Sky's Portfolio

In China

2011-04-10T07:19:00.001-04:00

UPDATE - I tired of being an underemployed-temp-agency lackey, so I decided to move to China. I'm studying Chinese full time and teaching English on the side. Still open to other work.

2009-09-28T23:25:00.115-04:00

Writing
The Enterprise
The New Hampshire
Main Street Magazine
The Tattler
See samples

Media 2.0
Filming and editing
Premiere,Youtube
Social Media
Facebook, Twitter etc.

Resume
Partial employment history
List of skills
Academic history
Interests
See resume

Writing

2009-09-26T18:38:00.028-04:00

Experience and Clips

See resume for more

Social Media:

Blogging – 2001-Present

Twitter – 10/2008-Present

Internet forums – 2004-Present

Print Media:

The Enterprise newspaper – 6/2008-9/2008

Main Street Magazine, NH – 2006-2008

The New Hampshire – 2006-2008

Newswriting clips

Feature writing clips

Feature Writing

2009-09-19T17:39:00.088-04:00

Who is Matt Gillis? 2008: I profiled a 29-year-old college senior who's wife was about to deliver. He talked about his friend killing himself, surviving cancer, and what it felt like to hold his daughter for the first time. See more

THE END 2008: My final forlorn farewell to college and everything it meant to me. I write about a roommate leaving for Iraq, studying in London and the pointlessness of analyzing the analysis of other people's thoughts on thinking. See more

Who is Robert Morin? 2007: While writing a news article, spoke to the main "media cataloger" in my college's huge library. He turned out to be a millionaire who kept baloney sandwiches in his front pocket and hadn't missed a day of work since 1966. So I profiled him. See more

A War of Freedom 2006: After we invaded Iraq I began talking on an online political Islamic Forum. For years my opinion of the US's involvement in the Middle East shifted from one extreme to the other, until I visited Egypt. See more

An Atheist Goes to Bible Study 2005: Being devoutly nonreligious I decided to take advantage of an invitation to go to a weekly Bible study. Along with studying the Good Book I studied what turned out to be a great group of people. See more

Newswriting

2009-09-17T21:26:00.025-04:00

I've written newsprint for The Enterprise newspaper in Brockton, Massachusetts, and for The New Hampshire newspaper in Durham, New Hampshire. This is not a complete list.

ENTERPRISE NEWSPAPER, BROCKTON, MA

Saftler’s Fabrics in Whitman makes material gains in tough economy

WHITMAN - In 1919, Joseph Saftler started Saftler’s Fabrics, selling aprons and old wedding dresses from a push cart he wheeled around Abington, Rockland and Whitman...

Despite disability, Brockton man points troubled youths in the ‘right direction’

BROCKTON - Richard Brunson is blind. He lost his vision at age 13 as glaucoma slowly made his world shrink down to a pinprick of vision, then disappear.But his blindness doesn’t define him...

LIFE center a link to life for the disabled

BROCKTON - It’s easier than you think to become confined to your home...
Vandals, drug users disturb skateboard parks
WHITMAN - Steve Prisco, 19, of Stoughton, says the police have threatened...
New Brockton Fair ride is a thrill — for some
BROCKTON — Imagine this: The noise of the Brockton Fair blares around you...
Phelps’ impact felt at area swimming pools
BROCKTON —The recent Olympic successes of Michael Phelps has put swimming...
Everyone has an opinion about the Manny Ramirez trade; what's yours?
BROCKTON — So, Manny Ramirez is gone and the page turns...
Long lines form for cheap gas in Whitman
WHITMAN —When gas station owner George Yazbek lowered his prices to $3.77...
Brockton Fair draws light crowd on first night
BROCKTON —There were the usual characters: quirky game booth workers...
Easton high school graduate focuses film on final exam
EASTON — Recent Oliver Ames High School graduate Katelyn Alves’s...

