The College Hill Independent Vol. 37 Issue 3 by College Hill Independent

28 SEP 2018 VOL 37 ISSUE 03 A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY

LOCAL!

FROM THE EDITORS COVER

A Gift from Daddy Isabelle Rea NEWS

Week in Review Harry August, Ella Comberg, Lucien Turczan-Lipets

Vigilante (In)justice Julian Fox METRO

Let the Kids Learn Ivy Scott

Naked and Unafraid Kayli Wren ARTS

My First Raincoat Wen Zhuang FEATURES

1...2...3....Liftoff! Jeremy Wolin SCIENCE & TECH

Spark Up Julia Rock LITERARY

Dr. Oz, Wizard Luke Perrotta EPHEMERA

Where's the Remote? Nicole Cochary

Nearly every night without fail, my grandmother’s words ring in my ears as I try to fall asleep, “You don’t sleep with your phone by your head, do you?” “No, grandma, of course not,” I always say. “Good. The government wants to get you, ya know.” “Yes, grandma.” “Also cancer.” “I know, grandma. Don’t worry, I always turn my phone off 30 minutes before I fall asleep and leave it on the other side of the room.” This is a lie. Nearly every night without fail, I fall asleep with my phone directly next to my ear. When I feel especially guilty, I throw it to the foot of my bed and hope I can hear my alarm in the morning. When I feel especially lazy, I leave it resting on my forehead and try not to think about brain tumors. -IS MISSION STATEMENT

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The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown and RISD. We are committed to publishing politically engaged and accessible work. While the Indy is financed by Brown University, we hold ourselves accountable to our readers across the Providence community. The Indy rejects content that explicitly or implicitly perpetuates racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism and/or classism.

My Little Mew Ava Zeichner

Though this list is not exhaustive, the Indy strives to address these systems of oppression by centering the voices, opinions, and efforts of marginalized people in Providence and beyond. The Indy is constantly evolving: we are always working to make our staff and content more inclusive. Though our editing process provides an internal structure for accountability, we always welcome letters to the editor.

WEEK IN REVIEW Sara van Horn NEWS Mara Dolan Lucas Smolcic Larson Paula Pacheco Soto METRO Jacob Alabab-Moser Harry August Ella Comberg FEATURES Tiara Sharma Wen Zhuang BODY Pia Mileaf-Patel Cate Turner

VOL 37 ISSUE 03

ARTS Nora Gosselin Isabelle Rea Marianne Verrone

LIST Alexis Gordon Signe Swanson Will Weatherly

SCIENCE & TECH Mia Pattillo Julia Rock Eve Zelickson

WRITERS Ben Bienstock Mica Chau Jessica Dai Eduardo Gutierrez-Peña Liby Hays Jorge Palacios Giacomo Sartorelli Ivy Scott Marly Toledano Alex Westfall Claribel Wu Kayli Wren

LITERARY Shuchi Agrawal Emma Kofman EPHEMERA Nicole Cochary Claire Schlaikjer X Maya Bjornson Maria Gerdyman

28 SEP 2018

COPY EDITORS Grace Berg Seamus Flynn Miles Guggenheim Matt Ishimaru Hannah Ngo Sasha Ramen ILLUSTRATORS Natasha Brennan Natasha Boyko Julia Illana Jeff Katz Halle Krieger Katya Labowe-Stroll Sophia Meng Sandra Moore Rémy Poisson Katherine Sang Mariel Solomon Ella Rosenblatt Miranda Villanueva

ILLUSTRATION EDITORS Alex Hanesworth Eve O'Shea DESIGNERS Pablo Herraiz Garcia de Guadiana Bethany Hung Amos Jackson Katherine Sang Ella Rosenblatt DESIGN EDITOR Jack Halten Fahnestock BUSINESS Maria Gonzalez

SENIOR EDITORS Eliza Chen Katrina Northrop Signe Swanson Will Weatherly MANAGING EDITORS Olivia Kan-Sperling Chris Packs Erin West MVP Paper Boys (@theindy_tweets)

WEB Ashley Kim

The College Hill Independent is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

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@THEINDY_TWEETS

WEEK IN RUNNING BY Harry August, Ella Comberg, Lucien Turczan-Lipets DESIGN Amos Jackson

UPTOWN RATS, NOT SO WHITEBREAD WORLD Billy Joel pointed out that the differences between the girls of the Upper East Side and the grittier guys from the backstreets downtown never seemed greater than in the musical imagination of the 1980s. According to a study released by Fordham University last fall, however, hordes of vermin in New York City’s subway system have actually developed a far greater social divide than Joel could have anticipated. While those uptown girls from their white bread world today might venture south of 14th street, the newly discovered genetically distinct variant of uptown rats probably never will. Since the first European colonists in New York, their quasi-mythical rat friends were assumed to be a monolithic species: large, ubiquitous, and revolting. While the rats of the city that never sleeps will probably always retain those characteristics, Matthew Combs, a graduate researcher at Fordham University, released a study that found genetic divisions in the rats, suggesting distinct ‘Uptown’ and ‘Downtown’ varieties. While the result of this research seems too wild to believe, the methods were extremely serious. Combs conducted his two-years of research by traversing the island using data from a crowdsourced “rat map” to trap the animals at locations across the city. According to the Atlantic, the research team used a “potent bait of peanut butter, bacon, and oats, placing their traps near places where rats had clearly crawled.” These spaces indicated on the map were eagerly identified by residents of each neighborhood by the residue of a quotidian rat existence: sebum, rat poo, chew marks, and holes dug in the ground. The team then collected one-inch samples from the rats’ tails, and analyzed their DNA. Combs found that rats that share a common ancestor from the mid-18th century in lower Manhattan had expanded northward with the growth of the city’s population, eventually acquiring genetic characteristics that differed from their downtown counterparts. This phenomenon was encouraged by the relative lack of rats in Midtown, creating a buffer zone between the cousin rats. This means that, unlike humans, rats rarely traverse the boundaries of their own ‘neighborhood,’

and may even be distinct within uptown varieties. All jokes aside, this research has important implications. New York is facing a health crisis that has prompted Mayor de Blasio to create a 32-milliondollar plan to address the rats and their accompanying diseases. The Fordham research team will potentially play an important part in this plan, informing the monumental challenge of addressing the rat problem in a city famous for its rat problem. While the date of the rat’s genetic separation is unclear, what is apparent is that the social division unfolding above ground in Billy Joel’s 1983 Manhattan might have had a nastier mirror image hiding just below the surface. While the rats can obviously still mate, the genetically distinguishable populations extend far beyond an ‘uptown’/‘downtown’ binary. Each neighborhood has an identifiable population of rats, and Matthew Combs is to thank for this discovery. -LTL

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS NOT MY FRIEND

A man attending the North Smithfield Town Council meeting last week had a simple request of Council Chair John Beauregard: “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”. From his chair among the council, Beauregard retorted back: ‘Who said that? Who said that?’ ‘I did!’ said the older man, shaking with rage. ‘OUT!’ rebuked Beauregard. (Transcript from local journalist and legend Steve Ahlquist). In the end, it was the man from the crowd who got the last laugh. That night, North Smithfield rescinded the transparently racist resolution it passed a week earlier, which banned any town official from purchasing Nike products. The resolution was a response to Nike’s partnership with Colin Kaepernick, who was effectively blacklisted from the NFL after publicly protesting -HA & EC police violence. Beauregard, who authored the resolution, drew national condemnation for the original bill, which said that Colin Kaepernick “has compared police to modern day slave patrols” and “fans the flames of the endless fallacy that police are nothing more than inhumane

PERSONAL EFFECTS

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

tyrants.” The resolution states that 102 police officers have been killed in the line of duty so far this year, but notably does not mention that 723 people of color were killed by police in the same time period, according to the Providence Journal. While we here at the Indy fully condemn this overtly anti-Black legislation, we have to admit that Beauregard has one thing right—what policy-wonks might call “the horseshoe hypothesis.” That is, a resolution so far right, it starts to border on anti-corporatist leftism. That’s what we do best, after all. 11 Nike executives left the company this year for “rampant sexual harassment” and “over complaints of an uncomfortable workplace that discriminates against women,” according to NPR. Could North Smithfield’s proposal be taken to stand in solidarity with these executives? Or with Naomi Klein’s 1999 anti-corporate branding book “No Logo,” which attacks Nike so fiercely for its numerous corporate misdeeds that the company had to publish a point-by-point rebuttal? Maybe, Beauregard is acting as a sleeper agent for United Students Against Sweatshops, who notably brought attention to Nike’s exploitation of Vietnamese workers in 2017. Nike is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad corporation. Out of context, Beauregard's initial resolution states that “Nike’s values do not reflect our values and Nike should not financially benefit from our business.” Here at the Indy, on this at least, we can agree. Several protesters who, according to the Providence Journal, attended the North Springfield meeting to protest the original resolution “wearing new Nike T-shirts.” How this resolution put Nike on the side of the justice makes us weep for this world.

BY Liby Hays

WEEK IN REVIEW

S.T.D. FREE?

“If I drink Mountain Dew after having sex, will that prevent pregnancy or HIV?” a teenager earnestly asked in one of Thomas Bertrand’s focus groups, this one held at Youth Pride, a social services organization in Providence, RI. Youth Pride is located on Westminster Street, adjacent to the intersection of three of the largest high schools in the Providence School District: Classical High, Central High, and the Providence Career and Technical Academy. The organization has become both a geographical and social cornerstone of the LGBTQ+ community in Providence. Students from all over the city gather to build community with one another, as well as to learn and discuss issues facing the queer community. As Chief of the Center of HIV, STDs, Viral Hepatitis, and TB at the Rhode Island Department of Health, it is Bertrand’s job to be concerned about sexual health. However, as Bertrand recounted his experiences speaking to several focus groups representative of the various communities at risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), it became evident that his concern was directed specifically at the absence of sexual education among young Rhode Islanders. “Young people had questions that made me believe that they lacked basic understanding around HIV and STDs,” he said. “A lot of young people thought that if you got tested for an STD, they would also do drug testing at the same time. [They said,] ‘I don’t want to get tested because I’m afraid that they’re gonna find out I do drugs.’” Bertrand found that these misconceptions about sexual health persisted into adulthood. “In one of my focus groups with gay men, they said, ‘Tom,

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we don’t know that syphilis is a problem. You have to emphasize how serious a problem it is,’” Bertrand said. Although some communities might be unaware of it, STDs are a persistent and wide-reaching issue in Rhode Island. The state ranks 13th in the nation for rates of infectious syphilis, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Syphilis cases have also increased 15 percent more than the national average last year, with gonorrhea increasing four percent and chlamydia increasing three percent more than the national rates. “Every day, it’s probably one of the main calls that we get, people inquiring about STD care,” said Marie Ghazal, Chief Executive Officer of the Rhode Island Free Clinic. Although the Free Clinic’s focus is general care, employees often serve a demographic considered to be at risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases. “The majority [of calls we receive] are from the inner cities,” she added, “from Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls.” The Rhode Island HIV, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and Hepatitis C Surveillance Report, jointly compiled by the Rhode Island Department of Health and Department of Education, confirms Ghazal’s observations: From 2013 to 2015, the Providence and Pawtucket municipalities had the first and second highest number of cases, respectively, of the “big three” STDs: infectious syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. The three cities mentioned by Ghazal also rank among the top four poorest cities in the state by per capita income. For every disease, the number of cases in Providence was more than double that of any other

municipality. For chlamydia, it was more than triple. Doctors in Providence are unsure what is causing these numbers to increase, particularly since new cases of both HIV and teen pregnancy have gone down in the past decade. “We’re seeing significant decreases in HIV but significant increases in STDs, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” said Dr. Philip Chan, internal medicine and infectious diseases physician at The Miriam Hospital and director of their STD Clinic. Dr. Chan raised the possibility that people are exclusively using hormonal birth control or medications designed to prevent HIV, such as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), and forgoing use of a condom. This conflation of “anti-pregnancy” or “anti-HIV” medication with “anti-STD” contraception would explain how Rhode Islanders might acquire other sexually transmitted diseases without contracting HIV or becoming pregnant. Although it is well established in the medical and academic fields that condoms are the only form of contraception that also prevent against STDs, an absence of thorough sexual education in Rhode Island public schools may be responsible for the misunderstandings that prevail among teenagers and young adults throughout the state, and for the increase in sexually transmitted diseases in urban RI. +++ “I’m very apprehensive about talking to you... I’m not sure that I should be,” were the first words that came through the phone. The voice, crackly and difficult to

