Journalistic Writing

Wednesday afternoon, Cindy Slates reflected on a rainy day in Pennsylvania. After driving hours from Niles for a Christian rock concert and camping trip with a group of friends, the carload of teenagers was tired from the drive, soaked from the rain and cranky over the ruined trip.

On a brisk January afternoon, a tall, slender man in his thirties enters the Baker’s Rhapsody in downtown Dowagiac, his glasses fogged as the winter air follows him into the warm coffee shop.

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In Cincinnati, Ohio, hours from her home in Michigan, a nurse stands by a bedside, her iPhone in one hand, her patient’s hand in the other.

In a brick building at 3 N. Third St. in Niles, cocktails and gourmet burgers are served where customers once waited to have their brakes aligned. The sound of clanking wrenches has been replaced by clinking glasses, the churn of engines by the hum of conversation.

On Nov. 21, 2011, Misty Collett hit rock bottom. With a large burly man shaking and crying on her living room floor, the 31-year-old Dowagiac woman was desperate, angry and hurting, eager to find her next fix.

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Rows upon rows of musty smelling, hardcover books line sterile, Pine Sol-scented bookshelves. Green lamps with pull strings sit on top of solid, wooden desks. Long rows of drawers are filled with cards cataloging every book in the building. A grumpy older woman with a perpetual scowl keeps an index finger pressed to her lips, ready to shush noisemakers.

For 92 years, the walls of Calvin Community Chapel, 18770 Mount Zion St., Cassopolis, have stood as a reminder of a solid foundation built by a community of faithful farmers.

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Two people escaped a home before it burned to the ground early Wednesday morning in Niles.

A Brandywine teacher is facing disciplinary action after he was recorded on video allegedly attempting to meet what he believed was a 14-year-old girl at a hotel.