Sr.

Best wishes in the new year, everyone!

Sparkles

Here are some of the year's highlights:
Proyecto Linguistco Quetzalteco de Español, Ichiban Kan, Olafur Eliasson, dates wrapped in bacon, dinners at Atsushi's, Kopkind Retreat and articulate lefties, Peabody, Na Kamalei, My Own Private Belly Dancer, Haile Maile General Store, Bagan, Favianna Rodriguez, Lincoln Cushing, San Francisco Print Collective, Zaccho Dance Theatre, Facebook, Jack Davis, Day of the Dead, Manilatown Heritage Foundation, Bill Sorro, Eric Quezada, Paradise in Ashes, Sonoma wedding, Auntie Janet moving to the Bay Area, Shanghai Dumpling King, Lance Hahn, police barging through my hallway at 7 a.m., Jack Straw, Dick Brooks, KALW, reflecting back on my early radio pieces, independent radio resoures, new favorite massage place (it’s a secret!)

Quick Reflections on 2007

The end of the year is always a special time for me, a time to reflect back on the people who have shared with me and the things I've learned. This year's end brought even more reflection as I thought long and hard about what I've accomplished in my media work over the past 12 years in San Francisco and where I want to take these skills and how I want to develop.

Enough of my cheap rent, day job slacking. Now is the time for me to step up. I don't know anything about this guy I'm quoting, but I like his sentiment:

"Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-and melting like a snowflake...”
-- Francis Bacon, Sr.

Best wishes in the new year, everyone!

Here are some of the year's highlights:

Proyecto Linguistco Quetzalteco de Español, Ichiban Kan, Olafur Eliasson, dates wrapped in bacon, dinners at Atsushi's, Kopkind Retreat and articulate lefties, Peabody, Na Kamalei, My Own Private Belly Dancer, Haile Maile General Store, Bagan, Favianna Rodriguez, Lincoln Cushing, San Francisco Print Collective, Zaccho Dance Theatre, Facebook, Jack Davis, Day of the Dead, Manilatown Heritage Foundation, Bill Sorro, Eric Quezada, Paradise in Ashes, Sonoma wedding, Auntie Janet moving to the Bay Area, Shanghai Dumpling King, Lance Hahn, police barging through my hallway at 7 a.m., Jack Straw, Dick Brooks, KALW, reflecting back on my early radio pieces, independent radio resoures, new favorite massage place (it’s a secret!)

Devil's Highway

The Devil's Highway: A True Story

Luis Alberto Urrea

I'm trying to figure out the best way for me to remember what I learn from the reading I do. I often only hold on to the larger idea of the book and forget the details that help make the argument. So here it goes online:

The Devil's Highway is a deadly stretch of desert that many migrants take to enter the US. Urrea takes us back in time to remind us that this migration northward started with the Europeans as they settled Mexico. Then he adds:

"The first illegal immigrants to be hunted down in Desolation [the horrible desert the book covers] by the earliest form of the Border Patrol were Chinese. In the 1880s, American railroad barons needed cheap skilled labor to help 'tame our continent.' Mexico's Chinese hordes could be hired for cheap, yet they could earn more in the United Statees than in Mexico, even at cut rates. Jobs opened, word went out, the illegals came north." p. 8

Writing is Not a Contest

I'm reading William Zinsser's writing bible, On Writing Well and while I'm picking up pointers on how to be a better writer, this short segment on following my own pace offers relevant advice in my post-application phase.

I cleared my plate several months ago to focus solely on my application to journalism school. At other points in my life, I didn't produce for new outlets because I took on a part-time job at a public radio station. Prior to that, I had a full-time day job and worked on an award-winning documentary series.

I can make a list of reasons I haven't filed for various radio outlets but the bottom line is I just haven't filed with them. And as I hear that people who started working in radio after me are diving head first into the public radio system, I start to feel like a tortoise. And while I told myself I'd keep December project-free, I start to feel like I need to start pitching to new outlets immediately!

Zinsser sends this gentle reminder:

Every writer [or journalist] is starting from a different point and is bound for a different destination...Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Ultimately your only contest is with yourself.

Weekly Writing

My friend Pauline just filed a story for the SF Bay Guardian about the affordable housing crisis in San Francisco and while reading it, I tried to pay attention to structure.

While the four-minute long radio pieces I work on are generally made up of three characters at most and maybe three scenes, this story has many characters (though the most prominent is the Luz Moran, the person the story opens with. She quotes someone fighting eviction, someone from the Tenants Union, the US Census, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, a broker at the TIC Group, and a TIC owner. 

She takes us to a tenants apartment, the Tenants Union office, a "spacious" TIC group's office, and a wonderful scene at a neighborhood protest.

As I try to read more, I'll be paying attention to style and structure, so stay tuned.

Weekly Writing

My friend Pauline just filed a story for the SF Bay Guardian about the affordable housing crisis in San Francisco and while reading it, I tried to pay attention to structure.

While the four-minute long radio pieces I work on are generally made up of three characters at most and maybe three scenes, this story has many characters (though the most prominent is the Luz Moran, the person the story opens with. She quotes someone fighting eviction, someone from the Tenants Union, the US Census, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, a broker at the TIC Group, and a TIC owner.

She takes us to a tenants apartment, the Tenants Union office, a "spacious" TIC group's office, and a wonderful scene at a neighborhood protest.

As I try to read more, I'll be paying attention to style and structure, so stay tuned.

Lance Hahn Memorial

Lance2k

Photo by Dave Deluxe
After the Joe Strummer movie, I strolled a couple blocks down to the Hemlock to join people in saying goodbye to Lance Hahn.

People posted old band fliers and photos, made a zine, and converted old show footage to screen. Slowly people took stage to tell Lance stories. The stories were mostly about Lance walking through the Mission, holding philosophical talks with folks, and the commitment he gave to build the punk scene. Lance welcomed young bands to a J-Church bill, was the first employee of Revolver, and used his wide network of friends to help touring groupies find a place to crash.

Lance embodied punk rock: not the leather-clad punk with mohawk and piercings (though he did have a mohawk once), but the punk rock made out of the do it yourself spirit, the punk rock that build a community of creative people, the punk rock that connected people through a music of rebellion.

I saw folks who I first connected with in the '90s when I went to shows all the time: one of the guys in my favorite band, a zinester whose copies I ran for free, and a zine buyer from Epicenter turned cheese buyer at a local co-op. It was a good reminder of why I loved punk rock, the community I bordered, and the generous spirits that are everywhere.

Joe Strummer - The Future is Unwritten

Before I took off for a vacation in Hawaii, I squeezed in an evening of alternative media and punk rock.

The Future is Unwritten brought perfect closure to the Bill Sorro project I'd been working on for the past seven months. RJ's video on Bill screened two nights before. One of the challenges he faced included a large quantity of talking heads on tape with little b-roll.

Julien Temple, the director of the Strummer documentary, spiced up the interviews by shooting them in front of camp fires. Bono in front of a campfire in Ireland, Strummers old bandmates in front of a campfire in England. RJ had an idea to do this with the theme of the dinner table. Bill and Huli's dinner table has a distinct green table cloth. RJ wanted to film each interview at a dinner table with the same table cloth, but we didn't think of this in time.

While this film goes in deeper to Strummer's psychology, I liked Westway to the World, the documentary on the band, much better.