28 SEP 2018

An inquiry into safe sex among young Rhode Islanders and the state of sex ed in RI public schools BY Ivy Scott ILLUSTRATION Julia Illana DESIGN Amos Jackson

distinguish, belonged to Andrew McIntosh*, one of the four physical education teachers at Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School in the Providence Public School District. “Excuse me? Could you repeat that, it’s a bit difficult to hear you.” His next words came through crystal clear. “We’re not teaching what we should be teaching, and so we’re very apprehensive about talking to people, letting people come watch us teach.” McIntosh explained that a few years ago, Providence and Warwick school districts, the two biggest school systems in the state, decided to switch from contraception-based health education to a focus on abstinence. This change has made the job of health educators increasingly difficult, and in McIntosh’s case, increasingly covert. “They’re teenagers,” McIntosh added. “They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, you know?” So, despite the school district’s mandate, McIntosh and his colleagues continue to teach contraception to the students at Alvarez High School, promoting condoms and other forms of birth control. As a locally controlled state (one where municipalities have control over the management of public schools), Rhode Island has no mandated state curriculum, instead allowing school districts to design their own curriculum so long as it complies with state guidelines. State law does require discussion about STDs, teen pregnancy, condoms, and contraception, but does not include requirements for the amount of time that should be spent on each topic. The minimum instructional time is 100 minutes per week for health and physical education in general; however, the state does not specify how much time should be spent in gym class as compared to health. When asked how much time he spent on sexual health in high school, Jacob Jackson responded, “All I remember was a week and a half long project where we all had to research an STD and give a presentation on it.” The former student of Burrillville High School, Class of 2016, said that sexual health wasn’t covered every year, and that when they did cover it, the instruction was comprehensive but brief. At other schools in the state, information about sexual health is not so transparent. When the College Hill Independent asked a secretary at William E. Tolman Senior High School in Pawtucket, about sexual health instructors at the school, she responded, “I don’t even know who to have you talk to... it’s a very small component of the education, it’s not even a class.” This statement is not surprising given that health and sexual education in Rhode Island are often taught by gym teachers in combination with physical education classes. Assistant Superintendent of the Pawtucket School Department Cheryl McWilliams initially gave permission to the Independent to observe health instruction in the district in an email on November 16. However, on November 17, she changed her mind, stating, “We are not able to accommodate your request... it seems you are not an education student seeking to learn about teaching practices. Our Health classes incorporate the state requirements for health education.” Of the two high schools in the district, only Tolman High School had available information on health curriculum, which did not include sexual health.

about the unique sexual health issues that members of the queer community face. While some information reaches queer students through workshops and conversations like the one held at Youth Pride, sufficient LGBTQ-oriented sexual education is woefully lacking in many public schools across Rhode Island. “There was a unit [in health class] about LGBTQ terminology and how to respect people’s identities, but it was detached from sexual health,” confirmed Jackson, Burrillville Class of ‘16. “We were never taught about how these issues relate to LGBTQ people.” According to the Rhode Island Adolescent Sexual Health Profile for the period 2016-2020, it is estimated that LGBTQ+ students comprise at least 10 percent of the high school population in Rhode Island. The absence of thorough and contextualized information provided by the state is likely a major cause of the misconceptions that queer youth in Rhode Island often have about safe sexual practices. The profile reported that the rate of condom use is much lower among the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) population than the general high school population. Specifically, almost half (49 percent) of LGB students reported not using a condom in their recent sexual experiences, as compared to 37 percent of heterosexual students. Data is not available for students identifying as transgender, nonbinary, questioning, or queer. Additionally, there is no guarantee that available information even reaches students. Many high schools in Rhode Island have a large percentage of students that immigrated from Latin American countries, whom McIntosh termed “newcomers.” It is not only these students’ first time in the United States, but their first time attending school. As a result, he said, very few of them can read above a third- or fourth-grade level, making it very difficult for them to understand the material, even when it is presented in Spanish. Alvarez High School, with a 77 percent Hispanic population according to the Department of Education, is among these schools with a high number of “newcomers.” An assessment of the school by the Department of Education in 2017 confirmed this: only 2.3 percent of all students and 1.1 percent of Hispanic students at Alvarez High School are deemed by the state to be proficient in reading. Parents can also choose to opt their children out of sexual health education, according to Anthony Ficocelli, Director of Athletics and Physical Education at Central Falls High School, RI. If a parent refuses to sign and return the permission slip sent home at the beginning of the year, the student receives alternative classwork during the units when sexual health is being covered. Ficocelli said that fewer than five percent of students at Central Falls High School opt out each year; however, 35 percent of Rhode Island high schoolers either had not been taught, or were unsure of being taught, about methods of birth control, according to information provided by the state. At Alvarez High School, no permission slip is sent home at all, according to McIntosh, because, “we’re not teaching sexual education; we’re teaching abstinence, wink-wink.” Rhode Island Department of Education Representative Rosemary Reilly-Chammat stated

that she was unaware of the legal liberties being taken with state law by school districts.“[The decision not to teach sexual health] would be unacceptable,” she said. “Schools have to teach these concepts.” +++ The question of ending sexually transmitted diseases in Rhode Island is daunting, but medical professionals throughout the state are optimistic. According to gynecologist Dr. Vigliani, public health officials are already making attempts to improve the sexual education system statewide. “I think there’s been a lot of training by the health department in response to the increases in STDs. They have created, out of what was a patchwork quilt of health care, an integrated system for screening for STDs,” she said. “I’m really impressed.” Department of Health representative Bertrand confirmed Vigliani’s observation. While Betrand himself works with Youth Pride and similar organizations to spread information about sexual health, he added that several nurses working with the Department of Health have been “actively visiting urgent care sites to educate healthcare providers on conducting screenings for STDs.” Athletic director Ficocelli added that in Central Falls School District, school nurses and medical aids make an effort to provide access to the resources that their teachers do not offer. Among these is the Central Falls High School Clinic, a branch of Blackstone Valley Community Health Care that is located directly inside the high school. Although the clinic does not specialize in sexual health, it does offer basic services such as condoms. When asked for his thoughts on strategies to reduce the rate of STDs, Dr. Chan repositioned the problem altogether: “We should be talking about how to achieve zero. Zero new diagnoses.” Chan hopes foremost that increased screening and access to better health care will reduce the problem, but he highlighted the importance of education in spotlighting the issue. “I just think there’s room for improvement in how we talk to people, including our students, about sexual health,” he said. “It’s a very sensitive topic—highly politicized, which is understandable, but I think that we have to be realistic. We have to be open to talking about it, we have to be open to acknowledging that it is a problem, and we have to not just sweep it under the carpet.” *Names have been changed to maintain confidentiality and to preserve the personal or professional safety of the individual. IVY SCOTT B’21 likes contraception that glows in the dark.

+++ Although the State Department of Education emphasizes tolerance and awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) identities in its guidelines, little education is provided THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

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JUDGE,

JURY,

BY Julian Fox ILLUSTRATION Julia Illana DESIGN Katherine Sang

AND

cw: graphic depictions of death, racial violence

On the night of September 1, 1994, local news anchors Loretta Caroll and John Mason reported live from the Nebraska State Penitentiary. The execution of death row inmate Harold Lamont Otey was imminent. Vowing his innocence, Otey had spent much of his time on death row appealing and re-appealing his death sentence. With all judicial reviews exhausted, and barring a last-minute pardon from Governor Ben Nelson, Otey was scheduled for execution at midnight. Never before in Nebraskan history had a death row inmate faced execution via the electric chair. The controversy drew the attention of both pro-death penalty and anti-death penalty activists. Thousands of people gathered outside the prison walls. State patrol officers were forced to erect a double fence to separate the rival factions. Deb Ward, reporting from within the crowd, caught a shouting match between a protester and a supporter: Protester: “None of you are about productivity. You’re all about killing others. You think killing is going to solve everything. You kill Otey, crime goes down. Well it doesn’t.” Supporter: “Why don’t you sit on his lap?” Protester: “Why? You want me dead too. That’s wonderful. This gentleman over here wants me to die for saying something. That’s absolutely wonderful.” At 12:01AM, four 2,400-volt jolts of electricity surged through Harold Lamont Otey. He was pronounced dead at 12:33AM. To supporters and opponents of the death penalty alike, the execution of Harold Lamont Otey set a defining precedent: Nebraska state officials would go to any length to apply whatever punishment the courts decided. A similar controversy followed when, six month ago, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services scheduled Carey Dean Moore's execution for this past August 2018. Like Otey, Carey Dean Moore was scheduled to be executed via a controversial method. Never before in the United States, let alone in Nebraska, had a prisoner faced a death penalty utilizing fentanyl as the primary drug in the lethal injection. Nearly forty times more potent than heroin, fentanyl has been directly linked to thousands of overdoses in the national epidemic of prescription opiate abuse. Fentanylrelated overdose deaths have increased by nearly 600 percent from 2014 to 2016 in 24 of the United States’ largest cities. As a result, the festering tension between death penalty and anti-death penalty activists erupted into a war: lawsuits by the ACLU, dissent by Pope Francis, campaigns by the Nebraska Catholic Church, legal action by pharmaceutical companies, and ads by Americans for Prosperity all descended upon Nebraska. The entire state was seized in a gridlock. Despite the unparalleled amount of opposition, Moore died via lethal injection the morning of August 14, 2018. There is powerful internal strife over the issue of the modern death penalty in Nebraska, a force which seems to tear at the state’s seams whenever news

of the death penalty’s application arrives. Moore’s execution exposes the clash of two traditions of justice in Nebraska that, when linked with state officials’ committed pursuit of the death penalty, produces an unceasing tumult of matters of life and death in middle America. +++ The two disagreeing attitudes about the death penalty align with two opposing ideologies: vigilante justice and due process. Vigilante justice is defined by extrajudicial actions often taken under the auspice of ‘protecting local communities,’ while due process is defined by judicial caution in order to insulate the rights of citizens from displays of excessive governmental power. Broadly speaking, the vigilante is more likely to support the death penalty, perceiving it to be a powerful tool of protection against dangerous criminals. The due process advocate is more likely to oppose the death penalty, seeing it as an abuse of power. American vigilante justice has roots in the practice of lynching. In The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, legal scholar Franklin Zimring used data from the Tuskegee Institute to identify 14 states with historically high rates of lynchings. The vast majority of these states were located in the sparsely populated Southern United States, with a few scattered in the American Midwest. Using modern execution statistics, Zimring found these states, while collectively comprising only 35 percent of the population, accounted for 85 percent of the first 695 executions after 1976. The American due process system has descended from the anti-authoritarian principles upon which the nation was founded. The judicial traditions of high burdens of proof and presumptions of innocence, enshrined in law, spread to areas of high urban development in the densely-populated Northeastern and Western states. Zimring found this group of states only accounted for three percent of the first 695 executions after 1976. Vigilante justice, in the form of lynching, was utilized by early Nebraskans to purportedly ‘protect property’ and ‘discourage theft.’ Racial animus, enflamed by false and grossly exaggerated news reports, motivated a significant percentage of these lynchings. While never exceeding one percent of the population, African Americans represent eight percent of the total amount of deaths in these early lynchings. Instances of lynching in Nebraska fell significantly towards the beginning of the 20th century. Lynching met its end as the police extended their reach into smaller towns and the recently-expanded court system took over cases of capital punishment. Nearly 60 people were lynched in Nebraska between 1858 and 1919, while 24 were executed according to due process. Nebraska, uniquely positioned between Southern and Western states, is the nexus in the clash between the vigilante and due process system. Nebraska ranks 23rd out of states with the highest lynching rates. The racism

Moore’s execution exposes the clash of two traditions of justice in Nebraska that, when linked with state officials’ committed pursuit of the death penalty, produces an unceasing tumult of matters of life and death in middle America. 05

