I didn’t know that when I was 11 years old, and my world was rocked by a series of events. My parents got divorced. My mom decided to get remarried. And to accommodate my soon-to-be stepdad and his stable, pre-Great Recession job, my mom, my two younger sisters, and I left my hometown of Chicago and moved to Phoenix, Arizona.

Those two places are more than 1,700 miles apart. But I would discover that at this moment in U.S. history, two big American cities, both full of lots of people from someplace else, can feel like neighbors—no matter the distance between them. And so, nine years after arriving in Phoenix, I still identify as a Chicagoan. It’s not just because that’s where I was born—it’s because Phoenix has reinforced that identity.

I arrived, of course, kicking and screaming. Before I moved here, my preconceived notions of Phoenix were similar to what I had seen in old Western movies that I watched with my grandfather—a barren wasteland of desert, filled with nothing more than tumbleweeds blowing in the hot wind and shootouts between John Wayne-esque cowboys. I can still feel the uncomfortably hot breeze on my face as I stepped off the plane in July of 2007. (For the lucky ones who are unfamiliar, a Phoenix breeze in July feels like the strong whisper of a hot breath in your ear—only one that encompasses your entire body.) It was nearly exactly how I had pictured it, only instead of cowboys there were middle-class, white Americans who felt the need to open-carry into the local Walmart. Because, Arizona.

At first, I didn’t care much for the desert urban reality. I hated it. I despised it. I loathed it. Phoenix is a difficult city to relate to. “How can you relate to a city?,” I know you’re thinking. Take one stroll through Chicago and you’ll understand. The city is full of life, echoing with the sounds of street performers and rumbling under the rush of the Loop train. Chicago is one of the biggest cities in the nation, but everyone seems to know one another. It’s a major city that feels like a small town.

I missed it. But the more time I spent in Phoenix, the more I realized that Chicago’s roots extended well outside the Windy City. Phoenix was—and is—rich in expats like myself. Many people moved here from someplace else, so all kinds of midwestern transplants like me were looking for new friends and communities where they belonged. I was especially lucky that many Phoenicians are originally from Chicago, and came here to escape the cold, find more affordable living, or find work.

My family and I slowly connected with other Chicagoans, both in person and online. Some of our neighbors turned out to be from Chicago as well, creating a familiar feel within our neighborhood. My family joined Facebook forums focused on uniting Chicagoans in Phoenix and we used the sports cultures to keep connected. We watched or attended Chicago Cubs vs. Arizona Diamondbacks games, Chicago Bears vs. Arizona Cardinals games, and, ahem, Stanley Cup Champions Chicago Blackhawks vs. Arizona Coyotes games.

After I began my freshman year at Arizona State University, the connection between the city that I loved and the city that I was thrust into only grew stronger. I ran into more and more students or faculty who were from Chicago, coming for the academics (or the parties) and bringing their Windy City pride with them. I was no longer a lone outsider struggling to find an identity in this new home. My identity as a Phoenix resident was molded by my love and pride for my old home, one that I could share with other, like-minded Chicagoans around me.

Throughout the nine years I’ve lived in the Valley, I watched the Windy City get blown across state lines. The market of Chicago-themed sports bars boomed. The Chicago Cubs established a brand-new spring training stadium in Mesa. Often, more Chicago sports fans showed up to Arizona games than home team fans. Wearing your team’s jersey or gear would inevitably get you a, “Hey, go Cubs!” or “Da Bears!” as you walked down the street. Classic Chicago food joints such as Portillo’s began popping up all over the place. Chicago wasn’t just housed within the confines of Chicago anymore. Slowly but surely, Chicago subsumed itself into Phoenix, giving the city an entirely new identity.

While Phoenix still isn’t, and never could be, as beloved to me as Chicago, I’ve grown to accept and rejoice in the merging of my two cities. I can take a shuttle to Sloan Park and sing along to “Go, Cubs, Go” as the Cubs take on the Los Angeles Angels. I can go down to Lou Malnati’s and grab a classic, deep-dish pizza. I can impress my friends and total strangers with an occasional slip into my accent. I can fend off jokes about being too cold in 60-degree weather.

