Officers discuss local crime statistics at town hall meeting

On Tuesday, Dec. 13, a town hall meeting was held in Police Service Area 3 of the 26 District to share end-of-the-year statistics.

Captain Michael Cram made his presentation at the meeting held in the basement of the Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church at 701 East Gaul Street, which was attended by Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Angel Torres of the District Attorney’s office.

The 26 District is a “mid-level district,” Cram said, with between 65,000 and 80,000 residents, and is broken up into three PSA’s. In PSA 3, which extends from Front Street to the Delaware River, homicides are infrequent with only three in the last year.

One of the biggest issues facing PSA 3 is property crime, with 1,400 incidents reported. “It’s amazing the amount of property crimes in this area,” Cram said. 

Property crimes include home burglaries and thefts from auto, and Cram said there has been a spike in robberies in the last month.

“What we find with burglaries, is they’re not just stopping at one – they’re doing two or three,” Cram said. In an effort to stem these problems, Cram and his men “stay on top of the pawn shops,” he said.

Thefts from auto keep area police busy, with over a thousand thefts from auto in the last year, Cram reported. “Keeping valuables hidden doesn’t do any good,” Cram said. The criminals target a block and they’ll break in even for just a few quarters, Cram added.

In the last year, 250 residential burglaries were reported in PSA 3. “They use force and go through the back door or windows,” Cram said. “They’re gonna do it quickly.”

Of the 64 burglars arrested, most are adult residents of PSA 3 and are repeat offenders. “They are generational burglars,” Cram said. 

Addressing the audience’s concerns about recidivism, Cram said, “It’s tough to keep ‘em in.”

Cram turned his attention to Torres from the DA’s office, who said that “Community prosecution has been a huge success” in other areas. When criminals from other communities go to court, residents have shown up in large numbers to get results.

Stolen cars are also an issue. Most of the cars that are stolen are 10 years old or older and they’re not “going to the streets,” Cram said.

In PSA 3, there were 312 quality of life arrests including underage drinking and public intoxication. 

There were 48 drug buyers and 44 sellers arrested in PSA 3 in the last year. “Our prescription narcotics in this neighborhood are bad,” Cram said.

Curfew violations and truancy is down. “I don’t have a lot of juvenile crime,” Cram said.

Cram focused the end of his presentation on ways that the community can help the police do their jobs. With the help of a neighbor, the 26 District was able to take over 2447 Jasper Street, a house that was home to drug dealers and prostitutes. It took 451 radio calls, 183 emails, four arrests and one year to convince the courts that the house was a problem.

“We can’t do those things without the community,” Cram said.

Commissioner Ramsey spoke after Cram finished his presentation. He encouraged the audience to attend hearings if they are the witnesses or victims of a crime, no matter how small. He said he hoped to implement training programs to teach landlords how to operate their businesses. 

Prostitution should be a big item on the agenda, he said. “We gotta get the Johns,” Ramsey said, referring to the men who pay prostitutes for their services.

“I promise you that I’ll do everything I can,” Ramsey said in conclusion.


This story and my photos appeared in today's edition of Star newspaper.

Losing one of their own

Publicly, the family of hit-and-run victim Gregory Loper is calling for justice. Privately, they're remembering the best man they've ever known.


A ghost bike – a vintage bicycle painted white and rendered useless with the removal of its tires – was hung on the railing outside 1912 East Lehigh Avenue in remembrance of bicyclist Gregory Loper.

On Tuesday, November 22 at 5:30 p.m., the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia organized the candlelight vigil and placement of the ghost bike for Loper, the 49-year-old father of 11 who was killed by a drunk driver. The vigil, held at the intersection of Lehigh Avenue and Jasper Street, was overrun by anger and sadness at the loss of the family man.

Brett Truskin, 22, of Ivyland, PA, was allegedly behind the wheel of his mother’s 2011 Toyota RAV4 when he struck Loper on Friday, Nov. 18. While some reports claim that he died in the hospital, the family has been told by observers that Loper died on the street while a female witness held his hand.

Loper’s family, friends and strangers who had been touched by the story of his death huddled under a canopy of umbrellas and hid beneath the hoods of their rain jackets that cold, wet evening, united by outrage at the legal system that allowed Truskin to go free just hours after his possible involvement in another DUI.

After a short speech from Alex Doty, the executive director of the BCGP, a man who identified himself as Jay from Tom Cat Town Watch, made a rousing speech about how he’d been hit when he was 16. “We gotta take these streets back and make the law for us,” he said.

Renee Cuffee, Loper’s sister-in-law, responded to this saying that Loper’s family is seeking life without parole for the driver who took his life. Following this, those in attendance chanted “Life without parole.”

“Look at my baby sister. Look. Look what he left behind,” Renee said as the chanting died down.

Bettie Cuffee, the victim’s wife, thanked those present for their support. She would sue Truskin and his family, she said. In addition to taking her revenge, Cuffee was sure justice would be hers when Truskin’s Judgment Day came.

“You never know when Judgment Day gonna come, ‘cause God judge everybody,” Loper’s widow said. “And when your Judgment Day come, my husband gon’ be there. You gon’ see him sittin’ there and he gon’ ask you why, ‘cause I asked him why he leave me with a water bill that I can’t pay.” 

Once more, she thanked everyone for attending the vigil. Then she greeted a few one-on-one before heading back with her family to her house. 

Back at the Cuffee-Loper household, the tone was much more happy. Loper’s children, 12 grandchildren and friends talked with smiles on their faces of the man they all love so much. The family expressed thankfulness for their loving, supportive, hardworking father. 

Loper was, they all agreed, going to be sorely missed. “They take the good ones and leave the wrong ones,” his sister-in-law Renee said.

Markedia Cuffee, 25, may have been Loper’s stepdaughter but she had never known another father. “He was a good man. Loved his grandbabies,” she said with a smile on her face. He was proud of his kids, all of whom had graduated 12th grade – except for the three under the age of 12.

Education was very important to him, agreed several of his children. Loper recently helped his stepdaughter Sabrina, who he called “Brin-Brin” and who called him “Frankie,” pass her final exams.

“He said go to school, stay in school and have a good job,” Sapphire Cuffee, 10, said.

