Artist's Mugs Make Fracking Debate Easier to Grasp

• Susan Phillips
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

A Philadelphia potter trekked through shale country to dig up her own Marcellus Shale, turn it into clay and then made coffee mugs.
Jennie Shanker says her Marcellus mugs are safe to drink out of, but the clay has a slightly higher reading on the Geiger counter than her cell phone.
Here’s one thought: Use the mug to down your next “Fractini.”
What’s a Fractini?  It’s a mixed drink developed by Patriot-News reporter Don Gilliland, who has covered a fracking story or two.

The Fractini is a really, really dirty martini with extra salt along the rim.
Gilliland says the gin has to be accompanied by large quantities of olive juice to raise the level of total dissolved solids enough to make State Impact-Pa. reporter Scott Detrow run to the nearest non-flammable water tap.
It sort of tastes like a gulp of the ocean from the Jersey shore. And it just may be the perfect beverage for the Marcellus mug.
You can check out a longer report on the shale cups from WHYY’s arts and culture reporter, Peter Crimmins, here. 

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