Blog #7: Final Workshop Reflection

I would have never imagined I would be writing at this capacity again. Creative Writing was my major in high school. It meant so much to me back then, and thinking back to lower school I always had a love for english. I remember the poetry writings; prose and haiku poems. I didn't know what to expect as far as the extent and the content of our writing assigments, or its significance.
The most difficult writing pieces for me were the descriptive pieces (historical photo and describe a place). These two pieces drove me insane. I felt that there was nothing I could muster up enough creatively for these two projects. It was a total mental block for me coming out the gate, and there were alot of blank staring, brain farts, and agitation putting these two particular pieces together. It takes much mental absorption to embrace the intracacies of writing and I do understand why it is a task for some people to master this skill. What does writing mean to the writer? How does writing make him/her feel when writing, and how does the writer want to capture their readers? Describing a place in 750 words is nothing when an author pens an entire book from the top of their heads.
I always felt that my writing skills were strong and I took great pride and felt good about my writing. I also took great great pride in my handwriting too. Penmanship and writing well was greatly enforced with our english instruction growing up, accompanied by phonics. These are now relic teachings, but I have always taught my children and have instilled in them how important writing is. The difference between a good paper and a great paper is determined by an individual's writing.
My criminal justice professor made a comment about writing in class today, and how important it is to be able to write according to facts and not opinions. Her statement was relative to us as social science students, as our course major requires us to write, debate, and analyze through research. It made sense. The teachings of this class became  useful to me when I needed to create a blog site on WordPress for my final in my criminal justice class. We were asked to pick a theme, select five theme related pictures and write a short story of 250 words for each pic. My professor said that my blog was so awesome, she recommended that I consider continuing to use blogging as a forum for my writing, and she asked if she can use my piece to incorporate on her blog site, citing my authorship, plus she showed it to the students in her other class and they were absolutely blown away at my work.  I attribute it to this class for sure.  I would have never been able to pull it off otherwise. This course opened up a new outlook and approach to writing that helped me in more ways than one.

MY FAVORITE CREATIVE NON-FICTION PIECE

My favorite creative non-fiction piece was the vignette. It is a personal story about my first true love. I've kept every piece of those feelings and experiences of our relationship throughout my life. Writing this piece took me back to one of the most happiest most innocent time of my life. I enjoyed capturing those memories of  our love because it was the most beautiful love I have ever felt. No other relationship has ever compared to it, and unconsciously I guess I've been looking and comparing throughout the years all along. He has and will always forever live in me, but a piece of me has been ripped apart when he was murdered on November 22, 2005. That morning I felt the worst, most sour unexplainable feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I still remeber where I was and what I was doing the moment I felt it. I read about his death in the newspaper later on that morning. This piece is more significant to me than ever, and I'm glad I was given the opportunity to create it to bring my true love back to life. I miss him so much and  will always love him as long as I live and breathe.

