Kids

And now the Nassau Weekly is back again, thinking about girls, thinking about animals, and thinking about the internet.

The Nassau Weekly

Volume 48, Number 2 February 29, 2024

In Print since 1979 Online at nassauweekly.com

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February 29, 2024

Kids

Masthead 4 6 8

That Girl

By Sasha Rotko Designed by Hazel Flaherty

Something Different

By Sofiia Shapovalova Designed by Jasmine Chen and Karyna Podzirei

Nass Recommends: The Alcohol Initiative’s Magic: The Gathering Club and Chuquimamani Condori’s DJ E

By Frankie Duryea and Charlie Nuermberger Designed by Vera Ebong

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Art

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Ancestral Burdens

14 16 18 19 20 Cover Attribution

By Kaila Avent Designed by Vera Ebong

By Mariana Castillo Designed by Jasmine Chen

I’m Moving Out of the Internet

By Mollika Jai Singh Designed by Vera Ebong and Alexander Picoult

Lost Valley

By Daniel Viorica Designed by Cathleen Weng and Hannah Mittleman

The Many Rhythms of Devonne Piccaver

By Julia Stern Designed by Cathleen Weng

Stories Worth Telling: Sharon Lowe on Preserving the Nassau Weekly

By Jonathan Dolce Designed by Vera Ebong

Morning Prayer

By Tommy Goulding Designed by Vera Ebong and Emma Mohrmann

Alexander Picoult

CW: suicide It’s an unfortunate structural reality that the Nass appears in print about two weeks after we collect the content that makes up the magazine. Enough time elapses to generally inhibit committed journalistic work or timely commentary on campus happenings. Not to excuse the things the Nass sleepwalks through. Or to excuse the miserable, halfway ironic, alleged think-pieces we often toss out whenever we muster enough juice to actually write something. It’s how it goes.

The death of a student happens with terrifying immediacy, and immediacy can make it easy or even necessary to fall back on defeatist, catch-all language and little fatalisms like “tragedy,” which Eisgruber has been very quick to invoke. Not that I think I can do any better in this spatially limited letter from the editor. An opinionist at the Prince has opined far more cogently than I ever could.

Coverage from the Prince, PAW, and other local publications assembles a story that we cannot possibly excavate in words we know. There are many failures of language.

The Nass is calling all kids. These days, there’s nothing new to say except, “I love you,” and even that one’s getting old. I want to say the same old things over and over again. I want to live with the people I love, and I don’t want it to ever end. That’s the only predestination I’m really interested in. Last night, we talked way more than we had any right to.

Then, we danced for a while. I don’t know. I’ll take my bets on eternity.

Only love, Charlie Nuermberger, EIC

Editor-in-Chief Events Editor Charlie Nuermberger John Emmett Souder Publishers Isabelle Clayton Ellie Diamond Managing Editors Sofiia Shapovalova Julia Stern Creative Director Otto Eiben

Audiovisual Editor Mia Dedic

Web Editor Abani Ahmed

Historian Jonathan Dolce

Trustees Alexander Wolff 1979 Senior Editors Katie Duggan 2019 Frankie Duryea Leah Boustan 2000 Eva Vesely Leif Haase 1987 Marc Fisher 1980 Junior Editors Rafael Abrahams Ivy Chen 2013 Melanie Garcia Robert Faggen 1982 Teo Grosu Sharon Hoffman 1991 Marisa Warman Sharon Lowe 1985 Hirschfield Mia Mann-Shafir Alex Norbrook Aiko Offner Sasha Rotko Head Copy Editors Cailyn Tetteh Sabrina Yeung Design Editor Vera Ebong Art Director Alexander Picoult

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Volume 48, Number 2

This Week:

Verbatim:

Fri

7:00p Frist Race and Capitalism

7:30p Richardson Princeton University Orchestra Concerto Concert

Tues

Sat

2:00p Julis Romo Mini Meditation Retreat (Princeton Zen Club)

7:30p Richardson Princeton University Orchestra Concerto Concert

Wed

Sun

12:30p Chapel After Noon Concert

3:00p Richardson Dance for PD®, Performance and Experiential Panel

Mon

4:30p Robertson “Galoot” Film Screening

5:30p Frist Zen Whispers – Meditation Classes with Chung Tai

Overheard one night Avid Nass reader: “Be honest guys, do you ever make up verbatims?”

