My Column on Students Tampering with the Fire Alarms, 1986, The West Georgian


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being Gay and Homeless in the Metroplex by Terri Rimmer - originally published by Associated Content

Between 700,000 and 800,000 people are homeless on any given night. People like Roger and David who when they moved to Dallas thought it would be a haven. Most families become homeless because they are having a housing crisis.  About half of the families experiencing homelessness over the course of a year live in family units and about 38 percent of those homeless within that year are children like the gay youth who represent who represent 20 to 40 percent of homeless youth.  Homeless people report that their major needs are help finding a job, housing, and financial help for the rent such as the couple who lived in their car for about a month getting food from a local pantry and making sandwiches in the car and collecting non-perishables. Twenty percent of the homeless report that they get help finding housing.  In 2002 three days before Christmas Roger and Dave were on a two to three-week waiting list to get into the Samaritan House, a residential facility for thos...
Read more

The Role of Courtroom Sketch Artists by Terri Rimmer - originally published by Associated Content, 2007

Image
Courtroom sketch artists unfold the history of some of the most famous trials with the stroke of lead across a page. Heavy black satchels full of over 200 markers make up their professional lives. In the wake of more cameras in the courtroom some people believe that these unusual artists will disappear in the name of progress. Outlines become faces as testimonies emerge. Witnesses or defendants are often cartoons in themselves, so how do you draw a cartoon of a caricature? In between drawing, artists listen to details coming from the lips of those on the witness stand. Five years ago these artists made a couple of hundred bucks a day or more. Courtroom sketch artists fill the empty space where cameras are sometimes not allowed and they even have their own fraternity. Their work often promotes laughter among their own little group, more so than tears. Speed is also a factor if you want to be a courtroom sketch artist and their work can sell for as much as $10,000 a piece. Gary M...
Read more

Press Teacher Jump Started Ambitions by Terri Rimmer - originally published under my maiden name Persico in The Camden County Tribune, 1991

Tomorrow about a hundred or so West Georgia College   alumni will honor a journalism teacher, a former school paper advisor, a   Newsweek magazine editor, and a brilliant teacher. Joe Cumming, my Mass Com­munications teacher, is retiring after years of teaching the magic of the written word to thousands of amateur college students who dreamt of that writing gig that would turn them into profession­als and cast them into the lime ­light for all the world to read. Joe is not a straight-laced man in a suit and tie, throwing large words at you and overwhelming you with Ivy League language. He has a shock of white hair, wire-rimmed glasses, robust cheeks and a clown’s hapless smile that grins at nostalgia of the days of the penny press and "Citizen   Kane." It’s hard to believe that the school will no longer have a Joe Cumming. After four years of watching him scrupulously and diligently help me capture the flavor and not only learn but grasp the idea of journalism ...
Read more