I'm funny..at least I think I am

So can journalists still remain professional but incorporate humor into their pieces? There are not often opportunities to marry the two, but  if you can, do you go for it? Yah or Nah fellow 621ers?

Let's give this question another dimension. The last story I wrote about was on the 19th annual Durham Easter Egg Hunt held last Saturday. My first attempt at reporting on the story was wildly unsuccessful. Why? Because not many 'newsworthy' things happened. Well not much happened in general. There were eggs. There were kids. There was a person in a bunny suit. There were parents with iPhones capturing every precious moment of the whole fifteen minute hunt. That just about sums it up. But come on people, I have a word count to reach here. The only thing to bring interest to the story, which only can be defined as news based on its locality, is the little anecdotes I gathered from the parents and their kids. Although knots on their own, the stories can be stitched together to make a narrative. Hopefully my humor exists outside myself.

Pelican Man Pt. II

I call him Pelican Man.

 I've been planning my next semester abroad in Florence and am lucky enough to have found a travel writing course offered at the Florence University of the Arts. As with any aspiring writer, be fiction or non-fiction, I am at an insufficiency of words to express the excitement I have for this immense opportunity. When I was in Puerto Rico all I wanted to do was write and write I did. In retrospect of the trip I regret not interviewing a man I meet on a beach the locals call 'Crash Boat' in the Southwestern part of the island.

I call him Pelican Man.

( I will post a picture on my blog to honor his title)

 He wanders the shores of Crash Boat with a box of Ritz crackers in one hand and the other fist full of shark teeth necklaces . Searching the beach for anyone wearing Nigel Thornbury (90's anyone??) styled hats or misusing tanning oil, he approaches the gringos and the ostensible tourists and offers them a deal.

I immediately catch his eye, don't worry I don't normally make that assumption about my effect on men. Or it might by the point-and-shoot Cannon camera in my hand that he really is interested in. I'm wearing a loose-fitting sundress and faux floral patterned Ray Bans. My attempt at seeming trendy inevitably branded me as American.

He confidently walks over to me and the second he says "hello" I know I have failed the Boricua test.
He shakes the hand holding the shark teeth necklaces and says "look at these necklaces! Real shark teeth." I smile and fake interest, wondering if he knows just as I do that those teeth were not found on Puerto Rican shores.

In an effort to please Senor Ramos, my high school Spanish teacher, I reply "No gracias."

Nailed it.

He points to a group of Pelicans standing on the vibrantly painted benches not to far away from where I'm sitting.

"Do you want to see them dance like Michael Jackson?"

My friend and I laugh and tell him "maybe later."

After exploring the cliffs around crash boat I end up back along the main part of the beach taking more gratuitous pictures of palm trees to obnoxiously send to my friends stuck in the filibuster of New England's Winter. I see Pelican Man.

"Mike! Mike," he yells in a direction only to suggest that Mike is, in fact, a Pelican. He throws a Ritz cracker in the air which a pelican intercepts before the cracker hits the sand.

As two tourists gather around. I hear him say "Do you want to see Mike dance?"

The man dressed in a floral print shirt that screams gringo gives Pelican Man two dollars.

Let the show begin.

The French Connection

For Frank Francis, the morning of October 13 started off how they always did. He stopped by Jerry's Joint on 22nd Street for a black coffee and lightly buttered poppy seed bagel before heading to Midtown Park, located at the intersection of 24th and 25th Street, at around 10 in the morning. While sitting on a park bench smoking a cigarette he noticed a man who stood out among the familiar cast of characters who could usually be found at Midtown Park. A  Caucasian adult male of average build and height and white collar attire, nothing of his physical appearance marked him as unusual, but he seemed overly concerned about something.
"I had never seen this guy before. He seemed on edge, you know, nervous about something. His hands were shaking so goddamn much he could barely hold his cigarette" Francis said, " This guy was paranoid."



Witness Frank Francis aka Chris Sink
Veracity Rating: 4. 83

MLK Speech

Today over 250,000 men, women, children of all ages and races, representing all the fifty states of this country, lined the sweltering August steps and streets of the Lincoln Memorial, stretching far beyond the reflecting pool, to see Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak on behalf of the struggle for equality of African Americans.

Town Meeting Lead

Summer may seem even farther away for the students of Portsmouth High School as now many students will be spending their Saturday mornings in four hour detentions.