The Woman with The Rainbow Eyes

The Woman with the Rainbow Eyes

By Laura Lynn Miller

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., July 28 – The number one is yellow, two is orange and three is purple according to Rutgers University student Ryan Barton. 

For so many years, she couldn’t understand why when yellow one was added to an orange two that it equaled a purple three and not a yellowish, orange three instead. 

For her math teachers, they couldn’t understand why Barton saw numbers in different colors in the first place.

“They just thought it was something I picked up while looking at their flashcards,” Barton said.  “I believed them until I found out there were more like me out there.”

The 22-year-old Barton is one of a small group people who have the extraordinary brain condition, synaesthesia.

Unlike the average brain, which experiences things in life as they are through the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, people with synaesthesia, called synaesthetes, are born with their senses crossed, causing them to experience a certain type of sensation automatically when they interact with a particular type of stimuli.

Out of the 45 types of synaesthesia, Barton has grapheme-color synaesthesia, allowing her to see numbers and letters in different colors.

For hundreds of years, doctors have documented synaesthetic experiences.  But since synaesthetic experiences is something only a synaesthete can actually witness, skeptics believed that the experiences were just made up by the individual as mnemonic devices or that the person suffered a brain injury in the past.

When neuroscientists began investigating synaesthesia in the 1980s though, advancements in technology made the scientists realize that the experiences of synaesthesia never changed, said Barton.

“It’s not like you can just assign a random color to a number or letter or day of the week because you can’t really choose it because it’s just there,” said Barton.  “You can’t say Wednesdays are going to be blue, the next time is green and then 20 years from now it’s orange, it’s just always going to be blue for me.”

Unlike most synaesthetes, Barton shares an even more unique trait as she experiences not only grapheme-color synaesthesia, but another form called music-color synaesthesia, which allows her to perceive shapes and colors when hearing a sound.

When Barton was 14-years-old, she realized her perception was different from others when she read that her favorite band, The Beatles wrote many of their songs while on LSD said Barton.

“I read that one aspect of the LSD high is that a person can see colors and that this aspect was called pseudosynaesthesia,” said Barton.  “The funny part was that I have always seen color with music, but I was never tripping out on acid.”

Soon afterward, Barton began her research into synaesthesia, meeting various people with the condition on-line, including a pen pal, which she still has to this day.

“Every song has a solid-colored backdrop and other colors, shapes and images are constantly going over it,” said Barton.  “In The Beatles’ song, “With You, Without You,” there is a green background and the sitar in the song creates really beautiful golden yellow orbs that bounce and drip, which is probably why I like listening to sitars so much.”

Of course, being a synaesthete has always been easy for Barton as like anything else, it has its downside.

“I can’t listen to music while I’m studying unless it’s really low because of the words with the colors on the page and the colors in the background,” Barton said.  “It’s like I’m dealing with two things at once and this goes the same for when I’m sleeping.”

Today, Barton is majoring in music and minoring in psychology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick while painting her experiences and explaining to others the importance of synaesthesia in her spare time.

“It’s interesting when I tell people that I have this because either they nod their head and walk away like I’m crazy or they ask me what color their name is and get mad at me when it is a color they don’t like,” said Barton.

Researchers in the past have said that one in 25,000 people have synaesthesia, but Barton like other researchers believe that this number is too low because in society, both synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes alike still are unaware of the condition.

“There is definitely a great possibility that there is more people out there with synaesthesia because they probably believe that they just picked it up somewhere like I thought,” said Barton.  “But now with all the research today, I think other synaesthetes will realize that they are not alone and are not going to be afraid to talk about it.”

© Laura Lynn Miller Productions Inc.

Seeing Emotion: Through the Lens of Karen Fucito

Seeing Emotion: Through the Lens of Karen Fucito
By Laura Lynn Miller

Karen Fucito remembers the chaos that erupted on the sidewalk outside the Sussex County Courthouse one morning in March of 1989.

In the midst of it all, Fucito aimed at the prosecution’s star witness, who was walking down the sidewalk, and took her shot.

When it was all over, the picture Fucito took was on the front page of the newspaper the next day.

As a young photojournalist working with the Daily Record in Morris County, N.J. at the time, Fucito wondered if she had done the right thing in taking the photo.

“Did I do my job with what I had to work with?” Fucito asked, “Did I do the right thing?”

Almost 20 years later, Fucito asked those same, two questions to a small class of journalism undergraduates at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

On Feb. 10, Professor Bruce Reynolds invited the 48-year-old photojournalist and former photo editor to speak to his class about her career in journalism.

Dressed in a brown vest and cargo pants with enough pockets to hold a dozen rolls of film, Fucito held up several photographs she and her colleagues took.

Fucito then held a mock photo editor’s meeting, asking the students what pictures they thought ran in the Daily Record.

According to Fucito, a photojournalist must be objective when deciding what photos should run in the newspaper, as well as ethical in their judgment.

