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.

In My Book: Where you come from is part of who you are

Columnist Rosella Eleanor LaFevre explores ideas of self discovery in Anna Fields’ book “Confessions of a Rebel Debutante.” 

The summer before high school, I had to read three books, one of which was Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women.” It became one of my favorites, not only because it had been the longest book I had read at the time, but because I felt a connection to the character Jo March.

Since that summer, my favorite books have tended to be the ones with characters I could relate to, especially books about female characters who are as strong-willed and rebellious as March was.

Recently, I had the pleasure to read Anna Fields’ “Confessions of a Rebel Debutante,” which will appear in paperback this February. Fields’ memoir is about a chubby white kid with dreams of being Scarlett O’Hara who grew into a full-fledged rebel debutante living among Yankees.

For Fields’ sophomore year of high school, she transferred from public school to a single-sex boarding school called Wellingham – a place of tradition where girls had various lessons on ladylike behavior and tradition rules.

The high school I attended, Philadelphia High School for Girls, is the only single-sex public school in Philadelphia. I chose it because it was a place where tradition ruled. Like Fields, I believed I could learn better without boys to distract me.

I was mostly right.

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

Stash This in Your Quilted Chanel 2.55

A review of Cecily von Ziegesar's I Will Always Love You, the final book in the Gossip Girl series, that I wrote for two.one.five magazine.

The final installment in the long-running Gossip Girl series, I Will Always Love You, which features the original cast, is a seriously fun, guilty pleasure read. All the things that readers of the series love are here in this nearly 400-page tome: the shameless label dropping, the sarcastic one-liners, the hook-ups, the ill-timed and ill-advised behavior of Manhattan’s young elite. The book is a fast-paced romp that chronicles the failed romances and friendships of New York’s privileged youth as they navigate the choppy waters of winter breaks spent at home. Blair and Serena are at it again, and over Nate, just like always. Dan and Vanessa are finally together and for good – or so Dan thinks until he finds her in bed with her half-naked T.A. And Jenny is M.I.A. until the last two parts of the book, when she gives Blair and Serena a run for their money with Nate. The real reason this book is a must-read, however, is for the author’s orchestration of language. Von Ziegesar is a master of words. True, the poems she has Dan pen are pretty awful, but her one-line interjections in regular narration and the way she plays with words in general are pleasing to read. It is her way with words what sets von Ziegesar’s series apart from all of the other young adult novels and makes it one that adults will enjoy as well. These are actually literary treasures while other writers, even such YA mainstays as Judy Blume, use too many helping verbs and poorly placed fragments. Instead of telling us how characters feel and leaving us to decide whether we believe it, von Ziegesar makes us feel along with the characters – whether it’s anger at Vanessa for being so foolish or disappointment in Nate for smoking weed and drinking until he can’t remember who he is. Absolutely a must have for those of you who love the TV show or the series.

A little rock for your coffee table?

A review of Or Glory: 21st Century Rockers, a coffee table book, that I wrote for two.one.five magazine.

The people photographer Horst A. Friedrichs captured for the book Or Glory: 21st Century Rockers are not just defined by the music that started the rocker movement in the 1950s but also by their tattoos and reverence for retro clothes and hair styling practices. The book, released by Prestel Publishing, one of the world’s foremost publishers of illustrated books, opens with an interview with two Rock ‘n’ Roll DJs, Cosmic Keith and Sean Peschiera. This interview reveals the simplest history of Rock ‘n’ Roll music possible and there are many names that the average reader’s never heard. More eye opening are the narratives on rocker history from Mark Wilsmore, owner of Ace Café London, and Derek Harris, of Lewis Leathers. Wilsmore talks of the invention of credit giving a young generation the ability to buy fast vehicles (in 1950s England, this meant motorcycles) and thus a roadside entertainment culture was born. Harris refers to his company’s history as an outfitter for aviators and motorists and the company’s segue into motorcycle gear with the invention of the Bronx jacket, which young Englishmen rapidly feasting on pictures of Marlon Brando in The Wild One snapped up. And so you have the beginnings of this still relevant subculture. Friedrichs pictures of tattooed men and women with slicked back and pin-curled hair wearing leather everything and riding traditional English bikes are all striking and a good number of them haunt the viewer long after they’ve closed the hardbound volume. They are pictures to look at again and again. The only thing that’s missing is an explanation of the “59” insignias (this insignia means the wearer is a member of the 59 motorcycle club) and the phrase “Ton Up” (which got its meaning in the early days of motorcycling when going above 100 miles per hour was a great achievement). Or Glory is definitely one for your collection of coffee table books.

