THE

COLLEGE
HILL

THE BROWN/RISD WEEKLY | NOVEMBER 18 2010 | VOLUME XXI ISSUE X

4 CAMPAIGN CA$H FLOW: CITIZENS UNITED V. FEC

9 HOW TO ACTUALLY HAVE THANKSGIVING
12 HOW REALITY TV DEMOCRATIZES THE ART WORLD
20 A BUNCH OF LIES

“It was a gift. But I don’t want to

ever drown again. That’s actually
the third time that I’ve drowned.”
-p. 15
 The
College
Hill Independent
contents from the editors In 1874, the American Poultry Association (APA) published the Standards of Perfection, establishing breed stan-
NEWS dards for “purebred fowl.” The Association established three key criteria for the so-called heritage turkey: “naturally
2 Week in review mating,” “long, productive lifespan,” and “slow growth rate.”
Sam Knowles, Ashton Strait, Jonah Wolf
3 France strikes again Eschewing the standards of “fancy poultry” as prescribed by the APA, the 1960s saw the rise of the first com-
Emily Gogolak mercially bred turkey—the Broad-Breasted White (BBW)—which is so fat, it is only able to reproduce via artificial
4 Money making politics insemination. Today the BBW accounts for 99.9 percent of the turkey market. It reaches its market weight, up to
David Braun
32 pounds, in 18 weeks. By comparison, a heritage turkey can take up to 30 weeks to reach 18 pounds.
METRO
5 Slavery updates In the ’90s, the heritage turkey faced extinction. But it has persevered. Last week, the average price of a whole-
Sarah Gibson sale frozen BBW reached a record high at $1.09 a pound, due to the increase in US grain prices. But this holiday
6 Vehicular history season, approximately 20,000 Americans will shell out between eight and ten dollars a pound for a heritage. The
Maud Doyle
OPINIONS bird may be lean. He may take longer to grow. But upon reaching maturity, he is more flavorful and more complex
7 We’ve got opinions, but they’re small than his commercial counterpart.
The Editorial Board Here in CONMAG, the chopping block is near. We too have reached a long-coming, slow-growing maturity. It is
FEATURES time to say farewell to the pasture. So, eat your Indy. Get some sleep. Baste us in gravy. -KDJ
8 Holiday music madness
Alex Spoto
9How to give thanks
Eli Schmitt
11It’s a jungle out there
Emily Martin and Adrian Randall
ARTS
1 2 Let’s talk about reality TV
Amy Lehrburger
1 3 Primitive art F A L L 2010
Whitney Alsup
1 5 Interview with a Providence soapmaker MANAGING EDITORS Katie Jennings, Tarah Knaresboro, Eli Schmitt • NEWS Ashton Strait, Emma
Natasha Pradhan Whitford, Jonah Wolf • METRO Maud Doyle, George A. Warner, Simon van Zuylen-Wood • OPINION Mimi
16 I-95 gets a makeover Dwyer, Brian Judge • FEATURES Alice Hines, Natalie Jablonski, Marguerite Preston, Adrian Randall • ARTS
Sonja Boet-Whitaker
17 Let Freedom ring Jordan Carter, Alexandra Corrigan, Erik Font, Natasha Pradhan • SCIENCE Katie Delaney, Nupur Shridhar •
Zach Rausnitz SPORTS Malcolm Burnley • FOOD Belle Cushing • LITERARY Rebekah Bergman, Charlotte Crowe • X PAGE
PUZZLE MANIA Katie Gui • NEW MEDIA Kate Welsh • LIST Simone Landon, Erin Schikowski, Dayna Tortorici • DESIGN
18 Katie Barnwell, Jamie Green, Jonah Kagan, Joey Weissbrot Maija Ekay, Katherine Entis, Mary-Evelyn Farrior, Emily Fishman, Maddy McKay, Liat Werber, Rachel Wex-
SCIENCE ler, Joanna Zhang • ILLUSTRATIONS Emily Martin, Robert Sandler • COVER EDITOR Emily Martin • MEGA
19 Science is in everything PORN STAR Raphaela Lipinsky • SENIOR EDITORS Margo Irvin, Simone Landon, Erin Schikowski, Emily
Katie Delaney, Tarah Knaresboro, Brian Mastroianni,
Kathryn Wiseman Segal, Dayna Tortorici • STAFF WRITERS Zachary Rausnitz, Alex Spoto, Dan Stump • PHOTOGRAPHY
20Lies, lies, lies John Fisher • MVP Emily Segal
Tarah Knaresboro
LITERARY COVER ART: Christina Graham
21Peanut butter, jelly, and high school
Charlotte Crowe The College Hill Independent
X PO Box 1930, Brown University
23 Eli Schmitt Providence, RI 02912
26 Suerynn Lee
theindy@gmail.com

FOOD Letters to the editor are welcome distractions. The College Hill Independent is published weekly during the
24 Thanksgiving tastes like blurbs fall and spring semesters and is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, MA.
Robert Sandler and George A. Warner

TOE TAGS The College Hill Independent receives support from Campus Progress/Center for American Progress.
2 5A proper eulogy Campus Progress works to help young people — advocates, activists, journalists, artists — make their voices heard
on issues that matter. Learn more at CampusProgress.org.

as if you care... corrections

My wife and I are animal lovers. We don’t watch the pet psychic and we don’t have
funerals for our pets. I do enjoy analyzing out pets’ [cats and dogs] behaviors and
something really interesting occurred to me. My pets tell willful lies! Both cats and
dogs clearly understand that they are not to do certain things. For example, the cats
know that their not supposed to be on the kitchen cabinets. So what do they do, the
smart ones that is, they wait until we go to bed and then they have a party in the
kitchen. They understand a law and then follow a calculated and deceitful strategy
to obtain their goal...the chicken bones! Also, my dogs are well trained and stay
within the bounds of our five acres...until we go to sleep. I realized that our smart-
ISSUE 2: It costs $200, not $2000, to start raising your own chickens, complete
with chickens, chicken feed, and supplies to make a coop.
ISSUE 8: Zach, who lives on a boat, is from Potowomut, RI, not Pawcatuck, CT. “I’m
as RI as they come independent swamp yankee to the core.”
ISSUE 6: 120 million people did not take a survey about independent bookstores.
The number is actually closer to 9.300.
ISSUE 9: Both the headline, “Cwning Noobs: My Special Night at Toledo,” as well
as the statement “when the dripping meat cone comes out, we have fun” do not in
any way reflect the sentiments of the writer.

ephemera
est dog, a Border Collie, would wait until the light went out. She would then sneak
past our bedroom window ever so quietly, and then run up on the road and have a
party with all of the other willful and deceitful dogs. She also taught our other dogs
how the procedure works. When caught, sometime without even looking at me, and
without my saying a word, the animal knows they are in trouble.

Are these examples of lies? Do dogs go to hell? What does this say about sin?
What does this say about the intelligence of the animal. One could argue that this
indicates a rather high level of intelligence as compared to our normal assumptions
about household pets. One thing seem certain, deceit is in the genes!
[<:)]
THEINDY.ORG
N O M O LO KO
“Do you think people are gonna start stockpiling Lokos?”
“I hear the prices go up right after they outlaw it. At least that’s what happened
with Sparks.”
“Imagine selling cans of Loko for fifteen bucks.”
Variations on this conversation have been dominating the past couple of weeks,
as word spread of statewide bans on alcoholic energy drinks like Four Loko and
Joose: first Michigan, on November 4, followed the next day by Oklahoma. (Utah’s
state-controlled liquor market had never allowed the drinks to be sold.) In the midst
of this fracas, Phusion Projects, the three Ohio State grads behind Four Loko, found
an unlikely spokesman in New York restaurateur--and former corporate lawyer -- Ed-
die Huang, who took to his blog, thepopchef.blogspot.com, to defend the drink last
Monday, November 8.
“So, I drink a lot of four loko and its [sic] dope,” Huang began. “That’s really all
there is to it. I like gummy bears and I like alcohol that taste [sic] like malt liquor
gummy bears.” He went on: “On some Larry Flynt shit, I think a ban should be op-
posed. Banning four loko flies in the face of logical legal interpretation and the sole
reason there is an argument to ban it is because what four loko promotes culturally
(cheap booze) is an indefensible political position...My money says they find a way to
ban it and some representative will get cheap votes. Bush league shit. Pun intended.
And allowing this to happen is going to set a really shitty precedent that will affect an
issue in the future that probably had nothing to do with four loko.” Huang (who goes
2
News
by the Twitter handle @generalloko) concluded by inviting readers to “Four Loko
Thursday” at his Lower East Side restaurant, Xiao Ye.
Though Huang titled his post “Four Loko...once and for all,” it wasn’t so conclu-
sive. On Saturday -- two days after the party, and three days after a Four Loko ban in
Washington state -- a post appeared under the title “Goodnight Four Loko,” explain-
ing that the State Liquor Authority had put an end to the party: “We followed the
law, we were in line with the SLA requirements, but basically, it was understood that
if we kept selling Four Loko, we would be seeing a lot of raids.” On Monday, under
pressure from Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Phusion Projects agreed to stop ship-
ping Four Loko to New York state. On Wednesday morning they announced that the
drink would no longer be made with caffeine. (One industrious Brown student was
seen leaving Madeira Liquors with 63 cans and, one presumes, an ‘A’ in ENGN0090.)
In retrospect, Four Loko’s demise was about as predictable as those of Sid Vi-
cious or Kurt Cobain. The drink had only emerged to fill a hole in the market left by
Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Extra and MillerCoors’ Sparks, both decaffeinated in response
to a threatened lawsuit from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The fact
that alcoholic energy drinks are still officially legal brings into question the role of
government regulation. Prohibition was repealed, and a growing number of states
has de-criminalized or legalized marijuana. What’s more, caffeine and alcohol are
both readily available to be combined. An online video posted Tuesday to buzzfeed.
com teaches users how to “Make Your Own Four Loko Homebrew.”
-JW

W E E K I N R EVIEW
by Sam Knowles,
Ashton Strait,
and Jonah Wolf
Illustration by George A. Warner