Loper was a dedicated man who worked hard to provide for his family. “He was a hardworking man. He felt less of a man if he sat in the house,” Sabrina Cuffee, 20, said. 

He “did anything to keep us healthy and good,” Loper’s 10-year-old said of her father.

Everyone could see that he took good care of his family. “He did what he had to do,” Sara Berrios, 46, said of the man who provided for her best friend.

Loper wasn’t your typical father, said his stepdaughter Marktina. He was very into science fiction, she said, especially Star Wars. “He was an out-of-the-box thinker,” Marktina added.

Although much of the discussion focused on Loper’s good qualities and better times had with him, the circumstances under which their loved one was taken from them were never far from the minds of the Cuffee-Loper family.

Loper’s wife was at home in bed with one of her grandchildren when the news broke that someone had been hit on Lehigh Avenue. “Oh my God, that don’t make no sense. Somebody got hit on Lehigh Avenue again,” she remembered saying. “God bless,” she added as she watched the report.

The fact that she hadn’t known it was her beloved left her sounding a bit dismayed. “I’m looking at the ambulance goin’ past and all along they goin’ to pick him up and I didn’t even know it was him,” she said.

Cuffee has concluded that she must be happy for what she had. And she’s relieved to know that he’s in a better place, she said. “He up there with God now. He with his mother, his uncle, his dad, his little cousin, his aunt. He’s fine and I don’t gotta worry about him. He don’t gotta worry about his feet hurting,” Cuffee said.

Loper’s stepson Charles Cuffee, 24, may be comforted by that same notion but all he could talk about was his anger at the situation that led to Loper’s passing. “The driver didn’t take my dad, the judge took my dad when he let [Truskin] go,” he said.

Although the family must still contend with the financial burden left by Loper’s absence, they seemed to have found a way to carry the emotional burden, with Loper’s children staying strong for their mother. 

“At first my mom was sad so we had to be strong for her,” 10-year-old Sapphire said. “I’m hanging in there,” she added.

Sapphire’s older sister Sabrina agreed. “He was my mom’s backbone and she was ours so it’s hard [but we have] to be strong for her,” the 20-year-old said.    

The family is accepting donations to help pay funeral costs and other out-of-pocket expenses. Those who wish to make a donation can contact Markedia Cuffee via email at cuffeemarkedia@yahoo.com.

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This piece appeared on the front covers of both the Northeast Times and the Star today.

Sunny Eyes Up

Old men love waking up with NBC 10’s Lori Wilson and if you could muster up enough energy at 5 a.m. to turn on your TV and keep your eyes open, so would you. By Rosella Eleanor LaFevre. 

Lori Wilson has only been awake for eight hours and she’s yawning. But then Wilson got up around 2 a.m. “My first alarm goes off at two, and then I have one at two-ten. The very last possible alarm goes off at two-fifteen,” laughs Wilson, co-anchor of the 5 a.m. morning show on one of Philadelphia’s most-watched news stations. 

Doe-eyed Wilson sits on a large comfortable couch in an edit booth in NBC 10’s Bala Cynwood headquarters at 10 a.m., willing to tell us all about her job in the fourth largest broadcasting market. Most days, her work is done by now and she’s headed home where, on days like today, she takes a nap. 

So sometimes it’s hard to deal with getting up that early, but at least the drive is only seven minutes long. “The goal is always to be very close to the station, because it’s the middle of the night,” exclaims Wilson, who did morning shows at the last two stations she worked at. 

Around three a.m., Wilson arrives at the station to prepare for the show. First she reads through the two hours of copy, which she splits down the middle with co-anchor Terry Ruggles, in a half-hour or 45 minutes. In addition to checking the copy for accuracy and up-to-date information, Wilson pays close attention to the wording. “There are times when I have to make changes just because of the way that I speak – sometimes something is written formally and I’m a little more conversational in my delivery,” Wilson says.

After reading through the copy, Wilson reads a few newspapers – usually done online. “You never know when breaking news is going to happen and you’re going to have to give background about it, be able to vamp about it,” says the anchor. 

By 4 a.m., the beautiful, petite TV personality must be in the makeup room where, in about 20 minutes, she does her own face. This isn’t something that came easily to Wilson, who had never before worked at a station with its own professional makeup artist on staff. NBC 10’s Carie Brescia taught her everything she knows. “I just sucked the life out of her,” Wilson says with a laugh. “I was like, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ She gave me lessons and hopefully it works!” 

It sure does, most viewers would agree, getting a load of her mile-long eyelashes and blindingly white, perfect smile. The whole package is even more stunning in person. It’s no wonder that she got her start in commercials when she was in third grade. 

A Columbas, Indiana native, Wilson starred in a commercial for Indiana Bell’s call waiting service, which was the latest innovation. “I’m generally a shy person by nature so the camera was easier,” Wilson says. “I could hide behind the camera; it was just me and the camera one-on-one, even if millions of people are watching so I fell in love with that aspect of it.” 

The moment she realized how important television could be, she was watching Ronald Reagan make a State of the Union address. The whole entire country is probably watching the same thing I’m watching right now, she thought. It was powerful, she says, realizing that “we could all be connected at one time and getting information.” TV, that’s the way to go, she thought. 

Television is what gives her the opportunity, after all, to do what she loves, and that’s telling stories, inspiring people to act, and giving them the information they need in their daily lives, like “traffic, weather, what’s safe, what’s not, medical news,” she says. 

The “idea that we’re all kind of in it together” is one that continues to move Wilson. “We all come in different packages but we’re exactly the same underneath so I think stories that connect us all really draw me in,” Wilson says. “If I can tell a story about an 89-year-old grandmother that you relate to, then I feel like that’s having purpose in your life.” 

Since earning a B.A. in Journalism from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, Wilson has worked at four stations. Her first two stations were in smaller markets: Champaign, Illinois and Shreveport, Louisiana. Her third station, and last stop before Philadelphia, was WGCL in Atlanta, Georgia. 

At WGCL she worked as a morning anchor, weekend anchor, entertainment reporter and general assignment reporter until her boss decided not to renew her contract, which is “essentially being fired from your job.” To hear her tell it, she was the “victim of circumstance,” having had four bosses in three years, with the last deciding she was just “a little too sassy,” Wilson says. “And that’s fine. We just butted heads, so I left that job and then had the opportunity to look for another job.” 

