Lyceum Volume IV Spring 2020

LYCEUM

Volume IV | Spring 2020

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Lyceum

A Literar y Science Journal President

Miriam Hyman

Treasurer

Sumaya Ahmed

Event Coordinator Katherine Crawford

Contributing Lead Rand Burnette

Contributing Assistants India Kotis Nathan Chu

Editing Team Leads Nathan Chu Jonah Dominguez

Editing Team Rand Burnette Nathan Chu Jonah Dominguez

Alex Felleson Grant Holt Miriam Hyman

India Kotis Meheret Ourgessa Bella Stevens

Design Team

Grant Holt Miriam Hyman

Front Cover Yiyi Ma

Back Cover

Rand Burnette

Volume IV | Spring 2020 3

Editor’s Note Welcome to Lyceum, Before we tell you about ourselves, we’d like to thank you for “purchasing” this volume of our magazine. “Purchasing” in the sense that you’re trading your time and energy to read our pieces and enjoy our work. For all of us who have poured our hearts into this publication, there is no greater honor.

Lyceum was conceived by a group of students who worked at the crossroads of science and art. Together, we wanted to create a space to share our writing, artwork, and scientific fascinations with the Kenyon community, a space where our passions could be combined and explored together.

Our name comes from the ancient Greek phrase meaning a place of public discourse. The first and largest Lyceum of the Classical world was founded by Aristotle, and the concept was later revived in the United States by Transcendentalist thinkers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Asa Gray.

Lyceum has always been a nexus for philosophy, art, and science, and as our namesakes did, our mission is to provide an opportunity for all students to share their fascinations with and questions about the natural world and to creatively communicate science with integrity. This magazine is a testament to that exploration, recombination, and ongoing conversation.

If you dwell between science and art, we invite you to join us! We are always seeking student contributions of fiction and non-fiction prose, poetry, artwork, comics, and photography. Please send your work at our email account: lyceum@kenyon.edu for publication in a magazine just like this one or on our website: Kenyonlyceum. wordpress.com As these troubling times continue, we hope that our efforts to spread creativity and science can bolster our communal ties, and if not materially help, at least grant a brief period where you can enjoy the beauty of the natural world. Together, we can create a community of scientists and artists.

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Cheers, The Lyceum Team

Table of Contents Editor’s Note..........................................................................................................................4 Jump by Alex Clothier............................................................................................................4 The Ball Method by Grant Holt.............................................................................................6 A Still Life by Nathan Chu...................................................................................................10 Bottle by Rand Burnette........................................................................................................10 Stump by Sierra Smith.........................................................................................................10 The Truthful Beauty by Aleksandr Smirnov.........................................................................11 Pollinator by David Han......................................................................................................11 Near Death by Meheret Ourgessa.........................................................................................12 Skull by Kylie Writer............................................................................................................13 Petri Fish by Miriam Hyman...............................................................................................14 Gold Fish by Kylie Writer.....................................................................................................15 Fish on Drugs by Ethan Bradley............................................................................................16 Poor Bastard by Grace Ryder.................................................................................................16 Dissection of Mortality by Aleksandr Smirnov.....................................................................17 Tobacco Hornworm Dissection by Katya Naphtali.............................................................17 LGBTQ+ Scientists by Ezra Moguel & oSTEM...................................................................18 62% Water by Kirollos Mikhael.............................................................................................26 Flask by Rand Burnette.........................................................................................................26 A Short Autobiography by Dr. Thomas Greenslade..............................................................27 Hilbert Intestines by Dr. Judy Holdner.................................................................................28 Beyond Europe: Scholars and Science in the Caliphates and India by Chris Bechtol............30 Constructing Hilbert’s Curve by Dr. Judy Holdener............................................................31 Leaf Mobile by Nathan Chu.................................................................................................32 Obsessed by Isak Davis.........................................................................................................32 Blue Denim by Nathan Chu.................................................................................................33 Stump by Rand Burnette.......................................................................................................33 Calcium by Erin Donnely......................................................................................................34 Lost At Sea by Alexia Tiches..................................................................................................35 Untitled by Sierra Smith........................................................................................................36 Lyceum Caption Contest......................................................................................................38

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The Ball Method Grant Holt On the island of O’ahu, there is a tree. You can find it on the campus of the University of Hawaii, in the city of Honolulu. The bark is brownish or blaze pinkish. Its leaves are simple. From January to April, the tree sprouts flowers with greenish white petals. Its fruit is round and covered in a woolly matted shell. Inside are numerous seeds that can be turned into a thick oil. It is a Chaulmoogra tree, and for centuries its oil was the world’s best treatment for leprosy.

The world’s best treatment, however, was flawed. The oil was first applied externally, directly onto skin-level ulcers.

During attempts at internal treatment, patients were given digestible forms of chaulmoogra oil, like pills. But the results were problematic. Patients developed a number of digestive disorders—like vomiting and diarrhea—among other gastric issues. The oil also could not be injected, not without problems. But in 1915, someone made it work. Sitting beneath this Chaulmoogra tree is a bronze plaque, bearing a name: “Alice A. Ball.”

She was born on July 24, 1982 in Seattle, Washington to a family of photographers. Her grandfather was James Presley Ball—one of the first African Americans to practice daguerreotype photography. He opened his first photography studio in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1845. Her grandfather lived

Alice’s grandfather, James Presley Ball 6

in a time of stereotypes. From advertising to education, the 19th century was filled with stereotypical depictions of Africans Americans. Alice Ball’s grandfather joined the ranks of other African American photographers who practiced daguerreotypy as a form of resistance.

Alice’s daguerreotypist grandfather started with a silver-coated copper plate. After polishing the plate until it had a mirror-like surface, he placed it into boxes filled with iodine and bromide. These substances reacted with the plate to make it sensitive to light, and turned it a yellow-rose color. Her grandfather then slotted the plate into the camera, pointed it at the photograph subject, and exposed the plate to light. Afterwards, he removed the plate and placed it into a sealed box containing the fumes of mercury, where the image manifested itself. In order to prevent the image from disappearing, her grandfather immersed the plate in a solution of sodium thiosulfate and toned with gold chloride. He then sealed the developed photograph behind a protective glass covering.

In short, photographers had to be chemists. Through a series of chemical processes, photographers like Alice’s grandfather transformed a blank slate into a defined picture. The effect could be inspiring, enough to impress a young girl.

Both of Alice’s parents also practiced photography.

When the Ball Family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii for warmer weather—in hopes of alleviating the elderly James Presley Ball’s arthritis—they built a photography studio alongside their home. Alice grew up surrounded by the chemical processes of photography. The elderly Ball died soon after they moved, and the family returned to Seattle, where Alice would attend high school. She graduated from Seattle High School in 1910, after earning excellent grades—especially in the sciences.