A R I ZO N A G O E S G R E E N
It should be an extra-special Thanksgiving in Arizona
this year, as many will now be able to spice up their
turkey day feast with some good old-fashioned hippie
lettuce. That’s right friends, after a tight race Arizona
has officially legalized medical marijuana.
      For a while it didn’t seem like the measure was go-
ing to pass. Following the November 2 election, the por-
tion of votes counted put the wacky-tobacky measure
behind, but by Friday it had inched ahead in the tally,
ultimately winning by just over 4,000 votes out of 1.67
million total in the statewide referendum. Apparently
there are a lot of stoners in Maricopa County, whose
11,000 outstanding ballots were the last to be tallied in
determining the official outcome of the proposition.
      The bill will allow people with chronic illnesses to
either buy or grow laughing grass with a prescription
from their doctor, and will permit the opening of up to
124 green goddess dispensaries in the state.  pushed for the sound byte: “Does your faith allow you to forgive Kanye West?”
      Unfortunately, not everyone is in line to light up.  “Oh, absolutely,” Bush said, without missing a beat. “I’m not a hater.”
Carolyn Short, the chairwoman of Keep AZ Drug Free,
which opposed the measure, told the New York Times
that  “All of the political leaders came out and warned
Arizonans that this was going to have very dire effects
on a number of levels…I don’t think that all Arizonans
have heard those dire predictions.” Probably because
they’re too busy listening to the Grateful Dead and
dreaming about mashed potatoes and gravy.
-AS
T H E TO DAY S H OW [D OW N]
Former President George W. Bush reentered the public sphere on November 8 with an exclusive, seem-
ingly endless interview with Matt Lauer, in order to promote his new memoir Decision Points. Airing as a
primetime special and followed by a live segment on the The Today Show two days later, the interview was an
odd amalgam: one part revisionist history, one part science fiction, two parts therapy session. With a new
president growing less popular each day, perhaps Bush decided that now was as good a time as any to begin
reframing his legacy. Lauer and Bush breezed past minor issues—his defense of torture, the co-presidency
of Dick Cheney—in order to concentrate on what Bush called the “low point” of his time in office: Kanye
West’s comments at a Hurricane Katrina telethon, accusing him of racism.
Did nothing else come to mind? 9-11. Two wars. A recession serious enough to warrant capital letters.
And, oh yeah, that hurricane? Lauer suggested Bush’s choice of low points might offend some people. The
former president interrupted, “Don’t care.” The next day, during the live segment, Lauer played his previ-
ously unaired interview with West, in which the rapper approached an apology but never arrived. “In my
moment of frustration, I didn’t have the grounds to call him a racist,” West said. “I believe that in a situation
of high emotion like that, we as human beings don’t always choose the right words.”
In response to the rapper’s non-apology apology, Bush said, “I appreciate that.” Not yet satisfied, Lauer
West later accused Lauer of forcing him into his remarks. He later tweeted, “I feel very alone very used
very tortured very forced very misunderstood very hollow very very misused.” The mood lighting of The
Today Show cannot heal all wounds, it seems.
As the interview came to an end, Bush said he was not interested in a future under the national spotlight.
And you believed him—that he really would prefer the solitude of a Texas ranch to weekly stints on morning
shows. “The problem with the arena today is a few loud voices can dominate the discussion,” Bush said. “I
don’t intend to be one of the voices in the discussion.”
The nation breathes a sigh of relief.
-SK
3 N O V E M B E R 18 2010 T H E C O L L E G E H I L L I N D E P E N D E N T
News
W E’R E ST R IK I N G : L I S T E N TO US !
France, fear, and impending fatalism
by Emily Gogolak Illustration by Katherine Entis
C
rowds swarmed the
cities of France this
fall and chants echoed
across the streets:
“Fight, fight, fight!”
With revolutionary
fervor, millions of peo-
ple joined in protest
over a recent legislative measure to raise
the minimum retirement age from 60 to
62. In an effort to address a dire national
deficit, the reform pits fiscal pragmatism
against a legacy of robust state welfare,
and French citizens have responded with
a vengeance.
Protest is an inseparable element of
French Republicanism: when dissatis-
fied with government, the French natu-
rally take democracy to the streets. In
an email to the Independent, Aleksander
Glogowski, Paris spokesman for the
French Socialist Party, explained the
psyche of the French strike: “It’s not a
‘disease’ as most Anglo-Saxon free-mar-
keters are telling […] We have a strong
feeling of ownership on the State’s poli-
cies and are attached to a fair share of
the burden.” The most recent strikes
were no exception.
As much as the movement evokes
the classic French symbol of the strike,
the tensions also reveal a widespread
national malaise and question popular
confidence in the future of the Repub-
lic. What was most telling about the
recent turmoil was just who was mak-
ing the noise. Adults were not alone in
their protest, as youth were perhaps the
most vocal opponents to the increase in
retirement age. In a globalized era char-
acterized by burgeoning optimism and
opportunity among the world’s young,
France poses a striking contrast: with
its youthful idealism clouded by a star-
tling pessimism, it is uncertain how
much longer “the Great Nation” can rest
on its laurels before facing the times.
THE GOLDEN NUMBER
Early retirement is a centerpiece of so-
cial welfare in France and a symbol of
the nation’s progressive political culture.
In 1983, Socialist President Francois
Mitterand lowered the minimum retire-
ment age from 65 to 60, which has since
become a source of French pride. So-
cial benefits, including subsidized state
healthcare, the 35-hour workweek, and
generous vacations are not seen as mere
luxuries among the French, but rather,
as their birthright. Early retirement is
no exception. “We want to stop working
at 60 because it’s something our parents,
our grandparents, and even our great-
grandparents fought for,” Eric Gilly,
50, a union representative for the Force
Ouvrière (Worker’s Force), told the As-
sociated Press. Many deem retirement
reform an assault to an inalienable right
and the first step in dismantling French
social benefits in favor of an impending
American capitalism—a national night-
mare incarnate.
“ T H E O N LY LO G I C A L O P T I O N ”
No stranger to strikes, French President
Nicolas Sarkozy has been on tough terms
with labor since the start of his conser-
vative presidency. Labor reform is hardly
a surprising centerpiece to Sarkozy’s do-
mestic political agenda, as he made the
failed pension system a flagship issue of
his 2007 presidential campaign. Elected
on a platform of change, he claimed that
only through a “rupture with the past”
could France correct its budget, revive its
work ethic, and reenergize its populace.
Turning a new page in national history,
Sarkozy promised a break from tradition
and a brighter France to come.
The president did not forget his
promise for change, but when the most
recent strikes erupted, the French did
seem to forget who they voted for. The
trouble began in June, when Sarkozy
first presented the plan to raise legal re-
tirement and pension age from 60 years
old to 62, in addition to other proposals
to increase the number of working years
required to receive a full pension.
Sarkozy’s reform was a direct re-
sponse to France’s flailing fiscal position
amidst the global recession. With eco-
nomic woes running strong across the
continent, austerity plans are becoming
a European norm, and high debt bur-
dens have recently led Greece, Britain,
Spain, and Portugal to adopt unprec-
edented methods to scale back state
spending. Many European nations are
facing a battle between extensive state
welfare spending and gradual rises in life
expectancy, and as deficits run higher,
the need for more revenue only grows
more acute. According to a report by the
Paris-based Pensions Advisory Council,
in April 2010 the French state pension
system was running an €11 billion defi-
cit ($13.6 billion); by 2050, it will climb
to €103 billion ($127 billion), about 2.6
percent of the projected gross domestic
product. Furthermore, as the deficit has
forecasted to spike to 8 percent of the
GDP this year, France risks loosing the
AAA credit rating that allows it to service
its debt at the lowest market rates.
According to the French govern-
ment, increasing retirement age was not
a choice, but an economic imperative.
When he introduced the reform in late
May, Employment Minister Eric Woeth
announced, “as one lives longer, it is only
logical that your working life should also
be longer.” As protests later escalated,
he told the BBC, “we’re not here to do
what’s easy, we don’t always have the
people’s approval, but it has to be done.”
D E M O C R AC Y ON THE
STREETS
Mass resistance to the reform did not
break out until early September, when
the proposal passed through the lower
house of Parliament. The Senate was to
vote on the law in late October, and the
movement gained speed as the decision
approached. On October 12, the opposi-
tion saw its largest turnout with 3.5 mil-
lion protesters, according to the unions
(police claimed only 1.2 million were in-
volved). Firefighters marched with uni-
versity students and museum workers
past the Sorbonne, chanting resistance
songs ranging from la Marseillaise to
Queen: “We will, we will rock you” echoed
down le Boulevard Saint Germain.
Not all of the French disobedience,
however, civil. In Lyon, the epicenter of
violent protest, police used water can-
nons and tear gas to stop teenage pro-
testers from burning cars and hurling
glass bottles. West of Paris, in Nanterre,
hundreds of masked rioters—again,
nearly all adolescents—smashed store
windows and threw stones at police,
Reuters reported. “I saw 200-300 high
school students pass by, some waving
sticks. One of them had a crowbar. I find
it hard to believe that you can go to high
school with a crowbar like that,” Frédéric
Géhin, Nanterre resident, told France 24
News.
Anxiety reached its height when
workers blocked access to refineries and
ports across the country. Despite strong
warnings on the safety and financial
consequences of the blockades—which
stalled air travel, left motorists with-
out gas, and threatened to paralyze the
fuel-dependent industrial sector—the
strikers only turned more militant. As
reported by the UK’s Daily Mail, refinery
employees armed themselves with pick-
ets and burned tires, and formed a hu-
man chain around a plant in Grandpuits,
east of Paris. “The protests are not stop-
ping,” Jean-Claude Mailly, head of the
Force Ouvrière told Paris Radio Monte
Carlo, “we still think that demonstrating
is not enough ... we have to ramp it up.”
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux
would have none of it. “We will use all
means necessary to get these delin-
quents,” he threatened, including para-
military intervention. Comparable to
the US SWAT Team and with more au-
thority than the French riot police, the
paramilitary was never deployed, but the
threat made clear that the government
was not going yield.
W H AT L I E S B E N E AT H
Amid ongoing strikes, violence, and fuel
blockades, the reform passed in the Sen-
ate on October 22 and was written
into law on November 9 after final
approval from France’s Constitu-
tional Council. The protests gradu-
ally lost speed after the Senate vote,
although unions have since planned
new strikes for November 23 in hopes
of reviving the movement.
Though the retirement age has
now been officially raised and a resur-
gence of protest is extremely unlikely,
France is hardly free from its most re-
cent bout of tensions because the real
problem is not just about retirement.
What is most troublesome about this
year’s protest is the ironic demogra-
phy of its participants: youth were at
the center of the right against reform.
“When one sees young high-school
student representatives on French
television explaining why they take to
the streets (in order to defend their
own future pensions), one is seized by
a deep sense of fatalism,” Dominique
Moïsi, senior adviser at the French Insti-
tute for International Relations, wrote
in the New York Times. While energy and
optimism run ablaze in the high schools
of Mumbai and Beijng, ninth-graders in
Paris are smashing windows and burning
cars in fear of the future.
Call it melancholy, malaise, or fatal-
ism, this trend should come as a warn-
ing to France: the future will only be as
bright as the generation who will wel-
come it. This most recent demonstra-
tion of youthful hopelessness presents a
grim view of the years ahead. In an in-
terview with the Independent, Édouard,
a 20 year-old philosophy student at the
Sorbonne, put it well: “I don’t know what
will happen next; but what I do know is
that France just feels stagnant.” As Sar-
kozy attempts to deliver his promise
of change, it is unclear how tightly the
French will cling to the tradition he his
vying to leave behind.
EMILY GOGOLAK B’12 accidentally
led a labor protest down Boulevard Saint
Michel earlier this semester when she
made a wrong turn on her bicycle.
THEINDY.ORG
by David Braun
Illustration by Alex Corrigan
W
h o
won the 2010
midterm elections? Al-
though Republicans took
over the House and won
seats in the Senate, the real winners
are the corporations who supported
winning candidates from either party.
Record-breaking anonymous corporate
spending in elections paid off, and by
January, many corporations will have
new friends in office.
Spending reached new heights
thanks to the January 2010 Supreme
Court case Citizens United v. Federal
Election Commission (FEC). The 5-4
majority overturned two precedents re-
garding the First Amendment rights of
corporations: Austin v. Michigan Cham-
ber of Commerce(1990), which upheld a
Michigan law that prohibited corpora-
tions from spending money on political
speech related to candidates, and Mc-
Connell v. FEC(2003), which upheld a
similar federal law. The Citizens United
case voided these two cases, ruling that
corporations have a First Amendment
protection of speech just like individu-
als. This decision threatens to turn our
democracy into a corporatocracy, where
the government serves the interests of
private business rather than the public.
In Austin (1990), the Supreme Court
examined the constitutionality of the
Michigan Campaign Finance Act, which
banned corporations from spending
their own money on political speech for
or against candidates running for state
office. The Court believed that “state-
created advantages,” such as the ability
of shareholders to have limited respon-
sibility for a corporation’s debt “permit
[corporations] to use resources amassed
in the economic marketplace to obtain
an unfair advantage in the political mar-
ketplace.” In other words, state laws al-
low corporations to operate effectively,
and the success of a corporation does
not reflect public support of the cor-
poration’s political ideas. For example,
advocates of alternative energy research
need to buy gasoline from gasoline com-
panies that would support a different
energy policy. The Supreme Court ruled
that the government has a responsibil-
ity to limit corporate spending in elec-
tions because the government facilitates
the accumulation of corporate wealth,
and this “corporate wealth can unfairly
influence elections.”
Before the 2003 case McConnell v.
FEC, corporations could sidestep the
government’s ban on corporate spend-
ing by engaging in “issue advocacy”—
speech that avoided words such as “vote
for” and “vote against.” The 2002 Mc-
Cain-Feingold Act set out to close this
loophole by prohibiting a new category
of speech called “electioneering commu-
nications,” television or radio ads that
mention candidates and are broadcast-
ed within several weeks of a primary or
general election. Senator Mitch McCon-
nell challenged the Act, arguing that the
MONEY TA LK S
How corporation$ want to $hape our democracy
re-
striction
on electioneering com-
munications violated
the First Amend-
ment rights of
corporations. In a
5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld
the law. Without it, the Court believed,
corporations would use their state-sanc-
tioned structure to amass wealth, fund
political ads that mention candidates by
name, and influence elections.
O P E N I N G T H E F LO O D G AT E S
O F CO R P O R AT E S P E N D I N G
Before the 2008 primary elections, Citi-
zens United, a conservative non-profit
corporation challenged the McCain-
Feingold Act’s ban on electioneering
communications. The group produced
a film titled Hillary: The Movie, which
criticized Senator Clinton as a presiden-
tial candidate, and then attempted to
distribute the film through on-demand
cable television. Citizens United filed a
suit against the FEC, hoping to exempt
their film from the electioneering com-
munications provision of the McCain-
Feingold Act. In a 5-4 ruling, Citizens
United v. FEC struck down the McCain-
Feingold Act’s ban and overruled the en-
tire Austin decision, which had provided
a rationale for regulating corporate
expenditures. Corporations, the Court
ruled, have a First Amendment right to
the freedom of speech even when that
speech mentions candidates.
Without delay, President Obama
called the decision “a major victory for
big oil, Wall Street banks, health insur-
ance companies [and other powerful
interests].” Corporations once had to
jump through legal hoops to influence
politics, forming separate political ac-
tion committees (PAC) that ran ads fi-
nanced by voluntary contributions from
employees. After Citizens United, cor-
porations can speak loudly with millions
and millions of dollars from their own
treasuries.
Jeffrey Toobin emphasizes in The
New Yorker how corporate money could
similarly impact state elections. Al-
though two-thirds of states elect judges,
the public pays little attention to these
races. Corporations, on the other hand,
“have a huge stake in the outcome, be-
cause most personal-injury lawsuits and
other civil cases are handled at the state
level.”
For several years, California, the
Wild West of campaign finance, has al-
lowed corporations to spend unlimited
amounts in state elections. In 2006, the
software company Intuit, which produc-
es TurboTax, spent $1 million trying to
defeat Democrat John Chiang who sup-
ported a free tax-preparation program
for low-income residents.
Over the summer, Target and Best
Buy contributed a combined $250,000
from their own treasuries to a PAC that
ran advertisements for an anti-gay rights
Min-
nesota Repub-
lican gubernatorial candidate.
Faced with protests and consumer boy-
cotts across the country, Target CEO
Gregg Steinhafel apologized and claimed
to have only wanted a business climate
conducive to growth, i.e., low corporate
taxes. Nevertheless, Target and Best
Buy’s contributions could have led to
anti-gay policies that affect citizens, not
corporations.
Corruption once meant selling votes
for money, like the 1991 “AzScam” scan-
dal where seven Arizona legislators ac-
cepted bribes as a reward for supporting
legalized gambling. Today’s corruption
rarely involves handshakes, secret codes,
or briefcases full of money. Instead, poli-
ticians simply pass laws that benefit the
same corporations from which they ac-
cept thousands in donations. And they
get away with it. Senator John McCain,
for example, received $894,379 from
telecommunications PACs and regis-
tered lobbyists from January 2007 to
June 2009. Unsurprisingly, Senator Mc-
Cain introduced the “Internet Freedom
Act” to block FCC regulation of broad-
band networks (net neutrality), which
telecom companies oppose.
Our political system is especially cor-
rupt when the public is forced to choose
between two parties who will both keep
a corporation’s interests in mind. Ac-
cording to the Center for Responsive
Politics, from 1990 to 2010, AT&T fairly
evenly split $45,461,879 in donations
between Democrats and Republicans.
The website Ars Technica characterizes
AT&T as a company “whose political do-
nation strategy is to spread the money
evenly, so that no matter what happens,
AT&T has pals on Capitol Hill and in the
White House.”
Citizens should be concerned because
Wal-Mart, TurboTax, Target, Best Buy,
and AT&T aren’t the only companies
who want to influence political deci-
sions. BP, the company responsible for
the oil spill in the Gulf, spent $16 million
in 2009 lobbying politicians to support
deep-water drilling leases and oppose
climate-change legislation. Coal com-
panies, of which one is responsible for
a West Virginia mine disaster that killed
29 workers in April, have spent more
than $24 million since 2009 lobbying
candidates to oppose regulations of air
pollution, coal ash disposal, and mine
safety. Some people doubt the effective-
ness of lobbying, but David Kirkpatrick
of the New York Times writes, “private
influence-seekers shower big contribu-
