Profile - @wanderingstan

  The sunset at Ocean Beach is a sight to see. Tourists and locals alike come out to enjoy the 
colors playing off the waters in the Richmond District’s popular surf spot. And during low tide, 
beach-goers may have one more thing to look at. Strewn all around the beach during low tide are words like “Dream” and “Love” written in calligraphy with intricate designs. Stan James, 41-year-old Inner Richmond resident, is the artist.

His strokes are precise, as this is a very unforgiving art form. Although all the works he creates will wash away with the tide, he only has one chance to make them right. There are no sand erasers. Using only a rake, a stick, and his talent, James does calligraphy in the wet sand for passersby to enjoy. This calligraphy has gained him a notable following on Instagram, where he commonly posts pictures of his art. While some of his followers are San Francisco locals, many more enjoy his art from around the world. 

One such follower is Jimmy Holway, another Richmond District resident, who James inspired and has collaborated with. Holway is still learning, calling James the mastermind and teacher. The difference in James’ and Holway’s works can be easily seen. While Holway’s lettering is heavy-handed and illegible in places, James’ is well-scripted and meticulously done. 

Holway and James are part of a community of people who enjoy calligraffiti, or the mash-up of calligraphy and graffiti. Although fairly new, calligraffiti already has a good-sized following in the street art community. Holway and James met through a Reddit.com forum, where calligraffiti artist communicate and share their work. James describes this community as a place where geeks practice art. 

“It’s an interesting cross-road,” says James. “On the one hand, you have the artistic side, but most people who enjoy this are also just nerds and math people like me.” 

 In addition to calligraphy and art, James codes, and has be a “tech guy” for various startups around the Bay Area. Most recently, James has created an app called “Super Selfie Dance”, which is free on the App Store for Apple products. When he was eight years old, James began doing calligraphy, simply because everyone else in his class could draw, but he was the only student who could write in script. As an adult, he is still drawn to calligraphy, because it’s “art with rules”.

The idea for beach writing first came from Burning Man 2013, a festival that takes place in the desert and requires participants to bring a gift. James’ gift was his raking, because he felt he could create works of calligraphy in the desert sands to give back to the Burning Man. When it didn’t work very well, because the sand was too dry and all his art kept getting blown away,  he realized he could give back to the San Francisco community with his art as well.

“Doing calligraphy on Ocean Beach makes me feel like I’m part of the city,” says James. “There’s street performers and artists and basically just a big city full of weirdos. This makes me feel like I’m contributing and giving back.

Children’s faces light up when the come across his works, and people watching him from the Cliff House Restaurant take photos and occasionally burst into applause. His art brings people happiness and gives them pleasant surprises, and that’s the main thing James strives for. In addition to being a way for James to participate in the city, doing art on the beach creates a sense of calm and a reason to visit the beach. 

 
More of James' work can be found on his Instagram, @wanderingstan.

Jour300 book review

A little over a year ago, I bought my first car. It was beautiful - an old black Ford Explorer with quite a few miles on it, but it was the best I could afford, and I loved it. I installed a stereo system that would play my iPod, I disregarded the fact that it beeped for no apparent reason, and I yelled at people who ate, drank or sneezed in it. It was the first big purchase I'd made in my life, aside from my college tuition. I still drive that car.

Well, one day, I let my brother borrow it. Then he borrowed it again. And soon enough, he was using it almost as regularly as me. About a month after I bought the car, I agreed to let him drive me to work and pick me up in exchange for him using my car to hang out with his friends for the day. As he was driving me to work, he was using his phone to change the music. I told him not to use his phone while driving. He scoffed at me and snapped that he'd be fine and I shouldn't tell him what to do. He made me so angry. He even told me he was a better driver than I was which was why he could text and drive with no reprecussions. He dropped me off and I slammed the door, irritated at my know-it-all little brother who wouldn't listen to my advice on how he can should drive MY car. 

Fast forward five minutes. I kid you not, five minutes. And my kid brother, while looking at his phone and changing the song playing on my new stereo system, rear-ended someone in my car. Right after I warned him about it and he told me he'd be fine. My brand-new car was now considered totaled by insurance, I had to pay out of pocket to get it fixed (he still owes me money for that) and it is now a salvage title. 

Which brings me to my point. I agree with Matt Richtel in A Deadly Wandering. Drivers and phones shouldn't mix. In fact, drivers and anything distracting, including music, air conditioners, coffee, snacks, pets, kids, mirrors, friends, and the drivers own thoughts shouldn't mix. Okay, I'm over exaggerating. But still, there is a serious issue with driver distraction. It's not only phones, it's everything from music to GPS systems. People need to realize they are in a deadly weapon which can absolutely not only kill others, but kill the driver themself. It's dangerous! And people don't seem to take it as seriously as they would a gun!

While I wasn't a total fan of the writing style Richtel uses, the book itself was interesting and a great read for anyone who drives. In fact, I'd feel a lot safer if everyone on the road read it. Because while my brother got away with only a scratched up, now totaled "brand-new" car and a very angry sister, it could have been far worse. He learned his lesson, but if Richtel could have taught him it sooner, maybe my car would still have a clean title. 

