Professor Eric Freedman
Professor Joshua Duchan
Knight Center director Eric Freedman and Professor Joshua Duchan of the Wayne State University School of Music presented their study about the depiction of newsboys and newsgirls in sheet music between the mid-1840s and the late 1930s.
This presentation was part of the “Our Daily Work, Our Daily Lves” series sponsored by the MSU School of Human Resources & Labor Relations and the MSU Library.
Photo credit: Patrol project
The new documentary “Patrol” is about Indigenous Rama and Afro-descendent Kriol communities of Nicaragua fighting illegal cattle ranching in the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve not far from the Costa Rican border.
The film, supported in part by a grant from the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, will be aired on the MSU campus.
“This is the story of them and how they struggle to protect their ancestral territory,” said Tardi, an activist, who decided to stay anonymous for safety reasons. Continue reading
By Cameryn Cass
The first time I left America, I didn’t get very far: I went to Toronto for a mini-holiday. Though only four and a half hours from my hometown, it felt much farther than that. It was exciting and new and – dare I say – foreign. Unlike my 19-year-old peers, I was drawn to the city for something other than legal drinking: I went in search of adventure.
You see, I enjoy living outside my comfort zone. I figure the more I do, the larger that zone will become.
Former Great Lakes Echo writer Cameryn Cass on the scene in Australia
So for my final semester at Michigan State, I decided to pack my bags and live 9,370 miles (15,080 kilometers) from home in Sydney, Australia. Instead of studying abroad, I interned at a lovely nonprofit called the Ethics Centre in the heart of the city.
I had the opportunity to write and edit stories and meet philosophers and experience imposter syndrome daily. I got used to spelling color with a “u” and writing the date with the number first, followed by the month. Did you know writing the date with the number sandwiched between the month and year is almost exclusively American? I think we ought to reconsider how we write that. And also adopt the metric system.
But, back to Australia. My internship went from February to mid-April, but I stayed until July 24 (24 July). I saw Brisbane and sat beside kangaroos all afternoon at Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo. I hiked at Cradle Mountain and easily fell in love with Hobart, Tasmania.
I visited New Zealand and its Hobbiton, having never seen the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings films and left a piece of my heart in Queenstown.
And I got lost in the equatorial heat and traffic lightless roads of Bali, visiting my cousin there for 15 days. Continue reading
Eric Freedman
By Eric Freedman
Director, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism
There’s nothing like almost dying to wake you up to the multiple realities of America’s health care system.
I nearly died in April from a still-unidentified collapse and its complications, including pneumonia, blackouts, heavy bleeding, liver damage and ICU delirium during seven weeks at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital, four of them on a ventilator.
I have no memory of my first five weeks there.
When it first happened, my children and grandchildren arrived from four states, although I don’t remember their visit or their encouraging words.
For me, the experience highlighted the fragility of life and our vulnerability to sometimes-inexplicable health crises, regardless of how well we’ve taken care of ourselves: eaten – mostly – right, exercised and had regular medical exams and tests.
Beyond that, however, came deeper insights about inequities in the American medical system, starting with access to and the high cost of care.
Medical expenses can push patients and their families without good health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid or VA benefits into a devastating choice between bankruptcy on one hand and foregoing lifesaving treatment on the other hand.
Talk about sticker shock. The retail price – the bottom line – for two days at Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital, where my arduous medical journey began in the emergency department: $87,748. The ambulance transfer while I was comatose and in critical condition from Sparrow to Henry Ford Hospital’s ICU: $13,520. Continue reading