Some article ideas:
The Source
My theatre class blogs on a new topic each week..This week’s: There's a guy touring the country right now, giving motivational speeches. He tells the story of how he was shot down during Viet Nam, parachuted from his plane, was captured by the Viet Cong and held for many months. He said that recently he and his wife were eating in a restaurant and a guy came up and said, "Hey, are you Wilson? The guy who got shot down in Nam?" He told him he was and asked how the guy knew him. He said, "I'm the guy who packed your parachute!" Wilson had been a top gun pilot in Viet Nam...one of the guys who got all the glory. The other guy was "just a sailor" who worked down in the bowels of the ship, packing parachutes carefully. Wilson said he set him to wondering... Who else has packed my chute? Who else has done those little things that ended up being very big things? Who have I passed on the street or in the hallway not even nodding or saying hi, when actually, they were the ones who might have been responsible for getting me where I am. This week's question: Who are those who've packed your chute? Thus…an article asking folks around Jacksonville about the influences in their lives who have made them who they are. I think it could be an on-going, multi-part series of articles, featuring perhaps two or three people each week.
The Grandma’s Hands show uncovered a small gold mine of interesting thoughts… Asking people about their most enduring memories of their grandmothers. I asked the class what sights, sounds, smells remind them of their grandmother…they ranged all the way from the smell of fried chicken, to Border Collie, to Joy dishwashing liquid. I also asked them what qualities their grandmother taught them…patience, endurance, keeping a smile during tough circumstances.
Memories of the square. With the J’ville square about to have its reopening, it’d be a good time to interview some of the town’s older residents about their memories of the square. For example, Jan knows a former LLCC student named Larry who used to peddle papers up on the square. He wrote an article about it for my LLCC English class, but I can’t remember the guy’s last name. Sort of an odd duck but he has a good memory. But there are a whole raft of folks who have memories of the town square as it used to be.
Jay Jamison’s memories of being an advance man for the circus. (Hole in the Wall.)
Brad Barnes and partner Patrick Darrow, owners of Aquatic Treasures, have some wonderful and hairy stories of running a store selling strange and exotic pets. Snakes that have gotten loose for several days….being offered the contract to clean the huge new aquarium being installed in that behemoth sporting store being built in S’field…(they would have needed scuba gear to clean it), being chewed out by mothers for selling pets to their sons, etc.
Alan Bradish’s career of service to mankind.
How I got to be a pastor. ….Patsy Kelly with her theatre degree (I think you may have done something on her)… John Roth getting tired of crawling under trailers to install air conditioners….
The new Terri Benz music-making place under Hamilton’s.
As June approaches, an article on wedding musicians. We have tales to tell. We’re often the “forgotten” part of the wedding. You travel three hours because you MUST attend the rehearsal, then they run through the rehearsal, get ready to leave for the dinner, look at you and say, “Oh yeah..did you want to run through your song?” I did a wedding for a couple who met during a theatrical production so they wanted to get married on the steps of the theatre. Trouble was, the only piano was inside the theatre, two floors up, so we pushed the piano to the window so the assembled crowd below could hear. They’d asked me to write a special song for them so I did. Then the minister forgot that the song would be in the wedding. An hour sitting in a hot upstairs window waiting to sing a song that would never be sung. Strange choices of music….a thrice-married guy wanted me to play Tammy Wynette’s D-I-V-O-R-C-E for his wedding. A wedding in Quincy where I’d been asked to “surprise” the bride with bagpipes. She was not happy. Terri Benz would be a good source…Tim Chipman…Lynda Locke…Julie Hood…
Dr. Omar Panella’s escape from Cuba and his career as an MD.
As summer approaches… “The Best Vacation I Ever Took”
Or/And…. “My dream vacation.” …given unlimited funds, where I’d like to go and what I’d like to do this summer.
The best meal I ever had.
A “Heroes” Issue. One of those group projects where your writers talk about their own personal heroes… plus a feature interviewing some of your readers about their heroes.
The baby boomers are retiring from the teaching profession in droves…a good time for a feature as they reflect upon a career in the classroom.
The editor of The Source should take a trip up to Starved Rock on the Spirit of Peoria and write about it…lots of fodder for copy.
The Woodland Farm, home of the local Underground Railroad interest, needs a boost in notoriety and it really is a pretty cool place. They’ve hired a young intern, Kyle Cummings, to act as host out there this summer and he hopes to put a little more “drama” into the experience with his guitar and voice.
Scott Maruna’s good…get more copy out of him!
Frank Skinner, composer for hundreds of Hollywood movies including Shenandoah, Harvey, and Arsenic and Old Lace is from Meredosia and is buried in the town’s cemetery. The little bandstand in the Dosh park is the Skinner Bandstand, paid for by Frank and his family.
My head is tired….maybe more later.