Richard's work space is stationed in a one garage warehouse which previously was a mechanic shop. This also happens to be his living space four out of seven days during the week. There are no windows in any of the four separate spaces in the building and aside from the industrial lighting or natural light let in when the garage door is open, the area is pitch black. Upon entrance, the first visible things are the shelves of candy, chips, soda and other foods. Richard has one bathroom in his work space. There is a toilet and sink, but no shower. He showers at the local gym he exercises in during his business days. The walls in his bathroom are painted bright blue, with pictures of an old Cadillac and Corvet hanging on the wall. On the other side of the bathroom is his office. Pictures of his wife and two daughters, Bruce Springsteen, Howard Stern, B.B. King and an elephant poster decorate the blank white walls. Howard Stern keeps him company on the Sirius XM Radio. "I would go nuts without that," he said. There are two desks on either side of the wall: one has a talking bill and coin counter, the other holds a magnifier machine which Rich uses to read bills and documents. Right above his office is a makeshift room where Richard sleeps. "That's the reason I rented this place," he said. "The extra room is perfect for me." A set of shaky, wooden staircase leads up to his room. Inside, there is a cut out in the wall where the air conditioner is and aside from the two small lamps, the room is very dark. He has a futon on the right side of the room where he sleeps a few hours each night. His suitcase lays open, the clothes sprawled out on the maroon colored rug he installed four years ago. Tiles from the industrial ceiling are missing as well as a portion of the rug in the corner of the room. There was a leak so Richard had to pull up the rug and place buckets below the drippy ceiling. The buckets of water were gone, but the smell of mold and wet rug lingered in the confined space. It looked like a difficult place to lay one's head in, but Richard said it's not so bad. "I've gotten used to it," he said. "It's already Tuesday."
Standing tall at six foot two inches and about two hundred pounds Sean Murphy, would look like your typical power hitter in a baseball lineup. As if the last name Murphy couldn't give it away, he is definitely an Irish boy. Although he doesn't have the usual stereotypical features of an Irishman, red hair and freckles, he definitely looks like a true Irishman, with brown hair and greenish blue eyes. Since he was little Sean played baseball right up until his sophomore year in high school. He was a very good player, who hit for power and average and was a very good defensive first baseman and would be an asset to his varsity high school team. Unfortunately the coach of the team had other plans. As the final cut day during his junior year in high school neared, the coach told Sean to come see him in his office after practice. Going into the meeting a player usually knows what the coach wants to talk about. It's a long walk down a dimly lit hallway, and your heart races so fast that you can hear it in your ears. Your heart continues to race until you sit down in the chair in front of the coach and you know that your fate already and you have to wait for the coach to finally say the words, "I'm sorry but were going to have to cut you." When Sean asked why, the coach answered him and told him, "That he wasn't athletic enough." With the devastating news, Sean didn't give up and worked hard throughout the next year on trying to get faster and more agile on his feet. When tryouts rolled around again the next year, Sean got told the same thing by the coach, "That he wasn't athletic enough." He would never play baseball again after his senior year tryouts. As many people would let that discourage them and put them down, Sean didn't. During his freshman year at Siena he wanted to join a club sport to fill some spare time he had. The sport he chose was rugby, a very physical, draining, and ATHLETIC sport to play. This was the first time he had ever played the game and his first couple practices were rough and he got a little beat up. As you can imagine the thought of the his high school coach telling him he wasn't good enough stuck in the back of his mind. When one of the older kids on the team asked Sean what was wrong one day, and why he was holding back and hesitant, Sean told him the story from high school. His teammate responded, "Rugby is a physical and athletic sport and your playing it, so you must be good enough, so take your anger out on the field." Eventually after preseason was over, Sean would fill a starting spot on the team as a freshman. The motivation of getting told he wasn't athletic enough to play baseball fueled Sean throughout his ruby career. He would start all four years for the team and eventually in his senior year become a captain and president of the rugby team.
Sitting in a room with thirty plus girls, facial features, clothes they way they look all seem to blend in. What stands out, is each individuals personality and the traits we recognize in a person as we get to know them. At 5 foot 4 with dark skin, short black hair in twists, Tayo looks like a typical American girl. Her size two frame dresses like every other American girl, her wardrobe supplied with an array of dresses and shirts from Forever 21. She wakes up in the morning, grabs any shirt and pair of jeans from her closet, quickly runs her fingers through her hair and is out the door. What makes Tayo stand out, is that she is from Nigeria, and is a part of their culture, British culture as well as American. Her background is a huge reflection upon her personality. Although Tayo considers herself very much Americanized, having been born here, attending a university and joining a sorority, her personality shows her connection to multiple cultures. Tayo is very outspoken and will say what’s on her mind, an important trait for someone who visits and has roots in multiple countries, because having to adapt to people of different cultures can be a challenge at times. What draws people to Tayo’s personality is her humor. She can say one word, and have a whole room on their knees laughing on the floor, through the words she expresses and her mannerisms. Her natural ability to make people laugh until they cry, and feel as though they just attended an ab workout session, is what makes her so social and able to adapt to the many cultures she is a part of. Humor is a universal trait seen throughout the world. Tayo is very universal, through her hairstyle reflecting more of her Nigerian culture changing daily from shorter to longer in a mixture of braids and twists, to her having the same shirt as hundreds of other 19 year old in America. She keeps that mixture of both cultures into her daily life, which is important to her having still both cultures in her everyday life.