Wilson, who believes “everything was divinely ordered and led,” got a few offers closer to home but in the interest of moving toward a network job in, say, New York City or Washington, DC, came to NBC 10 in Philadelphia. It’s a “great city that’s close to everything and has so much to offer,” she says, voicing the love she has for where she’s at. 

She says one of the deciding factors was The 10! Show, the station’s morning talk show, which she hosted when she arrived here. Also, she loves her current boss, someone who “looks you in the eye, who tells you what’s happening,” she says. “It’s nice.” 

That’s not all there is to love about her job, and despite the fact that she’s yawning today, that includes waking people up, she says. “I think there’s a way to do it. There’s a temperament, there’s an energy, there’s a seriousness and then there’s a little bit of light.” 

One of Wilson’s favorite parts of the job is the off-air stuff she gets asked to do. When you’re on television, “There’s a lot of stuff that you’re gonna be asked to be a part of in the community,” Wilson says. “Going and mentoring young girls, emceeing events that raise money for fundraisers. Those are the things that matter to me and the only reason that I do it is because I have a platform. The only reason they care about having me come out is because I’m on TV. That’s an honor.” 

As with any career, of course, it can be very challenging at times. “When you stop connecting to stories or stop being affected by things, then you probably need to do something else with your life,” Wilson says. “Like whenever harm comes to a child, it’s hard to deal with. Stories like that, when people come up missing or dead, it’s hard because I always try to put myself in the place of the families.” 

Sometimes the challenging part of the job is keeping your lips zipped on controversial topics. “It’s hard being objective in such a heated political climate,” Wilson says. And then there are times when it’s not what you say but how you say it that can cause trouble. “It’s all in your inflection when you’re a TV journalist,” Wilson says. 

One of the things industry watchers have often lamented is the shift away from hard-hitting news and toward entertainment. While it can be hard for some to accept that celebrities are making news daily or that citizen journalists are making waves with YouTube videos, Wilson looks at it this way: “Those things, based on my definition of news, which is what people are talking about, those are things you have to include in the conversation.” 

So will she be staying in Philadelphia, where her co-anchor Tim Ruggles has been for 30 years? “I’d like to be on a national platform, but I am completely satisfied and happy if Philly is my last stop,” she says.

Suggested Viewing (Fall 2011)

John Singleton, the guy who directed Four Brothers, which is still quite possibly one of our favorite Mark Wahlberg movies, created his newest film, Abduction, with the hopes of recreating Taylor Lautner into someone our brothers and boyfriends might like too. The action-packed thriller, which also stars Lily Collins, Jason Isaacs, Alfred Molina, Sigourney Weaver and Maria Bello, is about Nathan’s (Lautner) quest for truth after he sees his baby picture on a missing person’s website. Whether or not the boys in your life enjoy it, I’m sure you’ll find Lautner’s exceptional physicality entertaining. (Sept. 23) 

“So, you really think that the girls gonna go for me just ‘cause I have cancer?” asks Adam, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in 50/50.  “For the millionth time, YES!” replies Seth Rogen’s Kyle in the comedy written by the actor’s real-life best friend Will Reiser. When Reiser was 25, he was diagnosed with spinal cancer, and although Rogen attempted writing a script about his friend’s battle with cancer, we’re sure it’s benefited from Reiser’s first-person knowledge of it. I’m excited to see this film, aren’t you? (Sept. 30) 

Opposites attract and long distance is hard. These are the ideas behind Drake Doremus’ Like Crazy. So why do we care? How about the fact that it stars Anton Yelchin, the dramatic wunderkind of Alpha Dog and Star Trek fame, and London stage actress Felicia Day, and their on-screen chemistry has critics blown away? That’s enough to make us want to preorder tickets. (Oct. 28) 

Funny. Hilarious. Hysterical. Wait – where is my thesaurus? I can totally imagine needing more synonyms for the word funny to describe Tower Heist to those who haven’t yet seen it. True, I haven’t yet, but the Brett Ratner-directed film is sure to be highly entertaining with a double-whammy of comedians Ben Stiller and Edie Murphy. About a group of employees who want to rip-off and impossible-to-rip-off Bernie Madoff-type character, the film also stars Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Tea Leoni and Gabourey Sidibe. (Nov. 4) 

Adam Sandler plays himself and a woman in Dennis Dugan’s Jack and Jill. Excited yet? No? If not, I can’t imagine any other way to make you want to see this movie. Unless you’re a fan of Katie Holmes, who plays Jack’s wife, or Al Pacino. The film is about when Jack’s sister Jill comes to visit for Thanksgiving and doesn’t go home. Sounds good, doesn’t it? (Nov. 11) 

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This piece appeared in the second issue of M.L.T.S. Magazine, a publication I started. This appeared in the Most Entertaining section.

Smak Talk

Abby Kessler and Katie Loftus, best friends and boutique owners, talk business and reworked vintage pieces.

There’s a place where the walls are hot pink, the tables are covered with lacy panties and handbags, and the gilt mirrors show your greatest desires. The walk-in closet of your dreams, this place is Smak Parlour, a boutique located at Second and Market Streets in Philadelphia.

Abby Kessler and Katie Loftus, who have been best friends since they were 15, are the owners of Smak Parlour. Since bonding over the application of black eyeliner, the two have developed a shared aesthetic.

This aesthetic translates into the “fun rock ‘n roll, retro, girly, glam, 80s, pin-up, vintage-inspired styles” they design and stock in the store.

When designing, Kessler and Loftus draw inspiration from each other. “We love looking back at different eras of fashion and getting inspired! We love bouncing ideas off each other,” they say.

Their favorite pieces on sale now are the Smak Parlour embellished vintage tees (pictured in our “That’s So Raven” fashion editorial). These pieces “have our hearts at the moment,” Kessler and Loftus say. “They are all different and, well, just plan cool. Many are wide and boxy and look awesome with Many Belles Down fitted knit skirts.”

These are the very styles the Drexel-educated ladies created when they started their wholesale clothing line SMAK by Abby & Katie in the early 2000s.

Educated in design and merchandising at Drexel University and after a year in New York City working in the fashion industry, Philadelphia-area natives Kessler and Loftus decided to open their own boutique in which to sell SMAK by Abby & Katie.

