Or more accurately, not all of our stuff, but two laptops, a beautiful Panasonic video camera, numerous files, and all of my clothes.

We mourned the loss of the equipment, but no one was hurt, and we’ll start posting again soon. In the meantime, stay tuned for full story of the break-in, which includes a miracle, a porn star and some voodoo. I swear.

Alyssa

Today is Samuel Clemens’ 176th birthday. And, consequently, another reason for us to order dessert.

Alyssa

That’s 13,500 miles.

Alyssa

Lexintong Herald-Leader columnist Merlene Davis

On a Friday afternoon, Merlene Davis is playfully cussing out John Carroll, her former editor. We’re in a cold first-floor conference room of the Lexington Herlad-Leader, and Carroll had recommended we talk to Davis during our stop in Lexington. Davis—a gregarious, warm woman who pretends to be ornery—is worried about the interview. She’s furiously wiping her forehead, afraid she’s going to be too shiny on camera.

“Lord have mercy!” she cries, several times.

Davis really had no need to worry; she’s a natural storyteller and one of our most powerful interviews. Davis has been a columnist at the Herald for almost 20 years, and during our conversation, she expressed her pessimism about ever truly ending prejudice.

Simply inquiring about her background invites her to tell a story. Davis, born and raised in Kentucky, flirted with education all her life. In college, she was studying to become an English teacher when she “somehow got wrapped up in the civil rights era.” “I decided ‘I don’t need college!’” Davis says. She started a family. Then at 28, she went back to school and, not satisfied with a specific program, bounced around different possibilities. Eventually she attended a summer program for minority journalists and found her career.

Although Davis has studied a variety of subjects in several different settings, she has never seen the fifth grade and doesn’t know what the curriculum is like.

She skipped fifth grade not because she could, but because she had to. Davis was one of a few students to integrate Mary Lee Cravens Elementary School in Owensboro, Ky. (Watch the video to hear Davis tell the story.)

“We all ended up in the sixth grade because as far as I could tell, Mrs. Olive Bopp was the only teacher in the school that would take us,” Davis said. “So I have no idea what the fifth grade’s like.”

Instead, she sat through two sometimes painful years of sixth grade. In the classroom, Davis developed a severe stiff neck. It never happened on the weekends. Her mother suggested that she was probably holding in a lot of tension.

Davis’ mother, who had wanted her to integrate the school system, then told her something that she has never forgotten.

“She said, ‘You know you’ll be okay as long as you remember you cannot be as good as your white classmates,'” Davis recalled. “‘You have to be better than.'”

“Better than” is a motto that Davis has adopted.

“I have not seen when I’ve been able to react to an issue or be involved with something on the same level as a white person,” she said.

She raised her three children to be “better than” as well. She said her daughter took her advice, became trilingual and spent time in Japan. She excelled. One of her sons didn’t. He chose drugs and is about to enter the prison system, Davis said.

Davis is not optimistic about the future of prejudice. “I don’t see it as improving,” she said. “I see it as changing. We just gotta step on somebody to make ourselves taller, and I don’t know why.”

Lexington marked our trip’s entry into the South, and Davis explained some of the differences between adjusting in the North and the South. For one, it’s less diverse and less accepting. Despite the South’s reputation for hospitality, it’s not the reality. “All I know is we’re not hospitable, we’re not welcoming,” Davis said. “We will do it publicly, but behind closed doors, what are we saying?”

It’s not strictly the dynamic between blacks and whites, either. Jews, Native Americans and Hispanics have all faced or continue to face prejudice. The black community, Davis said, is not accepting of gays and lesbians. “Why would you stomp on somebody else when you’ve been stomped on?” Davis asked. “I don’t understand.”

Davis is frustrated with all groups. She said, “I keep hearing little tidbits, little slights, that make me go, ‘I thought we crossed that barrier.’”

Alyssa

Video by Dan Q. Tham

In Iowa, carrot cake and steak coexist so easily. How Midwestern.

Alyssa

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Stormfield, Twain’s last home, in Redding, Connecticut

The garden wall at Stormfield is one of the only original portions of the house that remains intact

Stormfield

Stormfield

Stormfield

Books from Mark Twain’s personal collection in the Mark Twain Library

Mark Twain’s writing tablet, made from a cigar box

The Mark Twain Library dresses up Twain for Halloween

Mark Twain’s traveling cigar case from the Mark Twain Library collection

One of our favorite quotes: “There ain’t no surer way to figure out if you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” Has a bit of personal resonance.

