ANDI MCDANIEL

Artist Day Jobs: Two Bettys Green Cleaning

andimcdaniel — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:01:23 +0000

In 2005, Anna Tsantir had a full-time arts administration gig and no time for her art. She decided there had to be a way of making a living that also supported her true passion — and so Anna founded Two Bettys Green Cleaning Service, the eco-friendly house cleaning company she now runs. While Anna no longer cleans houses herself, she has 28 “Bettys” on staff, all of them artists, musicians, or healers.

Reported, shot and edited for tpt’s weekly arts series, MN Original.

Minneapolis Media Institute

andimcdaniel — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:02:17 +0000

Reported, shot and edited for tpt’s weekly arts series, MN Original.

MNO on the Go: Art Shanty Projects

andimcdaniel — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:19:42 +0000

In the deepest chill of winter a group of eager artists heaves their homemade shelters onto the ice of Medicine Lake in Plymouth, Minnesota. Soon, a veritable “Shanty Town” emerges— a colorful and eclectic vision that’s one part Norman Rockwell and two parts Beetlejuice: inhabitable monster tails, plywood nap shelters, and spinning platforms are all part of the architectural array.

Started by Peter Haakon Thompson and David Pitman in 2004, Art Shanty Projects aspires to be “part sculpture park, part artist residency, and part social experiment.” With 20 shanties created by artists from up-and-coming fashion designers to robot enthusiasts, and events that include fashion shows and an Art Car parade, the art shantytown has something for everyone.

The Cover Letter Formula, According to Me

andimcdaniel — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 18:50:03 +0000

A good cover letter: Sometimes it gets you the job, sometimes it doesn’t. But in my experience, a letter that exudes confidence, capability, and a little bit of flair–as long as it doesn’t have any grammatical errors–can go a long way. Do you agree?

Sad to say, I’ve written quite a few cover letters over the years, and I’ve even collected the best rejection letters I’ve ever received in response. (Perhaps I’ll share those at a later date–they’re even harder to write.) But for now I’m just going to share the advice I just gave a friend who is highly skilled, incredibly charming, and applying for a job for the first time in years. It’s kind of a formula, I told her. As such:

[Note: She's applying for a reporting job at an environmental journalism outfit.]

Starting the letter is the hardest part. Just jump in. Go with something like: It is with great enthusiasm that I submit my application for the position of: monkey juggler or insert job here. Then next say something that encapsulates how much you rock and why that fits the position like: As a tireless reporter, a shameless environmentalist, and a diehard ____ fan, I feel confident that I’d be a great fit for the position, and an invaluable addition to the team.

Then go into something kind of anecdotal. About an article they published that you particularly liked, or a moment in your reporting career that really encapsulates what you love about the work. Or maybe quote someone you admire. This can be funny, or just reflective of your personality in some way. As an example, I once wrote, in an application for a multimedia position, that “As Bill Moyers said in a speech at the blah-blah conference… a story can be told in a thousand ways” or something like that. I actually made that up. But personality is good here.

And then… then for this next part you can use BULLETS! Yes, it’s totally legit. First say something that shows you “get” the position. Like, Undoubtedly, the right candidate for this position will require a rare combination of experience, wit, and willingness to roll with the punches. And then you use bullets to show why you ARE that person! Use examples from your work experience like:

As a crime reporter, I rolled with the punches in such-and-such a way.

In my job before grad school, I gained such-and-such kind of great experience.

As so-and-so put it in a recommendation on LinkedIn, I’m “very funny and cool.”

Does that make sense?

Then just kind of reiterate what you said, in one sentence, and conclude with something like, I think I’d be a great fit for the team, and I hope that upon reviewing my application you come to agree. Please contact me with any questions or to arrange an interview.

What would you add?

SPAM: America’s Favorite Recession Food

andimcdaniel — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:39:49 +0000

From the series MN90: Minnesota History in 90 Seconds. (Image by janetgalore)

The Juan Doe Problem

andimcdaniel — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 14:53:40 +0000

Image by Matt Nager

(Published in Mother Jones, September/October 2010)

AGENT GUERRERO’S radio scratches to life: Are you at the bodies yet? In local Border Patrol lingo, the word for border crossers is the same whether they’re living or dead.

Yep, we’ve got four of them, he radios back.

We’re crawling along a dusty desert road in Guerrero’s Chevy Tahoe, 65 miles southwest of Tucson and miles from anything with a roof and a door. From the sky we must look like a toy army truck, dwarfed by our rust-tinted surroundings—rocks and clay, cacti and mesquite. Guerrero is explaining how easy it is to die out here. “People don’t understand how grateful people are to be caught. Depending on where the group crosses, it’s almost impossible to carry the amount of water they’re going to need,” he says. “And during the summer months, there’s absolutely no shade.”

We find these bodies in a valley in the San Luis Mountains, 11 miles north of the border. We know their names because we asked them: José Luis Aquino Garcia, 26; Lorena Márquez Ramirez, 25; Eduardo Cardoso Delgado, 34; and Jhoana Stephany Hernandez Márquez, 8. It’s harder to find names for the other kind of bodies.

As many as 700 corpses of migrants are found in the deserts and mountains of US border counties each year. Roughly half are anonymous. Undocumented border crossers travel light, sometimes leaving nothing to identify them if they die. It doesn’t help that their bodies are often unrecognizable; by the time they’re found, hungry javelinas and coyotes have carried away their organs. Sometimes their skin, and with it fingerprints and birthmarks, is long gone. Often their bones are bleached white from the 100-degree sun.

A dead body without a name can’t be buried, not in good conscience, at least, until efforts to identify it seem completely hopeless. And each person who deals with border bodies has a different definition of hopeless. That’s the Juan Doe problem.

Read the rest of the artic le on MotherJones.com.

MPR: Rare Twin Foals treated at U of MN Vet Center

andimcdaniel — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:30:04 +0000

MPR: Ticketless at Target Field

andimcdaniel — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:16:13 +0000

MPR: New Twins’ Stadium Gets High Marks for Accessibility

andimcdaniel — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:06:51 +0000

See the rest of the slideshow on MPR’s website.

Mob Jurisprudence, in New York Times Magazine, 2007

andimcdaniel — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:56:16 +0000

When the New Zealand police force said they were open to suggestions about how to rewrite national policing laws, they meant it. In September, they posted the 1958 Police Act online and invited Kiwis and non-Kiwis alike to visit the site and type in their own revisions to the law — extending the concept of “Wiki”-style collaborative writing from encyclopedias to democracy.

“The idea was to take something that’s inherently dry and intellectual” like law reform, explains Superintendent Hamish McCardle, who is in charge of the review, “and transfer it to something that’s cool and innovative” — like Web 2.0.

By making the Wiki open to anyone who cared to participate, the police force hoped to make it easy for international law and policing experts to weigh in, as well as those one million or so New Zealand citizens living abroad. Of course, all of that interactivity yielded its share of unconventional ideas. McCardle’s favorite is one submitted by a user who requested that the name of the police force be changed to “The New Zealand Yum-Yum Teddy Bear Strike Force Z.” That particular suggestion was quickly edited out. Other bold ideas made it into the final Wiki document, like a suggestion to increase the minimum police recruitment age to 25, since the human brain is not fully developed until then.

Despite the novelty of the Wiki process, McCardle is quick to point out that plenty of old-fashioned checks and balances are in place. The Wiki follows a traditional review process and will culminate in a document that will advise, rather than mandate, Parliament in its decisions regarding the Police Act.