They derived the name Smak Parlour from the name of their line, which they loved because it has many connotations and is “playful and fun,” and the sewing parlor where they created their pieces. “We were making ‘Smak’ in the ‘Parlour’ and so it became!” they recall.

Without any assets, the ladies financed their business with credit cards. This move, they say, “absolutely” scared them but “it was our only choice if we wanted our dream to come true.” And they handled it beautifully, paying off their debts in three years with manageable monthly payments.

For the first four years, they exclusively sold pieces from their own line. They have since expanded and added indie designers to the mix. Kessler and Loftus explain, “We buy what we want to wear when looking for new designers and hope other people will want it too!” 

Apparently they do, as it has been six years since these best friends opened Smak Parlour. “It’s absolutely a dream come true to work together,” Kessler and Loftus agree. 

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This piece appeared in the second issue of M.L.T.S. Magazine, a publication I started. The issue launched on September 5 and this piece appeared in the Most Stylish section.

Suggested Reading: Jennifer Rainville's Trance of Insignificance

Every now and then, a woman needs a good friend to smack her upside her head. Certainly, through much of Jennifer Rainville’s self-published novel Trance of Insignificance, readers will feel the urge to slap former TV reporter Jules Duvil around. She’s got everything she could want – a hot career in PR, a good husband – and yet she keeps getting tangled up in her ex-fiancé, the handsome TV news anchor Jack Culligan. In fact, it isn’t really clear why she keeps coming back to him. He calls her “beautiful” and it makes the reader’s skin crawl; how could she be charmed by that most unimaginative of pet names? And how, Lord, how could she sleep with a married man? All the while, her girlfriends casually ask Jules questions about her extramarital affair. If ever a protagonist needed a good friend, it is Jules Duvil. 

Later in the novel, Jules’ mother-in-law Tess tells her that she has something Noah, Jules’ husband, will never have: a sense of self. What does Tess think gives Jules this sense of self? Her tough childhood in Boston, Massachusetts. One can see how trying to get away from your past might lead you to getting wrapped right up in it again, as Jules does repeatedly with fellow Massachusetts native Jack. 

Perhaps because of her questionable judgement, Jules comes off as incredibly real and her story is believeable. It is engaging and thought-provoking. How can we be so stupid when it comes to matters of love and lust? Why do we let our pasts best us, again and again? Can we break our bad habits and find happiness? 

The novel would benefit from a good proofread and occasionally the broadcast journalism technical jargon is distracting, but Rainville’s debut novel provides a captivating tale of a love that her protagonist just can’t seem to let go. 

WISE BUSINESS PRACTICES: Tips and Tricks from Pop Culture

This is a set of quotes and practices I culled from pop culture to improve M.L.T.S. Magazine readers' performance on the job or at their internship.

The New Rules

Rosella Eleanor LaFevre tells you how to dress if you want to impress on the job or at your internship.

Over the course of our young lives, fashion has changed quite a bit. Designer wares are now available at affordable prices and street style bloggers have placed an emphasis on the everyday style of regular women. It’s also made dressing for the work place a little freer -- if not also a little more confusing. 

So how do you dress for success these days? The short answer is by mixing classic business wear with pieces that have more personality.

Most of us will be entering companies that are more creative in nature, meaning our dress can also be more creative. Try jodphor pants or other unexpected cuts. One of my coworkers recently wore green khaki pants with black stripes down the sides. She said they were old pants from the Gap, but, boy, did she look cool, especially when pairing those pants with a black cardigan. 

Another great way to inspire confidence in your abilities, try mixing in suitwear pieces with your more unusual or basic sportswear pieces. While you’re in college especially, it’s more age-appropriate to mix up suitwear like jackets, skirts and pants than to wear an entire suit. Pair the jacket with a dress and tights, wear the skirt or pants with a tank top and cardigan. Wear a dress tucked into the skirt, like our cover girl does on page 31 (although perhaps you should save the strapless numbers for after work). 

Remember, too, that dresses are your best friend. They are simple and quick to throw on and 

usually look great. Just keep the hemline near your knees, the cleavage to a covered-up minimum, and you’re golden. We like dresses with simple, classic lines, like a shift dress or the pink dress at left. 

You can still also get away with wearing leggings under your skirts and dresses, which you should definitely do if they’re closer to mid-thigh than your knees.

Play with proportions and wear a full skirt with a well-fitted t-shirt. Wear a dolman sleeve top with a pair of skinny leg pants.

Remember to keep even your casual looks somewhat dressy, as I did with the outfit Julie wears on page 43. Here, I paired a chambray button-down shirt with black dress pants and a pair of strappy heels, which easily dress up the denim shirt. Play with accessories, too, as I did by wrapping a floral print H&M scarf with touches of blue around our model’s waist.

Wear ballet flats on days when you’ll have to run around a lot, and heels when you can, if you are a fan of elevating footwear.

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I wrote this piece for M.L.T.S. Magazine, the publication I started last March. This appeared in the Most Stylish section of the first issue.

The Balad of Jessi and Nema

I wrote a profile of one of my favorite couples, singer Jessi Teich and photographer Nema Etebar, for JUMP, a new Philly-based music magazine.

Singer Jessi Teich and her love, photographer Nema Etebar.
(Photo courtesy of Nema Etebar)

Will power and love saved singer Jessi Teich’s voice, she says.

The singer was in jeopardy of losing her instrument last year when a cyst developed on her vocal cords. Teich’s fiancé, Nema Etebar, introduced her to a friend, a world-class surgeon, who suggested surgery to remove the cyst.

People told her not to risk it. They told her she’d never sing again. Ultimately, she decided to go through with the procedure.

“I could never have the career that I wanted if I didn’t get the surgery,” Teich says.

Fortunately, the surgery was a success. And seven months after the operation, Teich released her debut album, Barely There, on Fuzztone Records.

By introducing her to his surgeon friend, supporting her decision and then assisting her through her recovery, Etebar, 32, helped Teich, 26, through the difficult period.

While Teich believes will power played a large part, she says, “In a way, Nema helped save my voice.”

