Each week, my routine was the same. After watching the latest offering from Hollywood on the big screen, I composed my thoughts and analysis and wrote my review. Then, I read what Roger Ebert thought about the movie. This final step was important to me — week in and week out. If Ebert loved a movie I disliked, why was that? He always provided great commentary and gave me reasons to admire a certain film more or dislike it more. He has always been an important validator for me. It’s like we had a conversation about a movie each week. And now I’m on my own. I was devastated to hear about the loss of Ebert. He taught us all about movies and life. The New York Times called him “ A Critic for the Common Man .” He was the consummate writer, journalist, film critic and human being. Ebert just celebrated his 46th year as film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times . I always admired Ebert’s ability to draw on his life experiences when reviewing a film. The first line of his 2011 mem...
Friday afternoon I was listening to music at my dad’s house in the living when I looked at the large buffet mirror about 10 feet away. I stared into the mirror and back at myself and at that moment I realized – or rather reminded myself – that time is a fleeting entity of my life. I am now a junior in college (50 percent done), at a paid internship (getting ready for the workforce) and about to study abroad (something I’ve dreamed about for years now). In short: I’m growing up and my dreams are becoming a reality. This moment, however, was truly realized about eight hours later (a few minutes ago) when I was getting something out of the living room and briefly glanced into the mirror again, from the same spot as before. I proceeded to walk towards the kitchen when I stopped and continued to look into the mirror. “Wow. I really am growing up,” I thought to myself. In 12 hours, I had stopped to notice time passing. Things had changed since yesterday afternoon. The sun had set and I had ...
Looking out the window of the tour, I thought to myself, "Where am I? What is this place?" That was last Tuesday afternoon, June 16th. Today, I'm still asking that same question to myself - if only to a smaller extent. I am spending the summer as a design editor at the Chautauqua Institution's daily newspaper, the Chautauquan Daily . I'll be here at this utopia-like place until the end of August. That may answer the first question I asked myself, but there's still the second... Trying to describe the Institution is very hard. Over dinner Tuesday night, Institution president Tom Becker gave us a better idea of the place. It's like chocolate in that it's incomparable to anything else, he said. For me, Chautauqua is like many things: a resort, a summer home or lake house, a small college town, Disney World and, in a sense, Monaco. On Monday, resident archivist and historian Jon Schmitz stopped by the newsroom and helped describe the Institution anecdo...
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