Volume 47 - Issue 3

staff publisher Briton Park editors-in-chief Eric Boodman Julia Calagiovanni executive editor Ike Swetlitz managing editor Maya Averbuch senior editors Ashley Dalton Emily Efland Katy Osborn Noah Remnick Ezra Ritchin A. Grace Steig associate editors Ashley Dalton Caroline Sydney Isabelle Taft copy editors Adrian Chiem Eva Landsberg Adam Mahler photo editors Jennifer Lu

Volume 48 Issue 3 January 2015

members and directors Emily Bazelon, Peter B. Cooper, Jonathan Dach, Kathrin Lassila, Eric Rutkow, Elizabeth Sledge, Jim Sleeper, Fred Strebeigh advisors Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Joshua Civin, Richard Conniff, Ruth Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Jennifer Pitts, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, David Slifka, John Swansburg, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin friends Michael Addison, Austin Family Fund, Steve Ballou, J. Neela Banerjee, Margaret Bauer, Anson M. Beard, Jr., Blaire Bennett, Richard Bradley, Martha Brant, Susan Braudy, Daniel Brook, Hilary Callahan, Jay Carney, Daphne Chu, Josh Civin, Jonathan M. Clark, Constance Clement, Andy Court, Masi Denison, Albert J. Fox, Mrs. Howard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwin Goldman, David Greenberg, Stephen Hellman, Laura Heymann, Gerald Hwang, Walter Jacob, Jane Kamensky, Tina Kelley, Roger Kirwood, Jonathan Lear, Lewis E. Lehrman, Jim Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Daniel Murphy, Martha E. Neil, Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, Sean O’Brien, Laura Pappano, Julie Peters, Lewis and Joan Platt, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Fairfax C. Randal, Robert Randolph, Stuart Rohrer Arleen and Arthur Sager, Richard Shields, W. Hampton Sides, Lisa Silverman, Scott Simpson, Adina Proposco and David Sulsman, Thomas Strong, Margarita Whiteleather, Blake Wilson, Daniel Yergin and Angela Stent Yergin

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The Real-Life Miracles of Father McGivney A congregation must prove miracles to win sainthood for a beloved leader

by Edward Columbia

28

Rocking the House New Haven’s punk scene lives on in the basements of some its most die-hard fans

by Anna Meixler

STANDARDS

4 10

points of departure

by various authors

snapshot Jesus Take the Wheel

by Ruby Bilger

13

snapshot All in the Mind

17

essay On Roadside Shrines and Being Far from Home

by Nimal Eames-Scott

34 endnote Interview with Jay Carney

by Noah Remnick

by Ivy Sanders-Schneider

design editors Annie Schweikert Edward Wang Madeleine Witt

The New Journal is published five times during the academic year by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. Office address: 305 Crown Street. All contents Copyright 2014 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher and editors-in-chief is prohibited. While this magazine is published by Yale College students,Yale University is not responsible for its contents. Four thousand copies of each issue are distributed free to members of the Yale and New Haven communities. Subscriptions are available to those outside the area. Rates: One year, $50. The New Journal is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. The New Journal encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. All letters for publication must include address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for publication.

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Cover by Edward Wang and Madeleine Witt

JANUARY 2015

3

points of departure

into the

( connecticut )

woods

A wilderness enthusiast singlehandedly maps the state’s native species

by Marissa Medansky

B

efore we crossed the gate into Hamden’s West tail it requires—has afforded him a near-encyclopedic Rock Ridge State Park, Michael Richardson pulled knowledge of the Connecticut species he now cataa bottle of mosquito repellent from a backpack stuffed logs online. The man behind ConnecticutWilderness. with hiking supplies. “I have two separate infections com is part Bear Grylls, part botany teacher—and deof Lyme disease, so I make a point of bringing the termined to get his visitors to rethink their relationbug spray every time I come out,” he explained to me ship with nature. as we stood near the park’s entrance. “It’s just one of Richardson discovered his love for the wilderthose things you have to deal with, I guess.” ness as a teenager, tucked away at summer camp in Richardson knows nature, ticks and otherwise: the New Hampshire woods. There, from the camp’s he has spent the past four years compiling a compre- counselors, he learned about vegetables that came hensive guide to native species from the ground, not the groof plants and animals across the cery store: wild plants that you “YOU HAVE TO THINK state. In 2010, the 37-year-old could pluck straight from the ABOUT IT IN TERMS Connecticut native founded dirt and eat. The first he tried the educational website Conwas a slender white root called OF WHAT WOULD necticutWilderness.com; today, Indian cucumber. With just HAPPEN IF THERE the website features nearly 900 one bite, he was hooked. “I creatures, from Sphyrapicus knew you could pick blackberWAS A ZOMBIE varius, the yellow-bellied sapries and blueberries and all that APOCALYPSE OR sucker, to Notophthalmus viristuff, but the Indian cucumdescens, the Eastern newt. ber, that was cool,” RichardA NUCLEAR BOMB Even on this sunny Saturday son said. Later that summer, he WENT OFF.” morning in September, when decided to draft an exhaustive people in hiking boots and camap of the campground’s ednoes dot the sunlit Connecticut landscape, Richardson ible plants, a feat for which he won Camp Pasquaney’s said his thoughts often turn toward darker visions. nature award. “That was sort of the first iteration of “Every time I’m out, I’m always sort of thinking from Connecticut Wilderness,” he said. a survivalist standpoint,” he said as we headed down He built the current version of the website about the trail. “You have to think about it in terms of what four years ago to share his knowledge. By day he is would happen if there was a zombie apocalypse or a an IT professional, and the project has offered him an nuclear bomb went off.” opportunity to learn additional computing languages Richardson knows this eschatological vision— and skills. Richardson uses everything from vinyl rethe undead swarming the parking lot, the woman on cords of birdcalls to Wikipedia to guide his work. the red canoe paddling through hellfire—is improb“The best way to get proficient is to spend a lot of able. Unlike so-called “doomsday preppers” obsessed time studying,” he said. “You have to be really careful with the apocalypse, Richardson is ruled by a more and know what you’re looking for.” To illustrate his practical motivation: he’s simply fascinated by how point, Richardson motioned me over to a cluster of nature abounds with resources for survival. His ex- black and yellow insects, buzzing menacingly around treme thought experiment—and the attention to de- a clump of purple blooms.

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“Come down low on these guys,” he said, squatting down with his camera. He let one of the fuzzy critters climb his finger. “That’s a syrphid fly,” he said. “They look like bees. They’re mimics.” But unlike bees, they’re harmless. Syrphid flies’ resemblance to a more dangerous doppelganger helps them ward off predators—plus freak out inexperienced hikers like me.

But those familiar with the wilderness, my guide included, have an easier time than predators at recognizing the many mimics that live in Connecticut.

Richardson cites another common local example: two plants, mountain laurel and wintergreen. The former is poisonous, while the latter lends a minty taste to chewing gum. But both have red stems and bluegreen leaves. When we found a plant that fit that description, Richardson used a pocketknife to slice off a portion, then plucked off its leaves, tore them in half, and gave the fragments a sniff. Pressing the leaf fragments to his mouth, he took a taste to confirm his identification: wintergreen.

Richardson rarely checks the analytics that would tell him how many people have visited his website.

Just 51 Facebook users, including myself, “like” the website’s fan page. Still, it’s important to him that the website expand, both online and off. He hopes to develop a mobile version of his site, and he recently hosted a mycology walk under the ConnecticutWil-

derness.com banner attended by a dozen people eager to learn to identify wild mushrooms.

In Connecticut, a state better known for its country clubs than its national parks, the challenge isn’t taming the wilderness, but finding it. Here, foraging for wild edibles is a hobby, not a matter of sustenance.

“You’re never really going to be anywhere in Connecticut where you can’t get rescued,” Richardson said. “Even in the deepest of forests, you really can’t get more than five to ten miles away from a road at the most.” But even a short distance from the pristine lawns of suburbia, he can point at nearly any plant and tell you whether you can eat it.

On our hike, Richardson identified dozens of other species that can sustain hungry foragers, from sheep sorrel, a lemony herb that goes well in salad, to common mullein, a fuzzy-leaved plant that grows close to the ground and is said to have medicinal effects. Some plants have multiple uses, too: take mullein, for example. “Its best use is as toilet paper in the woods,” Richardson said. “It works.” While you may never find yourself wiping with a leaf, the point has been made: there’s an abundance of treasures in the forest, if only you learn to find them.

Marissa Medansky is a senior in Morse College.

rarer than fiction Rare books remain hidden in the stacks of Yale’s main library

by Abigail Schneider

T

he quest for the Holy Grail. The legend of the Sword and the Stone. The founding of the Knights of the Round Table. These, and other tales, fill the illustrated pages of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.

Malory, an English knight and Member of Parliament, wrote the book while imprisoned in the 1470s. Since then, the book has become one of the most well known collections of the heroic deeds and chivalric romances of King Arthur’s reign.

Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library JANUARY 2015

owns a special 1838 edition of Le Morte d’Arthur— one of just three hundred ever created. Its handmade paper is fragile. Its edges are torn, interrupting the patterns of pears and leaves that line the pages’ borders. Some pages have come loose from the binding.

The book creaks as I flip through its pages. But even in this condition, the book is valued at over $10,000.

Yet, until very recently, it sat in the shelves of the open circulation stacks of Sterling Memorial Library, available for anyone to check out. The book finally 5

found its way to the Beinecke in September when ju- said they were looking for everything published benior Katie Stoops checked it out, for pleasure reading. fore 1800. At any given time, four staff members One of the book’s first pages says that it is “of su- and two students were assigned to the project. They perior issue.” Intrigued, Stoops methodically went through researched the book’s history. the library catalogue, finding She learned that the Dutch pathe call numbers of rare books ABOUT ONCE A per the book was printed on and collecting them from the MONTH, SOMEONE makes it extraordinarily valustacks. George Miles, a curator able. To make the paper, fine of Western Americana at the DISCOVERS A RARE linens were steeped in water Beinecke, says that he knows OR VERY OLD BOOK, and dried between different the project didn’t find all of the coatings of salts, liquors, and rare books, but “we felt pretty POTENTIALLY WORTH acids of fermented rye or butconfident that we got most of MORE THAN A termilk. The linens were dried them.” and re-wetted for weeks unIn 2006, the former Cross THOUSAND DOLLARS, til they were white and sturdy Campus Library was renovated IN THE STERLING enough for printing. to become today’s Bass Library.