Alice next attended the University of Washington, where she graduated with bachelors degrees in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Pharmacy in 1912 and 1914, respectively.

In their October 1914 edition, the Journal of the American Chemical Society published “Benzoylations in Ether Solution,” an article that Alice co-authored with her pharmacy instructor. The publication of a scholarly article by a woman was uncommon at this time—even more so for a black woman. Academic journals rarely published articles written by women.

After completing her studies at the University of Washington, Alice was offered graduate scholarships by multiple institutions. She could have continued her education in Cal-

Susanna Celeste Castelli, DensityDesign Research Lab ifornia, at the University of California, Berkeley. Instead, she chose to return to Hawaii. She accepted a scholarship at the modern-day University of Hawaii, where she pursued a master’s degree in chemistry. In 1915, Alice Ball became the first African American—and first woman—to earn a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii. She later accepted a professorship and research position at the university, becoming the institution’s first African American and first woman professor in the chemistry department.

Her master’s thesis studied the chemical properties of the Kava plant, a crop of the Pacific Islands. Alice’s experience with plants would be the reason she began her work on the Chaulmoogra tree, and its oil’s treatment of leprosy.

Leprosy—or, Hansen’s Disease, named after Norwegian physician Gerhard Hansen who first identified its causative agent—is a disease of the nervous system. It is commonly perceived as a disease of the skin, but this is incorrect. Leprosy attacks the body’s nerves, causing them to become inflamed under the skin. These inflamed regions of the body change color, become dry or flaky, and lose all sense of feeling. Individuals in the advanced stages of leprosy completely lose their ability to feel pain. Such an individual could stick their hand in boiling water and feel nothing. The resulting nerve

damage caused by leprosy can lead to paralysis, blindness, and collapsing of the nose.

According to recorded cases dating back to the second millennium B.C., leprosy was disfiguring, and contagious.

In the early 20th century, it was still without a cure. Civilizations around the world deemed victims of this incurable and contagious disease as threats to the general welfare. Consequently, people suffering from leprosy—lepers—were demonized and exiled. They were sent to confined colonies to live out a lifetime of isolation.

Leprosy was brought to the Hawaiian islands by Eurasian traders, sailors, and other workers. They came to Hawaii from societies where leprosy was already endemic. Hawaiians lacked immunity to this new disease, and many were infected. Worried that the disease would eliminate their labor force—made up of Hawaiians, as well as Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino workers—Sugar Planters pressured the Hawaiian Government to do something. In 1865, the Government responded by passing legislation that required all lepers to be apprehended and quarantined.

This reaction was commendable. Gerhard Hansen would not identify the causative agent of leprosy until eight years later, and preventive medicine around this time was 7

anything but respectable. The potential of a new disease going viral was enough reason for the Hawaiian Government to respond—quickly, yet firmly. Hawaiians diagnosed with leprosy were sent to leper colonies on Moloka’i, the fifth largest hawaiian island. From 1866 to 1969, a total of 8,500 Hawaiian men, women, and children were exiled to Moloka’i and declared legally dead.

These were the circumstances under which Alice’s advisor at the University of Hawaii—Dr. Harry T. Hollmann— assigned her to work on the Chaulmoogra tree. Hollman was an assistant surgeon at the Kalhi Hospital in Honolulu on the island of O’ahu and a doctor at the Leprosy Investigation Station in Kalaupapa on the island of Moloka’i. Both facilities were dedicated to the investigation of leprosy.

Aware of her experience studying the chemical composition of the Kava plant, Hollmann assigned Alice to investigate the oil of the Chaulmoogra tree. Chaulmoogra oil—derived from the seeds of Chaulmoogra fruit—was known to be a treatment for leprosy since the early 1300s. Chaulmoogra oil was introduced in Hawaii in 1879, thirteen years after the founding of Hawaii’s first leper colony. The treatment, however, posed problems. The oil was so thick and viscous that it couldn’t be injected. Not easily. This was because its main components—Chaulmoogric Acid and Hydnocarpic Acid—were both insoluble in water, making the oil painful to inject and difficult to absorb. Whenever it was injected, the oil clumped under the skin instead of being absorbed.

Leper colony on Moloka’i photographed 1907 8

Some patients felt as if fire was burning beneath their skin. The oil couldn’t be consumed orally, either, as it tasted incredibly acrid. Patients would vomit it up.

Enter Alice Ball.

In her research, Ball was able to isolate the oil’s esters— chemical compounds derived from acids and synthetic lubricants. She chemically modified them to develop a substance that maintained the medicinal properties of the Chaulmoogra tree yet could also be absorbed by the body when injected. Ball’s manipulation of the oil’s esters was something that no other chemist or pharmacologist had been able to do.

The treatment of leprosy with this modified Chaulmoogra oil became known as The Ball Method.

The Ball Method allowed leprosy patients all over the world to be free of symptoms. In 1918, the Kalihi Hospital discharged 78 patients, free of symptoms—all were given oil injections. Between 1919 and 1923, no new exiles went to the island of Moloka’i.

The Ball Method remained the foremost treatment of leprosy for the next 25 years, and was responsible for improving the lives of countless people—all because of its namesake.

But she never got the chance to see these results. After developing the treatment that revolutionized leprosy care in 1915, Alice Ball died one year later. She was 24.

What killed Alice Ball? According to a 1917 article in the Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Ball inhaled chlorine gas during a lab demonstration. Ventilation at

Chaulmoogra Fruit this time was not a required safety feature in laboratories.

She was instructing students on how to use gas masks. This makes sense. Around this time, World War I ravaged Europe.

The year 1915 saw the first major use of chemical warfare in Belgium. Germany dropped over 150 tons of chlorine gas on French soldiers. More than a thousand soldiers died, and over seven thousand were injured. Strangely, Alice Ball’s death certificate was altered to cite tuberculosis as the cause of death. Irritant gases—like chlorine gas—can damage the lungs, therefore making them susceptible to infection or disease. If Ball inhaled chlorine gas, it is possible that she harmed her lungs and became much more vulnerable to infection, like tuberculosis.

Whatever the cause, Alice became ill. She left Hawaii in October of 1916 and returned to Seattle, where she died a few months later. Because of her illness and eventual passing, Alice never published the results of her leprosy research. Dr. Arthur Dean, the president of the university and a chemist, published her results without giving her credit. He claimed her discovery for himself, and even named the treatment “The Dean Method.”

In 1922, six years after Alice Ball died, Dr. Harry T. Hollmann—the man who originally assigned Ball on the development of Chaulmoogra oil—published a journal article that credited Ball for her work. Hollmann wrote a total of eight pages, and dedicated seven to describing his enlistment of Ball on the chaulmoogra oil problem, how she did it, and its life-saving results. “I cannot see that there is any improvement whatsoever over the original technic as worked out by Miss Ball.” This journal article, however, couldn’t rescue Ball from obscurity. Alice Ball had vanished.