Teich’s relationship with Etebar, a street photographer whom she calls her business partner and soul-mate, continually provides her with strength. The two have created a world in which they can live their dreams together. Etebar frequently shoots Teich, a brown-haired, brown-eyed beauty whose usually makeup-free face seems to transform in every picture, and she uses these images to promote her music.

They met in August 2008, three weeks before Etebar, who is half-Persian and has long, dark, wild hair that he tends to keep in a topknot, left for a month-long trip to India. They only had a small window of time together.

“We were just scrambling to get to know each other,” Teich says. “It takes time to get to know somebody, whether you’re going to be friends or lovers.”

They decided quickly.

“He is it for me and I didn’t settle,” Teich says. “Now we’re creating these tiers of art and beauty and people. I get so excited about it.”

Teich rarely performed in front of others at that point.

“I was too scared,” she says with a laugh. “I just didn’t think my music was good enough.”

One of the first times Etebar heard Teich’s silky, soulful singing voice was when she strummed a guitar and sang a cover of Feist’s “Let It Die” in his bedroom. A month later, Teich sang some of her original songs for Etebar.

“I’ll never forget those,” he says. “Because I was blown away.”

Etebar, who had been single for six years before meeting Teich, took his first photos of his muse on New Year’s Day 2009 after the Mummer’s Parade. She stood before a brown brick wall, wearing the same green hat that graces the cover of her CD, carrying a yellow Mummers umbrella.

“I was so nervous because I’d seen him take pictures of people for three or four months,” Teich says. “That birthed what we do today. That was the beginning of what he have grown into, what we have created. We planted a seed and we’ve grown an oak tree. It is a joint effort. Although he’s the photographer and I’m the model, the photos wouldn’t be the same without each other.”

Today, Teich accompanies Etebar on his street shoots. This female presence puts Etebar’s subjects – many of whom are mothers with children or homeless people – at ease.

In June 2009, Etebar introduced Teich to another friend, producer Daniel Marino. They started talking about recording an EP. Teich had planned to leave for South America with her sister that September and planned to be gone for three months. Before her departure, she and Marino get down as much of the basic recordings as possible. By the end of August, they recorded nine songs, mostly ballads.

In addition to creating images together, Teich and Etebar write songs together. They wrote  “Tuesday” and “Beggin’ You,” both of which are on Barely There.

During the spring of 2010, Teich quit talking, let along singing. The cyst was embedded in the vocal fold and by keeping silent, Teich hoped the cyst would be more defined on the day of the operation.

Teich broke her silence before going into surgery to tell Etebar that she loved him.

Etebar did not want to photograph Teich that day but she insisted. The black and white image he created shows a wavy-haired Teich dressed in a hospital gown with her head resting in her right hand and her left arm outstretched, an IV needle taped into the crook of her elbow.

“I am glad now that I have it,” Teich says of the photo. “It reminds me to keep working hard and that, no matter what the situation, if I believe hard enough and make myself strong enough, I can conquer just about anything.”

She didn’t speak for a week after the surgery. Teich broke her silence and called Etebar to say hello.

“No, you can’t do that yet!” Teich says he cried out.

It took nearly six weeks for Teich to fully regain her voice and for much of that time, she did not speak. The couple developed a system to communicate.

“We would call each other on the phone and he would talk to me and ask me yes or no questions,” Teich says. “I would hit a key once for yes, twice for no, and three times for ‘I love you.’”

Teich saw a speech therapist first and two weeks later, she started seeing a vocal therapist.

“I immediately could hear a difference in my voice and the way that it felt to sing,” Teich remembers. “It took me honestly about eight weeks before I sang a full song but it was absolutely worth the wait.”

All this time, Barely There was put on hold. Finally, Teich completed the record and released it on December 18, 2010.

“Right now, Philly’s really receptive to me,” Teich says. “I’ve been able to bring people out without really asking. I really feel like, from the bottom of my heart, outside of my ego, that my music will do well [elsewhere].”

Salute to Service: Volunteer Plugs Into School's Needs

This article appears in Philadelphia RowHome Magazine's latest Salute to Service issue, which came out just a few days ago.

Salute to Service: Service Is Music To Her Ears

This piece appears in Philadelphia RowHome Magazine's Salute to Service issue, which came out just a few days ago.

In My Book: Sometimes we must suffer in order to learn

Columnist Rosella LaFevre digs into the struggles faced by "Long Run, Short Catch” author.

Many of us, I believe, have asked the question, “Why me?” When we face tough situations, we wonder why those things had to happened to us. I’m not the only one who has begged for an answer to this question, I am sure.

Asama Iwuoha, a Nigerian-American and the author of the self-published memoir “Long Run, Short Catch: One Woman’s Desperate Attempt to Discover If Normalcy Actually Exists on Earth,” posed this question on the first page of her book.

Iwuoha, whose memoir encompasses the sexual abuse which she suffered as a child and the years she spent as a student here at Temple University, wrote at the start of her memoir that she has never found the answer to this question.

In her book, Iwuoha recalled the time her mother discovered her father in the act and called the police. When her father returned from prison to live with the family, Iwuoha had to learn to deal with his presence. Understandably, she continues to hold a grudge against him, getting fancy clothes and accessories out of him and finally, by marrying a Jamaican man to spite him.

Sometimes, when we ask the question, “Why me?” we seek to absolve ourselves of any guilt, as did Iwuoha. She asks the question without pausing to consider that perhaps her ill-fated marriage happened because she chose to marry a man for the wrong reasons.

As a sophomore at Temple, Iwuoha was finally fitting into a group of girls. One of them introduced her to Michael Williams, a polite Jamaican man. He immediately took a shine to her despite being more into light-skinned girls, as Iwuoha’s account tells us.

His father had brought him to America using someone else’s passport. Advised by his father that marriage would be the quickest way to solve his problems, Williams recognized that Iwuoha could solve his problems and he set out to marry her.

Action was taken so that he might go to college, but it caught up to him when a student enrolled at Temple with the same Social Security number. That was when his father told him he must find a woman to marry and soon after, he met Iwuoha.

They started dating, and soon after, he told her his dilemma. Unsure, she said she’d think about marrying him.

“Is it possible he just wants to use me as his ticket?” Iwuoha wrote. “Either way, marrying him could be my final valediction from father.”

