Mizzou Tigers for Tigers

This is my latest podcast!

This second skin

This new second life I’m living as a reporter creates some interesting tensions for the old Rachel.

As a reporter and budding journalist at the world’s best journalism school (I’m told), I’m shrouded in this new skin of stereotypes: she must be liberal, likely atheist, politically savvy, ruthless with questions and relentlessly nosy. Wrong. There are actually other places that I’d rather be than the newsroom. You won’t catch my napping in the break room if I could be home instead. And that whole religion thing….

Tonight, for probably the first time, I attended a church service for a reason other than worshipping God. I felt like an intruder in an old friend’s house, dressed as a stranger and treated as one. Back row, last pew, headphones on, mike in hand: reporter. Not churchgoer. I was the reason that noisy photographer kept clicking photos in quick burst every 30 seconds or so. Would I want that distraction if it were my church? No. I would want to worship in privacy. I’d want the freedom to not worry how my hair looks or if my shirt is too short.

I smiled grandly at everyone who glanced my way, as if to wordlessly tell them, “I’m one of you! Really!” You know,… wink, wink.

Until I was six or so, my family went to a Methodist church. Don’t think I’ve been in one since, but as I listened to their chants and rehearsed prayers and benedictions, I knew some of the words! I felt strange not singing along with their hymns. I love this God, too, I thought. But that’s not why I’m here. Not directly. Is it? Hmm. There’s a philosophical point for you: if I believe this is the path God wants me on in life, then isn’t a reporting assignment ultimately a moment with God?

I digress. After the service, I chatted with the pastor, and ended up asking him how he felt about the primary results. I was a little bummed myself, since I wanted Huckabee, and am somewhat worried what will become of America with an ungodly president. I told the pastor I wasn’t pleased, and he echoed my sentiments, being careful not to tell me who he had voted for. We danced around the issue for a minute, then dropped it. I don’t know why I didn’t just announce whom I had voted for. I wouldn’t have told someone I knew would dislike my vote, so would telling a fellow Christian have been underhanded? Do I have to uphold this unspoken image of college-student-reporter=Democrat?

All I know is that I’m being labeled, and I don’t like the invisible labels I’m acquiring. I’m not a reporter at heart; that’s not my essence. There might be only a few reporters who would define themselves ultimately as such, but still, it bears mentioning.. So as for me? I’m a bride. A bride in waiting.

comments on racism

 How’s this video for an eye-opener? Black children are asked to make judgments on black dolls and white dolls. Guess which came out on top?

Matchmaker, matchmaker

Podcasts: the cusp of communicatory evolution. At least, they are in my world.

Today I downloaded my first podcast. The action served as homework for my Capstone AgJ class here at Mizzou, and I was given free rein: any podcast that caught my eye. Being the sentimental type, I chose a piece from Chicago Public Radio’s series, “This American Life,” entitled “Matchmakers,” which I assumed would be a fluffy, tender story. Wrong.

The podcast consisted of a prologue and three acts, each set to a different background song and each successively more depressing. The first was a story of a failed romance in Afganistan; the second one was of a Jewish woman who tried (unsuccessfully) to set up a kidney matchmaking service and motivate people to donate a kidney to a complete stranger. The third story was the most disturbing, according to the narrator and also to me. An actress, Elna Baker, tells of her job as a doll saleswoman at the giant toystore, FAO Schwartz. She worked as a “nurse” in a doll “nursery,” selling lifelike dolls to little girls in a pseudo-adoption-agency. What at first was a somewhat boring job, spiced up by slightly malicious “accidents” the “nurses” would feign involving a deformed factory reject doll, turned solemn due to the encroaching push of racism.