Helen Arase, Managing editor

I am now the managing editor (and multimedia reporter) of the Alhambra Source.

I’ve been working myself to death, but it’s a good experience to be alone and literally have to do everything yourself.

Of course I have support from the other two non-journalists on staff and the co-founders, but the gravity of my success/failure is the publication’s success/failure is a new one for me.

We also moved mid-pandemic. That was interesting.

I’ve managed to photograph a couple of things too:

Michoacana Pedir De Boca is an ice cream and paletas (popsicle) business that just opened:

The San Gabriel Mission caught fire in the early morning so I ran over in the afternoon:

ZinDrew Chili still needs to be published but they’re a husband-wife team making chili oil:

More stories and photos to come.

Long time no check-in

This update to the blog is overdue.

I’ve been busy! Good!

I’m working for the Alhambra Source, a non-profit community news site. We redesigned the website. Someday I’ll post the before and afters.

As the (only) multimedia reporter i’m making videos, photos, text, some graphic design – all that.

COVID-19 has been dominating our coverage.

I’ve started an abstracts photo project that I’m posting on my instagram story every day.

Some photos from the last couple of weeks at AS:

Computer distribution for Alhambra Unified students who need computers for distance learning during COVID-19 pandemic

Top: March, 2020, First Baptist Church of Alhambra packing food for food pantry. Serving 75-150 families.

Bottom: May, 2020, First Baptist packing/distributing food for food pantry. Serving 250-300 families.

Top: Pasadena’s mobile COVID-19 testing site at the Rose Bowl; for county residents. Used self-administered cheek swab.

Bottom: Alhambra’s COVID-19 mobile testing site at City Hall; for Alhambra residents. Nasal swab by registered nurses.

Wasteland Weekend

It seems that my updates correspond with publishing dates, projects or life changes.

“Los Angeleno” sent me to Wasteland Weekend, a post-apocalyptic, “Mad Max”-themed festival in the Mojave Desert. The five-day music-festival-meets-rat-rod weekend was intense, but everyone was nice and made sure to keep me hydrated.

I didn’t just take photos this time, I wrote it too. It’s basically all of my voice, which is not what I expect when handing in text, so that’s awesome. Read and look at it here.

“Los Angeleno” didn’t publish everything I gave them so I put some of the photos on my site, here.

There are other updates and other projects, but for now, this is a Wasteland post.