Nass member: “No, noooo…. why would we ever do that?”

Avid Nass reader, nodding pensively: “Sometimes they’re just too funny to be true.”

Overheard in Coffee Club Beautiful, innocent, sweet, and doe-eyed brunette: “Could I please have a steamed lemonade, stud?”

Big-boned stallion man: “Coming right up, sugartits.”

10:00a Hurley Gallery Traces: Collaborative Exhibition by Erin Macanze, Kirsten Pardo, and Julia Stahlman 12:15p Robertson Iran & Persian Gulf Studies Wednesday Seminar Series

4:30p McCosh Nat Turner and the Late Emancipation Novel

Thurs

12:30p Firestone Crafternoons at Firestone

7:30p Richardson Hagen String Quartet

Got Events?

Email John Emmett Souder at js0735@princeton.edu with your event and why it should be featured.

For advertisements, contact Isabelle Clayton at ic4953@princeton.edu.

Overheard in group chat Dreamer: “In my dream, my mom sliced my head open with a hammer/knife and then we were running around everywhere, and my head was just bleeding, and I was happy.

I didn’t like it.”

Overheard in a classroom Sedatephobic professor: “If you’re not talking I’m going to keep talking. I fear a vacuum.”

Overheard in NCW Just a girl brewing tea: “Guys, life is about making beverages.”

Overheard in eating club Brave white woman: “Can you stop talking, because I haven’t liked anything you’ve said for the past hour.”

About us:

The Nassau Weekly is Princeton University’s weekly news magazine and features news, op-eds, reviews, fiction, poetry and art submitted by students. There is no formal membership of the Nassau Weekly and all are encouraged to attend meetings and submit writing and art. To submit, email your work to thenassauweekly@gmail.com by 10 p.m. on Thursday.

Include your name, netid, word count, and title. We hope to see you soon!

Overheard while waiting (for elevator) Elevator eunuch: “I’m not very patient, but I’m also not a walker…especially upstairs.”

Overheard on a Tuesday Perceptive professor: “So many things often feel accidental… like being gay or whatever. Or the Metamorphosis.”

Overheard through the Gram Chill-ass chiller, chillingly: “Last night was such a fever dream. Everything happened yet nothing did.”

5:30p Chapel Sound Journey with Ruth Cunningham

Overheard during Room Draw Secular folklorist: “We should get one of those rooms with a shared bathroom.”

Biblical muddlehead: “Oh, you mean an Adam and Eve?” Overheard while discussing DDA OA veteran: “Mandatory affinity group is segregation.

That is literally the definition.”

Submit to Verbatim Email thenassauweekly@gmail.com

Overheard in East Pyne Slavic professor probing his students: “I am being kind of a jerk here, but that’s the point.”

Read us: nassauweekly.com Contact thenassauweekly@gmail.com us: Instagram & Twitter: @nassauweekly Join us: We meet on Mondays and Thursdays at 5 p.m. in Bloomberg 044!

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February 29, 2024 PAGE DESIGN BY HAZEL FLAHERTY

That Girl “That girl walks for thirty minutes at twelve incline and three speed on the treadmill while drinking one of her goal-three Stanleycup tumblers of water and journals when she’s out of the shower where she shaved her underarms and legs and vulva with a vanilla bodyscrub.”

By SASHA ROTKO

I

have a question for you: who is “that girl”? Doom-scrolling on TikTok, I see “that girl workout routine,” “that girl morning routine,” and “things I did in 2023 that made me that-girl.” I just want to know who she is.

I asked my younger sister (a fifteen year old girl who never parts from her Stanley-cup tumbler) to explain the concept to me, and she told me, “That girl is, like, the perfect girl who has the perfect life.

She eats healthy, wakes up early, reads a lot. She’s just perfect.”

The phenomenon of that girl reminds me of a couple of things. It reminds me, primarily, of a modern equivalent to finishing school.

