The most difficult part about writing this article is that I chose to write about two places of worship instead of just one. From here I had to make it to both places, gather information and devote the story to both as equally as possible.
The easy part of writing this article was gathering information. St. Mary's, the Catholic church, holds daily masses, including several on Sundays, so I was able to stop by a few times and make my observations. Beth Israel, the synagogue, didn't have as much access but when I did get in I got a lot of good stuff. The day was Purim, which is a day of celebration in Judaism. I was able to sit in on a potluck and worship service and there were several people who were very friendly and helpful.
The biggest lesson I learned through my research is that a tape recorder is very helpful, but if you're going to use one either have several tapes on hand or join the 21st century and get a digital recorder. The problem that I ran into with writing this article was pretty much the same as before in that I get frustrated with not being able to share all the information I gathered. Again, this is a matter of sharing the most important and compelling information.
I feel that I interacted with the people in this story better than my last one. For my first story I was very nervous and intimidated when talking to people (hopefully they couldn't tell!) and I think this time around I was much more at ease. Also, I was better prepared, but I learned that procrastination is a habit that's hard to break. Again, my point of weakness is AP style. However, this time around I'm going to claim illness as the reason why; I got a nasty (yet undiagnosed at the time) ear and respiratory infection shortly before the article was due and was struggling to finish the article. I always have trouble with AP style, but I'm going to hope that I would have learned my lesson from the last time had I not been so miserable. I suppose we'll see in the next article.
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