 |
|
wMelissa's AP stories |
|
|
 |
Here are my stories whose links are no longer available. Only the ones with bylines are included here, for the non-bylined ones that I found more interesting, go to melswar.blogspot.com. Thanks! Let me know what you think!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
wMonday, December 29, 2003 |
|
|
|
Dec. 26, 2003
Single mothers use web project to tell their stories
By MELISSA MANSFIELD
Associated Press Writer
TROY, N.Y. (AP) _ "Home is a big responsibility," Sonia De Alba wrote.
"It's the place where you are beginning to teach your family values such as respect and discipline. Home is when you take care of your children when they are sick, and where you show them you love them. They know they always have a home with you."
De Alba is one of eight single mothers who participated in a project called Relocating Our Roots, which taught them how to express and tell their stories through their own web site, www.relocatingourroots.cjb.net.
Most of the women had little experience with computers before they started working with Dina Williams, who designed the program. Still, they were not intimidated by the idea.
"Everything is a learning tree and with every thing that I learn, the better I will be as a person," said Virginia Clark.
Williams taught the women, in groups of four, the basics of web-site writing and digital photography at the Ark, a community-based after-school program within Taylor Apartments, a federal housing complex.
Then Williams, whose mother and grandmother were both single moms, posed to the women open-ended problems to solve on their sites, such as "define home."
"I would leave it up to them to think and write about how they have made homes for themselves and how that can be difficult when you don't have a lot of money. I wanted to hear other peoples' voices instead of my own," Williams explained.
The women responded with stories of traditions and holidays. Clark shared a story on her pages about the day she had her daughter. She wrote, "I love her totally and with all my heart and didn't realize how deep a mother's love is until I became one."
Besides personal stories about being a single mother, the women also talk about work, both inside and outside the home.
"We talked a lot about women, their jobs in the home and out of the home, and how we are really not compensated for all that we do," said participant Jean Smith, 64. "We become technicians by what we do in the home, but you step out in the community and you cannot get a job doing the same thing because it isn't considered experience."
Smith explained how even though she raised seven children, she would not be able to get a job in a day care center without a degree.
"Staying home and taking care of your children isn't considered work because you aren't financially compensated for it, but it's very important work," Williams said.
The women calculated their "unpaid work worth" through a web site that shows, for example, how much money a childcare worker or a cook would make for the same time.
"My mother raised 22 children. She would have been a millionaire today for the amount of time she spent cooking and cleaning and wiping noses," Smith said.
Clark hopes women who visit the site get a sense that they are not alone.
"There are other women dealing with the same things, the same aspirations, the same thoughts," she said. "Maybe somewhere somebody is saying, 'I identify with what she is saying.'"
___
On the Net:
www.RelocatingOurRoots.cjb.net
www.MothersOughtToHaveEqualRights.org
posted by
Melissa at 11:24 AM
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
wTuesday, December 09, 2003 |
|
|
|
Dec. 6, 2003
Slow-moving storm hitting half the state
By MELISSA MANSFIELD
Associated Press Writer
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) _ A foot or more of snow blanketed parts of upstate New York Saturday, causing at least one death, while forecasters predicted additional accumulations before the storm was expected move out by Sunday.
Police blame slippery road conditions for the death of a Yates County teenager Saturday morning. Laura E. Decker, 18, of Penn Yan, 45 miles southeast of Rochester, was in the back seat of a van driven by her father, when the vehicle went off the road. Decker, who was not wearing a seat belt, was partly ejected from the van.
Many roads remained covered in snow and visibility was limited as crews tried to keep up with the slow-moving storm. The National Weather Service reported that snow fell as fast as 2 to 3 inches per hour in some areas.
The Albany International Airport remained open Saturday and snow crews were put on "storm status," which includes 12-hour shifts, authorities said. Airport officials said airlines were experiencing some delays and cancellations, including for Sunday morning flights.
"It's going to be snowing at varying intensities throughout the night, probably tapering off to snow showers around daybreak," said meteorologist Hugh Johnson in Albany.