Despite how a photojournalist may feel, all sides of a story must be reported, as to only report the optimistic side of a story is to shield readers from another side of the truth, Fucito said.

“We have to be objective,” Fucito said. “You’ve got to decide who you are making the decision for, and you’ve got to make the right decision.”

Fucito passed around photos among the class.

One of the photos showed a distraught field hockey player after losing a championship game and another showed a teenage girl being rescued from an overpass.

Fucito then described how that one photo she took at the Sussex County Courthouse became the most memorable story she ever covered in her 20 years with the Daily Record.

According to Fucito, on Feb. 12, 1989, a teenager was murdered and another kidnapped during a party in Sparta, N.J.

Anthony Pompelio, a 17-year-old Sparta High School student heard fellow schoolmate, 17-year-old Donna Shaban’s cry for help during the party, Fucito said.

When Pompelio came to her aid, Shaban’s 19-year-old ex-boyfriend, Mike Ardila stabbed Pompelio repeatedly with a hunting knife and kidnapped Shaban, Fucito said.

After stealing Pompelio’s Jeep Cherokee, Ardila fled the state on a three-day, cross-country drive, Fucito said.

According to The New York Times, Ardila led police on a high-speed chase through the Nevada desert before losing control of the vehicle, flipping it over.

Ardila suffered only minor injuries and was taken into custody in Las Vegas, N.M., The New York Times said.

Shaban was found in Groom, TX by a passing trucker, after he saw her being pushed out of the Jeep Cherokee by Ardila, The New York Times said.

Pompelio’s father, Attorney Richard Pompelio petitioned to keep cameras out of the courtroom during Ardila’s trial because the prosecution’s star witness, Shaban, was a minor, Fuctio said.

The petition was granted, despite protests from The Star-Ledger, The New York Times and the Daily Record, Fucito said.

Every day, Fucito waited outside with other reporters to catch a glimpse of Shaban until finally that one March morning, she came to give her testimony, Fucito said.

“We had to illustrate the story that day,” Fucito said. “Despite how that makes me feel, that is my job.”

Although being crowded among several reporters, Fucito got a picture of the scared, blonde-haired Shaban as she was being escorted to the courthouse.

The Daily Record ran the picture the next day, Fucito said.

According to Fucito, though, the best aspect about her involvement in the case was that at the end, she got to know everybody during the trial, like Pompelio’s family.

When Ardila was found guilty, Richard Pompelio and his ex-wife tearfully hugged each other outside of the courthouse, relieved about the verdict in their son’s murder.

“When I saw Richard’s ex-wife put her head on his shoulder, I took my shot,” Fucito said.
“We ran the picture, and I had no problems because I had been there for so long.”

After listening to Fucito, Rutgers University senior, Alex Napoliello agreed with her about the importance of a photo and how it affects a story.

“A photo can capture emotions and show how important a reader’s view of a story can changed based on the photo that goes along with it,” Napoliello said. “It’s not words describing events, it’s seeing what’s going on.”

Professor Bruce Reynolds also pointed out the importance of how a photo portrays emotion and illustrates a story for the reader.

“Karen's greatest asset in my estimation is her ability to find emotion where it exists,” Reynolds said. “Morris County is largely white and also largely devoid of emotion, but she finds it, even while standing relatively far away, with her long lenses.”

Fucito retired from the Daily Record in 2004.

Due to the rise of online media, when asked how she would feel if newspapers like the Daily Record disappeared, Fucito explained that it would be it would be loss of a great tradition.

In 2005, Fucito found one way to support the future of newspapers by teaching print journalism to children, she said.

Fucito is the co-founder of Making Headlines LLC, a company that provides workshops to educate elementary, middle and high school students about journalism.

In these workshops, students learn the basics of conducting interviews as well as how to write news stories, which are made into a whole newspaper by the end of the workshop.

“Newspapers is something I hate to see go away,” Fucito said. “That's why it is up to them to keep them from going away.”

© Laura Lynn Miller Productions

Nervousness is Not Picky on Who It Chooses to Haunt.

I finally got a part-time job and being the new kid on the block is not easy, especially in retail. Stepping up to the plate in my all black outfit, I couldn't help to get the smile off my face. My face was like stone and not because I was happy to be there. The fact that I couldn't yank this smile away even with a crowbar was due to compounded nervousness. Although my demeanor was extremely friendly and polite, most of these customers seemed distant and judgmental. Of course, the cash register didn't make things better. When ever there was a problem with this machine, the roll of the eyes usually happened on cue. Every time, I felt like I wanted to tie a white blindfold around my eyes, puff on a cigarette and say, "C'est la vie!"

But then I started thinking. Am I the only nervous one here? For one, these people are awfully quiet? How many of us really as customers feel like talking to the cashier when making a purchase? As a society in the U.S., personal space and time are greatly emphasized. Maybe the customer just didn't want to talk because of such a reason. At the register, all I wanted to do was get things done short and sweet so these people can go home to their families. As a customer, I usually feel the same.