Beth Dominianni, director of the Mark Twain Library

One of Twain’s billiard balls from the Mark Twain Library collection

Mark Twain lived his last years at Stormfield, an isolated Italianate villa in Redding, Conn. Twain bought the expansive property sight unseen and asked not to be saddled with the construction plans. All he wanted was space for an orchestrelle and a red billiard room, and the rest he left up to his daughter, Clara, and his secretary, Isabel Lyon. Twain lived at Stormfield from 1908 until his death in 1910. The home is privately owned these days, but we were lucky enough to have a look at the first floor and the grounds of the house. In 1923 the house burned down, and a smaller version of Stormfield was rebuilt shortly after. It’s difficult to say if anything remains from Twain’s era. However, the garden wall is thought to be original.

While living at Stormfield, Twain decided the town needed a library. He placed a collection sign on his mantel and pressed Stormfield male visitors to donate a dollar to his cause. The library opened in late 1910, after Twain’s death, and still operates today. Before his death, Twain donated a collection of about 1,000 books as a core collection to a temporary library; some remain at the present library, many of those with interesting Twain marginalia. Library Director Beth Dominianni and former library director Heather Morgan showed us a few Twain artifacts, including his billiard balls, traveling cigar case and a homemade writing table.

Alyssa

Gunner Scott

At first, transgender political activist Gunner Scott hesitated to give us an interview. The media so often bungle trans coverage that it’s not hard to understand why.

Take Rita Hester’s case, for example, which continues to resonate with Scott more than a decade later. Hester—a transgender woman—was stabbed to death in Allston, Mass., in 1998. Her murder is still unsolved.

The media identified her as male, even though Hester had been living as a woman for 10 years.

“I still hold her in my heart,” said Scott, the executive director of Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, which, for the past 10 years, has aimed to use political channels to end discrimination against the transgender population. Every year, he calls the police and asks for updates.

“Her case did not get the same attention as other people’s did,” he said.

Other ways traditional media outlets mess up: Asking privacy-invading, personal medical questions (i.e. “Have you had surgery?”) and publishing addresses of transgender crime victims (which can lead to additional violence). Scott said it’s important to be attentive to these nuances within the transgender community; he can disagree with an article but still find it respectful if it’s reported with tact.

And while the transgender population has historically been lumped in the LGBT group, there can be differences in their needs. For one, the larger public has more difficulty understanding the transgender community. Being transgender has to do with a person’s gender identity and not with sexual orientation; sexual orientation is about who a person is attracted to.

Part of Scott’s job is to be an advocate, but even he has reservations about his image appearing in mainstream media outlets.

“I do the next day worry about getting on the train and being in my neighborhood.”

Scott, who has been threatened before, has “passing privilege,” which means he resembles a man. This makes it easier for him than, say, a 6-foot tall transgender woman.

“Being trans is a process,” he said. “For some of us, we struggle our whole lives. It isn’t just a lifestyle choice. It’s a struggle.” Scott has come out twice; the first time he went back in the closet and didn’t come out again until his 30s. One of the biggest misconceptions is that “people just wake up one day and decide they’re transgender and they transition within a week, or the next day,” he said.

Another is that transgender people want to cause trouble. “We for the most part want to put our heads down,” Scott said.

Alyssa

Driscoll is an English professor at St. Joseph’s College in West Hartford, and she’s spent the last 10 years working on a book about Mark Twain’s relationship and multitudinous references to American Indians. While most of Twain’s backwater attitudes changed throughout his lifetime to reflect a more enlightened, tolerant man, he remained prejudiced against Indians. Twain’s remarks against Indians range from obscure references to “a polished-up court of Commanches” in A Connecticut Yankee to the recognizable “murdering half-breed” Injun Joe character in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

“I’m not convinced I’ll ever get to the bottom of this,” Driscoll said. She did, however, share a few of her theories.

For one, Twain grew up in pro-slavery Missouri, but he had regular interactions with African Americans. The same can’t be said about Indians.

“There was a sense of familiarity to black people,” Driscoll said. “Twain never had a corresponding experience with Indians. They’re kind of an empty space into which imaginary things can seep.”

