Progressive Wednesday

Staff

Founders and Editors:

Eric Ruest was born in our nation’s capital and raised in upstate New York, less than a mile from our neighbors to the North. Since graduating from SUNY Fredonia, he has held a wide range of jobs, from the whitest of white collar (A/V Specialist at an online testing center) to the bluest of blue (day laborer for 10 years). It took less than a month of the oppressive heat of Florida for Eric to start pining for the blizzards of Buffalo, but he stuck it out for four years as his wife finished her schooling. The day she graduated they hopped in their car with their nine (count ‘em, nine) animals, and left their mobile home for good. (Yes, they lived in a real mobile home.)

While his wife is at work taking care of sick puppies, Eric is at home taking care of their two beautiful daughters. Take that 1950s! There’s a third kid on the way ready to claim what’s left of his sanity.) During their naptimes, he’s worked on a handful of local and national campaigns. Don’t talk to him while his Buffalo Sabres are beating up on their unlucky opponent, and watch your fingers when you reach into the bowl of Buffalo wings: he might bite them off.

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Matt Zambito hails from Niagara Falls, New York, and currently lives in Moscow, Idaho, where he is working as a political strategist and earning a Master’s of Fine Arts in creative writing. He already holds an MFA from Ohio State University, where he taught composition and creative writing for eight years.

Back in the day, he was a sports stringer for The Niagara Gazette, and he covered politics, business, and technology as a freelancer for The Livingston County News. He’s published essays, book reviews, and poems (yes, poems) in over forty national and international literary magazines. He’s received grants and fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, Ohio State University, and the Greater Columbus Arts Council. In 2000, he received an Academy of American Poets Prize.

Last Halloween, he dressed as a sumo wrestler, his favorite costume to date. Other people’s dogs? He digs ‘em. If you see him saddled up to a bar, then run, don’t walk, and buy him a vodka tonic.

He wants a country he can continue to sleep with and still respect himself in the morning.

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Photo Editor:

James Bristol Robinson (Bris to those who have met him more than once) was born and named during Western New York’s infamous Blizzard of ‘77. Thirteen years later, during JV cross country practice, Coach pulled him aside. “Hey Robinson,” he said, “anyone ever tell you your parents named you after a circumcision?” Turns out, Bris did not know this, but he took the news in stride.

He completed his final college exam a decade later, skipping the graduation ceremony for his trusty Dodge Spirit and the open road. He lived in the back of a friend’s Ford Bronco in Longmont, Colorado for six months to avoid rent expenses (call him cheap if you want) while exploring the Rockies. The following year, he returned to the East, adding 700 Appalachian-Trail miles to his favorite pair of Merrell hiking boots in just less than two months. Despite a white-collar degree, he’s held mostly blue-collar jobs, including gas station attendant, roofer, lighting technician, and bathroom partition installer. He currently works from home as a business consultant for the American Poolplayers Association.

He lives in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York with his wife Jill, son Beckett, and dog Bailey Jones.  During the summer of 2006, two of his photos were selected by the band Wilco to appear on their official website. In January of 2007, he was awarded the Grand Prize in Aquascape’s Annual Photo Contest for 2006. He would love for you to own a copy of the new Progressive Wednesday calendar featuring his recent work.

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Featured Writers:

Alyson Greenfield is a singer/songwriter, creative mentor, writer, and the founder of Tinderbox Music Festival. Alyson’s music spans the genres of folk, electronica, and rap, and has been recognized by publications such as Paste, Relix, Beyond Race, The Deli, Beatcrave, and more, and has been heard on Fox Television and Rubyfruit Radio, as well as live from the CMJ Music Marathon in New York City to the Foyer de L’air in Mali, West Africa. Alyson has released two albums and is currently at work on her third, an album of covers featuring her version of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” on a glockenspiel which received media coverage during SXSW 2010 and was most recently featured at the 2010 International Human Beatbox Convention.

Alyson holds an MFA in creative writing and is the co-writer of Sitting on Fire, a film based on her short story, which screened at film festivals including the California Independent and the Philadelphia Documentary and Fiction Festival where it won Special Prize for Best Short Film. She is a former Chicago National Organization for Women Board Member, high school teacher, university instructor, tolerance educator, and she is currently a creative mentor based in New York City.

