Letter from the editor
Aren’t we all trying to be better?
We wake up day after day on an innate mission to improve. We make decisions, considering the outcomes:
Wake up or sleep in?
Take the faster route or the scenic back road?
Initiate a necessary, difficult discussion or avoid it?
We choose the better option — for ourselves, for others, for principle or for no good reason at all.
With this issue of The Burr, our mission is to find ways to be better.
For Jinae West, whose story is featured on the cover, being better meant opening a 21-year-old manila folder. Inside, she’d find the names and story of her birth parents — two people she’d always been curious to know but only ever dreamed of before spilling the folder’s contents. Read her story here.
Kristina Deckert gave up her obsession with social networking and techno-gadgets. I kept her coveted BlackBerry, laptop and iPod on a shelf in my apartment for her five-day hi-tech hiatus … and I’m surprised she never broke in. Follow her journal entries here.
Ben Wolford talked to singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle to find out why he’s finally kicked his addiction to drugs. Learn about Earle and other rock stars who are dropping the drugs, sex and booze for healthier habits here. We had a difficult time tracking down Eric Clapton for photos, so my mom let us borrow a few of her shots from the ’70s — the heart of the binge years.
Sarah Steimer asked students and Kent community members why they can’t get along. She talked to more than 15 people to get as many sides of the story possible. Find out their ideas for a solution here.
Browse Brittany Moseley’s slow cooker recipes here and whip up your own home-cooked meal instead of ordering out again. I taste-tested the chili, and it’s delicious.
The Burr began with a mission to be better, and even as these stories blossomed and changed, I watched it emerge. Somewhere in the chaos of reporting, writing, taking photos, designing and editing, we all found ways to be better.
Maybe when you read this, you’ll find a way to be better, too.
— Caitlin Saniga
Glad to see the Burr is still alive and cooking. Keep up the good work.
Bob Jones Burr photographer 73-76