And after his marriage to Olivia Langdon in 1870 Twain adopted the role of male protector. In his fiction he typecast Indians as capable—metaphorically if not always literally—of sexual violence. “Indians are lustful,” Driscoll said. “They’re sexual predators.”

Another plausible reason is that Twain’s mother, Jane, “hated Indians to her dying breath.” Her ancestors had been massacred in Kentucky, which could be why Twain reacted to them so negatively.

Alyssa

Video by Dan

Quinnipiac University journalism professor Ed Alwood

The Saturday morning we went to see journalism professor Ed Alwood at Quinnipiac University, it happened to be parents’ weekend and the campus was abuzz with activity—music playing, lots of hand-drawn cardboard signs, mothers and fathers walking around with their kids.

We pulled up to the gate and rolled the window down to speak to the security guard. Loren managed a few words before the security guard held up a piece of white paper with, bizarrely, Loren’s headshot on it. She compared the image to the real thing, and then waved us through. A hundred feet later, another security guard stopped us. She held up the same photo, grinned, and pointed to the face on the piece of paper. We were VIPs.

Ed Alwood, like every good journalist, had done his homework on us.

Before entering academia, Alwood had a long career in journalism and public relations, including working as a CNN correspondent in Washington, D.C. He published Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media—the first book to describe the experiences of gays and lesbians in mainstream media—which is why we went to see him.

Alwood, who is gay, has had a prime view of the gay rights movement, from the pre-1974 era when homosexuality was classified as a mental disease, to the first gay march in Washington D.C., to the current movement, which he questions.

Alwood finished college in 1972, when “gays were still mental cases.” he said. “I wasn’t out at work, whatever out is,” Alwood said. “How are you out at work? Bring in a banner? Oh, I didn’t have any boyfriends’ pictures at my desk.”

Being gay sometimes left Alwood feeling vulnerable on the job, but it also helped him find and air stories he otherwise wouldn’t.

It was sometime in the early ‘80s in Washington D.C. “I’d never been to the gay porno movie theater, but I knew where it was,” Alwood said. “In that day, the gay movie theater would advertise the movie it was showing in the Washington Post.” Alwood was riding in the van with his crew when he heard chatter on the police scanner about a three-alarm fire.

“I heard the address and I looked at the Washington Post, and I thought, ‘That’s the gay movie theater!’” he said. “Then I thought, ‘Well how do I handle this?’” Alwood laughed at the memory.

“So I made up this convenient story, and I got on the walkie talkie, two-way radio, and I said, ‘Listen we were riding along here and I heard this police thing and I just happened to be reading the Washington Post and just happened to notice that the address of the fire is this gay movie theater.’ And they went, ‘Oh really?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I think we need to go there.’”

Several people died in the fire, and it turned out to be a big story.

At that time Alwood’s social network, and that of his gay peers, revolved around bars. “The bar became the gay people’s church,” he said. At bars, they “could meet with a fair amount of anonymity,” he said. “Except if you were on television every night.”

Alwood, who easily reminisced about being a gay man in the less tolerant ‘70s, visibly bristled when asked about coming out to his family. He grew up in Albany, Georgia. “I’ve got a fair amount of family who are fundamentalists,” he said. It wasn’t discussed.

“I don’t sit with them and talk about their sexuality,” he said. “I don’t see any reason to sit with them and talk about my sexuality.”

Alwood doesn’t describe himself as a “political person” but he did participate in the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979, the first of its kind. But the movement he identified with then is not the same anymore, he said. His statement reminded us of Larry Mass, whom we interviewed in New York. Mass said similar things; gays and lesbians don’t have to fight for equality as much as they once did, and it changes their culture.

Alwood wasn’t shy about his disapproval.

“The whole tenor of that type of political movement has changed so that it’s almost embarrassing,” he said.

For one, Alwood said the movement has gone corporate. At a recent convention, people at booths were hawking services and products “like the state fair,” he said.

“We come across as clowns,” Alwood said. “We come across as weird, very weird people.”

He hasn’t embraced the word “queer” either.

“We have people who seem to revel in these stereotypes rather than knock them down…In all of the celebration of gay pride, I just feel like there has been a decline in the pride part,” he said.