When she discovered the During the construction, its COLLECTION. book’s value—a UK bookbooks took up temporary resishop lists the volume on Abedence in Sterling. Kiss helped Books, an online book marre-shelve Sterling’s books to ketplace, for $11,711.10—she felt uncomfortable make room for the Cross Campus collection. It was, being in possession of a book with such “historical he says, “the first time in a long time that people had and monetary” value. After contacting Sterling Me- put their hands on literally every single book in the morial Library, Stoops gave the book to Brian Kiss, entire library.” While moving the books back to the who works in the circulation department there. newly opened Bass in 2007, Beinecke staffers were inKiss quickly brought Le Morte D’Arthur to the Bei- structed to put aside any book printed before 1800 so necke through the basement tunnel that connects the that these books could be moved to the Beinecke coltwo libraries. lection. “They found tons and tons of stuff,” Kiss says.

Stoops’s story is unusual, Many of the books were small, but not unheard of atYale. About THE BOOK IS VALUED pages numbered with Roman once a month, someone disnumerals. Most were not writAT OVER $10,000. covers a rare or very old book, ten in English. Hundreds were YET, UNTIL VERY potentially worth more than a transferred to the Beinecke. thousand dollars, in the SterKiss explains that books RECENTLY, IT SAT IN ling collection. It is then moved printed in the nineteenth and THE SHELVES OF THE over to the Beinecke. Though twentieth centuries circulatold and fragile books still turn ing in Sterling were not part OPEN CIRCULATION up occasionally, Kiss said that of the project. The scope of the STACKS. it’s uncommon for books as transfer was already so large rare—and as valuable—as Le that including newer books in Morte d’Arthur to be found in the stacks, available the search would have added an enormous amount of for circulation. work for the librarians. That may be one reason that In the past eleven years, Yale’s libraries have made the Dutch paper edition of Le Morte d’Arthur, which an effort to move all rare and fragile books to the was printed after 1800, remained in the stacks.

Beinecke. The library’s staffers combed through the But books are moved to the Beinecke for reasons Sterling stacks in 2004 as part of a major project to other than old age. Some are very fragile—for exammove thousands of books into their collection. Sarah ple, historical political pamphlets and booklets. OthSchmidt, head of printed acquisitions at the Beinecke, ers might be particularly difficult to replace. Even so, if 6

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the Beinecke already has a copy of a rare book—even if it is worth a significant sum of money—multiple copies are allowed to stay in Sterling so that library patrons can access them. This could be a second reason why Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur was overlooked in Sterling: the Beinecke already held two older copies of Malory’s book when Stoops discovered the 1838 edition.

However, because of its Dutch paper, this 1838 edition was even more valuable than its counterparts in Beinecke.

Only by flipping through its pages could someone realize its significance.

So, some rare books still linger in Sterling.WhileYale’s librarians want to make its collection of over fifteen million volumes available for research, they also want to ensure that the books are properly preserved.Though books

in the Beinecke collection are not in open stacks, students and researchers can read them in the reading rooms.

“The library system at large is looking to balance security with accessibility,” Miles says. “It’s one of the hardest questions that libraries face. They want to serve today’s readers as well as tomorrow’s.” As a result, books like the illustrated Dutch-paper Le Morte d’Arthur may continue to wind up on the desks of students who are unaware of their value.

“I would imagine,” Miles says, “that there will always be a few books in Sterling that we are surprised to discover are still there.”

Abigail Schneider is a sophomore in Trumbull College.

haunted haven A ghostly tour of the Elm City

by Libbie Katsev

“P

oint five’s nothing. In New Haven, we Washington, D.C., and Palm Beach, Florida. get sevens.”

Before we get started, McGrath gives us a crash Chrystyne McGrath stands outside of the Star- course in ghost physics. When we die, there’s a light. bucks at the intersection of Chapel and High Streets, If our spirits go into the light, they pass on; if not, surrounded by a crowd of about forty people. She they stay here and haunt the living, hovering one foot holds up a black box the size of a graphing calculator. above the ground and feeding the local ghost tourIt’s an EMF meter, a scientific instrument that mea- ism industry. In a symbiotic relationship, the tourism sures changes in electromagnetic fields. A small screen industry feeds the ghosts. Ghosts consume electricity, displays a single number. If the number is at least 0.5, according to McGrath, which is why EMF meters can McGrath says, then the machine might be detecting detect them. She warns us our phones are likely to go a ghost. dead, but to keep them ready anyway: Ghosts can be The EMF meter is one of a ghost hunter’s primary captured on camera as glowing orbs or bright streaks tools, but McGrath is less of a hunter and more of a of light. Often, orbs appear in the photos the morning guide. On this cold Friday night in early November, after – charging your cell phone overnight feeds the she’s leading us on a ghost tour of New Haven. Mc- spirits, who then decide to grace your pictures with Grath is wearing a silver down coat and a hat with a their presence. leopard-print band. By day, she works at the Health McGrath asks if anyone has experienced a ghost Options Center for Wellness in Guilford, which of- before. Most people stay silent, but one man in a black fers a smorgasbord of alternative medicine options in- jacket raises his hand. Later, he’ll volunteer to knock cluding herbal treatments and hypnotherapy. By night, on the door of the Skull and Bones tomb, the first stop she leads tours for the New Haven division of Ghost on tonight’s tour.

Walks USA, which also offers tours in New York City, We stop at about a dozen places, including secret JANUARY 2015

7

MADELEINE WITT

society tombs, Sterling Memorial Library, the Grove At Sterling Memorial Library, McGrath shares two Street Cemetery, Yale’s visitor center, and City Hall. On stories. The first is of a kindly librarian named Auntie, the way, we get a good dose of New Haven history, ev- who still helps students out with their studies, deerything from the Amistad upspite having died decades ago. rising to Hurricane Sandy. This The second is about an entity history is full of ghosts. Some that called itself “Seth.” Back in A CRASH COURSE are historical figures like Cor1963, a poet named Jane RobIN GHOST PHYSICS: nelius Vanderbilt, and others erts was possessed by this spirit. are prominent local legends.

While channeling Seth, Roberts WHEN WE DIE, Mary Hart, better known went on to write many books, THERE’S A LIGHT. IF as Midnight Mary, haunts Evknown as the Seth Material. The OUR SPIRITS GO INTO ergreen Cemetery, near the manuscripts and letters, along intersection of Columbus Avwith some recordings of Jane THE LIGHT, THEY enue and Ella T. Grasso BouleRoberts, ended up in the SterPASS ON; IF NOT, vard. The tour doesn’t stop at ling Memorial Library’s ManuEvergreen Cemetery, but Mcscripts and Archives collection, THEY STAY HERE AND Grath tells the story anyway: taking up a total of 498 boxes.

HAUNT THE LIVING. According to legend, MidAfter that, we spend some night Mary was buried alive. time huddling in front of the And then there are the namegates of the Grove Street Cemless spirits, like the murdered girl with long red etery. There, the ghosts of soldiers killed in the Revohair who haunts the basement of the New Haven lutionary War greet McGrath, she says. McGrath tells Free Public Library. us to take pictures, and if our intentions are strong, 8

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the ghosts will show up for us, too. I guess I’m not As we head over to the New Haven Green, a man sincere enough, because I don’t get any orbs, just a on the tour approaches McGrath. He’s got a photo glowing white blotch in between the bars of the gate. with an orb in the window of one of the city hall It might just be my camera flash reflecting off another buildings. Can she tell if it’s the real thing? This is it, participant’s cellphone, but I can’t be sure. I do feel I think: confirmation of the supernatural, or at least a cold patch as we walk along the gates of the ceme- of…orbs. McGrath looks at the picture. She says it tery—I mean, the entire East Coast is a cold patch, but looks like a light fixture. it seems to me that the left side We stop in the middle of my body is a little bit chillier of the New Haven Green and than the right. stand by a plaque that marks MCGRATH ASKS The Union Trust Building the ground in front of a sapon Church Street now houses ling. It replaces the old Lincoln IF ANYONE HAS Wells Fargo. But, almost a cenOak that came down during EXPERIENCED A tury ago, a nasty bank teller Hurricane Sandy, skeletons and named Eli Wilson skimmed a time capsule tangled in its GHOST BEFORE. money off of other people’s roots.

MOST PEOPLE savings. He died in accident, “The vortex is right here,” trapped in the bank’s airtight McGrath says. A vortex is a STAY SILENT, BUT vault. Later, phantoms of laughplace where energy is concenONE MAN IN A ing children terrorized the trated, and McGrath said later BLACK JACKET men who tried to paint the that all high-energy locations— walls. That’s a sure sign that the including burial grounds like RAISES HIS HAND. building was once an orphanthe New Haven Green—have age, McGrath says. Following a vortex. McGrath explains that her instructions, I put the EMF the people burying the time meter that McGrath had lent to me on the ground capsule a century ago had found the vortex using to see if it will pick up signs of any ghosts. Some of dowsing rods, divination tools that pick up electrothe tour’s participants had downloaded an app that al- magnetic signals. (Today, there’s an app for that.) She lowed their phones to act as EMF meters, so they put invites us to step onto the vortex, and one at a time, their phones on the sidewalk. people do. One woman feels a tingling in her hands. A I had been carrying the EMF meter for much of man starts to rock back and forth, slowly. I’m swaying the tour, and it had been fluctuating wildly through- too, where I’m standing, and I know it’s because it’s out the walk. I’m surprised that it doesn’t beep in late and I’m tired and naturally unsteady on my feet, front of the Union Trust Building, even when I lay it and I wonder if they’re swaying for the same reason, on the sidewalk. But it goes wild when we’re crossing but I don’t take a turn on the vortex hotspot. Maybe the street. I wonder if it’s a fluke, or if it’s picking up I’d rather not find out. the spirit of an unfortunate pedestrian.

Libbie Katsev is a sophomore in Davenport College.

JANUARY 2015

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snapshot

jesus take the wheel A liberal evangelist trumpets his message amid New Haven traffic

by Ruby Bilger

“H

ow can the nation expect that the Republicans will solve the problem of the president not being able to drive the nation’s bus properly when they’re the ones who punctured the tires?” The voice coming from the stereo on the back of Reverend Ray Dubuque’s van lilts and breaks on “tires”—it sounds wise; a little paternal. Dubuque drives in circles, down College Street, right on Chapel, up High, and back around again. “That’s my voice you’re hearing,” he says. “I just recorded it this morning and burned it onto a CD. I’d use a mic, but I’m not sure how to rig it up in here.”

So here he is, this friendly, red-sweatered man in his mid-seventies, driving the car that I’ve been trying to track down for weeks. You’ve probably seen him— his tan sedan and trailer are now part of the afternoon landscape of downtown New Haven, looping around the Yale campus on clear weekday afternoons, blaring Frank Sinatra and slow jams, plastered in slogans for websites called “LiberalsLikeChrist” and “GreatLiberal-Insights.” In the past, Dubuque was a Catholic priest, then a Methodist minister; now, he is retired.

