Forgotten Ellis Island.

This was an amazing day. I went with my family to the premiere of Forgotten Ellis Island, a documentary for which I recorded voice-over this past spring and summer. The premiere was held at the Ellis Island Museum on the island. A particular delight for me was to attend this screening not only with my family but with Bruce Miles and his wife Emma. The film-maker, Lorie Conway, had asked me to recommend male voice talent and I suggested both Bruce and my colleague Drew Hadwal, and Lorie hired both. Bruce and Emma made a vacation of the event and were in New York for a total of 5 days whereas my family and I just went down for the event itself. It was a gorgeous, warm and sunny day, most unusual for October, and we enjoyed the ferry ride over to the island.

Lorie Conway and Bruce Miles

Bruce and I were as excited as children. Although we had been brought in for the final stages of production, we had gotten very attached to the project not only because it is such a compelling one – who among us Americans cannot relate to the story of immigration? but also because of Lorie Conway’s enthusiasm and passion for the story of the Immigrant Hospital that she was telling through this film. Also, at the time we were hired, the film still did not have a primary narrator, and we had been bursting with anticipation in the last months, waiting to hear who it was going to be. We have known for about two months that the narrator would be Elliott Gould, and we were very much looking forward to the possibility of meeting him. We were not disappointed!

The lights finally dimmed and the film began, and we were riveted. It was a poignant story, movingly told. A number of surprises revealed themselves: on the dock back in Manhattan, while we waited for the boat that would take us to the island, we got into a conversation with a woman who had come all the way from Australia for this occasion. We did not have a chance to ask about her involvement with Lorie’s project, but as we watched the film, we learned who she was. Part of my script had included a description of the final hours of the life of a patient at the Immigrant Hospital who had died of scarlet fever. It was a very sad story, but it wasn’t until I saw the film that I realised just how sad it was. This patient, a young man of 19, was not an immigrant seeking citizenship in the United States; rather, he was a visitor, with gainful employment elsewhere. Unfortunately, he had forgotten his passport on the boat, and was detained at Ellis Island until officials could determine his status. During his detention he had the great misfortune to contract scarlet fever, from which he never recovered. The Australian woman we had chatted with on the dock this morning was that young man’s niece. If you go to the Forgotten Ellis Island website and click on Patient Stories, then click the right arrow twice, you will hear this young man's story told by Elliott Gould, and the account of his public health nurse, Lucy Simpson, read by me.

Another surprise was to learn that in the audience today was a man who had come over from Germany as a small child and had caught the measles. He was nursed back to health at the Immigrant Hospital, and he remembered the place with great good will. The hospital staff had been kind to him, as they were to so many; a great majority of the people who were treated at the hospital recovered fully and were allowed to leave and pursue their dream of citizenship.

After the screening we did indeed get to meet Mr. Gould, and Emma took a picture of him with Bruce and me, which I will post here after she and Bruce get back to Phoenix and have had a chance to rest at home for a few seconds after which I will start pestering her.

[Note on 25 Oct - here is the picture! Thanks Emma!]

Bruce Miles, Elliott Gould and Mary McKitrick

There followed a lovely catered lunch which was held in a part of the old hospital that has been renovated thanks to the efforts of the non-profit organisation, Save Ellis Island. It was a bit of a hike to get to that area and we had the chance to see some of the hospital and its grounds. It was eerie, I must say, to see it. One cannot help but feel the presence of an extraordinary segment of American history in that place. Without immigration, none of us would be here today.

Elliott Gould did a superb job narrating the film. Bruce – I have known Bruce for a couple of years and we’ve worked together and I knew his talent. But I was blown away by his work on this project. It was really impressive. So was Drew Hadwal’s. And you know what – I even was impressed by my own work! I hope you all will get a chance to see this beautiful film. Lorie Conway is truly to be congratulated on an excellent piece of scholarship and artistry. With luck this documentary will air on television this winter.

Lorie's cake!

Lady Liberty

Part of the Immigrant Hospital and Grounds

Inside the Immigrant Hospital

Part of the restoration project at Ellis Island

My guys

Part of the facade of the Ellis Island Museum

Manhattan skyline

What do you do to lessen your environmental footprint?

This morning the dog and I were on our daily run, and I felt a bit of a twinge in my back, which I decided to ignore since I would like to accept Dr. John E Sarno’s contention that many of us store our stress in our backs, and we have pain because we expect to have pain and we shouldn’t allow our minds to get in the way of activities we enjoy. But it did take me back many years, in my mind, to the first time I ever experienced back pain. I was 15 years old and living with my family in Princeton, NJ for a year as my father had a sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced Study. There was a new community recycling program and it was supported by volunteers. Glass bottles actually had to be crushed and that was my job for the morning – lifting a very heavy iron crushing implement to smash the bottles. It was a bit much for me – I don’t know what I weighed at the time but probably in the neighborhood of 80 lbs – and I wrenched a muscle and could scarcely move for the next couple of days. Ever since then, back pain has been an unpredictable visitor, striking when I least expect it. But it never soured me on recycling!

