Uncovering Denver’s Lost Chinatown
Keeping Jazz Alive: One Drum Teacher’s Impact on the Community
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Every morning from Monday to Thursday, drum instructor Chad Hodges wakes up around 9 a.m. and prepares for a day of teaching his students. But before he arrives at his studio in the Littleton Music Go Round, first, he stops at Goodwill.“I have a lot of students that like cute little things, and I’ll get them a little stuffed animal or something like that. Goodwill is part of my daily routine,” Hodges says with a smile on his face.
None of these students are demanding stuffed animals from Chad—far from it. He believes in going the extra mile to create a real connection and strengthen it in any way he can.
Chad Hodges with one of his current students, teaching them to play some of their favorite songs
The Great Equalizer
Chad Hodges, 61, has been drumming since he was five years old.
“I remember being in kindergarten and going over to my friend’s house, and he had a little snare drum and it was sparkling blue. I remember seeing that, and I’ll never forget that day. I thought that was the neatest thing I’d ever seen in my life,” Hodges recalls, “I knew right then and there I want to play drums. That was it.”
So, from that point onward, drums became Hodges’ identity. While the other boys went on to play sports, Hodges used his drumming to stand out.
“I think of drums as the great equalizer. When all the other boys [in] school were growing and getting bigger and doing athletics and everything else, I didn’t grow much. So I kind of was looking for something that would even the playing field, and drums certainly was it for me”.
A Life of Drumming
Hodges’ passion for drumming carried him all the way through college, attending the Berklee School of Music and discovering his affinity for jazz. After school, Hodges toured with a few bands before a major life change put an end to that lifestyle.
“I don’t play live much anymore, cause I had a family, and it’s not terribly conducive to be married and have a family and be coming in at 3:30 and 4 o’clock in the evening.”
While he was done being a performer, Hodges still had so much to give through his drumming, and decided that teaching could serve as a good way to make money and a positive outlet for his talent. Unbeknownst to him, teaching would become a passion to him even stronger than performing had been.
As he began teaching the next generation of drummers, Hodges noticed that they weren’t very interested in learning jazz—or more likely, hadn’t been exposed to it yet. While he was happy to teach kids how to play rock and roll or pop music, Hodges would introduce them to jazz, and according to him, he could usually pique their interest.
“[New students] come in here, and they tell me that they want to play Metallica or something like that. And I say, ‘Good, we can do that. Let me show you a little something, though,’ and I’ll play a little [jazz] for five or ten minutes. That’s when they light up and go, ‘Well, I want to be able to do that.’”
Short End of the Stick
Jazz music and the big band style of playing certainly are not as culturally relevant in the 21st century as they once were. All across the country, the jazz scene has faced budget cuts at different levels, largely affecting school programs. Hodges feels this is a disservice to the youth, taking away a potential creative outlet or possible life path.
“It feels to me that music is getting the short end of the stick, again, like it always has. It gets it in public schools—it’s always the thing that they cut. They don’t cut the other programs, but they cut the music. And I don’t understand why.”
The recent announcement of the cancellation of the Five Points Jazz Festival is further proof that jazz music is not viewed as culturally significant enough to gather the proper funding. While some consider the genre “dead,” Hodges has a different view.
Looking Toward Jazz’s Future
“I think jazz will always have a huge place. I have seen it go through its ups and downs, its waxing and waning. It may feel like it’s waning right now, but I think that’s just a matter of time,” Hodges explains.
Although jazz is often viewed as a genre that has had its heyday, Hodges believes in a strong future, and he is playing a part in cultivating that reality. As he continues to teach and create connections with his students, he realizes that it’s about more than just the music.
One of his students, 11-year-old J.J. Ochoa, is among the many who have formed a close bond with Hodges. J.J. started playing drums at the age of five, and for a couple of years, he and his parents sought out various teachers. However, his talent truly skyrocketed when he connected with Hodges.
Hodges has assisted in finding J.J. opportunities to perform outside of school, something that has been and continues to be a concern for his parents, Jenaé and José.
“I think the biggest challenge that we’ve had is finding somewhere where he can really perform,” says Jenaé, “I think that’s been the biggest challenge, we need somewhere where these kids can go and show their talent”.
Beyond the student-teacher dynamic, J.J. sees Hodges as a friend and a trusted confidant, Jenny and José even described him as an extension of the family.
“Mr. Chad is definitely not strict, he’s loving, he understands. That kind of motivates me”.
Transitioning from touring the country as an aspiring performer to teaching 70 students a week is a career shift that many wouldn’t dare to make, but for Hodges, it has been incredibly fulfilling and has given him a new purpose in life.
“It has changed my priorities; it has changed my whole life,” says Hodges. “It’s not about drums. Drums were just the medium to get us together.” : Writing and Reporting
Negative Side Effects of Marijuana
Smoke from Canadian wildfires envelops Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
For the class “Storytelling and Reporting”, this article covers the 2023 Canadian wildfires and the effect that the smog that was produced had on Milwaukeeans.