tions on politicians because they want to
gain access and shape policy; they would
not spend the money if they got nothing
in return.” With Citizens United, health
insurance companies, pharmaceutical
companies, and Wall Street companies,
can do more than lobby; they can anony-
4
National Commentary
mously
bankroll like-
minded candidates to office.
THE GOLDEN CALF
And that’s exactly what they did in the
midterm election. Corporations gave
millions to tax-exempt 501(c) groups
that don’t need to reveal the sources of
their donations. According to the New
York Times, outside groups not affili-
ated with political parties spent $51.6
million on the 2006 midterms. For the
2010 midterms, these groups spent
$280 million. About 60 percent of that
spending came from groups who don’t
disclose their donors, and most of the
anonymous spending benefited Repub-
licans.
Many candidates owe their victories
to this increase in anonymous spend-
ing. The Wall Street Journal reports,
“Republican groups prevailed in nearly
75 percent of the House races in which
they significantly out-spent Democratic
organizations.” Thirteen-term Rep. Paul
Kanjorski (D-PA) lost his re-election af-
ter conservative groups bombarded his
campaign with $500,000 of ads. Similar-
ly, fourteen-term Rep. John Spratt (D-
SC) lost his re-election after two conser-
vative organizations spent a combined
$650,000 on attack ads.
Citizens United sold public elections
to corporate interests. In a Congressio-
nal approach to the problem, Rep. Chris
Van Hollen (D-MD) introduced the DIS-
CLOSE Act (“Democracy Is Strength-
ened by Casting Light On Spending
in Elections”), which would require
CEOs of corporations and presidents of
unions to appear in the ads their groups
finance. Additionally, any group that re-
ceives corporate or union money would
need to list its top five sources of contri-
butions.
In Citizens United, every justice ex-
cept for Clarence Thomas confirmed the
government’s constitutional ability to
require disclosure of corporate spend-
ing and advertisement disclaimers.
Other legislative proposals would limit
the influence of foreign-owned corpo-
rations, tighten the restrictions that
prevent federal contractors from influ-
encing elections, and require sharehold-
ers to approve corporate spending on
campaign ads. The DISCLOSE Act and
similar ideas would protect our coun-
try from corporatocracy, but 39 Senate
Republicans blocked debate on the Act
in September. At least they didn’t vote
anonymously.
DAVID BR AUN B’14 is the CA$H
MONEY DOLLAR$ WAL-MART.
5 N O V E M B E R 18 2010 T H E C O L L E G E H I L L I N D E P E N D E N T
Metro
BRO W N & S L AV E RY:
T H E U PDAT E
I
by Sarah Gibson | Illustration by Robert Sandler
n 2003, Brown University Presi-
dent Ruth Simmons appointed
a Steering Committee on Slav-
ery and Justice to research and
reflect upon the university’s
“historical relationship to slav-
ery.” The committee found that
the transatlantic slave trade had
contributed to the wealth of
many prominent Rhode Island families
who helped to establish, run, and fund
the university in its early years, includ-
ing the Browns. The Steering Committee
included these findings in their October
2006 report, along with several recom-
mendations about how these revelations
should inform the University’s scholarly
pursuits and relationship to communi-
ties “disadvantaged by the slave trade.”
The report reads:
Universities express their priorities first
and foremost in their selection of fields of
study. We believe that Brown, by virtue of
its history, has a special opportunity and
obligation to foster research and teaching
on the issues broached in this report, in-
cluding slavery and other forms of historic
and contemporary injustice, movements to
promote human rights, and struggles over
the meaning of individual and institutional
responsibility. We recommend the estab-
lishment of a scholarly center dedicated to
these questions.
In February 2007, President Simmons
issued an official University response to
the report, stating the establishment of
a “major research and teaching initia-
tive on slavery and justice” as one of the
University’s primary goals. To this end,
the report authorized a new committee
to decide on the “shape, cost, and scope”
of the initiative, and recommended that
fundraising begin “in order not to delay
implementation.” More than three years
later, fundraising has yet to begin and
a director has yet to be named, leaving
many to wonder what can explain the de-
lay and who is ultimately accountable for
this process.
THE FIRST THREE YEARS
In Spring 2007, Provost Kertzer ap-
pointed ten faculty members to the
Advisory Committee on a Slavery and
Justice Initiative and named Econom-
ics professor Glenn Loury as commit-
tee chair. The committee was supposed
to determine the specifics of the Center,
but its recommendations were vague.
The 2008 Advisory Committee report
suggested that, depending on the vi-
sion of the director, the Center could ad-
dress issues of human trafficking, crimes
against humanity, genocide, political
philosophy, mass incarceration, and “the
history and contemporary manifesta-
tions of the idea of ‘race.’” The report
recommended establishing a permanent
endowment to support the institute, but
it did little to define an actual budget, ar-
ticulate perimeters for the Center’s intel-
lectual scope, or to unite faculty in their
vision of a Center. There does not appear
to be any official University response to
this report, and several professors cur-
rently involved in looking for a response
say that they’ve never heard mention
of Loury’s report, let alone read it.
There are conflicting versions of what
happened next. Provost Kertzer claims
that soon after the 2008 report came
out, he asked Anthony Bogues, Kenneth
Sacks, and Elliot Gorn, then the respec-
tive chairs of the Africana, History, and
American Civilization departments, to
begin searching for a director. However,
Professor Bogues says that he, Sacks,
and Gorn conceived of a joint search
for a director, identified a candidate,
and dedicated a tremendous amount of
time and effort into convincing faculty,
Provost Kertzer, and the Dean of the
Faculty to follow through with this ini-
tiative. Other faculty members corrobo-
rate Bogues’ account. When asked why
so much of the momentum had to come
from individual faculty rather than the
administration, History professor and
director search committee member Seth
Rockman explained that this is often the
way things get done at an institution as
big as Brown. “In a decentralized univer-
sity,” says Rockman, “if you want to make
stuff happen, you just have to go out and
make it happen. Faculty members [have
to look] for ways to short-circuit institu-
tional hindrances.”
By Spring 2010, the University had
offered the job to the first-choice can-
didate that the three departments had
selected: historian and activist Marcus
Rediker. Despite the administration’s
efforts to draw him to Brown, Rediker
unexpectedly turned down the job last
April citing personal reasons. Rockman
calls Rediker’s decision “tragic,” reflect-
ing: “[It’s been] hard to find a scholar
who can bridge all the departments. You
can find someone who knows a lot about
the legacy and doesn’t know squat about
what actually happened, and someone
who has studied this historically but
isn’t interested in the contemporary is-
sues of legacy and public memory.” Ac-
cording to Rockman and others involved
in the search committee, Rediker would
have satisfied all the constituencies.
FA L L 2 0 1 0
This summer and fall, a director search
committee (now lead by Africana Stud-
ies chair Tricia Rose) relaunched their
search, but its focus on finding an ideal
director reveals the challenges of envi-
sioning a Center. Rockman notes that
circumstances of the involved depart-
ments—professors departing from
the American Civilization department,
Americanists retiring from the History
department, and Africana Studies look-
ing to attract candidates for its new
graduate school—have shaped their
agendas in relation to the Center. Since
there is so little consensus about the fo-
cus and organization of the Center, the
University is relying on finding a director
who has the authority to shape a Center
as he or she sees fit.
History professor Michael Vorenberg,
a director search committee member,
remains hopeful that this method will
allow them to find a visionary director:
“There are people who would be very
attracted to the position, but some of
those people would want a strong hand
in shaping it, as opposed to trying to fit
into an existing mold,” he says. “That
means that [Brown] should be careful
not to set the definitions and boundar-
ies too clearly.”
However, other members of the
search committee take issue with this
method. Professor of Africana Studies
Corey Walker comments, “I think it is
imperative for the university to have a
coherent conception for what it imag-
ines as a Center [before recruiting a di-
rector].” Rather than asking a candidate
to formulate his or her own vision and
then negotiate the Center’s scope and
cost privately with the University, Walk-
er says that there should be “a dialogue
of visions from both the university and
the director…to create a strong, viable
teaching and research enterprise.” While
the current amorphousness of a Center
and the total lack of a budget or endow-
ment may be attractive to some people,
it could ultimately make establishing a
Center more difficult.
Some professors were willing to dis-
cuss their opinion of and involvement in
this initiative but the majority of faculty I
contacted refused to comment. It is clear
that the momentum for much of this ini-
tiative has come from department chairs
and been maintained by faculty, but the
silences surrounding this process make
it challenging to trace responsibility for
its successes and setbacks.
The official University response in
February 2007 placed ultimate responsi-
bility for the Center’s creation on the ad-
ministration. In 2007, Simmons wrote:
“The President and Provost will guide the
process [of establishing a Center] in such
a way that it does not fall prey to the bu-
reaucratic hurdles that can delay imple-
mentation.” Provost Kertzer maintains
that despite these bureaucratic hurdles,
the economic downturn, and the disap-
pointment of Rediker’s last-minute de-
cision, the University is in fact deeply
committed to a Center. He describes it
as becoming an important space —both
physically and intellectually—for the
work of Brown undergraduates, gradu-
ate students, faculty, post-doc fellows,
and researchers. When asked why there
has been no fundraising for the Center to
date, he explained: “although the Presi-
dent has let it be known among some of
Brown’s financial supporters that this
is going to be an important fundraising
target, we are waiting for a founding di-
Alm
o
Univ st five
e y
for a rsity st ears lat
dire ill se er,
ctor arch
ing
rector to help formulate the vision that
will enable us to fundraise successfully…
Given the fact that President Simmons
sees this as an important priority and is
so good at fundraising, I feel confident
that this project will succeed.” President
Simmons was not available for com-
ment.
THE MEANTIME
Despite frustrating setbacks and a lack
of movement from the administration,
there has been progress in the past few
months; the search committee has nar-
rowed its list of director candidates, and
although committee members are un-
willing to share information publicly, it
appears that they are in the getting clos-
er to making a choice. In the meantime,
though, the energy that surrounded the
2006 Slavery and Justice Committee Re-
port has faded, and the questions raised
by the report—how histories of injus-
tice permeate the present, what kind
of scholarly and activist pursuits can
emerge from knowledge of this past, how
meaningful discussions about slavery,
justice, race, privilege, and responsibil-
ity can happen on campus and in Provi-
dence—have yet to become ingrained in
the undergraduate experience at Brown.
Few students read the Report or know
about the status of the University’s pro-
posed initiatives, and the transience
of the student body makes this kind of
continuity almost impossible without a
physical center to house this work and
remind us of its importance.
When asked what undergraduates are
supposed to do while the University bu-
reaucracy, departments’ agendas, and
challenging circumstances slow the cre-
ation of a center, Rockman says that
“there isn’t a centralized mechanism for
this kind of work—basically, undergrads
have to assume that there are existing
places that are attuned to the impor-
tance of slavery and justice to the Uni-
versity, and pursue those.” With the help
of President Simmons, Rockman set up
the Slavery and Justice Undergradu-
ate Research Award for undergraduates
interested in presenting work related
to these issues at a “Slavery and Capi-
talism” conference that Rockman is or-
ganizing jointly with Harvard for April
2011. When Rediker was still slated to be
director, this conference was to coincide
with the launch of Brown’s Center for
the Study of Slavery and Justice. Now,
though, it serves as a reminder of the po-
tential for Brown to pursue these issues
in a meaningful, rigorous way, and of the
continued need for a center to consoli-
date and support these efforts.
SAR AH GIBSON B’10.5 was the first
redhead I made friends with at Brown.
 THEINDY.ORG
A Brief History of
Automotivation
1 8 9 6 In May of 1896, the Rhode Is-
land State Fair Association announced
$5,000 in prizes for a series of horseless
carriage races. Only vehicles propelled
by power other than animal—which is
to say, inanimate—that could be demon-
strated to run at least 15 miles per hour
would be permitted to enter the race.
The races would be held at Narragansett
Park, a dirt trotting ground opened by
Amasa Sprague in Cranston, RI. An ar-
ticle in the May 16, 1896 Scientific Amer-
ican said, “Racing of this kind has been
attempted before, but never on so large
a scale… Certainly no ‘infant industry’
was ever so coddled and fostered by the
offer of large rewards; up to the present
time the results in this country have not
been worth the cost.” History suggests
otherwise.
1 8 9 6 There had only been two horse-
less carriage races before the September
races at Narragansett Park—one in Chi-
cago, and one in New York City on May
30, 1896. Both of these earlier races had
been road races through the city streets.
As a result, neither had been “produc-
tive of fast or even moderate time.” Ac-
cording to The Scientific American, “The
[Rhode Island] State Fair management
realized the importance of giving inven-
tors an opportunity to show what speed
results can be obtained.” The September
7, 1896 race at Narragansett Park was
possibly the first automobile race around
a track in American history.
The Riker Electric Carriage won first
prize for the fastest mile, surprising a
public that had already put its faith in
petroleum and discounted the electric
motor. The first race alone gathered some
5,000 spectators. One spectator wrote
that while “the crowd that witnessed the
race was very enthusiastic, but it was a
strange sight to see the so-called ‘vehicle
of the future’ taking the place of horses
on the race track.”
1 93 4 The original Narragansett Park,
outside of Cranston, disappeared from
history. In 1934, another trotting
ground was opened in Pawtucket under
the same name.
1 9 45 When car ownership boomed
following World War II, Providence
grew desperately congested. In 1945,
The Rhode Island Department of Public
Works (RIDPW) came up with a plan for
an expressway network to alleviate traf-
fic.
1 955 A section of travel lanes strung
between the Rhode Island-Connecticut
border and Richmond, Rhode Island
opened to traffic on December 12, 1955.
In July 1958, another stretch of road
opened between West Greenwich and
West Warwick. The following year, both
of these sections became part of the new
Interstate Route 95.
Traffic was alleviated and commutes
6
Features
by Maud Doyle
Graphic by the author
Design by Liat Werber
1896
1896
became faster and easier. Small shops
closed when drivers began passing over 1896
1896 FORD MOTOR
local streets on overpasses and many in- AUTOMOTIVE CAR
dividuals and business were displaced by
the new highway.
1896
1 9 60 ’s By the 1960s, I-95 was well
under construction. It was common prac- 1902
VICTOR STEAM
tice for rascals and scallywags to build in CAR
the path of the highway, then sell their
land to the RIDPW at a profit. Pawtucket
city officials awarded a garbage contrac-
tor the right to build a garbage incinera-
tor in the new highway’s path, forcing
1 93 4
1934
TWO-DOOR FORD SEDAN
RIDPW to purchase the incinerator from
the city and deal with pounds of waste.
1938
1 978 In 1978, Narragansett Park 1 937 NISSAN
closed when gamblers began abandon- PASSENGER CAR
ing horseraces for new forms of specula-
tion. The only building left standing to-
day is the grandstand, which has served 1 9 47
as Building 19 1/9 discount retail store
since the late 1980s. 1945
AUSTIN CAR
1 9 9 0 ’s The “I-way” Project to relo
cate a section of I-195 was taken on in
the early 1990s. By moving I-195 south
1950
of the hurricane barrier, the elevated CITROEN
highways that cut through the Jewelry
district could be relocated to the city’s
periphery, opening up 35 acres of land.
Eight acres have been set aside for pub-
lic parks, 19.2 for development, and the
rest will go to recreating the roads that 1 9 60 ’s 1961
had been destroyed by I-195. CHEVROLET IMPALA
Politicians envision multi-use office
buildings overflowing with high-paying 1 9 60 ’s
jobs in the knowledge economy. City
planners emphasize a return to the lay-
out of the Jewelry District before it was
1 974
cut up by the highway, waving 1937 AWESOME RED CAR
maps of Providence before journalists
and assuring a re-creation of historic 1 97 9
street patterns. LINCOLN VERSAILLES
2 01 0 November 14, 2010: Google
Maps recommends taking the I-195 to
2010
the I-95 to get from Bagel Gourmet to BENTLEY
Providence Place.
In the Future, electric cars will FUTURE
BENTLEY
be out in force, and Downtown Provi
dence, according to planners, will look
much like the 1937 version of itself.
But most of the neighborhoods dis
turbed by the highways in the 1950s will
remain untouched. Visitors will continue
accidentally merging with the I-95 when
trying to park at Providence Place. I-95
continues to cut through Providence,
dividing the prosperous Downtown and MAUD DOYLE B’11 does not have a license bexcause she does not know how
to drive.
East Side from the rest.
7 N O V E M B E R 18 2010 T H E C O L L E G E H I L L I N D E P E N D E N T
Opinions
AN OPINION ON OPINIONS
So what constitutes an opinion? Perhaps an opinion is
a kind of cobwebby toy, forgotten in the lumber-room
of the mind, which, some day, you imagine your mother
searching for. Or perhaps, an opinion is the product of
a leap over the chasm of a hypothesis, or a resolution
made in the midst of interminable doubt, presenting
itself as a memory recovered—perhaps opinions, like
tough bulbs, pack themselves under in childhood, and
that error arises when children have forgotten they are
children and play themselves as adults.
T H AY E R P E D E S T R I A N ZO N E ( T P Z )
The Oldsmobile has returned to its gated lair and the
soccer Odyssey no longer haunts the daylight hours.
In their place are longboard curves to make you weep
and a fixie from a Nice-Slice wet dream. The pavement
is spilled black coffee instead of skid marks. Once the
sun falls behind the Biltmore, bikers stroll arm-in-arm
to Tedeschi followed by lovers holding hands under the
four stars of the Providence night. I want to be able
to hear the dude playing John Coltrane on the corner.
Let’s ban cars from Thayer Street and create the TPZ.
R O B OT TA K E OV E R
In various periods throughout my life, I’ve referred to
myself as a democrat, socialist, liberal, moderate, left-
ist, and progressive. But I’ve come to suspect recently
that politically, I think my true political affiliation is as
a robocrat. Robocracy, or government-run-by-robots,
is not exactly a new idea; the idea gets posed in a lot
of ‘50s and ‘60s science fiction by people like Isaac Asi-
mov. When you get right down to it, humans are pretty
flawed; and thus, all systems of governments run by
humans have their problems. That’s why I intend to
fully support the robot overlords when they decide it’s
time to take over the world for our own benefit.
T H E C E L LO
The cello is the greatest instrument. Because it is not
especially portable, so the people who play it have to be
dedicated enough to haul that shit around, and you will
never be bothered by someone playing one on a subway.
Because its name is practically onomatopoeic. Cell-o.
Cell-o. Chills down your spine, every time. Because it’s
deep and low and sexy, painful sexy, makes-you-cry
sexy, because once the cello’s involved, you will be cry-
ing: the violin will yammer on the first date about his
LSAT test prep classes; the viola will know how charm-
ing he is and be all too quick to slip that hand up your
skirt; but the cello, oh, he’ll have you in tears, red and
hot and raw.
 