Alwood hasn’t forgotten a piece of advice given to him and his peers: If the movement wanted to be taken seriously, its participants had to present themselves seriously. That meant men wore ties and women wore dresses. Nothing over-the-top.

Alwood acknowledged that the needs of the movement have changed. He has stopped going to National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association meetings. These days they’re more about finding jobs than improving coverage of gays and lesbians in the news, although he said he’s still supportive of the organization.

“Sometimes movements outlive their necessity,” he said.

Alyssa

“A cross-country road trip in a crowded van might conjure images of Little Miss Sunshine. Replace the mute brother, drug-addled grandpa, precocious 7-year-old, and eccentric parents with a 70-year-old journalist turned professor, a recent Medill grad putting off a career, and a current journalism student looking for the thrills of the open road and you’ll have the “Twain Trip” — sort of.”

Continue reading here.

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The Elmira Correctional Facility

The Elmira Correctional Facility

The Elmira Correctional Facility

Loren Ghiglione, behind bars

The Elmira Correctional Facility

The Elmira Correctional Facility

Phones in The Fieldhouse

Pay phones in The Fieldhouse

The Fieldhouse

The Law Library

The conjugal visit units are behind the recycling center.

The mess hall. Officers can dispense tear gas from the glass office in the corner.

Elmira Correctional Facility

Rules of the House

B Block: The reception center

A prisoner’s few belongings

Elmira Correctional Facility

Elmira Correctional Facility

On a sunny day, the placement of the Elmira Correctional Facility seems inappropriate for a maximum security prison. If you make it to the top of several very steep flights of stairs, you’re rewarded with several views; the first being the town of Elmira and the picturesque Finger Lakes region, brilliant in its fall foliage.

The second is a crudely constructed sculpture of two naked men.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh boy, the jail with the two naked guys out front,” Elmira Correctional Facility Superintendent Paul Chappius says with a sigh. That was his first reaction when he found out he would be transferred to Elmira from Attica, a notoriously rough prison in New York.

This morning we’re visiting Chappius, who began his tenure as Elmira Correctional Facility’s top dog only a month ago. He’s so new that his name is vacant from the signage on the grounds outside.

Mark Twain, actually, is the reason we’re at the Elmira prison in the first place. He tried out a few of his lectures on the inmates before the building was a maximum security prison.

Chappius quips that it must have been a “captive audience.”

Although Chappius is new, the prison has quite a history. The facility, which was originally a mere reformatory, opened in 1876. In older pictures it looks like a castle or a mansion. But in 2003 two inmates managed to get onto the roof, tie bed linens together, climb down and escape. The media snapped an embarrassing photo of the prison, sheets still hanging from the roof. After that barbed wire and razor ribbon went up everywhere. The outside of the building looks more prison-like these days, spiky and imposing.

The inside, however, is more inviting than we expected. The history of the place and its thick layers of paint make it accidentally charming when you’re on the right side of the prison bars. The guards are chummy with one another but they also interact with the inmates in positive ways, leading to what leadership calls “relaxed control” and a clean, organized facility.

Chappius welcomes us into his office, which is filled with New York Yankees’ paraphernalia. The Yankees are big around here, and their emblem is painted on walls, doors and floors. Chappius is a friendly man with sandy hair and a matching mustache, but we don’t want to push his good will by bringing up the Yankees’ recent loss.

He calls Stephen J. Wenderlich, deputy superintendent of security, to join us and fill in some of the details. Chappius has been here a month, Wenderlich, 12 years. He strides over from his office, and a momentary air of formality descends upon the room.

Wenderlich looks official in a head-to-toe gray uniform. He uses a perpetual “yes, sir” or “no, sir” and dutifully supports all of the superintendent’s statements. Soon enough, though, a sly smile breaks through Wenderlich’s boyish face. Dan, Loren and I aren’t sure how to react when he eventually starts making jokes.

Deputy Superintendent of Security Steve Wenderlich

Wenderlich is “the numbers guy,” Chappius says. Wenderlich explains that Elmira holds approximately 1,800 inmates, which include prisoners in the maximum security facility and the reception center. Security staff here is about 600.

“The facility is like a city,” Wenderlich says. “Everything you find in the city of Elmira, you find in the correctional facility of Elmira. There’s doctors, electricians, plumbers.”