The outcome of the situation is surely undesirable, but this could be the very answer to the Iwuoha’s question.Why should her marriage end the way it did? Perhaps because, as much as Williams was using her for a green card, she was using him to get back at her father.

Often, we beg the question, “Why me?” because we hope that should the answer come to us one way or another, that it will give meaning to our suffering.

Perhaps Iwuoha’s supposed inability to find her answer is because in writing the book, she sought to answer the questions her family had about the choices she made in life.

“Not only does my book entail many of those answers, but it also served as my catharsis, releasing me of emotional baggage that had been haunting me,” Iwuoha said of why she chose to self-publish her story now.

Ultimately, Iwuoha’s book raises more questions for the reader than it answers, but this could be considered its greatest charm. By questioning Iwuoha’s actions, reactions and feelings, we learn that sometimes the answer we’re looking for is right there. And sometimes, it’s not so important why you suffered as how you championed that suffering.

This fourth installment of my book column for The Temple News appeared in today's issue, under a different headline.

Speak Easy With Beth Kephart, YA Author

BETH KEPHART, author of the historical young adult novel Dangerous Neighbors, discusses the inner workings of her characters, the meaning behind the title, and the symbolism of birds with two.one.five magazine’s Books Editor ROSELLA ELEANOR LaFEVRE.

Beth Kephart, known for writing adult nonfiction, has broken into the young adult fiction market with books quite different from the cookie cutter vampire and zombie romances that are crowding the young adult shelves of your nearest Barnes & Noble. In May 2009, HarperCollins Publishers released her debut YA title, Undercover, about a girl who ghostwrites love letters from the boys at her high school which works fine until she falls for one of her clients. Since then, she has published House of Dance, Nothing but Ghosts, The Heart is Not a Size and most recently, Dangerous Neighbors, a beautifully written novel about a grieving twin set in Philadelphia during the World Fair of 1876. Recently, the author talked with two.one.five magazine about Dangerous Neighbors.

REL: The book Dangerous Neighbors is labeled “Ages 12 up” but it reads like it’s for an older audience. There are lots of layers of meaning that I don’t necessarily believe the average 12-year-old would pick up on.

BK: I write books that are not bound by specific age group limits. I have tremendous faith in young readers’ ability to pick up on clues. This is my fifth young adult novel. What marks them, as young adult, is the age of the narrator or protagonist. I don’t believe in writing down to my readers; why should I? A lot of the young readers of my blog leave really sophisticated comments. I’ve taught children and some of them write poems far better than I write. I’ve taught younger reader pieces of Beowulf and they’re right there with me. And so I believe in the young reader’s ability to decode. I believe they want the challenge. Some of the young adult novels I love were originally designated for adults; The Book Thiefis a prime example.  John Green, for his part, writes keen, young adult-oriented stories. I was the chairman of the National Book Awards Young People’s Literature Award in 2001, and I had to read 163 books. The ones that rose to the top were not bound by age. I value that type of literature.

REL: Do you imagine this story is very specific to its setting? The interactions of the sisters feel decidedly contemporary.

BK: That was intentional. They are on the verge of something new. I did not want to write a book that was fusty and old. [In September 1876,] liberation is in the air. And I did, on purpose, give the girls a way of interacting with each other and the world that was more modern. I wanted the readers to fall in love with Philadelphia through characters they could empathize with. I just gave them the most modernity I could.

REL: Where does Katherine’s sense of right and wrong, of impropriety, come from? She’s so against Bennett from the beginning but recognizes her parents eventually would have given in and let Anna marry him. Who does she think is watching her and her sister and why does she care so much?

BK: Well, when you are endowed with that protective gene, you are also often burdened with a judgmental quality. It’s just Katherine’s way of being and seeing. She’s afraid to be alone and doesn’t know how to be herself yet. She cares so much because she cares about outcomes and consequences ‘They will know if Anna gets hurt. They will know it’s my fault,’ is what runs through her mind. She’s thinking of consequences all the time.

REL: Throughout the novel, Anna appears to be very modern and believes that love is more important than social boundaries or customs. Katherine was more traditional and judged her sister’s behavior harshly. Did you intend their battles against each other to also represent the battle of past and future, old and new?

BK: I would not say that that was in my mind there. I was interested in their mother, who was so progressive – who spent her time fighting for a feminist future, but also, correspondingly, was simply not home for the daughters she was ostensibly fighting for. Between Anna and Katherine, I’m more like Katherine. I was interested in what happens when the responsible sister can’t save the one who was more beautiful. One of the questions I asked myself was, How does one keep on going when what was most brilliant in one’s life is gone? When I was writing the book, I was in a position to understand jealousy very well, and I sought to find out what damage jealousy does.

REL: Why does Katherine feel so guilty over her sister’s death? I understand she considered herself Anna’s protector but I don’t think that the blame for her sister’s demise could be assigned to Katherine. And as a side note, I thought throughout the novel that Anna had killed herself.

BK: It was an accident. Katherine felt the guilt I think all survivors feel. Katherine had pulled away from Anna. Anna did not say to Katherine, “I don’t want you around.” She said, “My world is growing.” Katherine’s wasn’t. She decided to skate with this stranger because it was her way of possessing her own private thing. Still, how could she not feel guilt? Do I blame Katherine? No. Should readers blame Katherine? No. But she blames herself.

REL: Please explain what or how the “dangerous neighbors” theme plays into the plot, etc.

BK: “Dangerous neighbors” refers to many things in the book.  It refers to the strangeness of having so many people descend upon Philadelphia at once—10 million strangers.  It also refers to the fact that Katherine and Anna both end up falling in love with the “wrong” boys.  But for me, mostly, “dangerous neighbors” refers to the proximity of Shantytown [a whole area of shanty houses constructed right across the street from the main entrance to the World Fair grounds], with its opium dens and shacks and wood structures, set nearly against all the immaculate new of the Centennial grounds.

REL: What is the significance of the birds?

BK: Birds run through my life and through my books. I just finished a book that will come out next year (YOU ARE MY ONLY) and again, this motif of birds came up. I like to imagine landscapes from the bird’s eye view. When you put yourself in that place—high above—you can see the world unfolding in novel ways.  InDangerous Neighbors, Katherine seeks to fly—to get away from everything.  Flight and wings are both a metaphor, an idea, and a reality, for in the book she encounters a young girl who has a bird named Snow.  Snow is what brings Katherine and William back together by the story’s end.