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of lynching carries over into the modern death penalty: African-Americans account for 4 percent of Nebraska’s population, while they account for 25 percent percent of prisoners currently sentenced for execution. In addition to correlating historical rates of lynching with the death penalty, Zimring points to statistics showing correlations between historically high-lynching states and modern states with lax gun policies, high rates of self-defense killing, punitive prison sentences, and open-carry firearm laws; Nebraska qualifies in almost every category. Accordingly, the state has moderately greater support for vigilante values than due process values. As Nebraska state officials began to ‘modernize’ their death penalty protocols, they revived rhetoric of the vigilante tradition by emphasizing capital punishment’s supposed ability to provide ‘closure’ to the family of the victim. In the mid-1980s, the addition of the victim impact statement into the courts transformed death penalty proceedings. The prosecution became free to use the evidence of the suffering of the victims’ families to advocate for the death penalty’s use. The vigilante argument that the criminal’s death would provide closure to the victim’s family became increasingly popular. Prior to 1993, only one news story combined the term “closure” with “death penalty.” By 2001, 500 news stories had used the terms “closure” and “death penalty” together. Despite the prevelance of vigilante justice ideology in Nebraska, the state’s high levels of Catholicism and dense pockets of liberals in its largest cities have evened the ground in the death penalty battle. Consequently, no resolution to the conflict is likely without a significant reduction of power in one of the two value systems. The stakes are high. Delays in executions by death penalty opponents are now framed as deferred justice for the victims, while the intrusion of punitive vigilante justice in the court system has galvanized anti-death penalty advocates. However, the execution of Carey Dean Moore increased complications for both sides of the issue. +++ State officials have shown eagerness to carry out execution protocol regardless of potential danger. Carey Dean Moore’s death made Nebraska the first state to use fentanyl in an execution. Fentanyl’s unprecedented use and its potential to cause immense pain when mixed with other substances drew accusations that Nebraska was engaging in cruel and unusual punishment. However, standard methods of execution, even without the addition of fentanyl, risk causing acute and needless suffering. Seven percent of all executions via lethal injection have been botched. The College Hill Independent spoke with Eric Berger, a professor who studies the death penalty at the University of Nebraska College of Law, about the dangers of lethal injection protocol and Nebraska’s use of fentanyl in its most recent execution. “All types of things can go wrong. Just because the state is delivering the anesthetic does not mean the inmate will be sufficiently anesthetized,” said Berger. “If the anesthetic doesn’t take effect, then the inmate will be in excruciating pain from potassium chloride... It’s been described as being burned alive from the inside.” Unfortunately, this is not an abstract possibility, as botched lethal injections occur with alarming frequency in the United States. The most infamous case happened in 2014, with the execution of Clayton D. Lockett, in Oaklahoma. The potassium chloride was mistakenly administered before the anesthetic 28 SEP 2018

Life and Death in Nebraska

EXECUTIONER

Fentanyl’s potential to cause immense pain when mixed with other substances, its relationship to the national overdose epidemic, and its unprecedented use in an execution drew accusations that Nebraska was engaging in cruel and unusual punishment. rendered him unconscious. After the potassium chloride was injected, witnesses saw Lockett writhing in pain on the gurney, dying nearly thirty minutes after the injection. “The states have been under siege,” Berger went on to say. “In recent years, drug companies have made it harder for states to get the drugs that they need for the lethal injection protocols.” The pharmaceutical companies that produce these drugs take immediate legal action against their use in an execution. For the companies, often located in places such as Canada and Europe that have banned the use of capital punishment, affiliation with the death penalty would be a public relations scandal. Nebraska has incurred countless and expensive lawsuits from pharmaceutical companies overseas. As a result, state officials have lost access to crucial drugs needed in the injection protocol. Nebraska turned to fentanyl as a last resort. When asked whether Nebraska would continue using fentanyl, Berger replied “My guess is Nebraska’s decision on that will be driven by whether or not they can get another drug. But, if not, I think it would stick with the fentanyl, because to change the protocol it has THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

2007, and June 14, 2011. Moore had been on death row for 38 years before he was given his last date: August 14, 2018. Moore had long expressed his wish to die. He had stopped fighting his death sentence long ago, having instructed his attorney to withdraw his appeals. His brother, David, and his niece, Taylor, visited Moore the night before his execution and shared a final meal. JULIAN FOX B'20 thinks there are no appropriate drugs for lethal injection.

to have another administrative procedure and redraw the entire protocol.” As states lose their access to lethal injection drugs, they turn to dangerous and untested methods to carry out death sentences. Oklahoma recently announced that it plans to employ nitrogen gas in its executions, while Ohio switched to using large doses of pentobarbital. Mississippi and Alabama have also recently signed into law injection protocols that use untested drugs. Little concern has been displayed by state officials for the potential suffering these drugs may cause. “A lot of states,” Berger concluded “probably including Nebraska, without more information I can’t be sure, are throwing together execution protocols... without a lot of care for whether they would cause suffering and without expertise on how to do it safely. These protocols raise serious humanitarian and constitutional problems.” +++ Nebraska’s Supreme Court had given Carey Dean Moore seven execution dates: Sept. 20, 1980, Aug. 20, 1982, Dec. 4, 1984, May 9, 1997, Jan. 19, 2000, May 8, NEWS

The campsite is quintessential New England. Cornfields in the distance, wooden cabins nestled between tall oaks and pines, a cluster of buildings around a pond. When we crest the hill and drive down into the parking lot, the first person we see is a man pushing a lawn mower through the grass. He wears a hat, headphones, a pair of shoes, and a white towel wrapped around his upper arm—nothing else: no shirt, no shorts, no underwear. My two friends and I climb out of the car and pull off jeans, t-shirts, a dress, socks, bras. I drop my clothes in the passenger seat, grab my driver’s license and my wallet, and head towards what looks like the camp office building. This is our first time at Dyer Woods Nudist Campgrounds, a family-oriented camp in Foster, Rhode Island. The camp website invites visitors to “experience nature naturally” and join a community that can be a “home away from home.” People come here for afternoons and full summers to hike, swim, and relax—all while nude. While there are nudist resorts that cater to swingers and polyamory, Dyer Woods is one of many places where nudity is strictly non-sexual. The camp’s philosophy is one of appreciating nature and, as the national Naturist Society’s website declares, believing that “Nude is not lewd!” A man named Bob greets us on the porch of the office. He is 55. He wears small hoop earrings and a grey, long-sleeve t-shirt, but only because it’s a brisk and cloudy 71 degrees. Growing up in Rhode Island, Bob remembers the kids giggling about Dyer Woods and screaming, “There’s a bunch of naked people running around in the woods out there!” Then, two years ago, Bob arrived at Dyer Woods for the first time with his partner. “We said ‘heck with it.’ We got out of the car, we stripped right away,” Bob recalls. I smile as Bob says this, hearing my own afternoon mirrored in his story: removing article after article of clothing, walking barefoot up to a stranger, feeling the tension fade from my shoulders and my stomach unclench as we talk. Bob began officially exploring social nudity as an adult visiting Cape Cod’s nude beaches, but he says he’s always hated clothes. “My 86-year-old mom came and spent the weekend with me last weekend, and she’ll say even when I was a little kid I would rip off my diaper and run naked through the house.” Out in the “textile world,” the term nudists use for the world of clothes-wearing people, Bob works in a small payroll office for AAA. “I’m more ready to tackle the regular world on the Monday through Friday. And I’m always counting down: Tuesday, three more days until I’m at camp. And it gets me through the week,” Bob says. Bob is open with his coworkers about where he spends his weekends to relax, reflect, and recharge, and one woman from the office has been joining him at Dyer Woods for almost two years. The other coworkers don’t understand it, and they ask Bob how the two can work together when they’ve seen each other naked. As Bob recounts other people’s surprise and judgement, I remember that my back, chest, stomach––everything––is visible, but until this moment, I’ve forgotten. So when he emphatically says, “I don’t know, it’s no big deal,” stretching out his words and emphasizing his point with his hands, I believe him. Being in a gay relationship, Bob says he didn’t know how camp members would respond to his presence when he first arrived. “It didn’t faze anybody,” Bob says. “That’s when we got our first inkling that the

I remember pulling off the blanket and letting my awareness of my body’s shape fall away again.

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ESCAPING THE TEXTILE WORLD place was very welcoming...We started coming every single weekend after that.” More than two years later, Bob says he hates it when it’s time to go home. “I have to put my shorts back on,” he cries, throwing up his hands. His tone is light-hearted, but he adds that there’s a marked difference between how he feels in his own skin here and in the textile world. “I just feel right, more at ease and at home [here],” he says. “For the most part, I’ve been big. Say I went to a public, normal state beach or whatever, I would be wearing the longest shorts I could possibly wear and not take a shirt off. But then, here— it just doesn’t matter here. And no one stares at you or judges you. You’re a person. And the packaging doesn’t matter.” Bob isn’t alone in this experience. One of the tenets of nudism is respect for your body and for others’, and through social nudity, many people experience a comfort and confidence unavailable in textile life, a feeling of peace with their physical bodies. Bob knows the rhetoric of “be thin, be thin,” is waiting out in society, but he says, “it’s nice to leave all those behind that gate at the top of the hill.” This summer, Bob and his partner married each other in Dyer Woods, in the nude, with the help of the ordained president of Dyer Woods and guests from the camp community and the textile world. Bob says the day highlighted the camp’s sense of community, as camp friends celebrated the couple and volunteered to grill food for the after-party, as well as what being nude can represent. “We even kicked off our flip flops and everything, ‘cause we said we’re marrying each other exactly how we are, no pretense, no getting all duded up and looking like we don’t normally look. Just totally nude, right down to the soles of our feet, and we’re just marrying each other as we are, for what we are.” +++ Back in 1965, a man named Kenneth (Ken) Walker inherited 200 acres of farmland from his family, which had owned land in Foster since the 1700s. With the help of family members and friends, Ken transformed the property, digging out a swimming pond, planting pine trees in the cow pastures, and erecting camp buildings and electricity poles. The central clearing now boasts of a woodfire-heated sauna, volleyball court, lawn chairs, swings, and a playset for the kids, all clustered around the pond. Dyer Woods is quiet today; only seven members are out and about in the cooler, overcast weather. But typical summer weekends see two or three dozen people around the camp: people in their early 20s to their 80s, as well as parents with young children. One family has been coming to Dyer Woods for 20 years, and their 15-year-old basically grew up spending his summers at the camp. Special events throughout the year, such as “Dyer Woodstock,” include activities like yoga, tie-dying, and slip n’ slides. The Labor Day festivities this summer brought 140 people from surrounding states and as far as California. Before the warmth of the afternoon fades, my friends and I go swimming. I’ve been skinny dipping

before, but always at night. There is the same pleasure of water on skin, glossy and gentle. When I step out and feel air hit my skin, my body instinctively expects a towel, more for the security of cover than to be dry. Instead, my friends and I walk straight to the sauna. A few minutes later, two men have joined us. One cheerfully brags that 120 degrees is nothing for a sauna, settles on his towel, and says, “best place in the world.” He goes on to tell us about his wife, his writing, his religion. The other explains that he was interested in social nudity since early adulthood, but it didn’t quite fit with his family life. He began coming to Dyer Woods earlier this year with his puppy, a fluffy bijon and shih tzu mix named Lucy, after his wife passed away. His story reflects a larger narrative shared by many members: the search for a community. When Ken passed away (nude) in 1987, his daughter turned the camp over to the members to create a co-op. Now, seven long-term members serve on a board of directors, and all the members share responsibilities around the camp. “It’s all completely voluntary,” Bob says. “When someone sees a need and thinks they would also enjoy doing it, they just step into it. And luckily, it all just seems to mesh.” All summer, Bob has taken half-Fridays off from work to come volunteer at the gate and take reservation calls in the office. Saturday and Sunday mornings, he wakes up early, brews a pot of coffee, and bakes apple muffins for whoever wants a morning treat. Saturday evenings are for community potlucks, and, most nights, one member starts a campfire where people will chat and play music late into the night. “It’s a great community of people that really care about each other and like spending time together,” Bob says. “Everyone is accepted for who they are, quirks and all.” While Dyer Woods presents a loving community and home for many, there is an imbalance in terms of the members’ gender, racial, and ethnic identities. With its largely white, male history, social nudity in the United States is still struggling to achieve diversity in multiple regards, and Dyer Woods is no exception. Of the seven people we see today, six of them are men, four of them are white, and everyone looks over the age of 40. Two of my friends who visited Dyer Woods on a busier weekend recalled a greater mix of age-levels and gender identities, but still a predominantly white crowd. +++ A camp member named Sam* offers to lead us through the hiking paths that thread Dyer Woods’ 175 acres of nature preserve. Sam looks to be in his early fifties, and, similar to Bob, began enjoying social nudity at a clothing-optional beach in Vermont. No one else in his family is a nudist, but they accept the importance of Dyer Woods in his life. Sam wears Teva sandals, a gold wedding band, a white and gold watch, and a Columbia backpack to carry his flashlight, bug spray, and water bottle. Noticing these details, I’m reminded of what Bob’s mother told him during her visit about the equalizing