Blog Post #10

Let me preface this blog post by saying that I really enjoyed feature writing! I can't quite decide which I enjoy more, news writing, feature writing, or creative writing. I think I will continue to do all three! The most important thing I think I learned in feature writing is how to make my writing a bit more fun and colorful without straying too far from the topic. I have a hard time striking a balance between logic and creativity; a lot of times I will be a little wild and creative if I don't have an agenda or deadline to meet, but I tend to try and stay in between the lines if I do. Feature writing for me was incredibly fun and challenging because I did learn to mix the two, and I got to practice having fun with my writing without losing the point of it. The second most important thing I learned was how to cut things from my writing. I would often get my stories back for this class and see certain words that were cut out. I would get good grades, and the story itself would be really good, but I would look back over it and think, "oh yea, it does sound better without that word!". So I really just learned to reread my writing a bit more closely, and write just a little more concisely (some words don't have to be there; if they add nothing to the story, take them out!). The third most important thing I learned was about the different types of features and news stories. I'll be honest here, I followed news people on twitter and that's how I got my news. I never read the newspaper. However, now that I know more about features and stories and profiles and all that jazz, I have a new respect for the newspaper, and therefore am more interested in it. I actually even read the front page, and a bunch of features from the sections of the news I'm interested in. Even if it's not as efficient as twitter, it's still pretty awesome.

My writing has improved immensely over the course of this quarter. I have learned how to better edit, and how to catch things I previously probably wouldn't have caught. Believe it or not, I have learned to be a bit more concise (I know, hard to believe, since I just love words so much!) and not ramble on or be repetitive when talking about one topic. I learned how to be fun and exciting when I write without letting my opinions glare through and without making it overwhelming and distracting from the actual news story.

Of all the feature writing styles, I think I liked writing the profile most. I really enjoyed basically everything I did, but it was really fun for me to interview someone and just note everything about them, and turn it into a story! I adore people and getting to know them, so for me that was just a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed it. I honestly really enjoyed doing basically everything in feature writing, but if I had to pick my least favorite part, I would have said it was the short-form. Weird, I know. Clearly I should never go into graphic design. I think it may be because I'm not a terribly visual person, so thinking of some short, visual ways to present a story that I personally worked really hard on writing was difficult. I think in words, and I love words. Short pictures and graphs aren't my thing. The event story was also a little bit difficult for me. I still enjoyed it; it wasn't my least favorite thing, but it was challenging for me to put the mood and scene of an event into words. Not that I didn't like the challenge though :)

What's next for me? Good question! I wish I knew. I'm planning to continue to write for fun, and to work on my creative writing over them summer. Also, I may just keep a blog this summer; I'm planning to travel quite a bit, so that would be a great way for me to quickly keep practicing my writing. I also plan to write for La Voz in the coming fall! It sounds like a lot of fun, and a great experience, even if I don't go into journalism!

Blog #9

An editiorial I found that I whole-heartedly disagree with is an editorial about our education system located here. Essentially what this article says is that Latino and African-American children are not being properly educated in Algebra in 8th grade. However, Asian and white children are at a much higher proficiency rating. It points out that charter schools have a much higher rate of proficiency in 8th grade Algebra one, and we need to change our school system to better prepare kids for college.

Now, I am incredibly passionate about education. I want to be a teacher or open a charter school for goodness sake! And I do agree with this article in that I think our school systems don't work, and that they need to be reformed. However, I don't think the race of the student matters as much, nor do I think the government can implement many programs to help, other than to completely change the entire school system. First of all, parents need to be more involved in their child's schooling. That's a given. And it's not even mentioned in the article. But that's the least of my worries.

The thing that tells whether or not these students are proficient is a standardized test. Some students are not very good test takers, whereas other students are. I could almost always get good grades on tests regardless of whether or not I studied, whereas my little brother almost always failed, regardless of how much he studied. That's not entirely fair. Also, if these kids aren't doing well in school, maybe someone should take a long hard look at their teachers. After all, the teacher's responsibility is to teach. And I can't tell you how many times I had a tenured teacher that taught us absolutely nothing.

But the thing that bothers me the most about this article is the solutions presented. First of all, they define education as the ability to get into college. Anyone can get into college if they memorize the facts and then just forget them. Last I checked, to educate someone you're actually teaching them a life skill that they will retain, not just training them to do well enough to get into a college so they can be up to their ears in debt and owe tons of money to the government. The whole idea that the goal of education is to get as many kids as possible to college disgusts me. Education should be about teaching kids something valuable and allowing them to do with that what they will. The ultimate goal may be college, but the primary goal should be learning. Let's keep in mind here that people can be successful and happy with or without a college degree. Hello, Steve Jobs anyone? I also really hate the fact that this article points out charter school that are doing well, and public schools that aren't. Charter schools are awesome, but they're alternative education. Instead of saying, "hey, here's a silver lining this charter school is doing well, let's make some more!", we should be focusing on the fact that our traditional schools are sucking pretty badly, and reform those to include more innovation and be altogether a more student centered environment. Given, that can be achieved by taking a few pointers from charter schools, but we need to reform our entire school districts, not just implement some halfway finished government programs. Of course, to reform our schools, we'd actually have to be funding them. But that's a whole other argument...