You can take the girl out of Chicago, but you can never take Chicago out of the girl—thanks to the welcoming arms of a Sun Belt city like Phoenix.

The post What Happens When Windy City Culture Mingles with the Sun Belt’s Hot Breeze? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Earlier that week, Stephanie—the youngest of my four daughters—and I were sitting in a courtyard at our school, Chandler-Gilbert Community College, when she told me that she was dropping one of her classes and needed to add another. I told her I was taking geography and since she needed that class as well, we could take it together.

She gave me “the look” with a resounding “No.” Then she changed her mind: “Yeah, OK.”

There is nothing quite like attending college with your daughter. For all the difficulties of getting your children educated, nothing is more challenging than trying to educate yourself at the same time.

The journey started years ago, when our family was living in North Carolina. I was a stay-at-home mom with hopes of returning to school once Stephanie started kindergarten. Eventually, I wanted to become a teacher. My dream was that my daughters and I could go to school together during the academic year and have family time during the summer.

Then plans changed. Getting divorced and raising four daughters alone is not easy, but I decided to go back to school anyway.

It would be very slow-going—I was behind. Algebra wasn’t even on my high school transcripts. So I found myself in community college, taking middle school math, three levels below the minimum college algebra class required to graduate. But I didn’t give up. I enjoyed it. Going to school became my place to go to invest in myself while still having time for a young family.

At the same time I was taking those math classes, my oldest daughter Amy, an eighth grader, complained about the new teacher in her own math class. Her regular teacher had a medical issue, and Amy was having trouble understanding the substitute, an older man who told long, drawn-out stories that made no sense. So I suggested that we talk to him and see what we could do to help the situation. She agreed.

I had just come from my math class earlier that morning and felt I could handle this. We walked into the room and there was my college math professor sitting at the desk looking up and smiling at both of us. Amy looked mortified–“No! How could this be?”

The two of us were taking the same class, which may have been embarrassing to Amy, but I thought it was great. I was happy to be with my girls and be in school.

He proved to be an amazing teacher. He set the two of us up in friendly competition. In the evenings, we would sit together and go over her homework. Amy looked at math as a puzzle and I turned his stories into a method that helped her see how to do the problems.

In her class, he would tell the students that Amy’s mom had gotten an A on her homework—and wondered what Amy could do to beat her mom. He got the class interested in the game. She knew my grades before I did, and it made her feel special. He turned that around and did the same in my class, and students would ask him about my daughter. It was fun. More importantly, we both learned. As a side benefit, it brought us closer.

We later moved to Arizona and Amy signed up for the high school marching band. Erin and Courtney–my other daughters–went to middle school and also signed up for band. Stephanie was in second grade. And I applied to Arizona State University.

Then reality hit.

Marching band for Amy included early morning practices at 6 a.m., Friday night football games and competitions every Saturday all across Arizona. Middle school involved field trips, teacher meetings and homework. Elementary school was filled with more field trips, class parties with baked goods, and after-school activities. And I had a full-time job. I never signed up for classes at ASU after being accepted, and college went on the back burner.

The years flew by. One by one, daughters moved out, leaving Stephanie the last one at home. She started taking courses in high school that satisfied college credits. Since I was not working at the time, I decided to go back and finish what I started.

I went to my local community college to learn about my options. Stephanie came with me and together we looked at my transfer credits from North Carolina. Her face dropped when she saw my grades. The adviser and I looked at her and I asked what was wrong. Mockingly she said, “Mom, really? One B? Out of all those A’s? Why?” She couldn’t believe I had received good grades. Apparently my daughters thought I had made up my grades in college to “inspire” them to do well in their classes, since that’s what moms do, you know! So I signed up and dug in.

Graduating with honors with an associate of arts degree, Stephanie sat in the audience—she was just four credits short of graduation.

In fall 2012, we both transferred to Arizona State. I chose to attend the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Stephanie chose to be a photography major at the Herberger Institute. But when Stephanie visited Cronkite and saw pictures on the wall by photojournalism students, she decided to change majors.

As a mother, I tried to stay out of her way, planning my classes on a Monday/Wednesday schedule after finding her classes were on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She needed to have her own college experience.

