Freelancing – Page 6 – Christopher Wink

Live, from the Northeast – it's theater (Philadelphia Inquirer: 3/22/09)

Devon artistic director Michael Pickering oversees a rehearsal of “Nunsense,” the inaugural show for the new theater. AMANDA CEGIELSKI / Staff Photographer

By Howie Shapiro and Christopher Wink | Philadelphia Inquirer | March 22, 2009

About 400 people, dressed for a gala, will take their seats Friday evening in what once was a dilapidated Frankford Avenue movie house. Three women in nun’s habits will pop up, administering parochial-school demands: Get rid of the gum! Flip off those cell phones!

The lights will dim, the loopy musical Nunsense will begin – and Northeast Philadelphia will have its first professional live-performance theater, in an area where many people (those in the Northeast included) may not expect to find one.

The opening of the sparkling Devon Theater is an example both of neighborhood tenacity and of a professional Philadelphia theater community whose growth – against the economic odds – seems unstoppable.

“I welcome them to the theater community,” says Margie Salvante, executive director of the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. “The theater industry, on a national level, is really focused on Philadelphia as a hot spot right now.”

Continue reading Live, from the Northeast – it's theater (Philadelphia Inquirer: 3/22/09)

Live, from the Northeast – it’s theater (Philadelphia Inquirer: 3/22/09)

Devon artistic director Michael Pickering oversees a rehearsal of “Nunsense,” the inaugural show for the new theater. AMANDA CEGIELSKI / Staff Photographer

By Howie Shapiro and Christopher Wink | Philadelphia Inquirer | March 22, 2009

Continue reading Live, from the Northeast – it’s theater (Philadelphia Inquirer: 3/22/09)

PW: Did Philadelphia ambulance response time kill a woman?

In yesterday’s Philadelphia Weekly I shared the story of Vlad Glikman, who blames a failure in Philadelphia’s ambulatory system for the death of his mother.

Jan. 20, 2008: Glikman receives a frantic call from his 81-year-old father telling him that his mother, Adalina, is unconscious in their Somerton apartment in the Northeast. His father says a private ambulance company, Century, is on the way. Twenty minutes later, Glikman arrives at his parents’ home and finds his mother on the ground, still unconscious, with no ambulance in sight. His father calls Century again, but according to Glikman, the ambulance driver says he can’t get his engine started due to the blistering cold. Desperate to save his mother, Glikman dials 911. Fifteen minutes later—far too late by most national standards—a city-dispatched ambulance arrives just in time to pronounce her dead. Read the rest here.

While it focuses on Glikman, the story serves as an update from a May 2006 story by Mike Newall on Philadelphia’s poor ambulance response times.

Read the story, comment, then com on back, as always, and see what didn’t make it into the final story.

Continue reading PW: Did Philadelphia ambulance response time kill a woman?

Inquirer: Why are there so many aspiring librarians?

Susan Davis teaches a library-science class at Drexel, where enrollment in the program has grown more than threefold since 2000. Retirements are opening jobs for librarians. Photo by DAVID M WARREN.

I try to tackle the contrast between contracting libraries in Philadelphia and a surge in library-sciences programs at regional colleges in a story for today’s Style & Soul section of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

You might think librarians are going the way of card catalogs.

After all, many of Philadelphia’s Free Library branches are on the chopping block come summer, and the number of public school librarians have dropped by half in the past 15 years.Yet local colleges tell a different story.

At a time when free access to Internet, books, movies and lectures is more important than ever, libraries across the country — where many librarians are graying and retiring — are seeking skilled information specialists, trained and college-educated in the library sciences. Library science programs here are filling the need. Read the rest here.

Go there, check out the story, comment and then come back here for the extras that didn’t make it into the full story.

Continue reading Inquirer: Why are there so many aspiring librarians?

Blogging at Uwishunu.com: See me

If you peeked at my Blogging clips on this Web site recently, you may have noticed that I have begun contributing to uwishunu.com, a very cool arts and entertainment blog in Philadelphia.

If you have managed some RSS feed for my Disclosures on this site, you may also have seen that uwishunu is a product of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corp., which means I am currently receiving small funds from a public relations organization.

I’m over it and hope you are, too. If it causes a conflict, we’ll cross that bridge when we have to. Because, right now, I enjoy the work and love the product – I was subscribing to uwishunu long before I became involved.

Below check some of my work and extras from those assignments.

Continue reading Blogging at Uwishunu.com: See me

Phila. fine-arts scene goes where youth are (Philadelphia Inquirer: 2/24/09)

By Christopher Wink | Tue, Feb. 24, 2009 | Philadelphia Inquirer

inquirer-cover-2-24-09 On Valentine’s Day, Pennsylvania Ballet staff members stood in the Merriam Theater’s lobby handing out coasters that bore what might have seemed a strange suggestion coming from an arts organization: Go to our YouTube channel.