Alyson is excited to be organizing an event that brings together so many of her passions, and she hopes Tinderbox helps to create community, showcase the incredible musical talent of emerging female artists, and ensure that empowering programs for young women continue. You can buy and preview her albums here, listen to her on MySpace here, connect with her on Twitter here, and follow the happenings of Tinderbox Music Festival here.

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Steve Heim was reared in Amherst, New York, and graduated from SUNY Fredonia with a degree in philosophy and English. He worked for two years on the Seneca reservation as a technical writer before he couldn’t stand the sight of a computer anymore and quit to walk the Appalachian Trail for four months.

He currently lives in Moscow, Idaho, where he teaches while completing a Master’s degree. He enjoys sitting on his porch in a sky blue Adirondack chair, sipping his homemade beer, and anthropomorphizing animals by channeling their inner monologues to those near him by means of funny dialects and panicked tones.

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Charles Lamb is a retired minister who isn’t really retired. After ten years as a local pastor at East Aurora Christian Church, then 28 years on the denominational staff of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and five years as an East Aurora Village Trustee, he’s spent the eleven years since retirement as an adjunct professor at Niagara University and as an assistant pastor in the Youngstown Presbyterian Church. He gives most of his remaining time to working for a safer environment through the Sierra Club and through a Youngstown, New York group called Residents for Responsible Government.

Once a year he has to get back to his rustic roots by making a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. When the East Aurora Christian Church was voting to sponsor a refugee family, one conservative member asked why they couldn’t just bring up some poor hillbilly from Appalachia. To that, Charles said: “You already did that when you called me to be your minister.”

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Julie Nusbaum was raised in Linwood, New Jersey, just a few miles from the ocean. It was a much more pristine, though much less exciting, existence than its depiction on MTVs Jersey Shore would suggest. Julie attended the University of Pennsylvania where, during a medical anthropology class, she read Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a story about a Hmong family navigating the American healthcare system. She felt that a more interesting story had never been told, and she decided to become a doctor. After spending a year in Buenos Aires eating steak and working for a web design company, Julie started medical school at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. As a medical student, Julie has searched for approaches to healing that place a high value on the preventative benefits of nutrition, emotional wellness, and spiritual engagement and has spent time learning from naturopaths, acupuncturists, and native healers in addition to western physicians. She started a blog called The Rogue Tomato that features stories in which matters of the heart intersect science and medicine. Julie envisions a medicine that integrates the arts and humanities into patients’ healing, is founded on values of justice and benevolence, and considers the patient’s spirit and community connection as integral parts of their overall health. You can follow her on Twitter by clicking this sentence.

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Chelsia A. Rice was born in Portland, Oregon where her two lesbian moms raised her as she danced her way through the ‘80s while listening to Madonna, and chain-smoked her way through the ‘90s while sitting under a red light listening to Nirvana. She completed her undergraduate degree at Portland State University, but attributes the best of her undergraduate education to her three years at Portland Community College. She is currently teaching writing and grinding away at her Master’s thesis at the University of Idaho where she’s a candidate for an MFA in Creative Writing (nonfiction to be exact).

Back when Chelsia was in school and thought a more practical way to make money writing was to pursue journalism, she wrote for a variety of Portland rags including the feminist magazine NervyGirl, which won the Utne award for the Best New Title in Alternative Press Awards in 2001, and the St. John’s Sentinel community newspaper where she was assistant editor. In 2003, leading up to the national elections of the following year, Chelsia began speaking publicly about her experience growing up with lesbian parents, and the oppression her family faced in her community. Since then, several laws that perpetuate the oppression the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Queer) people have fueled her desire to continue writing and speaking out about inequalities experienced by same-sex families and their children.

When not writing or teaching, Chelsia is hot for teacher, her partner, who lives a state away. Chelsia also enjoys singing old Bonnie Raitt songs from the ‘70s while showering and cleaning house; desperately trying to recreate ethnic recipes from her favorite restaurants in Portland; collecting trivial information about butt-rock, glam-rock, hair-rock (whatever you want to call it), and soft rock; and throwing the ball for her diabetic, half-blind, differently-abled chu-wiener, Nugget.