Frank LoMonte speaks to UNC Charlotte Journalism Students
Frank LoMonte, Executive Director of the Student Press Law Center in Alexandria, Va., will speak Feb. 21 to Student Media students and to journalism students in Cheryl Spainhour’s class. He will discuss recent cases in college media (including the “streaker” photograph case at ECU) and the Freedom of Information Act. You can visit the Student Press Law Center website at http://www.splc.org/
Is the Freelancing Life for You?
By Jessica Arenas
Independent Charlotte-based journalists visited aspiring student journalists Nov. 15 on campus to talk about the highs and lows of the freelancing life. The Greater Charlotte chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists sponsored a panel discussion for students called “Paid in exposure: Should journalists work for free?” Three independent journalists shared their experiences and advice.
The panelists were: Mary C. Curtis, a contributor to The Root, NPR. and the Nieman Watchdog blog; Rhi Fionn, a UNC Charlotte alum and successful local independent journalist; and Michael Solender, City Life Editor for Charlotte Viewpoint. Charlotte Observer’s Andria Krewson served as moderator.
Each writer, highly knowledgeable in their craft, has earned their success and has discovered useful strategies as writers. Their main advice to the students: Don’t work for free – most of the time.
Being your own boss is an appealing advantage. Unpredictable paychecks can sometimes be frustrating. UNC Charlotte alum Fionn, who has extensively covered the dangers of coal ash and most recently the Occupation Movement, encouraged students to carve out a beat to report and write about.
All three shared that at the beginning of their freelance careers, it was “fine to work for free to a certain extent” to establish a career. The life of a writer will always bring creative challenges to reporting and writing, but the writers emphasized an independent journalist leads a rewarding life. The thrill of your work and name appearing in print or online never gets old.
***
Grandma Anne Keeps the
Neighborhood Kids in Line
By Ieisha Green
On any given weekend you can expect to see a petite old lady on Concord Street in the quaint town of New Bern, N.C.,working in her yard or sitting on her porch hissing at the neighborhood kids riding their bikes too close to her curb.Across generations, this little old lady has been dubbed “Grandma Anne”. And she’s not your typical neighborhood bully.
Joel Byer, 24, grew up in the very neighborhood where Grandma Anne still resides. He recalls the many run-ins he had with her and even one where he ended up handcuffed in the back of a police car. “I felt like she did everything in her power to make my childhood miserable,” he says now. He theatrically recounts how she would scold him and his friends for riding their bikes too closely to her sidewalk and how she once called the police on him after her house was egged and toilet-papered. Byer maintains to this day he was innocent and that the little old lady simply had a vendetta against him.
If you ask any kids in the neighborhood today about Grandma Anne, they would recite the same stories back. There would be plenty of tales of how she harasses the children who walk and ride bikes by her house, and even whispered rumors that her house is haunted. They would indeed whisper to you of how she never has any visitors and only leaves her house to go to the grocery store and back.
Older neighbors do not seem to share in the trouble children still have with Grandma Anne. Lillie B.,75, who lives across the street from her, says that she is a warm person but comes off “odd at times”. She thinks it peculiar a woman her age doesn’t get any visitors to at least check up on her.
But there is some story behind her aged face, which I heard firsthand when I came back to my old neighborhood.
Pulling up into the driveway of the infamous Grandma Anne’s, it’s a hot Saturday morning and Grandma Anne, whose real name is Dorothy Anne Johnson,is cleaning up the debris in her yard from the recent hurricane that swept through the eastern coast of the state. She is tiny in every sense of the word. She stands no taller than five feet and doesn’t weigh more than a 100 pounds soaking wet.You would think she is no match for the massive tree branches she lugs from one end of her yard to the other, but she drags them around like they were mere twigs. A peach-colored sheer scarf drapes around her head and bare shoulders to protect her from the beating rays of sunlight. Her vivid red nail polish is visible from her driveway. She looks up in shock when she finally realizesshe has company. She unravels her scarf to reveal a regal face that has aged gracefully, done up with makeup. Her hair is a solid pitch black and smooth and short against her face. Icantell that it isn’t a wig but had most certainly been dyed. It is obviousthat she had been a physically-striking woman back in the dayand I almost forget I am staring at a woman near 90. She sets aside her yard work to talk.