Driving down the winding back roads of downtown Kingston along the Hudson, the pathways are marked by industrial junk yards. The names of the yards are used by the locals as a type of measurement. Going three junkyards means you have traveled a quarter of a mile. Rolling down the road doors locked, Caleb diverts my attention to my left hand side. “You see that building coming up? Yeah that is the boy’s home of Kingston. I was almost going to have to live there for a while till my mother straightened up her act.” Caleb didn’t come from a very broken home but the home he did come had its ups and down. His parents splitting up early in his childhood, he mother entered a series of abusive relationships. Both of his sisters were actually born from different dads. Making Caleb’s two sisters half. Although they always disregarded this fact, Caleb and his two sisters always lived under one roof together. Through his mother’s unconventional path of mother hood turned ugly at some points, Caleb was extended the invitation from his not so loving father to move in with him in Newburgh. This has one of the higher rates of violent crime per capita than South Bronx or Brownsville. Newburgh, population 29,000, is the murder capital of New York State. Says Century Foundation Moving into Newburgh, Caleb thought he would breeze through junior high and high school just keeping to himself and focusing on skateboarding. In the first couple of weeks of Newburgh he found out just how wrong he had been about his current situation. “Walking home one night I was startled by a noise and I can’t be certain but I am pretty sure I saw someone get stabbed. I just remember walking home with my hands clenched in fists in my windbreaker trying not to look anyone in the face” Caleb said.
AUSTIN COLLINS PT 1 The morning begins at 6:00a.m and the strong smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen fills the air of the Collins house as 53 year old Scott Collins gets ready for his jam packed day of managing and working his very own landscaping business. Collins stands at 5”10, weighing 195 lbs., but mostly from muscle. The amount of hard work he puts into everyday is shown through his appearance, consisting of an almost constant 5 o’ clock shadow beard, a year round sun burnt face, and cuts from equipment run up his arms, as well as the calluses and blisters on his hands. Collins grew with divorced parents, but he, along with his two younger sisters, was raised by his mother and his stepfather in a small house in East Quogue, Long Island. With his mother and father being absent when he got home from school and on weekends due to work, Collins had to take care of his sisters and act as a good role model towards them. As he got older, Collins needed to assert himself into the working world to help provide for his family. Collins began his interest for working with plants and landscape by working on a farm when he was entering his teens. Collins would wake up at 7:00 a.m. and ride his bike to work, making $80 a week working for 40 hours a week. Collins was hired to weed the field, gather vegetables, and clean the animal barn of a 90 acre farm down the road from his house, owned by a family friend. “ The word was not easy,” says Collins, “ he would start off the morning with having us move 60 foot long, 6 inch wide irrigation pipes across the field, each weighing pretty heavy because they were full of water.” As time progressed, Collins decided that he no longer wanted to live under his mother and fathers rules, and moved out of his house at the age of 16. He rented out a small apartment in the same town and lived off of what he made on the farm. After Collins graduated from Westhampton Beach High School, he decided that he wanted to take his knowledge of farming further and applied himself to college. Collins was accepted to the University of Santa Barbara and was on the next flight out of New York. Going to this college was not only a great decision for Collins, but it was a dream come true. One of Collins’ favorite hobbies is surfing, so going to a school that was on the ocean was incredible for him. Collins would wake up and go to class, get whatever class work he needed to get done over with, and then be out surfing until the sun set. After his junior year studying Landscaping, Collins assumed that he knew what he needed to know and dropped out of school to travel back home and start his own business. Collins began a landscaping company titled “Landzign,” a landscape design and maintenance business. Collins began the business on his own, but later found out that it was going to take more than one man to get the job done better and faster. Collins hired 3 workers at first and the business took off.
Collins has been running “Landzign” for over the past 30 years and amazing still has one of the three workers with him. Landzign extends from Montauk to Remsenburg, Long Island and remains very successful. Although the business has been running for quite some time, his daily routine still remains the same. A pit stop is made on his way to his shop at Peppercorn’s Deli, located right at the top of the road from Collins’ house, located in the small town of Remsenburg on Long Island. Like every morning, Collins starts his day with a healthy breakfast consisting of a whole-wheat wrap of spinach and egg whites. “ Make sure you throw some hot sauce on that too, Rick. Got to add a little kick to it!” says Collins to the deli owner. Collins also takes into consideration that his workers deserve a good healthy, balanced breakfast, so he treats his workers to egg sandwiches and a carton of orange juice. Collins makes his way to his shop, located right at the top of the road from his house. Waiting for him are his three workers, dressed and ready to put in hard labor throughout the day. Collins lays out an agenda on the tailgate of his Ford F150 pickup truck and the workers examine it, as if they are studying for a test. The workers hop into an Isuzu F series, one of Collins’ work trucks, and leave the shop, as they embark to their first job site, a house on Dune Road, a very wealthy road located in Westhampton Beach, Long Island, which acts as a peninsula, having one side of the road overlooing the bay, and the other side overlooking the ocean. “ It’s kind of a privilege to work on some of these houses that were fortunate to be hired for. It’s like were on a celebrity’s property,” Collins says. Like many of the houses located on this road, steel fences protect the driveways, only allowing guests and company to enter through a 3-digit code that is given to them through an intercom. One of the workers has to hop out of the car and type in the code that opens the steel gates to the never-ending driveway of this jobsite. The truck pulls into this pebble driveway, aligned with cobblestone, and approaches this $8.2M three-story house with an acre as their front yard, including a full sized tennis court/basketball court, and a roof consisting of a gunite swimming pool, Jacuzzi, and a guest house with a beautiful view overlooking their ocean backyard. “ When I got the chance to work on these types of houses as a kid, the owners would be either in the city, work, or bringing their children somewhere on the other side of Long Island, so I would put in hard work, then jump in their pool and relax before they got back,” Collins tells his workers.
Upon returning to Germany and to the life that he had left behind, Büth remembers those first few months being the most confusing in his life.
“It was so weird,” he said. “I did not feel at home at all. People looked at me weird, I guess I was looking more American, plus I was always wearing my favorite Red Sox hat all the time. And I think I was moving in a different way. I was feeling more relaxed about everything and the Germans always seem very focused and straight about what they want and not really caring about everyone else around them. Whereas in the United States I feel like everyone is always caring for everyone else.”