Girls of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were sent to Parisian or even Bostonian finishing schools for the purpose of learning how to become a woman–no, a perfect woman. How to hold a cup of tea, how to walk in a balanced way like Anne Hathaway in the Princess Diaries, how to prepare a meal, and how to bat your eyes just right. But the purpose of it all was to learn how to lure a man with stacks of gold in the bank (or,

more modernly, the absence of a PS5 and the presence of a stable job) to your table in the salon, at the speakeasy, in the club, or right into your Instagram DMs. Sound familiar?

That girl walks for thirty minutes at twelve incline and three speed on the treadmill while drinking one of her goal-three Stanley-cup tumblers of water and journals when she’s out of the shower where she shaved her underarms and legs and vulva with a vanilla bodyscrub. Her journaling is a greater percentage aspiration than it is reflection, but does that matter when everyone seems to love her? Does that matter when everyone seems to want to be her?

A friend of mine and I met up in Los Angeles recently, and during one of our many joint philosophical musings, she brought up a girl she’d met on her recent trip to San Diego State University. This girl, my friend said, lays a moodboard on her nightstand where most people lay their alarm clocks, so that it is the first thing she sees when she wakes up. Not dissimilar to a 2004 teen’s compilation of

Seventeen clippings, these were printer-paper cutouts of Pinterest pins, captioned with affirmations.

A supermodel and, underneath her, “my skin is this clear.” Rory Gilmore and, underneath her, “my grades are this good.” Laminated with packing tape and stuck to a cardboard backing is “that girl” in her ephemeral state. This year, that girl is smart like Rory Gilmore and clean like a lifestyle influencer. She has the same hairless body men who don’t see a problem with wanting to fuck a high-school girl unapologetically crave. Next year, that girl smokes Marlboro Reds and wears her hair like the protagonist of a One Direction y/n fanfiction–in a messy bun, so that Harry Styles sees she is that girl, and not like other, less perfect, ones. It doesn’t matter what you want. It matters what they want.

When I was a young girl, perhaps spanning the ages of eight to thirteen, I would read over and over again the nationwide bestseller, “The Body Book for Girls”, compiled and distributed by the American Girl Doll corporation.

The Body Book for Girls made

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apparent that, in order to remain healthy and beautiful, I had to follow these simple steps: brush your teeth for two minutes twice a day, wash your hairbrushes in warm water twice a month, be kind to your friends, go bra shopping with your mother at the precise moment you see dimples form beneath where your breasts might one day be, change pads or tampons every eight hours when you are on your period which is precisely five days per month and wear pantiliners when you aren’t, clean the insoles of your running shoes so you don’t get ringworm, and absolutely eat according to the food pyramid that nutritionists will repeatedly recall and change so that each year you take health class you are told something different.

“The Body Book for Girls” did feature a range of body types, hair colors, boob sizes, and, depending on which edition sat on your bookshelf, skin colors, but that girl remains a nameless, faceless goalpost that refuses to rest at any sort of stopping point. No amount of achieved goals or implemented tactics toward perfection are ever enough to be happy with ourselves as we are.

Girlhood is a state of desire.

Girlhood is a state of aspiration.

Girlhood is riddled with goals, and a place where successes go undermined or unacknowledged because there is always something new to want. But I know you know that.

Finishing schools were not taught by fathers or husbands, but mothers and wives. “The Body Book for Girls” was not written by a collective of men, but a group of women, because men have never cared to learn the intricacies of the female body. They prefer to let it remain a three-pronged

monolith: personality, tits, and (unbeknownst to the clitoris) the vagina, whose purpose is solely sex and has nothing to do with periods or childbirth or anything so uncomfortable. And the “That Girl” hashtag on TikTok is in fact not cluttered with men trying to tell women how to eat or how to dress or how to exercise in order to become the epitome of perfection. It is women that bow down to “That Girl” like she is the feminist messiah. It is women that offer other women simple and easy steps to perfection.

These are practices of “self care.” But if you follow the simple and easy steps to perfection and you are not perfect by the end of it, then there’s just something wrong with you.

But are you truly ugly, or do you just not do pilates? Womanhood is plagued by a pandemic of insecurity. If the Stanley-cup gets your girlfriends to drink their lemon water and their skin is looking great and the supermodel on your nightstand moodboard is staring back at you with the lie you call an aspiration written underneath her, you will buy the Stanley-cup. And if the iPad Pro is how all the girls on the internet take notes in their classes and their grades are tantalizing and Rory Gilmore’s Virgin Mary demeanor hangs before your eyes like a carrot on a stick, you will buy the iPad Pro. Keeping women insecure is great for business.

