HM Magazine Intern Diary: 6.22.09

Music Monday lived up to its name once again. Here’s a short list of either new albums or new bands I listened to today: Showbread – The Fear of God, We Came As Romans – Dreams EP, Alexisonfire – Old Crows / Young Cardinals, The Color Morale, Alesana – Where Myth Fades to Legend, Mr. Del – Thrilla, Shadows Fall – Retribution and Darkest Hour – The Eternal Return. What do you think about a Darkest Hour “So and So Says” article by the way? Apparently one member was born to a former Catholic nun who left the convent to give birth to him and he loves talking faith.

I guess I have a ton of new material for the next time I’m driving in Miami and want to blare some aggressive music with my windows down. (That happens a lot by the way – have you met Miami drivers?!) Personal favorite album for that is Go West Young Man, Let The Evil Go East by Greeley Estates. They’re writing their new record right now, I cannot wait for it. I liked their old stuff but I love the heavier sound and more complex song structures they introduced with Go West. It would make my year if they made a guest appearance at Warped Tour next week. C’mon, Texas is right next to Arizona, right?

Speaking of Warped, Tornado stopped by with some of her famous baked goods and she’s hopefully coming along to Warped in San Antonio July 2. If Kelly’s able to come, that’ll be fun the three of us going. If you’re in Texas, you should meet up with us there!

I checked out the lineup tonight so we could make interview requests and there are a lot of bands I’ve never seen but am excited to check out live. My list of requests includes: A Skylit Drive, Alexisonfire, Dear and the Headlights, Saosin, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, The Devil Wears Prada, There For Tomorrow, Thrice and Underoath. I’m hoping to get maybe three of those haha. But at least hopefully I can get a photo credential for most of them.

I guess putting a Bud Light girls cardboard cutout in Kelly’s office didn’t scare her away, so we’ll have to try harder this week to convince her we’re chauvinist pig dogs. I’ll update you on our progress.

Hazing is just another way of saying “good, clean, all-American fun for everyone involved,”
Corey Erb

“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?” – The Scarecrow, The Wizard of Oz (my aunt sent me a card with that quote on it – kinda too close to describing me for my liking…)

Spanish language school story research

We recently began a story on “Centro Venezolano de Espanol,” a center in Little Havana that offers an immersion in the Latin culture in Miami for students to learn Spanish. The organization was started in Venezuela and many of its staff are Venezuelan.

We spoke to one professor who told us how they educate people from the United States in the language using their unique immersion techniques.

It is a good story, but just doesn’t fit the aim of our publication – to be an in-depth look at an underreported segment of the population. Although it’s frustrating to make so many phone calls and work as hard as we did on a story that won’t end up panning out, it’s an important lesson in knowing your niche. We would have to stretch to fit the story in with our aim of covering stories related to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and it’s better to look elsewhere and return to this one only if we can find an angle that is more impactful.

Clinica Venamher interview and Soundslides

We spoke to Raul Salas, clinic administrator at Clinica Venamher the other day for our Soundslides to go with our first story.

We used the Canon HV-20 video camera to interview him, though we only are going to use his audio. This was an interesting experiment but I think we ended up with really good quality audio because the external microphone on the camera is probably better quality than the old Edirol R-1.

I also shot some photos with the Canon 10-D and a 17-35mm lens as Salas showed us around the clinic. It’s a small family-style clinic that runs on donations from people like Ernesto Ackerman, whom we recently interviewed as well. The “donated by” tags on a bunch of the equipment made for some interesting photos.

Hopefully the Soundslides will capture the clinic’s efforts to help out those Venezuelans and others who are struggling to make ends meet as newcomers to this country. It should be a good tie-in to Goal 1 – Eradicating Poverty.

Interviewing non-profit community figure

We recently interviewed Ernesto Ackerman, who is the president of the non-profit Independent Venezuelan-American Citizens and is involved in “Clinico Venamher,” a low-cost donor-driven medical clinic in Doral.

He was a really good source to speak about the Venezuelan community in Miami and he gave us some interesting opinions, comparing Venezuelans today to Cubans in 1959 going through the Castro revolution.

We shot a couple photos but since we were interviewing him at his business, Hillusa, a medical equipment supplier, it wasn’t a great visual backdrop.

We taped the interview but mostly for transcription purposes.

Keep an eye out for our Q&A with him coming soon.

He also pointed us to some other good sources that we’ll likely tap into in the near future.

Interviewing a Venezuelan soccer player in Pembroke Pines

We recently interviewed Melissa Guerra, a Venezuelan native who lives in Pembroke Pines and coaches girls’ soccer.

She came to Miami from Caracas when she was seven. She always liked watching her brother play soccer but was never allowed to play herself as in Venezuelan culture sports are considered exclusively for males.

Once her parents gave in and let her play sports, she never looked back. She quickly became too good for her soccer league and moved up to better leagues.

Eventually Guerra walked on her college soccer team and earned a scholarship with her hard work and play.

Now she passes along her knowledge and passion for the game to young women in the hopes that they won’t have to struggle to be able to play as she did.

My partner and I recorded her interview on an Edirol digital audio recorder and took some photos of the interview and of some of her old pictures from Venezuela and throughout her soccer career.

The audio slideshow will be done soon and up so you all can see it.

We may turn the interview materials into a longer feature because her story highlights the struggles women can have in Venezuela to gain equality with their male counterparts.