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Earlier this week, Milwaukee’s air quality was among the worst in the world. This was due to the smoky haze clouding the city as a result of the Canadian wildfires that has affected much of the east coast, and is now making its way to the midwest.For around a month now wildfires have been breaking out across Canada and the resulting smoke has made the air quality very poor in a number of places across the U.S.. New York and a number of surrounding states have gotten the brunt of it, but over the past few days that has shifted to the midwest and Great Lakes region.
Generally, Milwaukee averages an AQI (Air Quality Index) rating of “good” done by the American Lung Association, but in the past week that rating has gone past “moderate” and all the way to “unhealthy”. For reference, a “good” AQI rating is considered to be in the range of 0-50, a “moderate” rating would be between 50-100, and anything over that is considered “unhealthy”. Wednesday saw the highest AQI recorded with a level of over 200, the worst the air quality Milwaukee has seen since 1999.
This haze has mainly enveloped the downtown area, especially the areas near Lake Michigan. Milwaukee has a population of over 550,000 people, many of whom walk to their jobs and have undoubtedly been affected by the low air quality.
“My walk to work is only around 10 minutes and I still find myself coughing uncontrollably”, said Emma Stenzel, a Milwaukeean who walks through the heart of downtown for her commute to work.
Stenzel isn’t alone in this, as many people who either walk to their jobs or are working outside for a long period of time have expressed similar complaints. I briefly talked with a man named John, a horticulturist for the Shorewood Department of Public Works about his experience with working outside. He expressed his frustrations with the conditions, saying “[…]most of my coworkers aren’t able to do their jobs to the best of their ability, wearing a mask is advised as the best way to protect yourself against the air but I haven’t been able to tell a difference”.
Wearing a mask isn’t the only parallel to the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen, as many parents have been reluctant to let their children go outside as well. The nearby summer day camp, “Rainbow Day Camp” just north of Milwaukee has had many parents express concerns about having outside activities, and a couple of counselors I talked to shared these concerns.
“The kids safety is our main priority”, says counselor Louis Lodhua, “I have asthma and know that a number of the kids do too, so our recent move to doing more inside activities is probably the best thing for everyone’s safety”. According to the counselors, parents of children with asthma have been the most vocal about their concerns of continuing outside activity.
Hopper Planey, another counselor, expressed similar concerns. “We still have the option to do our outside activities, but me and lots of other counselors have requested to stay inside for our whole shifts. It doesn’t feel safe to be outside for more than a couple minutes”.
There are a few precautions we can take to ensure that we are being responsible and smart about our health during the haze. Mark Werner, the director of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services Bureau of Environmental and Occupational Health recommends the following:
– Close all windows in your home
– Limit your time outside, wear an N95 mask if you have to go outside
– Avoid highly congested areas such as busy streets or highways
– Avoid burning objects, indoors or outdoors
These are just some of the precautions you could take to be as smart as possible about your health during such an unusual yet dangerous event.
Conditions in Milwaukee are slowly improving, but the AQI remains at “moderate” for the time being. Hopefully sooner rather than later, the haze will lift and we can fully enjoy a safe and sunny summer.: Writing and Reporting
Paula K. Wheeler: A Career Profile of a Freelance Writer
Another “Storytelling and Reporting” assignment, the job here was to write a career profile of someone in our lives who does something that we may want to do one day. Luckily for me, that person is my mom, Paula K. Wheeler.
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After many years of hard and effortful work, Paula Wheeler is at a place in her career where she can be her own boss. While working mostly from home and being able to create her own hours sounds like a somewhat east position to be in due to the flexibility, Wheeler is constantly working and won’t stop until her project is perfect.Paula K. Wheeler is a freelance writer with a focus on marketing communication. Before we dive deeper into Mrs. Wheeler’s career specifically, let’s talk about what it means to be a freelance writer. The biggest part of being “freelance” is that you don’t have a boss, or at least a consistent boss. You have the ability to pick and choose what you want to work on, as long as the opportunities are presented for you. For example, if I was a freelance painter and someone asked me to paint something for them that I did not want to paint, I could decline the offer because I don’t already work for them.
Now let’s talk about what “marketing communication” is. Gartner.com defines marketing communication (or “marcom”, as it is commonly referred to) as “the messages and media that marketers use to communicate with target markets”(Gartner). I think this is a pretty good definition, and Mrs. Wheeler agrees that this definition fits what she does. Now that we have a shared general understanding of what this job is, let’s talk more about the woman herself.
Wheeler told me that she has been working in this field for over 30 years. She graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelors of Science in Journalism and a Masters of Science in Journalism. According to her, she gained valuable experience doing various internships and said that working with others in a professional environment helped her to realize that this was a career path that interested her.
Her first job out of college was at a PR agency, a job that she said “had a very fun atmosphere. Everyone respected each other no matter the level of experience, and even though there were people I had to call “boss”, they never made me feel like I was under them or they were above me”. During this time, Wheeler was mainly doing some editing, but when she got offered to do some marcom, she began to really love and develop her skills for that.
Wheeler left that job and decided to become a freelance writer after her boss left. As mentioned above, the relationship she had with her boss helped make the work environment fun and not stressful, so when that began to change she decided to go on her own and hasn’t looked back.