Adjunct 'layoffs' increase concern

As the Fall 2010 semester comes to an end, not all professors are gearing up for spring classes.

Of the 59 adjunct professors who taught courses in the First-Year Writing Program this semester, only 14 will be teaching in Spring 2011. This news came to the 45 adjunct professors, who will lose their current appointments, in a document titled “Spring 2011 First-Year Writing Program Staffing (Projected).”

Although university officials were hesitant to call the announcement a layoff, many of the affected teachers said they feel this is indicative of a rift between the university and its adjunct instructors.

While attempts by the adjuncts to unionize have yet to come to fruition, adjunct faculty members suggest a union could have prevented this situation.

“We’re the last hired, first fired, and this is a continuation of that relationship,” said Frank Fucile, an English instructor who was not assigned to teach any courses next semester.


Read the rest of this news story for The Temple News here.

Film Review: Steve Antin's Burlesque

What you might expect from a film about show business starring two musical icons as the leads: a dippy romp with a spectacular soundtrack. A cross between Moulin Rouge -- which featured a song by Burlesque star Christina Aguilera -- and Chicago with hints of The Devil Wears Prada, director Steve Antin's film offers up plenty of beauty shots of stars Cher and Aguilera and somehow manages to skip over most of the cohesive drama of those instant classics without totally losing the film's momentum.

The film concerns a naïve girl from Iowa named Ali (Aguilera), who travels to Hollywood with grandiose dreams but quickly finds herself in a seedy motel with no job prospects. After a long day of job searching, she stumbles upon a burlesque club owned by Tess (Cher) and is mesmerized. Ali gets a job as a waitress at the club, which is in danger of slipping through Tess' cash-strapped hands, and after auditioning and imploring the hardened Tess, eventually gets a job in the kick line. When an angered fellow performer cuts the music during one of Ali's first shows, Ali belts out a song that blows everyone away. Suddenly, Tess is congratulating her and planning a whole new show that will revolve around her. The music in the film will certainly inspire fans of Aguilera. Cher, whose lip synching is pretty obvious, also gets to belt out a couple of numbers to somewhat lesser effect. Despite the presence of the pros, the most convincing lip-synch belongs to the petite Kristin Bell, who dons a black wig to play the role of Ali's arch enemy Nikki.

Surely, some viewers will be thrown off by the cheesy resolution of the plot's various conflicts – love, debt, the realization of dreams – but everything else about the film is absolutely stunning. The film is visually ravishing in every way, from set design to costumes to lighting, which, in this critic's mind, more than makes up for its lack of narrative originality. You're not going to this movie for subtle shadings of suggestion or nuance of character, you're going for the sass, soundtrack and supreme swagger of its leads. As long as you're good with that, you should have a fine time.

This film review was originally published on two.one.five magazine's website here.

Film Review: Ondi Timoner's Cool It

 
With this doc, based on the book of the same name by Danish environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg, director Ondi Timoner provides a refreshing sequel of sorts for Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth. While avoiding the scare tactics used in the famed 2006 documentary which served to bring global warming and the Earth’s welfare to the forefront of our collective consciousness, Cool It delves into long-term solutions and some temporary stop-gap measures that would cost much less and do much more good than proposed short-term measures to cut carbon dioxide emissions on this planet.

Problematically, Timoner’s film is a bit disjointed. The first 20 minutes are spent on Lomborg’s personal and professional history before moving on to interviews with professors around the world about global warming and possible solutions. Naturally, it also hits on Lomborg’s proposal for spending $250 million on decreasing global warming and addressing the world’s other problems (like lack of health care, lack of education systems and poverty). Perhaps the 20 minutes spent telling Lomborg’s story is meant to mirror the interspersion of Gore’s personal story in Truth, but here, it's more of a distraction, as if interjecting this man's personal story somehow adds a necessarily element of basic individual humanity.

Ultimately, the bulk of the film addresses the world’s future and the solutions that scientists have been studying for years and are ready to implement. In that, it is fascinating stuff to watch, leaving the viewer hopeful rather than glumly preparing for an imminent apocalypse. One can only hope that policy makers are sitting up and taking notes.

This film review was originally published on two.one.five magazine's website.