PS: LSAT test prep classes are bullshit; if you can’t do
logic games on your own, I don’t want you to be my
lawyer.
S M E L L S L I K E H O L I DAY S P I R I T
It’s that time of year again. The red cups are out at Star-
bucks. As much as I love these tokens of holiday spirit
(it is the only time of year I get my coffee from the yup-
py chain) it’s too early! Red cups mean warmth against
the frigid New England winter, and comfort, and joy. It
is 61° today.  Starbucks’ chairs aren’t even comfortable.
And these cups are making me so mad that no way I
could be joyful. It’s like Christmas carols—only to be
listened to after Thanksgiving. From November 26 to
December 25, red cups and carols are to be savored. Un-
til then, you may don a pilgrim hat if you wish.
TO P R E - A D U LT H OA R D E R S
Dear Students, please stop acquiring things. All you
need in college is a futon. Maybe a skillet. You are on the
move. You are going places. And you should not need a
U-Haul to go to the places where you’re going. You are
full of youthful creative energy––lash your goods to the
roof of your friend’s suburban. Studio apartments don’t
need dining room tables, or reading lamps, or, (least of
all), potted plants. They catch dust. Your limbs are lim-
ber, eat on the floor. Your eyes are young, read in the
dark. And you’re green enough as you are. Live large.
Grow out your hair, trim down your horde.  Parliament sports such political gems as politicians
You are a student. You’re gonna make it. You’re a survi-
vor. Keep on survivin’.
SMILE
I wish that you would smile.
We’ve met before, I’m sure––
You don’t recall?
We chatted for a while.
Is it dull, having seen it all,
at the ripe young age of 21?
I know you’re having a rough morning,
But wasn’t last night fun?
You must yearn for joy underneath––
Displeasure must be such a trial.
Easier to part your lips and show your teeth,
And break into a smile.
W H Y I S E V E RY H E A D L I N E F R A M E D A S A
QUESTION?
Here are several of your current Slate headlines. “Could
the Voting Rights Act Prevent Republicans from Redis-
tricting as they Please?” “Why Didn’t Elizabeth Smart
Run Away?” For especially curious jocks, “The State of
the NFL” provides a choice of questions: “Is Instant
Replay Over-used?” “Will Players Eventually be 600
Pounds?” and “Is the League Overprotective of Quar-
terbacks?’ For guys who love to print out articles for
their girlfriends, “Why do women who have anal sex get
more orgasms?”
The Daily Beast, fresh off its merger with Newsweek
(Daily Beast in 2009: Can the Re-launched Newsweek
Survive?”) asks us, themselves, nobody, “Is Alaska’s Joe
Miller Committing Political Suicide?” Even TheAtlantic.
com has asked into the trend: “Does ‘Morning Glory’
Get Female Journalists Right?” As I understand it, one
reads news to receive answers, not to be asked ques-
tions. So why all the uncertainty? Why not just, “Why
Elizabeth Smart Didn’t Run Away”? Is online journal-
ism just a big conversation with commenters, a town
hall rather than a soap-box? Or is the editorial freedom
of the online format simply more conducive to tougher
questions and hence, more complex answers? Oh God,
I’m doing it too, aren’t I?
PRO BUSH
When I was in ninth grade, a group of giggling girls in
my friend’s basement sat in a circle with their hands
held up. “Never have I ever,” one began, “Had a bush.”
I did know whether to put my finger down, as I did
not know what a bush was, apart from the leafy ones
in front of our porch, and they did not seem giggle-
worthy. When you are in ninth grade, you are fourteen.
Fourteen-year-old girls extending their pop-culture an-
tennas out and receiving the SHAVE-YOUR-ENTIRE-
CROTCH message. This is a terrible message, because
after the age of fourteen, you are no longer meant to
have a baby smooth baby-crotch. You are meant to cul-
tivate a lady crotch. This could mean waxing or shaving
around the edges, keeping things trim. You might like it
neat, manageable. A little smooth feels a little sexy. But
hang onto some of that hair: keep those pheromones
around, reduce damaging friction, and have a little la-
dy-love.
D I R T Y DA N C I N G
When I was thirteen, I learned yet another valuable les-
son in the third floor bathroom of School of the Im-
maculate Sacred Heart Bleeding Child. Mary Catherine
Leonard flipped on her Get Low RAZR ringtone and
showed me how to grab my knees/ankles while simul-
taneously gyrating my underdeveloped behind. At four
feet tall, it came naturally. Let your eyes drift out of fo-
cus, perhaps cross them a little, and make sure your lips
are closed to cover your braces. Move your ass back and
forth like a pendulum keeping time to the pulsing mu-
sic. Eventually, if your movements align with the natu-
ral rhythm of the moon or St. Veronique of Sensualia
or something, a mysterious magnetic force will begin
to work and draw a prepubescent partner into the or-
bit of your round bottom. No luck? Blessings, you must
be a dwarf planet. Your plexus is soo destined for the
convent.
S TAT E - S P O N S O R E D T E L E V I S I O N
CSPAN has got to go. We’ve got more pizzazz than that.
making fun of one another’s junk. We got one caning,
once, in 1856. We didn’t even have radio to get the raw
viscous sound of the sucker-punches in! No wonder no-
body votes! Ah, yesteryear. Venezuelans get to watch
their president go fucking fishing and cook steaks and
yell at people and shit every Sunday on Alo Presidente.
I would like to request an American analogue, perhaps
called Chillin’ w. Obama.
ASSHOLE
Please stop calling me an asshole. Just because I am
loud, have an “abrasive” sense of humor, and a difficult
time understanding precisely the nature and neces-
sity of physical boundaries, doesn’t it mean it doesn’t
REALLY HURT MY FEELINGS when I hear you be like
“what an asshole.” Other words you shouldn’t call me:
“dick” “douche” “bro” etc. Also, don’t call me juvenile,
childish, or immature. Shitting your pants is childish.
Joking about shitting your pants is hilarious. I only do
the latter. Dollaz! Also, please stop calling me sexist
just because I discuss my sexual urges with frankness.
I am entitled to refer to my genitals, and her genitals,
and what I want them to do to/with/w/r/t each other.
Loudly. And in public. You complaining just means you
love it. Dumbass.
SEX
Why doesn’t anyone want to have sex with me? I am in
college, and am pretty good at saying what I mean, and
I do some neat extracurriculars (okay, model UN and
yearbook I both did in high school, but slam poetry is
new!). Plus, I am pretty good looking, especially when I
take my glasses off and dress up a little. I don’t smell. I
do all my homework. I love my family, and god. I want
to be a teacher or a banker. Have sex with me.
GUNS
It would be fine if we all carried guns around. We would
just have to agree not to shoot each other. Cops have
guns, and they have simply agreed not to shoot each
other. Sometimes they shoot us, but that is because
they are on a power trip re: having a sick badge. People
without badges wouldn’t have that problem. Plus, as
we know, guns are useful tools. You can shoot out the
tire of a car that is speeding towards you, you can shoot
through a padlock on a fence guarding a high securi-
ty area. You can shoot out surveillance cameras. You
can even wave a gun around to get the guy behind the
counter to give you all the cash. I think it’s pretty self-
evident that gun laws are unreasonable, and that more
guns would be a good thing.
PORN
I am really interested in porn aesthetics. Like, close-
up, full visible penetration, loud moaning. Also, having
things categorized by the age (young girls / young boys,
old men and young girls, old men and young boys, old
couple + young person, etc.) and race (blacks, asians,
hispanics, and also white people). It’s good that porn
isn’t too nuanced or too complicated. Just fucking raw
and to the point. I also think that porn has a good order
of operations, which is always simultaneously predict-
able and surprising (meeting/walking in on, undress-
ing, oral, fucking, cumming all over each other). I am
in favor of incorporating elements of porn aesthetics
into all aspects of our every day lives, including but not
limited to rap music, horror movies, internet memes,
thriller novels, sporting events, snack food advertise-
ments, and even political speeches.
M I D N I G H T M OV I E S
Midnight movies are supposed to be for like, really
hardcore fans. The kind who stay up EXTRA LATE to
watch whatever’s coming out RIGHT WHEN IT’S COM-
ING OUT, sooner than anyone else at least within their
time zone. They buy tickets, dress up as a something,
and wait in line talking about how early they bought
tickets and how long they’ve been waiting in line. How
much they’ve been inconvenienced by their devotion.
But really, when they get out of the movie, it’s only like
two or two thirty in the morning. Two thirty isn’t very
inconvenient or hardcore at all. Midnight movies are
easy; I’m pretty sure even a semi-casual fan could go
like no big deal. I think they should change midnight
movies to like, six am movies, or maybe five am. It re-
ally sucks to be awake at five am. People would have to
go to bed at eight and wake up at four and it would be
really terrible but then we’d see who the true fans really
are.
 THEINDY.ORG
I NFI N I T Y C A ROL S
Malls, Music,
Black Friday, and
the Advent of the
Holiday Season
E
by Alex Spoto
very Black Friday, people
die shopping. The holiday
season hits full throttle
on the day after Thanks-
giving; it has become the
high mass for an epoch
of shopping—a pagan,
natural beat in the year-
long rhythm of our lives. Whether it’s
going to be one of the biggest sales days
this year or not won’t keep people from
engaging in the ritual of frenzied con-
sumerist Bacchanalia. Trees sprout up
in unnatural places decked with lights
and garlands, oversized stockings hang
expectantly, and America’s faces are
cheerily softened with snowy gauze and
festive sparkle.
Tastes change. Every holiday shop-
ping season, there is some new “must-
have” and a new record number of peo-
ple trampled. But the holiday aesthetic
is a static one—it plays off of nostalgia
and familiarity: Christmas trees, Santa
Claus, and most importantly, Christmas
carols and holiday music. Each year there
are slightly altered incarnations, but get-
ting into the spirit often means engag-
ing with that which is most recognizable.
Consumer products—from the paper
cups at Starbucks to limited edition can-
dies—are the archetypal sites of season-
al transformations: everything you’ve
ever loved (or hated) about the holidays
is wrought into an all-encompassing aes-
thetic. Insular though they may be, ev-
ery town has a mall—concrete, tangible
altars on which to converge and channel
consumers’ desires.
There is still a week to go before
Thanksgiving, but the mall and many
of its stores are already flirting with
shoppers, flaunting signs of the holiday
season in anticipation of the ultimate
consumerist climax: Black Friday. From
that day on, both the stores and their
customers ride this economy-defying,
frenzied wave of retail pleasure until the
big day finally arrives...
I T ’ S B E G I N N I N G TO S O U N D A
LOT L I K E C H R I S T M A S
Mid-November, Providence Place Mall is
already dripping with white icicle lights,
silver garlands, and shining red bulbs.
The holiday decorations hang down from
the ceiling through the many levels to
create this top-down command over the
mall’s most public spaces with a cohe-
sive, all-encompassing Christmas cheer.
Some of the most hard-hitting holiday
symbolism comes through music. For all
of the heavy-handed advertisement and
decoration, perhaps the Christmas songs
and sounds are what really bring the sea-
son’s spirit to life. As the carol goes:
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas/
Soon the bells will start/
And the thing that will make them ring/
Is the carol that you sing/
Right within your heart/
Stores’ background music is typically
a good barometer to determine how
“Christmas-y” a particular store is, and
each business transitions into the sea-
son at a different pace.
Muffled, thumping bass emanates
from the dark entrance of Abercrombie
& Fitch. For those brave enough to enter
the maw-like storefront despite the mu-
sic’s volume, smoke machines, and ever-
present musk (I think this is a man-per-
fume available for purchase), the music
reveals itself to be a deep-bass club mix
of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christ-
mas.” It’s unclear what the marketing
strategy here is. The way the A&F mix
sequences the lyric “merry little” into
an electronic blowup evokes conflicting
sentiments of fireside, family-friendly
nostalgia and a sticky-floored frat party.
Many stores do a ‘soft’ transition into
Christmastime. This means they hold off
on overt Christmas-themed advertis-
ing slogans and mood music, but put up
some initial decorations and dress the
front windows in wintery reds, whites,
and greens. For example, Macy’s—a
more traditional department store—was
teeming with Christmas decorations but
was a mess of sound with several con-
flicting musical styles. Every ten racks
there seemed to be some different kind
of music playing. Pants had a differ-
ent soundtrack than shirts, but neither
contained a single carol or holiday tune.
One employee at Macy’s said, “it’s a mix
for now, but it’s still a little bit too early.”
The holiday music is turned on for only
some of the time.
J. Crew has held off on holiday music
entirely. The store gets its music from
the “multi-sensory” branding agency
auspiciously named “DMX,” and the CD
full of trendy Christmas music hasn’t
arrived yet, according to an employee.
Justice, a tweeny-pop glitter mart, has
yet to roll out any sign of Christmas
outside of some hamster dolls in Santa-
suits. Places that have an unmistakable
brand, like the Apple Store, coolly allude
to Christmas gift-buying rather than
stooping to store-wide transformations.
Williams & Sonoma, on the other hand,
waits until Thanksgiving comes to a close
before kicking off Christmas. Since the
store’s business centers on food, it milks
Thanksgiving for all it’s worth. “Other
stores transition gradually. We do it all
at once,” said Taylor, an employee at the
Providence Place location.
On Thanksgiving, the “visual team”
stays until two AM to transform the
store into Christmas overnight. A fresh
regiment of Williams & Sonoma employ-
ees arrive at four AM on Black Friday to
meet the masses of shoppers. “You’ll
definitely hear the sleigh bells if you
come in here on the day after Thanksgiv-
ing,” Taylor said.
It’s difficult to gauge what makes the
most inviting transition into the season:
a polite courtship with Christmas deco-
rations and holiday tunes, or waking up
one morning to find every corner of your
workplace glittering and jingling.
MA XIMUM CHRISTMAS
One place that is required to push the
Christmas Spirit 100 percent is the sea-
sonal store—obligatory in every mall. At
Providence Place, the store is a decora-
tion in and of itself—a shop set up only
for the last two months of the year. It’s
called “A Christmas To Remember,” des-
ignated by not-quite-permanent signage
festooned atop the store’s entrance. The
inventory is full and festive. Garlands,
nutcrackers, snow globes and baubles
flesh out the shelves. The music has a
contemporary beat—it lends a strident
energy to the inventory of Christmas ba-
sics, hitting on the canon of Christmas
carols but using some unlikely rendi-
tions.
A Christmas To Remember is, in fact,
a chain, and its parent company gets mu-
sic and sends it to store managers on a
CD to play throughout the season. This
branch’s manager said he’s actually been
at Providence Place since before Hallow-
een, helming the previous incarnation of
seasonal store. He admitted, “music is a
huge part of any retail business.”
For Halloween, the store would play
“spooky sounds” until around six PM,
when they would opt for the “younger
stuff ”—”younger stuff ” being the kind
of thing you hear on top 40 radio—and
that’s when the best customers stop
through: “girls come in, and it gets them
in the groove for the club.”
As one could imagine, A Christmas To
Remember has a different target market
than the previous season’s Halloween
store. “When people walk in the door,
we hit them with scents, the evergreen
smells, and music…Music gets the emo-
tions going, and it gets people thinking
about where they were last Christmas
and what they’re going to be doing for
this Christmas,” he says.
The aggressive Christmas branding
is working to create a sense of continu-
ity amongst Christmases—a feeling of
timelessness. The looped CD of Christ-
mas music creates an infinity carol:
stores make sure you don’t forget what
month it is and that Santa Claus is com-
ing. The Christmas continuity doesn’t
just go from year to year, but store to
store as you stroll through the mall.
HEARING: THE SENSE YO U
CAN’T TURN OFF
Parent companies and branding agen-
cies such as DMX and the Muzak corpo-
ration (the colloquial term for canned
8
Features
Illustration by Thom Finley
music is actually the name of the first
company to make the stuff ) force a holi-
day soundtrack throughout nationwide
chains. For example, DMX provides
branding for many of Providence Place’s
stores: Levi’s, J. Crew, Lucky Brand,
Guess?, Foot Locker, the Pottery Barn…
The stores all have different fronts—dif-
ferent brands mean different music—but
when the holidays roll around, the stores
are merely playing different versions of
the same carols. Banding together the
world’s background music under holi-
day-themed tracks affirms the regularity
of unabashed over-commercialization.
Traditionally, Christmas caroling in-
volves standing on the threshold of a
neighbor’s door and delivering warm-
hearted cheer. In a sick inversion, a mob
of shoppers broke down the locked door
of a Long Island Wal-Mart on November
28, 2008 and trampled a temporary em-
ployee, Jdimytai Damour, to death while
he was trying to maintain order during
a Black Friday sale. Eleven other people
were injured. Holiday over-commer-
cialization often results in absurd and
dangerous circumstances. As the season
approaches, decorations go up, and ad-
circulars get printed, it will be the music
that gets piped through the marketplace
that ties the fast-paced chaos together.
The same songs will be revisited and re-
invented, working as an historical adhe-
sive, cohering each year’s holiday season
together with a semse of heightened
nostalgia.
On December 25, the stores will seize
up in shopping silence—the seasonal
turning point—only to awake the next
day in an apocalyptic after-Christmas
comedown—a deluge of red and green
liquidation and desperation. Stores try
to hang on to a sense of festivity through
gift returns and marked down sales, and
the retail market is mired with flotsam
and jetsam made up of unused baubles
and wreath-bits. It’s not until New Years
that consumers and retailers alike can
regain their dignity and practice sober
economics. Christmastime is a life-stage
for the mall, a period of metamorphosis
during which the consumer-realm co-
coons, molts, and is reborn at the begin-
ning of the New Year.
ALEX SPOTO B’11’s favorite: “Blue
Christmas”
9 N O V E M B E R 18 2010 T H E C O L L E G E H I L L I N D E P E N D E N T
Features
Q: WHAT IS
THANKSGIVING AND
HOW CAN WE DO IT? 
A: suffer, suffer, suffer
As November grinds onwards, children
in elementary schools are asked to say,
or write down, what they are thankful
for. The times when they have felt truly
thankful, when they have conjured the
quiet, outward-yet-specific goodwill that
is thanks, are probably incidents they
cannot yet talk about well—receiving a
comforting embrace after being bullied,
being bandaged after a scrape. So inevi-
tably, they will cough up the platitudes
they have already heard: I am thankful
for my family. My cat. My video game
console. Perhaps those of them who
have gone without families, and then
gotten them back will be able to actually
be thankful for the presence of a fam-
ily. But their expression of thanks will
sound like everyone else’s, and as such
will be lost in the cute, effectively phatic
lull.
What’s dissatisfying about the obvi-
ous what-we-are-thankful-for question
and answers—physical and emotional
well-being, relative socio-economic com-
fort, loved ones—is not that they are
wrong, or merely hackneyed. It’s that
they somehow skip over what the holi-
day of Thanksgiving is about. Everyone
knows what to be  thankful for. It is
thanks itself, the means to it, and the
mechanisms therein, that need to be elu-
cidated.  the way over here, ill and on horrible
D O N ’ T J U S T TA L K ; D O S T U F F
The problem with any emotional ritual
is that—unless the feelings are codified
in conventions such that we need not
articulate them personally (a wedding
provides a good example of this, unless
you are silly enough to write your own
vows)—we have to bring that which is
private into public language.
I do not mean to argue that saying
something out loud is a bad way to make
it more palpable. A lover will tell another
lover  I love you, and the effect is tan-
gible and meaningful. But this, again, is
relatively private. The lovers know how
they treat each other, know how they at-
tend to each other, and this knowledge
can concretize the language. Public acts
of thanks usually lack this kind of nu-
ance through application. A kind parent
telling her family that she is thankful
for them is not a remarkable instantia-
tion of her kindness, much in the same
way that an unkind parent expressing
thanks for his family does not redress his
wrongs simply by saying he is grateful.
This lead-in, however, is perhaps
misleading. The problem with thanks is
not simply that it is hard to articulate
it publicly. This problem with articula-
tion merely edges towards the more pro-
found problem, which is how exactly to
BY ELI SCHMITT
GRAPHIC BY THE AUTHOR
DESIGN BY LIAT WERBER
become thankful  such that you might
have something meaningful to articu-
late. When the holiday comes, we sit
down together to pay lip-service to the
institution of gratitude, but gratitude
itself happens out-of-sight, and away
from language. Whence it comes, how it
comes, is mysterious.
Giving thanks is conditional; that is,
it is a condition. It is as Aristotle says of
virtue, an active condition of the soul.
Taking-things-for-granted may be a pas-
sive condition rather than an active con-
dition, but it still pervades your every
behavior. It follows then that the same
should be true of its opposite; thankful-
ness should be a pervasive condition,
an everyday behavior. Aristotle also
says, on the topic of virtue, that an un-
just man wishing to be just is like a sick
man wishing to be well. Following this
analogy, an ungrateful person does not
come to be thankful by saying thanks
on Thanksgiving. The condition is some-
thing practiced over time, grown into,
and understood. It is, like any trait, to be
cultivated, inculcated, ingrained.
T R I A L S A N D T R I B U L AT I O N S
There is a tradition in Western cultural
narratives of suffering, tribulation, and
hardship as definitive aspects of the path
to success. The hero must journey, the
righteous man must suffer. And for all
of our contemporary postmodern north-
eastern bourgeois decadence, we have
not abandoned this attachment to suf-
fering as part of a success narrative. One
need merely look at popular film to see
that we are most drawn to characters,
see them most vividly, and empathize
most intensely with them when they suf-
fer. In ‘serious’ films, the kinds that are
considered for Oscars, protagonists al-
most always become their own personal
Job, suffering wild brutality in order to
be able to say, at the end, I am still here,
I am alright. 
I bring up popular film as an example
because the one thing that almost all
popular films have in common is their
happy endings. The protagonist finds
happiness, or becomes happy, after suf-
fering. They know their happiness be-
cause they have seen the opposite. This
knowledge of one’s happiness I think
is perhaps our best model for what
thanks actually looks like. The narrative
is important to us culturally, and can be
traced back to our national origin myth,
namely that of the Pilgrims.
The Pilgrims were driven people in
funny hats, benevolent expatriates,
who suffered in Britain and suffered on
boats in endless unforgiving seas. They
arrived and they knew not what to do,
but they received help, and they suffered
less then, and they knew they had come
home, so they gave thanks.
Lincoln codified Thanksgiving as a
national holiday in 1863, after some of
the bloodiest parts of the Civil War. In
his proclamation on the matter, he said:
And I recommend to them  [the thanks-
givers]  that while offering up the ascrip-
tions justly due to Him for such singular
deliverances and blessings, they do also,
with humble penitence for our national per-
verseness and disobedience, commend to
his tender care all those who have become
widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in
the lamentable civil strife in which we are
unavoidably engaged.
With a penitence almost Judaic in its
ferocity, we come to see that at the very
least, a thanks-giving act as conceived
THEINDY.ORG
historically cannot merely involve ac-
knowledging the plight of the wretched,
but require existing in proximity to it,
perhaps having it as your own plight.
More like a Hebrew seder, Thanksgiving
in Lincoln’s mind involved lament as well
as hope, celebration tempered by sober re-
flection on the real possibilities for human
suffering.
And intuitively, this makes sense. The
warmth of the hearth is nicer in the win-
ter because it’s a refuge. A shower is more
pleasurable after being truly filthy. Food
:
tastes better when you’re hungry.  physical experience after the fact. One of
S U FFE R I N G
I N G RO U P S
Our relationship to communal suffering,
as Americans, is convoluted. Public suffer-
ing—suffering that is widely recognized
to have happened to many of us—is al-
most always marshaled strategically, and
usually exploited ruthlessly, for rhetori-
cal purposes. The Holocaust has become
a cliché. September 11 is well on its way.
A knock-knock joke I recently heard goes:  being in the world. But pain, as we saw
a: knock-knock
b: who’s there?
a: 9/11
b: 9/11 who?
a: i thought you said you’d never forget
To be offended by the joke is to misun-
derstand what it mocks. The joke is funny
because it literalizes the flimsy language
of the bumper stickers, flags, lighters, and
shot-glasses that proliferated after the
horror of the actual event. It acknowledges
that the language which not only citizens
but public figures and politicians used to
speak of the event was not unlike that of
elementary school children predictably
giving thanks, in line with a set of codified
conventions.
Our soupy national political discourse
has appropriated the event into a kind of
fuck-yeah-America-jam-fest. This gives
such an instance of suffering a weird bleed
with a Holiday like Thanksgiving, as it’s
practiced, where instead of meditating, we
masturbate.
Events of mass trauma affect us cultur-
ally, but they do not happen to all of us.
Thanksgiving is a national holiday, but we
don’t all give thanks for the same things.
One whose house has been destroyed by
a hurricane will have a different Thanks-
giving than one whose house is about to
be foreclosed. We can see these things on
television, and if we try hard and think a
lot, we can become effectively politically
active around them; and then maybe we
can give thanks in relation to them, or in
spite of them. But they don’t become ours
without effort.
The Thanksgiving myth and the rheto-
ric of Lincoln refer to a kind of communal
suffering, which is not legible, or made
legible, by our national discourse (and by
this I mean quite practically, news media,
political rhetoric, and internet commen-
tary therein).
But private suffering is different. Critic
Elaine Scarry points us to the obvious but
also bizarre fact that when one person
in a room is in ferocious physical pain,
another person in the room can have no
idea. It is this trait of pain, Scarry argues,
its insistent subjectivity, that enables one
person in a room to torture another. Suf-
fering, even non-physical, is perhaps bet-
ter understood like Scarry’s intensely pri-
vate pain than like the gaudy public grief
around national tragedies. 
The curious thing about suffering is
that it relates, at best, quite weirdly, to
time and memory. Demonstrating the
weird prescience of the 9/11 knock-knock
joke, Philosopher Hannah Arendt notes
that the most definitive aspect of physi-
cal pain is that you can experience it with
such great intensity, but will always be un-
able to conjure up the exact memory of the
the things language helps us do is conjure
these memories—language can describe
pain, such that we feel what we felt emo-
tionally at the time we suffered physically.
But it cannot make the pain itself come
back. Thus, at least with physical suffer-
ing, we cannot simply conjure a memory
in order to re-live the agony, and then be
thankful afterwards.
So even if we understand that suffering
and gratitude are tied up, that in order to
have thanks, you also have to have been
in pain, there is still a problem. Gratitude,
we said, was an active condition, a way of
above, is a way of being out of the world;
it is private. And what’s more, it occurs
in specific instances, specific moments in
time, and then it goes away, and is hard
to remember exactly. Gratitude as a pub-
lic, national sentiment can be made rec-
ognizable and compelling in the speeches
of orators. But pain is harder to politicize.
Outside of small collectives of people who
have suffered together (c.f. the pilgrims),
it is harder to recognize at all.
:
S U FFE R I N G
This past summer, when my car broke
down in a mid-sized city in western Wis-
consin, I had occasion to ride in the cab of
a disgruntled ex-grad student in philoso-
phy. He was excited to discover my dilet-
tantish interest in philosophy, and accord-
ingly pontificated on a variety of subjects
while he drove me from auto-shop to mo-
tel to bus-station and back again. One of
his rants was a general diagnosis of why
we are unhappy. People in modernity, he
explained, only understand how to desire
objects that they don’t have. We strive for
things we want, but once we have them,
they no longer interest us. As he began
to explain the ways in which this was a
symptom of the deterioration of human-
ity in late capitalism, my mind drifted. It
is true that I had been less excited about
driving across the country once I was actu-
ally doing it. The first leg of my road-trip
was hazy and boring. I thought that per-
haps I only became excited to drive again
when my car broke down, and that once
I was on the road again, it would still be
boring. But after the panic of losing my ve-
hicle, and being truly stuck in, what to me
was the most ungodly of places (the rural
Midwest) being able to drive again was a
blessing, a gift disproportionately more
gratifying than it had been when I started.
One thing that happens when we ex-
perience pain, to which both Scarry and
Arendt almost allude, is that we suddenly
become intense witnesses to ourselves.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, a philosopher of
language wrote: “It can’t be said of me at
all, except perhaps as a joke, that I know I
am in pain.” His point is that to be in
pain is to know, that to say what he says
above would be a wild redundancy. We can
take from Wittgenstein perhaps that suf-
fering need not be an end in itself, as in
some primitive ascetic practice, but rather
a means to a kind of intense presence,
something jarring and ephemeral that
vividly reminds us of ourselves and our
needs.  to be coping mechanisms without neces-
Ignoring the slightly problematic con-
flation of suffering generally and physical
pain (which is ultimately, in its ferocity
and intangibility, a really good metaphor
for suffering generally) it’s worth return-
ing to the pontification of the sage mid-
western cab-driver.  The inability to desire
what we have, our pursuit of endless con-
sumption, derives from intense focus on
the self. Acutely aware of one’s own striv-
ing, the real and the ideal never coalesce.
Considering this within the context of how
we celebrate Thanksgiving illustrates the
holiday’s almost comical nonsensicality.
How can we possibly consider what we are
thankful for by being indulgent? Once we
have immense quantities of delicious food
in front of us, we simply worry about calo-
ries, complain about having to be around
our relatives, and hope that someone else
will wash the dishes.  makes sense. It’s just not the right way to
The intense presence and self-aware-
ness that derives from suffering is per-
haps similar to the intense self-absorption
of the upper-middle class postmodern
bourgeois subject. Our focus on the next
thing, on eternally striving, is the behav-
ior of a person whose present condition
can offer them nothing; it is the behavior
of someone suffering. Weirdly though, we
avoid suffering, thinking about suffer-
ing, or dealing with suffering. Non-fiction
writer Barbara Ehrenreich describes, in an
extensive book about the tyranny of posi-
tive thinking in contemporary America,
how many awful things, from the plight of
breast cancer patients to the plight of the
unemployed, are treated with a deluded,
weirdly aggressive optimism. Suffering,
and saying, “I am suffering” is out of fash-
ion. As was described above, we have rele-
gated the importance of ‘bad’ experiences
being actually bad to movies and history
books. But this ideological (Ehrenreich’s
notion) positivism, this active denial of
anything negative, and the unsatisfiable
self-absorbtion of the upper-middle class
bourgeois post-modern, are both kinds
of survival mechanisms. They seem both
well-suited to people who are in a condi-
tion of unpleasantness, who need to get
past whatever it is ailing them, to be fixed,
to be better, to move on, to get on with it,
to git’r’done.  is most thankful for is simply not being
10
Features
SUPPERING
::
Our positivism and our myopic drivenness
are a strange amalgam, because they seem
sary symptoms, crisis mentalities that
don’t need a crisis. These correlate with
the “never forget” problem; we reify com-
munal suffering into meaningless rhetori-
cal gems, and thus disappear it entirely.
And this is the problem with Thanksgiv-
ing. Culturally, we rhetoricize our plural
suffering into cliché, and are constantly
living our personal lives in such a way as
so to push our suffering to the side, even
if there’s no substantial suffering to be
pushed. The consumption of an enormous
meal and reminders of what’s good about
our lives cannot jar us into being thankful
because we are used to living as though we
already suffered. If anything, overeating
and feeling guilty are ominously congru-
ous with hyper-positive, constant moving-
past-the-present that Americans practice.
We do practice Thanksgiving in a way that
practice it if we actually want to do what
we say we are doing.
As was said above, gratitude is for al-
ways. Suffering happens in instances, and
then pricks through the surface of memo-
ry in moments of poignancy. And Thanks-
giving is a holiday. We do it once a year.
We gather together to perform a ritual, to
attempt the terribly difficult task of shar-
ing an experience—of pluralizing a mo-
ment of intense subjectivity.
Which opens the question of the pos-
sibility of re-ritualizing Thanksgiving. If
:
what we would like to do is have a holiday
where people give thanks earnestly and
effectively, where people  experience  pain
such that they come into thanks the way
the a blood-stained hero at the end of a
schlocky hollywood ‘prestige piece’ does,
we should get rid of the turkey and cran-
berry and pumpkin, and just fast. Instead
of having children talk about what they
are thankful for, we should have them
meditate privately about what’s hardest,
what’s worst, about the most damaging,
desperate times they’ve known.
Perhaps we can say the holiday takes
place in Autumn for a different reason
than is conventionally believed. Fall is the
season of harvest, but also more palpably
to us now, the season where natural things
die. In secular terms, the thing everyone
dead. When we look at the leaves rotting
in damp heaps on the ground we can re-
affirm our own resistance to becoming
corpses, we can know that we are not rot-
ting on the ground. If we don’t eat, if we
conjure an unpleasantness greater than
merely nagging dissatisfaction, if we can
align ourselves with Lincoln’s “widows, or-
phans, mourners, or sufferers” perhaps we
can actually give thanks, actually conjure
gratitude in some meaningful way, not as
once-a-year gesture, but as way of being a
person among other people. And if we’re
successful, maybe we can render ourselves
actually deserving of presents once Christ-
mas rolls around. 
ELI SCHMITT B’11 is insistently subjec-
tive.
 I N T RODU C T ION TO
PH Y TO SO C IOLOGY
by Adrian Randall and Emily Martin
Let’s consider a fundamental dichot-
omy in thought and structure: the
gap between hierarchy and diffusion.
We are already familiar with both.
Hierarchy we know in two ways: the
vertical construction from God to
man, and after the Enlightenment,
the vertical construction from man’s
intellect to the world. Later we en-
counter diffusion, the explosion of
culture and identity, the spontane-
ous and arbitrary connection of all
forms between humans and Earth,
the destruction of Chinese Walls,
inter- and intra-net connections,
what many have called the rhizome.
Hence, we attempt to reconcile the
two, to consider how hierarchy can
fuse with swiftly moving quantum
links. In a word: the synthesis of the
vertical tree and the rhizome.