He has run these websites since the late 1990s. The ones advertised on the van are the main sites, but a bit of clicking on large, grainy gray buttons will lead you to over 400 html pages—“JesusWouldBeFurious,” “theGodlessConservativeParty,” “ColumbusNoHero,” “MorePartisanshipPlease,” and “CatholicArrogance,” to name a few. Some of the pages are meticulously researched exposés on conservative corruption, some are detailed analyses of scripture, and some are plain rants. Full of blinking buttons and big, blue hyperlinks, with most of the text resting on a background motif of computer-generated linen, they seem to be a relic of the Web’s frontier days in the late nineties, bold but unsophisticated. Dubuque says all his pages serve a common goal: “I want liberals in America to wake up.

Seventy percent of Americans identify as Christians.

Instead of treating them as rivals, we should aggres10

sively persuade them to support the party that supports the ideas of Jesus Christ”—by which he means, of course, the Democrats. www.liberalslikechrist.org/thegodlessconservativeparty.html: “Christian conservatives” have been using guilt by association for decades to suggest that “liberal Christians” of [sic] being godless Marxists. Where is the evidence to support that charge?

the stoic and collected look of a world-weary visionary. “You’re probably wondering what my definition of ‘liberal’ is,” he says slowly. “Now, by my definition, Stalin and Lenin were conservatives. Conservatives aren’t about conserving the past—that’s a huge mistake. They’re about conserving power for themselves.

Us liberals, we’re about distributing wealth and power.

We’re about equality.”

As he rattles off the hot-button issues, he says his websites give Christian liberals fodder for argument.

On taxing the rich, according to Dubuque’s page “ChristvsChurch,” Jesus is pretty clear: “Anyone who wishes to be first in the kingdom of god should make himself the last and the servant of the rest” (Matthew 20:26-28). Jesus doesn’t even mention homosexuality, or abortion, says Dubuque. “Of course, people on the Christian right will say, ‘But the Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not kill!’” Dubuque laughs a little. “And what’s that supposed to mean? The Bible doesn’t say thou shalt not kill a fetus anymore than it says thou shalt not kill a mosquito.”

Dubuque pulls over onto Hillhouse Avenue and waits for an opportunity to turn around. Some students walk by as we wait for a green light. They look at the car for a few seconds, a little amused, then keep moving.

“Anyway,” Dubuque continues, following them with his eyes, “I’ve been wanting to advertise for years. I watch television all the time—MSNBC, and sometimes I go over to Fox to see what they’re up to—and I see that they’re spending millions of dollars on commercials. I don’t have that kind of money. So I bought this caravan this summer and hitched it to my car.”

I ask him why he wants to get the word out. Is there a Liberals Like Christ community? He tells me he has a Yahoo group moderated by one of his friends.

It has just over five hundred members, and averages a few hundred posts per month. The forums are used for discussion, but Dubuque never tries to organize in-person events. “Organizing liberals is like herding cats,” he says. “There’s an awful lot of chiefs, but no Indians.”

But never mind the organizing—Dubuque has a lot to say. The sun is setting as we round Chapel Street again, and the pink horizon illuminates one side of his face through the windshield. For a second he has THE NEW JOURNAL

I ASK HIM IF HE’S EVER HAD ANY MEANINGFUL DISCOURSE WITH MEMBERS OF THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT. “NOT REALLY...THERE’S NOT A LOT OF INTELLIGENCE IN THAT GROUP.” I ask him if he’s trying to use the sites to convert conservative Christians. “Those who really are conservative have a lot to lose. I don’t expect to convert the Koch brothers. But the other ninety-nine percent, the non-wealthy conservative Christians, are just being lied to. If they really believe in the teachings of Jesus, hopefully I can convince them.” I ask him if he’s ever had any meaningful discourse with members of the Christian right. “Not really,” he admits. But he doesn’t

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attribute their lack of dialogue to mutual stubborn- a finger.” Someone keyed his car last week, but that’s ness. “There’s not a lot of intelligence in that group.” the worst vandalism he’s seen. New Haven’s a pretty liberal place, but not without its conservative dissidents. A few years ago, Dubuque had an anti-Bush www.liberalslikechrist.org/about/morepartisansign in the back windshield of his Mercedes. One shipplease.html: Why is just about everyone day someone scrawled on the glass, “If you don’t like who talks about “partisanship” these days buy- America, why don’t you move to GERMANY?” But ing into the idea that there’s something wrong Dubuque’s more amused by these responses than outwith it? It’s the American way, for God’s sake! raged. “Dubuque treats people extremely courteously,” It’s just another word for “competition”! says Harold Helm, the moderator of Dubuque’s chat room, a retired minister and MENSA member who lives in Houston. “Even when they treat him terribly.”

If Dubuque makes a point of exposing conservative Christian hypocrisy, he’s taken care to live his own life http://catholicarrogance.org/about/Bushfamily. according to the morals he espouses. He was raised html: George Bush visited Auschwitz, where Catholic; in fact, he says, his mother was a nun. (When his grandfather Prescott became very wealthy I ask how that was possible, he’s not sure. “Boys don’t off the labor of slaves. Mr. President, the ask questions like girls do. Maybe she wasn’t a nun, dead want to know: maybe she just went to convent school. I wasn’t curiWHERE DO YOU GET YOUR BALLS? ous about things like that”).

He became a Catholic priest in the early sixties, and worked in churches around New England and upstate New York. In 1967, upset with the corrup- Dubuque doesn’t see Yale students as his target popution of the higher-level clergy, he abandoned Catholi- lation, but instead as a way to get the word out, and cism and joined the ministry of the United Methodist eventually, start organizing for the cause. Maybe some Church. He got married soon after to a woman who of the students at Yale will start a Liberals Like Christ already had five children from another marriage. The club, he hopes. It’s Helm’s vision, too: “You could do couple subsequently adopted five children with dis- it! All it takes for this to balloon into a bigger moveabilities in the seventies and eighties. Dubuque retired ment is good management and a lot of money. You from the ministry in the early seventies when his wife could manage, say forty million dollars for the cause. started having health issues. He worked in IT for the Seriously. That’s not very much money in the venture next twenty years. Most of his kids have grown up capital world. Or the Yale world!”

It’s hard to nail down Dubuque’s vision. He’s a and moved out by now, but one son lives permanently with them in New Haven. Sometimes Dubuque takes measured man in person—thoughtful and considerate—but people are different on the internet. Online, him along in the car.

And what, exactly, to do with the car—Dubuque he’s a bold, blue, hyperlink firebrand, and it’s hard to is still figuring that out. For now, it’s an experiment in see how committed members of the Christian right publicity. He drives smoothly, and his large glasses re- would want to read accusations of their own depravity, flect the empty road. “It’s hard to engage anyone from or even think to Google “Jesus Liberal.” Internet rants the truck,” he says. “Sometimes I get a thumbs up, or are a long way from political organization, and the

“SEVENTY PERCENT OF AMERICANS IDENTIFY AS CHRISTIANS,” HE SAYS. “INSTEAD OF TREATING THEM AS RIVALS, WE SHOULD AGGRESSIVELY PERSUADE THEM TO SUPPORT THE PARTY THAT SUPPORTS THE IDEAS OF JESUS CHRIST.” 12

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people who walk the streets around Yale University are a long way from the seventy percent of Americans who identify as Christians.

Dubuque lets me out in front of the School of Management. I can still hear the music wafting from the car as he drives off. It’s a quiet cycle, how good people get obsessed with others’ hypocrisy, how good thinkers leave the exposed pulpit and get comfortable in radicalized isolation, how good ideas of

truth and reform blaze vividly on the internet but burn out slowly in an old sedan. Then again, Dubuque is top of the list on a relatively simple Google search.

He’ll be out with the car in the spring. Throw him a thumbs-up, or a middle finger. Or tap on his window, if you’re curious.

Ruby Bilger is a freshman in Branford College.

snapshot

all in the mind Can hypnotherapy help Yale’s athletes master their minds—and their opponents?

Story and illustrations by Ivy Sanders-Schneider

T

he Yale men’s soccer team won only one of its seventeen games this season. Midway through the fall, physical training had not led to considerable improvement on the field. The coaches hoped to find another way to give their team an edge. They talked one-on-one with the players, learning what made each man tick; they even administered personality tests. They were not looking for information about the players’ observable performances. They were interested in improving the team’s mental game. Despite months of training, they psyched themselves out JANUARY 2015

on the field. So the coaches offered a few players an unusual opportunity: hypnotherapy.

Ryan Simpson, a sophomore athlete, was one of three teammates who took the coaches up on their offer, and the only one to agree to an interview. The tall, bright blond goalie had dated one of my suitemates, so he was especially candid with me. On the soccer field, Ryan often struggled to keep his mind under control. He was jittery and nervous. He reacted slowly, and didn’t jump high enough or dive far enough to make saves. Off the field, he kept his frustrations 13

bottled up until they began to manifest in insomnia, anxiety, or the cathartic breaking of furniture. Despite these problems, he didn’t initially embrace the idea of hypnotherapy.

“I went in thinking, ‘This is going to be silly,’’’ Ryan said. He agreed to hypnotherapy partly out of a sense of obligation: the hypnotherapist, Leanne Peterson, is also the fiancé of the team’s assistant coach, Hiro Suzuki. (Suzuki and Brian Tompkins, the recently retired head coach, could not be reached for comment.)

“I never thought it would work,” Ryan continued, “but I am so happy to say I was one hundred percent wrong…It helped me attempt to figure out me.”

I wanted to believe Ryan when he talked about the radical change in his perspective, so Ryan and Peterson allowed me to come along to their second appointment. So I suppressed my doubts and went to experience hypnosis for myself.

Mindful Warriors, based out of Lakeville, Connecticut, offers testimonials on its website from Yale varsity golfers as well as volleyball, football, and field hockey players, all praising the therapist’s ability to help them relax and learn about themselves. So, the soccer team’s embrace of hypnotherapy isn’t entirely new.

The NCAA publication Mind, Body, and Sport, calls sports psychologists “an ideal resource to provide care and services,” but warns against “motivational gurus” and “mental coaches,” who can find “college athletics a prime target for their services, and they may very well ignore, minimize or neglect the real issues of psychological health.” Still, Matthew Stults-Kolehmainen, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist and researcher at the Yale Stress Center and Columbia University told me that he believes the therapy might have some merit. Though he wouldn’t personally prescribe hypnotherapy, “the literature does report some evidence of efficacy for some performance-related outcomes,” he said.

