Erin Rose's Review of "The Ledge" by Jim Davidson and Kevin Vaughn

Jim Davidson and Kevin Vaughn give such a personal account of Jim's tragedy at Mt. Rainier that readers have to "hang" on every word he says. I love the descriptive details of being buried in snow and how it feels like a "million cold hands." This book doesn't cheapen what happened to Davidson because he describes with meticulous detail what happened to him. The book is $15.85 new on Amazon. 

Visit Jim's website at http://www.speakingofadventure.com/the-ledge/

Here is Jim's account of the accident:

St. Valentine's Day poems

Steven

Who is tall
Who makes me happiest, like stepping into warm jeans, fresh from the dryer
Who couldn't sing a note until sophomore year
Who is my biggest strength and vice
Who puts my life into perspective, like a long talk with my mom
Whose clothes look way too baggy on me to look cute
Who is my half a century
Who likes electric guitar and when I wear lipstick
Who fixed my heart
Whose handwriting is the best an engineer's will ever get
Who is four years, 549 miles, two songs 
Who is mine


Where I grew up

Lying flat
on our backs staring at my ceiling satisfied
us more

than anything. In my high school bedroom
listening to Say Anything
thinking we owned the town and talking about how


sweaty your hands were. Sounds like our love
story. Football towns
in the Upper Peninsula weren't ready


for our forces. Nowhere
provided the alternate
paths we craved.


Until I grew up,
I didn't realize how much cold
air I craved or how


fast I forgot my sister's voice
and why calling Kalamazoo "home" caused my parents
to correct me. When I grew up,


we were back on our backs
exhausted with the burdens of growing up
that held us back.

Pictures from past projects

Sister Kathleen Kaiser looks out of a window in the hallway of the Nazareth Center on Gull Road. The Nazareth Center is home to many sisters in the Kalamazoo area. Kaiser is a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph and also a member of Sisters of St. Joseph. Last summer, the SSJ helped a major hotel chain commit to the global Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism. This commitment required them to train hotel employees on how to spot victims of the sex trafficking trade. Look for the story next week in the Western Herald.

A Kalamazoo College student discusses political activism with a member of the Michigan Organizing Project.

My family's dog, Rufus.

One of the chandeliers in the Amway Grand Hotel and Plaza in Grand Rapids.

This picture shows the shape and texture of the door handles in the front lobby of the Amway.

My family's cat, Gus.

Photojournalism Class- Week 1 Adventures

This picture was taken with a 1/500 shutter speed, f/22 and 800 ISO. For this picture, my aim was to freeze the action of the jump. My teacher, Mark, told me that if you see the moment happen, then you missed the picture. It was tricky trying to get the timing right. My friend is excited to get this over with! It was really cold, but she was a good sport.

For this picture, I used f/22 and 800 ISO, but I slowed down my shutter speed to blur the snow. She got the snow in her hair, but it looked great in a following picture I took! Scroll down!

This picture took us a lot of skipping! It's especially hard to see if things are in focus looking on the small viewer in the back of the camera. Anyway, I was practicing panning objects to make the background blurry while the main subject was sharp.

My friends boyfriend squashing me like a bug. This was taken with automatic and is just for fun. :)

Here are my roommates and friends being patient. This was taken in 400 ISO, which always means higher quality, if you're working in enough daylight to turn it out.

Finally, a self portrait. The books are by Phillipa Gregory, my favorite historical author, Jack Kerouac, he wrote a lot of books about hitchhiking and travel and also got the ball rolling with the beat generation, Walter Cronkite, a legendary journalist, and a book called "Jesus for President" by Shane Claiborne. I had the pleasure of meeting Shane when he spoke two years ago at the Urbana '09 World Missions Conference in St. L. I participated in the poverty and advocacy track where I learned about victims of human trafficking and how to raise awareness . It changed my life.

Erin Rose's Review of "One Day" by David Nicholls.

"One Day" by David Nicholls shows that love is about embracing imperfections. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew are best friends that, sometimes, know too much about each other. It's the classic love story with a twist. To listen to the first page and get some insight about the composition of the book, watch my review. :)

Sorry about the random black and white. I was messing around with different effects and it must have stayed in there! I'm a goof.

I can't focus unless I'm multi-tasking.

Why I'm a Journalist

 The things I remember from September 11 stem from a lump in my throat and the feeling that everything was different. Among the things are: a reporter standing in complete silence waiting for the pulverized debris cloud to smother his lens; my 6th grade teacher crying in front of the chalkboard explaining how her daughter was in New York; watching Channel One News replay soldiers and firefighters hanging the American flag on the side of the Pentagon building while the song “With Arms Wide Open” played in the background; and watching the towers fall against the crisp, blue sky and thinking that people are dying in there. I didn’t know what the World Trade Centers were at the time, but people were dying in there.

I remember my homework, a normal middle school collage project. I remember crying too. People died in there.

I remember watching the cloud swallow the reporter and mentioning to myself, “I want to be a journalist.”

When I told my mom this, you can only imagine her reaction. I’m sorry, but for people who don’t know my mom---you’re missing out.

“OH NO ERIN!” she said, shocked.

Although I was only 11 years old, I watched the events unfold on my television in a graphically realistic manner. I remember being disturbed yet I could not take my eyes off the screen. As the reporter waited for the debris cloud, I recognized his commitment to getting the story for viewers like me who couldn’t be there. People died in there.

Media and storytelling combined on September 11 to give us a modular view of what happened to America. We all felt it. We are fortunate to have so many personal, separate story accounts of that day.

What was strikingly traumatic was the seemingly normal day of September 10, I don’t remember it and I don’t have to. My life was mundane and predictable. However, my life, along with everyone's life in America, changed in a split second the next morning. We all connected, one way or another, through a story.

To view more stories about survivors click here. I recommend the story about George Mironis, a man who escaped the World Trade Centers.