Johnsonendured a difficult upbringing that tested her. Born in the Southern town of Ayden, N.C., about 32 miles northeast of her now home, she was the youngest of five children and the exact date of her birth is unknown to her. “I am about 88 years old. Now I say about because I don’t exactly know and not because I’m senile either! It’s because I do not and never had an officially birth certificate,” she says, as she sips homemade sweet tea and rocks in an antique chair on her porch, “Well, back in those days a mid-wife would deliver you at home. Nothing was officially documented. I had to estimate my birth year and make up the month and the day when I went to get a birth certificate made.”
She despised growing up in the South. Not only did she constantly face racist discrimination, she also suffered sexist Southern views. She felt like all she ever was going to do was grow up and be someone’s wife. She dreamed as a little girl of escaping the country life and moving to the big city. Eventually, Johnson would get her wish, but in the form of a tragedy. At the age of 10, her mother passed away from the flu. Her father was no longer able to care for all five children,so she and her siblings were scattered across the East Coast. Johnson was sentto New York City to live with an aunt she had never met nor knew anything about.
“I was sad to leave my family, but I knew this was an opportunity to finally get away.” she recalls. She described arriving in New York City on a bus. “I remember being on the bus and staring out the window and think[ing] to myself ‘wow!’ Everything in Ayden was just dirt roads and little mom and pop stores. I had never seen so many cars, and people, and buildings! I was excited!”
Her excitement was short-lived. Once arriving at her aunt’s house she realized that city living wasn’t what she thought it was going to be. Her aunt turned out to be a cruel old lady known for spitting on children walking under her window. Her aunt would give special treatment to the boys living in the house, but treat her like a servant. “I expected living in New York to be a different experience…but I might as well have been back in Ayden. There was no adjustment needed. My aunt was raised in the South, so she still had the mentality that women’s place was in the house.” Johnson’s eyebrows rose and her voice grew sharp as she went into greater detail about the abuse she endured from her aunt. She revealed that her aunt socially stunted her and forever damaged her relationships and trust she could have with people. Nonetheless she doesn’t seem aware that she has, in some ways, embodied a few characteristics of her aunt. “I could never be like that foul, foul women. I have love in my heart…”
She does recall some fond memories of growing up in the North. She enjoyed hanging out with her friends and roaming through the neighborhoods. She maintained good grades in high school and won prom queen.
Directly after graduating high school at age 17, she married her long-time boyfriend, Jack Hudson. She says she never wanted to get married but it was her only choice because her aunt wouldn’t allow her to go to college. She and her husband moved into a small house in Jamaica, Queens, where they startedtheir family. They had four children, three boys and a girl.
The marriage was rocky. Her husband turned out to be a cheating and controlling alcoholic, and the stress of raising four children while working full-time weighed down on her. She pushed through the marriage and didn’t want to get a divorce because of the stigma attached.
It felt to her like family life just kept getting worse as the years progress. “My sons were always in and out of trouble, they started getting involved with gangs and drugs. I can’t count how many times I got calls from the police telling me to come pick up one of the boys,” she said. “My husband would blame everything on me and make me feel like a bad mother and wife, but it seemed like the harder I tried the worse it got.I dealt with this for years and would just cry myself to sleep at night.”
Finally, enough was enough and Johnson couldn’t take the constant drama anymore. “I was getting old and all my kids were grown and still acting like children. My house was constantly getting robbed and I could see everything I worked so hard for going down the drain if I didn’t get away.I knew I had to leave I Just didn’t know when…or how.” She debated for several years whether to leave and where to go but in a snap decision she left. “The final straw for me was in 1987 when I was looking out my window watching one of my sons in a shootout with another man. That was it for me! With gun shots going off in the background I packed up as much of my stuff as I could and just got the heck out of there!” Johnson’s voice saddens as she discusses her family and how they are all estranged now. She declares that she doesn’t have any children anymore.