But at the same time, there were moments when my daughter and I were peers. We laughed and cried during midterms and final exams. We rolled our eyes at difficult professors and homework assignments that made no sense. I also felt better connected to my other daughters and their educational experiences..

Stephanie took the fall semester off this year and spent time in Oregon and New York visiting two of her sisters. She plans to start at ASU again this January, and she should graduate next fall, having studied photography, journalism, and art history. Her goals are to get a master’s in anthropology and to work for National Geographic.

Graduation should come this spring semester for me, as there is one core class I need in order to finish. Stephanie and I have become each other’s biggest supporters and I couldn’t be more proud of all of our accomplishments. My daughter Courtney graduates this spring as well. Erin was the winner, having already graduated, but 2015 is our year!

The post When Life Gives You Lemons, Go Back to School appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I had gone to the beach with my college roommate Amanda, who flew in from Arizona on Thursday for the weekend. On Sunday, a few hours before her flight home, we finally found time to try the beach, as a brief stop on our way to drop her off at LAX. On the way, we picked up another friend, Sam, who lives on a houseboat in the Marina. Finding parking at the Venice Pier took 20 minutes; after a stop at Starbucks, we had 45 minutes to dip our toes in the sand before heading to the airport.

From the coffee shop, we made our way past packed cafés serving brunch to locals and tourists alike. Before approaching the sand, we slipped off our shoes and walked alongside the Venice Pier until the chilly water was up to our calves. The sky was overcast, and the ocean water was refreshing. I was relaxed and happy as I soaked in the idyllic combination of crisp air, toes in the sand and the company of my closest girlfriends, one from middle school and one from college. I missed this. I grew up taking weekend trips to Perry’s Beach Café with my dad on Sunday mornings, driving up PCH to The Reel Inn in Malibu to eat fish on paper plates, and celebrating birthdays with picnics in Zuma.

Walking in and out of the surf, we shared a beautiful 30 minutes, and stories of ex-boyfriends, college classes, and our mutual struggles to be vegetarian. We were standing in a triangular formation; I was up to my knees in water facing Sam and Amanda. I had been digging a hole in the sand with my feet, burying my ankles in it as water rhythmically filled and emptied it.

Without warning and without a second to look around, an explosion erupted above my head. My heart skipped about 10 beats. An enormous, white light broke the sky above me. A huge roar echoed across the beach, and my body refused to turn around, for fear of seeing that a bomb had gone off around me. I still had my Starbucks coffee and flip-flops in my hands, but those hands had gone numb.

Seconds later, the bright light disappeared, and the thunder was replaced with sounds of chaos on the beach. We ran, out of instinct, to shelter, which was out of the water and under the pier. As Sam and Amanda caught their breath, my attention was focused on my left kneecap, which was tingling. As I reached down to touch it, I became very aware of my hands. The joints in my fingers felt tender, and my hands were suddenly tingling as well.

As I glanced around the beach, trying to make sense of the last 10 seconds, I heard Amanda telling Sam that it was lightning. Amanda told me that the bolt had hit the water directly behind me, just 30 or so feet away. I would later learn, via the Weather Channel, that the lightning strike electrified the water for about 50 yards around it. I had been standing knee-deep in what they called the “hot zone.” My left leg was closest to the deep water, so the shock may have entered through that extremity and exited through my hands.

From under the pier, I watched as dozens and dozens of people poured out of the ocean, sprinting, while others ran into the water to attend to surfers and swimmers who had been struck. The line separating the water from the dry sand was swarming with frazzled men and women. Sunbathers sat up straight. Families with picnics and umbrellas farther up the beach were quickly packing up to head home.

I began to regain sensation in my hands and ignored my tingling knee as we joined the mass exodus from the beach. We walked past the surf shops and restaurants again, this time overhearing conversations between strangers about the lightning. As we climbed into my car, I brushed the sand from my feet, which sent a small but sharp sensation through my ankle. The sand felt more grainy than usual on my fingertips. Perplexed, I gave up cleaning my feet and started the car.

I felt more scattered and anxious than usual, but I had to drive. I dropped Sam off at her boat and took Amanda to LAX. Then, while driving away from the airport, I made the uncharacteristic decision to try to get back to South Pasadena without using any smart navigation apps. I could hardly focus on where I was going and desperately didn’t want a voice coming out of my phone micromanaging my driving, so I got on the freeway and drove straight until I felt like changing lanes.