But why are we complicit? Why, when we know perfection is impossible to achieve, do we force it upon each other and spin aimlessly in the hamster wheel that is womanhood?

I suppose the better question is, how can we not be complicit? All of us in a hamster wheel running as fast as we possibly can is not a

cycle that ends. Progress is slow.

Equality is daunting.

Girlhood is a state of desire, but it should not be a state of aspiration. When the world doesn’t change and the pressure isn’t released, what else are we to do but mitigate? “That Girl” is not our feminist messiah, she is simply the ideal we have concocted of a woman who can escape this never-ending story. “That girl” is on a one-way trip away from the patriarchy. We simply hope we can hitch a ride.

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February 29, 2024 PAGE DESIGN BY JASMINE CHEN ART BY KARYNA PODZIREI

something Different Bear is late to his Standard Evening Meetup with Rabbit, a Samovar, and the Stars

By SOFIIA SHAPOVALOVA

“M

y goodness, Bear! I had been so worried about you…fretting about where you could have gotten off to this evening,” Rabbit exclaimed, dropping the Rather Large Stick he’d found in preparation for their Standard Evening Meetup and rushing to embrace his friend in a desperate hug.

Squirrel had counselled Rabbit earlier that day, wisely suggesting that it would be easier to stoke the fire with a Stick rather than fanning it with the usual leaves that would typically shrivel in the process. Rabbit had been eager to show Bear how the fire would burn brighter and stronger if he used the Stick. Poor Rabbit. He was nothing if not incredibly dedicated to this ritual he partook in with Bear – to carefully feeding the fire underneath the rusted Samovar he and Bear had trudged up a few years ago by the river bank, so they could share a cup of tea every night before closing their eyes. They’d

count the Stars too. Night upon night. Rabbit couldn’t sleep without the Stars. Without Bear.

Bear scratched his head, hitting that particular spot behind his left ear that always seemed to be nursing an itch. “Hmmm,” he sighed, plopping down. “Gosh, I don’t know Rabbit. I seem to have gotten lost, haven’t I?” “Lost?” Rabbit gasped. “But Bear! You take the same path every night! You have for As Long As We Can Remember…Remember?”

“You’re right Rabbit, but tonight I think something must have made me Act Funny because suddenly I had this thought…wouldn’t it be nice to have some Honey? And then I thought I would get some Honey.

Which I did. Because I thought it would be nice to share with you and the Stars and that maybe we could do something Different.”

“Different?” Rabbit scrunched his nose.

“Yeah Rabbit…Different. And so I’d set off for the evening…to visit you, and as I was walking through the Woods I heard a curious sort of Noise. It sounded like Buzzing, and I thought it might have been Bees, and so I followed it because where there are Bees there is Honey, and I wanted to bring you the Honey so

we could have something Different tonight with the Stars.”

Rabbit had started tapping his foot incessantly, casting anxious glances between Bear and the Samovar nestled within the fire’s glow. The Stick somehow mattered much less now.

“But as I followed the Noise, Rabbit, I seemed to find myself inside of a Cloud, and it was so thick that I think I might have gotten Lost. I could still hear the Buzzing though, and I so very much wanted to bring us the Honey, so I kept walking. I thought I saw something that could be a Bee, but then I discovered it was just a leaf. Floating.

Like the ones you use to fan our fires. And then I saw a shadow so large and frightening, Rabbit, and I got scared, so I ran back. I wanted to get out of the Cloud, but I couldn’t. And the Buzzing got louder and louder until I thought I was going in circles. And I think I must have been because I got so dizzy that I fell down.”

“Oh Bear,” Rabbit cried, wringing his paws in dismay.

“Yes, it was quite Sad, and, for a moment, I forgot how to move.

And I closed my eyes so I could at least stop looking at the Cloud, but I could still hear the Buzzing.

I tried to close my eyes tighter but that was no good either, and then I began to think of you Rabbit and how I had just wanted to find us some Honey so we could share something Different tonight.”

