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December 15, 2007
Neat stuff other people are putting online
I want to share some recent online writings by people I went to college with.
Molly is a former middle school teacher who recently left her New Mexico life behind for Chicago, has a literary agent shopping her young-adult novel, and is working in a bank to pay the bills. In a very random moment, Ben and I ran into her on the El during the one day we were in Chicago earlier this year. Yesterday the bank Molly works at was robbed, and she talks here about the frightening, confusing experience.
Sarah was a columnist for the Grinnell College newspaper. She went on to earn an M.F.A. from the University of Montana's creative writing program before moving to New York, where she works as a lowly assistant by day and writes insightful articles by night. She has been examining the world of public harassment of women by men, and recently witnessed what happens when the tables are turned.
Kate is a public health worker who seven months ago left a non-government organization in Congo, where political instability was the norm, for a new job in Malawi. "The fact is, no matter how you slice it, eastern Congo is one of the worst places to be a woman today," she wrote today, in a brief commentary that shocked and enlightened me.
Michael, like Sarah, worked for the college paper, where he was a reporter and editor. He then went on to get a master's in journalism from Medill before working his way to the newspaper that also employs me. His political insights into a strange fluke of the Iowa caucus system have drawn national media attention.
Then there's Hilary, another college newspaper staffer. She was the sole copy editor charged with keeping us all in grammatical order. Since graduating she's lived mostly in Europe and pursued more fellowships and degrees than I can keep up with. Posting mostly from Berlin, with updates from all over Europe and occasionally from her hometown of Duluth, Minn., Hilary now runs the highly useful No Budget Travel blog, filled with useful tips for travelers who really know what it's like to be broke. As someone who once nearly missed a flight to Hong Kong because she didn't have enough money left to exit the Paris Metro station at the airport, I definitely appreciate this blog.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at December 15, 2007 11:33 PM