MY LIMBS FELT Hypnosis has long been a popHypnotherapy’s reputation HEAVY, LOCKED IN ular as an on-stage entertainoften affects clients’ expectament stunt. As a result, hypnotions. Peterson, the hypnotherPLACE, AS IF ASLEEP. therapy has struggled to assert apist, noted that clients often I COULD MOVE MY itself as medically sound. It can come in either overly skeptibe hard to find unbiased inforcal, which prevents them from ARM, I THOUGHT. BUT mation about the effectiveness feeling any effects, or overly WHY BOTHER? of the practice, since most of excited, believing her to be a the testimonies are from pracpsychic. ticing hypnotherapists. The few A licensed clinical social scientific studies that do exist look into two dozen worker, Peterson practiced traditional talk therapy for participants at most. For example, a 2000 study pub- two years before acquiring her hypnotherapy license lished in the academic journal Perceptual and Motor in 2013. With hypnotherapy, however, she says she Skills observed that “hypnosis may positively control sees results much more quickly. In her experience, emotions, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions,” but the treatment can address issues as varied as academic the two researchers, sports psychologists at the Uni- underachievement, grief, and depression in only four versity of Sheffield Hallam, based their claim on the sessions. One patient’s anxiety seemed to decrease by experiences of a single “elite senior European tour half after just one meeting. As Peterson put it, she’d golfer.” Other studies, which look at hypnotherapy pa- “never seen results like that in traditional therapy.” tients’ cerebral blood flow or athletic performance, are similarly questionable.

The many hypnotherapy services, however, When Ryan and I met to walk to our hypnotherapy promise success rates that science cannot. There are session, I expected him to guide us to a clinic or office over a dozen such centers in the greater New Haven building. Instead, we turned toward a nearby apartarea, many of which practice sports hypnotherapy ment building. Peterson has a New Haven office for and count Yale athletes among their clients. One is the her business, meditation, yoga, and therapy center Amadeus Center for Health & Healing, which is lo- called Elevate, but she sometimes holds informal sescated just two blocks from the university’s campus. sions at home.

A small woman with shining brown hair, Peterson was poised and professional. She asked us to remove our shoes in the entryway before guiding us to the living room, lit warmly with star-shaped lanterns. There, Ryan and I each lay on a wing of her L-shaped couch.

Our session, like each session Peterson administers, began with a conversation about what hypnotherapy is and what we wanted to address. Peterson played a mellow instrumental track on her laptop, as she turned down the lights and began to speak slowly and softly.

“Imagine a ball of energy starting at your toes,” she began. We envisioned it rolling from our toes to our feet, up our legs and throughout our bodies.

“Imagine your body melting away,” she continued, and we systematically let the consciousness of our limbs float away, arm, arm, leg, leg.

Worried I wasn’t fully experiencing the hypnosis, I analyzed my experience as it occurred. What would happen, I wondered, if I moved my arm? Would it break the spell? But even as I considered it my limbs felt heavy, locked in place, as if asleep. I could move

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my arm, I thought. But why bother? This was the hypnosis, I decided—or, at least, the manifestation of my desire not to sabotage my own experience. Later, I asked Peterson why, instead of losing consciousness completely, I felt half-awake throughout the session— aware of my body and my senses but unable or unwilling to move. She reassured me that my experience was a common one, explaining that people tend to expect hypnosis to feel utterly new, when in reality it is more like an extended state of relaxation, similar to meditation.

Continuing the hypnotherapy, Peterson instructed us to mentally walk down a staircase to a meadow.

From there, she told us to walk along an outdoor path, following the sun. In my mind I followed the sun along a California hillside, which transformed into a tree-lined trail as my thoughts increasingly governed by dream logic.

“Follow the path and don’t worry about your future,” Peterson directed us. “The future is your path and the sun will guide you.” From the path we were directed to a movie theater, where we were instructed to watch ourselves succeeding on the screen. In my 15

essay

RYAN HAD WANTED TO BE CALMER AND MORE PRESENT, SO HYPNOTHERAPY MAY HAVE ACTED AS A CATALYST FOR A MENTAL SHIFT HE HAD ALREADY BEEN REACHING TOWARDS.

black-and-white mental movie, I was taking tests, writing papers, completely calm throughout.

“Picture yourself during finals succeeding. Say to yourself, ‘I am enough. I am enough,’” she instructed.

“Say, ‘I am relaxed and peaceful. I release stress.’”

We hovered there for a moment, watching our imaginary futures on our imaginary screens, before Peterson walked us backwards out of the hypnosis: we traveled down the path again, up the stairs, and then, on a count of three, became aware of our bodies and our faces, and finally opened our eyes. Ryan woke as if from a deep sleep, unable to remember half of the session.

Although an inch-long tear in his quadriceps prevented Ryan from completing the soccer season, he did play one post-hypnotherapy game on his injured leg. It was the Harvard-Yale soccer game. Normally antsy and unfocused, Ryan remembers feeling calm and relaxed. During the game, instead of letting his doubts get the better of him, he told me he was able

to trust himself. The mental shift translated into better performance. He made smarter decisions and felt more confident, which helped him block more shots.

It’s impossible to know how much of this can be attributed to the hypnotherapy, but Ryan credits the treatment for his improvements. He recalled how, during his first session, Peterson asked him to visualize two abstract struggles: first, climbing a mountain until he reached what he described as “his vision of success”; and then plunging “underwater and feeling crushed by the weight of everything,” until he swam to the surface. Ryan said hypnotherapy allowed him to switch his perspective from a glass half empty to a glass half full.

Yet, Ryan had wanted to be calmer and more present, so hypnotherapy may have acted as a catalyst for a mental shift he had already been reaching towards.

Changes he attributed to hypnotherapy might have occurred simply through force of will. Maybe even the opportunity to pause and reflect improved his play. “The purpose [of hypnotherapy] is to remind you of what makes you succeed and what causes you to fail,” Ryan said.

I had seen Ryan’s transformation, and I wanted hypnotherapy to work for me. A few days later, I found myself in the library quietly chanting, “I am enough.

I am enough.” But it was hard, during the academic crush of early December, to know if the calmness I was feeling was a result of a subconscious suggestion or a sign of emotional burnout. I think I’ve been better able to deal with stress, but I don’t know if it’s possible to say that hypnotherapy changed me. It might have simply been, as Ryan kept suggesting, a reminder to pay more attention to myself.

Who knows—maybe the secret to athletic success is not daily workouts, lifting weights, or running drills. Maybe the secret is lying in a darkened room, conjuring up mental mirages, your limbs perfectly still.

Ivy Sanders-Schneider is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College.

on roadside shrines and being far from home

by Nimal Eames-Scott

MADELEINE WITT

I’m in Mumbai when Samantha dies, and Siem Reap when I find out. I see it on Facebook, which is how I always learn that an acquaintance has died.

It’s 5:00 a.m., and my circadian rhythms are upside down. The air beyond my hotel room window is warm and soggy, and it’s fogging up the glass. The air-conditioning on my face feels like it would be chlorine-blue if I could see it. The room smells like perfume and bleach fumes. I’ve promised myself that I won’t use my laptop first thing in the morning, but it’s my only connection with home and I wake up reaching for it.

The first thing I notice is that there are cryptic little notes sprinkled through my news feed.

Cassandra: Goodmorning @Sam. <3 <3 <3 Thinking of you this morning. I still don’t believe it.

The posts are all tagged like that: @Sam, her name lit up in a luminous blue. Second, I notice the jokes.

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Jake: I swear you must have demanded them to bring chicken fries back when you got up there lmao I saw the commercial today and instantly thought “Damm Sam would flip shit!” Lmao miss you boo.

Third, I notice the comments choking with earnestness.

Monte: i just don’t know what to say its just so unreal that another one of my friends have left this earth. I’m gonna miss all the random times Sam would just show up at my house and just take me on one of her random adventures.Through thick and thin i always knew that she would be there.

As she would always say to me “ i got your back kid” Truly an angel love you sammy. - @Sam

Fourth, I see photos, like a slideshow at a wake.

Hartlie posts one of the two of them in middle school, wearing pajamas, singing into spatulas. Trakiya posts 17

one of Sam in high school, poised to dive down a in a flurry like down feathers, or Cam pulling it out water slide slicked with baby oil. Sherry posts one of in tufts.

The second was Dante. He was tall, with an impSam as she was just before she died: twenty-two years old, creamy skin, highlights in her hair, hoop ear- ish smile that showed gaps between all his teeth. He rings, deep dimples, crooked laughing bottom teeth, grew up in the Pleasant View Acres project. In fifth grade, Dante and I used to yell “Two Musketeers!” wet-looking eyes.

Lewiston, Maine is spilling guts on the internet and then press our foreheads together until our brains today, and I want to look away, but I can’t. Some of hurt. In high school, Dante played football. He wore the most enthusiastic grievers barely knew Sam at all. dark purple polos, and these spotless suede TimberThere’s something inviting about this kind of exhibi- lands that were so fly. He went to a state college, but tionist mourning. I’m halfway around the world, on he dropped out after a year, and then he dropped out tour with the Yale Whiffenpoofs, and all I want to do of contact.

A rusty iron freight train rolls through Lewiston is take part, send something home, a few sad words, wrapped in a comment box. I want to write about how every twelve hours at a speed that seems too slow for a she died so young that now her death will be the big- train. It blows a low, whale-sound whistle that used to gest thing that ever happened to her. How it will seem re-play in my dreams when I was drowning. At 4:00 a.m. one morning, Dante left like the whole point of her life his apartment, walked downbut it wasn’t, it couldn’t have town, and stood on the railbeen. My fingers hover over road tracks. He just stood there, the keys, jittery. I don’t write WHAT COULD I watched the train come, heard a word. the whistle, and stood there.

This is not the first time POSSIBLY SAY ABOUT His brother got a stay of that one of my classmates has SAM’S DEATH? sentence for his misdemeanor died in the few years since I conviction to attend his funeral. graduated from Lewiston High WHAT DO I KNOW Sam was the third to die. I School. Andrew was the first. He ABOUT HER LIFE? knew her the least well of the was a giant with a soft, round three, but it was impossible not face. He lived in a run-down to like her. She was loud and complex on Bartlett Street. He friendly, always cursing brightly had a booming bass voice, and he used to cheer so loudly at football games that the and dancing in the hallways. She had a semi-ironic coach would kick him off of school property. When obsession with Spongebob Squarepants, and she used he sang, you felt it rumble in your chest like your to carry around pineapple-house erasers, wear starfish body was against a dryer. He wanted to be a singer. t-shirts, and burst randomly into the theme song in The last time I saw Andrew was at graduation. He full-on pirate-accent.