The biggest issue the correctional facility tries to address—in a change from recent years—is the mental health of the prisoners.

“You can imagine, prison is a tough environment anyway,” Wenderlich says. “(Prisoners) come with their backgrounds, and then you put them all together and say, ‘Now get along.’”

Wenderlich and Chappius remember when a prisoner’s mental health status was no consideration at all.

“Old-school prison,” as Wenderlich calls it. “It was just ‘Keep ‘em in, don’t let ‘em out.’”

These days a prisoner’s mental health is evaluated before almost anything can happen, be it disciplinary action or housing placement.

“Ten years ago, if you told an inmate to do something and he didn’t do something, you took action, and it was usually physical,” Wenderlich says.

Of course staff members still grapple with stereotypical issues of running a prison, specifically drugs and gangs. Just the other day, Chappius says, a mother and sister smuggled in 23 grams of marijuana. Even a grandmother was caught once.

Gangs, and criminal organizations in prisons, are a correctional officer’s worst nightmare, Chappius says.

“We know there are gangs,” he says. “We know they are there but we do not acknowledge them. We do not empower them.” He vaguely alludes to the policies of other states, in which officials negotiate with prison gang leaders, and expresses his distaste.

On the other hand, Wenderlich eagerly expresses approval for Chappius’ policies in place in Elmira.

Chappius’ first motto—”Helplessness and hopelessness are detrimental”—is connected to his second,“walking and talking.” Walking and talking is very straightforward. It means guards get on the floor with the inmates and engage in human interaction.

“My wife says, ‘Well, you don’t go back there, do ya?’” Wenderlich says, affecting a tone to mimic his wife’s worry. “I say, ‘Oh yeah, honey, I do,” he says excitedly. Even the higher-ups are expected to interact with inmates in the prison setting.

Before our guided tour, Chappius says most people expect to see inmates in their cells, or officers standing over inmates.

“You’re going to see a clean, organized facility,” Wenderlich told us. “You won’t feel the tension in the air. It’s kind of a relaxed control.”

The two escort us past the security checkpoint outside of their sterile offices and into the prison, and we prepare to see this “relaxed control” that they had been talking about.

There’s a board filled with green and red metal tags hanging on pegs. Wenderlich and Chappius flip their tags over. In case of emergency, staff needs to know who’s in and who’s out, who’s green and who’s red. The action has an ominous feeling about it, reminding us that the situation can change as easily as they flip the tags over.

We enter the E Block, which can hold 148 prisoners when it’s full. The walls and bars are white and sky blue, with cerulean accents. The way the light filters in from the window and the cells stretch up to the ceiling, it’s sort of like being underwater.

Almost immediately Chappius sees a sheet tied to the bars across an inmate’s cell, blocking the inside from view. He strides over and forcefully knocks it down. He gives the prisoner a sharp verbal reprimand. It’s a little scary.

Chappius never intended to get into the prison business. In fact, he downright wanted to avoid it. He meant to be a dairy farmer with his father.

His mother was a switchboard operator at the local prison. “I had told her there was no way I would ever be a damn prison guard,” Chappius says.

Superintendent Paul Chappius

On the sly, she forged his signature and signed Chappius up to take the prison guard test. You can imagine his surprise when he received something in the mail. He still wasn’t going to take the test. But the night before, “everything that could possibly go wrong on a dairy farm went wrong on a dairy farm.”

He got up the next morning and took the test. He scored a 98.

Loren asks Chappius when he changed his mind.

“When I was standing knee deep in cow manure,” he says.

We pass through the historic D Block, which was built in 1876. There are several levels of cells, and they face one another across a large open space.

In the B Block, Chappius pauses in front of another cell. “You all right?” he asks its inmate softly.

“A little cold,” the inmate replies. Chappius expresses his sincere concern.

It’s cold in the prison, despite the Indian summer weather. But once the heat’s on, it’s on. With 80-degree weather coming this weekend, the prisoners would roast, he says.

All throughout our prison tour, we see evidence of the “walking and talking” Chappius described. He and Wenderlich address prisoners by name, ask them how they are doing and tell them they’ll try to get them home.

We pass rows and rows of cells. Inmates sit on their beds and read or write. Some have TVs.

“Each block has its own personality,” Chappius says. “They take a lot of pride in what they do and how it looks.” Some of the prisoners’ paintings on the walls are quite elaborate. Aside from the pervasive Yankees logo, there are also nature and nautical scenes.