We can speak of the rhizome in its

components:
>> Counterposition to root-tree sys-
tems.
>> Anti-causality, anti-chronology,
anti-narrativization.
>> No specific vertices of origin, no
(0,0,0), not in search of the sundial,
but rather considerations of light,
shadow, and wind velocities.
>> Hence, the analysis of multiple
asymptotic strands, shapes pro-
duced by underlying confluences
rather than total sum conclusions.
>> Has no beginning or end; always
in the middle, between things, inter-
being, intermezzo.

In Opposition: what is the most fun-

damental appearance of hierarchy?
On spaceship Earth, in its contained
system, there is an inevitable law of
gravity. Gravity hopelessly requires
some hint of order, a reference to
farther in (greater gravity) and far-
ther out (lesser). Even Milles Pla-
teaux (and every other book or form)
finds itself bound by chapters, cover,
back cover. Until the time when the
words are plastered and burned into
every street, wall, and jungle (i.e.
Armageddon), we must consider its
semblances of hierarchy.

We resort to another structure:

phytosociology. That is, the total in-
tegration of plant ecosystems, the
existence of multiple rhizomes: rhi-
zomatic layering. Rhizome ordering.
The explosion as it occurs on axes.

Refer to the structural taxonomy

of the rainforest, its schizophrenia
and its capacity to be understood,
the floor, midway, canopy, points of
emergence. At the root level we have
termite colonies, earthworm gentri-
fication, aquifers; at the ground we
have tapirs, groundshrubs, orchida-
ceae, succulent cacti; the true canopy
contains epiphytic plants, trunks,
branches; the remaining area: howl-
er monkeys, quetzals, tucans, plat-
form villages, constellations, etc.
THEINDY.ORG
WOR K OF A RT: T H E NEXT
When Reality
TV meets artis-
tic discourse
by Amy Lehrburger
For a genre of mainstream entertain-
ment, reality television is certainly large,
and contains multitudes. In the last
decade and a half, television producers
have plumbed every corner of Real Life
for watchable content. Singers, chefs,
celebrities who can’t dance, cops, moth-
ers with problem children—all have had
their moment in the sun.
Bravo, a cable network owned by NBC,
has demonstrated a knack for the reality
TV subgenre of professional competi-
tion. Using a standard structure
(pretty host, fa-
mous judges, British mentor, dramatic
contestants, contrived challenges, grad-
ual elimination, and of course: grand
prizes), Bravo has produced near count-
less professional competition programs.
This past summer, Sarah Jessica Parker’s
production company Pretty Matches
premiered Bravo’s newest competition
series: Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.
Fourteen eager contestants were pitted
against each other over the course of ten
episodes in competition for the grand
prize: $100,000 and a solo exhibition at
the Brooklyn Museum.
Not surprisingly, the Art World
proper took offense. Critics of the show
(a drove of purists: artists, critics, and
tastemakers) begged the junk culture
factory of formulaic reality programs to
keep its hands to itself. That art could
be made under the same conditions
as dresses (from recycled material!) or
cakes (for vegan celebrity judges!) was
seen as fundamentally preposterous.1
However, most attacks on the show were
thinly veiled—and in some cases, embar-
rassed—yelps of self-defense. Real-life
G R E AT A RT I ST
artists and critics spoke out against the
show to preserve a fantasy upon which
the majority of the contemporary art
market relies: that art is pure, autono-
mous, creative expression and that there
are only a few people in the world—a
critical elite—who can tell whether art is
good or bad.
T U N I N G I N , LO G G I N G I N
The show itself is as enjoyable as any
reality television program—you’re ei-
ther the kind of person who TiVo’s it or
you’re not. But the conversation that it
spawned was more substantive than any
surrounding Project Runway or Shear Ge-
nius.
The Work of Art Facebook page ex-
ploded with petty, but prolific, commen-
tary throughout the course of the show,
gathering momentum during
the season.
Users
posted re-
actions after every
episode, griping about per-
ceived injustices to favorite contes-
tants. Cathy Cooper wrote on August 6
at 11:04 AM, following the penultimate
episode, “Jackie is a talentless climber.
Miles is a shallow technician. Abdi needs
to bust his cherry. Nicole got robbed.
And Peregrine needs to win just cuz the
weirdos need to be represented.”2
Work of Art’s first season’s judges were
Bill Powers, the handsome co-owner of
Half Gallery in New York, Jerry Saltz,
husband to Roberta Smith and New York
Magazine art critic, and Jeanne Green-
berg Rohatyn, self-proclaimed “taste-
maker” and founder of Salon94. Art
World insiders blogged their damndest
to excommunicate these high-profile
judges who had committed the low-
brown crossover. Saltz complained, “Peo-
ple in the art world keep pulling me aside
at openings and earnestly whispering,
“Jerry, please stop.”3 In response, the for-
merly well-respected judges all defended
their right to cross the high-low divide.
Powers, in an interview with W.M. Akers
of the Observer hypothesized “If Andy
Warhol were alive today, he’d be an ex-
ecutive producer of reality television.”4
This fairly mundane bickering occurred
as the series unfolded. What makes any
of this chatter exciting are interjections
on Facebook and blogpost comments
12
Arts
from Art World outsiders, people who
wouldn’t normally be privileged to par-
intelligent space of the internet.
Rather than an accurate reflection of
ticipate in the meta-critical debate.
As the episodes aired this summer,
real life, reality television is the collective
imagining of an alternate, less rational
Saltz diligently related his experience
filming and then re-watching Work of Art
world. It’s a creative hypothesis of what
sort of art and what sort of conversation
along with the general public on a New about that art—a culture would have if
York Magazine blog. In his recaps, he of- artists all lived together in a fancy loft
fers personal insights into the dynamic and had only two days and two hun-
of the show’s cast, sprinkling the com- dred dollars to make shocking art.9 It’s
mentary in references to the MoMA and a watch-and-see experiment about what
Sol LeWitt. The reflections on nymag. happens when husbands trade wives,
com have hundreds of comments. So do when strangers go Lord-of-The-Flies on
the hyperlinks to them on his Facebook a desert isle, when neighbors redecorate
page. Of course, some of this conversa- each others’ living rooms. Reality televi-
tion is he-said-she-said,5 but some of it sion is a guess at what dinner would be
is rich critique.6 Viewers share opinions like if every night, home cooks opened
on the actual art: whether they like it, up a basket with a secret ingredient in-
why they like it, what it’s about anyway. side.10 It begs viewers to form opinions
In one of Saltz’s last posts, he calls these on these potential realities, and those
mixed threads the “edge of criticism”— attitudes affect their taste and behavior.
the outskirts of the realm of art criticism
that is “serious but not sacred.”7 Bringing T H E N E X T N E X T G R E AT A R T-
fine art to television calls for a familiarly IST
casual conversation about the program, Following harsh criticism, Jerry Saltz
de-sacralizing artistic discourse for any- posted a Facebook note offering seven
one with cable. reasons as justification for his role on
Work of Art.11 The first one speaks to
A LT E R N AT E R E A L I T Y T V this fantasy dimension/dementia of re-
For almost a decade, reality television ality television. “For me, the show was
programs have been experimenting an interesting thing to try.”12 For the
with how to draw viewers into immer- producer, the network, the contestants
sive multimedia experiences. American and the viewers alike the show was ex-
Idol relies heavily on audience voting; actly that, and interesting enough to
web-exclusive video clips lure audiences try again. Work of Art has been renewed
to show websites. The online discussion for a second season. This past Monday,
surrounding Work of Art is evidence of Jerry Saltz posted the news on his Face-
its audience’s more active use of the in- book wall: “The prod. co. called me but
ternet to enhance their television habit. not Bravo which ‘reserves rights to al-
It speaks to the fact that professional ter format/ participants.’ I ran afoul of
competition television is addictive for their legal dept. last season for all my
two reasons, regardless of whether writing on the show. Anyway, I plan to
or not contestants produce anything say YES if...asked. If you HONESTLY
‘good.’ First, it’s informative. Work of Art think I should say NO - tell me WHY,
educates its audience with content: tech- seriously.”13 This vague allusion to le-
nique, vocabulary, and materials. Sec- gal restrictions on public commentary
ond, it’s a platform for viewers to experi- raises suspicions as to whether the Art
ment with opinions. All reality television World could ever democratize in the
amplifies the audience’s critical power. capitalist realm of cable television. Re-
Work of Art invites couch criticism from a gardless, within 24 hours, there were
demographic that would never walk into 233 comments answering Saltz with a
Gagosian Gallery and say, “That doesn’t resounding YES. The plugged-in public
work for me.”8 The online exchange dem- wants more positing of artistic prestige
onstrates a ‘conversation for the sake on reality game shows, whether or not it
of conversation’ without thought as erodes the much-loved ideology of artis-
to whether one’s vote counts in the ul- tic genius and critical elite.
timate outcome of the program. It’s an
experimentation with personal opinions AMY LEHRBURGER B’10.5 is await-
liberated by the semi-anonymous, semi- ing friend confirmation from Jerry Saltz.
1
Art critic Linda Yablonsky writes: “It’s just that I didn’t much like seeing my profession represented
as a self-important and superficial practice. http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/work-of-art/
2
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/WorkofArt/posts/146665058683722
3
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/07/jerry_saltzs_work_of_art_recap_3.html
4
http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/almost-famous-bill-powers-braves-art-world-reality-tv,
The What Would Warhol Do argument might stand; In 1966, Warhol produced what might arguably
be the first piece of “reality TV.” Chelsea Girls, a whopping 3 ½ hour long film, is a split-screen docu-
mentary of women and various acquaintances living in the Chelsea Hotel.
5
Juliar87 on 07/15/2010 at 12:29am “as much as i am glad Eri”k” is gone...I couldn’t agree more with
what he said about MILES. Someone needs to make a mixed media piece of miles sucking from an
art world teet. yeah, i said it.” http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/07/jerry_saltzs_work_
of_art_recap_3.html
6
Elias Nebula on 07/28/2010 at 11:26pm “Miles’s idea of maleness as a punched hole in a wall was
almost as obvious as the heaven/hell diptych if you ask me.”
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/07/jerry_saltzs_work_of_art_recap_5.html
7
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/08/jerry_saltzs_work_of_art_final.html
8
Work of Art’s tag exit phrase is: “Your work of art didn’t work for us.”
9
Episode 4 is titled “A Shock to the System:” No joke. “The artists are challenged to create a piece
that is shocking and memorable, and speaks to issues that are important to them personally” http://
www.bravotv.com/work-of-art/season-1/a-shock-to-the-system
10
I’m thinking Wife Swap, Survivor, Trading Spaces, and Chopped, respectively.
11
145 people like this. 282 people commented on this.
12
Other reasons Saltz outlined included: “The show is not the main thing I do” and “Each of us uses
what we have, hopefully for rightous [sic] purposes.” http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/
notes/jerry-saltz/we-contain-multitudes-a-few-words-about-work-of-art/285101609966
13
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/permalink.php?story_fbid=163921153647596&
id=716179266
 The chthonic marsh has been filled over
to make way for an orderly suburb where
people live in identical houses with iden-
tical and orderly fenced in backyard box-
es where they will never see the stars at
night. When they look up and see only
the hazy purple of the light-polluted
sky looming over them, do they feel the
same connection with what lies beyond,
that our human ancestors devoted so
much to? The precessions and cycles
of the heavens, once personified, now
carry only the signifiers of their former
mythological depth. Their movements
have been calculated and recorded, their
meanings all but forgotten, their light
blocked out by street lamps stamped
onto the landscape in regular interval.
Modern urbanity lives in a concep-
tual grid, a system based on a scientific
framework of precision, one that de-
pends upon the measured unit for the
constitution of reality. Our minds are
trained to work within it, systematiz-
ing our existences based on principles
put forth by the discourses of science. In
this way the institutions of civilization
we have created in turn create us. We are
limited by our linguistic construction of
the world through privileged binary op-
positions—relationships defined by the
The Metamythical Re
tensions of polarity between light/dark, ies would adopt a nostalgic outlook and Des
sun/moon, right/left, man/woman, reach into the distant past for small- the ar
good/evil. scale systems making the postmodern satire,
As a culture we privilege the expe- era one of neotribalism. This longing on ed the
rience of the left hemisphere, valuing the part of industrialized western soci- display
its ordered and systematic approach to ety found expression in the art of the in her
the information it perceives as ratio- primitivists and has become thoroughly on Cul
nal while we relegate the right and its enmeshed in pop culture thanks to the “revers
non-syntactic reality to the world of Western, ubiquitous tribal tattoos and work:
creativity and the irrational. The cogni- the widespread corporate textile appro- onto
tive system of opposition holds itself to- priation that serves us “Afrika”-themed fantas
gether by a failure to integrate, to blend prints skintight to the bodies of lithe assum
order and chaos, finds expression in the white women. mestic
Judeo-Christian creation myth wherein Our postcolonial reality calls for the bers fe
mankind is cut out of nature, where the deconstruction of the modern desire for coloniz
feminine is cut out of mankind. This ide- our deep past, detangling it from the exo- the au
ology structures modern Western reality tification, decimation and generalization provid
on the basis of our exclusion as human of the other that defined half a millen- from t
beings from the essential primal bond nium. Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez- the ot
we share with the natural world as ani- Peña put themselves and this dichotomy nograp
mals. on display with their performance piece The
The conventions of industrialized “Undiscovered Amerindians,” in which cultura
society depend on the repression of this they portrayed a pair of indigenous na- bra an
link, the banishment of primeval mytho- tives from an invented island culture dis- can wr
poeic cognition from the civilized, con- played within a ten-by-twelve foot cage. these
scious psyche. During the course of the exhibition they objects
Michel Maffesoli, a French sociolo- performed stereotyped primitive activi- is lost
gist who deals with the imagination and ties including hair braiding and banana the co
everyday life in urban society, predicted eating and could be enticed by donation discov
that once the geared infrastructure of to perform “native” dances to rap music in the
modernity began its slow decline societ- and tell “authentic” stories in gibberish. tifacts
Primitivism, Colonialism, a