Leprosy today is completely curable. In the 1940s, synthetic antibiotics replaced the Ball Method as the preferred form of leprosy treatment. Modern cases of leprosy can be cured through multi-drug therapy. Despite these treatments, there is still no vaccine. The past has seen many attempts, and there are presently multiple ongoing trials.

For the longest time, Alice Ball was missing from the

historical record. But over the last twenty years, she’s been found. In 2000, the University of Hawaii placed a bronze plaque in honor of Ball in front of a Chaulmoogra tree located on the campus. In 2007, the university posthumously awarded Ball with the Regents’ Medal of Distinction, an award given by the university’s board of regents to individuals of exceptional accomplishment and distinction. The Alice Augusta Ball Endowed Scholarship was founded in 2017, supporting students in the natural sciences. The city of Seattle opened “Alice Ball Park” in the Greenwood neighborhood in 2019. In London, England, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine added Alice Ball’s name to its frieze atop the school’s central building, alongside the likes of social reformer Florence Nightingale and atomic physicist Marie Curie.

In 2020, a short film will bring Alice Ball to the screen.

Written by Dagmawi Abebe and Javier Carmona and directed by Dagmawi Abebe, “The Ball Method” follows Alice as she fights against racial and gender barriers in her endeavor to find a treatment for leprosy. The short film premiered at the 28th Annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival held this past February. The coronavirus pandemic hit the following month.

As there is currently no treatment for this virus, we have been quarantining ourselves and staying away from our loved ones. Despite this new world of social distancing and uncertainty, the future is not cancelled. Just like Alice Ball, scientists of today are committed to producing a treatment—and they will succeed. When the World Health Organization declares coronavirus to no longer be a public health problem, scientists and health workers will be the ones to not only thank, but fight for in a post-coronavirus world.

Alice Ball, ca. 1915 9

A Still Life I thought I loved it The afternoon sun on a glass bottle Scratches catching the light Hurling blades at my eye Just under Pure, white sand

Caught A beach scene, just missing blown glass water Venetian glass, aquamarine Was it ironic?

Sand, Glass, Gem. All the same A little deeper, all the same atoms, quarks

Perfect little universes, spinning, bouncing There’s a theory that the universe is made up of one electron being

passed back and forth across time and space Why are they all the same charge and mass?

SM

In Buddhism everything is caught in

Samsara Rebirth and Death Everything is

at one point or another You and you

and everything And meanwhile, it is only a bottle of sand wishing for the sea.

I hate Emerson.

— Nathan Chu

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The Truthful Beauty Aleksandr Smirnov In July of 1974, the Journal of Theoretical Biology published an article that is now considered the missing piece in theory of evolution. In it, Amotz Zahavi, an evolutionary zoologist at Tel Aviv University, proposed an answer to the question that has been riddling biologists for decades – is beauty random or functional? In order to fully appreciate Amotz Zahavi’s idea, one must first understand a crucial biological phenomenon: sexual selection.

Unlike natural selection, sexual selection is not pressured by the environment and traits that arise from it are not adaptations that improve an animal’s chances of survival. Rather, this form of selection is tailored to female choice, raising the chances of reproduction. This is why peacocks have bright tails – these traits are more appealing to females.

However, such extensive physiological changes are demanding. Animals are forced to walk a narrow line between natural and sexual selections, balancing the beauty of their characteristic traits and survival adaptations. An example of this can be seen in bluebirds. During molting, birds are prone to predation, so shorter molting periods maximize the bluebird’s survival. On the other hand, longer molting periods result in brighter and bluer pigmentation, which attracts mates, maximizing reproductive success. Thus, male

bluebirds have to put themselves in danger to interest more females in the long run.

But why? Why do females prefer traits that put males into a phasal disadvantage? The answer lies in Amotz Zahavi’s handicap principle. According to this principle, females are looking for indicators of reproductive health that are not easily bluffed. The more a behavior or a trait is energetically costly for an animal, the more honest it is. For example, a toned physique requires many hours of exercise and proper nutrition. It is not easy to build muscle, so it is a good indicator of reproductive success, thus, more attractive to females.

A nice shirt or a pair of shiny boots, on the other hand, is much easier to obtain, so it cannot serve as a trustworthy indicator.

This idea finally provided an explanation for the reason behind the female reproductive choice. The brightly colored feathers are not merely random, impractical, and spontaneous traits that are attractive to mates. The underlying beauty behind them is a well-crafted mixture of sexual and natural selections, which provides a signal of trust, an honest connection between the mates. Its main function is to avoid deception. After all, beauty is truth, truth beauty.

David Han 11

Near Death Meheret Ourgessa Many of us get a similar picture of what dying is like when we try to imagine it. Slowly walking through a dark tunnel with a bright light at the end, calling for you. Being overwhelmed with feelings of joy, love, or tranquility as you move into the light. Coming out the other end into a fantastical world with other spiritual beings, maybe even people you once knew. Though many of us think that it will likely not play out this way, this is how some of those who have stood at the brink of death and come back describe their experience.

The last moments of human consciousness have long been a point of speculation for scientific and spiritual communities alike. In recent years, an increasing amount of research has gone into the physiological processes that occur during near-death experiences (NDEs). Despite this, there is still a lot more to be learned, especially about what happens in the brain. Our lack of understanding of the physical basis for NDEs has likely been a reason why these experiences are popularly described as paranormal occurrences or as evidence for the afterlife. Regardless of their spiritual significance, NDEs have been life-changing events for some of those that experienced them and additional research into these fascinating experiences, more than just satisfying our curiosity, may one day help some address their fears of facing the end.

A near-death experience can be defined as an unusual experience taking place on the brink of death and recounted by a person after recovery. NDEs typically involve outof-body experiences and visions of a tunnel with a glowing light which often leads to another blissful reality. They have often been described as being more vivid than real life. Approximately 3% of Americans claim to have had a near-death experience. NDEs are popularly believed to be evidence of an afterlife, and well received movies such as Heaven Is For Real (2014) have been based on this concept. Interestingly, across cultures and religions, NDEs are reported to have similar themes such as being out of one’s body and passing through a tunnel with a bright light at the end. Though there have been variations in the statistics, one study has stated that of the participants who had an NDE, 50% reported an awareness of being dead, 24% described having an out-of-body experience, 31% remembered moving through a tunnel, 32% reported meeting deceased people and 56% associated the experience with positive emotions such as bliss and euphoria (others reported negative or neutral emotions). As a result of widespread curiosity, many scientists have tried to look into 12

how these shared themes may be perceived in the brain and relate them to processes that happen as we die to establish a biological basis for NDEs. One of the most interesting discoveries about the dying brain comes from observations of rats which were first anesthetized and then induced into cardiac arrest. Researchers noticed a surge of brain activity in the dying rats thirty seconds after the heart had stopped. The activity detected resembled that of a conscious brain. Furthermore, the rats’ brains were actually more active after the cardiac arrest than when the rats were conscious. The researchers concluded the study by suggesting that mammalian brains have a high potential for processing information after the heart has stopped beating. The researchers continued to hypothesize that what was seen in these rats may help explain near-death experiences in humans. However, little is understood about how or why this surge in activity occurs.

