A native of Connecticut, CAMERON LAWRENCE has called Louisville home for 20 years. For several years, as a producer and on-air host, Lawrence was affiliated with local public radio. These days, she divides her professional life among print, radio and television projects. Her feature stories and essays have appeared in the Washington Post, the Hartford Courant, American Legacy, USAWeek/files/storyimages/and other publications, and she produces stories for several National Public Radio programs. Her first public television production, People of Freetowns, is slated for broadcast later in 2007 or early 2008. Cameron has a bachelor of science in natural resources from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2003, she received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. Her most recent story for Louisville Magazine appeared in the March 2006 issue and profiled local residents with solar-powered homes.
This month, her attention turns to the issue of potentially dangerous dogs. "I was one of those kids whose best fri/files/storyimages/was a dog, a cat or a horse — always," she says. "I haven’t strayed very far." Cameron and her husband John Gregory keep several "rescues," including a 12-year-old black Lab mix, three cats and eight pigeons at their Crescent Hill home. "I heard it all in the course of doing this story," she says, "people doing almost heroic rescue work of dogs in bad situations and people mistreating their dogs terribly. Over and over, I heard experienced trainers say that having a companion animal is not a right, it’s a privilege. That makes perfect sense to me."
Freelance photographer ANGELA SHOEMAKER has become a valued regular contributor to this magazine. Monthly, she enlivens the pages of Design Finds (page 72) and The Cutting Edge (page 81), but Angela also shoots some of the portraits and other photos for our features, most memorably in recent months when she captured University of Louisville football star Michael Bush off the field and with his family for our issue last August. A Louisville native, she graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in photography from U of L. She also produces images for several other local publications including LEO and the Courier-Journal and has recently started teaching a photojournalism class at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany. Angela says she is passionate about photography "because it takes me to places most people aren’t able to go and allows me to share these moments as a visual storyteller." We think her visions will be seen more and more around town.
JOHN CARBONE is a casual observer of life who lives and writes in Louisville. He has had careers in economic development, as a private investigator, teaching political science in college and as a taxi cab driver. His observations stem from none of those vocations. John was asked by us to take the Mensa High I.Q. Society exam last fall and write about the experience — pass or fail. "I had reason to believe I would be highly recruited by Mensa," explains the Philadelphia native. "Once, while changing the light bulb in our shower with the floor still wet, my wife Donna remarked, ‘You’re some kinda genius there, honey.’"
You may have heard John’s South Philly accent on WFPL-FM, where he has recorded a score of humorous commentaries. A regular contributor to our End Insight column, he last wrote in December bemoaning excesses in packaging ("Safecracking Your Cheerios").
Originally from Malaysia, our fashion consultant, YEEN FOONG, came to the U.S. to further her education at Wisconsin’s Beloit College, where she graduated with a B.A. in art history and minored in management. She headed home to Malaysia for two years before returning to the States after marrying a Louisville native. "I don’t have any official training in fashion styling, but I keep up with trends and go with my instincts with what looks good and what doesn’t," Yeen says. "I hope that most readers agree with what I come up with." A freelance contributor to Louisville, she also designs the visual displays at Banana Republic’s Oxmoor and Summit shopping center stores. Yeen’s fashion eye has been shown off in our pages recently with "In Vogue at 21C" (September issue) and "Warm-up Acts" (November). This month (The Goods, page 30) she features a variety of women’s watches, from funky to feminine. "A watch should be a staple in every woman’s wardrobe, being both functional and a part of one’s style," she says.