I read “Norwalk” on a freeway sign, and not knowing where that was, took the exit. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, replaying the surreal scene of families, couples, and small children running out of the ocean. In that moment of aimless driving, I wanted to go to a bookstore and skim the shelves. No, I wanted to go shopping for workout pants. Shaking my head, I decided I wanted food. I was starving, my arms were suddenly sore, and I wanted to stop driving as soon as possible.

I gave in and turned on Waze for directions to Fresco Community Market, my favorite grocery store. I spent about 45 minutes walking around, forgetting why I was in that aisle, staring at the Greek yogurt choices, walking away and then coming back. I was dazed, but didn’t recognize it. Finally, I bought a loaf of bread, fig jam, and several types of cheeses and drove home. After making myself a grilled sandwich with my new ingredients, the chaotic day melted away as I watched Chopped, the Food Network show, and drank orange juice.

A few minutes after I finished my meal, my parents walked in the door, and I told them about my wild afternoon. I insisted I was fine, and I really thought I was. Once I finished my sandwich, I stood up.

This is when things took a turn. My mother watched me with a close eye as my legs grew weak, and my fingers began to tingle again. Within seconds of standing, I had hardly enough energy to bring my plate into the kitchen and left to lie down in my bedroom.

I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I have a long-standing sensitivity to fluorescent lights in the kitchen. But usually the dizzy feeling brought on by visits to the kitchen goes away within seconds. Not now. My eyes wanted to close, and suddenly my body felt cold. I reached up to itch my neck and froze. I looked down as I ran my finger across my neck. The tingly feeling I had felt in my knee and my fingers earlier that day was spreading. It felt as though there were eight layers of skin between my fingertips and the rest of my body.

The inside of my elbow became achy, and my muscles became sore with every second that my arm was elevated to reach my neck. The nerves throughout my body felt both electrified and numb. I lay very still as I called for my parents to come upstairs. When they arrived, my eyes were glassy, and my shallow breaths came and went quickly. It felt like an electric wave was moving up and down my left leg, across my torso. I squirmed on my bed to try and shift the sensation but it had no effect.

My parents started asking me specific questions, such as where my shoes are, if I remember the names of my medication, and what I ate today. I stared blankly at them and didn’t speak. A few minutes later, I watched as six or seven paramedics walked through my bedroom. A paramedic asked for my name and age; I answered quickly to focus on following the electric current through my body. They took my blood pressure and asked me other questions, to which I murmured answers.

The paramedics said that I seemed fine, medically speaking. But the fatigue was overwhelming, and a loud beep from a paramedic’s walkie-talkie gave me a sudden and raging headache. I tried to explain how I was feeling, but the paramedic interrupted to say that they couldn’t answer specific questions because of liability concerns. The paramedic offered me a ride to a hospital, but I shook my head quickly. If I was in any real danger, I figured I wouldn’t have been able to operate the car as I did after leaving the beach. Within minutes, the paramedics were gone.

The electric wave moving across my body had slowed down since I began dealing with the paramedics. When I awoke and joined my family later that evening, I felt tired, but the tingly sensation had stopped. I contacted Sam and Amanda, who reported no ill effects.

I feel fine today as I recount this. The rare lightning bolt was a surprise to Angelenos, as were the heavy rainstorms earlier in the day. We’re not used to such things. I hadn’t known, on Sunday morning before my trip to the beach, that thunder follows lightning, or that untimely rainstorms are something to worry about. I know now.

The post I Was Struck by Venice Lightning appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

At a panel co-presented by Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at MOCA Grand Avenue, Mathews asked a panel of journalists from print, TV, and the Internet: Are political and government reporters destined to be pushed aside by entertainment culture? Or can they embrace it?

TMZ co-executive producer Charles Latibeaudiere said that the collision between entertainment and politics doesn’t mean the death of serious journalism. At TMZ, they’re trying to make politicians into personalities—which can be one way of drawing viewers and readers into learning more about a politician’s policies. TMZ published a photograph of Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock’s six-pack, and “suddenly he had constituents reaching out to him—they didn’t even know he was their representative.” Sure, it’s funny, maybe even sad, said Latibeaudiere. “But if that’s what it takes to get them into church, as they say, that’s what it takes.”