When I asked Mrs. Wheeler what she thought the most important skills one could have if they were interested in doing what she does, she replied “The ability to gather and organize information, the ability to write in a clear and engaging way, and the ability to network”. Another thing she mentioned was having self control and a strong sense of responsibility; it is easy to become lazy when you make your own hours.
Speaking of making her own hours, Wheeler told me that she works roughly between 30 and 40 hours a week, with the hours per day varying. Spending most of her working hours at home, a typical day for her starts with her making calls to current and potential clients, sharing ideas with each other, and then she will spend the rest of her time drafting and editing potential ideas. Sometimes she will go into a physical office, but she believes that working from home is the most effective way to freelance.
While she does do her job better from home, an aspect of her job that she doesn’t always enjoy is the solitude of it. She is a self-proclaimed outgoing and very social person, so sometimes working alone in a home office can make her long for a more collaborative approach. Another part of her job that she doesn’t particularly like is when she receives no feedback from a client on whether or not her work was effective. The reason she always wants at least some feedback is because she likes to know what works and what doesn’t work, and then she can apply that to future projects.
While those two aspects of her work aren’t her favorite, the good heavily outweighs the bad. We’ve already been over the flexibility of hours and the work week which she views as a huge positive, but something else Wheeler highlighted when speaking with me was the variety she experiences. She said that on every job she learns something new and interesting because she moves around from company to company. This keeps the job fun and new and fuels her fulfillment.
Wheeler has done many personally fulfilling jobs, but perhaps none more than the year she wrote the annual report for investment banking company Goldman Sachs. She loved this job because she got to tell the stories and spread awareness about the philanthropic work they were doing to help children and the education system. She also met lots and lots of very interesting and successful people during this venture, and their approval and faith in her gave her the confidence she needed to know that she had picked the right field.
Paula K. Wheeler has worked hard to become the successful woman she is now. After 32 years of working her way up she has proven herself to be one of the most reliable freelance writers you could find.: Writing and Reporting
How South Park has made the world of streaming more confusing
An article for the class “Storytelling and Reporting” about the controversy surrounding South Park and it’s streaming service deals.
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“The way that the TV immediately overwhelms you with options when you turn it on sometimes makes me not want to watch TV,” said Cal Oechler, an avid television watcher. For the past couple of months, I have heard and seen quite a bit of discourse around streaming services and what the future with them may hold. Are some services more powerful than others? What happens if they keep merging together? How do studios determine which content they can host on a service when another service may already have content owned by that studio? Some of those questions may seem a bit odd, but when we take a closer look at them it reveals the mess that is the current state of streaming servicesThis discussion made it to the forefront with the recent rebranding of the streaming service “HBO Max” to simply “Max” due to the merger with “Discovery +”, another streaming service, but I first recall hearing about streaming service confusion in June 2022, with the release of South Park: The Streaming Wars. The popular cartoon South Park plays a surprisingly big role in the debate about streaming services, so let’s get into that.
South Park recently was sued by Warner Bros. Discovery for allegedly breaching a contract the creators had signed with them. The breach came in the form of new episodes of South Park being produced for the then brand-new streaming service “Paramount +”, when they were only supposed to be making content for HBO Max. This gets tricky because technically, South Park is still owned by Paramount.
South Park airs on the channel “Comedy Central”, a channel which is owned by Paramount. So while Warner Bros. and therefore HBO Max had the streaming rights, Paramount still owned the product. HBO Max was promised to get a new season consisting of 10 episodes each year until 2025, which at first got complicated due to the COVID-19 pandemic and their ability to make the show, but that was only the beginning.
In 2021, Paramount+ launched, but since HBO Max had already signed their deal with South Park they didn’t have the rights to hold the show on their service. Instead, since they didn’t want to lose the valued property that is South Park, a historic deal was made. $900 million to continue to air the show on Comedy Central through 2027, on top of 14 hour long specials to be released exclusively on Paramount+. So HBO Max was no longer the only place to see new episodes, and there would be content related to the show that they would be unable to release. Not a big deal as long as they keep their promise to deliver them 10 episodes a season, but of course that got complicated as well.
In 2022, the first true season of South Park since 2019 aired simultaneously on HBO Max and Comedy Central, but suddenly stopped after only six of the promised 10 episodes. Then, later in the year, two 45-minute long specials were released on Paramount +. This is where the controversy first started. The fans were caught off guard, as they thought as long as they had HBO Max they could watch all new South Park content, and the companies behind the streaming services were at odds as well. The creators said that the two specials were the equivalent of four episodes, but Warner Bros. didn’t agree, culminating in the lawsuit.
I asked my friend Will Brennan, a huge fan of the show, what he thought about this. He said, “I think it’s stupid that if I want to keep up with a show that I’ve been watching my whole life I need to pay for two streaming services,” and this opinion has been the popular consensus online. While I’m sure it is frustrating for the corporations involved, it is much more of a burden to the fans who have to cough up more money than they usually would just to follow their favorite show.
: Writing and Reporting