All of this reminded me that today is Blog Action Day, wherein bloggers everywhere are urged to write about the environment - so here I am. Reducing waste and reducing the number of times I have to drive my car are priorities for me. My bicycle has two big baskets so modest trips to the grocery store can be done with the bike. And I always take my canvas bags with me so I can avoid using the disposable bags that the store gives away.

More and more, the large local supermarkets around here are offering reusable bags for sale. This is laudable, but I think the stores could take this a huge step further: they could discontinue the practise of giving bags away. In Europe everybody carries bags with them to the grocery store. If they forget, they’re out of luck, so guess what? They don’t forget. Americans need to get into this habit too. Another thing I would like to see at grocery stores: large bike racks. The store where I shop most frequently has a bike rack and it’s often full. How about this: when you lock up your bike, a store employee gives you a special token. You show the token to the cashier and get 2% off on your grocery bill. In order to free up an employee to hand out tokens (unless you can think of another way of dispensing the tokens ONLY to bicyclists), the stores could have special racks for their grocery carts – you would have to put in a $1 coin to get a cart, and when you return the cart you’d get your coin back. That way employees wouldn’t have to spend any time chasing after carts. This is also a European practise. We would need to have $1 coins in frequent circulation, that’s all.

Do you think you could deal with taking your own bags with you when you go shopping? Do you already do it? And if you already use disposable grocery bags at home for other purposes – maybe you could design a washable, reusable bag to serve the same purpose and sell it on the internet. Getting rid of plastic grocery bags could open up all kinds of business niches!

What do you do that's "green"?

Last year I offered a 20% “green discount” on voice-overs to businesses that are environmentally friendly. That offer still holds. Just ask.

Back to College and Studying Spanish!

It has been some years since I began studying Spanish. I was thrown into it one summer after graduating from college, when I went to Costa Rica to help with a study of bat foraging behavior. I took along a book by Charles Duff called Spanish for Beginners, which was a lifesaver, and was given a worn copy of the University of Chicago Spanish-English dictionary. The staff at Santa Rosa National Park were natives of Costa Rica, so I had plenty of practise speaking the language. Also, there was this revolution going on in Nicaragua, 40 km away and it wasn’t long before the park was populated by large numbers of Costa Rica’s Civil Guard, deployed there to protect the border. So I had even more people to talk to. By the end of the summer I was doing pretty well. In graduate school that fall I took an intensive introductory Spanish course and the following semester took a conversation and composition course (I still have my paper on which my professor wrote “Su estilo es elegante!”). So, I have a good foundation, but I’m not fluent and since my goal is to do voice-over in Spanish as well as English, I decided to go back to school.

The college in my town allows non-students to audit classes, when space is available, at no cost. This is an absolutely outstanding resource. Taking a college course years after graduation is something I would recommend to everyone. When you sit at home alone in front of a computer for much of the day, your perceptions can get a bit whacky. You get very dependent on the internet for information and it’s really good to get away from it, back to people and books and writing with a pencil on paper. Sitting in a room full of 19 and 20 year olds can be a pretty humbling experience too. They certainly know a lot!

So, along with my voice-over work and family responsibilities I’m reading stories in Spanish, studying grammar, and writing compositions once again. I also try to tune in to Telemundo for a half an hour each day to listen to Spanish commercials and programs, and I pay attention to the Spanish pop culture that is available to me – which, thanks to the internet, is abundant. I’ve got a song running through my head right now called Mala Leche by the Cuban band Moneda Dura – following the lyrics is definitely a challenge. I’ve even been thinking in Spanish. I am so grateful for the opportunity to do this, and hope to do it each semester for a long time to come.

I’m just the narrator, but I have opinions too. Good ones.

Last weekend I attended a screening of a documentary that I narrated. I’ve been working with the filmmaker for 2 years so I was looking forward to seeing the finished product. As it turned out, I was disappointed. The film was energetic; the narration was slow-paced and dramatic in places. It didn’t fit. I had done as I was directed, and of course I didn’t know at the time of recording what the film would be like.

In voice-over, we do as directed and try to stay out of the director’s way. But is that always the best way? In this case, I admit that from the beginning I didn’t care for the style that was being requested of me, but I did it and had no way of knowing just how poor a choice it would turn out to be. Now that it’s done and the filmmaker is trying to sell the film, I feel compelled to express my opinion and have indeed emailed him to mention, briefly, that I didn’t think the pace of the narration matched that of the movie. If he doesn’t like my opinion he can ignore it. If he agrees and I re-record, cool. Since my name is associated with the film of course I want it to be as successful as possible and because of this pace mismatch, I truly don’t think it will be as successful as it could be.

So yeah, I don’t think it’s always the best course to keep one’s opinions quiet. I’m not advocating questioning everything you’re directed to do, but neither should you stand by and watch a project go down in flames, especially if it might take you with it.