Our only rule today is that we can’t take photos of inmates, and this leads to entire blocks being cleared out once or twice on our behalf.

Wenderlich takes us inside a momentarily vacant cell in the historic D Block. Wenderlich is eager to point out photo opportunities. He’s a very enthusiastic man (also evidenced by the numerous comments he has left on our website, asking us if we enjoyed the tour).

The cell is so small that photographing the space is a challenge. There’s a tiny sink and a toilet. Green sweats are hanging on a clothes line against the side of the cell. A Rolling Stone cover is taped to the wall, along with a few glossy pages from a men’s magazine featuring women blowing kisses. Those are the pictures you can see from the outside. The really raunchy, eye-poppingly pornographic photos have to be on the opposite wall, which isn’t visible from the corridor. There are considerably more of these.

In a large, open room there’s a group of Rastafarians, many with long dreadlocks, sitting at tables and standing around, talking. They’re holding a special religious event.

“They get to do what Rastafarians do,” Chappius says. “Except smoke,” he laughs.

We pass through the mess hall, and the silver tables and benches are gleaming. A glass office overlooks the large room. Just as we’re getting a bit too comfortable, Chappius subtly reminds us where we are. He tells us officers can deploy different doses of “chemical agent” if necessary. “Also known as tear gas,” he adds.

The scullery behind the mess hall is bustling with activity. Inmates wash dishes and do other tasks. (“They’re going about their jobs,” Wenderlich says. “Just like you’d see in a college cafeteria kitchen.”)

Outside of the prison, there’s a recycling center, which sits in front of six units used for conjugal visits. Nearby, it looks like the Main Street of a city. Rows of brick buildings used for inmate classes face one another.

The Fieldhouse is the main attraction. It’s used for recreation. Inmates get a minimum of one hour of recreation a day, but most get many more. When we arrive, it’s eerily empty. There are basketball courts, phones and four TVs. There’s something for everyone: one TV is used for sports, one is used for movies, another runs BET and the last is for a Hispanic channel, Wenderlich says.

Once again, Chappius draws our attention to the glass office above the basketball court. “The officer up there has a gas gun,” he says. “And, yes, we have dropped chemical agents in the past,” he says, anticipating our next question.

As we walked outside through a courtyard, a few inmates yell out of their windows at us. It’s the rowdiest behavior we see.

Chappius, who has been more than generous with his time, runs off to a meeting. Wenderlich leads us out through an impressive, terrifying maze of barbed wire and razor ribbon. He points out one last photo opportunity before we go.

Alyssa

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Occupy Wall Street

The tour buses show up

Mark Twain is also occupying Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street

If it looks like everyone is sleeping, it’s because they were

Occupy Wall Street: For the young and the old (and the formerly oppressed shop mannequins)

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street

The 99%

Occupy Wall Street

Wait, homeless camp?

Class War

Occupy Wall Street

Fighting against the rats

Protesters gather

Occupy Wall Street

One thing about the Occupy Wall Street protest in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park: Don’t visit too early. Like, before 2 p.m.

We made that mistake last week and arrived around 11 a.m. Everyone was still sleeping, literally curled up in their sleeping bags, and in one case, underneath a tarp. Dan and I were kind of disappointed in the vibe of the whole thing; I had expected to be so taken with the movement that I would throw my sleeping bag down there with everyone else. After all, this is my issue! I have a $40,000 debt and no job! Most of my friends don’t have healthcare! One of them only goes to the dentist when she has a Groupon in her hand!

But those who were awake couldn’t quite articulate why they were there, other than that they were angry and wanted change—which I absolutely agree with—but it was disheartening when one person we talked with told us he doesn’t vote. Most people here don’t vote either, he said. The logistics of the protest are well-organized; the manifesto of the movement is not.

In any case, Occupy Wall Street is truly all-American. The park is little, but it’s a cross-section of the country. We saw retirees protesting, business-types taking pictures with their iPhones, hippies beating drums, tourists gawking, police patrolling, vendors selling food…basically enough variety to rewrite modern, angsty lyrics for the Twelve Days of Christmas song.

A succession of double-decker tour buses rolled in to see the spectacle. It’s been tough for us to remember which city we’re in because of our ping-ponging around the country, but after that we knew we couldn’t be anywhere but New York City.