spite the expressed intentions of
rtists that the piece be taken as a
, more than half of viewers accept-
e piece as a genuine ethnographic
y revealing what Fusco described
book, English is Broken Here: Notes
ltural Fusion in the Americas, as the
se ethnographic” nature of the
“The cage became a blank screen
which audiences projected their
sies of who and what we are. As we
med the stereotypical role of the do-
cated savage, many audience mem-
elt entitled to assume the role of
zer.” The cage bars through which
udience viewed the performance
ded a frame, a degree separation
the artists that conceivably allowed
thering discourse of colonial eth-
phy to follow close at hand.
artists’ syncretic incorporation of
al artifacts such as leopard-print
nd sneakers as well as Peña’s Mexi-
restling mask elevate the status of
items to that of the ethno-kitch;
s whose original symbolic content
t in the process of conforming to
onsumer’s popular notions. “Un-
vered Amerindians” pushes satire
e appropriation of pop culture ar-
s in critique—intentional or unin-
eality of The Present
and the Age of Innundation
tentional—of the viewer’s predisposition
to be so distracted by the degree of sepa-
ration as to consume the endless debris of
consumer culture without notice.
But what of artistic creation that seeks
to explore the inner primitive of the self
rather than the other: is it possible to
draw inspiration from primal depths with-
out being caught in a cage? Can we create
outside the contemporary discourses of
identity and ownership, exploring what
is universally possessed? After all, the hu-
man imagination that once saw sacred-
ness and spirits in the world is still within
us today. There are perhaps some things
that can never be stripped of their sym-
bolic content, some element of wildness
within us that refuses to be reckoned. Is it
possible to explore the primitive in a way
that shows us ourselves rather than oth-
ers?
Where do we draw lines between sincere
syncreticization, expropriative appropria-
tion, and those things fundamental? Can
we make boundaries between what un-
derlies human cognition and what has
been projected upon the framework of our
consciousness. After all, the innate hu-
man experience has not been altered, but
manufactured to fit into a meticulously
gridded and scientific approach that gives
us language only to describe what is tan-
gible in this world. Those experiences that by Whitney Alsup
are fleeting and indefinable are left to fall
by the wayside. When we enter the void of
intangible experience, we are immersed in
Illustration by the Author
a sea of images, some of which have con-
sumed our minds through the vantage of Design by Emily Fishman
the glowing frame and some which have
gnawed on our souls from time immemo-
rial.
We live in an age of inundation. We
are awash in a sea of ever-changing im-
ages, ideas. The question of whether any
of this information is new is a tide that
sweeps us back and forth, back and forth
over the vast repository of the collective
unconscious. These deeper currents pulse
beneath the surface reality of our modern
existences and link us to an underworld of
archetype where myths are born and find
meaning. If we can stand the chaotic quiet
long enough we just might be able to make
out their mysteries. Those rhythms that
science has no measurements for, those
intricacies of the human experience that
are nothing short of magical.
WHITNEY ALSUP, RISD’11 is “native”
and “authentic.”
15
Arts
F ROM A R C A DI A , W I T H LOV E
Up-and-coming Providence soap-
maker Rick Roden muses on our
unconscious, the honesty of
nature, and the sensory present
Interview by Natasha Pradhan
Spending time with Rick Roden, an art-
ist whose primary medium is life itself,
is being shaken from numbness into awe
without stepping into an alternate real-
ity. Roden returns to Rhode Island to
furnish the most auspicious aesthetic rit-
ual—that of the bath—with handmade,
homegrown, sensually extra-ordinary
soap.
Rick can be found at his shop, ZOP,
at 186 Union St. (b/w Westminister and
Weybosset). For bars and bubbles cus-
tom-made to tickle your sense palette,
give him a ring: 401-751-4967.
The Independent: Tell me about the
painting you have covering this wall of
your shop.
Rick Roden: This is by John William
Waterhouse. It’s called Hylas and the
Nymphs. Hylas was a servant of Hercules
and the legend goes that Hylas was sent
to go fetch water. He went to this wood-
land pond and these nymphs showed
up and he was never seen again. Every-
thing about this painting is so evocative.
There’s no violence in it, though you
don’t know what happened. Hylas just
disappears.
I: Though it’s so clean, there is something
freeingly dark about the whole scene.
RR: It is very clean. And I personally am
petrified of water. I almost drowned a
couple of years ago. I’m a Pisces, too. I
went back a few days later to the place
where I nearly drowned and swam across.
People thought I was crazy. But I replied,
“I’m not crazy; if I don’t do this I’ll be
crazy.”
I: What sort of place did you nearly
drown in?
RR: It’s beautiful. The water is 80 feet
deep and there’s a gorge. It’s not a cul-
tivated place at all. I was about halfway
across and my leg had locked. And the
next thing I know, I’m pulled down 20 or
25 feet. I had slipped lower and lower into
cold water and branches. I thought I was
certainly going to die. Those were some of
the purest thoughts that I’ve ever had in
my life—all the people I’ll never be able
to tell I love them. The things I wouldn’t
do because I didn’t risk it. I felt capillaries
popping in my lungs.
I: What changed?
RR: You get this weird feeling. You are
torn in two. One half yells, “breathe,
open your mouth.” The other half says,
‘whatever you do, do not breathe.’ I don’t
know how, but I made it to the surface
of the water. I made it back. I sat there
on the shore with my son, and it was like
I was having my own biblical experience.
Every stick, every rock was as if I had
never known it.
It was a gift. But I don’t want to ever
drown again. That’s actually the third
time that I’ve drowned. I have a healthy
respect for water. It’s a worthy adversary.
I: Is your fear of water a very concrete
fear of drowning, then?
RR: No. Joseph Campbell said that ev-
erybody is afraid of water. And the fear
is not of water itself, but of what lies un-
derneath. We don’t know what’s under-
neath. The conscious is the oxygen we
breathe, the subconscious is where the
monsters are. That is why dragons are
such a big deal in British mythology. This
is why I think people have such neuroses
today. There are no dragons for us to slay,
there are no battlefields, there are no
mountains for us to climb.
I: And instead we are saturated with dis-
tractions to keep us from what’s impor-
tant.
RR: I’m a parent, you know. And I don’t
place myself first. What’s the most im-
portant thing in life? Certainly, I know
that. And what’s the second most impor-
tant thing in life, and well, who gives a
shit. I have a kid to worry about—I’m not
getting into crazy, kooky stuff. When you
have a child, you get rid of your bells and
whistles, and you become a father, plain
and simple. It’s the greatest thing that’s
every happened. I know that doesn’t fit
into this world. People still want to go
party and be distracted.
Some guys don’t get it. It’s a chain.
I’m just a piece of the chain. I hear people
that say, “Oh, I would never bring a child
into this world.” Well, then, don’t! But I
will.
I am forty-seven years old. I’m not
a kid. A girl I was dating a while back
was hesitant to ask me if I would have
a kid. Though my reply is, of course—in
a heartbeat. Even if I’m not going to be
able to do some things with my child be-
cause I’m old, who cares? The kid’s here—
he’s alive. This is precious to me.
I: It’s so common for people to approach
raising their children as a that must fol-
low some sort of insane controlling for-
mula.
RR: Oh, God. My son’s first bed was the
top drawer of a dresser—just pulled it
out, put a broom under it, and there you
go. And what did he eat? This is my din-
ner, and here’s half of it.
I: Where were you raised?
RR: I grew up here in Rhode Island. But I
dropped out of school in ninth grade and
then ran away. I’ve done a lot of differ-
ent things. I’ve done so many things. But
I like what I’m doing with soap right now.
I’m certainly not a master soap-maker.
I don’t ever want to be a master soap-
maker.
I: How much of your soap-making pro-
cess is improvised versus premeditated?
RR: It’s a mix. I mean, now that I have
this shop, if I need more of something,
I need to make it. Like lavender—it’s a
little pedestrian, but it’s a classic.
I: The grass soap is divine. What lead you
to take grass that’s out here and work it
into a soap that people will experience in
the bath?
RR: With the soaps, I think I’m giving
some things in nature their day in court.
Give everything a chance. That’s why I do
what I do.
I: And even more radically because scent
N O V E M B E R 18 2010 T H E C O L L E G E H I L L I N D E P E N D E N T
has to be shared in this very immediate,
human-animal way without the ability to
be photographed or recorded.
RR: Scent and fragrance are a weird
thing. I mean, I can say something is a
particular shade of red or I can say, its
PMS [Pantone Matching System] color
this...There is a science to color. Or I can
say, remember that song? And I can hum
it. But I can’t remember scent in a con-
crete way.
You can’t lie with scent. Similarly, with
pheromones, you don’t even know what
you smell. It’s so immediate. We have a
musk and we bury it. It is like a code be-
tween people. There’s something about
someone that you can’t describe that
goes beyond everything else. It is almost
a tribal thing. Do you accept someone?
Are they friend or enemy? That’s just the
honesty of nature and of people. We can’t
explain or pretend to understand it.
I: Before fragrance, what makes a soap?
RR: If it’s a substandard soap, you can
dress it up and make it smell however
you like. But it needs to be good soap.
Soap is first oil, or fats, combined with
lye—alkali. There’s a little story about
a mountain in Greece called Mount
Lykaion and they would do animal sac-
rifices there. The rainwater would pass
through the ashes in the hardwood and
that, in turn, would become lye. That
would pass through the fats of the dead
animals. It would solidify, turn into soap,
and then make its way down to the river
and people would get really clean there.
That’s what soap is. It’s lye, which is a
caustic. Actually, where alkali comes
from—its Greek. I think its ‘alkal,’ which
means to calm. People use lye in very di-
luted forms to calm, to take care of stom-
ach-aches and stuff. They use it to cook.
People back then would save all their
ashes and they would separate the hard
ashes from the soft ashes, pine from
maple and such. And they would save all
their fats from cooking. And the chan-
dlers—the soap and candle makers—
would come along and pick all of this
stuff up.
I: What have you been making lately?
RR: I make a different thing all the time.
I made some dirt stuff lately, on a whim.
I made this the other day, the mimosa,
which is vegetable based, with palm, ol-
ive, and coconut oil.
I can make soap that a lot of people
will accept as beautiful. And by beauti-
ful, what they are considering beautiful
is that it is accepted by a lot of people.
This is a soap that a lot of people will like.
Ergo, it’s beautiful. And that sucks. I have
to deal with people like that all the time.
So do you!
I: I think what is most magical about
the soap is that you experience it alone,
usually, and are completely open to it
without the balancing effect of being sur-
rounded by society.
RR: I’ve thought about that, too. Musi-
cally, some eighty years ago, you’ve got
these guys Copland, Ives, Groves, Barber
—the Americans. They took their com-
positions to Vienna. And the response
they get is, “That sounds very American.
It reeks of America. But where are you
with this other stuff ? What did Wagner
teach you? You need to fix that America
thing.” And they reply, “No, that’s the
point.” I’m not talking about the America
today, which is a fucking mess. I’m talk-
ing about the real, the dream, whatever
you want to call it.
Barber did an Adagio for strings,
which is a beautiful, beautiful song. If
you listen to it, you can hear creaky doors
in a house in Salem, you can hear a boat
on the moor, you can hear misty morn-
ings. You can just feel it. It’s not about
Germany or Switzerland. It’s about some
kid chasing his dog down the street in
some little New England town. It’s beau-
tiful.
My point is this: here we are, a hun-
dred-and-something years later. I can
go look at water-lilies just as anybody
else. If I want to listen to a record, I can.
Now if this is art, it’s here, it’s right now.
You’re experiencing it like it will never be
felt again. The art is not the soap but the
feeling you get when you’re using it. It’s
personal from me to you. In a hundred
and fifty years when I’m dust, people will
say “he made soap.” But what does that
mean? It’s for us to know. It’s precious.
THEINDY.ORG
T
he abandoned section of
I-195, which crosses the
Providence River just north
of the Point St. bridge
but south of WaterFire,
has become a sacred place
for me. On overcast days
there is no end to the bleak
greyness of this place. The
lines on the pavement and the signs
above are bigger in person than at high
speeds from car windows. The highway
is not human sized, just like the huge
abandoned wharves and dry docks that
I wandered around in Amsterdam. This
old highway bridge is where I come to
see the real Providence, without the
polished veneer of the Renaissance. It’s
the last place I can savor my nostalgia
for Amsterdam, where I can pretend to
be back on the wharves pretending to
belong among the squatters. I go to the
abandoned highway to get perspective,
to see the lights of the city over the wa-
ter and to see the dark hulking forms of
the empty power plants.  Providence City Hall, the eleven final-
This wasteland—unwanted by buy-
ers and by the city for at least two
years, its only official use the storage
B R I DGE OV E R
DIGI TA L LY
R E NDE R E D
WAT E R
The Redesign of the abandoned
I-95 Highway Bridge
by Sonja Boet-Whitaker | Graphic by Robert Sandler
Providence City Hall. It is forbidding
and cold, grey stone that watches over
Kennedy Plaza with a sneer. The front
door was locked and closed off with an
iron gate. Even the caterers had trouble
getting in, but with enough time spent
banging at the doors, we got in, into
the swirl of rich patterns and colors
and brass banisters and an impressive
staircase that drew us upwards. On
the second floor: RISD-created textiles
responding to the Providence built en-
vironment. Empty and quiet. On the
third floor: Providence River Pedestrian
Bridge competition. Bustling.
Once we were in, the democratic at-
mosphere surprised me. Well-known
designers, politicians, and planners
mixed anonymously with students.
There were no nametags, and the post-
ers were identified by design group
number, also without names. It was
the day after the elections, there was a
vitality and energy in the crowd, every-
one was speaking loudly and excitedly.
While the competition was not com-
pletely open, many different groups
submitted proposals, and the selection
committee includes representatives
from a broad range of interest groups.
of construction materials—will be the
The committee is looking for feedback
site of the Providence River Pedestrian
from the public through a Flickr group:
Bridge Project. It is being reimagined
http://www.flickr.com/groups/pvd-
as an opportunity for a new form of
bridgedesigns/. A final decision will be
urban revitalization. Rather than the
made by the end of November.
large-scale clearance projects or high-
The first person that talked to us
way reshuffling of the previous genera-
congratulated us on our bike helmets.
tion of urban revitalization, this is one
He informed us he was keeping tabs
of the smaller infill and adaptive reuse
on the designers, making sure they
projects that characterize today’s urban
included bike lanes in the designs. He
planning efforts. The perennial con-
knew we would understand. He told us,
cerns of Providence are, of course, still
those designers, sometimes they just
present: the need to make the city, and
don’t care. Then he disappeared into
the waterfront in particular, a tourist
the crowd.
destination. Fortunately, this project
Most of the designs actually are bike-
appears to be an attempt to move be-
accessible, and many have a designated
yond that obsession. This project would
bike-only lane. The first posterboard,
build on the existing highway bridge
at the top of the stairs, had a smooth,
(where, in an attempt to capture the
curving center path, with great sweeps
absurdity of being in the middle of a
of pavement coming off of it as though
highway, I have taken to lying down)
the designers had grabbed handfuls of
and turn it into a bike and pedestrian
the bridge’s fabric and pulled it out into
thoroughfare. It will be another stitch
place: a sloping seating area, a great
to draw the sides of the river closer.
prow to overlook the city. Several de-
On Wednesday, November 3 in
signs played off the WaterFire concept,
making the bridge into stadium seat-
ist designs, chosen by a selection com-
ing or a viewing platform for a drama
mittee from a pool of 47, were pub-
that would unfold on the river itself.
licly unveiled. Perhaps you don’t know
16
Arts
One design invoked a maritime aesthet-
ic, suspending the bridge surface from
masts strung with loops of cable. One
common theme was the use of the bridge
as a connection between small park areas
on either side of the river, expanding the
green space across the bridge.
The designs were expected to have a
focus on reuse and sustainability: the re-
quired reuse of the existing bridge piers
and the broader environmental impacts
of the project. In some of the designs,
this meant only the inclusion of low-en-
ergy LED lighting. For other groups, the
use of the existing structure seemed to
be a primary element in the design. The
proposed cost of the project was $4 mil-
lion, but these designs were rarely lim-
ited by that consideration, creating lush
café and patio spaces populated—in the
renderings—by well-dressed socialites.
A couple of the proposed designs
looked as though they would immediate-
ly fall into disrepair. Designs with dead-
end paths or access to the piers at water
level were tempting in their creative use
of space, but the blind spots they created
would be difficult to maintain and would
probably become decrepit or dangerous.
On the other end of the spectrum, bridg-
es that created homogenous open space
threatened to become an extension of
Renaissance Providence: an unwelcom-
ing bleak expanse, unable to attract the
crowds of people it was clearly designed
for. The most popular designs among the
students in the crowd were able to both
create open green space and make the
bridge into an efficient link for bike com-
muters.
This project feels like a legitimate at-
tempt on the part of the city to cater to
the needs of the people who live here. If
the city really cares about green spaces
and bike commuting and sustainability,
as I do, I might be convinced to live here
in this city for just a little bit longer so
that I can feel the stranded parts of the
city come back together. I can so clearly
see a future in which the project is work-
ing and people are starting to come back
downtown. Despite my love for the dirty,
gritty abandoned highway, the re-design
of the bridge is, to me, an exciting and
hopeful venture.
SONJA BOETWHITAKER B’11
rides or dies.
17
Arts
F R E E D OM ’S J UST
A N OT H E R WOR D
…For hype-fulfilling novel by
Jonathan Franzen
Review by Zach Rausnitz
J
onathan Franzen’s
novel Freedom reads
like a drug injected
straight into the
bloodstream, produc-
ing an addictive high
as the pages turn—
which they do effort-
lessly. But we don’t
expect things that are euphoric to also
nourish, but it becomes clear, as you
digest the satiatingly whole characters,
that Franzen’s achievement is a work
that does both.
As with his 2001 sensation The Cor-
rections, the core characters are a fam-
ily: Patty and Walter Berglund (a stay-
at-home mom and a lawyer) pioneer
the gentrification of Ramsey Hill, the
neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota
where they raise their two children. The
yuppie paradise sours when their neigh-
bor Carol Monaghan’s boyfriend Blake
moves in. Blake disturbs the Berglunds
by chopping down trees and noisily
building an addition to Carol’s house;
the conservative bumper stickers on his
pickup truck don’t help matters. This an-
noyance turns dire when the Berglunds’
teenage son Joey, who is dating Carol’s
daughter, emancipates himself and joins
the Monaghan household.
Such drama—both personal (affairs,
accidents, elopement) and political
(deals with coal executives and defense
contractors)—pervades Freedom. The
action keeps the pages turning, but the
novel’s heart is in its characters. After
the introduction of the Berglunds, a sec-
tion called “Mistakes Were Made: Au-
tobiography of Patty Berglund by Patty
Berglund (Composed at Her Therapist’s
Suggestion)” occupies the next chunk
of the novel, a quarter of its 562 pages
(what seems like a formal gimmick fac-
tors into the plot as a physical document
much later). Patty examines her up-
bringing in the New York City suburbs,
where she disappointed her intellectual
parents by pursuing sports and accept-
ing an offer to play basketball at a me-
diocre academic institution, the Univer-
sity of Minnesota. While there, she fell
for budding rock star Richard Katz, but
couldn’t quite entice him. Instead, she
agreed to date his best friend, Walter,
who had been courting her for months.
Franzen’s mode is realism, but he re-
sists overdoing what Zadie Smith calls
“lyrical realism,” the chief goal of which
is vivid sensory description. Franzen is
up to that task—the neglected kitchen
that “smelled like a mental illness” or a
storm’s “omnidirectional” thunder come
to mind—but he sets his prose to the
pace of normal thought, which processes
story more naturally than elaborate de-
scriptions of scenery.
N O V E M B E R 18 2010 T H E C O L L E G E H I L L I N D E P E N D E N T
Similarly, he does not settle for de-
scribing his characters’ traits; he un-
tangles their dilemmas. Patty’s dilemma
is in suppressing her ongoing desire for
Richard and returning Walter’s love.
In her autobiography, she has to insist
that she “does love him, does love him.”
But her physical desire for Richard feels
more natural, more genuine. Not that
her love for Walter is insincere, but it
is a conscious decision to love the man
who cares so much for her. Her dilemma
raises the question: Are natural desires
worth resisting? Richard thinks not. He
believes in acting on desire until he’s
“got it out of his system.”
Walter disagrees. “He loved Patty in
some wholly other way, some larger and
more abstract but nevertheless essen-
tial way that was about a lifetime of re-
sponsibility; about being a good person.”
But as his marriage weakens, a younger
woman tempts him. Over time he also
drifts from being a mild-mannered, in-
dustrious Minnesotan, with an earnest
fear of human overpopulation and ani-
mal extinction, toward the deep end of
self-righteous anger. By the end he’s
ranting about house cats murdering en-
dangered birds. But Americans aren’t
about to give up their pets, or stop hav-
ing kids, and Walter’s radicalism mostly
alienates.
Much more than Walter, Franzen
Two Yorkie Terrier Puppies
For Re-Homing
contact: rkmaxwell1@gmail.com
understands Americans as a species, in-
cluding their obsession with self-suffi-
ciency and the interpersonal (and inter-
national) trouble that follows. “It wasn’t
the people with sociable genes who fled
the crowded Old World for the new con-
tinent; it was the people who didn’t get
along well with others.”
There’s more, always, to admire. Like
the realistic dialogue that avoids gim-
mickry. Patty, alone with Richard for
days, pretends she is certain they won’t
have an affair: “Oh, totally. God. Yes.
Totally. Yah! I mean...” She reiterates to
seem confident, masking a skepticism
that is so transparent on the page.
Franzen, an expert on the short-
comings of a generation of Americans,
disappoints only in his lack of a vision
for alternatives. Analysis is important,
but novels can instruct, too, and in this
realm Franzen is as vague as Walter’s fo-
cus on “being a good person.” Nonethe-
less, our hunger to know what he knows
contributes to the novel’s addictiveness
and to the feeling of withdrawal when it
ends. If, to Walter’s surprise, we survive
the environmental catastrophes loom-
ing in this century, Franzen looks to be
one of this era’s authors still read on the
other side.
ZACH R AUSNITZ B’10.5 smells like a
mental illness.
THEINDY.ORG 24
Puzzle Extravaganza

HIP TO DO A WORD SQUARE! ED I T

DODO
Each of the four sets of clues below corresponds to a 4x4 “word square” in which the by Joey Weissbrot and Jamie Green
across and down answers in each of the four positions are the same. For example
8 8 I DES
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 TOS S 1. The best thing
you’ve read all week
1. WWII enemies 2. Great-grandson and
2 2 2. 1990s TV princess great-great grand-
with an ambiguous son of Mark Antony
sexuality 3. John Travolta acted
3 3 3. A paper with spell- in it in 2007
binding content 4. He said, “I never said
4 4 4. Ejaculates, essen- most of the things
tially I’ve said”

1. It was first “seen” 1. What Angelina kept 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

in 1832
2. Constant
3. ___ off (We know
what you’re think-
ing, you perv)
4. The finest publica-
tion in Providence
some of Billy Bob
in (what the fuck,
right?) 2 2
2. A true paragon of
journalism 3 3
3. Port in the deep
south...of Yemen
4. Bobcat, e.g. 4 4

In this grid are arranged all of the dominoes

containing the digits 0 – 4. No domino is re-
peated, and they are all here. Unfortunately,
their borders are no longer visible—they are
up to you to discover! Hint for solving: See
that the 3-3 pairing is the only one on the
grid? Now, you know the 3-3 domino and
the 1-3 in the NW corner, so draw a line be-
tween any other 3-1 pairings. Happy solving!

by Katie Barnwell

by Jonah Kagan
19
Science
T HE SC I E N C E BE H I ND EV E RY
T HI N G  A N E XC E R P T 
by Katie Delaney, Tarah Knaresboro, Brian Mastroianni, and Kathryn Wiseman
Illustration by Emily Martin
H E A D OV E R T E N TAC L E S
I recently saw a nature documentary
that showed an octopus wrapping its
tentacles lovingly around a diver. It
would detach itself and swim around the
man slowly, before enveloping him in
an eight-armed embrace. It was love at
first sight. Suctioning itself to the man’s
mask, the shapeless cephalopod looked
like it was kissing the diver’s face—I
could imagine hearing a loud “smack” as
the suckers on each tentacle made con-
tact with the mask.   nol means more GABA binding, which
It’s true: octopi have a whole lotta
love to give.
The octopus has three hearts in order
to maintain the high blood pressure it
needs to propel itself through the sea on
its hunt for tasty crustacean treats. The
two smaller branchial hearts pump the
mollusk’s hemocyanin-filled blue blood
to its gills. The gills then dump out the
waste while oxygenating the blood and
(presto!) the oxygen-rich blood is sent
to the large systemic heart. This blood is
then sent through the rest of the octo-
pus’s body.
Naturally shy creatures, these inver-
tebrates are, quite literally, spineless.
But as that one diver found out, a smit-
ten octopus will step out of its shell to
prove that it will give its heart to you…
three times over.
-BM
T E X T S F R O M L A S T N I G H T:
MOM LEARNS ABOUT NEU -
R OT R A N S M I T T E R S E D I T I O N
(215): do not drink anything in a can called
“four loco”. saw a news story kids are drop-
ping like flies. 1 can = alcohol of 5 beers +
caffeine of 5 coffees. just sayin. love, mom.
Well, Mom, yes and no. While your local
ten o’clock news is not exactly a high-cal-
iber journalistic institution (think An-
toine Dodson, but in West Philly), they
did manage to get the alcohol compari-
son right. A 23.5oz can of Four Loko at
12% alcohol vs. a 12oz can of PBR at 5%:
carry the one and you get roughly five
times the fluid ounces of alcohol in a can
of PBR in a single Four Loko.
The five-coffee statistic, on the other
hand, is just wrong. A can of Four Loko
has 135mg of caffeine—a cup of coffee
has 125mg. And it’s a good thing too,
because 625mg of caffeine at once (the
equivalent of five coffees) is just enough
to kill a human infant.
Furthermore, Mom, I routinely in-
gest more than a Four Loko’s worth of
caffeine as an integral part of my paper-
writing process and have yet to explode.
The thing that troubles people (and the
reason it’s banned at four universities
and in several states) is the combination
of two psychoactive substances with op-
posite effects.
Ethanol is a positive allosteric modu-
lator for the neurotransmitter GABA.
Translation: GABA is a molecule that
travels from one neuron to another,
binding to certain receptors and trig-
gering a specific cellular response in the
brain. In adults, GABA is an inhibitory
neurotransmitter—it slows down the
nervous system. Ethanol can bind to the
same receptor as GABA, but not at the
same active site. The binding of ethanol
changes the receptor’s shape, heighten-
ing the attraction between the receptor
and GABA and promoting additional
GABA binding. So consumption of etha-
means slower brain activity.
Caffeine, through an entirely sepa-
rate mechanism, does the opposite.
Caffeine is structurally similar to the
adenosine molecule, which suppresses
neuronal activity and may also play an
important role in the sleep-wake cycle.
But caffeine is an adenosine antagonist,
meaning it can bind to the same recep-
tors as adenosine, obstructing adenosine
from binding and triggering a cellular re-
sponse; if adenosine is the brain’s brake
pedal, caffeine is the brick underneath
it. By preventing adenosine binding in
the brain, caffeine interrupts its func-
tions—it allows heightened neuronal ac-
tivity, keeps drowsiness at bay, and helps
me pull all-nighters studying things like
neurotransmitters.
Moral of the story: the “upper” effect
from blocking adenosine binding (caf-
feine) can make the drinker oblivious
to the downer effects of GABA binding
(ethanol). They feel less drunk than they
really are, drink more, and in rare cases,
end up in the hospital with a BAC of 0.4
and leave medical professionals unsure
as to how, exactly, they are still alive. So
there you have it. I promise not to drink
Four Loko if you promise to stop signing
your texts “love, mom.”
-KD
H I CC U P C U R E S : A LITER A-
TURE REVIEW
Hiccups are the result of repeated dia-
N O V E M B E R 18 2010 T H E C O L L E G E H I L L I N D E P E N D E N T
phragm contractions that cause air to
surge into the lungs. In response, the
epiglottis (a flap of tissue separating
esophagus and trachea) snaps shut,
causing the hiccup sound. They can be
caused by everything from laughter to
chemotherapy. Only extreme cases war-
rant medical treatment with sedatives,
but word-of-mouth fixes for the every-
day case of hiccups are plentiful. Below is
a sample of hiccup remedies, empirically
verified by users of the Internet:
Breath-holding method: Hold your
breath until the hiccups stop.
Peanut butter method (or why I faked
hiccups frequently throughout child-
hood): Eat a spoonful of peanut butter
as quickly as possible.
Screaming Method: Count the seconds
between hiccups. When you think a hic-
cup is about to start, scream.
Ear Method: Take a drink of water. While
holding it in your mouth, pull down your
earlobes, tilt your head back and swal-
low.
Vinegar Method: Drink a teaspoon of
vinegar.
Upside-down drinking Method: Stand
up, bend over. Put your head between
your legs. Drink a glass of water.
Digital Rectal Massage (only to be used
with intractable hiccups): Doctors at
Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Israel
observed that massaging the anus with
a finger relieved a 60 year-old man’s un-
stoppable hiccups. This procedure blocks
the vagus nerve from uncontrollable fir-
ing, which can be a cause of intractable
hiccups.
The Styx Method – Listen to “Renegade”
by Styx until hiccups subside.
30 Second Cure*: Quickly inhale as far
as you can. While holding your breath,
swallow. Repeat this pattern until you
can neither inhale nor swallow anymore.
Then, swallow once more. (Even if you
feel you can’t, you’re wrong. It’s possible)
Exhale.
*Note: the inventor of this cure would
like you to know that he is, graciously,
not charging for this imparted wisdom,
but if you’d like to make a donation to his
PayPal, feel free: http://www.cognitial.
com/hiccups.shtml. I have no doubt the
following reviewers did.
User testimonials:
“Brilliant, it worked! Thanks very much!”
“This guy should be a millionaire (if he is
not). Absolute genius., every time, first
time”
“YEAHHHHH B^TCHES! TOTALLY
WORKED ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU
ARE
DRUNK!!!”
“GREAT IT REALLY WORKS. EVEN IN
AFRICA”
-KW
DOUBLE THE PLEASURE ,
DOUBLE THE FUN
Scientists suspect that mimicry within
our motor and sensory systems might
underlie human empathy. That is, when
you see someone prick their finger with
a pin, you wince too and kind of ‘feel
their pain.’ Same thing happens when
you watch someone crying and start to
tear up. The process by which observ-
ing something makes you feel as though
you too were experiencing it is thought
to operate through ‘mirror neurons,’ or
cells that fire both when you prick your
finger and when your friend does. Some
people think this is how we understand
other people—we literally put ourselves
in their place and experience their sensa-
tions too.
And that’s why scientists think watch-
ing porn is so much fun.
-TK
THEINDY.ORG 20
Science