What the mostly graying matinee audience made of the invitation to an online video-sharing site is unclear. What is clear is that the Pennsylvania Ballet is not alone in lusting after online social-network users.

The Kimmel Center has a Flickr photostream. The Curtis Institute of Music is on LinkedIn. The Arden Theatre and the Franklin Institute use Twitter. The Philadelphia Orchestra has a MySpace page.

The Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, and just about every other arts organization in the city has a Facebook page. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has an RSS feed of its exhibitions on its Web site, and the Academy of Natural Sciences shares exhibit-construction videos.

The Philadelphia fine-arts scene has gone viral, and no one is hiding the reason.

Continue reading Phila. fine-arts scene goes where youth are (Philadelphia Inquirer: 2/24/09)

Inquirer: Philadelphia's fine arts and social media

I was interested to cover the convergence of social networks and fine arts institutions in a story running in today’s Inquirer. While it focuses on Philadelphia examples, there are broader implications, I think.

On Valentine’s Day, Pennsylvania Ballet staff members stood in the Merriam Theater’s lobby handing out coasters that bore what might have seemed a strange suggestion coming from an arts organization: Go to our YouTube channel.

What the mostly graying matinee audience made of the invitation to an online video-sharing site is unclear. What is clear is that the Pennsylvania Ballet is not alone in lusting after online social-network users.

The Kimmel Center has a Flickr photostream. The Curtis Institute of Music is on LinkedIn. The Arden Theatre and the Franklin Institute use Twitter. The Philadelphia Orchestra has a MySpace page. Read the rest here.

Go read the story and comment, Digg it here, and then come back and see the extras that didn’t make it into print.

Continue reading Inquirer: Philadelphia's fine arts and social media

PW: Undesirable elements and an interview with Director Ping Chong

Charisse Loving, with Ping Chong and others of Secret History performance, warming up before rehearsal.

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend in Philadelphia, I know what it should be. My byline on PhiladelphiaWeekly.com about a performance commissioned by the Village of Arts and Humanities:

Secret History: The Philadelphia Story debuts this Friday at Old City’s Painted Bride Art Center. The play, written and directed by Ping Chong, a New York–based theater director, explores six teenagers’ first–hand experiences with conflict and violence. The catch? Some of them have never acted before. Read the rest here.

Read the rest, comment, buy tickets, go to the show, then come back and read below a Q&A with director Ping Chong that didn’t make it into the story.

Continue reading PW: Undesirable elements and an interview with Director Ping Chong

PW: Frankford addiction recovery homes

Dignity Recovery sober-living home at 1734 Harrison St. in Frankford, as seen on Fri, Feb. 6, 2009. Add a Caption Save CaptionCancel

The heated debate on private addiction recovery homes in the Frankford neighborhood of Philadelphia takes the front stage in a story I wrote for today’s Philadelphia Weekly.

It’s 1997, and Jeffrey Jackson is getting wet.

He’s balled up, trying to sleep inside New Way Out, an addiction-recovery house in Kensington.

The 28-year-old addict is in the process of kicking heroin after moving on from cocaine, but he’s starving and sweating and can’t somebody stop that damn rain from coming in?

“I told the director, ‘Hey, your roof is leaking,’” Jackson says now. “The guy looked at me with a straight face and said, ‘Then move your bed.’” Read the rest here.

Go there, read the story, comment and return here to check out the extra information and quotations that didn’t make it into my final story.

Continue reading PW: Frankford addiction recovery homes

Why losing a job can hurt men more (Philadelphia Inquirer 2/4/09)

By Christopher Wink | Feb. 4, 2009 | Philadelphia Inquirer

Thomas Schuler is a man.

Since October, he also has been without a job, a combination of characteristics that some say comes with distinct disadvantages.

That’s because unemployment affects men differently than women – research shows joblessness often is emotionally harder for men to bear. And with the economy hemorrhaging high numbers of jobs, disproportionately in male-dominated industries, those disparate emotions – shame, anger, fear, vulnerability – are on display more than ever. These feelings often find their way into other parts of a man’s life, affecting relationships with friends, wife and children.

“Historically, men have been in the breadwinner role in families, and so their sense of self is wrapped up in their ability to provide,” said Jerry Jacobs, a University of Pennsylvania sociology professor whose research focuses on labor. “So even today, when men are unemployed, that comes as a different kind of blow than to women.”

Schuler was proud when he landed his job as a facilities engineer at a struggling hotel in Plymouth Meeting. But when his position became a casualty of his company’s struggles, he suffered.

Continue reading Why losing a job can hurt men more (Philadelphia Inquirer 2/4/09)