The snow didn't stop Dorothy Wilburn, a church secretary from East Greenbush, from venturing to downtown Albany to go Christmas caroling with a quartet at a sparsely attended neighborhood holiday festival.
"Well, heck, we're here, we're gonna sing anyway," said Wilburn, who sported a Santa hat.
John Kennedy, who moved to Albany from Ireland, said he planned to mail home photographs and newspaper coverage of the storm.
"We don't get this kind of snow in Ireland," he said.
By Saturday night, the weather service had received reports of 18 to 24 inches of snow in Rensselaer County and in parts of the Mid-Hudson Valley. The Albany area got about a foot of accumulation.
In central New York, the highest accumulations were in Delaware and Otsego counties, with the communities of De Lancey and Schenevus reporting 15 inches. Binghamton received about eight inches, while the Syracuse area got only about three, the weather service said.
"It's pretty much done, there are scattered snow showers around and we're actually starting to see some lake effect snow showers developing as the wind shifts around to the north," said meteorologist Michael Cempa in Binghamton. "There still might be some accumulations in the western Catskills, but in general it's winding down or has wound down already."
___
AP Writer Rachel Kipp contributed to this report from Albany. (I did the reporting and she did the writing!)
posted by
Melissa at 9:34 AM
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
wFriday, December 05, 2003 |
|
|
|
Nov. 28, 2003
Announcers use radio shows to reach out to inmates
By MELISSA MANSFIELD
Associated Press Writer
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. (AP) _ Vassar College disc jockey Julie gets about 10 letters a week from men across the Hudson Valley. She's never met these men _ all of whom are in prisons within the listening area. Since 1999, Julie has read their letters on the air during her jazz show on WVKR.
"A radio show is a public forum, and a lot of people are listening," Julie, who does not use her last name for security reasons, explained. When she heard about a radio station in Texas that catered to prisoners' families, she thought about how she could use her show.
Then Julie got an unsolicited letter from a prisoner, thanking her for a Nat King Cole hour. She read the letter on the air, gave out the station's address, and letters started coming in.
During one show in September, Julie read a letter about the anniversary of the Attica prison riots and another looking for parole board advice. One letter was from a man whose son found him in prison after 25 years.
"We're letting those outside prisons know what it's like inside," she said.
Valerie Linet, another disc jockey at WVKR, read a series of haiku poetry from a prisoner in Washington state who had heard of the program through a literacy effort at the jail. "The clock ticks away. The calendar pages turn. I know loneliness," Linet read into the microphone.
She had studied traditional haiku with subjects like dewdrops, and said these _ with subjects of freedom and barbed wire _ were especially evocative. "A drug deal at yard. Sex offenders get stabbed. Never a dull day."
Besides reading letters from prisoners, Julie also invites those involved in prison issues _ ranging from politicians and criminal justice workers to children and spouses of the incarcerated _ to speak about their experiences. The noncommercial station run by students has not heard any complaints from the community.
The state Department of Correctional Services declined comment for this story. Robert Gangi, executive director of the nonprofit prison watchdog group the Correctional Association of New York, sees these radio programs as positive.
"It is a way for prisoners to engage in warm and supportive relationships with people on the outside, helping to keep prisons safer and more manageable," said Gangi.
"Inmates will often reach out to people on the outside who seem to be concerned about them and interested in them," he said, adding that these relationships may help prisoners "make a better adjustment when they are released."
A Jeffersonville disc jockey who also has listeners in prison hopes to meet some of her faithful writers someday.
"Some of these men have adopted me as their little sister," Liberty Green said. "It's really intense."
Green stays away from politics and talks about music with the men who write her, responding to their questions and comments during her soul music show "Silly Love Songs," on WJFF.
"I say specific things to each guy, and I keep it neutral," she said. Most of the dialogue is about the music. "They write about how the music takes them back to a time when they weren't in jail and when everything was good. The music is total time travel."
Green gets between 15 and 20 letters a week, and though warned by other DJ's that she was "playing with fire" by inviting the letters, she hasn't had any problems.
"They call themselves the forgotten ones," Green said. "I'm the one saying, `Hey, wait a minute, there are people in there, people with feelings.'"
