I feel sorry for The Hartford Courant. A once proud newspaper has been reduced to a division of a Total Recall-like conglomerate hell bent on squeezing whatever juice (profit) it can from its loins. As someone who almost exclusively reads the paper online, I’m heartened by the wonderful stable of writers (I kid not) that are toughing it out in the name of what they feel is their art. I use the term “writers” when I speak of journalists very loosely. They all work under the same rules of how to attract a certain type of reader enough times to get that subscription. Even the most radical non-conformist is doomed to get beat down by the everyday struggles to write in a certain antiseptic manner.
But some of these people can actually write! And there’s no better place to get an idea of the soul of some of these peoples’ writings than their own unedited blog entries.
Helen Ubiñas (or Ubinas)
I like to peek in on my estranged buddy, Helen Ubiñas (or Ubinas, depending on the day of the week). Helen has the cleverly named Notes from Hel as her conglomerate induced daily writing assignment. She is the winner of numerous awards, most notibly a special recognition from the folks at Hartford Independent Media for her Hartford reporting. While she highlights some of her and other writers’ columns, every now again she gives us a glimpse of what life is like for a Latina living in the boonies. Check it out sometime, I’m putting it up as a permanet Blogroll link on ion.
Here’s a good link to an archive of Helen’s pre-Stanford musings dating back to 2005.
Stay tuned for more updates on Mrs. Ubiñas (or Ubinas) and other cool folks fighting the good fight over at THC until Ahnold comes through to save them.