THE NEW HAMPSHIRE, DURHAM, NH
2005-2008

"Film Underground" free showings possibly uprooted
DURHAM — Student organization Film Underground's goal had always been to bring free movies to everyone on campus, but they expected it to be in a different...
New management to re-open Tin Palace
DURHAM — As spring blooms, bar and restaurant Murphy's Tin Palace is sorely missed...
Tired of counting sheep? Doc helps UNH students get their much-needed sleep
DURHAM — Every animal does it. Your roomate seems set on making sure it never happens...
Skateboarding at the MUB may be rolling away
DURHAM — Skateboarders in front of the MUB may soon be just a memory...

NOT A COMPLETE LIST

2006 - A War of Freedom - published in Main Street Magazine

2008-10-27T18:00:00.005-04:00

Sitting for the fourth hour in a row, trying to force out the last four pages of an essay that’s getting worse with every word I add—I crack. I need a break. Just one five-minute break—maybe ten—but that’s it. Once the
browser opens and I log into the Islamic Forum I know I’m done for. It’s going to be a few hours before I get back to work.

I guess the Islamic Forum is my Facebook. Others might be checking out who is dating who, or browsing pictures of people boozing. Instead, I read about how the American "empire" is falling and why drinking a Coke will send you to hell.

You may ask how I got here. How did I become the boy at the end of the computer cluster clicking through an Internet forum seething with anti-Americanism? Good question.

I made my account on the Islamic Forum in March of 2004, my senior year in high school. Americans were being killed in Iraq, bullets were flying, blood was spilling, and the word “Islamic" seemed to follow everything bad that happened on the news. I don’t know why I expected to find Islamic extremists speaking openly, on the Internet, in English, but I decided I wanted to contact them and ask them what the hell they were doing.

Eventually I found the Islamic Forum (IF), an Internet message board located at www.gawaher.com. It was created by an Egyptian man who welcomes everyone "regardless of their faith system" and says his “...dream is for the West and Muslims to understand and respect each other, as brothers and sisters in humanity, for a better world." Despite his goal for unity, the rift between Muslim and non-Muslim members is obvious.

Most of the Muslims on the IF had a different opinion on who "the good guys" and “the bad guys" were. An insurgent could also be a freedom fighter, a liberator could be called an invader, and a secular invasion could be a Christian Crusade, depending on who you talked to.

Not everyone on the Islamic Forum agreed on the same conspiracy theories. Not everyone demonized America, and there were many members of diverse backgrounds.

Much of the time, the discussions repeated themselves. “America is the great Satan" versus "no, it’s not," or "the planes that hit the Twin Towers were remote controlled missiles,” versus “that’s absolutely ridiculous."

With all this polarization I began talking with someone I disagreed with entirely, Omar. He flooded my private message account with anti—West sentiment and blessed the people I condemned. He was so sure that what
he believed was true. The gray crept into my vision until it was all I could see. Where once it had been plain and simple, the true politics revealed themselves as a complex machinery of religious fundamentalism and democratic ideals.

Omar says that he lives in Karachi, the capitol city of Pakistan, is 24 years old, and says that his mother considers him the laziest person alive. Now, as the news networks put it—this can’t be "independently verified." The only way I know he’s real is through two years of online correspondence and a low quality JPEG file showing a tan-skinned twenty-something with a close-cropped beard and a black T-shirt reading, in English, “Bring Islam Back."

Omar and other members of the IF believed in the craziest conspiracy theories. Each theory went through the forum like a passing fad. Some members cited sources proving without a doubt that Israel orchestrated 9/ 11 or that the "terrorists" who flew the planes were merely very dedicated CIA agents.

These members swore by these theories and a week later dropped them to choose others. I got tired of it all, knowing what would be said: The West is the source of all the world’s problems and Islam is the only
solution.

After reading so many strange ideas, my opinions were changing. There was so much of this stuff—not just what Omar said, but throughout the forum—so much hostility towards “the West." When there is a movement this large, all expressing hatred for America, there needs to be some source. I had some ideas, but they didn’t come full circle until my trip to Egypt over the summer.

I was in Egypt on a fifteen-day guided tour. The tour company did their best to hide the poverty around us. For most of the tour we traveled down the Nile in a cruise ship. Every day, at a new port, we were loaded into a large air-conditioned bus, driven to an ancient temple, and then brought back to the ship where we were served hot tea and given a warm wet cloth to wipe off the sweat of our efforts.