REL: What did Anna’s giving Bennett the robin’s nest mean?

BK: It has to do with Anna’s ability to see beauty in things and her generosity in sharing those things. They share that worldview. It’s one of the things Anna loves about him [so the gift represents that mutual love of beauty].

In My Book: Trading others' support for a path toward self-guidance

Columnist Rosella LaFevre dives into “Speed Shrinking” and learns to be alone after leaving her best friend for college.

Leaving our high school lives behind for college means a lot of change – at least it did for me. A childhood spent on campus with a parent who works at Temple meant adjusting to college life wasn’t that hard.

Only, I hadn’t counted on how lonely I would be without my best friend. Adjusting to life without your support system is hard, as Julia Goodman, the narrator of Susan Shapiro’s touching first novel “Speed Shrinking” would tell you.

The novel opens with an announcement from her best friend, Sarah, that she will leave New York City after her wedding that weekend. That same day, Goodman’s husband Jake told her he was departing for TV work in Los Angeles, and at her weekly appointment, her beloved shrink Dr. Ness divulged plans to move to the Midwest.

With all three of her “pillars” leaving, Goodman, the Manhattan self-help author, is in a tizzy. What will she do without them?

To read the rest of the third installment of "In My Book," click here.

Freelance Friday: Paris-Based Journalist Caroline Kinneberg On Successful Pitching, Custom Publishing, and Writing From Abroad

 I recently guest edited the following interview with Paris-based freelancer Caroline Kinneberg for Lena Chen's the ch!cktionary. Check it out!

Caroline Kinneberg has written and edited across platforms since studying publishing at Columbia University. This freelancer, now based in Paris, France, started as an intern at GQ and Nylon in Sydney, Details in New York, and Teen Voices in Boston. She’s worked as a web editor at Conde Nast’s shopping magazine Lucky, updated Frommer’s 2012 NYC travel guide, and acted as an assistant managing editor for Self Service magazine, a Paris-based fashion and culture biannual that is more than 300 pages. Most recently, she published a piece on the illegal underground activities of Paris’ cataphiles for The Boston Globe.  In addition to the skills typically expected of a freelance writer and editor, Kinneberg’s expertise includes French-to-English translation and custom publishing. Here, she answers questions on her career, working from Paris, and the particulars of pitching articles.

Lena: If you don’t land a gig after a first interview but you still really want that job, what do you do?

Caroline: If you had a job interview for a position you really want and you didn’t get it, don’t take that to mean you won’t ever get that job! Once I applied to a web editor job and didn’t get it because of a lack of online experience. So I took another lower-level position for the website of a different magazine, and a few months later I spotted the same web editor position I had applied for in an online job posting. When I reapplied, I described what web experience I’d gained since the last interview. And I got the job! And I’m actually really glad I had that in-between job – I learned a lot there and it set me on some paths I wouldn’t be on without it. I tend to believe that things happen for a reason. So if you don’t get a job, use any criticism you get to your advantage.

Read the rest of the interview here.

College Magazine: Major Changes

via weheartit

Choosing a major at the age of 18 or 19 can seem like an impossible decision to make, which is why many college students go in undeclared. But even those of us who decide from the outset that we're going to major in biology or English or something else tend to change our minds.

Fifty percent of college students who declare a major change that major, and many do so two or three times, MyMajors.com Founder Dr. Fritz Grupe told Gayle B. Ronan of MSNBC. While your happiness is most important, it can be costly changing your major once or twice. It can also mean spending more time on your college campus.

In the interest of saving you money and time, here are some steps to take so you can settle on the perfect major as quickly as possible.

1. Test the Waters

If you're undeclared, go to step two. If you've declared a major, take courses in your subject area or prerequisite courses in your first semester or two. Julia Held, a first-semester sophomore at Temple University, declared biology as her major when she enrolled. She signed up for a chemistry prerequisite, “realized how much I disliked chemistry, which is a HUGE prerequisite to biology, pretty much when I stopped going to class, and had no desire to take any further classes in that field,” she said. If you like these classes, you've probably locked in the right major for you.

 

To read the rest of this post I wrote for College Magazine about changing your major, click here.

College Magazine: How To Sell Yourself At Job Fairs

 A job fair is not the time for companies to pitch themselves to jobseekers, but for jobseekers to pitch themselves to the companies, says expert Kathy Siravo, product and event supervisor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com. What this means is that, “The most important thing students need to bring to a job fair is their A-game,” said Rachel Brown, director of Temple University’s Career Center. There are a few steps you can take to ensure you’re putting your best self forward. 

 

Step 1: Research

According to Siravo, whose job involves the organization of job fairs, the first step is to do your research. “We have a website for each of our job fairs where we list the companies who will be present,” Siravo said. Most job fairs should have a list of presenters available online. Before attending the event, you should research the companies that will have tables at the event, being careful to familiarize themselves with the company’s mission, its available positions and the skills you need for those positions.

 

Step 2: Resume

Another part of your homework is making several copies of your up-to-date resume. When you attend the event, you should keep these in a folder. A big mistake job fair attendees make is handing a folded resume to a recruiter, Siravo said. She was also quick to warn that jobseekers need to make sure their resume is in “tip-top shape,” which means it should be free of grammatical errors, easily readable and tailored to the position you’re seeking.

This article was written for College Magazine's Career/Success section. Read the rest of it here.

The journey to self discovery unfolds through ancestors' eyes

Columnist Rosella Eleanor LaFevre sets out to solve the mystery of her grandmother’s past.

There tends to be one question the most introspective people ask themselves at one point or another – “Who am I?” I feel like I’ve been working to figure that out for my entire teenage life.

As far as I can tell, there are several factors that make a person who they are. There’s your name, your childhood, your morals, your family and your friends. These are only parts of the whole equation, but for me, I find a large part of my identity comes from my name: Rosella Eleanor LaFevre.

And for some, such as Lucy Jarrett in the novel “The Lake of Dreams,” by Kim Edwards, part of how we define ourselves is through our family history and our knowledge of our relatives.

To read the rest of the second installment of the "In My Book" column for The Temple News, click here.