But for Büth the hardest part was admitting to himself and to his family, that he was different. That his year abroad had changed him and he was not prepared to return to the way things were before he departed.
Büth described a saying in German (sorry, have to get the exact German spelling for the saying and then will add it here), that roughly translates to, “out of site out of mind.” For those who he had not kept in touch with while studying in the United States, Büth was the same person he was before he had left. He described wanting to change things, change how he was perceived and show off this new air of confidence that he had gained in the States.
“For the people that didn’t see me, when I came back it was like I hadn’t been away at all,” he said. “They wanted to continue where we had left off but I was different. I felt like I was looking at things a lot differently than they were, like where our personal relationships were.”
Büth had made many new friends in the States and after returning to Germany, realized that some of the friends he had before leaving were not really good to him. He had seen how friendship could be and wasn’t going to just return to how things were before he left, he needed to show he had changed. When his new school year started in Germany, after his return, Büth found himself talking to people who before his “friends” had shunned or thought little of. He wasn’t going to let anyone else influence his opinion of others anymore. He quickly found himself becoming close with a group of boys he had never really taken the time to get to know before, and those new friends would ultimately become his closest companions in Germany.
After 9th grade, Jeremy was yearning for something more than what was being offered in Hunter, New York. He wanted to leave Hunter-Tannersville Central High School and continue his schooling at Stratton Mountain School in Stratton, Vermont where he could focus more on snowboarding. His parents did not want him transferring for financial reasons, but since Jeremy's sister, Vickie, was already going, his parents had no choice but to let him attend. Any given day at Stratton, Thompson would be up at the early hours of the morning, starting his day with 5 AM workouts, followed by breakfast, and then Thompson's favorite part, classes till 4 PM. After classes, Jeremy could be found dry land training, getting body ready for the upcoming winter season. But once the first snowfall of the season, Jeremy could only be found on the slopes. Competition after competition, Jeremy worked his way up to compete at the New Zealand Open in 2005 where he placed third in the competition. “At first I placed second, and then someone did better than me, and I ended placing third. But it's still pretty cool,” says Thompson. One of Jeremy's most memorable experiences was at the Junior Worlds Competition in Switzerland. Thompson took his practice runs in the early morning, but his time to compete was at 4:30 in the afternoon. Thompson grew anxious by the minute after watching three people get injured and be whisked away by helicopters. Unfortunately, Thompson did not place in the competition but that didn't seem to bother him, because his most vivid memory from Switzerland was partying with is friend “Sea Bass.”
Eight pairs of shoes line the floor of the closet. In the back there’s a pair of silver and blue Puma track shoes. Scattered are three different sets of Adidas sneakers. Each holding nearly indistinguishable qualities; a white one inch rubber outsole lift on the bottoms, a mostly smooth but sometimes spongy suede outside, similar patterns in the stitching, the Adidas symbol proudly displayed on the heels. There are also three pairs of dress shoes. Two black sets. One of which shines when exposed to light, is of the French Canadian, Aldo brand. It’s still got some luster, especially next to his Italian made, Mercanti Fiorentini brown leather pair, whose bottom heel has been mostly eroded in the back, the dark brown façade chipped away revealing a layer that’s less slick, and more jagged. There’s a shoe for every occasion.
Smaller than any of the shoes, is an iron, placed between the Pumas and a pair of Adidas. Most students don’t need to perm press clothes, but when in your closet you have sixteen button up, collared, dress shirts, it would be silly not to.
Four shirts are plain white. Another four are a variation of deep reds, purples, and pinks, many with stripes, and one with a plaid design. Three more are shades of blue, one with lines, another with plaid, and a last one with vaguely nautical art and sailor symbols. The rest are a mix of yellows, greens, and blacks.
The far end of the closet is home to three suit jackets. There’s one winter coat. It’s waterproof, but is light height and flimsy. When it gets into the colder fall and winter months, the coat is probably supplemented with the scarves that hang on the hook opposite.
The top shelf bears three fedora-like hats.
“If I wear a hat, I wear a fedora,” Rutty says from his desk. I ask him about his closet, about his wardrobe. I tell him that I think it’s pretty snazzy. “No, it’s casual.” We sit a half-minute in silence before he pauses his computer game to lean over and take another look at his closet. After a once over, he reconsiders, “Ok, I’m a little more than casual.”
I ask him if he likes to stand out, and his answer sounds confused. He’s not sure if he likes to look “interesting” or he just realizes that the way he dresses is different from most American college kids. All of a sudden he gets visibly upset, slowly shaking his head, eyes fixated on the floor. “Last Friday I got compliments for wearing a blazer,” he tells me before rotating back, and immersing himself back into his game. He’s legitimately angry that someone noticed how well he dressed last Friday. He would feel more at home, in his garb if he were actually in the place where he was born, in France. He explains to me that according to him, Europeans look like they put more effort into the way they dress, that they are more stylish, and that “their jaws won’t drop if they see a kid wearing a blazer.”
“I don’t want to wear American Eagle t-shirts, like every other American,” he tells me. He name dropped that brand a few times. Apparently American Eagle is the epitome of American fashion. He pauses his game again once he gets fired up about expressing his opinion on the American dress code: “baseball caps, sports jerseys, t-shirts and sweatpants.” He rattles them off with such disgust and hostility. He’s so confident that his attire is classier, he borders on arrogant. He certainly sounds ostentatious. I start to feel defensive, even though I don’t own a single pair of sweatpants.