Bus bound, rolling through the streets of Egypt, I never saw a neighborhood like the suburbia I know. There was no smooth pavement running between evenly spaced houses. New cars never parked two in a row.

It looked like what I would call urban rot: buildings collapsing and not being rebuilt. Maybe it isn’t worth it to fix things because it costs too much, or maybe no one has the money in the first place.

It is hard to describe the scale of everything that I saw. Going down the Nile, during late afternoon, I talked to the ship’s manager on the top deck. He was a large, dark-skinned man who was always smoking cigarettes and spoke English slowly, searching for words.

I told him I didn’t understand it—why people would want to live this way, in this garbage and broken buildings. Why don’t they get the government to fix the streets, instead of donating all their money to the mosques?

"Why do you think the money goes to them?" he gestured toward a passing mosque. “They are the only people Egyptians can trust."

“Don’t we give your country a lot of money to help out?" I asked.

“How much of that do you think gets to the people? Maybe ninety percent goes to the government. Ten percent makes it down here."

I decided to make small talk, bringing up a news story I’d read in an Egyptian-English newspaper.

"You won't believe this. I read it yesterday. Did you hear they want to pass a law so the press can’t question the financial integrity of politicians?"

He blew out some cigarette smoke and flicked his cigarette. “We already have that law."

* * * *

The next day a police officer boarded the boat, met me on the top deck and tried to sell me hashish.

"Is it legal?" I asked the only crew member who had brought the officer on board. "No. Seven years in jail... so do you want some?"

Our tour guide told us that the police could hold an Egyptian for four days if they didn’t have their identification on them. In Egypt, he said, you are guilty until proven innocent. A retired Canadian tourist that had been to the Middle East before told me: "if the cops try to arrest you just slip them fifty pounds and they’ll let you go."

After I came home and settled into the comfortable lanes of Suburbia I asked Omar how life was in Pakistan.

He responded:
Life in Pakistan sucks most of the time, no implementation of islam results
in pathetic state where everyone is confuse, system sucks, education is bad,
law and order sucks, judiciary system is a complete failure, govt officials
and police are super class corrupt people, Amry is ruling this country,
and above all, Our President is a yes man for America, in a country where
89% of People denounce American policies. Anything more to know about
Pakistan?

After the Islamic forum, Egypt and everything Omar told me I finally got it: much of the unrest in the Middle East is a war of self-determination. People desire to live under their own rule, with the laws they want, under a government that lets them prosper, Instead of this, America is propping up corrupt governments with money and military aid while quietly pushing for democratic reform. There is no reform, and the money only feeds into the government’s corruption.

Muslims see this, while many Americans don’t.

In school we are taught that government should represent those who live under its laws. Is this happening in the Middle East? Also, we are taught about the natural human struggle for self-determination—the will inside
each and every human being to raise the quality of their life and live how they want. In America there seems to be a perception that terrorists, or insurgents, or whatever you call them, aren’t human beings—as if they are made to fill a role and there is no motivation for them to want to attack America. We don’t realize that people can put down the gun as quickly as they pick it up. Just as a soldier can come back from Iraq and regret
he joined the army, there can be dissent within the ranks of terrorists.

And Omar is someone just like me, on the other side of the world, pissed off at the status quo and rambling on the Internet about it. We are both part of two different cultures, but in each culture there are many people who are willing to kill, and to die, for their principles and what they perceive as "right."

So now, when I watch T.V. and hear the word "Islamic" spoken over images of burning AMerican flags and masked men chanting, I understand what's behind it: People just like us, fighting for what they believe in.

The design idea was mine and the graphic work was done by the ever talented Nathan Raymond.