I lost touch with Sam when I graduated, and she wasn’t walking, but he cheered from the bleachers.

After the fanfare, he walked up to me with puffy eyes, took an extra year to finish school. I saw her again and this goofy swagger like he didn’t have a care in the November before she died, three and a half years the world. He told me that he was going to take sum- later. We were at the Blue Goose, a bar that’s small mer classes and graduate within a year. One more year and damp and black like a hole in the earth. Sam was drunk. So was I. She had gained some weight. She had wouldn’t be so bad.

During that year, Andrew overdosed on bath salts. a little freckle on her chin that I had never noticed beThe police said they couldn’t be sure, but we all knew fore. She wanted to hear about college. I told her that I it was bath salts. I couldn’t make it back for the funer- was taking the year off to sing with the Whiffenpoofs. al. A few weeks later, I went home and hung out with I’m always embarrassed to talk about Yale back home, Cam, who was with Andrew the night he died. Cam so I added,“That’s pretty pretentious right?” She just was nineteen, and bald. I guess he had started losing called me “kid” in this affectionate way that I’ve only his hair in high school, but I couldn’t help picturing ever heard in Lewiston. She said, “Yeah, kid, but it it happening all at once during the funeral, falling out sounds fun.” She had just enrolled in a local college.

She wanted to be a teacher.

At 2:00 a.m. on July 27th, Sam was driving her family’s Ford Focus down Buxton Road, drunk and screaming-fast. She swerved off the road and hit a telephone pole. The Ford flipped and landed on the driver side. The metal scrunched, crushing her in her seat. They closed the road for two hours to fix the telephone pole, and then opened it right back up again.

Life in Lewiston has an undertow of desperation.

It’s the kind of small, poor town where everyone’s family settled there in the 1850s to work in the mills, and they’ve all been working the same kind of blue collar jobs ever since. The mills are closed now, so they work in the Tampax factory, or the Country Kitchen Donuts factory, or they don’t work at all. Kids call it the Armpit of Maine, or the Dirty Lew. They dream of leaving, throwing all of their belongings in a mudcrusted Ram pickup and driving south-west forever, but they never do.

I didn’t feel desperation to leave, growing up.

My parents moved to Lewiston in the ’90s to teach anthropology at a nearby liberal arts college. Lewiston was their chosen home, so that’s how it always felt for me. But as graduation drew closer, it became increasingly inevitable that I was going to leave (whether I wanted to or not), and that my friends were going to stay, stuck, like in a bad dream where you’re thrashing but something’s got you by the ankles.

Mourning brings people in Lewiston together like nothing I’ve ever seen, though minor league ice hockey runs a close second. Everyone in Lewiston remembers being young and bored and trapped. They don’t just grieve for one person’s death; they grieve for the town, for the kind of place where kids die trying to get out. It’s intense, public, ebullient grief. It’s the whole town in matching white shirts, releasing orange balloons strung with letters to the dead. These kids die praying to break free, but strangely, wonderfully, their deaths draw the community into an even tighter circle.

I mourn vicariously for Sam, through photos on Facebook. I see six tattoos of Sam’s name, surrounded by tropical flowers, on two left feet, one bare chest, one forearm, one shoulder, and one delicate shoulder blade. I see three rear windshield graphics reading In Loving Memory Samantha 1992-2014, with matching decals of Spongebob Squarepants lying on his side, batting long, playful eyelashes like Sam’s. I see

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two pieces of Sam-inspired jewelry: one locket holding a little bit of a bumper sticker from Sam’s car, one bracelet with an inscription of Sam’s name. And I see one roadside shrine, by the telephone pole on Buxton Road where she died. Stuck in the ground is a makeshift white cross, and above it float two Spongebob balloons. I find six pictures of the shrine, and when I put them in the right order, they make a time-lapse.

The balloons drift slowly to the ground, and visitors pile the cross so high with bouquets that you can’t see it anymore.

The summer that Sam dies, I’m on a twenty-seven country world tour with the Whiffenpoofs. We travel to a new city every forty-eight hours, and it’s exhilarating and disorienting. In East Africa, I start pretending I’m sleeping in my own bed. In the Middle East, I turn to Google Maps, and stare at satellite images of my house. I watch Lewiston’s post-crash convulsions from Southeast Asia, plunged in the deepest pit of my homesickness. I want to be there. I want to do something for Sam—something big, like a tattoo, or a bouquet by the cross. Maybe it’s selfish, but I want to be a part of Lewiston’s special kind of grief-celebration.

But I left. I was never trapped in Lewiston, and now I’m gone. This distance has never been more pronounced than when I’m traveling the world with a Yale singing group, stuffing myself into tailcoats, pretending I knew that you were supposed to hold a champagne glass by the stem, or call it a “flute.” The departure has become too spectacular now, too gaudy.

It cuts me off, disinherits me from the right to mourn for Sam and my hometown. What could I possibly say about Sam’s death? What do I know about her life?

I sit on my hotel bed in Cambodia, my face bathing in the laptop’s blue light. The picture’s there, and there’s a freckle on her chin. I’m wondering if this is a silence that will lead me to slip away from home forever. And I’m wondering if it would be too much—or not nearly enough—to break it, and click a few keys.

I’m sorry, @Sam

Or @Sam, rest easy

Nimal Eames-Scott is a senior in Berkeley College.

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A congregation must prove miracles to win sainthood for a beloved leader

by Edward Columbia

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t an evening Mass at Saint Mary’s Church on Hillhouse Avenue, Father Joseph Allen stands at the pulpit and reads to his congregation from the Gospel of Matthew. He reads the story of a miracle: as Jesus departed from the city of Jericho, two blind men stopped him on the road. These men knew him and begged that he cure their blindness. Jesus asked them, “Do you believe that I can do this?” “Yes, Lord,” they responded. Jesus touched their eyelids. “Let it be done according to your faith,” he told them. The men opened their eyes and began to see.

Father Allen pauses to look around at the parishioners in the pews of New Haven’s oldest Catholic church. He takes a deep breath. “These men are grasping for anything in their hope for a cure,” he says.

“They are at a point where nothing in their society can help. And so, it is their faith that saves them.”

He closes the Bible and carries it down the pulpit steps, back to the altar, where he continues to celebrate the Mass. After Communion, the service concludes with a familiar prayer. Though the text is in

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every parishioner’s pew-box, no one reads from the paper: they know the words by heart. They pray to God for the canonization of Father Michael McGivney, the parish priest who, some 130 years ago, devoted his life to the widows, orphans, and indigents of this very church.

Father McGivney’s spirit may dwell in heaven, but his body is in their midst. Father McGivney’s remains lie at the back of the church, in a granite sarcophagus that glows under a row of lights. The congregants pray for Father McGivney’s help in delivering miracles. They all speak the same prayer, but hope for different things: some pray for a cure for illness, others for a job to pay the bills or a loved one to return safely home.

“We pray that God will grant the favor through the intercession of Father McGivney on behalf of us,” says Father Allen, a Dominican friar who has been a pastor of Saint Mary’s Church since 2007. “And it is certainly a lot of prayers storming heaven. For three years now, we have said the prayer at the end of each 21

Mass, every day, and many of the parishioners say the prayer on their own.”

At this point, Father McGivney’s Cause for Sainthood—the process by which someone becomes a saint in the Roman Catholic Church—has been advancing for seventeen years. But it is a long and complicated road to sainthood. Now, Father McGivney’s advocates need to show that he has helped make miracles happen by interceding with God on behalf of the faithful.

Authentic miracles, it turns out, are hard to prove.

olic families. In the event of the death of a family’s breadwinner, this insurance would give the remaining family members the financial support needed to stay together. This, Father McGivney hoped, would put an end to painful separations at the ruling of the Probate Court.

On March 29, 1882, he founded the Knights of Columbus to provide insurance to Catholic families.

Within twenty years, the group’s membership had swelled to over 10,000, and its mission had expanded beyond insurance to include charitable work. Today, more than 1.8 million men across the world belong to the organization. Over the last ten years, they have In the late 1800s, when Roman Catholics often contributed a total of nearly 700 million hours of endured prejudice in the largely Protestant Northeast, volunteer service.

Father McGivney devoted himself to New Haven’s The organization has remained devoted to Father Catholic community. In his time as a priest at Saint McGivney and his founding principles of charity and Mary’s Church, from 1877 to 1884, he visited the altruism. In 1997 the Knights of Columbus Supreme sick, tended to the dead and dying, and helped those Council, headquartered in New Haven, petitioned the who could not help themselves.

Hartford Archdiocese to start the John Walshe, Father McGivney’s process of canonization for Father grandnephew and a practicing McGivney. They asked then-ArchAUTHENTIC lawyer in Bridgeport, says that bishop of Hartford Daniel Cronin MIRACLES, IT stories of Father McGivney’s selfto initiate the first stages of Father less work have been passed down McGivney’s case. He named FaTURNS OUT, ARE through his family. ther McGivney a Servant of God, HARD TO PROVE. “He wasn’t the type to stay formally beginning the Cause inside the church all day, and he for Sainthood. wasn’t all ‘sackcloth and ashes,’” Only three people born in says Walshe. “When one of his parishioners was in the United States have ever been made saints in the need, Father Mike”—as the family affectionately calls Roman Catholic Church. Two, Saints Elizabeth Seton Father McGivney—“wasn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and Katharine Drexel, founded religious orders dediand get his hands dirty.” cated to educating the poor. They were canonized in Father McGivney was particularly concerned with 1975 and 2000, respectively. The third, Saint Kateri New Haven’s Probate Court. The Court routinely sep- Tekakwitha, was canonized in 2012, becoming the arated widowed mothers from their children if the only Native American saint. Were Father McGivney to mother was unable to demonstrate her ability to sup- be elevated to sainthood, he would become the first port each child. Father McGivney had seen this hap- American-born man ever canonized. pen many times, and throughout his career, he interToday, Father Allen says, the Church is looking vened to assist widowed mothers in danger of losing for contemporary Catholics who could be canonized. their children. Once, he vowed to serve as a guardian “People we can align ourselves with, instead of somefor a young man about to be sent to an orphanage. body who died in, say, 476, in which case you lose But he could neither attend to every such case the connection with this place and time.” He explains nor change the system singlehandedly. So, in Octo- that, by 1997, the Knights of Columbus were thinkber 1881, Father McGivney gathered several of his ing, “We’ve put this off long enough. It’s time to beparishioners in the basement of Saint Mary’s Church, gin the Cause for Father McGivney.” where he was then an assistant pastor. He explained Every Cause needs an advocate, called a postulator, to them his vision for a new organization of Catholic who builds the case for sainthood. The Knights chose laymen, one that would provide insurance for Cath- Father Gabriel O’Donnell, a thoughtful, white-haired

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Dominican friar fluent in Italian. He holds a doctorate from the Teresianum, an institute for the study of spirituality and theology in Rome. After his appointment, Father O’Donnell was required to attend classes at the Augustinianum, near the Vatican, with many other postulators. He was the only American in the program.