Another NDE study found similarly perplexing results.

Over one hundred people who had suffered cardiac arrest and were brought back to life (resuscitated) were interviewed about their experience. In addition to finding that nearly half of the interviewees have some memory of their NDE, the study also found that two of the patients interviewed were able to recall events that happened during their resuscitation.

The latter finding implies that the patients’ brains were active and able to perceive and process information for up to three minutes after their heart had stopped functioning, even though conscious awareness is typically thought to be lost within twenty to thirty seconds after the heart has stopped beating. The study concluded that consciousness may be present even when it is not clinically detectable. It is worth noting, however, that only two of the almost one hundred patients interviewed seemed to have been aware of what was going on during their resuscitation. Dr. Sam Parnia, one of the main researchers who worked on this study, later questioned the study’s conclusion, saying that the most likely explanation for their findings was that the interviewees’ memories were some sort of illusion. Even so, the brain has been found to take hours to fully shut down and for brain waves from the cerebral cortex (the part of the brain that plays a key role in perception, awareness, memory and consciousness) to become completely undetectable after the heart fails.

Several explanations have been proposed for what happens during near-death experiences based on previously known neurological processes. Some researchers have pro-

Kylie Writer 13

posed that some sort of chemical cascade (a series of chemical reactions) occurs as the brain dies, triggering NDEs. In one study, drugs such as ketamine appeared to mimic neardeath experiences, inducing out-of-body experiences and euphoria. The same biological systems that produce reactions to drugs like ketamine (a medication used in anesthesia) have also been shown to become active when an animal comes under predatory attack, and might come into play during traumatic events for humans. Interestingly enough, researchers have also been able to show that out-of-body experiences, like those recounted during NDEs, can be artificially induced by electrically stimulating a certain area of the brain. Their findings suggest that out-of-body experiences occur because of failure to integrate information from the different senses, which may be happening during clinical death. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the common hallucination in NDEs of moving through a tunnel may be the result of tunnel vision that can occur as a result of extreme fear and oxygen loss, both of which are

common occurrences during death. Together, these disparate strains of evidence suggest that NDEs result from normal brain functions gone awry.

Whatever neurological basis for near-death experiences may be discovered in the future, these experiences would not be any less vivid or profound. For those who have had NDEs, memories of these experiences seem to be clearer than any other memory. These people often have drastic changes in their lifestyle and views on life. Still, little is known or understood about the dying brain and NDEs. The research on rats’ dying brains allude to a similar pattern in humans. This surge of brain activity may well be the glowing light, the blissful reality, the tunnel. Only time and more research will tell if this is indeed the case as we finally establish the scientific basis for NDEs. Nonetheless, for many that have experienced them or will experience them, NDEs will likely remain to be major life events that have the potential to change how those people view the world and their place in it.

Petri Fish The mutant fish With twisted spine Was born to live and breed and die Under the microscope’s glass eye Like schools of fish before it.

Its eggs all laid Its time had come To be disposed Like well-chewed gum But just in time This mutant fish Was saved by guilty scientist.

So now it swims In a larger cage From Walmart All expenses paid.

A brand new life For mutant fish Who swam so far From the petri dish.

— Miriam Hyman

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Kylie Writer 15

Fish On Drugs I wish I could myelinate.

Some big scientist messed with my grandpa’s grandpa’s genes And now my neurons don’t fire right.

I was just swimming along with my siblings When some big scientist decided I was going to do drugs today.

They’re trying to understand if my nerves can be fixed, But when did I sign up to do hallucinogens?

I’m a zebrafish, see My world is very black and white, And the fish I’m with don’t look quite right!

They put glaucine in our water!

That’s a 5HT-2A activator!

Ever heard of magic mushrooms? Mescaline?

When I look around, my black and white buddies Are all sorts of colors.

Green, red, blue, orange!

I’m not as conscious as I’d like to be, But if I was I’d be having a crazy time right now.

Never thought a fish could trip, huh?

Anyway I just hope it fixes my nerves. *sigh* I wish I could myelinate.

— Ethan Bradley

Poor Bastard by Grace Ryder 16

Dissection of Morality Aleksandr Smirnov There it lay in front of me. A little worm, bent to the right, smaller than a pair of manicure scissors. After being submerged in liquid nitrogen for 10 minutes, it couldn’t feel anything. Neither could I. Completely numb and not knowing how to start, I anxiously looked around. The other students had already indulged in the process, cutting slowly but surely through the epidermis. All of them had a zoo of experience on their backs — rats, frogs, cow hearts, goat livers, and even cats. The only thing I had on my back was a clock rushing me. I looked at my tray. The poor little worm was still there, unmoving and, yet, untouched.

The first step was easier than I expected. A needle in the head and a needle in the tail. Although unsure of which end was which, I managed.

The second step was where it got tricky. We were warned that the space between the epidermis and the midgut is a little thin. Space is relative, but “a little” was a very poor choice of words.

My scalpel went right through the worm’s skin and, of course, the gut. A neverending brownish mixture of clumps and goo slowly crawled out of it. The worm must have had a big appetite. Disgusted but not discouraged, I persisted.

I gently glided my scalpel across the rest of the body. It was too gentle. I tried again. It felt like ripping off wrapping paper on Christmas morning. I could finally see the insides.

More needles went in. More clumps came out. The dissection was finally over.

All parts of a laboratory procedure are equally important. However, they are not equally interesting. After a dissection there is weighing, comparing, more weighing, and cleaning — they are as exciting as they sound.

One last look at the worm, or at least its remains. It seemed naked and exposed. But there was no point in feeling sorry. Animal dissections have been a core practice in biology for centuries. They are done for the greater good, for science.

But who determines the greater good? Humans pride themselves on being the most intelligent species on Earth, yet history has given us many examples of how destructive and evil we are. We dictate morality while being immoral.

On the other hand, how else would we conduct research?

Scientists need specimens to test their hypotheses. We have to sacrifice some to save many. And, after all, morality is just a social construct created, and oftentimes broken, by humans, so why should it even matter?

Tight schedules wait for no amateur philosophers. Perplexed and late, I left the laboratory.

Students dissect the tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta, in Intro Bio Lab. Photo: Katya Naphtali 17

Can you name a gay scientist? Being able to see a part of yourself in someone else who has succeeded in your f ield can make a big difference. For this reason, a part of our oSTEM (Out in STEM) mission is to increase visibility of LGBTQ+ people in STEM. Here we present four f igures in STEM who made signif icant contributions to their f ield and were part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Alan Hart Alan L. Har t, a physician, writer and researcher, was influential in the study of tuberculosis.