Who is Robert Morin? - 2007

2008-10-27T14:18:00.012-04:00

Who is Robert Morin?
He is a 69-year-old, standard, professor figure: disheveled, with thick-black-framed glasses and pipe nestled in the small stretch of bare gums beside his teeth. He walks with a pronounced limp and a hunched back. The top of his head is bald, but the sides drip long, wet-looking hair that licks the collar of his aged undershirt. Over the undershirt, a vest, and over the vest, a sports coat, which is just a little too big, making him look smaller than his 5 feet 3 inches. Add some tears, holes, and frays to his clothes. That’s Robert Morin.

But, maybe Robert Morin is better defined by his work as a Dimond Library media cataloger.

Morin sits in his office during the day entering information about new media that enters the Dimond Library. He is the man who writes the short descriptions of DVDs, enters the ISBN numbers of CDs, and catalogs book after book of sheet music.

Maybe he is defined by the single incredible fact that he hasn’t taken a sick day since 1966.

Morin began pulling 12-hour days cataloging for Dimond Library in 1965. After a few months the overtime pissed off his appendix and it had to be sliced out. The wound healed, and he hasn’t missed a day since.

* * * *

Twenty-one-thousand movies, 2,000 1930s-era books, and $1 million dollars will be important later on, but right now what matters is the water seeping into my sneakers. It’s 7:25 in the morning. Headlights are still on as cars park behind New Hampshire Hall. Professors eye me, wondering why a student is standing in the middle of the lot, in the drizzle. I’m waiting for Morin.

He arrives, steps from his 1997 Plymouth Neon, approaches And begins telling me about a police chief who was framed for murder.Yesterday Morin was reading a typical mystery novel from the 1930s.Tomorrow Morin will have another book to tell me about.He has been reading 1930s books in chronological order for the past decade.

Why? "Because 1 like the l930s." He estimates lie’s gone through about 2,000 books. Currently he’s in
year 1936.

With his inflection, his tone, and his serious description of the book’s
characters, while he puffs his pipe, I forget to ask Morin to describe his life, I forget the interview and begin wondering, who killed the damn dame?

* * * *

Morin’s desk is V-shaped within a large cubicle. A lamp hangs from a shelf above a new computer, a three-ring binder lays open and in a chair sits Morin smiling his smoker-brown teeth.

Beside his computer is a DVD: "Facing the Challenge: working with children who use challenging behavior?." And across from him, on a shelf, sit about 100 other DVDs. He’ll need to enter their descriptions into the Library’s database one by one, including every little bit of information
someone can search for to find their movie.

"How many media entries have you put in since you began working," I ask.

"Since 1965? Thousands," Morin says.

I tell him that he must get distracted with all the movies he could watch instead of work, but he says it isn’t a problem. He says that he’s tired of movies. He has already seen 21,000 (he counted).

When VHS tapes hit the market in 1980, Morin "decided to see what was going on in film," because he hadn’t been to a theater since 1968. So, over the next 17 years, Morin watched about three movies a day and didn’t stop until "it got to the point where all I hadn’t seen was made for TV movies."

* * * *

Morin tried drinking once, didn’t like it, and hasn’t since. He hasnnever been into a bar or a Chinese restaurant. He tried cooking, but that didn’t work out either, so he makes sandwiches which he keeps in his sports coat pocket until lunch time. He microwaves TV dinners at home.

"I like a nice smooth life—machines don’t work all the time," he tells me when I ask if could use a tape recorder. He also doesn’t like cameras. Morin has only taken two pictures in his life, and he doesn’t want to be photographed for this article.

* * * *

Despite his strange numbers, Morin has social skills. He’l1 run up, shake your hand, ask your name, and joke about your family heritage. An odd comment and you’re reeling with laughter—then he is gone, off alone, doing what he likes the most, being quiet and comfortably isolated.

Raised in Nashua, New Hampshire, his father believed that owning a house cost more than renting an apartment, so every time the Morins moved he had to make new friends. But Morin isn’t like that anymore.

"Sure I get along with people," Morin says smiling. Then in a calm voice—entirely serious—unlike when he’s usually laughing as hard as the other people around him, he says, "Aristotle found that one of the goods was friendship. He found friendship to be very important. I don’t."