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Nudity and community in northern Rhode Island

BY Kayli Wren ILLUSTRATION Eve O'Shea DESIGN Bethany Hung factor of nudity: “You don’t know who’s a banker, who’s the CEO of a company, who’s the janitor, who’s unemployed, who’s down on their luck or a millionaire.” While I still notice the cars that members park outside their trailers, their watches, or their shoes, this removal of class difference mostly holds true. However, the equalizing nature of nudity does nothing to erase the financial barrier to being a part of Dyer Woods in the first place. Of the camp’s 60 members, “day” members can visit afternoons for $600 a year, and “full” members own plots of land where they can pitch tents or park RVs and trailers for $2400 a year. Short-term visitors can come for an afternoon ($40) or an overnight stay ($65 - $115). Bob says the camp’s financial cost is discussed during monthly member meetings. He says there’s always a conflict between keeping the camp running and being as accessible to as many people as possible. There’s been talk of free summer weekends in the future, and the camp traditionally passes used trailers down to new members for free if the old owners are upgrading to a cabin. Still, Dyer Woods is the cheapest nudist destination in the area, the closest alternative being Sun Ridge Resort, less than five miles away in Sterling, Connecticut. The resort has more of a country club feel, with a swimming pool, tennis courts, and rates higher than those of Dyer Woods. “We think Dyer Woods is pretty unique because we’re not highbrow and fancy. It’s more old New England, rustic, more woods,” Bob says. Compared with online photos of Sun Ridge Resort, Dyer Woods definitely counts as more rustic, with its log cabins, real ponds, and acres of forest trails, but it’s still fancier than the plain old woods. Sam leads us through the trails now. Low shrubs and ferns cover the ground between trees, the paths are littered with fallen pine needles, and bright orange and purple mushrooms sprout along the trail edges. Tree roots snake across paths, moss creeps over the ground and up tree trunks, and white and yellow wildflowers dot the surrounding grass. Low stone walls crisscross through the trees, serving as a reminder of the land’s old use as a farm. A plaque along one trail is dedicated

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

to Ken and his wife, Muriel. It contains one of Ken’s favorite sayings: “Lack of reverence to nature is the mark of a fool.” Surrounded by shafts of light cutting through leaves and sparkling across ponds, it’s easy to see why everyone at Dyer Woods shares this love and respect for nature. And the desire to be nude in nature sinks in: Out here, the more human-made things are stripped away, the more immersed in nature I feel. Before joining the camp, Bob would get creative with the local trails around his home. “I’d sneak off to an Audubon Trail in Rhode Island at five o’clock in the morning on a Sunday when I figure no-one’s there. And I’d get halfway into the trail and take my shorts off.” But Bob says he was always listening for another person’s footsteps, feeling like he was doing something wrong. For people who can afford it, places like Dyer Woods are the answer. But if you’re a person in the U.S. who wants to be nude outside but doesn’t own property, have connections to someone who does, or have some money, you’re out of legal options. +++

For me, the equalizing aspect of nudity that day was in the equal presence of bodies; it shifted a power dynamic I’ve felt for years walking past strangers whose eyes make me uncomfortable. I’ve spent so much time in the world feeling tense, small, watched and violated through that watching—all while fully clothed. And I didn’t once feel that way that afternoon. My comfort at the camp had more to do with an escape from my body and physical self-awareness than a visceral enjoyment or acceptance, but there were glimmers of those feelings that Dyer Woods members described––in the pond, for example, and in reaction to the encompassing warmth of sunlight on skin. I find something deeply and personally beautiful about desexualizing the naked human body, claiming the ability to exist without the “packaging,” as Bob put it, of clothing and its connotations. Unfortunately, however, people have been known to violate Dyer Woods’ rules on non-sexual conduct, and the camp keeps a blacklist of people who have been asked to leave and are not welcome back. That fact would have made approaching Bob and Sam without my two friends feel very different. I wanted to hear about the experience of a woman member, but there was no one to ask. The one woman we glimpsed was off searching for the jacuzzi and taking a swim with another member. For the most part, the big questions around what nudity means and how it relates to body image, selflove, and identity go unspoken at the camp. “We don’t really get into too many deep discussions about nudism, ‘cause we’re all living it,” Bob said. Most days, nudism at Dyer Woods is about the visceral comfort of moving around in the sun, being at ease in your own skin and nothing else, and being part of a community.

Driving away from Dyer Woods, I sat with my legs tucked under me, the fabric of my worn jeans between my legs, long sleeved cotton shirt hugging the insides of my arms, the underwire of my bra against my ribs. I felt their presence, soft and restrictive all at once. I remember sitting in that small, intensely hot room chatting with two men about hiking, snowshoeing nude, and writing. I remember how they would gaze out the window as they spoke or make direct eye contact, how their eyes never swept or flickered below my neck, something I expect in the outside world every day. I remember wrapping a blanket around my shoul- *Name has been changed. ders in the cool shade of the woods with Sam, and how the partial coverage brought up familiar feelings of KAYLI WREN B‘20 would like to participate in the taking stock of what skin is showing, wondering where Naked Donut Run this year. I am being watched. I remember pulling off the blanket and letting my awareness of my body’s shape fall away again.

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FOREST FOR “Tree mortality” and fire management in the Sierra Nevada In March of 2017, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a workshop in Washington D.C. titled “A Century Of Wildland Fire Research: Contributions To Long-term Approaches For Wildland Fire Management,” which was sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service. Dr. Scott Stephens, a fire ecologist from the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the most prominent fire ecologists in the country, gave a presentation entitled “Fire and Fuels Management: What works where?” in which he discussed the distinct fire regimes that different types of ecosystems require to stay healthy. Dr. Stephens uses Wood Buffalo National Park, an area in the Northwest Territories of Canada, as an example. He explains that the ecosystem is adapted to “infrequent high severity fires,” characterized by severe fires that burn every 70 to 150 years. However, this is changing: the region experienced a large fire in 2004 and then again in 2014. Stephens shows a slide with a picture from the forest: “You can see those skeletons of the Jack pine there in the foreground. We found one seedling in an area of almost fifty square meters. Here you see a place where fire regimes are changing abruptly because of climate warming, and we are seeing major changes in vegetation.” The picture shows a grassy area, with the thin, skeletal remains of what used to be Jack pines. Dr. Stephens pulls up his next slide, which contains three pictures from the Sierra Nevada region in California. He gives the audience some data which was taken from an area of the Stanislaus National Forest in the Sierra Nevada: in 1911, there were 19 trees per acre. A century later, in 2013, there were 224 trees per acre. Six months later, the Rim Fire came through the forest, which was the largest fire to ever take place in the Sierra Nevada and the fifth-largest fire in California history. Why did the density of trees in the region increase by an order of magnitude between 1911 and 2013? Over the past century, the US Forest Service has adhered to a policy of fire prevention and suppression in national forests (think: Smokey Bear), in which smaller fires are quelled before they can burn naturally. Even in the 1960s, as scientific research in the United States pointed to the need to allow fires to burn in order to promote healthy forests, fire suppression continued, in part due to the timber industry’s vested interest in preventing burns. The consequence was the high density of trees that Dr. Stephens points to in 2013. These trees serve as the fuel that allows massive fires such as the Rim Fire to burn on a scale previously unseen in these forests. In the months following the workshop, California saw its most destructive fire season in state history: 1.2 million acres of land burned, at least 46 people were killed, and nearly $12 billion in damage was caused. This year’s season is on track to surpass the 2017 season by almost all measures. The Los Angeles Times reported on September 8 that wildfires had burned 1.2 million acres of land, destroyed more than 1,200 homes, and killed at least a dozen people so far this year in California. September and October are expected to be the peak of the fire season. +++ “This is a different type of fire,” Carmen Tubbesing, a Ph.D candidate studying wildfires at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Independent. Tubbesing is a researcher in the Stephens Lab at Berkeley, where

SCIENCE & TECH

she studies the effects of extreme fire behavior in the Sierra Nevada. In an interview with the Independent, Tubbesing explained that the Sierra landscape is changing rapidly, as pine trees die and chaparral—a family of shrub-like plants which thrive in drought and post-fire landscapes—takes over. When a high-severity fire kills all of the trees in the area, chaparral proliferates due to the availability of sunlight, whereas it takes a much longer time for pines to regrow. This disrupts the natural process in which burning pine trees spread their seeds for future generations of trees to grow. Tubbesing explains that this new breed of fires has accelerated the anticipated impacts of climate change on the region. One of the most alarming consequences of these high-severity fires is their impact on the ongoing “tree mortality crisis,” in California, in which 129 million trees have died in the state since 2010. The crisis has been caused by a number of factors, including drought and a bark beetle infestation, and the devastating impacts of large fires that have wiped out entire forests. The crisis has hit the Sierra Nevada especially hard: in some parts of the region, over 90 percent of pine trees are gone. The Sierra Nevada is California’s largest carbon sink––meaning its trees capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere––and retains about 60 percent of the state’s water. An estimated 85 percent of the dead trees are in the Sierra. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service webpage about the tree mortality crisis warns: “Millions of trees in the Sierras and Central Coast forests are stressed from higher temperatures, competition for water resources during this historic drought, and multiplying bark beetles. They simply can’t withstand this deadly combination of stressors and are rapidly turning orange and dying. Even with the increased rainfall this past year, stressed trees will continue to die because while green, they have been invaded by bark beetles and just don’t know they’re dying yet.” This language coming from a federal government website is notably stark and desperate, especially considering that the current administration is tirelessly rolling back environmental regulations and ignoring the impacts of climate change. Fires, though, are impossible to ignore. Hillsides covered in dead trees, which comprise the state’s largest carbon sink and play a crucial role in maintaining the state’s water resources, undeniably beg for swift government action.