After a year of rigorous study at the Augustinianum, Father O’Donnell received his certification from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican body that oversees the canonization process. He returned to the United States prepared to take the reins of the Cause for the Sainthood of Father McGivney. Father O’Donnell’s first responsibility as postulator was compiling the Acts: extensive historical records and documentation of Father McGivney’s life, as well as the priest’s own writings.

To compile the Acts, Father O’Donnell worked with the Knights of Columbus archivist. “We spent the better part of a year going to the state archives in Hartford and going through all the microfiches of newspapers and journals to find all the references to Father McGivney we could,” he says. “We were able to piece together a lot of information about him, a whole chronology.” Father O’Donnell tracked down Father McGivney’s living relatives to find out more about their ancestor. He even traveled to County Cavan, Ireland, where Father McGivney’s parents had lived before they immigrated to America, to learn about the McGivney clan’s history.

O’Donnell’s work was academic, but he says it also affected him personally. “Over the course of my work,” says Father O’Donnell, “I came to know Father McGivney first as a historical figure and then, gradually, as a spiritual ‘friend’ whom I came to admire and with whom I developed a personal connection. I sensed a kinship with Father McGivney that inspired me in my own life as a man and as a priest.”

After two years of research, Father O’Donnell had compiled 700 pages on Father McGivney’s life and work. In March of 2000, he presented these to Archbishop Cronin at the Hartford Seminary in front of a huge audience made up mostly of members of the Knights of Columbus. With great ceremony, Archbishop Cronin tied the pages of the Acts with red string and sealed them with hot wax. This marked his Decree of Closure. The local diocesan process was over. The Roman process was about to begin.

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What seems like a normal suitcase could, in the hands of a priest, contain the fate of a possible saint. It was now Father O’Donnell’s job to carry the Acts safely to the Vatican and deliver them to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. He packed the documents into two suitcases and boarded his flight to Rome, wheeling his luggage onto the plane, unwilling to check his precious cargo.

A driver met Father O’Donnell at the airport outside of Rome and drove him to the Congregation.

After arriving at the Palazzo delle Congregazioni, Father O’Donnell lugged the suitcases into the building. “Thank God for the elevator,” he thought, “I don’t know if I could drag these up the stairs.” He presented the Acts to members of the Congregation, who broke the seals, verified that all was in order, and gave the Roman process the go-ahead.

Father O’Donnell spent most of the next two years in Rome, as per Congregation rules, writing the Positio, a volume of biographical information from the Acts as well as an examination of Father McGivney’s virtue and spirituality. He submitted the completed Positio, which was over one thousand pages long, to the Congregation in 2002.

Six years later, Father O’Donnell’s efforts on behalf of the Cause finally bore fruit: in 2008, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the Positio and recommended that Pope Benedict XVI declare Father McGivney Venerable, a decree that officially recognizes a candidate’s heroic virtue. On March 16, 2008 Pope Benedict XVI declared Father McGivney Venerable. There are currently only forty-nine ‘Venerables’ awaiting the next steps toward full sainthood.

Because the Pope issued his decree from the Vatican while most of America slept, Father Allen in New Haven had not yet heard the news when he awoke that morning. It was Palm Sunday, the day that begins the Western Christian holy week leading up to Easter.

He was in the sacristy—a small chamber where the priest prepares for a service—at Saint Mary’s, getting ready to celebrate the Palm Sunday Mass, when the parish secretary told him that a group of journalists had gathered outside the church.

“I asked if they could come back after the Mass,” Father Allen recalls, “but they said it couldn’t wait.”

After that Palm Sunday, Father McGivney’s Cause THE NEW JOURNAL

PAINTING OF FATHER MCGIVNEY BY ANTONELLA CAPPUCCIO

faced its greatest challenge yet: proving that God had worked miracles through the late priest.

How do you prove a miracle? The Holy See defines a miracle as some event that has no scientific or non-divine explanation. They must agree that God has performed a miracle in response to Father McGivney’s prayers. After one miracle has been authenticated, Father McGivney would be declared Blessed; the next, and final stage—canonization—would occur when a second miracle is confirmed. But, if miracles attributed to a candidate for sainthood cannot be proved authentic, the years of work and thousands of pages of writing devoted to his Cause could come to nothing.

Hundreds of people have written to the Knights of Columbus because they believe Father McGivney interceded in curing their illnesses. Many of the congregants at Saint Mary’s have come to Father Allen reporting miracles they attribute to Father McGivney’s aid.

Yet few of these instances come close to qualifying as genuine miracles in the view of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

JANUARY 2015

Take, for example, the case of John Walshe, Father McGivney’s grandnephew. In 2009, Walshe went to Bridgeport Hospital for routine tests after a bout of pneumonia. The tests came back showing an exceptionally high white blood cell count. He was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and told he would need surgery.

Several weeks before the operation, Walshe took his 16-year-old son aside for a conversation about Father Mike. He told his son that he had been saying the intercessory prayer to Father McGivney and asked him to do the same on his behalf. From that point on, until the day of surgery, father and son prayed to Father McGivney for a cure. Following the five-hour prostatectomy, John Walshe awoke to find the surgeon at his bedside, grinning widely.

“We got it all,” the doctor said.

Today, Walshe remains cancer-free. He believes that Father McGivney’s intercession on his behalf was at least partly responsible for his cure. But, like many others with similar stories, his case does not officially qualify as a miracle. After all, who knows if it was Father McGivney’s intercession or the surgeon’s skill that saved Walshe’s life?

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ON MARCH 29, 1882, HE FOUNDED THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS TO PROVIDE INSURANCE TO CATHOLIC FAMILIES. TODAY, MORE THAN 1.8 MILLION MEN ACROSS THE WORLD BELONG TO THE ORGANIZATION. Father Allen, the pastor at Saint Mary’s Church, is also a cancer survivor. He, too, believes that constant prayers to Father McGivney were responsible for his cure. But hivs melanoma did not vanish without explanation—a surgeon removed it in the operating room. Neither Father Allen nor Walshe challenge the Vatican’s process for determining what is miraculous and what isn’t, but both wish that the issue were not so black and white.

“I have given it a lot of thought each day, and I believe that my cancer did not go beyond what it was precisely because of my devotion to Father McGivney,” says Father Allen. “A miracle must be instantaneous, inexplicable, no medical intervention, and so forth. Well, all that is true. But maybe the doctor’s knowledge, and his hands, were part of the miracle.”

However, Father Allen understands the Catholic Church’s hesitancy in claiming divine intervention in cases where the “miracle” could be attributed to medical treatment. In as delicate a matter as miracles, which many treat with suspicion anyway, the Church’s reputation is at stake.

“The Church could expose itself to ridicule by making statements that it must later retract,” he says, “should the miracle be disproven [after sainthood is granted].”

In 2000, while working in Rome on the Positio for Father McGivney, Father O’Donnell identified an event from the 1990s that he thought fulfilled the Vatican’s criteria. He helped to prepare a separate Positio for the event. (Due to confidentiality rules surrounding rejected miracles, he cannot give more details about the case.)

“The Positio for a reported miracle,” says Father O’Donnell, “includes not only the account of the reported miracle but also all of the medical documents involved—every X-ray, every blood test, all of the doctors’ and nurses’ notes. All of that must go into the Positio to demonstrate that medical solutions were attempted, and failed.” But he explains that “in the case of the reported miracle I submitted for Father 26

McGivney’s Cause, science did everything it could but it didn’t work. It was inexplicable what happened, and I felt there was clear evidence of the Digitus Dei, the Finger of God.” The reported miracle passed preliminary vetting by a committee of canon lawyers, who ensure that the Positio’s account of the event is factual and in keeping with the protocols of the Catholic Church. The Positio then moved to the consideration of a board of physicians, called the Consulta Medica or the College of Doctors. At least nine doctors review each reported miracle. In order for a miracle to gain approval, they must rule out any medical explanation for the reported event.

In 2011, after years of deliberation, the medical committee rejected the reported miracle Father O’Donnell submitted for Father McGivney. Without revealing anything confidential, Father O’Donnell explained why he felt the miracle had not “passed muster.” The College of Doctors found that the medical record for the subject of the reported miracle was incomplete, as the hospital where the patient had undergone treatment and testing had not retained all of the patient’s X-rays from the relevant time period.

“Because of our advances in science and technology, the bar has been raised considerably for proving a miracle,” say Father O’Donnell. “What two centuries ago you might have been able to ‘prove’ was miraculous healing, today would require a lot more scientific investigation and documentation. But this also means there is greater security that the authenticated event is actually miraculous. The Holy See will only accept as miraculous something that truly has no other explanation.”

After the 2011 rejection of the first reported miracle, a new postulator, Andrea Ambrosi, prepared the Positio for a second. (Father O’Donnell had since stepped down from his role as postulator and now heads the Knight of Columbus organization’s Father McGivney THE NEW JOURNAL

Guild.) Vice-Postulator for the Cause Brian Caulfield, who works at the Knights of Columbus headquarters in New Haven, is hopeful that the reported miracle will soon move to the College of Doctors for medical review.

“If anything it gives me confidence in the integrity of the process that it is so strict,” he says. “We would all like to see Father McGivney beatified as soon as possible, but there is a great amount of careful examination needed in these cases.”

Father McGivney is a long way from official sainthood. Even if the Pope beatifies him, it will require another authenticated miracle to move from Blessed to Saint. Still, Father McGivney’s supporters remain hopeful. The Catholic Church has struggled in recent decades to maintain its strength—especially in the United States. Sex-abuse scandals have called the Church’s moral authority into question and tarnished much of America’s view of the priesthood. Morale amongst priests has dwindled, along with their numbers. Every advancement of Father McGivney, a priest himself—“one of their own,” as Father Allen says— toward sainthood is a source of pride and inspiration for the American clergy.

“The Cause,” says Father O’Donnell, “is good instrument to give a more positive face to the priests and improve their perception in the world.”