The Temple News: Debating the adjuncts' role

IAN WATSON TTN
Adjunct professor Carol Jenkins teaching.

 Administrators and adjunct instructors discuss how stable the job should be.

In December, 45 adjunct instructors from the English department’s First-Year Writing Program were told they would not be assigned courses come Spring 2011. But the English department isn’t the only area of the university in which adjunct instructors are out of work.

Adjunct instructor Carol Jenkins, of the department of political science, said a number of adjunct instructors weren’t assigned classes in her department.

Jenkins said Richard Deeg, the chair of the department of political science, told her it was because of a change in the policy, informally known as the “gradjunct” policy. But Deeg said the policy is expected to change next year.

“The situation at Temple overall is bad,” Jenkins said. “It seems like it sometimes goes from department to department, depending on how many graduate students there are.”

To read the rest of this news story for The Temple News, click here. If you would like to reprint this article, please email me (rosellaeleanor -at- gmail -dot- com).

College Magazine: Welcome to Rejected Resumes

Are you worried your resume might cost you that coveted internship? College Magazine to the rescue! Each week in Rejected Resumes, we show your resumes to the experts so you can get to sleep at night. This week, we’re checking out a College Magazine editor’s resume. Although she got the job, she made a few mistakes we’re hoping to save you from making. Here are some tips that apply to every resume:

 

1. List your most relevant experience first.

Here, the editor's most relevant experience was serving as associate editor on Wooden Teeth literary magazine, which is listed at the end of her activities section.

 

2. List relevant experience and customer service or retail jobs separately.

In this resume, the applicant lists two jobs in the food industry, and all of her relevant experience is filed under Activities. She should have had a section for Relevant Experience that was separate from her other work and her clubs and activities.

 

To read the rest of the first Rejected Resumes post, click here.

This Book's Nowhere Near as Hot as Its Author

A review of James Franco's story collection, Palo Alto, that I wrote for two.one.five magazine.

“Halloween,” the opening story in James Franco’s story collection Palo Alto, is told by a grown-up narrator who, in his sophomore year of high school, kills a woman because he drives drunk. In the end of the story, the narrator says he has since driven down the same street where the incident took place and his remembrance of the poor woman’s death is an afterthought. The narrator’s apathy is disturbing and, yet, it almost means nothing.

The narrator of “Halloween” is not conflicted about this childhood tragedy, and neither is there any conflict in the story. The narrator does mention some tension between him and his girlfriend, who he is driving to confront when the mystery woman is hit, but largely, the story slips through the reader’s mind with no great friction to make it stick. “Halloween” reads like a memory put to paper with the intention of writing the real story at some later date.

While Franco’s narrator is clearly years past his adolescent misdeed, his language is not. The composition of his sentences, most of which are loaded down with helping verbs, is sophomoric and fragmentary. The cadence of Franco’s words is abrupt, halting, jarring, and it feels, not like it was a conscious decision made by the writer, but more like simply bad writing. Too many of his sentences read like this: “His professor father had a great liquor cabinet.” Many of the adjectives are vague like “great” and “horrible.” Then there’s Franco’s line: “Ed was half Korean and half white because his mother was Korean and his dad was white from Gary, Indiana.” How perceptive.

The story is weighed down by a lot of unnecessary exposition – like when he writes paragraphs about Ed and Ed’s family while Ed has very little, at all, to do with the story. There are several pages spent on the dynamics of the narrator’s friendships while there are about two sentences that inform the reader that the narrator was on probation when he ran the librarian over. There is no explanation of why and it doesn’t really seem to play into the story – it’s a fairly tangential (at least in practice) revelation. If this story were written by a regular Joe, critics would deride these sequences as throat-clearing and suggest that the writer attend a few more classes at Columbia before publishing again.

In fact, were Franco not a celebrated actor, it’s hard to believe he would have gotten a book deal. The second story in Franco’s collection, “Lockheed,” is told in exactly the same voice as “Halloween” although the narrator of the second story is female. Even the best story in the collection, “April in Three Parts,” which is told in three disjointed sections, disappoints, although the third section of the story has great potential on its own.

Buyback program makes textbook buying less risky

BookByte, a new textbook program, guarantees students will get cash back.

With classes starting, students are filling Temple’s bookstore, aiming to rent or buy used and new textbooks. While the green digits on the bookstore’s register may have some students’ eyes bulging, BookByte may have found a solution that will leave students’ wallets heavier.

The Salem, Ore.-based website, which has offered textbooks at a discount since 1999, introduced its “Guaranteed Buyback” program. This program is the first of its kind that ensures the company will buy back its textbooks from students regardless of their condition.

“Textbook rental programs typically charge students significant fees for late, damaged or lost books. In addition to the low upfront price typically found with rental, with ‘Guaranteed Buyback’ students also receive a cash rebate when they return the book to Bookbyte,” Andres Montgomery, the company’s chief strategy officer, said.

To read the rest of this article for The Temple News, click here.

Speakeasy with Tim Whitaker of Mighty Writers

Tim Whitaker, the former editor-in-chief of Philadelphia Weekly, is now the Executive Director of Mighty Writers, a nonprofit based in South Philly that offers workshops and an afterschool program with the aim of improving writing skills in students between the ages of 5 and 17. Whitaker, who wrote droll political and social commentary for his Letters from the Editor at PW, is now sending out entertaining updates on Mighty Writers while surreptitiously seeking donations. We met up with Whitaker before a beef and beer at the Pen & Pencil Club, a fundraiser for the organization he started in association with Rachel Loeper, and we talked about what he’s learned about the world of writing and his favorite reads.

Your program has to teach many different styles of writing, no?
The biggest thing is to teach them to write with clarity. They can layer on the style later.

You've been a professional journalist for many years.  Have you ever tried your hand at fiction?
Over the years, I wrote a column for PW about a couple that was a serial. But I never published anything else.

What advice would you give to an aspiring journalist in this day and age?
Besides 'Get out of the business'? We have a lot of tutors who want to be writers and I tell them to give it up unless they absolutely can't picture doing anything else. If it would virtually kill you not to be a writer, then you'll probably make it out okay. It's bleak, though a lot of interesting things are bubbling up.

To read the rest of the interview, check out two.one.five magazine's website.