+++ Large wildfires require many different levels of government response. Getting to zero emissions as quickly as possible will be necessary to prevent the worst of the damage caused by severe fires and tree mortality, because temperature rise and drought only increase the probability of large, high severity fires. However, in the short term, more scientifically informed fire management policies are crucial to create more resilient forests. As Dr. Stephens explained in the 2017 workshop, different forest ecosystems require different fire regimes, and the process of managing a fire regime

is ongoing: “This is a conversation with the land that goes on forever. This idea that you’re going to do prescribed burning and management—it’s something that’s going to go on for eternity. You can’t somehow think you’ve got it done.” Bob Kingman is the Assistant Executive Direcor at the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC), a state agency created in 2004 to provide “strategic direction” for policy in the region. The SNC is tasked with allocating billions of dollars in state bonding funds to local communities, non-profit organizations, and tribes who submit grant applications to fund local projects related to forest health. Kingman oversees the competitive grant process, and says that one of the main goals of the funds is to “bring people together to discuss forest health and bring resources to communities in need.” Kingman says the state is concerned about the impact of forest health on watersheds in California (which in turn impacts drought patterns), but it is nearly impossible to make effective policy decisions at a state level when the needs of different communities are so distinct. Kingman said that the role of the SNC in allocating resources for projects related to forest health and fires has increased in recent years, due to the increasingly obvious fact that the state’s forests are at risk, and the implications that this has for water access in the region. Dr. Gabrielle Boisramé is also an affiliate of the Stephens lab, where she researches the relationship between wildfires and water resources in the Sierra Nevada, and has studied the impact of tree mortality and fires on water retention in forests. “We know that really big, high-severity fires can cause a lot of water quality and erosion problems –– that’s what most people have been able to study in the past,” Dr. Boisramé told the Independent. Dr. Boisramé’s research has instead emphasized the impact that forest density and tree cover has on the Sierra’s ability to provide water for the rest of the state. It’s a precarious balance: if forests are too dense, due to fire suppression practices, the trees use up all of the moisture in the region. Additionally, when forests are too dense, less snow reaches the forest floor, which prevents the buildup of snow pack that is necessary to provide water for the rest of the state. Dr. Boisramé hopes that her research, and that of other hydrologists and ecologists, will serve as the basis for better fire management policy. “The goal is that our work is used as evidence when people are trying to make decisions based on the best science available. I do try and write things that are very scientifically rigorous, but also accessible, with figures and maps that are very clear.” The California Fire Science Consortium (CFSC) is a non-profit organization with the goal of ensuring a “free flow of fire science information,” according to its website. Dr. Boisramé says that organizations like the CFSC are crucial because they help policymakers and fire managers make informed decisions based on the best research available. +++ The other aspect of the policy approach towards wildfires is mitigating the causes of climate change—most importantly the state’s reliance on fossil fuels. On August 27, the State of California released its fourth Climate Change Assessment, which outlines how climate change has already affected California, and what changes the state expects to see in the future. The purpose of the Climate Change Assessments, the first of which was conducted in 2006 by three state agencies,

28 SEP 2018

BY Julia Rock ILLUSTRATION Franco Zacharzewski DESIGN Christie Zhong

THE

TREES

is to provide scientific foundations for the state to turn to when writing policy. The most recent study wastes no time in explaining the stakes of this assessment: “Since its Third Climate Change Assessment in 2012, California has experienced several of the most extreme natural events in its recorded history: a severe drought from 2012-2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada winter snowpack in 2014-2015, increasingly large and severe wildfires, and back-to-back years of the warmest average temperatures.” These visible impacts of climate change are perhaps more compelling than

warnings about burning fossil fuels, because of their visibility and proximity to people in California. The Fourth Climate Change Assessment warns that future fires will only be worse if carbon emissions continue at their current rates. “One Fourth Assessment model suggests large wildfires (greater than 25,000 acres) could become 50 percent more frequent by the end of century if emissions are not reduced.” Just two weeks after the Assessment was released, on September 10, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law mandating that the State meet a

California has experienced several of the most extreme natural events in its recorded history: a severe drought from 2012-2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada winter snowpack in 2014-2015, increasingly large and severe wildfires, and back-to-back years of the warmest average temperatures.

target for 100 percent of energy sources in the state to be zero-emission by 2045. However, a comprehensive climate policy that addresses the health of the state’s forests is necessary to complement action on fossil fuel infrastructure. The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board wrote on September 1, “The challenge will be ensuring that environmental and public safety interests, not commercial interests, drive the state’s policies on forest management. Regardless, the era of benign neglect of the state’s forests has to come to an end.” Recent legislation signed by the Governor indicates that the state government is already moving away from historic fire suppression practices towards prescribed burns and management policies more closely matched to the needs of different forest ecosystems. Prescribed burn policies can be politically tenuous, because many homes and businesses located on the edges of forests will inevitably be touched by burns. Additionally, the forests damaged by the fires of the past few years and the tree mortality crisis are in need of tree removal and reforestation. A more comprehensive state policy towards its forests are needed. “We have the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, we do not have a ‘Forest Resiliency’ or ‘Forest Act,’” Dr. Stephens told the audience at the 2017 workshop. Perhaps its time has come. JULIA ROCK B’19 is looking for a job as a fire ecologist.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

SCIENCE & TECH

BY Jeremy Wolin ILLUSTRATION Katya Labowe-Stoll DESIGN Bethany Hung

FEATURES

“Have you been? It’s very space-agey,” I overheard in my first week back in Providence. 20 Washington Place, better known to RISD students as Prov-Wash, has been under construction since January—if you tried walking down College Hill toward Downtown last year, you probably noticed the bright orange Jersey barriers, or may have darted into traffic to bypass a section of fenced-off sidewalk. The renovation of ProvWash, though momentarily disruptive, has been part of a long term effort to centralize student resources like financial aid, career services, and the university registrar under one roof. At the same time, it solidifies a closed-off, seldom-visited administrative space in a central location where RISD campus meets Downtown Providence, raising questions about what exactly constitutes designing for accessibility. The four-story brick building sits at the base of College Hill, filling the block bounded by North Main, Canal, Steeple and Washington – the last two streets become Waterman and Angell Streets when they cross North Main and make their way up the hill. RISD acquired Prov-Wash in 1988, and its name carries over from its original resident, the Providence Washington Insurance Company, which was born from the merger of two competing firms in 1812 and which constructed the building as its offices in 1949. Much of RISD’s campus consists of these adaptively-reused historic structures, including the multi-function 15 West, formerly the Rhode Island Hospital Trust; the Painting building Memorial Hall, formerly the Central Congregational Church; and Market House, once a space of commerce and now home to offices and studios. The acquisition of existing buildings by universities often raises issues about gentrification and tax breaks for non-profit institutions. RISD’s relatively small footprint and acquisition of unused structures on Downtown’s fringes places it in contrast to larger institutions, which often acquire property and serve as landlords far beyond their historical boundaries, shaping neighborhoods to their liking. Growing up in Greater New Haven, I watched Yale University Properties bring upscale outdoor retailer Denali to New Haven despite student pushback, only to be met again with the store opening in Brown-owned 271 Thayer Street earlier this month. Though RISD rents out several commercial spaces, its relationship to Providence’s historic architecture has tended to be more hands-off.

the paths marked along the old stone stairs and in the tarnish on the brass handrails. Passing through, the space’s idiosyncrasies served as a reminder of RISD’s location in a city that’s seen so much change over its several centuries, and of the residents that predate the institution. When this building was first built, the river was covered by roads and train tracks, and North Main Street was a vibrant neighborhood that extended well into what is now the Roger Williams National Memorial. While mid-twentieth century urban renewal radically altered this landscape, Prov-Wash’s stately exterior is a reminder of the commerce that used to take place on this side of the river. On the interior, the space undeniably felt like a remnant of an older age, the grain of the stone sheathed walls too coarse and the light a little too dim, but the lobby served its function, continuously bathed in the warm yellow light of three glass-encased brass lamps that hung in a row above the entry. Entering the building now is an entirely changed experience. The walls that closed off the lobby from the side office wings have been blown out, creating a vast white cube that spans the building’s entire length. Where the original lobby embraced you, the new space spreads out before you. The floor plans published online allude to little inhabitation beyond the space’s capability to hold large presentations when needed, so the motive for such a drastic architectural move remains unclear. Passing through the front door, a three-sided stair now brings you from the street up to the main level, but the forward path is blocked by a wall that stops a few feet above the floor, leaving two narrower paths to the sides available for circulation—though neither is wheelchair accessible. The stairs to the left and center have been elongated as if to signal a place to sit, but which in reality are too highly-trafficked to feel welcoming, and are so close to the door that they’ll be frigid for most of the academic year. While such a curated stair sequence could have been a statement piece in the space, its location and proportions make it awkward to actually inhabit. Despite the vast dimensions of the lobby, an unremarkable ADA-compliant ramp has been sidelined around the corner and pushed to the exterior of the building. Using it means entering the lobby at the back. Given that the previous ramp was in front, how little of the original interior was retained in the renovation and how much planning went into the new front stair, this +++ seems like a missed opportunity to fully incorporate accessibility into the new design. Walking into the North Main Street lobby of Prov-Wash Inside, nearly every corner, opening, and added pre-renovation, you could see the building’s patina: in furnishing is curved rather than squared off. The only

28 SEP 2018

CRITICALLY MAKING A CAMPUS RISD’s Prov-Wash gets a new look, but for whom?

breaks in the white expanse arrive via accents of bright orange applied to the edges of doorways and specific accent features. In many places, the dividing walls are lifted up a few feet from the floor, revealing the shins of those in the room beyond. This makes the room feel larger, as if it wasn’t vast enough already, but it also seems like a hazard for people who are visually impaired, as there’s no indication of the wall’s existence at ground level. A mix of zero-gravity spaceship design and Jetsons-style visions of the future, perhaps with a dash of the Vogue offices in The Devil Wears Prada thrown in, this is what popular media imagines a space for design should look like. It is bold and will make great photographs, and walking down the full length of the white and orange space feels grand. If you didn’t know you were at a design school, you know now. But the space can also seem minimal—like walking through an architectural diagram—and uninviting if you don’t spend your days in white-walled spaces. And, ultimately, its relevance to the everyday needs of RISD students is unclear. +++ Perhaps the renovation’s high point is the new bathroom tucked into the back of the lobby. Already profiled in Architectural Digest, the space is architechture firm Work.ac’s response to the American architectural tradition of separately gendered bathrooms. Throwing out the concept of segregated space, the restroom consists of a nine sinks sunk into a sculptural island at the center of the room. Six doors on the surrounding wall lead to six individual toilet stalls, each a different geometry in plan and sheathed in a different color of bold circular tile. One is ADA-compliant, and all house a miniature vanity set into the wall for grooming—or taking mirror selfies (the lighting is also pretty good)—in private. This setup parallels contemporary thought on bathroom accessibility, studied in depth in Stalled!, a research initiative founded by architect Joel Sanders, legal scholar Terry Kogan, and trans historian Susan Stryker. The three founded Stalled! in order to respond to the architectural tradition, often cemented into building code, that specifies the need for specific numbers of plumbing fixtures according to gender. Together, they worked with queer and trans student groups to design new standards. As part of the initiative, Sanders offers a prototype that mirrors the new Prov-Wash commode: spaces for the most uncomfortable tasks in a public bathroom—partially undressing and expelling—remain completely private regardless of gender identity, while common functions like washing and grooming move to a central space. The individual mirrors in each stall allows private grooming as well. This design won’t and shouldn’t be the end of reforming design to make public spaces more comfortable for trans and gender-nonconforming people, but this bathroom demonstrates what’s possible, and what should perhaps be compulsory for new construction projects. In thinking about accessibility for students broadly defined, perhaps the space could have included changing tables or private trash receptacles, but it’s a large leap beyond the temporary solution of switching signs on single-use restrooms. RISD is not alone on this front. In 2016, following several years of student activism, New York engineering and art school Cooper Union erased gender designations across all of its bathrooms. A Guardian article at the time quoted Cooper President Bill Mea reflecting on the general sentiment at the school: “Why is this an issue at all? As in, why aren’t we already doing this?”