LI E S E V ERY BO DY
T H I N KS A RE T RU E
You only use ten percent of your brain.
Humans consume an average of four
spiders per year in our sleep.
Reading in the dark damages your eyes.
U P - A N D - CO M I N G P S YC H O LO G I S T S S AY…
Lies can happen internally all the time when people repress If you shave, your hair grows back thicker.
memories or construct false ones. People will believe things Benjamin Franklin few a kite in a lightening
that they are comfortable believing, facts that fit into their storm and discovered electricity.
image of themselves, and will sometimes block out what’s
Lots of people thought the Earth was flat
mentally difficult to keep in their self-concept—child abus-
during Columbus’s time.
ers, for example, often deny accusations, honestly believ-
ing they did nothing wrong. Likewise, victims can block Bulls prefer red cloth.
out traumatic experiences—it may simply be easier to live You can unlock a safe by listening to the
with a lie. clicks.
The idea of unearthing such repressed memories is what
led to ‘False Memory Syndrome’ first identified in the early Hair and fingernails grow after a person
1990s, a condition in which people invent and become con- dies.
vinced of memories that never actually took place. Some Double dipping spreads germs.
even go so far as to accuse their fathers of sexual crimes they
Rats and mice like cheese.
never committed. Although such ‘awakenings’ can perma-
nently damage family life, this too can be adaptive. Cases Lemmings engage in mass suicide.
of false memory syndrome are often correlated with severe Sugar makes kids hyper.
problems in the sufferer’s current life, and focusing on the
Viking wore horns on their helmets.
past (and, ironically, the ‘truth setting you free’) can be away
to channel mental energy away from real, pressing troubles. data assembled with help from Fraser Evans B’11 and
Sutong Zhou B’11

S O C I A L P S YC H O LO G I S T S S AY…
Lying is adaptive within our own minds. We lie to
ourselves all the time, often subconsciously, twist-
ing information we receive to cause minimal mental by Tarah Knaresboro
distress. A famous example of this was a 1959 social
“ T H E T R U T H D O C TO R ” S AYS …
psychology experiment by researchers Festinger
and Carlsmith. Although they were actually trying Lying is dumb and anti-constructive. Psychothera-
N E W E X P E R I M E N T S S AY… pist Brad Blanton, or “The Truth Doctor,” pioneered a
to examine what makes people subconsciously lie
We lie because our minds crave ratio- movement called Radical Honesty in which members
to themselves, the researchers gathered one sub-
nality, and inducing confabulations are of society are 100 percent honest, at all times, to ev-
set of the participants into a room and told them
commonplace and easy. Experimenters eryone. According to him, lies cause nothing but stress
(untruthfully) that they were part of an experiment
have shown how simple it is to take a and misery, and everyone would be infinitely better
that measures how one’s expectations alter the ex-
person’s picture, photoshop him or her without them. He believes complete truthfulness is the
perience of a task. They informed participants that
into a scene they have never seen before, only path to a free, joyful, and authentic lifestyle devoid
they were members of a group that would be given
and ‘remind’ them of what was going on of petty social burdens, and that such behavior paves
no expectations before the task. Then, the first sub-
when the picture was taken. Rarely do the way for true love and intimacy. On the FAQ page
ject was told to enter the testing room, where he
subjects ever contest the picture or the of his website, he suggests immediately owning up to
soon discovered that the task is mind numbingly
description; they usually just agree and first impressions such as being attracted to someone or
boring: he had to move around spools and pegs in
internalize it as their own memory. being struck by their outstandingly hideous looks. He
a box for an entire hour. When he was done, the re-
Similarly, when experimenters read even advocates opening up old transgressions, coming
searchers paid him a dollar to lie and tell a partici-
a fairytale to their subjects and then forth to parents about sins committed long ago and ex-
pant in another experimental group that the task
asked them to retell it to an audience, plaining just why you resent them. This “frees you up
was really fun and interesting.
the subjects made minor alterations in from the jail of your own mind, which is the source of
The same experiment was repeated with a new
the story to make it more logical. The re- all human stress anyway.”
subject: he was given no expectations before the
searchers concluded that
task, and likewise found the spool and peg task
our minds want to be-
boring. But this time, the experimenters paid the
lieve and process rational E VO L U T I O N A RY B I O LO G I S T S S AY…
subject 20 dollars to tell a participant in the other
things, so we create the Lying is a really sophisticated cognitive ability.
group that the task was really fun and interesting.
rationality—on autopilot. We lie to protect ourselves from physical harm, to
As every test subject left, they were asked to ret-
prevent minor inconveniences, and sometimes to
rospectively rate how boring or interesting the task
spare the feelings of other people. Not telling the
was. The subjects given 20 dollars to lie rated the
truth is so evolutionarily beneficial, humans aren’t
task as really boring, which it was. But the people
the only ones who do it: spots on butterfly wings
who were only paid one dollar for their lie were
could be considered a form of lying (I’M ACTUALLY
much more likely to rate the task as “moderately in-
A BIG SCARY THING THAT COULD EAT YOU AND
teresting.” The fact that the group with the bigger
THESE ARE MY EYES), and one gorilla under scien-
reward was more honest about the results seemed
tific observation once destroyed a household object
to indicate that when the reward was much bigger
and then pointed accusingly at a nearby cat when
than the lie, subjects had no problem justifying the
the researchers walked in. Lying oils social relation-
deceit within their minds—they lied to get a good
ships with bosses, spouses, and friends, making us
amount of money. But when the reward was small,
more likely to be successful, survive, have offspring,
the subjects couldn’t justify the lie as adequately in
etc. Those perceptive enough to both lie and to see
their minds—they felt guilty; the money didn’t feel
through others’ lies have a big advantage: they can
substantial enough to merit deceit. Their minds rec-
alter others’ perceptions of the world without hav-
tified this uncomfortable incongruity by deciding
ing their own view skewed.
that perhaps moving around pegs and spools was
actually kind of fun. Scientists call this ‘cognitive
dissonance’—your mind dealing with two contra-
dictory ideas and rectifying them in the most logical
way it can.
The same thing happens when, for example,
there are really difficult obstacles to surmount be-
fore being granted entry into an exclusive party.
Because it’s so difficult to get in, people tend to sub-
consciously justify such effort by convincing them-
selves the party is extra awesome when they finally
get through.
An Excerpt from Bethel Park
by Charlotte Crowe, Design by Joann a Zhang
The crocuses are starting to push through, green and
round-tipped.
This morning there was a light coating of snow
around the house, in the shadowed parts the sun
hadn’t hit yet, the grass poking its way through the
snow, so it looked ruddy and rough. I was reminded
of my father when he hasn’t shaved in a day or two. I
thought about how a few hours after he has shaved, if
you look close enough, you can see the darkness right
beneath the skin, blue-ish.
March is a strange month, this overlapping of sea-
sons.
I cannot remember whether the crocuses by the
front walk are yellow or purple.
My father comes through the door, still sliding one
arm through his jacket. I can see his breath in the cold
air, a little disappearing-appearing cloud. It is 7:30 AM
or so.
This is our every morning: my alarm clock in my
room and my father’s alarm clock in my parents’ room,
and the showers going, me standing in my towel in
Francie’s room, saying Wake up. Pulling on clothes and
my father making English muffins or sometimes Pop
Tarts for me and Francie.
My mother is asleep, usually. For a while, she had
trouble sleeping and would be sitting up in the kitchen
when I came downstairs. Now, she has trouble getting
up in the mornings, and my father just lets her sleep.
He says, “Bye, Marybeth,” and bends over and kisses
her hair.
She sleeps.
Bethel Park is gray and brown in March. It slides
past the car window. I think my father could drive this
route without even looking: from the house, down
Church Road to the high school. He drops Francie off
at the middle school afterwards.
Then he drives to Pittsburgh for work. Sometimes
while I am taking notes at my desk with the chair at-
tached, I imagine him driving. I am sitting, taking
notes, and at the same time,
he is driving,
he is getting closer to Pittsburgh,
he is in Pittsburgh.
This morning pre-algebra is first period. We are do-
ing matrices, and boys in the class make jokes about
the movie The Matrix. There are neat rows of numbers
lined up on the board, the white chalk glowing.
The chalk numbers look like ghost numbers.
Last month I was sleeping over Chelsea Roddard’s
house with Joelle H. and Katherine Notting, and Joelle
had brought her Ouija board. We all sat on the carpet
in Chelsea’s room in the dark, our fingers on the edges
of the little plastic triangle, watching it move around
the board.
Katherine asked if I believed in ghosts. They all
looked at me and waited for me to answer. Have you
ever talked to your brother? Katherine asked. Kather-
ine, said Chelsea.
I didn’t know what to say. I said, No.
I have to do matrices problems from my pre-algebra
textbook. I lay it on the kitchen table.
Francie is home from school. We both take the
school bus home; Francie takes the middle school bus,
and I take the high school bus.
Francie has left graham cracker crumbs on the ta-
ble.
I can hear the television from the family room, a
commercial about hair dye that gives you natural-look-
ing highlights.
Francie! I’m home!
Hi, she says.
Did you eat? I ask her. I know she did: the crumbs.
Yep, she says.
Francie is in fifth grade. She wears blue plastic
glasses and has the straightest hair I have ever seen.
She loves reality television.
What are you watching?
She does not answer. The volume is up pretty loud
though, and I know it is the show about the nanny that
goes around to different houses and helps parents with
their children when they are acting childish.
Francie has never really acted childish, from what I
can remember.
I try to make a matrix neatly on my page. My rows
turn out crooked.
Francie, is Mom home?
She’s taking a nap.
When my mother wakes up, she watches television
with Francie for awhile. Then she asks what we want to
eat for dinner. She makes chicken-rice soup. My moth-
er keeps feeding us like we are sick people.
When my father gets home, he says the kitchen smells
good. He kisses each of us on the forehead. My father
keeps treating us like we are small children. We all sit
at the table in the kitchen and eat our chicken-rice
soups. Francie breaks crackers into little bits and puts
them in her soup. There is a circle of cracker crumbs
around her bowl.
Francie talks about her day: she typed her story in
the computer lab, her tadpoles are starting to get legs.
She talks about the show with the nanny that goes
around to people’s houses, tells us about a child who
hits his parents. My father laughs. My father drinks
the rest of the broth from his bowl. He asks my mother
how her day was. She says, Fine.
I don’t usually talk that much at dinner.
Francie says, Dad, do you want to watch Man vs.
Wild later? They love that show: the strong man who
goes to wild places alone, who somehow always finds
his way back.
Chelsea is on AIM and she AIMs me and says: Hey
Becca
and I say, Hi Chelsea
and she tells me she’s workin on hw and just fin-
ished dinner with her fam and its crazy because her
older sister rita got caught smoking cigarettes with
ronald delaney and her mom is flipping seriously FLIP-
PING.
Ronald Delaney is the son of the dental assistant
who cleans my teeth and wears the most eye makeup
of all the dental assistants. Ronald Delaney smokes. He
gets in fights in the student parking lot.
My sister has not stopped crying all night, she is se-
riously BALLING.
I do not tell Chelsea that she spelled bawling wrong.
Chelsea types fast.
What r u up to? she asks.
I tell her I am typing up my introduction paragraph
about To Kill a Mockingbird. I am writing about Scout
and Jem. I type their names over and over again: Scout,
Jem, Jem, Scout. I change the fonts to see which one
looks best.
Cool, says Chelsea. Would you smoke?
No, I say. Would you?
No, says Chelsea. But I think Ronald Delaney is
cute.
I think of Ronald Delaney’s mother, and how I don’t
think I’d like it if my mother wore that much tan make-
up and eyeliner and mascara.
Haha, I type, and send it to Chelsea.
Haha
Ronald Delaney always wears a black denim jacket.
Do you think he is? Chelsea asks.
Ronald Delaney was the year below my brother. My
brother told me that Ronald used to get beat up in mid-
dle school. Then he started beating people up in the
student parking lot. Ronald was nice to my brother,
though. My brother never got in any fights. Everyone
liked him.
From downstairs, Francie calls, Becca, do you want
to watch Man vs. Wild with me and Dad? He gets stuck
in an ice crevice!
I type to Chelsea: Idk
Idk g2g
My alarm clock makes a bee-beep bee-beep, and I click
it off and lay in bed until I hear my father’s: cleeps
cleeps cleeeeeps, cleeps cleeps cleeeeeps. He always turns
it off after two or three cycles, quickly, as if he doesn’t
want to disturb my mother, who is sleeping.
In the next room, Francie is sleeping too. She takes
baths at night, and lays her clothes for the next day on
the carpet. She lays them out in a person-shape: the
shirt, the sweater over it, the pants below that, then the
socks. An invisible fifth-grader lying flat on the floor. She
will wake up and put on those clothes, comb her straight,
straight hair with a comb, put on her blue plastic glasses.
The room after Francie’s is empty.
I cross the hall to the bathroom, turn the shower tap.
In the mirror my body looks longer than it is supposed
to; hipbones swell outwards. I press my palms against
them, as if I could push them back in.
It was the first time I’d ever seen my father cry. He did
not cry when the hospital called the house. He did not
cry at the wake or the funeral. I found him in the living
room, in the morning, one of the mornings during the
week when we did not use alarm clocks, when we did not
drive anywhere.
The week we stayed in the house. You don’t want to be
in the house, but you want to be anywhere else less.
I found him in the living room. We have a family room
with the couch and the television and the living room
with the fancy, clean couch and the matching chair. No
one ever sits on them. My father was not sitting on them;
he was sitting on the floor.
I was in the kitchen, staring at the food on the coun-
ter, wrapped in tinfoil and plastic wrap, sealed in tupper-
ware containers. The kitchen was still, all the food sitting
there, and I heard the bird noises he was making and
went to the living room.
He was sitting on the floor with his knees up. I stood
in the doorframe. He made bird noises and I stared be-
cause I had never heard my father make noises like that.
Dad? I asked.
He looked up, and saw me. He let out a bigger noise
then, his face melting down around the dark hole of his
mouth. I wanted to go to him, but I was rooted to my
spot in the doorframe.
Dad? I asked, and looked at him and then couldn’t
look at him anymore, and looked at the shiny coffee table
with the gilded picture frames on it, its fine layer of dust.
He was quiet and I walked into the room and knelt on
the carpet, bent over and tried to fold my arms around
his back.
He did not want me to touch him, and I did not want
to touch him, because we both knew it would not make
it better, but I did. I stayed there kneeling with my arms
around him.
That was nine months ago. That was at the beginning
of June and now it is March and first period and I am not
in the living room; I am in biology class.
We are doing an Embryology unit. We are filling out a
quiz and Part C is gestation times:
A whale’s gestation period is approximately a year.
A rabbit’s is one month.
A human’s is nine.
In these past nine months, a whole person could’ve
started. I fill in the blank. It takes so much longer for a
person to end.
Francie is home; I hear the television when I come in. The
kitchen smells like peanut butter.
What are you watching? I call to her and she says,
The News.
From the kitchen, I cannot hear what the reporter is
saying, but she sounds worried.
I put two slices of bread into the toaster and retrieve
the peanut butter jar from the cabinet. There are red jelly
marks in it; Francie didn’t use a clean knife.
Francie!
A memory: me yelling at Francie,
Francie! You got jelly in the peanut butter jar again!
What’s wrong with you? Wipe the knife!
Tyler saying, Or lick it. Him laughing.
Me looking at him, angrily. Me looking at Francie, an-
grily. Francie not liking television as much: her sitting at
the kitchen table, some papers in front of her, the purple
pencil case.
Tyler saying, Becca, the jelly’s going to get in the pea-
nut butter anyways. That’s the whole point. You’re mak-
ing a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. She’s just help-
ing you out.
Francie laughing loudly, adoringly. Yeah, I’m just
helping you out, her mimicking.
Me looking at him. Trying not to smile.
I feel sick and screw the lid back on the jar. I bring the
plain toast into the family room.
I sit on the couch next to Francie. I eat the plain toast
and we watch the news: bombs in Spain.
We hear my mother: Girls?
Hi, Mom, Francie says.
We’re in here, I say.
She comes in. She is wearing her bathrobe. It is light
blue, almost gray.
How are you feeling? I ask her. This is a stupid ques-
tion.
Oh fine, honey. I just took a little nap.
What are you girls watching?
Francie has quickly changed the channel from the
bombs. An old episode of The Cosby Show is playing.
Bill Cosby is walking up the stairs and Ruthie is laughing
down below.
The Cosby Show, Francie tells her.
Tonight I am babysitting for the Duponts, who live across
the street in the white house. They have two children:
Mikey is eight and Darrel is five. Darrel repeats most
things that Mikey says. Mikey loves microwave popcorn
and Nintendo 64. I ask what they would like for dinner.
Mikey says, Popcorn! Darrel says, Popcorn! I open the
freezer and take out a Styrofoam tray of chicken nug-
gets shaped like stars and moons and Saturns: galactic
chicken.
After dinner, Mikey plays Nintendo 64 and Darrel and I
sit on the couch and watch. After a while I am bored and
I suggest we do something else.
Fifteen more minutes, Mikey says.
Fifteen more minutes, Darrel says.
Ten.
After seven minutes I say, Ten minutes is up!
And we turn off the Nintendo 64, and Mikey says,
Let’s play Bad Guys. And Darrel says, Bad Guys, and I say,
Fine.
Mikey and Darrel go and retrieve two big plastic guns,
reappear in the living room.
BAM! Mikey yells. His gun is pointed at D a r r e l ’ s
chest. BAM YOU’RE DEAD!
Darrel says, No I’m not!
BAM BAM! Mikey yells.
I blocked! Darrel says. I’m not dead.
I got you!
Mikey uses his gun free hand to push Darrel. Darrel
falls onto the floor. Darrel starts to cry.
Darrel! I say.
He has to stay down there for ten seconds, Mikey ex-
plains to me.
Darrel, it’s okay. I go to Darrel.
He has to stay down there for ten seconds! Mikey in-
sists.
Mikey, stop it!
BUT HE’S DEAD I KILLED HIM!
MIKEY STOP IT!
HE’S DEAD!
STOP IT! STOP YELLING!
Darrel sits up. He asks, Becca why are you crying?
For a while after, there was a shortage of words. My par-
ents sent me to a counselor. She asked me questions:
What have you been thinking about, Becca?
In English, we had been memorizing words: archipel-
ago, pernicious, pedantic, lucid.
I told her what I had been thinking:
There is a word for someone who has lost their spouse,
widow or widower, words that sound suspiciously like
‘window.’ There is a word for someone who has lost their
parents: orphan. If you look that word up in the diction-
ary, the third definition is:
3. an opening line of a paragraph that is also the last
line of a page
see also widow
A line separated from the rest of its lines, but still, a
beginning.
There is no word for a parent who has lost a child, or a
sister who has lost her brother.
Interesting, the counselor says. That’s very interest-
ing.
Her freshwater pearl necklace looks too small for her
fat neck.
I am taking notes from the biology book:
Hibernation—a state of inactivity and metabolic depres-
sion in animals
Characterized by
a) lower body temperature
b) slower breathing
c) lower metabolic rate
Animals that hibernate include:
bats
ground squirrels, other rodents
mouse lemurs
the European Hedgehog, other insectivores
monotremes
marsupials
The book also tells me that some research projects are
currently investigating how to achieve hibernation in
humans. NASA is interested in inducing hibernation in
astronauts for very long space journeys.
Tyler went through a phase when he was nine or so,
when he could not sleep. His class had done a unit on
space, this papier-mâché Neptune blue and sticky on the
newspapered kitchen floor. He worried about the space
between the planets, the space beyond them.
Him standing in my parents’ room in his pajamas and
asking, Is it like that, just black black empty black?
I remember the service, and what the priest said
about Heaven. The priest that sounded Irish, and also
like a computer. I wondered if my parents believed him,
if they would have gone into space if they did, if they
would ever come back.
Francie! I yell from the kitchen. Wake, Mom up!
She’s napping, Francie says from the family room.
Wake her up!
Why?
Do it, I say. I do not say, Because she is not a ground
squirrel or a hedgehog. She is my mother.
The TV clicks off, the gauze of sound suddenly absent,
Francie padding down the hall to nudge her awake.
I have opened the window halfway and a breeze blows
in. There is no snow left, grass brownish but fully visible.
It is lighter out in the afternoons, lately. When my fa-
ther comes home it will still be light out, light enough to
see the crocuses, unfurled, purple and yellow and white.
by Eli Schmitt
THEINDY.ORG
T H E I M P O R TA N C E O F E AT-
ING CHOPPED LIVER
Every Thanksgiving, my grandmother
makes chopped liver. It’s smooth, a
little sweet, vaguely metallic—because
of the iron in the chicken’s liver, my
uncle used to tell me. It’s always on the
same mosaic coffee table, in the same
ceramic bowl surrounded by a ring of
water-crackers. Every year I eat too
much. Every year my grandmother
says the same thing: “That’s my girl!
She’s always loved chopped liva!”
I really do love it: for its wonder-
fully nostalgic taste, but even more
so for its place in my family mythol-
ogy. Thanksgiving of 2001, my uncle’s
mother, Miriam, lodged a chopped-liv-
er cracker in her throat. Panic ensued.
Twenty minutes later, my entire ex-
tended family—all twenty-five of us—
was gathered on the sidewalk while
Miriam shrieked at a handsome young
paramedic for asking what her age
was. (Miriam’s age is a mystery. Her
son doesn’t even know.) At the risk of
sounding morbidly sentimental, the
Miriam chopped-liver incident, in the
tradition of absurdly dramatic food-re-
lated crises that occur at large gather-
ings of Jewish families, was something
of a blessing. We got to act like Miri-
am had almost died—in reality she’d
been speaking and breathing just fine
through the whole ordeal—and like we
were thankful that she hadn’t. We all
shared something. It was kind of nice.
-GD
GIVING GRAZIE
We were a merry bunch, the students
abroad in the Brown-in-Bologna pro-
gram. It was my first Thanksgiving
separated from family, but I suffered
no sense of loss. There was some-
thing so natural about celebrating the
holiday in Italy: the things Americans
cherish on the third Thursday in No-
vember—loving company and food—
are woven firmly into the daily life of
an Italian. They eat slowly, they drink
slowly, and dinners are known to run
for hours into the night. As ours did
that Thanksgiving. We invaded the
small restaurant and claimed it for
ourselves, along with the two turkeys
prepared for us by the cooks each
sporting an American and Italian flag.
The locals strained their necks to ogle
the spectacle of our turkeys, and the
head chef proudly watched us enjoy his
food. He had never prepared a turkey
before, and had made an entire test
run the night before to practice, and
then eaten it with his family. I can viv-
idly recall the things we felt: pride ema-
nating from him, irradiating our table;
happiness in his eyes at his success and
the obvious pleasure we had in eating
his food; my eagerness to demonstrate
my gratitude and reciprocate this bliss.
The food was unforgettable. We had
all the usual Thanksgiving foods, just
wonderfully Italianized. We laughed;
we ate, we drank far too much wine.
No celebration could have been better,
and for it I am so thankful.
-HD
24
Food
THE INDY GIVES
THANKS
by Stephanie Cheung, Belle Cushing, Hannah Doyle, Alice Hines Grace Dunham, Kev-
in Pires, and Rémy Robert, Photos by John Fisher
DOUBLE TROUBLE
In a country of overeaters, Thanksgiving is the one day of the year when this vice is celebrated nationally. This in and of itself is a
marvel, but it is doubly true for a child of divorce. Every year, I must resort to a slew of trickery if I am to vanquish the looming
threat of tryptophan-induced slumbers, made acutely more resonant by my double feature feasting.
Over the years, I’ve struck a wacky balance between Dad’s schmaltzy mealtime rigmarole and the hilarity that is my histrionic
grandmother at Mom’s. The day starts with lunch around Dad’s table, where my brother and I are coerced into holding hands
with stepfamily, our heads bowed as Dad spouts off on the blessing of togetherness. It ends with Mom’s dry exchanges with
Grandma, who would be most thankful for a daughter who visited her daily…
On any other day, holding hands with a step-brother could really ruin one’s appetite, and awkward chunks of Velveeta would
put a damper on the spinach casserole. But then, the day Grandma starts using fresh spinach and real cheddar is a day I never
want to see. Somehow, I know I’ll never have to. And that’s comforting. Having learned to be a savvy Thanksgivinger, I see that
this bizarre mishmash of dishes and relatives is just what it means to be a family.
-RR
T H E N E W S T U F F I N G O N T H E B LO C K T H O U G H T S O N S U RV I VA L
I’m going to make a big generalization here—Asian families do Don’t touch the carving knife. Leave that to your dad, the
not get thrilled about eating turkey on Thanksgiving. It’s all too one with experience. And take time to stare. Stare at the
familiar: Daddy Cheung complains about the meat’s blandness, uncle from the Midwest who thinks East Coast education
Auntie Wong incessantly brings up how thick the gravy is, and makes you a Socialist. Stare at the 5th grade cousin who
Mommy Cheung mutters to herself, “we have to eat this for the tells you of spelling bees won and girls lost to boys with
next two weeks?!” footballs. And listen not to them but to the sound of your
I have a solution to please Turkey-friendly and hostile rela- dad cutting through turkey. And appreciate the silence of
tives alike. Ready? I present to you: sticky-rice stuffed turkey. unconditional familiarity. Appreciate that they know you
Move over, bread/veggie/assorted nuts stuffing, and meet your can give them an ear but not a thought. Only a passing
new competitor. Most likely adapted from a Cantonese dim smile because you are in college, and you have too much
sum called lo mai gai (sticky rice with mushroom, conpoy, and on your mind.
chicken wrapped in lotus leaves), the sticky rice-stuffed turkey -KP
has become a go-to dish for many Asian-American families. The
rice absorbs all the turkey juices so it’s extra flavorful, plus you T H A N K S FO R N OT H I N G
can add whatever you fancy to the rice (Chinese chorizo, black How to botch Thanksgiving? Be a sixteen-year-old board-
mushrooms, and chestnuts, to name a few). To make the stuff- ing school brat on her first trip to France. When my
ing, soak the rice in cold water for a few hours before cooking friend’s host family asked me if “I could share to them
to soften it, then bring to a boil over high heat, and reduce it please our speciale holyday?” I thought of my extensive
to medium heat until all the water is absorbed by the rice. Place E-Z-Mac experience and agreed! At the local Carrefour, I
your choice of ingredients on top of the rice, add in soy sauce, could not locate cranberries, pumpkin, squash, turkey, or
sesame oil, and black pepper, and cover it with a lid to allow the any of the French words for these items (although I did
steam to do the cooking. Cook it until it’s semi-translucent, as manage to find several bottles of the green-apple flavored
the rice will cook more in the oven. Finally, stuff the brined tur- liquor, “Manzana,” which I purchased without showing ID
key with the rice—add chestnuts if desired—stick it into the and smuggled back to boarding school in my suitcase.) So I
oven, and voilà! Oh, and tell your mom not to worry—there improvised. After an afternoon of messy labor, I presented
won’t be any leftovers. to the family a trashed kitchen, an overcooked chicken in
-SC brown soup, a celery-crouton “stuffing” salad, boiled pota-
toes smushed with a fork, a side of raisins, and ice cream.
The ice cream was a hit. As for the “turkey,” it was spit back
T H E B E S T C R A N B E R RY S AU C E I N T H E WO R L D
out into the napkin upon first bite and then ignored. Even
Buy can of Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce. Open can with
the chubby ten-year-old made fun of my purée. “Maybe the
can-opener. Squelch Jell-o cylinder onto a plate with a smiling
trash can will like it,” he smirked as his mother scraped the
pilgrim on it. If the ridges from the can glisten in the candle-
uneaten muck into the poubelle. I stuffed myself, for pos-
light, still intact, you have succeeded. Slice, serve, snort some
terity’s sake, thinking about how I could would gush about
up your nose (try to get it to come out your mouth…). And save
the snobby French to friends back at home. I should have
the real cranberries for the dark chocolate-cranberry glazed
just stuck to Manzana cocktails.
tart with mascarpone filling.
-AH
-BC