Har t was one of the first physicians to document that tuberculosis spread via the circulator y system and was a pioneer of early tuberculosis detection by x-ray photography.

He practiced medicine and conducted mass tuberculosis screenings while also raising money for research and patient suppor t. Har t also had a second career as a fiction novelist, publishing shor t stories and novels with semiautobiographical themes showcasing LGBTQ+ identities. Har t was one of the first trans men in the United States to undergo a hysterectomy and a medical transition.

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Neil Divine

Neil Divine (1939-1994) was a gay American astrophysicist who worked at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laborator y for twenty five years.

Divine built the first numerical model for the evolution of helium stars (even before they were confirmed to exist!), which has greatly contributed to our modern understanding of stellar evolution. He was also influential in the planetar y sciences; Niel defined the radiation belts around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and categorized the dust environments around comets. He worked on developing a numerical model to characterize populations of small interplanetar y bodies such as meteoroids and asteroid fragments. In addition to his significant scientific contributions, Divine also ser ved as a mentor to many younger astrophysicists at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laborator y.

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Dorothy Bernstein Dorothy L. Bernstein (1914-1988) was a Jewish American mathematician. She wrote her disser tation on the double Laplace integral and later worked on existence theorems for par tial dif ferential equations because of their usefulness regarding computational solutions to nonlinear problems. Bernstein taught at the University of Rochester and Goucher College.

She was chair of the math depar tment at the latter for most of her time there and developed an internship program for math majors.

Bernstein was interested in combining pure and applied mathematics in the undergraduate curriculum. She acquired grants from the NSF that made Goucher College the first women’s university to use computers in mathematics courses in 1961. She co-founded the Mar yland Association for the Educational Uses of Computers and helped introduce computers into high school mathematics curriculums. Bernstein was ver y active in the Mathematical Association of America and became its first female president in 1979. While there is no definite proof that Bernstein was not heterosexual, she and Geraldine “Jerr y” Coon lived together while they taught at Goucher College and continued to do so af ter retiring until Bernstein’s death.

Coon’s obituar y refers to Dorothy as her “life companion.”

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Peter Landin Peter Landin (1930-2009) was a British Computer Scientist, and one of the first to realize that lambda calculus could be used to model a programming language, essential to developing function programming and denotational semantics. Lambda calculus can be used to simulate any Turing Machine.

Landin was involved with the Gay Liberation Front star ting in the early 1970s, and was also involved in anti-nuclear protests during the Cold War. Landin was bisexual, frequently made jokes in his academic papers, and was also an accomplished musician.

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62% Water Kirollos Mikhael It was 7:50 am on a sunny Monday when I woke up to the sound of my alarm filling my spacious room with Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.” It took less than a minute to get myself all dressed up and ready for a new day. With earbuds in my ears, I biked down Middle Path to Tomsich, where all the great mixing happens. The clock ticked 8:00 am as I stepped into the carbohydrates lab on the third floor.

“Good morning.” I greeted my lab partners in a halfsleepy, morning voice, while I was putting on my stained white coat, a pair of gloves, and my lab goggles. Hoping to get ahead, I jumped into a chair with my notebook in front of me and filled it out with names of reagents and details needed for the reaction — I’d been working on the reaction for a while.

I headed straight to my hood, setting all my glassware up.

After adding two grams of sugar, I then went to the cabinet labeled “CORROSIVE” in bold red that has two big jugs of clear liquid with big handles sitting. I grabbed the acetic acid and closed the cabinet immediately. “Time to mix stuff,” I said while pouring some of the clear liquid into mythe rounded flask used for the reaction. Then I waited…

“Oh, wow! That dissolved really quickly!” said Professor Mo Hunsen five minutes later. The sugar usually took at least half an hour to dissolve. “You have gained quite the experience working here.” I could do nothing but smile a little bit — I wasn’t prepared for what was about to happen...

After the reaction had run for three hours, I pulled the flask off the hood and walked over to my old friend: The

Rotovap (a hollow tube that evaporates solvents quickly by heating the container and increasing pressure through a vacuum, thus decreasing their boiling point). It usually takes half an hour to get a bone-dry product; however, this time half of the liquid was still in the flask after a whole hour.

I sniffed it like professional chemists do, and surprisingly, my nose didn’t hurt! (I was supposed to be using >99% acetic acid and vinegar’s smell comes from 4% only!) That was when I realized that I had an organic chemist’s nightmare: water in the reaction!

I ran to Dr. Hunsen across the hall telling him that there is water in the reaction. With his wide smile, he asked me to bring the jug I used for dissolving the sugar. “Aaah… You added Hydrochloric acid instead of Acetic acid, didn’t you?” Dr. Hunsen said while my face turned red in embarrassment. It turns out that concentrated HCl contains 62% water — who knew? (You still don’t want it on your skin.)

Although I wasted a whole lab day, I learned one of the most important skills in the lab: double check your labels. It might take a couple of extra seconds to look twice and make sure, but it can save you hours or even days.

Two months later, I woke up again and ran to Tomsich Hall to catch my 8:00 am Organic Chemistry class. I sat down with my same morning half-asleep face and halfway through the lecture, I saw Professor Hunsen looking at me, and then, in his same sarcastic tone he said: “And now we have water in our product when we add HCl, where did it come from? I’m pretty sure Kiro knows!”

RB 26

A Short Autobiography Dr. Thomas Greenslade There were seventeen physics majors in the Amherst class of 1959, including me. Physics can be a disheartening field: there is always someone who is smarter, faster, cleverer than you. I found this out quite early in our freshman year, when, like a good many of my classmates, I flunked our first exam. Today I know why, for I was only interested in the answer, rather than in the process by which I arrived at it. In the middle of the second semester of Arnold Aron’s Science 1-2 course, I met Simple Harmonic Motion for the first time, and I was able to describe it in words, in diagrams, in algebra and trigonometry. In the language of the day, I learned to employ a number of metaphors to talk about physics.

In the summer between our sophomore and junior years, I met Sonia Burggraf, a student nurse from New York City.

Within two weeks we had our future lives planned out. Six days after graduation we were married.

That summer I worked as an attendant in the mental hospital where she was an R.N. In a way, we spent our honeymoon in a mental hospital, and that was a useful introduction for five years of graduate work in physics at Rutgers.