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Advancing access in specific areas also points to deficits in others. While RISD has increased student support for attendance and materials costs in recent years, the institution still does not offer full financial aid, raising the question of which students will end up profiting from this renovation. Access to space to display student work is also a continuous need on campus, exacerbated by the loss of student-run gallery Exposé when the group was evicted from their Downtown space in summer 2017. Exposé’s openings were gathering points for students, but were open to those outside the institution as well. On the topic of the new Prov-Wash lobby, former Exposé director Monel Reina lamented, “It’s so sad that RISD doesn’t have any student-run gallery spaces available. After I saw Prov-Wash, I wondered, why is it more important for Prov-Wash to look like a spaceship and not care about spaces like Exposé?” Installing temporary shows in Prov-Wash would be more beneficial to students than the select, seldom-changing pieces that hung in the space pre-renovation, and its central location would be a boon to young artists showing for the first time. Yet, even if this space became a student gallery, the space will be card access-only, like all RISD buildings––a piece of acutely-designed “public” space available only to those with a RISD ID. Cut off from the world outside and unadorned by the work of young artists, the minimalism of the space verges into an exclusive sparseness. +++

means working smaller, as there is no safe space to keep her work after critiques. Subpar working conditions are not unique to RISD. In May of this year, nearly every currently-enrolled student in Columbia University’s MFA program in Visual Arts demanded full tuition refunds due to flooding and excessive heating that damaged student work. Art materials themselves can also be dangerous; in 2013, a fire totally engulfed Pratt Institute’s senior painting studios, likely exacerbated by the oil paint, paper, canvases, and turpentine-soaked rags stored there. Many students lost their entire portfolios of work in the middle of applying to graduate programs and artist residencies, demonstrating just how lifechanging studio conditions can be. Looking back over RISD’s master plans stretching back to the 1990s, the safety and efficiency of studios have often been highlighted as a major, yet seemingly seldom-addressed need. The 1996 plan, available online, called for the renovation of College Building with connection to Bank Building, neither of which was achieved. This early plan also called for the conversion of Prov-Wash into a mainly academic facility, counter to the largely administrative functions it now holds. However, the State of the College plan released in 2014 points to the need for a new “one-stop-shop” for Financial Aid, Student Accounts, and the Registrar, and points to Prov-Wash as a possible location. While this may affect students during the few times they need these services, it does not change the amount nor quality of studio space available on campus. Staff members in these administrative departments will benefit most from the renovation, which also includes new offices at the rear of the lobby. Over the summer, RISD broke ground on a new residence hall and overhauled the Portfolio Café, also just a dozen years old, as part of the addition of new facilities to 15 West, and the Watermark Café was redesigned to streamline service. Many of these spaces are those most frequented by visitors to RISD, but their newness belies the reality of studio conditions in the buildings just down the street. Together with Prov-Wash, these projects reveal priorities placed on external views of the institution, like student centers and dining spaces, rather than on the studio spaces that draw students to RISD over peer institutions. At the same time, these outward-facing facilities are closed off to the Providence public, accessible by only card entry or sign-in. In 2012, RISD released a master plan centered on “critical making” that advanced the notion of pairing the physical method of creating art and design with a rigorous analytical focus on the work produced and the process undertaken to create it. The present moment, before the Student Success Center fills up with furniture and before the space officially opens to the public next month, presents RISD with an opportunity to pause and revisit this doctrine. By default, the glossy new lobby may be closed off to the public, inhabited by a few offices, and left to grace the pages of admissions brochures. Yet, Prov-Wash’s strides toward inclusive design and its unique location at the site where RISD meets Providence, leaves open the possibility to dynamically inhabit the space with programs that match the inventiveness of the architecture. RISD, your spaceship awaits.

The new facility bears the lofty title The Student Success Center, an alliterative mouthful that likely won’t pass into common usage unless RISD students can find an innuendo in it. And exactly what Success entails is uncertain. The primary offices in the new space (Student Financial Services, the Registrar, and the Career Center) aren’t centrally tied to “critically making,” the guiding principle of RISD’s most recent institutional plans that combine the physical production of art and design with rigorous analysis. Neither are they resources students use more than a few times a semester, and so the current emptiness of the space seems pretty permanent. Meanwhile, outside these glossy white walls, spaces for departments like Furniture Design and Photography are overcrowded, with students spending many hours stuffed into spaces long in need of renovation. Asked about her thoughts on safety in her department, one Furniture Design student pointed to hazardous materials, such as fiberglass and resins, used by fellow students in Bank Building, a slim marble façade that sits on North Main beside the RISD Museum’s lower entrance. While they don’t specifically point to art schools, recommendations released by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health specify that these materials release harmful compounds into the air, and advocate using protective gear and robust ventilation systems. Yet, this student claimed that the department had been, “trying to get proper ventilation in Bank Building for years and years, and RISD won’t fund it.” Across the street, the Photography Department is squeezed into Design Center with the much larger Graphic Design department, leaving some students feeling sidelined and limited in the work they can make. Jamie Bernstein, a senior in the department, JEREMY WOLIN B/R’19 wants to know what’s up with describes “overall disrepair in the Design Center: Thayer Street. barely functioning elevators, a weird trash can in the stairwell collecting water from the ceiling.” Most critically for Bernstein, the lack of physical space also

FEATURES

HEALTH SERVICES BY Luke Perrotta ILLUSTRATION & DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

“Oh, honey.” The paper crinkles when I hop up on the shiny patient bed and face the nurse, whose nametag screams ALICIA. “Honey, what did they do?” She’s got my eyelids. Somewhere in her education she’s been taught to pick at the eyelids. “Who— nothing. Nobody did anything to me. I just don’t feel right.” “Oh thank God, you have insurance.” She tosses the clipboard aside; it clatters off the doctor’s desk to the floor. “Everything’s going to be fine. Jesus is watching over us today.” I tell her that I think she has the wrong patient. “Oh, no, sweetie, something’s definitely wrong with you.” “How do you know?” “Honey, take a good, hard look at yourself. Not even. A passing glance. Here.” Pocket mirrors like hers are cheap. I almost break the thing squeezing the clasp, and barely locate my middle part before Alicia snatches it back. “Easy, girl. You’re here to get better, not worse.” “Can I see Doctor Rathburn now?” Because I am done with the Alicia part of the day, I do not know if she replied. That information is simply unavailable to me. But after an indeterminate ride on this blue-skinned bed and the Arrow of Time, I see that Alicia and a Doctor Rathburn have traded places in the room. I appear to have remained constant. “Afternoon.” The swivel chair complains when he flops into it. “Hi.” Colors ripple from Rathburn’s phone screen and soak into his flesh, bright blotches of chemical disease. These are lovely coats they have now. Stitched evenly over the breast pocket, RATHBURN. This must be where they put my co-pay. He asks, “Have you played this iPhone ‘2048’ game?” “Years ago.” “I don’t know what on earth is going on with the numbers in the little boxes. After 64 I always get myself trapped in a corner.” His bald spot, an ozone hole, wiggles beneath the headshook skull. In fact, it appears to contract and expand in the manner of a camera lens, or a giant’s foreskin. “Fun as anything, though.” “Sure.” “Anyway, what can I do you for?” “I need some drugs.” “Anything in particular?” “Doesn’t really matter.” “Not at all?” “Surprise me.” “Sure can,” Rathburn asserts brightly, scribbling something in pen. I blink. “Really?” “Oh my God, are you kidding? There are tens of thousands of drugs out there. You could check the

LITERARY

capsules, obviously, except I’d take them apart first and pour them in different dummy capsules, only not the clear ones you get with like niacin but solid color dummy capsules, so you wouldn’t have the right information. And then I’d throw a few dozen different chemicals into the capsules, and then put all those in one bottle, so you’d really have no possible way to determine what’s going to happen to you every single time.” I ask, “Can we do that?” “Sure. Do you drive?” “No.” “Are your coughs dry, or productive?” “I don’t have a cough.” “I know, but isn’t that a hilarious question?” Rathburn writes furiously. “Are you writing the prescription right now?” “No, sorry.” He takes a break from writing, bends his left leg over his right, and absent-mindedly scratches the portion of left inner ankle beneath his sock ferociously. Stuff comes off. “I’m in this epic Words With Friends battle with my kid’s elementary school superintendent, and I’m trying permutations of letters out on this page. I could go with an easy fix, but I’m behind and I wanna really whoop ’em, you know?” “What are your letters?” “a. a. p. a. t. c. n.” “Oof,” I wince. “Hand like a foot.” I ask, “Can I see the board?” Together we observe the board. “Oh my God, he’s trouncing you.” “She,” Rathburn corrects, “and I know.” “Oh, no. Ichthys? On the triple word?” “It’s not even worth all that much. Just wounds the pride, you know?” Rathburn’s head goes left, right, left, right, like a well-oiled pendulum. He shifts in his seat and looks me up and down. “What’s wrong with you again?” “Ask Alicia, why don’t you.” Rathburn consults the clipboard. “All she wrote is ‘LORD HELP US’.” “That’s not far off, I guess. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve slowly come to have the idea that I’m just a complicated mechanism, only I still work when submerged in water. I don’t enjoy feeling this way, but at the same time I don’t dislike it, I’m not like suffering. And when I think about that word, suffering, the entry’s blank. Just a name for something that’s gone, Failure to Refer. Like that word’s made of gears like me, nothing behind the tiniest innards. And I don’t mind that. It’s comforting. Consequences are nowhere to be found, and I could walk outside into the beautiful crisp day with the fat chipmunks and dig myself into the ground and just decompose until this train of thought no longer occurs to me. Speaking more clinically, doctor, if I peeled my skin off with some implement I wouldn’t find anything underneath. I’d just have to pierce the surface once, create a microscopic gap of a place, and I would pop.

The air would gush right out, and folds of the membrane that is me would pile up on each other into a heap, lifeless and cold, and my parents wouldn’t have to pay as much for their insurance anymore.” Rathburn nods. “Like a balloon.” “A balloon fits.” Rathburn takes note of that. “Let me check your pulse.” His knees creak. The right hand plops on underneath the curve of my jaw. “Oh, fuck.” “What?” “Your skin is like, putty.” He kneads it between his fingers in amazement. “That’s wild. You should really get that checked out.” “Uh–” “Great neck, by the way.” “Thanks,” I murmur. “Mine used to be like that. Years ago. Looked just like this one.” “Really.” “It’s amazing I can remember this. I have to say, after the age you are right now, life sucks itself straight down a hole. Blink and you’ll miss it.” “I’ll remember that.” He hums for a while, then stops. His brow crinkles. “Huh.” “What?” “No pulse, either.” “...” “It’s the strangest thing. Just nothing at all. How are you feeling? You seem fine, though I must say you don’t move a whole lot. Like the final result of entropy. Total heat death, full stop. And then there’s the skin thing. Damn, that’s really something. Decades of the practice and you get used to all these things, settle into a routine. The blood and guts and incontinence of it. And then suddenly out of the blue it’s like Whoa! Spinal compound fracture. Anal prolapse. And now this. Some people.” Rathburn throws his head so quickly over his shoulder that I hope it will snap. “Dawn! Dawn, get in here!” Outside, the steps of deeply arched feet inform me of the approach of Dawn. “What?” Dawn has arrived. It is Dawn. “Feel this. Here.” “Whoah.” Wavy-haired Dawn pinches my cheek. “Are these the new practice dummies?” “Patient, actually. Right?” I respond in the affirmative. “Definitely confusing, though,” Rathburn concedes. “Man,” Dawn wiggles my flesh, “I could do this for hours.” She looks into my eyes and asks, “What’s she here for?” Rathburn shrugs. “Haven’t decided yet.” Dawn exits but the Doc’s thumb remains. “You’re supposed to take the pulse with your fingers,” I wonder

28 SEP 2018

aloud, “not your thumb?” Wordlessly Rathburn trades his thumb out for his middle and ring fingers, pressed to the same place. “Nah, still nothing.” Hand withdrawn, Rathburn slings off the unused stethoscope, sending it clean through the office drywall. “That’s amazing. Something’s wrong with you, all right.” As he returns to his chair I lift my fingers to my neck to find a Bump, bump, concussive proof that my pulse is in attendance. “No ideas?” Staring at his phone screen, Rathburn massages his foreskin head. Forehead skin. “Pot is available. Should we try pot?” “Wait, really?!” He shakes his head. “Cant. Cant.” “Then why’d you mention it?” “I hadn’t realized I can also do cant, in this instance, which it turns out is much better. How ’bout a blood transfusion?” “That’s way more than seven letters,” I tell him, “and there’s no b on that whole board.” “I meant for you.” “What will that do?” “I dunno. Mix things up, probably.” “Okay. Yes. Yes,” I say again, this time with feeling. “Will do.” “What blood type?” “Human, barring some special request.” “Well, I don’t know what I’ve got. A, B, O–” “Sure, I mean, I’ll have to take your blood first. Before the transfusion.” Evidently expecting this turn of events, Alicia returns, wheeling in with cart, gloves, needle, and a healthy dose of the utmost concern. “Don’t you worry, honey, we’re going to figure it out,” she croons to the ghoulish footlong stabbing implement in her hand. “We’re gonna fix you.” I can’t help but notice that her eyes glimmer like moonlit pools, brimming with tears either of empathy or ecstasy. I’m not sure which of those is worse. “You’re– you’re going to stab me with that?” My pulse quickens, which I realize is circumstantially convenient. “Yes.” “Oh, Christ, really?” Rathburn watches, rapt. “Cause that is one huge needle. I had no idea they came in that size. Is that safe? Wow. Do we have more of those?”