"I’m the black sheep of the family, I guess. I never got married. I was
so different from the rest of my family. For me marriage is more of an inconvenience. It’s just not worth my while to compromise. She wants the window up, I want the window down... to settle differences and so forth."

* * * *

Here is another number: the million. Morin has limited his life—cutting it down to the bare minimum. Eating little, buying little, and all the while paying into his retirement fund since 1965. Plus his life insurance, long term care plan, investments in two banks, and the value of his house: Robert Morin is a millionaire.

He tells me that before his mother died she was the beneficiary. I ask him where the money will go now.

“It’s a secret," he says, smiling.

"I like reality for itself That”s why I enjoy real life and don’t imagine hitting a home run in Fenway Park or bedding-down Meryl Streep. People who live in Never-Never land have a dreadful problem when a real problem comes up. If, for example, you have a family and you have a
little boy get run over by a car, that’s a slap in the face. But I don’t have a problem with that, because I have no family," says Morin.

So Morin disconnects, he chops the ties. He is a man that has laid his own ground work. He mixed the mortar and set the bricks. He designed the floor plans and chose the roof. And the window is open or closed whenever he hell he wants. But he is also here in this world, he is in this reality. There is no delusion when it comes to Morin. The world is what it is, and he is what he is:

Robert Morin is Robert Morin

An Atheist Goes to Bible Study - 2005

2008-10-27T13:51:00.008-04:00

Faith was never my strong point, so when I fell in with some Bible thumping gals I decided to tag along to Bible study. I had no intention of writing about it, but the experience struck me as worth sharing.

An Atheist Goes to Bible Study

“When you were growing up your mother and I decided to let you choose your own religion,” my father says with a stressed voice and a fake smile, “we didn’t expect you not to choose one!”

I’m not sure what my parents expected. I was raised into it. Logic won out, and I became an atheist.

My Sunday school was “The Waltham Philosophy School.” It was a weekly hour drive to ponder perception and the complete works of Aristotle. In one room the children were being read stories of “just wars” fought in the age of antiquity. In the next room the adults were debating whether the Self can perceive its own existence (nope).

While I was learning the merits of meditation, other children were learning stories of an ark that must have carried millions of different beetles. While I learned the importance of maintaining a still mind, other children learned the importance of not masturbating. In my house we had a Bible on the shelf, but it was dusty, and hidden behind a large bust of Socrates.

For me there is no magical world beyond this one. Prophecies predicting impossibilities don’t hold water, on which God’s baby boy never walked. There was no self-immolating bush, or fantastic alcoholic water. A man cannot part a sea, and the dead never come back to life unless it involves electric-shock paddles and a quick response.

Because I have always rejected the idea of a God, religion seems like a ridiculous waste of time. Despite my Christian surroundings I give the Bible as much respect as Stephen King’s less inspired works. Recently I found a Bible in a friend’s dorm room:

“Why do you have this?” I said, “Are you religious?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because…” I tried to begin a debate, but it wouldn’t take. I asked for evidence, she pointed to the book. I asked for logic, she pointed to the book. I asked her about the contradictions, and to tell me how the rules even made sense. I asked her how anyone in this day and age could ever hold a book that was poorly translated, outdated, with impossible stories, as something to base their life on. She said I should go to Bible study and find out.

So I went.

* * * *

Bible study was held in a furnished attic. Three floors up, people sat on clean carpet, a blue futon or on a khaki colored leather two-seater. There was a television with a DVD player. The windows beside the television were curved with an angled frame to fit below the sloping roof.

“Okay now, choose two or three people to read this passage with. Take notes, then we’ll discuss it as a group.”

After we had read the passage, we went in a circle, each person saying what the passage meant to them.

“Glorious”

“Beautiful.”

“I feel so inspired—it really show me that Jesus will always be there for me.”

Then came my turn: “It doesn’t make sense.” There were no sidelong glances or hostile sighs. They tried to explain it to me it still didn’t make sense.

Eventually I stopped arguing and started observing. It felt like everyone in the room had a polite confidence in themselves. Each word was dipped with calm. They didn’t interrupt each other or disagree. The Bible was their guide, and truth was inherent. They spoke, and sat, and breathed in a flow of what they thought life was meant to be. I decided attend next week.