So I ask him if he feels like an outsider, and he tells me he does. “My first year, I lfelt like such a sore thumb…” I waited for him to continue but he didn’t, until I looked up once I finished writing, where he was waiting for me to clarify whether he was using the right expression. Seconds ago he had just made an articulate rants in English with what seemed like such ease that I had for a moment forgotten that he was a foreigner and from time to time still has trouble using American expressions. J
He was tired of dressing the way he did in high school, so he just stopped doing it as much. He was tired of having to explain that he didn’t have a special reason for wearing a button up shirt, tucked into his jeans. He wanted to stop sticking out so much, so he stopped stressing the way he wanted. And just as quickly as he irritated me minutes earlier, he won over my sympathy.
************************************
“Hey John, we still watching the new South Park in half hour?” Kevin asked me from his bedroom. Our roommate over hears us from the bathroom, walks out and proposes to the both of us “Yo, Cold Case in 29 minutes?!” He walks away with a satisfactory grin. We three of us laugh and myself and Kevin solidify plans to watch the season premiere. South Park is in its 16th season, and it’s my observation that it’s lost intrigue from the demographic that used to give it their undying support. Every Thursday of my sophomore year of high school, my peers devoted to retelling South Park jokes from the previous night. Anything anyone said, good chance it originated from the mouth of Cartman, Kyle, Stan, or Butters. I just remember the immense pressure there was to watch so that you weren’t left out the next day. It was such a staple of my growing up. But know here we are, five years later, and some of us would rather watch Cold Case (maybe ironically). Or at least make jokes about it. Kevin, the only one of my roommates not native to America, is the only one who is enlivened by the prospect of watching a new episode of South Park. It probably seems passé for anyone like myself who endured several years of gush over a cartoon in every social setting. He’s enthusiastic. He clearly hasn’t been worn out and by beaten to death by the show like the rest of us. It’s still new for him. The episode turns out to be a spoof on football; American football. I make the distinction because for the half hour before the show started; Kevin played FIFA ’13,the new soccer video game that was just released this week. Soccer, or Football, is without a doubt his favorite sport. One of the first commercials of the night was one for FIFA, which easily excited him. It even prompted a rant about how there would never be a strike among the soccer refs in Europe, and how the advertisements in France so greatly differ from those in the United States. It all mostly went over my head.
Control has always been a four-letter word. Even as a kid, I was forced to relinquish my right to make my own decisions. My parents were separated, and I would visit my dad wearing a dress I hated, my curly hair cut to my chin—as it was not allowed to be any longer—and he would lecture me about standing up to mother. “You have to have your own personality,” he would plead. Easier said than done. Besides, I didn’t think it was a big deal back then. So I wore a dress that I didn’t particularly like or was made fun of for wheeling around a backpack in junior high. Who cares? But time passed and as I got older, the control grew with me. It became a colossal monster, slithering across my body, tightening around my legs and arms, preventing, always preventing. A curfew, a boyfriend, a texting plan, a shirt that looked too revealing. It doesn’t seem too constricting separate and on paper, but together, it was enough. It was more than enough. I have a birthmark on the right side of my neck that indicated the spot my hair was forced to be cut to before camp every summer. “But if I always cut my hair to that birthmark, then it can never grow,” I remember telling my mother. “Exactly,” she would answer. I began to despise this birthmark because it prevented me from having beautiful, long curly hair. When I got older, I realized, my birthmark wasn’t holding me back, my mom was. Having short curly locks was cute when I was little, obnoxious when I was 12 and seemingly a social hindrance once I got to high school. It wasn’t until I was surrounded by girls with beautiful, long curls that I started to wonder what I would look like if mine grew. This curiosity blossomed into motivation to fight for my own freedom, and that chain of events outlined the template pattern I followed for years: curious, motivated, jolted to act, and finally, forced to a screeching halt. That’s the thing with control: once you have it, you don’t want to relinquish it. Being able to grow and cut my hair as I pleased, even at 14 years old, was a battle, one of the most frustrating and tedious I have ever fought. It was just hair, my hair, so what did it matter? That was exactly it. It didn’t matter. Everyone knew it didn’t matter, including my mom, but she held on tight anyway. It didn’t matter what it was, if it was something she could have a say in, she would. It would be the last say, complete with a contract—often signed and dated by a notary public—and consequences to follow. Because she could.
Lara is very comfortable with being noticed. Her footwear always adds a few more inches onto her already 5’9 figure, forcing everyone to glance slightly up when speaking to her. She runs her fingers often through her thick mass of curly hair, making it tousled to messy perfection. Her Slavic round face is almost doll like, with china blue eyes, ivory skin, and high cheekbones. Her clothes are simply designed but meticulously selected to flatter her slender curvy body. Every outfit is accentuated by her extensive collection of accessories; cat eyed sunglasses, vintage earrings, Grace Kelly inspired headscarves and colorful silk scarves. Most of the time Lara looks like she walked right out of 1955, with dark winged eyeliner and red lipstick to complete the look.
Lara grew up in Mendam; a small, affluent town in Morris County, New Jersey. Her parents, Russ and Karen Chelak, are the CEO’s of their own successful craning business. Lara’s sister Anna is less than two years younger than Lara. Everything about the Chelaks reeks business. When they travel as a family, they take two separate flights. Lara, the more business savvy daughter, flies with her mother and her father flies with Anna. That way, if one of the planes goes down, there is still someone to carry on and run the family company. Growing up, Lara and Anna shared everything. They even decided to attend the same college, Barnard College, where they were roommates for the two years together. Although it’s rare I see one without the other, they never seem to get along. They seem to almost be in constant competition, fighting for the spotlight of their parent’s approval. Lara tends to be the bossy one, telling Anna what to do with an air of arrogance that noticeably drives Anna insane.