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Alicia grips my forearm, makes me a fist, and draws first blood at an acute angle. I look. I stare. Alicia is good at this, fast and efficient and professional, nailing me right smack in middle of the inside-elbow vein. Maybe there will be some excitement, a climax. But no. Though the needle is sharp, the process of the wound is blunt, expected, all the edges shaved off. No bite. I don’t even need to wash it down. “Here.” Job done, Alicia sticks the needle out pointfirst in Rathburn’s direction without looking while she swabs the point of entry with alcohol and cotton in the other. Greedily Rathburn accepts. “Sweetie, you’ll receive a call from us in two weeks, once the results from the bloodwork come back.” “Thanks,” I say, watching Rathburn replace the vial holding my blood with an empty one before trying the needle on himself. He observes the outflow of his blood for a while, then gets bored and goes back to his phone without removing the needle, which dangles. There’s a lot of space between us once Alicia leaves, and I ask if that’s all. “How should I know? It’s your appointment.” “Right, but, we’re just going with blood transfusion? That might fix me?” Rathburn’s arm makes a sucking sound when he extracts the needle. “That is what we’re going with. Oftentimes in cases like these, the patient’s suggested remedy is the best one.” “Cases like these being ones where you don’t know what’s going on?” “That’s a way of putting it, yes.” He extends the blood-filled syringe. “Want some?” “No, thanks. What about the prescription?” “Oh, of course.” His palms slapping his knees sound like dropped fruit denting on the floor. “I forgot.” “Sorry to rush you.” “Of course. Nine-to-fives. I get it. Here. Go downstairs. They’ll get you sorted out.” “‘Party Mix’?” “Yes, ma’am. Have a ball.” I hop down to the floor and put on my socks. When I’m almost done Rathburn pries himself into my peripheries. “Oh, hey, you have health insurance, right?” “As long as my family’s plan hasn’t changed…” “Oh, nope. Have it right here. Woof. You’re good. I just wholesale did not check before.” A rush of blood to the head follows me to my feet. Rathburn’s fingerstained phone screen glows silver from Words With Friends. My yellow jacket scuttles

onto my shoulders. “Panacea,” I say. “What?” “Going down, on the e in tench.” “Oh, wonderful. Spell that?” “P-a-n-a-c-e-a.” Rathburn’s shining teeth burrow into the nibble marks girding his pen. He clicks. “Shit. Fourteen with the double letter. Barely made a dent.” Enter Dawn once again. “What are you doing here?” Rathburn answers before I get the chance. “Well,” he says, straightening up and loosening his belt, “I have this rash in my southerlies that makes my crotch look exactly like the surface of the moon. Wanna see?” “Let’s party,” says Dawn, and Rathburn drops trou. He’s right. In turning away, I am met with a cratered expanse reflected in the glass cover of the wallmounted blood pressure gauge kissing my nose. For a moment I even see a man in there. “Folliculitis,” Dawn decides. “You shaved, recently?” “Yeah,” Rathburn replies, “there was no delaying it any longer. I’m just getting laid all over the place.” “I bet,” Dawn murmurs. “Oh, hey,” he blurts as Dawn examines him. “I think I’m wearing your coat.” “So you are,” Dawn discovers, and ex-Rathburn disrobes, handing her a coat and a name. Dawn says, “I’ll send you down to the pharmacy with a prescription for cephalexin. Should clear the lunarscape right up.” “You’re a lifesaver.” The man pulls his pants back up and weaves his belt back into a hip-high embrace. On his way out he nods to me. “Good luck with your thing.” Dawn Rathburn dawdles before me in her white coat, evidently perplexed, as footsteps plut away on the carpeted floor. “So what can I help you with?” “Excuse me,” I ask, “Are you the doctor?”

LITERARY

SOME NOTES ON WEATHER, BY Wen Zhuang ILLUSTRATION Alex Hanesworth DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

Preface I recently acquired my first raincoat. It happened at the foot of the Vatnajökull glacier in Southeastern Iceland. “If you think you hate the weather in Iceland, wait five minutes and you’ll hate it more,” my glacier-hiking-arctic-adventures-guide teased, looking on at the soggy, ill-prepared herd of humans that had collected in front of him, each dense with water, fear, and whatever other feeling a 2,000-meter glacier should cast upon someone. Unlike the wool-dressed Icelandic sheep, humans aren’t fond of pack mentality—for the miles before this rain, we traveled always at a safe distance from each other. Nor are we fond of unexpected showers in 10-minute intervals. It was clear, my hair now sickeningly wet, that I was to be a sore match for the forces on this island. Erik offered me an extra raincoat. I thanked him, but by then the rain had subsided. In five minutes, I’d hate it more. +++ No one comes to Iceland to think less about the weather. And it’s not an easy thing to overlook. Its presence is made all the more palpable due to the absence of highrises or rows of developments—just endless amounts of open air, lush fields. You either come prepared to be shot down by the blazing sun, scathing rain, burning geyser mist, freezing glacial water, or you stand there waiting to be molded by a mixture of these forces. Aside from the weather, all I know about Iceland is an amalgam of facts skimmed from various postings on the walls of hotels and guesthouses. Beer wasn’t legalized until 1989; three trees next to each other is deemed a forest; Iceland was the last place to be settled by humans. There is an air of placidity, miles of land free of barriers. Everyone who visits feels as if they’ve discovered something secret, or have woken up a resting giant. And all are eager to share. This fascination has influenced a large number of artists, both Icelandic and many foreign, all turning to Iceland as a place for inspiration and clarification. Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson has long exalted Iceland as a place largely similar to that of a studio itself: “Actually, a lot of public spaces seem to suggest that you can use the space to—I wouldn't say ‘reinvent’ yourself, but at least ‘reconsider’ yourself.” The light, landscape, and weather above all, are unmistakable in Eliasson’s work. In May of 2017, he opened Studio Olafur Eliasson in downtown Reykjavik, which is now open to the public. His most celebrated piece, known as “the weather project” employed humidifiers and hundreds of monochromatic lamps; disseminated mist and a radiating yellow light flooded the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London. Art critic Brian O’Doherty, in a description of the installation to Frieze magazine, illustrates the space as: “enormously dismal—like a coffin for a giant— but was socialized in an effective way.” The climate Eliasson installed transformed what once was a large empty space, where people moved past each other unknowingly, into a space where all collectively gathered under the sun. The severity of it and the proximity that people in Iceland have to weather has shifted the way Eliasson experiences weather conditions in London or other metropolitan areas. He brings these unvarnished episodes of weather into the steel-framed Turbine Hall, with its old construction crane still hanging above, and visitors instantly feel the weight of gravity. The only reasonable next step being sitting down, breathing in the mist, and letting themselves be smothered by the light. For Eliasson, he believes it is, “one of the few fundamental encounters with nature that can still be experienced in the city.” He goes on to explain that, “As inhabitants, we have grown accustomed to the weather as mediated by the city. This takes place in numerous ways, on various

ARTS

collective levels ranging from hyper‑mediated (or representational) experiences, such as the television weather forecast, to more direct and tangible experiences, like simply getting wet while walking down the street on a rainy day. A level between the two extremes would be sitting inside, looking out of a window onto a sunny or rainy street.” I think about my hiking herd and how weather made friends of us; we walked the miles before the downpour in silence, and the miles after laughing and damning the rain. +++ During an Icelandic winter, the sun shines for four hours a day. In summer, it doesn’t set until 10 at night. Between all of this, the wind and rain sustains. For Icelanders, having to deal with a riotous sky or a turbulent ocean is never a bitter pill. Visitors for 10 days, 100, a year, may never navigate Iceland in the same way. For starters, the Icelandic language has developed around 56 words for wind alone, some meaning close to storm and some alluding to a calmer state. But what keeps visitors coming back is the hope that they might begin to learn the how’s and what’s. Many of the artists (even native born Icelanders) who find spaces to work in Iceland only end up doing so temporarily. But all continue to dwell on their experiences and talk candidly about the impact. The question is not why they care so much about the landscape, the culture, and the weather; it is a question of how a place reminds them that they do. Perhaps no visitor has attempted to answer this question as committedly than artist and writer Roni Horn. A native of New York, Horn initially visited Iceland out of college and has returned constantly since the mid-70s. Her oeuvre, in photography, writing, installation, and various other mediums is much like the Icelandic weather she is fervently in awe of: difficult, and oftentimes impossible to grasp. Only for viewers and readers to marvel at and be made curious by—as if it were another climate, or a combination of many. Intimately communal yet vastly solitary, Iceland and Horn have depended on each other for company. And Icelanders have welcomed Horn as they do most visitors, enthusiasts, and wanderers to their island. Over 100 local residents have collaborated with Horn in her studies with weather, offering their personal experiences and sharing what continually draws them home. Horn, along with Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir, an Icelandic writer, pursued various residents of the towns of Stykkisholmur and Helgafellssveit. The 197-page book titled Weather Reports You is told through the experiences of police officers, sailors, farmers, and preschool teachers. All seem to harbor a quiet understanding that those who visit have all come to quench some desire. A desire to feel one might be an infinite stranger, or that their proximity with everything else is unbounded. And being on this island makes those desires a fact, that we still have much conversation to make with nature. And being exposed to its daily forces fuels Horn’s fascination and frustration. Both with how little we know and how much we never will, about the water we drink or the rain. “During the many months of making these interviews I learned something important about Iceland…” Ævarsdóttir reflects, “I can’t say exactly what it is...but it’s connected with people’s different ways of reading their environment and the people around them, living in the whirlwinds of memories and forgetfulness.” “My weather began back in grade school. In class, the teacher announced a hurricane was on its way. With that she dismissed us and emphatically instructed: ‘Run home!’ Scared at first, exhilarated afterwards, I ran all the way,” begins Horn in the introduction of Weather Reports You. This book and the recordings have proven, most importantly, the length that Horn has gone to bridge herself with the surrounding communities, and

the importance of this gesture. Aside from the introduction, in all 197 pages, her name is almost absent. And aside from the brief introduction, she allows only those who have tempered with this climate their entire lives to speak on it. They do so proudly, many having not thought much about this everyday occurrence. Some speak about the perils of boating, of simply being outside. And some just hate when the weather prevents them from being outside—or simply playing basketball. Horn’s desire has always been not to recreate but to pass on, in whatever language best suited the feeling that the island has instilled in her. Echoing the sentiments of Eliasson, Horn has long used Iceland as her makeshift studio and in her most ambitious project to date, all of Horn’s abiding interests are displayed subtly but clearly. The Library of Water, or Vatnasfn, is a building which rests quietly on a promontory, overlooking the town of Styykishölmur. The library houses an installation of 24 glass columns. The language of these pillars is much like that of her sculptures: each pillar contains water collected from some of the most famous glaciers in Iceland. Cast in solid glass and standing floor to ceiling, the properties of the water reflect and refract the town, its buildings, and the people who visit the library. At some angles, we see ourselves as one with the red lighthouse that faces the window. In others, we’ve melted in with the reflection of neighboring columns; the surfaces of these are constantly in flux, much like the reflection of oneself in water. The pillars are clustered at the entrance of the library and in front of the walkway to the seating area but are anything but obtrusive. We make ourselves fit, swerving and spreading ourselves across the space created. Much like rain, in some areas, we cannot move without dodging a pillar and in all areas, the reflections of the 24 pillars constantly change the visuals we are experiencing. The choice of Styykishölmur, a town on the western-coast of Iceland, as home to this artistic venture is intentional. It is the home of many of the interviewees in Weather Reports You and Vatnasfn houses the tapes of these recordings. In 1845, it also coincidentally began recording the first regular measurement of weather. Upon finding this building, which was used only to house books in transit to other places, Horn negotiated with the town mayor on a renewal of the building, proposing for it to be a public space. Above all, Horn hoped it would be a place that reflected the history and culture of the island. Upon being granted permission, Horn placed down sheets of rubber flooring and set off to collect what would become the library’s 24 columns. Now in its 11th year, the library is used as a community space and visitors are invited to attend events, sometimes with shows by performers like Ragnar Kjartansson and Laurie Anderson. During its less busy seasons, Vatnasfn is accessible by code, which you can retrieve by visiting the Volcano Museum down the hill. Some leave books, notes, and writing. Others come to browse the catalogues and sit and listen to the recordings. A general management staff comes to check up on the space from time to time, but in general it is left as is. All that is asked of visitors is to remove their shoes. The general preservation of this place comes not from strict policing, but an understanding that there is something sacred preserved here—be it experience, emotion, or bits of Iceland’s landscape—and it is up to all who come upon it to respect and nurture it. For many, it is rare to be able to see landscape so clearly, unfettered by much else. And when the rain hits harder, one becomes more alert. Both to how humans are affected by our surroundings and our obvious shortcomings in understanding and dealing with nature. Though Horn tends to be somehow both subtle and conspicuous about her intentions, it is easy to feel that her work with Vatnasfn comes from a level of urgency. Parts of the casted water comes from the Vatnajokull Glacier, also known as “Fat Yogurt” for

28 SEP 2018

POTENTIALITIES, AND LIMITATIONS those less privy to the Icelandic tongue. It is a glacier superstar, one of the largest of its kind (by volume) in Europe and covers more than nine percent of the island alone. Even in its grandiosity, a glaciologist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office has reported that more than ten percent of the glacier has melted since 1890 and the land around has risen by approximately 25 millimeters just within this past year. All of Iceland’s glaciers are melting; weather has become, more so now than ever, ominously unpredictable across the world. These pillars stand as testaments to loss, but even more as icons of hope. When faced, on a human scale, with a force normally too large to comprehend, we’re reminded of the beauty in Iceland’s glaciers. Horn forces our movements to literally blend with these pillars, and we feel how interconnected we are to their livelihood. Past the bevy of glass columns is the back room, where one may sit and listen to the recordings and as Horn hoped, find commonality under the weather, and see it both in its true scale and on an individual scale. “I imagine the weather reports of Laramie, Palermo, Hudson Bay, Gorky, Lake Baikal, Timbuktu and so on. Iceland is only a starting point. But Iceland more than most places is a country that has forcibly been made to experience the weather as the dominant, essentially unpredictable presence that influences the outcome of all things on the island.”