One afternoon, while sitting at his desk in the priory, Father Allen explains that “[Father McGivney] could be beatified very soon. It might even happen when Pope Francis visits the United States next September, but of course we don’t know for sure. As for Father

McGivney’s sainthood, well, when that happens we’ll be more prepared than anyone.”

He rises from his chair and walks to the shelves in the corner of his office. He pulls out several laminated blueprints, his architectural plans for the longawaited day when Father McGivney may be canonized. Father Allen has plans to move Father McGivney’s marble sarcophagus to the front of the church, where the altar now stands, so that the congregation that is devoted to their former parish priest can view their patron saint’s memorial in full splendor.

Father Allen has the new lighting plan all figured out, down to the last bulb. He has even started to calculate how much it will cost to install more bathrooms—after all, he will need to accommodate the crowds he anticipates will flock to Saint Mary’s to visit the resting place of Saint Michael McGivney.

Still, Father Allen says, there is no need to wait for an official decree of sainthood to honor Father McGivney’s spiritual inspiration and legacy.

“Whether by divine providence Father McGivney is raised to Blessed or is canonized in itself is very important,” says Father Allen, “but our work does not depend upon that.”

As Father Allen told his congregation, Jesus alone could not grant sight to the two blind men of Jericho. It took their faith to bring the miracle. Father McGivney’s greatest power, then, may not be miracles worked from the grave, but the fervor he inspires in the believers at Saint Mary’s Church as they honor him in their daily prayers.

Edward Columbia is a freshman in Morse College.

TODAY, FATHER ALLEN SAYS, THE CHURCH IS LOOKING FOR CONTEMPORARY CATHOLICS WHO COULD BE CANONIZED. “PEOPLE WE CAN ALIGN OURSELVES WITH.”

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walked up the uneven stairs to the Panty House’s front porch on a Sunday night in November. A group of twenty-somethings with bull-ring nose piercings, shaggy beards and long, purple-streaked hair sat on the patio smoking. They nodded silently as I entered.

Less than three miles from Yale’s campus, this “female house of punk,” as described by resident Kayla Bastos, was hosting a concert

by New Haven band Mute Witness. Their front man, Ed Goodfriend, had warned me not to spread word about the show’s location too widely or publish the address. Doing so could attract police attention to the unofficial concert venue and result in fines for those who live there. There was no entrance fee, but Chris Szczerba, a punk enthusiast who helps book shows for local bands, collected contributions in the living room. His black felt top hat was filled with crumpled singles. Inside the warm living room, a dozen people passed around steaming mugs of cider and a small black Labrador retriever puppy.

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On any other day, the living room of this old, white house could only be described as quaint. The couches were strewn with sweaters, the bookshelves overstuffed with books—and in the corner sat a box of kitty litter. But its fresh-cut flowers, vintage candelabra, and handmade quilts were hard to spot, as about thirty people passed through the room that night.

“We’re ready for ya!” someone called from downstairs, and the crowd filed down a narrow staircase to the house’s basement. I ran my fingers along the cement walls covered in torn concert posters, some designed by Bastos herself. They were emblazoned with the names of punk bands like Foulmouth, Modern Horror, and Nursery Crimes. On a large silver tank against the basement’s back wall, a banner of colorful letters spelled out “DICK FART.” Christmas lights illuminated a chalkboard on which someone had scrawled that night’s performers: Mountain Man, Nervous System, Mute Witness, Rage, and Throw Shit Away.

The Facebook event page describes Mute Witness’s sound as “worship but not emulation of metalcore made back before that got to be a dirty word. Political hardcore.” Goodfriend jumped around, screaming lyrics that were rendered inaudible by thrashing guitars and a thumping bass. He danced with audience members and shoved the microphone into their faces so they could scream along. I felt the basement floor vibrate beneath my feet. The music grated on my ears, but the crowd’s energy and rapture made me nod along. A sweaty Goodfriend paused between songs to look into the crowd and say, “Thank you to all who work for punk rock, to do something unconventional in homes like these.” I caught sight of Bastos in the crowd, eyes half-closed beneath her pink bangs. She was smiling softly and nodding her head to the music, a punk at peace.

But she wouldn’t be at peace for long. It was one of the last concerts ever to be hosted at this New Haven punk venue. Just weeks later, the Panty House 30

would be shut down—going the way of punk rock houses across the nation. Residential dwelling by day, crowded venue by night—these homes violate legal regulations because they are not registered venues.

But the law isn’t the only thing leading to their decline. As people move in and out of new homes, the stress of hosting large groups of people at wild concerts often deters punk fans from holding concerts in their own basements When I visited, Panty House, along with a handful of other house venues in New Haven, had hosted shows every few weeks since 2012. Since Bastos and her friends moved there, the house had become more than the place where five women, a gray cat, a shaggy brown dog, and the occasional male slept and ate. Bastos and Emily Byram, who form the musical duo known as Circle Circle, practiced and performed their folk-pop tunes with banjo and ukulele in the living room. At night, young punk bands rocked the basement so loudly that Bastos’s cat Mishka scurried across the floorboards upstairs. But the scene looked tame compared to the notorious New Haven stages of the 1970s and 1980s.

New Haven’s punk clubs were known to look rough on the outside and worse on the inside. As punk grew popular internationally, the city became notable for local bands such as the Saucers, Sperm Donor, and the Poodles. Big-ticket musicians, including the Ramones, the B-52s, and Blondie, stopped by while traveling between New York and Boston. With both teenage rockers and celebrities passing through, the New Haven punk community coalesced around “unpretentious, fist-banging, working-man music,” said John Stone, a member of the New Haven band 10,000 Blades.

Though the punk market has shrunk over the past few decades, the rebellious spirit of the rockers remains in residential basements, alive but out of public view. It is a gentler punk, with a close-knit but open commuTHE NEW JOURNAL

nity that revives the raucous spirit of the past in private spaces. Most concertgoers at the Panty House, for example, knew those who lived there, as well as those performing. Still, anyone could receive the house address via e-mail a few hours before a show.

New Haven’s most famous punk rock venue was Ron’s Place, once on the corner of Park and Chapel Streets. In the 1970s, Doc Marten combat boots stuck to the club’s beer-soaked floors, and the running joke was not to use its toilets, lest you get crabs. But its dance floor was “packed every night of the week,” said Jim Martin, a member of New Haven’s original punk scene and the front man of the local band Chem-trails.

I met Martin in October at the now-closed Anchor Bar. Dressed in all leather, Martin was hard to miss. When he slid into a booth by the near-empty bar and stuck out his hand, I noticed that his knuckles revealed the faint outlines of a rag-tag tattoo done by friends. His forearms are covered with tattoos of the names of all of his former bands, along with the mantra “Born a rocker, die a rocker.” Having been a regular at punk clubs since age fourteen, Martin spoke about the local stages he once played with his former punk band, Broken.

In the 1980s, the Connecticut punk scene grew from New Haven to Stamford, Bridgeport, Hartford, and New London, with new clubs popping up across the state. But by the late nineties, as interest in the music faded, most of these once-crowded punk venues shut down. Punk became memorialized in numerous retrospective documentaries, exhibits, and performances. Meanwhile, its pioneers grew older and put down their electric guitars.

In New Haven, though, musicians from the Golden Age of punk are now training a new generation of head-bangers and guitar thrashers who strut their stuff in the kind of basements where the genre origiJANUARY 2015

nated. Though these venues are small, the music is as loud as it was decades ago.

The Panty House and similar establishments celebrate anti-establishment eccentrics, but they have tried to stay away from the less-than-lovely faces of punk. In the original club punk scene in New Haven, Martin says, “there were creepy factions, factions that hated people.” It was a time when homophobia and racism were more often publicly encountered than they are today. Martin remembers the angry skinhead punks of the eighties, the “Nazi garbage” who once tried to stab him at a concert.

The house venues of today are different. “The scene self-polices,” Martin said. “People don’t let that shit survive, and it hasn’t in New Haven.” Szczerba, an employee at the independent booking firm Arc Agency and the donation collector at Panty House, said the current house venues are nothing like the clubs where, as a teenager, he broke his ankle three times.

Yet the absence of racism doesn’t mean these houses offer family-friendly evenings. “To have a house of punk, you need a lawless shithole,” Stone said. With citywide efforts to clean up the town, opening a legal venue that’s also a “shithole” is not as feasible as hosting a show on home turf. Stone’s studio apartment, dubbed the Yankee Doodle, is one of New Haven’s newest house venues, hosting both folk and scream-o punk concerts. It follows in the creative, rule-breaking tradition of places like the Panty House.

At house venues, “people are free to create,” Stone told me, green eyes widening. “And also to puke off balconies.”

When Bastos and her friends established Panty House, they were determined to make it a place where, true to the ethos of punk, misfits could feel at home in an open-minded feminist environment. On the basement wall, the faint remains of sidewalk chalk scrib31

ble read in capitalized lettering: “No sexism, no racism, no homophobia. Don’t be a jerk.” Bastos’s house rules basically end there. Panty House is meant to feel respectful but also irreverent.

A few weeks after the concert, Bastos invited me back to Panty House for a tour. I followed her as she darted into the kitchen. On a corkboard by the fridge, Bastos had pinned thank-you notes from outof-town bands that came to perform and crashed on her couch. One band, SWAATH, hailing from Maine, praised the home for its “max comfort and warmth.”

On the fridge, someone stuck a magnet from Arc Agency, the concert-booking firm at which Bastos is the only female employee. We made a pit stop back in the living room before heading downstairs, where Bastos flipped through a small brown book, a guest log of the Panty House’s visitors.

Bastos giggled, reading choice entries out loud, transporting herself back to nights of loud music and drunk dancing. One read, “Wow, will this blunt ever end and where is my food also I want to live here this is good.” Julia Rodriguez, Bastos’s housemate, entered. She knelt by Bastos and read over her shoulder.

With a pierced septum and wild, curly streaked hair, Rodriguez fits in with the basement’s punk décor.

Later, we scrolled through dozens of grainy videos from Panty House concerts, while Bastos provided commentary. She laughed at memories of her friends and the touring musical idols who performed from out-of-town performing on her makeshift stage. We watched footage of bands she admires most, from Saintseneca, a folk rock group, to Mountain Man, a hardcore punk band. “I can’t believe Mountain Man played here,” Bastos told me. “I’ve been listening to their music since high school. Watching them play, in my own house, Wow.” Bastos trailed off, lost in memory.

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Stone’s Yankee Doodle apartment is, like the Panty House, a living museum, reflecting the work and spirit of young artists. Stone fills his playing space with plants potted in plastic bottles hung from rafters and smoothly sanded wooden furniture he made himself. Sitting on his couch and opening a Narragansett beer, I spied a prosthetic leg on the floor, what appeared to be an antler, a cinderblock, and several halffinished paintings.