Richard's work space is stationed in a one garage warehouse which previously was a mechanic shop. This also happens to be his living space four out of seven days during the week. There are no windows in any of the four separate spaces in the building and aside from the industrial lighting or natural light let in when the garage door is open, the area is pitch black. Upon entrance, the first visible things are the shelves of candy, chips, soda and other foods. Richard has one bathroom in his work space. There is a toilet and sink, but no shower. He showers at the local gym he exercises in during his business days. The walls in his bathroom are painted bright blue, with pictures of an old Cadillac and Corvet hanging on the wall. On the other side of the bathroom is his office. Pictures of his wife and two daughters, Bruce Springsteen, Howard Stern, B.B. King and an elephant poster decorate the blank white walls. Howard Stern keeps him company on the Sirius XM Radio. "I would go nuts without that," he said. There are two desks on either side of the wall: one has a talking bill and coin counter, the other holds a magnifier machine which Rich uses to read bills and documents. Right above his office is a makeshift room where Richard sleeps. "That's the reason I rented this place," he said. "The extra room is perfect for me." A set of shaky, wooden staircase leads up to his room. Inside, there is a cut out in the wall where the air conditioner is and aside from the two small lamps, the room is very dark. He has a futon on the right side of the room where he sleeps a few hours each night. His suitcase lays open, the clothes sprawled out on the maroon colored rug he installed four years ago. Tiles from the industrial ceiling are missing as well as a portion of the rug in the corner of the room. There was a leak so Richard had to pull up the rug and place buckets below the drippy ceiling. The buckets of water were gone, but the smell of mold and wet rug lingered in the confined space. It looked like a difficult place to lay one's head in, but Richard said it's not so bad. "I've gotten used to it," he said. "It's already Tuesday."
ReplyDeleteStanding tall at six foot two inches and about two hundred pounds Sean Murphy, would look like your typical power hitter in a baseball lineup. As if the last name Murphy couldn't give it away, he is definitely an Irish boy. Although he doesn't have the usual stereotypical features of an Irishman, red hair and freckles, he definitely looks like a true Irishman, with brown hair and greenish blue eyes. Since he was little Sean played baseball right up until his sophomore year in high school. He was a very good player, who hit for power and average and was a very good defensive first baseman and would be an asset to his varsity high school team. Unfortunately the coach of the team had other plans. As the final cut day during his junior year in high school neared, the coach told Sean to come see him in his office after practice. Going into the meeting a player usually knows what the coach wants to talk about. It's a long walk down a dimly lit hallway, and your heart races so fast that you can hear it in your ears. Your heart continues to race until you sit down in the chair in front of the coach and you know that your fate already and you have to wait for the coach to finally say the words, "I'm sorry but were going to have to cut you." When Sean asked why, the coach answered him and told him, "That he wasn't athletic enough." With the devastating news, Sean didn't give up and worked hard throughout the next year on trying to get faster and more agile on his feet. When tryouts rolled around again the next year, Sean got told the same thing by the coach, "That he wasn't athletic enough." He would never play baseball again after his senior year tryouts.
ReplyDeleteAs many people would let that discourage them and put them down, Sean didn't. During his freshman year at Siena he wanted to join a club sport to fill some spare time he had. The sport he chose was rugby, a very physical, draining, and ATHLETIC sport to play. This was the first time he had ever played the game and his first couple practices were rough and he got a little beat up. As you can imagine the thought of the his high school coach telling him he wasn't good enough stuck in the back of his mind. When one of the older kids on the team asked Sean what was wrong one day, and why he was holding back and hesitant, Sean told him the story from high school. His teammate responded, "Rugby is a physical and athletic sport and your playing it, so you must be good enough, so take your anger out on the field." Eventually after preseason was over, Sean would fill a starting spot on the team as a freshman. The motivation of getting told he wasn't athletic enough to play baseball fueled Sean throughout his ruby career. He would start all four years for the team and eventually in his senior year become a captain and president of the rugby team.
Sitting in a room with thirty plus girls, facial features, clothes they way they look all seem to blend in. What stands out, is each individuals personality and the traits we recognize in a person as we get to know them.
ReplyDeleteAt 5 foot 4 with dark skin, short black hair in twists, Tayo looks like a typical American girl. Her size two frame dresses like every other American girl, her wardrobe supplied with an array of dresses and shirts from Forever 21. She wakes up in the morning, grabs any shirt and pair of jeans from her closet, quickly runs her fingers through her hair and is out the door.
What makes Tayo stand out, is that she is from Nigeria, and is a part of their culture, British culture as well as American. Her background is a huge reflection upon her personality. Although Tayo considers herself very much Americanized, having been born here, attending a university and joining a sorority, her personality shows her connection to multiple cultures. Tayo is very outspoken and will say what’s on her mind, an important trait for someone who visits and has roots in multiple countries, because having to adapt to people of different cultures can be a challenge at times.
What draws people to Tayo’s personality is her humor. She can say one word, and have a whole room on their knees laughing on the floor, through the words she expresses and her mannerisms. Her natural ability to make people laugh until they cry, and feel as though they just attended an ab workout session, is what makes her so social and able to adapt to the many cultures she is a part of.
Humor is a universal trait seen throughout the world. Tayo is very universal, through her hairstyle reflecting more of her Nigerian culture changing daily from shorter to longer in a mixture of braids and twists, to her having the same shirt as hundreds of other 19 year old in America. She keeps that mixture of both cultures into her daily life, which is important to her having still both cultures in her everyday life.
Driving down the winding back roads of downtown Kingston along the Hudson, the pathways are marked by industrial junk yards. The names of the yards are used by the locals as a type of measurement. Going three junkyards means you have traveled a quarter of a mile. Rolling down the road doors locked, Caleb diverts my attention to my left hand side.
ReplyDelete“You see that building coming up? Yeah that is the boy’s home of Kingston. I was almost going to have to live there for a while till my mother straightened up her act.”