___
On the Net:
www.wvkr.org
www.wjffradio.org
Nov. 27, 2003
All along the Hudson, historic homes host special holiday events
By MELISSA MANSFIELD
Associated Press Writer
HUDSON, N.Y. (AP) _ Just as Frederic Church's children anxiously waited to peek into the sitting room at Olana, visitors will be able to glimpse the family's Christmas tree as it would have looked in the late 1800s.
Olana is one of many historic homes in the Hudson Valley that will be decorated for Christmas and host special events to demonstrate what holidays past were like in New York.
Along with two trees and presents such as dolls and a rocker the children received for Christmas, Olana will also have musicians playing selections from the early Victorian days. On Dec. 7, a man dressed as Samuel Clemens will recite a monologue about Christmas in the character of Mark Twain, a frequent visitor at Church's estate on the east bank of the Hudson River.
Curators will focus on authenticity and accuracy when decorating the home Church built, according to Gerry Weidel, historic site assistant. A floral historian will arrange the flower globes on the dinner table, by using photographs in the collection and according to the fashion of the time.
Nearby Clermont, in Germantown, is the home of seven generations of the Livingston family, including Robert R. Livingston, Jr., who administered the oath of office to George Washington. Each Christmas, the home is decorated with the family's ornaments from a certain era. This year, the 9-foot tree will be dotted with 1930s era revolution and colonial revival pieces. Candlelight tours will also be available.
Thirty-five miles south in Hyde Park, visitors can participate in the "Historic Hyde Park Christmas," an initiative by the National Park Service including the Vanderbilt Mansion, the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt's Val-Kill, which will hold evening open houses the first weekend in December.
"The Vanderbilt Mansion will be lavishly decorated to represent the kind of Christmas the people of Vanderbilt's social status would have," said Franceska Urbin, supervisor park ranger. Elegantly decorated trees accent the gold leaf furniture and ornate style of the mansion.
At the Roosevelt home, near a portrait of the president, a 1940s era Christmas tree will be surrounded by stacks of presents. Potted poinsettias can be found throughout the home as well, and works by Dickens will be read in accordance with a Roosevelt family tradition.
Of all the Christmas recreations in the Hudson Valley, Eleanor Roosevelt's Val-Kill will remind the most visitors of their own Christmases past. The stone cottage, built by Franklin Roosevelt for his wife as a retreat, is decorated in the style of the 1950s. Eleanor Roosevelt made window stencils of snowflakes and bells, and sometimes added little pieces of cotton around the window sills if it didn't snow. Packages are piled on chairs and sofas in the living room, divided up by family.
"She tried to put touches of Christmas in every room that she could," Urbin said. The rooms are arranged according to pictures and stories passed on by family members.
Another five miles south brings visitors to the home of Samuel B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph and Morse Code. The Tuscan villa's Christmas festivities revolve around stories of the season, rather than a particular time period. For example, the drawing room tree is designed exactly as portrayed in the Nutcracker.
Locust Grove, the name of the full property on which the house sits, was once owned by Henry Livingston, Jr., who some believe wrote the Christmas classic "The Night Before Christmas," which will be depicted in the master bedroom.
Information about holiday tours at Hudson Valley estates:
_Vanderbilt Mansion, Hyde Park, Dec. 6, evening open house. For information, 845-229-9115.
_Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hyde Park, Dec. 7, evening open house. For information, 845-229-9115.
_Eleanor Roosevelt's Val-kill, Hyde Park, Dec. 7, evening open house. For information, 845-229-9115.
_Home of Samuel F.B. Morse, Poughkeepsie, Dec. 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, 21, "Stories of the Season" activities. 845-454-4500.
_Clermont State Historic Site, Germantown, Dec. 6, 7 "A Child's Christmas," Dec. 5, 12, 19 holiday candlelight tours. For information, 518-537-4240.
_Olana, Hudson, weekend holiday tours. For information, 518-828-0135.
_Boscobel, Garrison, Dec. 12, 13, 14, candlelight tours. For information, 845-265-3638.
posted by
Melissa at 11:00 AM
|
|
|
|
|
|
|