The sky darkens and Johnson points up at the forming storm clouds as an indicator to wrap the interview. Her rocking chair rhythmicallycreaks and she takes the last sip of her teaas she finishes telling me her story.She says she knows she comes off to neighbors as being paranoid. She says she doesn’t dislike the people, that it’s more of a distrust of peopleshe has developed over her lifetime.She says she is content with her life as it is now and she doesn’t feel lonely.
[END]
Rugby Chick
By Victoria Ellis
There is more to women’s rugby than bruises and bows. This sport breeds all types of personalities and brings them together as a family on and off the field.
There they stand on the pitch, College of Charleston just scored a try and now UNC Charlotte is losing. If they lose this game it ends any chance of making finals. With 7 minutes left to go, Charlotte’s Elizabeth Alliss has had enough and calls for the ball. She receives the ball and charges through her opponents like a bull out of Spain. She stiff arms girls to the dirt as she dives in the try zone and touches it down. Everyone cheers. Charleston never gets the chance to come back and the 49ers win.
Liz has short blonde hair and nine ear piercings. You can tell she doesn’t take a lot of shit from people. But there is more than meets the eye with this girl. She is the president of the UNC Charlotte Women’s Rugby Football Club.
“You have to have a this type of sport, you have to be very physical, have good endurance and be a little bit crazy,” Liz says later in an interview at her apartment while wearing a Michigan T-shirt and jeans with a Misfits poster on the door of her bedroom. The junior is majoring in middle grades education with a minor in psychology.
Liz first learned about rugby when she lived in Vermont; some of her friends played at her high school and she always thought it looked fun and interesting. “Vermont is very liberal, very cold and compared to North Carolina there are more hippies,” Liz explains.
The earliest Vermont memory she has is when she was 3 years old. She was singing in her living room to Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” while her parents giggled and videotaped. She finally realized they were filming but she never shied away, she just kept on rocking out.
In 2008, she came to UNC Charlotte because it was closer to home. She saw a poster for rugby, decided to give it a try and has never looked back. She began playing her sophomore year; she loves it because it is full contact and she gets to play aggressive. She also loves meeting the variety of people who play. All the girls on the team are diverse; some are girly while others are total tomboys. But they all get along and consider themselves one big family.
The intramural club folded in 2002 but was started up again by April Simmons in 2008. Since then, the club has stayed alive with thirty committed players on the roster and four volunteer coaches. I asked Liz why she wanted to succeed April Simmons and become president of the club and she replied “I like responsibility and I care a lot about the team so I was up for the challenge.” The team has won two awards: one for Outstanding New Sports Club and the other Outstanding New Student Organization both in 2009, and is now entering into their matrix with an undefeated offseason thanks to these ladies who are continuing on the legacy of the Women’s Rugby Club.
Fellow teammate Courtney Jessamy describes Liz as someone who “isn’t afraid of being herself, and just tells it like it is.” Another teammate, Jessica James, says “When you first look at her, she doesn’t seem that intimidating but then she steps on the field and it’s a different story; overall she is a great rugby player.”
Liz is happy with her life as it is right now. She values her friends, family and her education the most. She is not sure where she will be 10 years from now because she does not like to plan things out, she just goes with the flow but she hopes to be teaching somewhere. She hopes to play rugby in a club after she graduates college but coaching would also be an option.
Q&A
What is one word you would use to describe yourself? Crazy
Who were some of your favorite artists growing up? Sum 41, AFI, Marilyn Manson, HIM
What has been your favorite place to live in so far? Charlotte, because there are a lot of things to do
What type of qualities do you look for in a friend? Openness, humor and trustworthy
Who had the greatest influence on you as a kid? My dad, he’s hard working, mild mannered and I want to be just like him when I grow up
Would you want your children to be like you when they grow up? I want them to be clones of me and most definitely play rugby