Blog #6--Murder at Columbia University

On December 20, 1998, there was a murder that took place on the Columbia University campus in Journalism Hall. A man by the name of Garry Germain, 34, was shot and killed at his security post that night. He was last seen by a fellow officer around 10 pm that evening. Twenty minutes later there was a call stating that an officer was injured. When fellow security officers arrived at the scene, he was laying on his side in a pool of blood facing the staircase. They didn't know exactly where he was injured because the bullet wound was behind his left ear. There appeared to be no sign of a struggle, as the murder was quiet and precise, accoring to the police. The attempt to save his life was slim as he was pronounced dead at St. Luke's Roosevelt hospital. On December 22, 1988 the story of his death was written in the New York times.
Mr. Germaine was originally from Port-au-Prince Haiti and came to the United States as an early teen. He was a married father of three, two daughters and a son. He served in the military from 1974-1976. He was described as an incredible man who took care of his business and his family, as he was an extraordinary father to his children. He and his wife Marlene owned a restaurant called Le Triumphe on Jamaica Avenue in Queens, that she worked in and was in charge of, and he worked at night. He had worked for the VA Hospital for 9 years until the security firm that he worked for folded. His brother, Max had been employed at Columbia Uniersity for six years at the time. And was able to plug him in and pull some strings to get him a job as a campus safety officer. That was the beginning of the end for Garry, as no one would have ever imagined that he would be killed on the job two hours before his shift was over.
His homicide has not been solved and has been officially open for 27 years. His case has passed through the desks of 22 detectives throughout the years. Detective O'Sullivan who was the third detective to take the case, is now 71 years old and retired. There were so many murder cases then, that one minute you were assigned a case, and the next minute you were off. Unsolved cases rose to the 9,000 plus mark. He took a vested  interest in the case personally and professionally, and even after retiring he continued to work closely over the years with the District Attorneys who took on Garry's case. It never went to the Cold case files because of the lack of DNA evidence. There were no surveillance of any kind back then that left nothing for detectives to work with. Someone slipped in and out of the building just like that.....CLICK.BANG.BOUNCE.....Nothing solid has ever surfaced about Garry's murder over the years, but plenty speculation occurred in the very beginning of the investigation. All the theories have never been substantiated, as Garry's brother Max has remained in contact with detectives from the very beginning. After working 46 years as of 2014, Max still works at the café opposite the building his brother was murdered in 27 years ago.
After her husband's murder, Marlene and her children stayed at the home for a little while but Marlene decided to pickup and move her family to Florida. Marlene remained a widow for 11 years. The tragic loss of their son in a car accident in 2005 left her devastated as she mentioned that both Garry and her son Christopher died on Broadway. This would be the very street that took the lives of the two most important men in her life.
As I continued reading the story, I think I vaguely remember this incident. Only because the vicinity which Columbia University is located in is not the safest area to stroll as night starts to fall, especially in the wee hours of the morning. There were several incidents of students being harmed and attacked in the area during that time. This was the era of stick up kids, street beatdowns, and random gunplay. This is a sad ending to a good, decent man's life who did nothing but try to make the American Dream possible for his family. To leave surviving family dangling with no closure or answers after almost 30 years must be the hardest thing to live with when the death of a loved one was was committed by a random act of violence.

Blog Assignment #5-Planning an Interview for a personal profile

For this Personal profile piece, I am going to conduct an interview with my mother. There is no one else I would rather interview. My children and I are blessed to have her in our lives. She is still working, healthy, and strong.  Last week my mother turned 68 years old. As I think back to my childhood, and witnessing my mother getting older, I remember when my mom was a young vibrant woman in her 30's. It seemed like yesterday as I was combing through her wardrobe and trying on her shoes. Can you guess where I developed my love of shoes? It can be dearly described more so as shoegasms!!! Anyway, being an only child from my parents, my mother and I are very close. My mother and father's marriage was very short lived didn't last very long. It was my mother who decided to exit stage left when she was pregnant with me. Turned out that my father wasn't the ideal type of marrying man. I don't doubt that he loved her; they had their grown up reasons. But "yay" it's good to know that I was conceived through marriage. My father thought my mother would conform to his cultural ways. That wasn't going to happen--not from "spitfire Rose". My father was Puerto Rican, born in San Turce Puerto Rico. You would have never known when you looked at him because he looked more like a light-skinned Black man. He didn't reveal this to my mother when they met because my family was in mourning from the death of my late cousin David. He was killed by a Puerto Rican man who stabbed him to death. So at this point my mother hated  Puerto Ricans and made it vocal and very clear. My father was scared to tell her, so he rolled with what worked. I am the seventh of eight children from my father and the only one conceived from marriage.
My maternal grandparents played a big role in raising me too. We lived with them as long as I can remember. We moved several times back and forth in my younger years, but we always found our way back to Mama's and Daddy's house. I won't talk about them because the loss hurts way way too much and the sorrow is maddening. I love them very much and if it weren't for them my family wouldn't exist.
My mother always told stories about her childhood. The stories intrigued me because I was learning that my grandparents as parents were the bomb then too. I kno what my mother's life was like after she married my father and became pregnant with me. She took the time to reveal her story to me when I was old enough to understand and filled in the gaps when we heard through the grapevine that my father had passed away, just a matter of weeks before my 18th birthday. What really hurt about his death was that I mourned the loss not knowing the man with no closure.
The part of my mother's life I'm interested in is the life she had before me growing up as a teenager into a young adult. I guess the questions I would ask would be those stated below....