One week later I was sitting on the edge of the blue futon closest to the television. Pens and paper were handed out. We were going to watch a video, take notes, and then discuss it. The video began playing—on screen was a man in a suit with close-cropped hair and an organized beard. He had a strong composure and a powerful voice with which he howled into a wireless headset.

“Praise the Lord!” The preacher would say mid-sentence. Praise the Lord, the audience followed him in slow echo.

The preachers described a man he knew who had been infected with powerful demons. The demons would turn on lights. The demons would start cars. Jesus Christs cured the man of these demons. Jesus Christ guided the man to the truth. And, to this very day, the man is walking the path of righteousness.

The audience was sitting in a large carpeted amphitheater, all the seats full. The audience looked to be mostly older housewives, with an occasional man wearing a formal sweater. Hairspray held the womens' hair in twisted, impossible directions.

The camera flashed to a red haired woman with a beehive hairdo. She pushed a large pearl necklace away and continued writing in a small notebook.

“Praise Jesus,” the preacher's face was turning red, his forehead sweaty. His confident composure grew into something pseudo-manic, like a steroid user on PCP. Another slow echo.

The preacher went through each sentence of a Bible passage and explained his interpretation of each word. Definition after definition seemed slightly skewed. The preacher was twisting the words to create a wild interpretation that was purely his own.

The red-haired woman on screen again, furiously scribbling the preacher’s words. Another slow echo.

I waited for others to giggle at the video so I could begin laughing. I looked around the room. Almost everyone was taking notes.

I felt sick. I was scared. I had to leave.

“Later, guys,” I said.

“Bye, Sky,” the Bible study echoed.

* * * *

The next, and last, Bible study I attended was “to be between you and the Lord,” which meant candlelight and a laptop quietly playing Christian soft rock. We were encouraged to copy Bible verses onto construction paper or write our own words of worship.

Some were reading the Bible, others copying it. Many were writing their own words of worship, while one boy was looking into the flame of a candle he held between his sneakered feet. Above where I was sitting hung a pink piece of construction paper. “Praise the Lord for the life he has planned for you,” it read.

I thought about what a boy had said during the first Bible study. He explained that between Bible Study on Tuesday and Church on Sunday there was a long stretch of time. During this time he began to “forget what the whole point of this is.”

“Why am I going to school?” he said. “I mean… what’s the real meaning? Then I come to study and God shows me the way and I know where I’m going. I thank God for the strength to go on.”

Walking back to my dorm that final night I considered the idea there was a benevolent God who had designed my life. A dull peace came over me as I flirted with the belief that my life had a plan.

Life is a struggle, a fight towards a goal we only think exists because we exist. In Bible study I would forget that pressure. Believing your life has a plan is the most powerful drug.

I was calm as I stepped off the curb and into the street. Suddenly, brakes squeeled, a horn honked, I jumped back and the driver flipped me off.

Reality asserted itself.

The End

2008-01-02T21:36:00.001-05:00

I'm paging throughFacebook and I see this girl.

"Wow," I think."Wow. She's attractive."

I get this sort offeeling like I'm looking at someone special, someone I'd really like to talkto, date, hug, have quiet moments with and then I see the number 2011. Shegraduates in 2011, she is a freshmen. I can't date her. No quiet moments ordrunken flirtations. I'm not going to be that creep. She's a freshmen. Offlimits.

And I wonder: how did Ibecome a senior? How did I become a 22-year-old man sitting at the end ofcollege life? Where did the time go? When did it pass? Was I not looking?Aren't you supposed to notice things like this?

Really. What the fuck?

And I look back at thegirl's picture. Cute smile. Born 1990, she's 18.

"Well..." I sayto myself, "legally..."

* * * *

I get the e-mails. I getthe e-mails from the teachers. The e-mails about RAC numbers and what coursesare offered to who and when. Those mass e-mails arrive every few days. Theyused to be so important, life changing, life deciding--getting the course I wantto make the life I want!--but now they don't apply to me.