Once more I discovered that most of my fellow students were smarter, faster and cleverer than I was. Because I had taken courses in music and art history at Amherst, I had to take some undergraduate physics courses at Rutgers, which made me appreciate just how good Amherst was! When the time came to find an advisor for my thesis research I looked for the most liberal-arts oriented faculty member. He was kind and patient, and by the time I left Rutgers I was the world’s leading expert in the thermal conductivity of indium and indium alloy thin films at liquid helium temperatures Finding a physics teaching position in a small college in 1964 was easy: you announced your availability and looked over the jobs. I was drawn to Kenyon, a small all-men’s liberal arts college in central Ohio. There was some family history here: I had a great uncle in the class of 1876, and my father was a chemistry graduate from 1931.

Soon after I started teaching I realized that, while I was a good experimentalist, I had little talent for starting a research program on my own. Not to worry, for I discovered that Kenyon, founded by the first Episcopal bishop of Ohio in 1824, had a good deal of 19th and early 20th century physics apparatus in the back room. Some second-hand 19th century physics texts in my collection showed the apparatus and explained how it was used. In 1972 I spent the summer at

Barnard College using 19th century apparatus to perform experiments, and in 1975 I was invited to visit the Smithsonian Institution. Soon I was travelling about, giving lectures on early physics and photographing early physics apparatus – I was an expert!

Until 2000 I hunted apparatus with a camera, much like the modern big-game hunter. That summer my friends at Oberlin College asked me if I would like to collect some of their early apparatus to make space for a renovation. Sonia and I made several trips, and other colleges and individuals asked me if I would like to have their orphans. By the summer of 2005 the apparatus was all over the house, and Sonia suggested that it was time to put the eighth addition on our 1857 house in Gambier. This was lined with cherry shelving and museum-style overhead lighting illuminated the 300 pieces of apparatus in the room. By 2019 there were nearly eight hundred pieces of apparatus in the collection, and they began to spread all over the house once more.

In the 1970’s I began to write articles for the physics teaching journals, and eventually wrote LXVIII articles for one of them under the running title of “Nineteenth Century Textbook Illustrations.” For another journal I supplied pictures of early apparatus with 100 word captions. There were almost 700 of these published by 2019, with 1000 written. By this time I had published nearly 300 articles about physics apparatus and teaching, and had given about 225 lectures at departmental seminars at Kenyon and elsewhere, and at national physics meetings.

When I retired from Kenyon I was given an honorary degree, and became Doctor Doctor Greenslade! For sixteen years I was a member of the History and Philosophy of Physics Committee of the American Association of Physics and was committee chair for half of the time. The Association gave me a Distinguished Service Citation in the later eighties, and in 2014 made me a fellow. A year later I was made a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2019 I was award the Millikan Medal, presented by the AAPT that recognizes “those who have made notable and intellectually creative contributions to the teaching of physics.” This is perhaps the crowning achievement of my career. I am still not a very good physicist, but I have learned to lead with my strengths and work around my weaknesses.

I have been retired for over fifteen years, and still work with physics every day. It’s a wonderful life!

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Dr. Judy Holdener

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Dr. Judy Holdener created “Hilber t Intestines” last semester while on sabbatical at the Institute of Computational and Experimental Research at Brown University.

The work depicts “Hilber t’s cur ve” -- a well-known “space-filling cur ve” constructed in 1891 by German mathematician David HIlber t.

Hilber t’s cur ve is a fractal object, defined recursively, star ting with a fundamental region shaped like a capital “U”.

At each step, four subsquares of the unit square are replaced with an appropriately rotated and scaled copy of the previous iteration. The ar twork depicts just one iteration of the process (the four th iteration). Hilber t’s cur ve is a purely theoretical object, achieved only by applying the iterative process ad infinitum.

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Beyond Europe: Scholars and Science in the Caliphates and India Chris Bechtol

If one was to survey students across the country, and ask them who the greatest scientists and mathematicians were, they’d likely end up with a pantheon of old, dead, white men, all from Europe or America. Few students have even heard about Aryabhata, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Biruni, Al-Uqlidisi, or– barring philosophy students – Al-Ghazali. Except for Aryabhata, these men all came from the Abbasid or Umayyad Caliphates (in this article both will be referred to as the Islamic world). But without these ancient scholars, our mathematical and scientific foundations would be unrecognizable. This article will focus on the main contributions of these people and try to dispel common myths associated with them and the contributions from the Islamic world.

IBN AL-HAYTHAM: Hasan Ibn al-Haytham (Latinized as Alhazen) was raised in Basra, in modern-day Iraq, but spent most of his life in Cairo. He first worked as a chief engineer for Caliph Ma’mun and was later imprisoned in Cairo. During his imprisonment, he formulated and eventually proved a theory of how vision worked. Ibn al-Haytham was imprisoned in an empty cell, but he noticed how light from the stars came through the small window and reflected off the dust. He noticed how the light reacted when he placed his food tray (with different-sized holes) in front of the window.

The image on the other side of the hole was flipped vertically.

He deduced that the eye worked in the same way. Once he was freed from prison, he wrote down and published the Kitab al-Manazir (Book of Optics) detailing his discovery.

His greatest contribution to science, however, was the formulation and implementation of the Scientific Method.

Ibn al-Haytham was the first individual known to propose a method of inquiry based on real-world observations, formulation of theories for those observations, and subsequent verification of theory with mathematical data. His treatise Al-Shukuk ‘ala Batlamyus (roughly translated as Doubts on Ptolemy) was the first major work to employ this method, which he used to critique the Ptolemaic model of the motions of the planets used in the Almagest. Ibn al-Haytham found that many of Ptolemy’s theories were based on false assumptions, none more evident than that of the equant. Ptolemy claimed an imaginary point in space he named an equant explained the relative change in speed of orbiting objects in the solar system. Ptolemy proposed that each of the heavenly spheres orbited around an equant while simultaneously orbiting around the center of the circle created by their orbit.

Al-Haytham noted that objects travelling around a circular path can’t orbit two separate points simultaneously. In disproving the equant, Ibn al-Haytham introduced the scientific method to common use.

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Theorem of Al-Haytham ARYABHATA: Aryabhata was probably born in what is now Patna, Bihar, India around the year 476 CE. His magnum opus was the Aryabhatiya, which contained, among other things, treatises on arithmetic, algebra, plane and spherical trigonometry, and a sine chart. Aryabhata was the first known person to record the usage of sine, laying the foundation for scholars such as al-Biruni and al-Tusi to include cosine and tangent (secant, cosecant, and cotangent, as well as the inverses of all six, were considered not as their own functions but rather as functions of sine and cosine).

The concept of sine was first proposed by Madhava of Sangamagrama, but Aryabhata clarified and defined the concept for further use.