1. What did you want to be when you grow up?
2. What was the best memory of your childhood?
3. Did you meet your own expectations in any of your life's decisions?
4. Moving forward, what do you anticipate the most in the second half of your life?

These questions may be subject to change as I continue to put this project in motion.

Memoir: Angela's Ashes

As I read chapter three of Frank Mcourt's memior, it stirred up several emotions. I couldn't read this piece objectively. I immediately retained this reading from a woman's  point of view and it pissed me off. I'm amazed how Frank was able to recall his childhood memories so clear and descriptively. I feel as though he re-lived every inch of those moments as he graced the paper. His poverty stricken life is way beyond anything I have seen or witnessed growing up in the hood, and yet he survived. This level of poverty he lived in and detailed is beyond words. That severe womanly sorrow his mother endured seemed to take on a hard core character of its own.  I can't imagine how Frank and his siblings felt about their mothers' emotional state and not knowing then how their father contributed to most of it.
My personal thoughts about what she endured I defined as abuse. Not abuse in the obvious way that most would see or define it as, but emotionally and financially Angela was dragged through the mud. Any woman would lose it, through the tragedies she endured, but she managed to muster up strength and kept her loyalty to her useless husband through it all. Her life is depressing and pitiful, and if her husband was a better man, perhaps he could have placed the family in a better position.
Frank's father is what I call a "prideful bumb". He lives in a world where keeping up appearances satisfies his pride, but on the reverse side if the coin, his pride covets his selfishness and ruins his familys' quality of life. His family is placed in embarrassing positions and ridiculed; in which the role of a man is to never leave his family open or placed in compromising positions. His alcoholism made me angry. His wife and children are helpless and victimized from his addiction. His wife's moments of optimism for the family is short lived anytime her husband lands a job. Angela can only pray that he would be considerate enough to come home with his wages knowing they are always in need. He has no sense of rationality, and he uses his pride as the "man code" of righteousness. In hypocrit land, he wanders aimlessly looking for only what he wants in his tiny little world and what he perceives his tiny little world should be.  How quickly do you forget that after a long days work, after having no money and living on a dole, that the money your family desperately needs doesn't make it home? Where does the conscious lie? With mouths to feed, what connection in his brain got severed along the way? With everything that is wrong he finds a way to make things worse.
Their house is next to a lavatory thats full of shit that leaves an unbearable stench. In comparison, Angela is married to a piece of shit. The shit that her husband pulls leaves them in a whole heap of shit called the stench of poverty. Angela could do bad all by herself.

Description of a Historical Photo

The landscape appears far and wide as farmland or a plantation. Kansas? Wyoming? Wisconsin? Maybe Utah? From the look of this very photo, it would harden anyone to believe that this island still exists, right here in the middle of New York City. The trees that sit on the land appear frail, leaves sparse, hanging lifeless as if the sick people that are housed and treated here completely devastated nature with all of their ills. 

This eerily frightening picture mimics the scene of a horror movie; perhaps the House of Horrors or even American Horror Story: Insane Asylum. It's as if you can see the gang assault of the walking dead approach while the beating of the dry cold air cuts to the bone. But the walking dead live on the inside.
In there, is where the howling cries of the insane bellows through echoing hallways and the tundra of torture is open.The grass is windblown, brown, and dry as if this land owes its debt to nature.

In fact Welfare Island is the very place where the mentally insane were held, mistreated and dumped onto barges after their deaths to be shipped to where ever to be forgotten about.The story behind this hell hole of an island that once was, has notoriety and truths, and from the grotesque happenings of the past, it is no wonder the mention and sightings of ghosts reign true.