But is this collision, asked Mathews, also causing problems? You’re as likely to see a candidate on The Daily Show as you are sitting down with a reporter; popular websites are driven by pop culture as much as news.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and the anchors on Fox News and MSNBC “didn’t invent that kind of television or that kind of information,” said former CNN anchor and ASU journalism professor Aaron Brown. “I don’t find it particularly threatening to journalism at all.” The business has changed—but not journalism, argued Brown. However, journalists do need to stop pandering to their audience, he said.

It’s true that CNN is under pressure today to be entertaining; what you see on the other cable news networks “is more entertaining” than what you see on CNN’s straightforward news program. The challenge—which Brown isn’t sure is possible to surmount—is to be engaging on the days when big news isn’t being made.

But New York Times Hollywood correspondent Michael Cieply disagreed; star power is driving journalism more than ever, and it’s pushing the real news down and out, he argued, even at his own paper. He tipped his hat to TMZ’s journalism—calling it “one of the most intensely, classically reportorial organizations I’ve ever seen occur in this town”—but bemoaned the lack of importance in the material that’s taking control of journalism.

Web traffic especially is being driven by mentions of celebrity names rather than new stories; Cieply compared the vacant entertainment content posted online (even at his own paper) to “kudzu choking everything” on the sides of the road. A story that takes a reporter a week to report and write—even a story that breaks fresh news—is pushed down and out by soft celebrity interviews.

This isn’t new, said Brown. He recalled his worst day on television, over a decade ago, when he spent four hours reporting on the actor Robert Blake’s arrest for his wife’s murder—even though Blake at the time had no career to speak of and was known for just one TV role. Yet that program did huge numbers—and got a huge audience response.

The American public, said Mathews, is misinformed on any number of things. Can their obsession with celebrity be used to correct misperceptions and incorrect information—or is the truth being crowded out?

“I think this huge multiplicity of outlets, as much as it’s chewing us up economically—God bless,” said Cieply. However, he’s scared by our contemporary assumption that the Internet makes all news of any importance available at all times. There’s a “huge vacuum” of incidents and information that’s not reported, and that no one’s even thinking about covering.

Mathews asked the panelists if the blurring of the lines between politicians and entertainers and reporters is part of the problem—and if it’s creating new ethical questions, too.

“I don’t know what caused it, and why there’s this fascination with celebrity, but you can’t deny it’s a reality,” said Latibeaudiere—it’s the way the world works now. It’s the changing technology rather than the changing culture that causes ethical issues. On the Internet, your deadline is always two minutes ago; in the past, you waited for the newscast to go on air or the printing press to run. People are sacrificing accuracy for speed—and if you don’t double, triple, quadruple, quintuple check a story, “you’re going to get screwed,” he said.

Cieply said that there is one line that has blurred that he finds troubling: People getting political and historical information from films and documentaries, often in real time (as with The Social Network or Zero Dark Thirty). Documentaries in particular create “the illusion that everything you’re seeing must be true” when they’re in fact manipulating the events they present onscreen every minute.

In the question-and-answer session, an audience member asked whether entertainment coverage crowding out real information is causing problems for our democracy.

Latibeaudiere doesn’t believe the information is being crowded out; you simply have to search for it instead of seeing it on the 5 o’clock news.

Is traditional journalism in a crisis right now—and is there such a thing as “good” or “bad” infotainment?

Brown doesn’t see a crisis in news today. Getting out information in a democracy has always been messy one way or another. “What we need from you,” he told the audience, “is some diligence in what you do” as readers and consumers of news.

Latibeaudiere said that although “news” has become a bad word, people are still getting it—perhaps in spite of themselves. And this isn’t a good thing, or a bad thing.

Cieply said it’s not a crisis simply because the world of journalism wasn’t wonderful before. However, “it is a time of enormous chaos,” he said. “It’s incumbent on everyone to do a lot more thinking about what they’re reading.” And one benefit of all this confusion is that people are talking and sharing more about the process of trying to figure out this brave new world—“and that’s a good thing.”

The post You Can’t Fight Infotainment appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.