People At A Coffee Shop

There’s no reason you’d connect the woman at our coffee shop with undocumented Zimbabweans or…be aware of her reporting on the policies of South African authorities.

These are experience Andrea Hart herself hadn’t imagined.

Some years back the kid who was the first in her family to go to college and to travel overseas caught a break. Her feel for words and ideas earned her a full scholarship at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

She learned that a muscular press is vital for a democracy and that groups lacking the ability to tell their story will be exploited.

While studying abroad she reported on economic migrants for the Cape Times and later covered general news and features at South Africa’s first totally interactive newspaper.

Fast forward ten years, Andrea now heads up community engagement activities at City Bureau. She is a cofounder of the non-profit, civic journalism lab.

Paid journalists are brought together to provide access to quality, trustworthy information that helps urban communities generate their own solutions. Residents receive hands-on training while engaging in civic processes. City Bureau fills the need for tech support and working space.

In a world of hard facts and stubborn realities, of two steps forward and one step back, professional burnout is a constant possibility. As a powerful affirmation for its staff members, City Bureau (which is not funded by taxpayer dollars) recently won a $1 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

The last time we had coffee Andrea said it’s important to “avoid the hero narrative” as something that can isolate an underserved community and make its people forget their own strength.

“Heroics are a false God.” she added.

You will be spending the night with Liza Jean.

You’ve already had quite a day.

Some sort of medical thing has been addressed by a surgical team. Something was implanted or shifted or removed. Things monitored and modulated.

Thanks to the anesthesiologist whose team kept asking your date of birth, you’ll awake in a room equipped to receive you.

Liza Jean Baker is a bedside nurse in a post-op surgical unit. She works the Dracula shift, 7 pm to 7 am, Friday and Saturday nights. She visited us at our coffee shop recently.

Her job is one of the most demanding in nursing. She wrestles with swelling, bloating, stomach gas, nausea and people experiencing acute pain for the first time. She learned about post-surgery pain firsthand when her wisdom teeth were removed.

Liza Jean Baker hadn’t planned to spend weekend nights on a post-op floor. But those particular hours pay a premium which helps with student loans. She maintained 3.98 GPA while earning her BSN and submitted 102 applications before going to work.

Sleeping gets turned upside down, of course. Liza Jean says she eats her way through her night shift and follows with a good breakfast. Then she sleeps. Socializing can be a bit complicated.

Her father, an orthopedic surgeon, discouraged the pursuit of medicine, demands outweighing rewards and all that.

But her mother, a career pediatric nurse, whispered into her other ear. It wasn’t until her mother stopped encouraging her that Liza Jean took the step. Now the nursing profession is a bond between them.

Medical technology will give Liza Jean real-time readouts as you are stabilizing throughout the night. Just as important, she’ll lean in to fuss over you and to ask if you need help with pain, and if you might like to sit up for a while.

Jamie and his partners played mostly covers until they made it to high school.

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They reverse-engineered the likes of OutKast, Lauryn Hill, Kanye West, Eminem and Jay Z among others. They borrowed and learned. Their skills grew exponentially until at a certain point Jamie turned to the others and said:

“Fuck this! I want to write my own shit!”

Michael, Eli, Henry, Ari and Julian all agreed that they would absolutely fuck this and perform their own shit from that moment on.

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Jamie became the group’s lyricist and vocalist. “I’m no singer,” he admits — but in rap and hip hop that’s not a fatal flaw. He can hold a note and push a rhythm and he’s begun to round tones. It’s not exactly singing but it’s not exactly not singing.

The Manwolves play by ear. Progressions are laid down on keyboard and then cross-jiggered against lyrics, syllable by syllable. All six of the artists contribute. They record in a home studio and send their files to goodly Zen-Master Jim who mentors and mixes them.

None of the six are enrolled in college. They may not see themselves as entrepreneurs but in reality Manwolves is a start-up venture trying to crack a multibillion-dollar industry. They’ve recently opened for bigger names while touring the East and the Southwest.

Who’s to know how far the Manwolves’ decisive ‘fuck-this’ moment will take them?

They may be touring fifty years from now — still selling out Manchester Arena and Madison Square Garden and headlining UNICEF concerts. Of course Manwolves’ fans will demand they perform their epic Manwolves hits over and over and over and over again.

But this time it’ll be different. This time the cover songs Jamie McNear and Manwolves will be performing will be the ‘shit’ they wrote for themselves.

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