ABU RAYHAN AL-BIRUNI: Abu Rayhan al-Biruni was a Persian polymath in the late 10th and early 11th Centuries who is considered the first anthropologist and the first Indologist (someone who studies India), as well as the Father of Comparative Religion. Al-Biruni also accurately calculated the earth’s radius and circumference. He wasn’t the first to make this calculation, but his method was the first that didn’t involve some poor assistant wandering through a desert or other flat basin with a measuring tape. Al-Biruni used basic trigonometry and spherical trigonometry to first

find the height of a mountain from a known distance and with a known angle (1° on our scale). He then found the ratio between the height of the mountain and his distance from it, which allowed him to calculate the ratio between his distance to the mountain and the radius of the earth. From there he was able to calculate the earth’s circumference. Al Biruni’s calculations were accurate to the sixteenth decimal place - a precision that was unparalleled before the development of modern measurement tools.

In addition to his measurements of the earth, Al-Biruni accurately predicted its continental geography. He deduced that whatever processes had formed the Afro-Eurasian landmass must also have formed another continent, since the Afro-Eurasian landmass only amounted for about 2/5 of the earth’s surface. Since the Afro-Eurasian landmass was on a north-south band, he assumed that if the processes that created it was universal, then the other continent would be north-south too. He also predicted that the continent would be inhabited because he theorized that humans had expanded from South Africa to northern Russia, and assumed that they’d do the same in what would later be called the Americas.

ABU’L HASAN AL-UQLIDISI: Abu’l Hasan al-Uqlidisi lived in Damascus in the 10th Century. He is noted for the implementation of the decimal fraction, decimal manipulation, and positioning of Hindu-Arabic numerals. While fractional concepts predated him, in the Islamic World the mathematical system of choice was the sexagesimal (base60) system. This system is still used today, only primarily in

spherical geometry and in cartography. It is used to demarcate coordinates. In sexagesimal, divisions are demarcated using commas for both > 60 numbers and < 60 numbers, with no consistent symbol demarcating the split between the two groups (the most common one was the semicolon).

Al-Uqlidisi converted this system to decimal (base 10) and recommended using something similar to the modern decimal point to demarcate the split. He also began to use zero more often. Prior scholars used inconsistent ways to mark absence. This switch from base-60 (wherein which values ranged from 01-59 per place) to base-10 (wherein which values ranged from 1-9 and 0 for the tens places), required a new set of rules regarding placement, which al-Uqlidisi formalized.

AL GHAZALI: Al Ghazali is probably best known in the West as a philosopher. It is usually taught that his writings devalued science and promoted religion. This was accepted

by Westerners, because there has been a large split between Christianity and science (i.e. Christian Churches historically tended to reject science in favor of religion), but the relation between Islam and science is almost the opposite. Within the Quran there are passages where Mohammed tells his followers to question the world, as Allah made it to be examined. In his actual writings, Al Ghazali critiques scholars for offering theories with little mathematical proof or evidence to support them, and advocates for the scientific method.

To learn more about non-Western scientists, Kenyon students can take the intro-level math course, MATH 128: History of Mathematics in the Islamic World, offered every fall.

Constructing Hilber t’s Cur ve by Dr. Judy Holdener

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Leaf Mobile a leaf mobile cuts tiny pirouettes through space and time Unwanted clipped from its mother and forgotten by hibernators

it dances along drafts

lost to the wind the sound of rustling

the second act rushes on stage to greet the first and begin

their own ballet

— Nathan Chu

Obsessed This is the last I am never coming back For more I have shut the damn door Slam! Bam! Fuck science and it’s shazam Dry ice only adds CO2 It doesn’t keep the earth cool Sharp and on! I am rook, not a pawn Jokes do not exist only Tested and untested Experimented

— Isak Davis

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Blue Denim Nathan Chu I was with Tom when they cut down the tree. We were on our way to lunch, a pair of roommates trying to distract ourselves, either from our work or our problems. That’s just the way humans are, Tom especially. He likes saving things until he can’t ignore them anymore, and then he tears into them.

Outside hires, some company, Blue Denim Tree Service, had roped the top of the tree to a truck. One man was taking a chainsaw to the base.

We watched the machine chew through the wood. Occasionally, there would be a crack or groan, something snapping, I suppose. Chainsaws don’t cut, after all. They bruise and batter, shred and rip until the whole structure collapses in on itself. Like a black hole, you cross an event horizon and walk into wonderland.

The tree toppled over, truck ferrying it across the Styx.

Its body heaved on to the ground and cracked. Its bark popped off with a plastic Easter egg shell pop, in a cinnamon stick sheath. We turned to go to lunch.

— When we crossed the scene again, there were more of them—trees, that is. Cut in neat little segments and lined around an imaginary campfire as seats. They were laid out just in front of the freshmen quad, as if Blue Denim had been hired to set up a party venue. Their corpses were fresh. Sharp and piney. The kind of scent you could get from a scratch‘n’-sniff card.

I strained my mind to grasp at the reason for the cutting.

Maybe they were dangerous. Maybe they creaked at night in the wind. Were the freshmen scared of them crashing down on the dorms, or maybe it was the school who worried over lawsuits and insurance?

Maybe the trees were rotting. Like decaying flesh, you had to cut away the bad before it killed the whole. In this case, cut down the tree to save the lumber. If you don’t cut off necrotizing flesh, it creeps along your body. It’s agony.

It consumes your nerves, sinew, skin, and bone. Strips your body raggedly and leaves the corpse to shriek.

So you cut off the finger, or arm, or leg to save your body. Things you can’t ignore. Slowly. Slowly cutting. ‘till there’s nothing left.

I wonder where the lumber will be shipped to?

RB

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Lost at Sea Alexia Tiches

I never thought I’d miss the lights of human civilization. Back when I was young, everything was so bright you couldn’t even see the stars. Petty little humans trying to outdo a force far greater than themselves, typical. But who am I to judge? I’m just as human as anyone else.

Anyway, that was a long time ago. It never happened, just a memory. We’ve learned to move on. How many hurricanes can you sit through and watch until tragedy doesn’t affect you anymore? I was spoon-fed disaster after disaster so that, even though I understand the loss of human life, I am numb to it.

That was, until, disaster slapped us in the face. It happened gradually, with ever so slight increases in sea temperatures, to storms for years, until the tipping point. We were struck by an earthquake, no warning, no precautions. Those who were fortunate enough to remain on the mainland were rattled and then went on their lives as jaded little zombies.

We, on the other hand, got the bad end of the deal. But, hey, someone has to lose.

For years we’ve been on this hunk of ice. We’ve had communications with the mainland; they send out food and resources. But apparently, there’s some legal issue as to why we can’t just join the mainland again. Dad says that they don’t want to invest their money in only a handful of people compared to the entire world that needs help. Makes sense. Rational. People are thinking much more rationally now. I mean, you have to now; it’s the end of days, or so they say.

It’s morning, dark and cold as any other time of day, just with a sense of newness that soon grows stale. Begrudgingly, I slump out of bed, out of the warmth, and grab some breakfast: a protein bar and fruit preserves. It was a good day to have something that at some point in its life came from the earth. I turn the radio on and listen to the daily report. …It’s been four days since the first case of this new disease.