Blog #8

The person I chose to write my profile on is Danielle Boushey. She is a friend and coworker of mine. I chose Danielle because she is one of those super charming people you just can't help but like right away. I really enjoy her company; she has so much energy and she is so honest and real it's refreshing. She is also very interfering because she has two part time jobs, is a full time student, and still manages to have a ton of friends and a boyfriend in the military who she can find time to spend time with whenever he is home.

During my interview I really hope to learn more about Danielle. She is so interesting and open and honest that I feel it will be really fun to interview her! I also can't wait to practice my active listening skills (I'm an interrupter; at my house if you want anything to be heard you better shout it louder over the person who's talking at the same time!) and my note-taking skills. The last interview I did I looked back on my notes and realized they made no sense at all to me; I ended up having to email the person and follow up on things that were unclear in my notes. It was quite embarrassing and I'm determined to not have it happen again.

My plan to capture interesting quotes is to record the conversation if its okay with Danielle and put stars by points in the interview where good quotes may be located. I also want to ask questions that require thinking; if they're thinking the quotes should be easier to come by :) I'm really excited to do this profile piece, I adore talking to people and writing about them, so this is right up my alley!!

Blog #7 - Enterprise/Investigative Reporting

After reading the article "The Cost of Dying", I was really honestly sad. Some poor guy I didn't even know had died, and him just dying had not only put an emotional stress on his family, but also a financial burden! However, the actual act of investigative reporting seems daunting to me. Don't get me wrong, the author of that article did it super well, but I personally am a little intimidated by the idea of snooping around and trying to dig up truths from people who may or may not be incredibly terrifying!

Someone has to do it, and I think the whole idea of it is romantic and fantastic. I picture myself walking around in a little press hat with a camera and notebook interviewing people and getting pushed away by famous politicians and the likes, and publishing stories that are shocking and reveal some insane truth that has been covered up or lied about or just hidden from the public. When I think about investigative reporting that way, I think it sounds amazing. But I think the vision I have of reporting in that sense is mostly derived from films I've seen and also from Could Atlas, one of my favorite books, in which an investigative reporter tries to publish something about the instability of a huge nuclear reactor and almost gets killed and gets into gun fights and has this grand adventure. In the end, her story is published and she is this huge hero and what not.

But from what I've read and understood from the class, and from an analysis of "The Cost of Dying", I think investigative and enterprise reporting may actually be somewhat dull (at least in comparison to my over-active imagination). I also think it would be incredibly stressful. I can just say, if it was my father dying, I certainly wouldn't be trying to find out more about costs and writing a whole story on it. I would probably just be crying, and sobbing, and mopping around. Not writing. And certainly not publishing my tragedy for the world to see. Furthermore, if I was investigating a person, and they came after me angrily, I might just get angry right back at them and end up not only without a story but also with a nasty lawsuit on my hands. Also, the daunting idea of deadlines springs up into my head when I think of enterprise reporting, and I know how stressed out I can get if I don't have all my information at least planned, if not gathered, but the time a deadline is even announced. I couldn't imagine if I didn't even have a story idea, or if all I had was a shell, and my editor told me the deadline was in a few days.

So overall, investigative and enterprise reporting sounds like an amazing thing, and I think it would be something I would have a great interest in trying out, and something I might even enjoy. However, I don't know if I am cut out for the job. It sounds really difficult, and I give the people who can do it an immense amount of credit and respect. I just don't know if it's something I could handle.

Blog #6

Of the resources listed, the one I found most useful was The Adventurous Writer. This particular blog was incredibly helpful to me because I found the tips to be incredibly straight-forward, as well as tips I haven't heard before. For example, some of the other blogs had tips on them that I've definitely heard before, and that I feel are very elementry when it comes to writing. Personally, I found JProf to be uninteresting and straightforward; very little new information was presented on it. The LifeHack blog I found to be more interesting, but once again, the editting tips were all pretty basic, and I'd heard most of the before.

However, The Adventurous Writer only had six tips on them, and all of them were useful. I personally especially enjoyed the tip to use the "find" button in Microsoft Word to find phrases like "to be" and "there is" and other dull phrases, and otherwise reword them. I always think I catch phrases like that, but I'm sure there are still some that I just never notice, and therefore never revise. I never thought to specifically look for the words or phrases.

I also loved the tips "trust the writing process" and "let your writing go". I try so hard to do these things, but I still find myself re-reading stuff I've written and getting discouraged when the first draft I write isn't as good as I expect it to be. Trusting the writing process, and just letting the "stream of consciousness" writing flow out would really help me break out of a monotonous writing style. Letting your writing go is also important. My English professor once told me to "kill your babies", meaning delete a ton of your writing. Don't get attached. I, however, seem to think that everything I write is either inherently brilliant, or can be reworked to be brilliant. I need to do both of these things together; free-writing, and then deleting what sucks. If I do, it could greatly help my stories and my essays and everything else I write.