Caleb didn’t come from a very broken home but the home he did come had its ups and down. His parents splitting up early in his childhood, he mother entered a series of abusive relationships. Both of his sisters were actually born from different dads. Making Caleb’s two sisters half. Although they always disregarded this fact, Caleb and his two sisters always lived under one roof together. Through his mother’s unconventional path of mother hood turned ugly at some points, Caleb was extended the invitation from his not so loving father to move in with him in Newburgh. This has one of the higher rates of violent crime per capita than South Bronx or Brownsville. Newburgh, population 29,000, is the murder capital of New York State. Says Century Foundation
Moving into Newburgh, Caleb thought he would breeze through junior high and high school just keeping to himself and focusing on skateboarding. In the first couple of weeks of Newburgh he found out just how wrong he had been about his current situation.
“Walking home one night I was startled by a noise and I can’t be certain but I am pretty sure I saw someone get stabbed. I just remember walking home with my hands clenched in fists in my windbreaker trying not to look anyone in the face” Caleb said.
AUSTIN COLLINS
ReplyDeletePT 1
The morning begins at 6:00a.m and the strong smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen fills the air of the Collins house as 53 year old Scott Collins gets ready for his jam packed day of managing and working his very own landscaping business. Collins stands at 5”10, weighing 195 lbs., but mostly from muscle. The amount of hard work he puts into everyday is shown through his appearance, consisting of an almost constant 5 o’ clock shadow beard, a year round sun burnt face, and cuts from equipment run up his arms, as well as the calluses and blisters on his hands.
Collins grew with divorced parents, but he, along with his two younger sisters, was raised by his mother and his stepfather in a small house in East Quogue, Long Island. With his mother and father being absent when he got home from school and on weekends due to work, Collins had to take care of his sisters and act as a good role model towards them. As he got older, Collins needed to assert himself into the working world to help provide for his family.
Collins began his interest for working with plants and landscape by working on a farm when he was entering his teens. Collins would wake up at 7:00 a.m. and ride his bike to work, making $80 a week working for 40 hours a week. Collins was hired to weed the field, gather vegetables, and clean the animal barn of a 90 acre farm down the road from his house, owned by a family friend. “ The word was not easy,” says Collins, “ he would start off the morning with having us move 60 foot long, 6 inch wide irrigation pipes across the field, each weighing pretty heavy because they were full of water.”
As time progressed, Collins decided that he no longer wanted to live under his mother and fathers rules, and moved out of his house at the age of 16. He rented out a small apartment in the same town and lived off of what he made on the farm. After Collins graduated from Westhampton Beach High School, he decided that he wanted to take his knowledge of farming further and applied himself to college. Collins was accepted to the University of Santa Barbara and was on the next flight out of New York. Going to this college was not only a great decision for Collins, but it was a dream come true. One of Collins’ favorite hobbies is surfing, so going to a school that was on the ocean was incredible for him. Collins would wake up and go to class, get whatever class work he needed to get done over with, and then be out surfing until the sun set. After his junior year studying Landscaping, Collins assumed that he knew what he needed to know and dropped out of school to travel back home and start his own business. Collins began a landscaping company titled “Landzign,” a landscape design and maintenance business. Collins began the business on his own, but later found out that it was going to take more than one man to get the job done better and faster. Collins hired 3 workers at first and the business took off.
AUSTN COLLINS
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Collins has been running “Landzign” for over the past 30 years and amazing still has one of the three workers with him. Landzign extends from Montauk to Remsenburg, Long Island and remains very successful. Although the business has been running for quite some time, his daily routine still remains the same.
A pit stop is made on his way to his shop at Peppercorn’s Deli, located right at the top of the road from Collins’ house, located in the small town of Remsenburg on Long Island. Like every morning, Collins starts his day with a healthy breakfast consisting of a whole-wheat wrap of spinach and egg whites. “ Make sure you throw some hot sauce on that too, Rick. Got to add a little kick to it!” says Collins to the deli owner. Collins also takes into consideration that his workers deserve a good healthy, balanced breakfast, so he treats his workers to egg sandwiches and a carton of orange juice.
Collins makes his way to his shop, located right at the top of the road from his house. Waiting for him are his three workers, dressed and ready to put in hard labor throughout the day. Collins lays out an agenda on the tailgate of his Ford F150 pickup truck and the workers examine it, as if they are studying for a test. The workers hop into an Isuzu F series, one of Collins’ work trucks, and leave the shop, as they embark to their first job site, a house on Dune Road, a very wealthy road located in Westhampton Beach, Long Island, which acts as a peninsula, having one side of the road overlooing the bay, and the other side overlooking the ocean. “ It’s kind of a privilege to work on some of these houses that were fortunate to be hired for. It’s like were on a celebrity’s property,” Collins says. Like many of the houses located on this road, steel fences protect the driveways, only allowing guests and company to enter through a 3-digit code that is given to them through an intercom. One of the workers has to hop out of the car and type in the code that opens the steel gates to the never-ending driveway of this jobsite. The truck pulls into this pebble driveway, aligned with cobblestone, and approaches this $8.2M three-story house with an acre as their front yard, including a full sized tennis court/basketball court, and a roof consisting of a gunite swimming pool, Jacuzzi, and a guest house with a beautiful view overlooking their ocean backyard. “ When I got the chance to work on these types of houses as a kid, the owners would be either in the city, work, or bringing their children somewhere on the other side of Long Island, so I would put in hard work, then jump in their pool and relax before they got back,” Collins tells his workers.
Upon returning to Germany and to the life that he had left behind, Büth remembers those first few months being the most confusing in his life.