Parker Cottle, the seven year-old who contracted the virus, is in intensive care and the disease is currently being contained. No news yet from the mainland as Fester Titchlin, environmental advocate and scientist. It’s been three weeks since he has made the trek to the mainland for the national caucus of Arctic Climate Change…

After we separated, the news has been basically the same for the longest time, except for the occasional famine here or there. It doesn’t matter; it’s not here. What’s important is what happens to us. Since the disease’s debut, it’s all anyone can talk about. It’s been dormant for millions of years. We don’t have anyone who knew how to deal with this, and everyone who does lives on the mainland and doesn’t give a shit about us. Even before the virus, we knew that we were alone.

That’s why dad went over. If anyone can do anything about this, it’d be him. He knows how to get help.

The door creaks open and a crisp gust of wind floods the room. It’s Syndra, my younger sister, back from the market to get our daily rations: food, soap, batteries. When I was her age, dad would never let me go out and roam by myself. I guess when shit hits the fan, everyone has to take responsibility. Unfair, but what isn’t?

She puts away the groceries and sits down next to me, taking a nibble of my protein bar, but only a small one because even a child knows about sharing.

“Any news?” She grabs the radio but doesn’t turn it on to save batteries.

“Nothing new. That kid Oliver’s probably going to die.

Hopefully it doesn’t spread.”

“It probably will.” And then Syndra giggles, just like we always used to giggle about depressing topics. The only way to cope with the end of the world is with humor; that’s what you learn.

“We need to go to work.” I say.

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Sierra Smith 36

“I started this morning. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

That’s nice, but not effective. It’s time to be productive, so I bundle up in my layers and brace for the cold. No matter how long I lived in the Arctic, I will never get used to that moment when you open the hatch that separates the inside and the out. I seem to be the only one facing this issue because no one else minds the cold.

There’s not a lot of positivity in living on a piece of ice in the apocalypse. But, I’d rather live here than how they did when they got us into this problem in the first place. Everyone on the sheet realized when we separated that we had to work together to survive. I don’t think the mainlanders get it, and they call us the stupid ones, floating away into oblivion.

Informally, there are factions of workers to fish, sew, care for children, care for the sick, care for the island. Kids and fish are smelly, so I sew. There aren’t many animals to skin, so textiles are key for survival. Syndra helps care of the children.

They’re barely younger than her and yet I see that gleam in their eyes when a kid finds someone they want to emulate.

We march to our places of business, but it’s on the other side of the island, so we have to weave through every goddamn citizen here. Living with a confined group of people, you really get to know which ones you like and which ones you don’t. Back on the mainland, I hated almost everyone, maybe that’s because I was young and angsty. Here, everyone seems to be on the same page. Disasters bring us together in some weird way, even though no one wants to admit that we’re currently in a disaster. We just work to survive in a world that’s not dying, sure.

Right before we make it to our stations, a shrill shriek sounds from the hut that we just passed. We make brief eye contact before entering the home. It looks like any other home apart from a contained fire, which is a big no-no in our community because of the new conservation laws. There’s a woman crying, hyperventilating, while another girl, my age, seizes on the floor. There are red lesions all over her, oozing, gross and is it my fault I don’t want to touch her?

Syndra doesn’t hesitate. She tells me to calm the mother as she picks up the girl. They hobble off to the infirmary, leaving me alone with this blubbering woman. We remain in silence and I don’t know how to comfort her. Am I supposed to say it’s the virus and that she’ll probably die? Because I know that won’t help. She already knows.

I follow her to the infirmary because I feel like I have to.

Once there, I realize in all my jaded opinions that there is a real problem. The boy’s dead body is limp on a mat and the girl is next to him. There’s another sickly young man, who’s throwing up, not yet at the lesion stage. Those working flutter around nervously trying to alleviate as much pain as possible, but it’s clear that we just don’t have enough supplies to help them.One of the nurses catchs me staring. I expect her to kick me out, but she says, “It’s spreading,” and gives me a somber smile.

“How fast?” I ask after a while.

“Too late, probably.”

I chew on her answer and try to forget. But I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m tired and I almost fall asleep, but Syndra comes to the hut, interrupting all of us just to get me.

I’m irritated, and when we’re outside, I’m ready to give it to her until she gives me an envelope. It’s unopened.

Dad said he’d write back as soon as he got to the mainland, but it’s been weeks since he left and I haven’t heard from him. I know he’s busy advocating for us. Before the break, we moved to the arctic so he could study ice formations and after the break, he worked to help our little island.

Me, I gave up. But he never did.

I pocket the letter and when Syndra tries to object, I pull the older sister card and go back to work. My sister’ss hurt, sure, but I’m thinking about our community. At least that’s how I try to justify it.

“Go back to work.” I say rather coldly.

“I want to read it too. We both should know what’s happening.”

“I’ll tell you later, now go to work.” She stares at me until the door closes and our worlds are separated into different temperatures.

Separated for good.

The virus spread too quickly.

After Syndra died I read the letter.

Dieter, I want to start by saying that I am so proud of you and your sister. I know it’s been hard since I’ve been away and I’m sure my silence hasn’t been helping. I’ve been very busy doing good important work, trying to get back to you guys. There are things that I want you to know. You have the power to choose whether to tell Syndra; I’ll leave that up to you.

I heard about the virus and brought it up to the caucus. It seems to not be a concern at the moment, but I presented my hypothesis for the future. Our permafrost layer of ice has melted, releasing microbes, bacteria, and as you can guess, viruses trapped from within. We abused our world. Now our world is fighting back. I’ve been analyzing the disease and it looks loosely related to Anthrax. It’s rare and symptoms don’t show until weeks after contraction.

What I’m going to say next is hard, but I know you will digest it well. Our island has been quarantined in order to prevent spreading. I know and you know that there is no stopping this, but those in charge don’t seem to care that much about us little guys. I will try and work as hard as I can to get back to you, but until then, I need to stay here. There is work here that needs to be done and I can help. I’ll see you again, I promise.

I love you forever,

Dad 37

Lyceum Caption Contest Every season, a-la The New Yorker, we provide a new caption-less cartoon. Submit a caption to lyceum@ kenyon.edu or as a comment on our website kenyonlycuem.wordpress.com. We will choose the finalists. Vote for your favorite, and the top pick will be published in the subsequent issue. Comics will be provided by the resident cartoonist, Rand Burnett

Spring 2020 Contest

Finalists

“Dr H wins the lab’s smash a beaker with your head contest for the eighth year in a row.

—Ross Hyman “Frank’s methods are a little blunt.”

—Grant Holt “Kinetic energy, am I right?”

—Ian Rowe 38

Winning Caption

“Is that your head or mine?” “Unclear. More tests are needed.”

— Andrea Yarkony

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