The Clarity Post has been with me across many adventures: from Washington, DC to Rome, Italy, home in California and now in New York City. The Clarity Post content will be here for a while, and then disappear into the wispy translucence of internet memory.

It’s been fun Clarity Posting with you; I  hope you’ll check out the new blog.

Many thanks,
Chiara

There is something isolating about Columbus Day, particularly for Native American people.  I find it hard to watch my fellow citizens celebrate the “holiday,” attend parades, or integrate Columbus’ “historic journey” into the morning news shows. Today is a day where I feel personally conflicted:  where to be myself makes me an outsider.

But there is good news, and that is that there are allies, Native and not. My sources of respite this year are allies like The Uptown Collective, a northern Manhattan blog that posted a “Reconsidering Columbus Day” video today. I also appreciate the article in Indian Country Today that explains that today is legally Native American Day in South Dakota. Perhaps most importantly, there are allies–again, Native and not–in friends and coworkers who are willing to reconsider the holiday, even if that feels awkward at first.

And, for the social media fans out there, I am particularly enthused by the fact that the #ColumbusWasAKiller hashtag I started last week has now been adopted and retweeted dozens of times.

These are signs of positive change in a sea of “Happy Columbus Days.” So, even though I live in New York and not in South Dakota, Happy Native American Day to you.

I watched the sun rise this morning as it cast a beautiful orange sherbet glow on the walls of our apartment. Outside, the birds flew, street vendors propped up steaming pots of coffee, little bits of paper fluttered through the sky, and all was quiet.

When I got on the subway, there was an armed NYPD officer in a bullet-proof vest. “Good morning,” I said to him, almost inaudibly.

“Good morning,” he responded with a nod. I felt like we understood each other, like we had exchanged some sort of agreement. I wondered if passengers we’re looking around at each other more than usual. (“Be vigilant,” elected leaders told us.) Maybe we’re replaying the same “what-if” scenarios, saying the same prayers, remembering the same images from September 11th ten years ago.

My prayer today, as I head to work on the M train, is that today will pass–quiet and peaceful as it began–without any, well, from a journalist’s point of view, “breaking news.”

Manhattan, NYC
11:27am

I just walked out into Rockefeller Plaza, where clumps of camera-toting tourists and other folks are milling around. One such tourist just asked where to find the Nintendo store. So at least here, it seems that the attitude is “business as usual.” New Yorkers really are resilient.
It’s like what Dalton Conley, a dean at N.Y.U. was quoted as saying in The New York Times today:

“I think the ironic thing is, the area less affected in terms of daily life and fundamental change is actually New York City, the epicenter of the event.” (From “Getting Here From There,” by N.R. Kleinfeld).

From this vantage point at Rockefeller Plaza, too, he’s right to be confident in New York’s collective cool. This is how I’ve come to understand the New York state of mind today.

Manhattan, NYC
4:19pm

Overheard in lower Manhattan:

“That was an absolutely beautiful memorial… But I’m still on terror alert.”

Home in Brooklyn, NYC
11:54pm

The tenth anniversary is minutes away from its close. We climbed up to our roof and took a final look back at the former site of the World Trade Center towers. If you click on the image below, it will enlarge and you should see the towers lit up in the distance.

The Journalism School’s master’s project is a year-long reporting assignment and the culmination of the master of science program. The School encourages students to choose a topic that we really care about, after all, we spend a year researching and reporting it. My master’s project–which is called “Winning for Native America: Kuynákmahich”–was the most rewarding reporting experience I have had so far. “Winning for Native America” is a short documentary and almost 6,000-word print piece that weaves together the stories of three professional Native American athletes. PGA Golfer Notah Begay III, New York Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain and Olympic ice dancer Naomi Lang are making a positive impact on the Native American community and, with their success, undoing negative stereotypes about Native Americans. They are winning for Native America three at a time, and that’s what kuynákmahich means in Karuk (my tribe and Naomi Lang’s tribe). The name actually came to me in a dream right around the time I was building the web page for the project.

I recently built the complete project a page on my website, and I hope you will watch this 15 minute video and read the print piece. Please check it out at this link and leave me your feedback here. That’s how I learn!

In addition to finishing the project and designing a home for it, I also feel a sense of coming full circle, because I have just found out that “Winning for Native America” is going to be featured on Indian Country Today’s website. I’m excited and grateful for this opportunity; I hope that it will allow more people to check out the story, and hopefully be inspired by it. I’ll be sure and update this post with a link once the story is published. (Update: here is the link!) I am very grateful to author and journalist Eisa Ulen Richardson who interviewed me. I’m getting used to thinking of myself as a storyteller, and this was the first time I’ve actually been in the story. Now I understand how those I’ve interviewed feel! I think this experience will inform my own journalistic skills.

All in all, I’m feeling very grateful for everything that has happened in this past year.

The video portion of “Winning for Native America” and the opening paragraphs for the print piece are below. I hope you’ll visit the project’s website to see the complete story.