ReplyDelete“It was so weird,” he said. “I did not feel at home at all. People looked at me weird, I guess I was looking more American, plus I was always wearing my favorite Red Sox hat all the time. And I think I was moving in a different way. I was feeling more relaxed about everything and the Germans always seem very focused and straight about what they want and not really caring about everyone else around them. Whereas in the United States I feel like everyone is always caring for everyone else.”
But for Büth the hardest part was admitting to himself and to his family, that he was different. That his year abroad had changed him and he was not prepared to return to the way things were before he departed.
Büth described a saying in German (sorry, have to get the exact German spelling for the saying and then will add it here), that roughly translates to, “out of site out of mind.” For those who he had not kept in touch with while studying in the United States, Büth was the same person he was before he had left. He described wanting to change things, change how he was perceived and show off this new air of confidence that he had gained in the States.
“For the people that didn’t see me, when I came back it was like I hadn’t been away at all,” he said. “They wanted to continue where we had left off but I was different. I felt like I was looking at things a lot differently than they were, like where our personal relationships were.”
Büth had made many new friends in the States and after returning to Germany, realized that some of the friends he had before leaving were not really good to him. He had seen how friendship could be and wasn’t going to just return to how things were before he left, he needed to show he had changed. When his new school year started in Germany, after his return, Büth found himself talking to people who before his “friends” had shunned or thought little of. He wasn’t going to let anyone else influence his opinion of others anymore. He quickly found himself becoming close with a group of boys he had never really taken the time to get to know before, and those new friends would ultimately become his closest companions in Germany.
After 9th grade, Jeremy was yearning for something more than what was being offered in Hunter, New York. He wanted to leave Hunter-Tannersville Central High School and continue his schooling at Stratton Mountain School in Stratton, Vermont where he could focus more on snowboarding. His parents did not want him transferring for financial reasons, but since Jeremy's sister, Vickie, was already going, his parents had no choice but to let him attend.
ReplyDeleteAny given day at Stratton, Thompson would be up at the early hours of the morning, starting his day with 5 AM workouts, followed by breakfast, and then Thompson's favorite part, classes till 4 PM. After classes, Jeremy could be found dry land training, getting body ready for the upcoming winter season. But once the first snowfall of the season, Jeremy could only be found on the slopes. Competition after competition, Jeremy worked his way up to compete at the New Zealand Open in 2005 where he placed third in the competition. “At first I placed second, and then someone did better than me, and I ended placing third. But it's still pretty cool,” says Thompson.
One of Jeremy's most memorable experiences was at the Junior Worlds Competition in Switzerland. Thompson took his practice runs in the early morning, but his time to compete was at 4:30 in the afternoon. Thompson grew anxious by the minute after watching three people get injured and be whisked away by helicopters. Unfortunately, Thompson did not place in the competition but that didn't seem to bother him, because his most vivid memory from Switzerland was partying with is friend “Sea Bass.”
John Phillip Tappen
ReplyDeletePART 1
Eight pairs of shoes line the floor of the closet. In the back there’s a pair of silver and blue Puma track shoes. Scattered are three different sets of Adidas sneakers. Each holding nearly indistinguishable qualities; a white one inch rubber outsole lift on the bottoms, a mostly smooth but sometimes spongy suede outside, similar patterns in the stitching, the Adidas symbol proudly displayed on the heels. There are also three pairs of dress shoes. Two black sets. One of which shines when exposed to light, is of the French Canadian, Aldo brand. It’s still got some luster, especially next to his Italian made, Mercanti Fiorentini brown leather pair, whose bottom heel has been mostly eroded in the back, the dark brown façade chipped away revealing a layer that’s less slick, and more jagged. There’s a shoe for every occasion.
Smaller than any of the shoes, is an iron, placed between the Pumas and a pair of Adidas. Most students don’t need to perm press clothes, but when in your closet you have sixteen button up, collared, dress shirts, it would be silly not to.
Four shirts are plain white. Another four are a variation of deep reds, purples, and pinks, many with stripes, and one with a plaid design. Three more are shades of blue, one with lines, another with plaid, and a last one with vaguely nautical art and sailor symbols. The rest are a mix of yellows, greens, and blacks.
The far end of the closet is home to three suit jackets. There’s one winter coat. It’s waterproof, but is light height and flimsy. When it gets into the colder fall and winter months, the coat is probably supplemented with the scarves that hang on the hook opposite.
The top shelf bears three fedora-like hats.
“If I wear a hat, I wear a fedora,” Rutty says from his desk. I ask him about his closet, about his wardrobe. I tell him that I think it’s pretty snazzy. “No, it’s casual.” We sit a half-minute in silence before he pauses his computer game to lean over and take another look at his closet. After a once over, he reconsiders, “Ok, I’m a little more than casual.”
I ask him if he likes to stand out, and his answer sounds confused. He’s not sure if he likes to look “interesting” or he just realizes that the way he dresses is different from most American college kids. All of a sudden he gets visibly upset, slowly shaking his head, eyes fixated on the floor. “Last Friday I got compliments for wearing a blazer,” he tells me before rotating back, and immersing himself back into his game. He’s legitimately angry that someone noticed how well he dressed last Friday. He would feel more at home, in his garb if he were actually in the place where he was born, in France. He explains to me that according to him, Europeans look like they put more effort into the way they dress, that they are more stylish, and that “their jaws won’t drop if they see a kid wearing a blazer.”
PART 2
ReplyDelete“I don’t want to wear American Eagle t-shirts, like every other American,” he tells me. He name dropped that brand a few times. Apparently American Eagle is the epitome of American fashion. He pauses his game again once he gets fired up about expressing his opinion on the American dress code: “baseball caps, sports jerseys, t-shirts and sweatpants.” He rattles them off with such disgust and hostility. He’s so confident that his attire is classier, he borders on arrogant. He certainly sounds ostentatious. I start to feel defensive, even though I don’t own a single pair of sweatpants.