Illustrations by Charis Loke
EMILY SEGAL
Throughout history, there have
been winners and there have
been losers. But it was only after
GEORGE WARNER that epic sleepover/gym lock-in
You know the quote from that where Abigail Williams roofied
Shakespeare play—it goes some- Dr. Faustus, and Emma Goldman
thing like, “some are born to the and Lorena Bobbitt locked braces,
Indy, some achieve the Indy, and and Charlemagne and Napoleon
some have the Indy thrust upon locked them all in the girls’ bath-
them.” Alternate manuscripts read room with nothing but a bottle of
“George Warner has the Indy thrust sizzurp and a coop of guinea-hens
upon him,” and I think we can all (until nine months later, where-
agree that this must be the defini-
upon they emerged, fused like a
tive version. Sometime in the late
fuckin’ Gaeia-Megazord and preg-
16th century George was the web
nant up to the chin), that there
editor of ye olde Independent, un-
was Emily Segal. With more duende
til he was scared away by a former
in a single fleck of dandruff than
Managing Editor driving 50 mph
all the Spanish painters combined
the wrong way down North Main
and enough brains to sate the bel-
en route to the Indy banquet. But
lies of a thousand zombies, Emily
after stints in carpentry, farming,
came up on the scene covered in
and rapping (every time you hear
fake blood and lamé, whispered
the lines “sexually, mentally, phys-
“plez” and promptly started run-
ically, emotionally/I’ll be like your
ning shit. She bid all her haters
medicine, you’ll take every dose of
“kill yoself,” then gave them the
me,” remember that line came to
kind of deep tongue-kiss that
George in a dream), George had
makes grown men cry. If you
the Indy thrust right back upon
look closely, you’ll see that Emily
him—more accurately, he lived
actually oozes power, and shit is
with a series of Indy staffers and
contagious. Once, she blew ciga-
developed a kind of Independent
rette smoke in my face and I cried
Stockholm Syndrome. After put-
tears of amber—and then wrote
ting the gay farming beat behind
the best article of my entire life.
him, he assumed the position of
And there’s that thing were every
vociferous, indefatigable Metro
time Emily says UH-MA-ZING, a
editor, and there he’s been ever
non-sentient being gets an un-
since, a journalist through and
conscious. Literally. It’s actually
through—with a battle cry of ¡sí retarded. Spooky retarded.
se puede!
ver
has ne
T E : T h e Indy his season
t
R’s NO ss, but d of
EDITO tranger to lo it h t h e e n rs:
a s d w e
been har ial care
s e s p e c ia lly rious editor , two
t s
h it illus ditor s-
most aging e porter
e ig h t m
fo r er man o intrepid re ost
three ros, tw erhaps the m ver
caballe e
rogue ditors, and p paper has
e his e
turned ook critic t the collectiv
lb te
sensua could calcula t (and the y
e lo ss
seen. W bored by this htmares, me lyst.
la s ig n nig h e Cata
hours e e t
e: InD e’d b e SIMONE LANDON
overtim ), but then w speak for th nes
q u e t s li v in g ve d o
ban the r lo When I first saw Simone, I heard
ather s of ou n the
We’d r d tag the toe unt them o rs,
n mo trombones. It was winter—
dead, a e stuff and int-five
re w p u s r o om. Po g just her scaly hands were gloved in
befo um tayin
f our r u for s Swarovski crystals—and with glit-
walls o nly thank yo
o tering fingertips she drew from
we can h longer.
t m u c
tha her pocket a punch-card to guest
ZACH RAUSNITZ me into the Illuminati banquet. I
It’s widely understood that talking said I was nervous; she slapped me
about the size of your genitals in across the face. “Shut up/whatev-
public is objectionable, if not for er,” she said, and without another
puritanical reasons, then simply word shoved me into a dumbwait-
because it makes others uncom- DANIELA POSTIGO er. We spent a few weeks in there,
fortable. It’s unseemly. There are, “Bai” you said? But it can’t be time plunging toward the core of the
of course, exceptions to every to go yet. We’ve only just begun! earth, and as she decried patri-
rule, and behind each exception The templates are fresh, the code MARGO IRVIN archy and located the etiology of
is an exceptional person. Zachary is new. We haven’t finished our Has your heart ever been torn everything in the city of Detroit,
Rausnitz (or “Znack” as he liked Diet Coke or even started on the asunder, when a nearby curly head MI, I felt more homosocial ten-
to be called) was one such person. last roll of sushi. Our cigarettes are of hair spins around and it’s not sion than Josh Jackson and Paul
Though his reasons for taking up still lit and burning. The best Tay- your precious Margo, but a Chucky Walker did when they got stuck in
residence in Providence were am- lor Swift song hasn’t come on yet. Doll? Well, I sure have been, but it that cage in The Skulls. Palpable.
biguous (some speculate that he Hey, look! A kitten! … You’re right, was no big deal – Margo had just Anyway, by the time Mercury slid
fell off a transatlantic jet ski; oth- there’s no kitten. But, it’s just, moved to Argentina for a spell in into retrograde, we hit bottom.
PABLO LARIOS there are so many reasons for you The door flew open onto a gro-
ers buy his own story, that he es- order to have enough peace and
Vodka, triple sec, lime, cranber- to stay. There’s gotta be some more tesque parade of bodies with no
caped from a minimum-security solitude in which to download
ry, a bit of -eño and Okla honda. pixels to flatten, or at least a stray belly buttons and phantom hands,
prison in Maryland), he always PDFs of the Indy and meticulously
Shake it up in one of those Prus- ligature to correct? No? Well what chatting amiably about blogs be-
put us at ease, whether furiously seek out all the wrongly-bolded
sian boot glasses; a cosmo Pablo. about the blog? No, the other blog? side a lake of sulphur. Simone
NATALIE JABLONSKI ‘scratching’ himself under the ta- commas in them. She came back
The first and last time I ever saw That one we started that summer castigated a group of youths play-
If you have broken bread with a ble at a meeting or simply pussy- with such a thick aura that it’s nec-
the words palimpsest, interpel- and never finished; can’t you stay ing spin-the-bottle (“If you want
woman named Natalie Jablonski, popping with his roommate, As- essary to bust - or confirm - some
lation and postlapsarian in the for that? For old times sake? Look, to make out, make out!”) while
please do not judge her for her tro. The remarkable thing about myths: yes, she knew that already;
same sentence was either in Pab- I know it isn’t much, but these I hid behind the legs of grazing
whole-wheat cookies. Do not judge Znack was how comfortable he yes, those horrible shoes look in-
lo’s review of Prince’s album He awful modernist buildings we’ve megafauna. “It’s scary among the
her for letters that start with Good would make you feel in the wildest sanely chic on her; yes, she can
Looks Just Like Me or some shit in inhabited have to count for some- powerful,” I said, to which Sim-
Morning and end with Love. Be- situations, like when he would slip make a thanksgiving dinner for 30
Adorno. Either way I’m down with thing, a lol or two. Hey, I know it one replied, “We’re prettier and
cause gurl ain’t no Whole Wheat, up behind you and whisper that he in six minutes with only a can of
Lariosianism AKA intellectual no- says you’re busy on gchat, but re- we fuck more.” She then took my
King Arthur Organic bullshit wanted to sip blueberry schnapps condensed milk and a garlic press
madology. Plus those blackbird member that time we laughed so hand and led me to the Garden of
nothing. She is the real deal, and out of your —, or when he would while reciting the entire Aeneid to
chopstick pants and hot droopy hard you snorted ‘Habermas!’ ? Adonis, which looked like Chris
she don’t play nice. Think: Big Mac strip off all his clothes in front of the beat of a Jane Fonda workout
beaters; talk about a real-world Let’s watch an episode of House. Carney’s bedroom, and kissed me
with Dino-Size Fries and a 42oz a group of schoolchildren, scream: vid; no, her body was not cryo-
sartorial tumblr! He was the first Or Grey’s Anatomy! Even better. among the prototypes. I replayed
Drink, Two-For-One Deals, All “COLLEGE!!” and jump into a body genically unfrozen from a vault
guy to ride a fixie on College Hill, I’ll order some Dominos and pick it in my head for weeks—but
You Can Eat Chicken and Italian- of water. Never sly or sleazy, Znack in old hollywood; yes, she knew
and then, in the only way any true up some tequila. We need your whenever I brought it up, Simone
dressed Iceberg Lettuce. I’m talk- was simply a real-life Don Juan, or precisely where you were going to
revolution can happen these days, halp. We need your extra zzzzzs. claimed she’d forgotten. But you
ing Real. MMMMHMMMMM. perhaps Don Juan crossed with split your infinitive years before
was the first one to throw it out We need your astute critical eye: know what Simone? I remember.
That’s at least 4,000 calories real. Oprah; an infinitely wise and in- you even wrote your article. But
of his third story window. Also I “h8 frankfurt school h8 adorno And you know what else? I just
Just a few weeks ago I heard some finitely potent lover who would don’t stress, Margo’s not (really) a
think he’s into poetry, which I’ve h8 them all,” you said. You weren’t bit through my own hand. Which
fellas chatting, one said “Man, penetrate you before you said hello zombie – beneath that freaky, sav-
never personally read, but always wrong. You were always the brains means more to me, or you, or Ga-
Natalie is the total package.” The and leave you before you realized age genius, down below the layer
liked the concept of. behind this operation. ... I see, brielle Union than you can ever
other responded, “I got to get me a what had happened. of deviled eggs and pixie dust, is
okay. otay. i spose ur rite. bai now, just a sweet little freek-a-leek who understand. To be honest with
Natalie.” That type of real real.
Dani, bai. wants to fuckin party. you? It means everything.
by Suerynn Lee
FRIDAY | 19
7 PM
The Rude Mechanicals, a Shake-
spearean scenes festival, presented
by Shakespeare on the Green. At the
Underground, Brown University, Provi-
dence. FREE.
8 PM
48 Hour Film Competition. Prompts
will go out online at 8:00 pm to teams
that have registered in advance.
Students can register by emailing if-
fprogramming@gmail.com before with
their group name, leader, members,
and school. The contest is limited to
groups of undergraduate students with
ten or fewer members. Check www.
ivyfilmfestival.com/48.
10 PM
Blood from a Turnip. Rhode Island's
oldest late night puppet salon: What
is a puppet? Who really pulls the
strings? Is life just a performance?
Text, sound, imagery, and movement,
the cute with the macabre. "If You
Give a Mouse a Cookie, It'll Come
Back From the Dead and Eat Your
Brain." Also, "For The Hoot Owl (An
Opera for Headphones)" investigates
role-playing and deer hunting. At the
Perishable Theatre, Providence. $5.
SATURDAY | 20
12 - 5 PM
Providence Really Really Free Mar-
ket!. Bring usable goods, food, talents,
skills to share. At Dexter Field, Provi-
dence. FREE.
2PM
From the Ashes: Surviving The Sta-
tion Nightclub Fire. Join authors Paul
Lonardo and Gina Russo who tell the
story of Gina's survival and recovery
from one of the worst disasters in RI
history. At the Brown Bookstore, Provi-
dence. FREE.
5 PM
Kennedy Plaza Ice Rink Open-
ing Weekend. Did you know the
14,000-square-foot skating rink is
twice the size of Rockefeller Plaza’s
ice rink? Kennedy Plaza, Providence.
$6.
9 PM
imadethismistake (LP release show) //
Weak Teeth // Math The Band // Barn-
swallow. At AS220, Providence. $6.
SUNDAY | 21
3 PM
An afternoon of Javanese Gamelan!
At Grant Recital Hall, Brown Univer-
sity, Providence. FREE.
3 PM
The Manton Avenue Project presents:
“It Sounds So Crazy It Just Might
Work, the plays of Invention.” Plays
written by fourth graders, acted by
adults. At the Media and Arts Center
at Met Public, Providence. FREE.
MONDAY | 22
7PM
Lecture on Murakami by Thomas
Cobb, a Rhode Island College Pro-
fessor and author of “Crazy Heart.”
At Marian J. Mohr Memorial Library,
Johnston. FREE.
TUESDAY | 23
5 PM
Reading for a Living: Observations on
the Difference Between Lay and Pro-
fessional Reading. Lecture by John
Guillory. Pembroke Hall, Room 305,
Brown University, Providence. FREE.
8 PM
ARC & Firehouse 13 present: The
1st Annual ARTIST SESSIONS, a
time when all of us get together and
create music and joy to aid others in
our community. KC Maoners, Chris
Rosenquest, Eric Bloom and The
Reform Party, The Kildevil & The
Lovely Jess Powers. At Firehouse 13,
Providence. $10.
WEDNESDAY | 24
5:30 PM
Tour of AS220 with Founder and Ar-
tistic Director Bert Crenca. At AS220,
Providence. FREE.
7 PM
Cooler Than Smack // PROZAK
// The R.O.C. Trailer (?) on You-
Tube: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=7YPG6u2IjAw. At Jerky’s
Music Hall, Providence. $15.
9PM
The Gobble Gobble Getdown.
Thanksgiving Eve party. 21+. DJ Os-
heen & DJ Freezy. Cover.
THURSDAY | 25
12:30 PM
Patriots vs Lions on CBS
4:15 PM
Saints vs Cowboys on Fox
8:20 PM
Bengals v Jets on NFL Network
THE
LIST
3. Holding crayon in dominant hand, carefully trace
around the digits of other hand until you arrive at a
4. Draw in stick feet, crest, eyes, beak, & feathers
2. Place your non-dominant hand, palm down,
1. Gather supplies. You’ll need a piece of paper
The List Presents: How To Draw A Hand Turkey
firmly and flatly on sheet of paper.
and a crayon or two.
5. Gobble gobble.
turkey-ish shape.
as necessary.