Alyssa

Margaret Sullivan, editor of the Buffalo News

“Intern to editor.” It has a nice ring to it. And in 19 years at the Buffalo News, Margaret Sullivan did just that. She’s been the top editor at the News for 12 years, and one of her goals has been to enrich her newsroom through diversification. Sullivan is the first female editor in the paper’s long history.

She estimates that diversity in the newsroom has increased from 3 percent to 12 percent. Recently she observed just as many women at the news conference table as men and several people of color, she said.

“Overall it’s a good thing because it really reflects on our readers,” she said.

In April, Lisa Wilson, 41, became the only black female sports editor in the country at a large paper, “which is just shocking to me,” Wilson said. ‘I can’t be the only one qualified.” She considers it a “tremendous honor.”

Lisa Wilson, executive sports editor at the Buffalo News

Wilson joined the News in 1998 as a sports copy editor and steadily worked her way up.

“It’s not as hard as you might think,” Wilson said. At the beginning of her career, she might have talked sports a little more to prove her knowledge in a traditionally male-dominated section.

“But now, I don’t think so,” she said. “Everyone knows I’m a female and I run the sports section.” She’s been “in the trenches” with the newsroom staff, to the point where being a black female editor doesn’t make much of a difference.

Sullivan too said she felt like she had paid her dues, although there have been many times when she was the only woman in the room.

“You can feel alone,” she said. “It’s not an entirely pleasant feeling.”

Sullivan prefers to represent her individual views, she said. She laughed when an opinion editor asked her for the women’s point of view for an article. “I thought that was hilarious because I could never try to represent 51 percent of the population,” she said.

In fact, Sullivan represents a tiny percentage of the population. She’s a newspaper editor in Buffalo, one of only an estimated 30 in the city’s history.

“One of them was Mark Twain, and one of them was me!” she said. “It’s a great legacy.”

Alyssa

StoneyRidge Orchard

Dan and I will do anything to escape a) the van and b) prepackaged food. So today the two of us detoured to StoneyRidge Orchard in Erin, Ny., to pick apples and fix both of those problems.

There is something quintessentially American about apple picking. StoneyRidge grows about a dozen different types of apples, and they have names like “Freedom” and “Liberty.” Although the trees were marked, we had trouble finding those specific apples. We ran up and down the orchard hill yelling that we were looking for America.

We never found Freedom, but Liberty tastes delicious.

Michael Fosberg did not learn about the truth of his identity until his thirties.

Michael Fosberg plays the race card, literally.

He joked about it as he handed us his business card. “RACE” is emblazoned on the back in big black letters.

The other side listed Fosberg’s contact info and accomplishments: actor, writer, director, teacher and—perhaps the culmination of all of these things—diversity trainer.

We met Fosberg by accident. He led a post-show discussion about race relations after a performance of the Pulitzer prize-winning play Clybourne Park at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. We invited him to sit down for an interview after we heard his story that night.

Fosberg grew up as a white kid from Waukegan, Ill. While he was living in L.A. in his early thirties, he found out his mother and his step-father—the man who had raised him—were divorcing.

“I realized at this time that I didn’t really know who my biological father was,” Fosberg said. “And here I was losing my stepfather, and I decided perhaps I needed to know some information about [my biological father].”

Fosberg went on a journey to find him. “I knew his name and that 25 years prior to this he lived in the Detroit area—and this was before we used the Internet for everything—I went to the library and they had phone book sections.”

He looked up the Detroit section. “There were six listings and I copied down all the names and numbers,” he said, “and I went home and called the first number on the list, and it was my father.

“And during that phone call, my father proceeded to tell me, as he said, ‘a couple of things you should know I’m sure your mother’s never told you,’ one of which is that he’s African American.”

Fosberg had spent his entire life thinking he was white.

“Well, I was living in an apartment that was about the size of this chair at the time, but I remember being stunned, not so much from the idea of ‘Oh my God, I’m black’ but the idea that—let’s see, this is a big story—I’ve always felt my whole life, I’ve always felt a deep connection to African American people, to African American culture and I never could explain why. And so yes, indeed it was stunning to hear that I was half black, but it was also reassuring that all my life this deep feeling was verified.