So I ask him if he feels like an outsider, and he tells me he does. “My first year, I lfelt like such a sore thumb…” I waited for him to continue but he didn’t, until I looked up once I finished writing, where he was waiting for me to clarify whether he was using the right expression. Seconds ago he had just made an articulate rants in English with what seemed like such ease that I had for a moment forgotten that he was a foreigner and from time to time still has trouble using American expressions. J
He was tired of dressing the way he did in high school, so he just stopped doing it as much. He was tired of having to explain that he didn’t have a special reason for wearing a button up shirt, tucked into his jeans. He wanted to stop sticking out so much, so he stopped stressing the way he wanted. And just as quickly as he irritated me minutes earlier, he won over my sympathy.
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“Hey John, we still watching the new South Park in half hour?” Kevin asked me from his bedroom. Our roommate over hears us from the bathroom, walks out and proposes to the both of us “Yo, Cold Case in 29 minutes?!” He walks away with a satisfactory grin. We three of us laugh and myself and Kevin solidify plans to watch the season premiere. South Park is in its 16th season, and it’s my observation that it’s lost intrigue from the demographic that used to give it their undying support. Every Thursday of my sophomore year of high school, my peers devoted to retelling South Park jokes from the previous night. Anything anyone said, good chance it originated from the mouth of Cartman, Kyle, Stan, or Butters. I just remember the immense pressure there was to watch so that you weren’t left out the next day. It was such a staple of my growing up. But know here we are, five years later, and some of us would rather watch Cold Case (maybe ironically). Or at least make jokes about it. Kevin, the only one of my roommates not native to America, is the only one who is enlivened by the prospect of watching a new episode of South Park. It probably seems passé for anyone like myself who endured several years of gush over a cartoon in every social setting. He’s enthusiastic. He clearly hasn’t been worn out and by beaten to death by the show like the rest of us. It’s still new for him. The episode turns out to be a spoof on football; American football. I make the distinction because for the half hour before the show started; Kevin played FIFA ’13,the new soccer video game that was just released this week. Soccer, or Football, is without a doubt his favorite sport. One of the first commercials of the night was one for FIFA, which easily excited him. It even prompted a rant about how there would never be a strike among the soccer refs in Europe, and how the advertisements in France so greatly differ from those in the United States. It all mostly went over my head.
Control has always been a four-letter word. Even as a kid, I was forced to relinquish my right to make my own decisions. My parents were separated, and I would visit my dad wearing a dress I hated, my curly hair cut to my chin—as it was not allowed to be any longer—and he would lecture me about standing up to mother. “You have to have your own personality,” he would plead. Easier said than done. Besides, I didn’t think it was a big deal back then. So I wore a dress that I didn’t particularly like or was made fun of for wheeling around a backpack in junior high. Who cares? But time passed and as I got older, the control grew with me. It became a colossal monster, slithering across my body, tightening around my legs and arms, preventing, always preventing. A curfew, a boyfriend, a texting plan, a shirt that looked too revealing. It doesn’t seem too constricting separate and on paper, but together, it was enough. It was more than enough.
ReplyDeleteI have a birthmark on the right side of my neck that indicated the spot my hair was forced to be cut to before camp every summer. “But if I always cut my hair to that birthmark, then it can never grow,” I remember telling my mother. “Exactly,” she would answer. I began to despise this birthmark because it prevented me from having beautiful, long curly hair. When I got older, I realized, my birthmark wasn’t holding me back, my mom was. Having short curly locks was cute when I was little, obnoxious when I was 12 and seemingly a social hindrance once I got to high school. It wasn’t until I was surrounded by girls with beautiful, long curls that I started to wonder what I would look like if mine grew. This curiosity blossomed into motivation to fight for my own freedom, and that chain of events outlined the template pattern I followed for years: curious, motivated, jolted to act, and finally, forced to a screeching halt. That’s the thing with control: once you have it, you don’t want to relinquish it. Being able to grow and cut my hair as I pleased, even at 14 years old, was a battle, one of the most frustrating and tedious I have ever fought. It was just hair, my hair, so what did it matter? That was exactly it. It didn’t matter. Everyone knew it didn’t matter, including my mom, but she held on tight anyway. It didn’t matter what it was, if it was something she could have a say in, she would. It would be the last say, complete with a contract—often signed and dated by a notary public—and consequences to follow. Because she could.
Lara is very comfortable with being noticed. Her footwear always adds a few more inches onto her already 5’9 figure, forcing everyone to glance slightly up when speaking to her. She runs her fingers often through her thick mass of curly hair, making it tousled to messy perfection. Her Slavic round face is almost doll like, with china blue eyes, ivory skin, and high cheekbones. Her clothes are simply designed but meticulously selected to flatter her slender curvy body. Every outfit is accentuated by her extensive collection of accessories; cat eyed sunglasses, vintage earrings, Grace Kelly inspired headscarves and colorful silk scarves. Most of the time Lara looks like she walked right out of 1955, with dark winged eyeliner and red lipstick to complete the look.
ReplyDeleteLara grew up in Mendam; a small, affluent town in Morris County, New Jersey. Her parents, Russ and Karen Chelak, are the CEO’s of their own successful craning business. Lara’s sister Anna is less than two years younger than Lara. Everything about the Chelaks reeks business. When they travel as a family, they take two separate flights. Lara, the more business savvy daughter, flies with her mother and her father flies with Anna. That way, if one of the planes goes down, there is still someone to carry on and run the family company. Growing up, Lara and Anna shared everything. They even decided to attend the same college, Barnard College, where they were roommates for the two years together. Although it’s rare I see one without the other, they never seem to get along. They seem to almost be in constant competition, fighting for the spotlight of their parent’s approval. Lara tends to be the bossy one, telling Anna what to do with an air of arrogance that noticeably drives Anna insane.