He pitches for the Yankees, but he belongs to the Buffalo Clan.

New York Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain was the highest-drafted Native American in baseball history, and is one of only three Natives active in Major League Baseball.

“There’s two things that I think I stand out for. First of all, my name’s Joba,” he says with a smile. “And second of all, I am Native.”

He goes by another name, too: Hanaga, which means “First Son” in Ho Chunk. That’s the language of his ancestors and of the Ho Chunk Nation in Winnebago, Neb., where much of his family still lives.

At the age of 21, Chamberlain roared into Yankee Stadium clocking fastballs in the high 90s and was christened “Joba the Heat” by delighted fans. He bounded from the Single A Florida State League to pitching for the Yankees in just a few months. And the same Joba Chamberlain was made an honorary member of the Ho Chunk Tribal Council, or tribal government. He’s the same Joba Chamberlain who dances in powwows when he goes home to Lincoln, Neb.

As a Native American, he’s almost alone on the diamond: the other two active MLB players are Kyle Lohse of the St. Louis Cardinals and Jacoby Ellsbury of the Boston Red Sox.

For the full story, please click here.

It’s about the Italian-Jewish community in Israel, the fulcrum of which is the synagogue at 27 Hillel Street in Jerusalem. The Italian-Jewish identity is a complicated one: sometimes painful and contradictory, and always with a special Italian flair. But recently, the Italian synagogue was given an ultimatum, one that could threaten this vibrant community. Check out the video below.

The project explores everything from journalism done by robots to teaching “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon to use Twitter to the story I produced with Liz Davies about longform journalism.

Watch our video below, and please write feedback in the comments section if you are so inclined.

Long Live Longform! from Fast Forward News on Vimeo.

The first story I would like to share is a radio story I produced from the West Bank city of Hebron. Hebron is as fraught with conflict as it is holy. Palestinians and Jews barely coexist in the divided city. Please have a listen and, as always, post your feedback!

A huge, huge thanks to my amazing classmates for sharing their memories with me (and letting me record them), to Cindy Bernstein for her fabulous translation skills, and to J-School professors Ari Goldman and Gershom Gorenberg.

The video below is one example. This is the story of Inwood resident James Cataldi. Cataldi turned a forgotten “heroin shanty town” in northern Manhattan into a wildlife sanctuary. When I asked him why, he responded simply, “to make a difference.” See the story below, in James’s own words.

May 4, 2011 Update

My story was also published in The New York Times on the City Room blog as part of their “Bird Week” coverage. Check out the full story and video at this link.

For the past couple weeks, I have been designing and editing my own portfolio website to give my recent work a home, and perhaps even help get me a J-O-B after I graduate. Today I am excited to announce that the very first version of the site is up and published. You can check it out by clicking here. It is not complete yet, and hopefully will undergo much improvement, but it’s a start. I invite you to take a look and to please comment with your critiques here (the other site is not designed for comments). The Clarity Post will live on as my personal blog (which is also linked to from my portfolio website as you will see).

On the site, you will also see a story I recently produced (with fellow classmate Michelle Oh) about a woman named Gina Kim who has taken an unusual path to overcome sexual abuse. I hope you’ll view that video on chiarasottile.com at this link.

Thank you for your support!

New Yorkers are cranky: False.

I am more cranky than most New Yorkers, and I’m from California. There have been just a few times when, for example, I’ve been carrying bags down a subway staircase and someone has not offered me help.

New York has excellent public transportation: True.

If I could draw little hearts and flowers around the word “subway” a few lines above, I would.

New York is a great place to have a dog. Or a family: False and false.

One word: snowbanks. To add to the garbage that is unceremoniously piled in the street rather than chucked in bins and carted to the sidewalk in a civilized manner and the gritty, grey snow topping the garbage, your little teacup chihuahua’s yellow drizzle on the remaining white snow is disgusting. And said chihuahua’s pink snow shoes get on my nerves, too.

As for the family, I don’t mean to hate on people raising their family in this city, I just wouldn’t trade my childhood running around in rural California and knowing everyone in my small town for anything.

There is no green space: False.

I live between Riverside Park and Central Park, and both provide verdant escapes from city life. But neither beat the unadulterated natural beauty of Inwood Hill Park (in Manhattan’s northernmost neighborhood of Inwood).

The cost of living is extortionate and living space is very small: True.

I live in a 15 x 9 ft. room that I have affectionately nicknamed my “cubby” and it costs me $800 a month.

There are people here from everywhere: True.

And all their awesome food. I’m going to try a Dominican sushi fusion restaurant at my earliest opportunity. And if you want to know where in New York City all those fabulous people are from, check this out. You might notice, though, that the Department of City Planning doesn’t track Native Americans.

I’ll be back with more. For now, I’m off to revise a draft of my master’s project. I’ve never been more thrilled about finally having a working draft. In the meantime, feel free to add more NYC truths and lies (or opinions) in the comments.