Stone’s trio 10,000 Blades took to the makeshift stage to practice while I propped my feet on the bright orange road work sign that serves as Stone’s coffee table. Stylistically, 10,000 Blades falls somewhere between Bastos’s Circle Circle and Goodfriend’s Mute Witness. They certainly aren’t indie folk, but they aren’t hardcore punk either. One of Stone’s neighbors told him that they weren’t really a punk band. Rather than argue, Stone retorted that it’s true—even with their high-energy rhythms and wry lyrics, 10,000 Blades isn’t quite a hardcore punk band. Yet it’s antithetical to the punk ethos to exclude others from a genre that’s grown increasingly diverse musically, to tell a musician that he is not punk enough to rock.

It’s punk’s do-it-yourself spirit—not its volume—that 10,000 Blades embodies.

The members of 10,000 Blades played as if in a trance. Sam Carlson closed his eyes while drumming and Stone, jumping around in paint-splattered sneakers, sang with his eyes closed and lips pressed against the microphone. After an extended guitar solo, Stone reemerged. “Not so bad. Fucking hands are cold though.” Behind the drum set hung a sheet on which he spray-painted “We are in Connecticut and it is cold outside,” a tongue-in-cheek homage to the state he loves. “I’m here in New Haven intentionally,” said Stone. “I give a crap about this beautiful city.

It has a lot of problems. It needs some TLC, and my way to provide that is by hosting shows and playing my music.”

“You should return to where you’re from, and THE NEW JOURNAL

work to make that city cool,” added Carlson, look- finish on time in accordance with New Haven’s sound ing around the Yankee Doodle approvingly. “Everyone ordinance. Even so, police have twice received sound moves to New York, but there’s a lot of potential to complaints about the Panty House. “I better not be build a great community right where you’re from.” fined,” Bastos had said, biting her pierced lip.

Stone and Bastos welcome crowds into their perBastos was not fined, but she was forced to close sonal spaces on the condition that their belongings the house venue. In late November, Bastos was at are respected with the vigor that punks usually direct work at The Granola Bar, a café in Westport when she against the establishment. “I usually shout something received a panicked call from Rodriguez. “There’s a like, ‘If you break my shit, I’ll slash your tires,’ into huge foreclosure sign on our front lawn,” Rodriguez the mic before shows here,” Stone told me, only half- said into the phone, “and the sign says I can’t remove joking. After hosting particularly rowdy and drunken it. What do we do?” crowds, Bastos posted a PSA about the Panty House “What do we do?” Bastos echoed in her living on her blog, titled “The Panty House is not a Party room, seated on the couch and stroking Mishka. The House,” in which she wrote, “I live five women in their twenties who in a residential neighborhood and lived at the Panty House had to “I’M HERE IN will not hesitate to kick you the move out by the end of December. fuck out of my house if you can’t Bastos’s only recourse was to post NEW HAVEN cooperate with the general house a photo of herself flipping off the INTENTIONALLY,” rules.” foreclosure sign on Facebook, capMaintaining a comfortable tioned “RIP Panty House.”

SAID STONE. home full of mementos that si“I’m incredibly sad,” Bastos “I GIVE A CRAP multaneously functions as a pubtold me. “I love living here. But ABOUT THIS lic punk rock space is no easy feat.

I’m also a little relieved.” As excit“Every time a place pops up, they ing as it is to plan shows, two years BEAUTIFUL CITY.” shut down before too long,” Szchad been enough for Bastos. She zerba said, listing bygone New Haenumerated the anxieties involved ven house venues like the Discovery Zone, the Cookie in running a concert house, chief among them the Jar, Fort Flesh, and Submarine. Stone’s Yankee Doodle disappointment of sparse crowds. Though the Panty has only hosted shows since last summer, and Bastos House usually summoned a few dozen punk fans to noted that the Panty House—which hosted concerts its dank basement, “sometimes only ten people show since 2012—had a uniquely long run by New Haven up, and that makes me so fucking sad,” Bastos said. standards. “It’s a really volatile environment to live When crowds were thin, Bastos paid performers out in,” said Goodfriend, who has lived in a few of New of pocket. “I’d hate for them to leave with nothing.”

Haven’s concert houses but grew tired of living in a “It’s so hard to find a good group of people to live “lawless shitholes,” as he said. Aside from concerns with, who can afford a house in New Haven and who about destructive crowds, Bastos endured the constant are down to commit to the house concert lifestyle,” difficulty of keeping an unregistered venue below the she said. She, Rodriguez, and Tobias were looking to police’s radar: She knew of house venues across Con- move into an apartment. “It’ll be really nice to not live necticut that were shut down by the police. Bastos was in a house that’s falling apart,” Bastos laughed, and I “really anal” about making sure that bands start and remember the gaping hole in their basement window, JANUARY 2015

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kicked in by an attempted theft and shoddily patched with a square of carpet. “We’ll probably have acoustic shows in our apartment, and I’ll always book local bands at other venues through Arc Agency,” she assured me. “But first, we’ll have an insane final concert, with punk and folk bands,” she said. Her eyes swept across the room, from the wilting flowers to an enormous sombrero. “This place is special,” Bastos said. “I hope other people pick up where we left off, opening up their houses the way we did.”

The final concert, on December 28th, was the biggest one they had ever had. Over a hundred people came, to hear punk bands in the basement and Circle Circle strumming upstairs. It was a unique melding of the punk spirit with the homey vibe of a group of women who were sorry to leave the place they had so carefully made their own.

On a Saturday evening in early December, two friends and I ran through a rainy parking lot and into the warmth of Stone’s Yankee Doodle. In a crowd of a dozen young adults bathed in gold Christmas lights, I listened to the soft sounds of sweater-clad rockers sitting cross-legged on Stone’s stage. The Panty House might no longer exist, but the sounds of New Haven’s do-it-yourself music scene still blur the boundaries, recalling punk’s heyday, on a smaller scale. The music was honest and sweet, and at a certain point I forgot about New Haven’s punk politics and lost myself in the songs about finding love and leaving friends and jerking off.

Anna Meixler is a junior in Ezra Stiles College.

Interview

jay carney Jay Carney ’87, a former managing editor of the New Journal, served as the 29th White House press secretary until his resignation this past May. He is now working as a commentator for CNN. He spoke with TNJ about politics, media, and whether or not The Onion has it right. interview conducted by Noah Remnick

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ast summer, The Onion published a fake op-ed under your byline titled “Well, Time To Go Out In Front Of A Bunch Of People And Lie To Them.”

What do you make of this idea that you and other press secretaries are really just in the business of deception?

One of the things people ask me, having left the White House after five years, three and a half as press secretary, is, don’t you feel liberated now? I felt liberated when I went. I wasn’t an advocate, I didn’t take sides as a reporter in elections or align with a party or even an ideology. Having the opportunity, as I did, to go to the White House and work for a president and vice president that I believe in and a series of policy initiatives that I dealt with and to talk about them was actu34

ally very liberating. That’s my view. And I think it’s a little simplistic to say that because you’re representing the president and the administration and the country that you’re somehow being untruthful.

One allegation often levied against the Obama administration is its excessive use of the Espionage Act of 1917 to go after whistleblowers. Is it at odds with Obama’s promises of increased transparency?

For the people who say blindly that this administration is an enemy of the free press, it’s just ridiculous.

It very strongly supports shield laws and has pushed Congress on that. The new standards are the best there have ever been. The fact of the matter is that you have a convergence of existing cases that were started under the Bush administration and technologies that are so different now. When there are national security leaks, it’s serious. There are consequences, they can be sometimes extremely damaging.

I’m curious to hear about your switching sides, so to speak, from journalist to press secretary. You told The New York Times, “If I had known then

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what I know now, I would have succumbed less often to chasing the same soccer ball down the field that everybody else was.” Do you think the press often succumbs to a herd mentality?

So that’s why we’ve done so much to put the president in new media environments, like Google Hangouts and Twitter interviews and getting young people to enroll with the Affordable Care Act through Between Two Ferns, which obviously I know is not a real interview, but it was a way to reach people and it was very effective.

In Washington, every issue or challenge or problem or obstacle is a sensation or scandal. When that happens, there is a starting gun that goes off and people chase the story. And sometimes when you Not everything we did worked, some get a mass of high-profile reporters from the of it was a little awkward, but by and MADELEINE WITT most prominent news organizations chasing large it was pretty successful. You have to the same story, it suggests a legitimacy to the underlying be cautious and conservative when you’re dealstory that may not be there. Sometimes it is. Obviously ing with how the president interacts with the methere is a lot of important stuff that happens, a lot of bad dia, but I’m sure there will be things you and I things have happened in government and policy. But I can’t even dream of that presidents will be doing in think there is a lot of hyperventilating, and things turn ten years. out to be a lot less important than the reporting at the After graduating from Yale, you worked for the time suggested.

The instinct is correct to hold power accountable. That instinct needs to be nurtured, but there need to be editors and others around who have the perspective to know when a story is Watergate or not. Everything becomes “the worst thing since….” There’s only going to be one Katrina. There’s only going to be one Watergate. There’s an effort to hype every story beyond what the facts can bear. And I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, I just think it’s a function of the way the press works in Washington.

The administration went out of its way to give interviews to and to take questions at press conferences from new media ventures like the Huffington Post. Where do you think the president a generation from now will be giving interviews to?

When I was at the White House, you still always had to find your audience. It’s just a lot more complicated now than it was under Reagan and Bush and even to some degree Clinton. For this president and his successor, it will just be more of a challenge. If he gives a major speech in the afternoon, it’s almost a guarantee that no one will even know it happened. It’s no longer likely even that network news will cover it. If they do, their audiences have shrunk dramatically.

JANUARY 2015

Miami Herald and Time magazine. If you were graduating this spring with an interest in journalism, what would you be doing?

The economics of it are extremely challenging, up and down, from the starting reporter and writer to the publisher of any publication. But I think that the universe is settling a little bit, and when you look at the strength of The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal—and the Washington Post is actually on a rebound—there’s hopefully longevity there and they actually have digital strategies as well.

The most exciting place right now in terms of the written word is in the startup universe—not the digitization of old media, but publications that have started online. Vox.com comes to mind as one that is just, I think, excellent. It provides extremely high quality reporting and writing. It provides a real public service with its approach to explanatory journalism.

I might gravitate in that direction. In the end, if you can get the economics right, there’s always going to be a place for long-form magazine journalism, at least I hope.

Noah Remnick is a senior in Ezra Stiles College.

He is a senior editor of the New Journal.

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