you bring together 150 odd teenagers and place them in an educational program in the middle of summer break. What happens?

They lose sleep. They get bored. They get lost. They make friends of a life time and make personal realizations everyday… It has been a long five days filled with speakers and sites to see and while I’m sure that the wjmc staff would be delighted to know that we all learned a lot, I believe the true experience of the conference was the relationships. There’s the relationships between the number of people rooming together and sharing one bathroom; there’s the color group bonds (some took longer to make than others) and connections made during breakfast or on a bus ride.

The wjmc experience threw me into a world I wasn’t prepared for, but when embraced, it was an experience of a life time and we will all be sad to see it pass (despite the excitement of sleeping in our own beds).

Once again I am writing this from an iPod. To add to the chance of spelling errors, it is rather early for my thought process to have actually turned on… But I am going to try and recap yesterday.

We met with public relations people and I was informative and siprising some of the information the has to share. Technology it appears is growing and swimming over the world so the communication in faster. Does this create more distance between actual people? The PR people said no, that it was more likely that as technology increased actual interaction increased…

After that I traveled to the national press club and sat in a rather uncomfortable chair while a group of peole spoke. Some spoke more about their pasts than others and some spoke of the future. There was plenty of political talk thrown into the bunch. Each speaker had something to say, one small thing to remember (as the George mason alumni panel did later that night).

Late, late last night wjmc then tried to take a moonlit tour of some of the monuments. I say tried because we made it to a few and were falling behind on the schedule every second. I wish ww had been able to see more of the things people travel to DC to visit.

Now on to a long and exhausting day that I might be able to blog about at a later time after a nap…

I’m typing this out on an iPod so please forgive any spelling errors.

Newseum:
A long, emotionally draining day. Walking around the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery revealed a layer of fragility and seemingly a lack of humanity. The jobs of photographers is to capture the image which will describe the entire situation at hand or the power of a moment in time, but- as it was in the Katrina gallery- the photographs raised conflict. Could the starving children in the photos have been saved? The war victims? or the victims or natural disaster?

Amongst these black and white photos of the pains, suffering and death, I found Rocco Morabito’s “the kiss of life”. A story he happened upon captured a moment of humanity. My imagism reaction was shock. I was unsure of the photograph, but I kept looking for something. It was taken in 1967 or 68 in Jacksonville, Florida and I would call it a luck shot.

It features two Electric Authority workers up on the poles. One man hung from the pole after recording 4,160 volts of electricity and his fellow worker was breathing into him. In the right place at the right tine Morabito captures something heroic, human, touching, amazing (I could go on). The man lived. Morabito called an ambulance after capturing his shot.
After reading the small clip of info beside the photo, I returned my gaze to the image. It was the man breathing into the other that held me, not the one hanging limply. I don’t know if he was the thing that drew me to the photo but he was the figure that burned the image I to mu mind.

Following the Pulitzer prize photographs gallery I saw more tragic images and sone photos and objects of joy.
In the 9/11 gallery there were many Geary eyes. Personal stories were shared via a video and there was a piece from one of the towers. It brought to my mind the memories of a second grade student. Some of the thoughts may be artificial, thoughts formed on the spot because when it happened I was young, because I am so unsure of what really happened 9/11/01. I don’t know what reporters and photographers accomplished by rushing into the area of danger. Someone older or wiser might understand better the display.
The same I would say about the Berlin wall. I marveled at the mighty section of the wall. I filled mu camera with pictures, and for a moment I thought I could hear the past speaking to me. Yet no matter how long I stood at the wall, I couldn’t comprehend it to a level of satisfaction.

I would gladly return and attempt to understand.

First day on the blog and I’m sitting on the floor trying to get everything together.  I’ve got two conferences quickly approaching and I’m excited and terrified all at the same time (seems to happen a lot).  The first conference is a National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine and Health and I am traveling to Chicago.  The second trip I am taking is for the Washington Journalism and Media Conference and will be in- surprise- Washington!

Both trips are fast approaching and I’m attempting to get everything together while embracing the childhood summer concept of fun in the sun.  As a Florida girl I am accustomed to hot summers and beaches, two things which have filled my days since the end of school in addtion to the company of friends and the childish moments of simple fun.  I have come to find that life is experienced on different levels.  They build with each passing year, are sometimes forgotten, and often frowned upon.  My mind tells me that the levels range from child to adult and contain all ranges as they exist on a long spectrum.  Even as a teenager I can experience the joy found on a swing as a young girl would experience, but I also believe that I can embrace, if not the joy, the mild enjoyment of education through programs (even over a summer vaction).

Despite the rush of approaching events, I am looking forward to each trip and the excitement I hope will occur.  “You think me a child of my circumstances; I make my circumstance” (Emerson).