So that's when I started to speak to my customers about things like the weather, Christmas shopping, kids, the economy, etc. It really made a difference. One lady was quite sweet saying, "If we had more cashiers like you, there wouldn't be many grumpy people out there." In one case, it even helped to calm a person down.

After facing four people that really woke up on the wrong, hard and bad side of the bed that morning, one woman came to my register with two Internet and one in-store return. It looked like her blow dryer got the best of her as her blonde hair stood up on one side. In her hand was a pink, puffy kids jacket and a unzipped black leather purse exposing a plethora of papers. As I tried to work her returns, I hit a problem with the machine and had to call our manager. Instead of chewing me out or whining like most customers, this very troubled lady repeatedly apologize to me for the inconvenience. "I'm sorry this is happening on your third day," the lady said. "I didn't mean to make it this difficult, but I really need to get this done," she said. Every time I tried to assure her everything was going to be OK and she thanked me for being so patient. We talked about some of her plans for the day and the weather. She was finally calm. That is until a little girl came walking up to us with one of the managers. I can still remember it. "Is this your Mommy?" the manager said. "I found her in my office," she said. I thought this poor woman was going faint. Mommy and daughter were reunited though.....for about 45 seconds. As I was helping the next customer, the little girl came running pass my counter yelling, "No coat!" Running after her was the woman, with hair on end shouting, "But Honey, you have to listen to Mommy!"

Despite that episode, that little serenity between both of us was not only refreshing to me, but most likely to this woman. I think if she didn't have that little peace of mind, she probably would have collapsed while walking up to my counter. She probably wouldn't have the energy to chase this little terror through Macy's to get home in time to make dinner for her family.

In the end, I thought retail was going to swallow me alive. Now that I see most of my customers feel the same way as they put up their swords and shields or fumble with their receipts, I don't feel too bad.

© Laura Lynn Miller Productions Inc.

I Got the Degree. Where On Earth Are the Jobs?

Writers aren't born. Storytellers are. As far I can throw my brain back into the past, I have thought of stories in my mind. Stories that can chill a 9-year-old bones quicker than a late October wind gust and stories that warm one's heart with passion and inspiration. But it wasn't until my senior year that I was first told that I was a great writer. I couldn't believe how it flowed out of me. With more encouragement, things only got better with my writing.

My creative writing teacher encouraged me to carry on this pathway in college. Through her and my writing, I felt it was the right thing to do and it was. From August 2004 to August 2009, I excelled at Burlington County College and Rutgers with my writing, earning high marks and creating great pieces of work. I got even more inspiration from my college advisor to strive for more in my talent. His hug on the stage at graduation only set my aspirations higher. Looking at all my professors and friends that have encouraged me to go forward and all the work I have done, I couldn't wait to venture out into the real world to show off my talents.

I got 50 copies of my resume in a new, purple folder on my desk, my portfolio in a blue binder in my desk drawer and a B.A. degree in journalism and media studies stating in bold, italic letters underneath my degree major "Summa Cum Laude" coming in the mail. But where are the jobs?

It is said that "patience is a virtue." That is most certainly true. I knew the job market would be tough nowadays, but the fact that I can't even get a job at Dominoes Pizza to earn some money is now starting to get to me. Most companies are turning to interns nowadays because they're non-paid workers and since I am no longer a student, tough noogies on me. I could go to graduate school, but the fact that there is chance that I could get a head-start out in the world of work still calls me.

But I'm entry-level. A possible liability that gets paid. As entry-levels, we are just getting the hang of the ropes, showing off what skills we have. But if we are not careful, we could most certainly hang ourselves. Even give the ones holding us up some pretty nasty rope burns. Years ago, one, young person experienced such an event when she forgot to black out the face of a person she was interviewing for a segment on her news outlet. This person's name quickly flew around all of NYC's media market and according to the rumor, she never got a job again.

So instead feeling above the rest, for a while I felt like I was swamped with the millions of jobless graduates out there like me. Out of all of my searching, I only found one apprenticeship in my area and I hope to get it. Although I feel like I have fallen a bit, people have always said the best thing to do is to get back up on our horses and show people what you're made of. To lay down and give up is an easy thing to do, but there's no reward. After practically five years of hard work, I can't give up.

My Grandma always said, "When you think you have it bad, someone has it worse." I know there are others out there who are out of work and who have been out of work longer than me. I respect you, including those who have dependents. I never knew how decrepit the job market was like and now I feel the pain.

According to an Irish blessing I once heard, "May your troubles be less, your blessings be more, and nothing but happiness come through your door." Continue to shovel on. I know that's what my high school creative writing teacher and my college advisor would want me to do. For her, for him, for my family, for my friends, for my writing and for my future, I'll continue to shoot high and ride hard for my dreams.

© Laura Lynn Miller Productions Inc.