At one time course signup was a map to my future, now it's just a website with forms and numbers andcourse descriptions displayed in pixels on a computer screen. There is nothingsolid about it.

I felt this way oncebefore, during Sophomore year--felt like college was a fake. Like school wasimmaterial, like classes were nothing but ideas. No substance, just hours oftime analyzing arguments about other people's way of thinking about thoughts.

Maybe I felt that waybecause I was majoring in English, maybe it was the casual disillusion ofyouth. Anyway, I almost dropped out.

I mentioned it to myparents, to my guidance counselor, to my roommate Pat. Pat told me it was a badidea, that in today's world we need a college education, that knowledge was thekey to my future.

And then he was gone.

"I think I'mdropping out," he said one morning.

His eyes were bloodshotand he was slouched in his chair in front of a computer, working on a finalpaper that was already late.

"I'm droppingout," he said again.

Pat left UNH in themiddle of sophomore year. He was an army type of guy, into army type things. Heknew the names of guns and fighting formations. He was a member of ROTC. Heleft UNH and went to Iraq.

After winter break, whenI came back to the dorm, I thought Pat was still living in my room. I mean, Iknew he was gone--he told me. But my body thought he was still there.

I would slam open thedoor trying to scare Pat. But there was no Pat. I would get bored and head upto my dorm room, hang out with Pat. But there was no Pat.

So my body slowly forgot,or I consistently remembered, or just realized: Pat's not at UNH anymore--myroom is empty. The door will stay locked when I'm not there. For the rest ofthe year I will never come back to something I don't expect.

What's the fun in that?

* * * *

Junior year I worked hardand got good grades. I changed my major to journalism and a respectable teachertold me analyzing symbolism was bullshit. It was a good year.

* * * *

First semester of senioryear I studied abroad. It was probably the worst thing I could have done. Theexperience was incredible, eye opening. It gave me perspective.

I lived in London andtraveled Europe during the weekends. I rode the tired flights to confusingcountries. I made new friends and slept in strange hostel beds.

There was a girl in Rome,hallucinations in Amsterdam and a homeless midnight in Krakow, Poland.

Coming back to UNH I seethat if there is meaning in life, it's in the moments of intensity and not thehumdrum rhythm of essays and parties that define the college experience.

I wish there was more tosay, but there isn't. I came to UNH four years ago and now it's over.

THE END

Who is Matt Gillis?

2008-01-01T13:00:00.002-05:00

Feature article published in 2008 in Main Street Magazine. Scanned article available below.

There are several ways I could do this.
I could tell the truth: Matt Gillis is a 29-year-old University of New Hampshire student.
I could lie: He is an angry man, not friendly at all. His life is stagnant, his future bleak.
I could write a corny college magazine article: Not only is Matt Gillis a non-traditional student, he's a non-traditional person!

Or I could just summarize: In 1978 Matthew Gillis was born in Lowell. He grew up in Hampton Beach. When Matt was 16, his best friend killed himself. Matt followed that by a slow crawl through High School and years of drinking. Burning out and getting sick of "doing the same thing again and again" he decided to go back to school: Northern Essex Community College. Then he got cancer around the time he started medicine for bipolar disorder. Somewhere in there he met his girlfriend, Emma, and took on the responsibility of a father by helping her raise (just about from birth) her son, 7-year-old Mika.

Cancer free, about to graduate college, and a day away from fatherhood Matt Gillis sits in the MUB kitchenette sucking coffee from a plastic fake coconut cup through a neon—yellow twisty straw.
"Do you have anything to add?” I ask.
"I"m having a baby man. I don't know what else there is to say. I'm having a baby. A baby girl. Tomorrow."

* * * *

Do you know those people who seem to have it all together? Not necessarily getting the best grades, or doing everything in life right, but they smile wide, and laugh loud and who-could-want-more? Matt is one of those people.

He has a voice like a book on tape. When he reads poetry in class it booms through the room and he usually hit’s the rhythm right. If he stumbles on the words, stutters, reads a word that isn’t there—things that usually make someone get nervous and embarrassed—he corrects himself and continues on with full confidence.