Afterword: Today I am stopping by the town of Höfn, the largest town in Southern Iceland. Still, there is only one convenience store in the center. It sells few imported products. Lots of dairy. Although the car I have is a hefty 4x4, it’s heavily misaligned from bouts of rough rental usage. Rough not from off-roading or poor behind-thewheel habits but weathered by a terrain that was never meant for cars. Höfn boasts the island’s best seafood, even lobster dipped in chocolate. If you’re lucky, soup always waits at the end of a treacherous journey. On the off chance I look out the window, I see a red chair set atop a rock. Someone has left it there I assume (for viewing pleasures? forgotten?) and it stands as if it’d been drilled into the gravel, unfettered by the wind. How well we weather a storm depends on many things: stamina, courage, familiarity, intent. In this case, I was ruefully beat out by painted plywood. I was tempted to take a break, take a seat on this chair, see if I could learn anything. Nearing Höfn, I passed my third waterfall; across it landed flocks of swans, puffins, and around it clusters of horses and sheep grazed. Across it, another rainbow. Due to the rain, I’ve seen six and a half rainbows in 10 days. It’s nearing 10pm and the last of the sunset has left the sky; it’s raining again outside. A dull knocking rain. PLONK, PLONK, PLONK. I’m hesitant to draw the blinds, as it has proved quite an event for me here, always taking upwards of 15 to 20 minutes. Each time I find myself paralyzed and stupefied, staring at the vast abysmal land, not lit by a single streetlamp. An uncanny mix of awe, shock, longing, and terror. WEN ZHUANG R'1 9 left that raincoat in the airport.

Excerpts from Weather Reports You: When I was a little girl, I lived in a very good place as far as the weather was concerned. In bad weather it was horrible, everything shook and rattled and you lay awake at night wondering what would happen if the house was blown out to sea. Oh yes, I just made a ship of it, if it blows away it’s bound to turn upside down and sail on its roof and then i’m safe inside the house. I lived with that until I was almost ten. When I was twelve I lost my uncle at sea, so I’m not really terribly fond of storms and the sea. The weather is always connected with the sea in my mind. That’s what puts the fear into me the most, the sea. If the sea starts moving, I know what to expect. Birna Pétursdóttir Born 1940, Stykkisholmur Librarian

I never see the sun without starting to tingle and I’m outside at once. I was at sea for nine years. Once when I was on board the trawler Skúli Magnússon (I think it was the Skúli Magnússon, rather than the Jón Þorláksson) I was out on the Halinn grounds and we ran into strong, nasty weather, hauled in the trawl and headed for land. But it was snowing, there was a raging storm and heavy frost, and that was when I felt in most danger at sea. I was so tired of smashing the ice off all the ropes and as soon as I turned around everything was covered again. Sometimes when a sheep went missing and you saw a snowdrift somewhere, well into the spring, if there was a little grass sprouting alongside the snowdrift, you could always be sure the sheep was there. The sheep never left those gullies the whole winter and it was warm. I remember that because I was a kid on the farm and I was like the family dog, they sent me out to fetch the sheep from the snowdrifts. Sigurður Hjartarson Born 1930, Blönduós Farmer (Staðarbakki)

The best weather is the weather I can play basketball in. The worst weather is when I can’t play basketball, I think. Egill Egilsson Born 1991, Stykkishólmur Student

Several years ago, I was very depressive, I often used to think then that you don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg, if and how the weather affected my depression, for better or for worse. And I remember at that time I was shut in here by myself a lot, I shut myself away and there was an incredible amount of salty northerly storms. No snow on the streets but brine and seawater spraying everything so all the windows turn grey and the asphalt jet black although it is just dry. If you pull yourself together and go outdoors to scrape the salt off it gets a little brighter, you feel a little brighter. There’s also the question if I felt the weather [was] was worse because I was unbalanced. Anna Sigríður Gunnarsdóttir Born 1960, Reykjavík Nurse at St. Francis Hostpital

I had to go up onto the mountain every single day, whatever the weather. So I ought to have some definition of the changeability of the weather. But I’m such a blockhead. It’s a fact that even if you do something daily that has an effect on you, it’s as if it never sticks in your mind as a special phenomenon. Unless, you’re hit over the head! But sometimes I feel my whole life was spent more or less in peril. Jóhann Pétursson Born 1918, Stykkishólmur. Died 2006. Retired lighthouse keeper at Hornbjarg

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

ARTS

CESAR MILLAN OF DOG WHISPERER KNIGHTED! All the secrets & scoop! SEPT. 28 - OCT. 4, 2018

the E Watch wl LIV t o B y a Pupp ht this week al ntr nig every ern/7pm Ce l ast 8pm E on Anima only et! Plan

PRIME TIME

(Every night this week!)

Eastern Central

8:00 PM 7:00 PM

9:00 PM 8:00 PM

10:00 PM 9:00PM

CNN

Anderson Cooper 360: Anderson Cooper investigates skateboarding and does a treflip (that’s 360º).

CNN Tonight: How do we cope with Ariana and Pete in the age of F.O.M.O. and ghosting?

CNN Public Access: Wayne’s World.

The Knighting of Cesar Millan: (Special) The Queen knights Millan for his excellence in whispering.

Lord Cesar Millan’s ASMR Special: (Special) For dogs with autonomous sensory meridian response.

Animal Puppy Bowl: young dogs Planet battle for the title of most impressive specimen.

ABC Family

Garfield Gets His Identity Stolen: Mild mannered businessman Garfield travels from Denver to Florida to confront the deceptively harmless looking woman who has been living it up after stealing Garfields’s identity.

The Goldbergs: All seven of them wear the same sweater and it gets really stinky.

Lifetime Unsolved Mysteries: Who Paid Programming: Shop drank the rest of my green juice? Garfield Ge Identity ts His S at 8pm Ea tolen ster Central on n/7pm ly on AB Family! C

EPHEMERA

My Crazy Ex: Oh No He today’s hottest sativa strains Didn’t! (That mother TRUCKER from the comfort of your living did!) room. Ande Coop rson er 8pm Ea 360 at ste Central rn/7pm only o CNN! n

My C ra 10pm E zy Ex at astern/ 9pm Central on Lifeti ly on me!

28 SEP 2018

TAKE

THE

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IT’S

THE

FRIDAY

LIST! 9.28

Se Aculilló? | Panel + Closing AS220, 115 Empire Street / 6-8PM This month-long performance and installation series centering work by Latinx artists winds to a close with a curator-led panel discussion at the AS220 Main Stage. Se Aculilló?, named after a popular Colombian jeer that roughly translates to Are you scared?, aims to explore the concept of ‘susto’ or ‘soul loss’ in Latinx culture while interrogating the (white) imperative that Latinx artists make work specifically about racial trauma. Pregame your October with a dose of early-autumn solemnity!

SATURDAY

9.29

Macklemore at McCoy Stadium McCoy Stadium, 1 Columbus Ave, Pawtucket RI / 4-6PM / $23 Ok get this—Macklemore is performing at the Pawtucket Red Sox’ recently foreclosed former hq (McCoy Stadium) as part of Recovery Fest, a new concert series intended to “inspire, empower, and provide grassroots funding to U.S. cities affected by the addiction epidemic.” Nice concept, and this LW is glad that the org behind RF is donating all proceeds to local, RI-based charities––but feels pretty skeptical that the guy who wrote quasi-political liberal-guilt anthem White Privilege is in fact capable of fomenting any real revolution. Music Art & Everything Else Sale! Studio Blue Providence, 111 Summer Street / 1:11PM-7:11PM No, the start and end times of this event are not a typo. The entrepreneurs behind this Saturday’s Music Art & Everything Else estate sale are just reallllly quirky and love the number one! According to numerology, this sacred digit symbolizes creation, aggression, and production. Either way, I’ll be there, tearing through a pile of pots and pans, looking for a special or rare talisman to cure my chronic depression… a rabbit’s foot? A four leaf clover? Would also settle for a nice pair of heels.

SUNDAY

9.30

through the night: an evening of lullabies to benefit RAICES Columbus Theater, 270 Broadway / 7-10PM / $10-15 Last time this LW went to a concert at Columbus, the headlining act inadvertently saw up her skirt because she was supine on the floor, furiously making out with a really lame boy! She does, despite her troubled history, encourage you to attend through the night (even if she’s less than stoked to imagine the very twee crowd that’ll probably turn up to listen to the most infantile lyric genre there is). All profits go to RAICES, a “nonprofit agency that promotes justice by providing free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees in Texas.” 4th Annual Ed Lang Memorial/Untamed Auto Club Car & Bike Show Lang’s Bowlarama, 225 Niantic Avenue, Cranston RI / 10AM-2PM / $10 to enter your car into the competition, and $0 to look Plus, once staring down a lot full of geriatric men and their vintage rides gets boring, you can go bowling.

MONDAY The Majesty and Mystery of Crop Circles East Providence Public Library (41 Grove Avenue) / 7-8pm Like chemtrails, but with an autumnal twist! And you thought the only mystique left ern agriculture was whether Monsanto is laying the ground for Attack of the Killer

TUESDAY

10.1

to modTomatoes.

10.2

Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) RI Open Meeting 99 Morris Avenue / 7pm SURJ does great work in mobilizing white allies for anti-racist movements across the city. This time around, they’ll be discussing how to support the #NoLNGinPVD movement, DARE’s Rent Control campaign, and more. Bring a potluck dish if you’re able! Cocktails & Screens Film Critique Night Black Box Theater (95 Empire Street) / 7-9:30pm The last time your LW was drunk and at the movies, I cried too much at Call Me By Your Name, which I now think… is kinda bad. But if YOUR critical faculties are enhanced by alcohol, come give feedback to a whole host of local filmmakers! There’s nothing the Indy loves more than critique.

WEDNESDAY

10.3

Shaun Leonardo Artist Lecture Granoff Center for the Creative Arts (154 Angell Street) / 5pm Leonardo is known for the potency of his performance pieces; in “Primitive Games” at the Guggenheim this June, he led a group in a nonverbal debate on gun control modeled after a Renaissance-era sport. Here, he’ll be (verbally) discussing the intersection of artistry and social practice with the Guggenheim’s Director of Public Programs, Christina Yang.

THURSDAY

10.4

Netop Nights: A People’s History Tour of the John Brown House John Brown House (52 Power Street) / 6-8pm This is less of your standard mansion-tour and more of a true reckoning with the state’s past, using the John Brown House to spotlight the link between the slave trade and the profits of founding families and industrialists in 18th century Rhode Island. It’s also led by PVD’s coolest punk, activist, and now historian Joey La Neve DeFrancesco.