A beloved Eastern ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø tradition recently celebrated a big milestone. The 40th annual WILI Boom Box Parade was held in Willimantic on July 4. ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø was there and talked with people taking part in the celebration. They explained the spirit of this unique event in this audio postcard.
Mark Mirko is Deputy Director of Visuals at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø and his photography has been a fixture of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø’s photojournalism landscape for the past two decades. Mark led the photography department at Prognosis, an English language newspaper in Prague, Czech Republic, and was a staff-photographer at two internationally-awarded newspaper photography departments, The Palm Beach Post and The Hartford Courant. Mark holds a Masters degree in Visual Communication from Ohio University, where he served as a Knight Fellow, and he has taught at Trinity College and Southern ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø State University. A California native, Mark now lives in ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø’s quiet-corner with his family, three dogs and a not-so-quiet flock of chickens.
Ryan Caron King joined ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø in 2015 as a reporter and video journalist. He was also one of eight reporters on the New England News Collaborative’s launch team, covering regional issues such as immigration, the environment, transportation, and the opioid epidemic.