“I remember looking across the room I lived in, it was a little apartment, and there was a mirror there, and I was sort of holding the phone, my dad was sort of filling me in on family history, and I kind of glanced over and caught a reflection of myself, and I thought Oh my God, did I just change? Have I gone black and then back to white? It was sort of a surreal experience.”

A lot of Fosberg’s friends weren’t surprised. An old friend called, and Fosberg told him what he had discovered.

“His response was, ‘Damn, I always knew you were black.’ And I was like why did you know that?” Fosberg said. “A lot of my friends had said this. They always had an inkling, and I don’t know, I suppose it’s pretty easy after the fact to say that, but people said, ‘You know, you were so cool, your hair, you had an afro.’”

Although Fosberg was furious with his mother for withholding his identity, his life became richer with the addition of a new family. (He made peace with her).

His unkown family history is indeed rich. He can trace his roots back to slavery. His great-great-grandfather was a member of the 54th regiment of the colored infantry in the Civil War. His grandmother’s father was an all-star pitcher for the Negro Leagues. His grandfather was a genius who started the science and engineering departments at Norfolk University.

For 10 years now, Fosberg has used his story as a springboard for talking to Americans about diversity. He published a book, and he performs his one-man show, “Incognito,” 60 to 70 times a year for schools, colleges, corporations and the government.

In the play, Fosberg discovers his identity at the same time the audience does.

“Some people are kind of disappointed,” he said. “To be frank, white audiences are sometimes more disappointed that I’m not more outraged, perhaps, by the discovery. And I am perplexed by that, because what would I be outraged about? Would being part black be outrageous or bad? I’m confused by that kind of response to it. I was overjoyed. I was like damn. I figured out who I am.”

Fosberg talks about dialogue. A lot, because it’s the key to improving race relations. He sees it in politics, in audiences and in the media. Fosberg said it seems like people want to have this dialogue, but they don’t know how to start it.

“There also seems to be a faction of people who feel like, ‘Oh man, do we have to talk about race?’” he said. “When in fact they haven’t really talked about race. They think they have. And that’s mostly from white people, almost exclusively. And then yes, the dialogue about race is so difficult to have.

“From a white perspective, when you’re in mixed company and you want to have a dialogue about race, white people approach the dialogue from a place of caution, because you want to be careful that you don’t say anything that sounds racist. How can you have open dialogue when you’re coming from a place of caution? You can’t. You can’t be open about it. On the other side of the issue, people of color are ready to pounce on anyone, anything that sounds remotely racist, and so we’re polarized, and we don’t have the dialogue.

“So what I’m suggesting is that we create this space where we can have this dialogue, and it’s not going to be easy, but we have to allow people to say whatever they’re gonna say and not jump on them like they’re a racist. There are definitely, definitely racist things being said all over the place. You see them, you hear them, but rather than jump to calling it racist, why don’t we have some dialogue about it?”

The same thing goes on in mainstream media. Most people are not engaging in the dialogue about diversity.

“I’ve been interviewed by all kinds of media,” Fosberg said. “I’ve been on CNN, All Things Considered, Tavis Smiley Show, blah blah blah,” Fosberg said. “Who has interviewed me to talk about race and identity? People of color. Those are the only people in the media who are talking about it. Why is that?”

The bottom line is that there is no understanding without dialogue, and there is simply not enough dialogue.

Fosberg was a captivating storyteller, and during our interview, he told us about his epiphany at the Inkwell on Martha’s Vineyard, and the man who was moved to tears at his show, and how he forgave his mother for hiding his identity for so long.

But dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. It always came back to dialogue.

A few days later, I struggled to write about our conversation. There was still one question, one that I hadn’t brought up because I thought it might be unprofessional or worse, stupid.

So I pulled out Michael Fosberg’s “RACE” card and called him.

He answered, despite it being well past normal working hours.

“Michael, I have a one more question,” I began. “So I’m a white girl. I don’t know how to start a dialogue about race.

“What questions should I even be asking?”

The difficult part, he said, is that there is an expectation to be an expert, but we don’t know all there is to know about race. No one does.

“Come up front and say, ‘Hey, I want to be honest, this is where I’m coming from,’” he told me. Everyone has a different experience with race.

“It’s up to you to discover and uncover what you know about race.”

He said I asked a good question.

Alyssa