I can hear the sickening screams of the insane through dark hallways and rooms that resemble jail cells with one bed, a bucket for a toilet, and a chair strategically placed in the crazy corner behind the door. I can hear the dripping of stagnant water as you approach the tundra of torture in the basement. The patients, better yet experimental guinea pigs are dragged through dark never ending hallways with huge metal doors on each side of the walls. You can hear the frightening screams and the banging coming from behind the doors as they can hear the next victim being dragged to condemnation. The orderlies waiting in the chamber are dressed in all white scrubs prepare the rattling chains to strap the victim in. Their mouths are covered with surgical masks and their eyes with goggles. Their hands are adorned with long black latex gloves up to their elbows as if mere touch or skin contact is toxic.

The leader of the insidious pack enters the chamber and instructs the rest of the minions to bring in the the meat to fry. The rusted gurney that sits on the side of the electro shock chair is ready to welcome the victim's soon lifeless body. The black-gloved minions pull the lever upon request from the leader of the damned, as the the electrical sparks reflect off their goggles. The violent convulsions of the victim indicates that meat is now fried. After about 25 electrical lashes, the dirty gurney is ready for company. As the last lash of the victim is complete, you can here the shrill screams echo in the hall from the next victim being dragged down the hall as the banging of the metal doors begin to sound like the melodic theme song of the condemned. 




 

Reading response: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

As intrigued as I have always been with such incidents (murders), and more so intrigued about the people who committed them, the beginning of this read captures several things. It captures the simplicity of a quaint Kansas town streamlined with the descriptions of what any rural town would look and feel like in the 1950's.
Mr. Clutter, a fine man, described by his friend Andy Erhart, earned all that he acquired and accomplished through hard work; working his way up in every facet of his life proudly with conscious concerted effort. He earned the respect of many, in which his family too were notable and respected as well.
The two culprits who committed this heinous crime Capote seems to describe in a humanistic kind of way. Just like two buddies of on a road trip of some sort, never mind their agenda or thought processes; wantonly culpable of such an act.
Capote engages the family's demise in such a descriptive way where I as the reader, not having been born when this occurred, but feeling as though I am too connected emotionally to this tragedy. I'm thinking of their very last moments of panic and fear. The thought of a man not being able to save himself or his family from their vicious demise. Two murderers who just as the title of the book describes, took these innocent lives without a bat of an eye.
The description of the twenty post mortem pics of the family on the desk of Mr. Dewey was the crux of what Capote thirsted for. He wanted to know and dig in the gore of the matter, possibly just as others who have tried to understand the who, what, and when to put the pieces of the puzzle together. What in fact made the murder of this particular family sensationalized? What in fact drove Capote to want to actively capture the events of the Clutter murders as all of the controversy was unfolding? And why in fact did Capote think that this would be the very thing that would intrigue the masses? Indeed, a book about murder.
With his strange and weird looking self.

Welcome to My Creative Journey

nleoneng274.blogspot.com My name is Nicole and I am a full time college student who is exploring this world of blogging through my English class. I hear about blogging all the time and had no interest on what its about or even care what it's about. In my mind I visioned a forum of bored people interested in a bunch of rhetoric and boring topics. So with everyday life being social media driven, to me a blog is another time consuming avenue. Since I have been instructed to create this blog for class, I will have to be open to using this, and what I will accomplish for the next 12 weeks moving forward.
I was a creative writing major in high school. I have written poetry, plays, and other writing works in high school. Free writing was always my favorite because my thoughts were just able to flow naturally and freely. Even if it didn't make sense, it was therapy.The emphasis on reading, writing, and comprehension was significant in my academic rearing. Writing is a powerful tool that helps us retain information and engulfs our minds and imagination in many different ways. Being that this is my first creative writing class I have taken in LaGuardia so far, I look forward to seeing this creative journey through; perhaps the resurgence of passion and the love for writing I once had in high school will resurface during the next 12 weeks.