OK, so it’s been awhile since I last posted, and I figured I’d show you why. Because I know you — and by you, I mean the four people who no doubt find my blog each day by Googling something obscene — care.
Here, I present to you: Life Through the Eyes of a Bureau Reporter. Location: Newark, Ohio.
Morning. Here’s the door. Open the door. Smack self awake. Crank up the police scanner.
Filed under Uncategorized
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Jim Cotter and the volunteers who were painting over the damage in their hometown of Glouster, Ohio. Yesterday, CBS News did a piece on it. If you missed it, here it is.
Filed under Uncategorized
Well, kind of. I won’t really be blogging anymore, but I will be updating the site with new stories I write. And I promise there will be no more talk of the blue people of Kentucky.
Filed under Uncategorized
Is it just my generation, or has every generation freaked out about the trinkets of its childhood? I posted a picture of a relic of my youth on Pinterest recently, and in a day or two it had been re-pinned more than 100 times. I understand why. The older I get, the more important that kid junk is to me. It reminds me of a time when neon colors excited me, when love songs on the radio hinted at a romantic future I didn’t understand, when my greatest goal was collecting the entire set of Happy Meals toys.
It seems silly that a picture of perfume would conjure up such feelings — of being hopeful and lovesick and awkward and nervous — but it happens. And so here I’ve collected some of the things that fling me back to a time before I knew anything about anything. See if this works for you, too. (Just a note: This probably works best if you were born in the late 70s or early 80s and grew up as a girl. I have a limited world view.)
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Filed under Blabber
I came to know and love the Rosenow family in 2007, when I wrote about them for the Cincinnati Enquirer. They’re an incredible group of people, and they’re still growing. Since I wrote this story, they’ve adopted two more children with special needs and are in the process of adopting another little girl. Read more about their ministry here. A warning: You will be touched by their story.
Here’s the 2007 story I wrote:
Meet the Rosenows − all 18 of them
‘We don’t know how we were able to do this’
By Lori Kurtzman
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FAIRFIELD TWP. − Years ago, before life required three refrigerators, triple−bunk beds and four dozen eggs for breakfast, they were just Kathy and Scott.
He was her older brother’s best friend, the quiet, funny guy who seemed to know everything. She was the beautiful younger sister with the dark hair and the great laugh. They clicked. They married a week after her 18th birthday and left Alabama for Maryland, where Scott served in the Navy and Kathy studied to be a dental assistant.
Within four years, the kids started to arrive, Kristen first, then Erin two years later, then Allan. Ryan rounded out the brood four years later.
He would have been the last.
But then Kathy got this wild idea, and Scott eventually gave in.
Both of them sat on their couch nine years ago and watched that first adopted baby roll on the floor, marveling at what lay hidden inside a discarded child, slowly discovering that something lay hidden within them, too.
It all started there.
Filed under Cincinnati
For the past few days, I’ve been slightly obsessed with China’s Mt. Huashan — or, more specifically, all the pictures and videos from people who’ve braved the hike up the sacred mountain’s 7,070-foot-high South Peak. Here’s what captured my attention:
Every time I see this, I scream. (Image from www.ssqq.com)
This path forces you to belly up to an unforgiving slab of rock, grab a chain and side-step across some narrow planks (the “Changkong Zhandao”) for 13 screaming-in-your-brain feet. You also get a few existence-threatening moments where you can only move by poking your toes into footholds carved into the mountain. And don’t get me started on the ladder. While you can clip a harness to the chains and decrease your chance of plunging to a violent death, I still say no thanks.
Here’s a video of some brave/crazy guy doing it. Makes my palms sweat every time.
Looks beautiful. I’m excited to check it out. On the internet. With my feet on solid ground. If you’ve done it, I’d love to see your pictures.
Back in my entertainment reporting days, I somehow landed on the absolutely disgusting competitive-eating beat. Cincinnati had embraced the sport, and it seemed as though every other restaurant was offering a gut-busting challenge: obscene burritos, exploding gyros, pizzas bigger than coffee tables, submarine sandwiches you could float in.
Over time, I befriended the person who was gobbling up all the local eating crowns — Joe LaRue, a massive, surprisingly gentle dude in Kentucky who just so happens to love food. Joe’s a native New Yorker and a former rising star in the competitive eating circuit who got the boot for participating in non-Major League Eating-sanctioned events. (For all that sloppy hot dog eating, the Eater’s World is a tightly controlled one.) Joe was hurt by the dismissal, deeply. But he kept eating.
Which is how it came to be that one morning, I sat with Joe and his girlfriend as he attempted — and in a rare twist, failed — to eat the 3-pounds-ground-beef-6-fried-eggs-12-strips-bacon-12-slices-cheese burger in 30 minutes or less at Joe’s Diner in Over-the-Rhine. I wrote about it for Metromix and didn’t eat for a day. I was going through some old photos this morning, and I found my record of that day, and I thought you might like to see this.
Let us explore the emotions of the competitive eater on a day in which he does not win.
Joe. Burger. No biggie.
Filed under Journalism, Uncategorized