That's the way Matt acts. But he sort of sits down and leans forward and tells me he has 20 minutes to talk and says: "I try to be care free, but I have a lot of stress and anxiety."
So Matt does smile, more often then not, but at times he is overwhelmed, just like us all.

* * * *

Hampton beach is insane, then dead. Insane, then dead. During the summer season the boardwalk stores open up, tourists hit the beach, there is work for the locals, and then, when those three glorious summer months are gone: it's dead.

"It's like Mardi Gras for three months of the year, and for the rest of the time there's nothing. It's like a big culture shock—it messes with people. I know everyone I went to school with is absolutely insane."

As the insanity raged around him, Matt thinks he satisfied the requirements of a normal childhood: "I had the normal things happen. I had an appendix out, I broke a couple arms."

At 16 something bad happened. At 16, Matt's 15-year-old best friend killed himself. "Everything seemed fine, and then he was gone." Two days before the suicide there had been a party at Mat's best friend's house. Matt played the guitar, his friend the drums. He had seemed happy enough. "It'll do it to you when someone you’re really close to kills themselves," Matt says, bleak for a
moment. "I dove head first into drinking."

The drinking part is shady—Matt doesn't want to talk. He murmurs sometimes, saying the years were a waste. Matt dragged his feet through high school: "I started drinking a lot, I guess. I was getting in trouble. I took a while to graduate, finally I did."

A main point Matt kept going back to was that he is sober now. He no longer drinks. He is sober, he wants us to know that. He wants everyone to know that. "Looking back I wish I never even started drinking," Matt says. “It causes problems."

* * * *

There is that question for every non-traditional student: "Your not our age, why are you here?" And there are many different answers. Sometimes it's the single mother trying to start anew, with a kid in high school and a full-time job on the side. Sometimes its the middle-aged man, willing to sacrifice some time for a few college credits, because he thinks the knowledge is as valuable as the diploma. For Matt, the answer seems to be Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. "Cancer,"' Matt says, "was my wake up call."

In 2000 Matt was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Statistically, it you have Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and receive proper and timely treatment, you'll probably survive, but being told that within the next year there is a chance you will die, and the only way to stay alive is by being run through the stringer of radiation and chemicals known as cancer treatment—that’s a life event. "It really changed my outlook on life. I was faced with my own mortality. The idea that I may or may not survive this disease."

With the determination that comes when one realizes that it's possible to die no matter how unfair and meaningless it seems, Matt made it to UNH in 2004. Some of the credits from Northern Essex Community College transferred. He‘s an English major now.

* * * *

Matt hides the coconut cup in the MUB Kitchenette, he also hides a baggie of ground coffee. When he has a moment, he make's himself a cup. He tells me that he is going to a meeting with a teacher, jokes that he's bringing the coconut, actually does bring the coconut, and, when he is done the meeting, asks me if want to walk to Stoke with him. The meeting he had was to decide if he is ready to graduate. He has all the credits he needs, he just needs to drop off his intent to graduate form.

His confident steps carry him over the sludge puddles outside of Stoke Hall and into the registrar's office. He goes to the desk and hands them the intent to graduate form. There are all the proper signatures, everything is in order.

“Thanks," he says and steps back from the counter and into a new life epoch. Baring an obscene tragedy, Matt Gillis is soon to be a college graduate.

* * * *

“Talk about a defining moment in my life," Matt says as he describes holding his daughter in his arms for the first time, “It puts it all in perspective." So the Hampton Beach childhood is in perspective. His best friends death in perspective, the cancer, now college, all in perspective.
"When I was 16 I didn't see much of a future. I thought I'd be partying and living it up. But things change."

Filming and editing

2007-09-08T21:40:00.038-04:00

ENTERPRISE NEWSPAPER - 2008

Hire me

2006-07-03T16:15:00.005-04:00

I'm looking for work in the greater Boston area doing a job that utilizes any of my skills.

Please contact me by e-mail if you think you might have a job for me or if you simply want more information.

skytgidge@gmail.com

My resume and portfolio can be viewed through the main page.