“But Bear! Isn’t what we have quite nice? Don’t you like the Samovar and the Stars? I feel as if I can’t sleep if I don’t count them with you! And that if they’re shining up there every night, that we simply must count them? That, maybe, they’re lit each night because we need them? Bear and Rabbit need them?”

“I like the Stars, Rabbit,” Bear agreed, “I like them very much. But tonight I think something made me Act Funny. I am sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I just wanted to find us some Honey.”

“But how ever did you find your Way Out?” Rabbit had taken to pacing nervously in front of Bear, forgetting all about the fire and growing progressively more distressed with each pass.

“Oh, that part is funny too. I am still quite puzzled about it all. But as I lay there with my eyes closed and the Buzzing noise growing louder and louder, I thought I heard another sound from far off.

It sounded like you humming,

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Volume 48, Number 2

Rabbit. And then I heard a thud out of Nowhere!” And here, Bear got up and stomped his foot with as much strength as he could muster to demonstrate to Rabbit. “And so, I opened my eyes and right by my side, laying haphazard on the ground – you wouldn’t believe it – was a pot of Honey!”

“No!” Rabbit jumped back, startled.

“Yes, Rabbit! Only the trouble was it was all broken, as if the Sky had wanted to give it to me but dropped it by accident.”

“But Bear. That still doesn’t explain how you got Unlost!”

“Well, I just followed the humming Rabbit. Your humming, I suppose.”

“I hadn’t been humming at all!”

“Hmm, well someone had been,” Bear nodded gravely, sitting down again. “How else could I have found you? Someone knew I had to get to you and our Samovar and the Stars.”

“Bear, this is all very silly of you.

You didn’t even get the Honey!”

“But I did get a little. Just enough. It’s broken and not much, but I figure it will give us something a bit Different tonight.” Bear carefully pulled out a piece of pot he’d been holding, with just a smear of Honey pooled in the belly of the fragment. “See?” Rabbit sniffed back a tear, not caring much at all for this new Honey. “You’re late, Bear.”

Bear raised the Honey up higher, as if he were showing the Stars too. “See?” He turned back to this friend. “Rabbit, I think it might have been the Stars that were humming.”

“Don’t be silly. Stars don’t hum.

They light up. So you and I can count them. Because we need to, Bear.”

“I think I needed the Honey tonight Rabbit…I really needed it.”

Rabbit stared at Bear, not sure which of them had changed. Why or how. If they had changed at all.

Maybe it was because he’d used that Stick earlier today. He approached the fire, gently hoisting the Samovar off and placing it between him and Bear. Rabbit looked

up at the Stars in silence. “One,” he whispered. A twang of sorrow lacing his voice.

“Two,” Bear whispered back, wondering why the Sky had dropped the Honey. And how had it known, Bear was looking for something Different that night?

Sofiia Shapovalova had taken to pacing nervously, forgetting all about the Nassau Weekly and growing progressively more distressed with each pass.

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nass recommends

February 29, 2024

The Alcohol Initiative’s Magic: The Gathering Club An encounter at a semiregular gathering of trading card game enthusiasts

By CHARLIE NUERMBERGER

T

he email starts: “Greetings Planeswalkers…” It leads me to the basement of the JRR, which is funny because it’s very apparent that none of the attendees are econ majors, which in retrospect makes perfect sense. One guy wears a cape.

I make the trip alongside another member of the Nass Weekly masthead, and already, we’re out for blood. We’ve studied the most recent set. We’ve discussed the chase cards, the optimal archetypes, and the most efficient methods to reduce your opponent to zero life. We have sculpted ourselves into machines of trading-card wizardry.

In the basement, eight players sit at a table–we each open a booster pack. Fifteen cards: one rare (or, if you’re lucky, a mythic rare), four uncommons, ten commons. Each player selects one card then passes the pack to their left. We each empty three booster packs this way and finish with forty-five cards. Then we build our decks. It’s the most rewarding way to play the game because it’s sort of triathletic: pressuring your card selection, deck building, and gameplay skills.

Besides, other formats are clogged with miserable reanimator decks, throwing out “Atraxa, Grand Unifier” on the cheap, and midrange shells, fronted by the dread “Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.” The metagame is too lopsided to really care about.

The draft descends upon me in this very beautiful way where

everything comes together. I stick to two of the five colors that organize Magic the Gathering. My green and black shell centers around a strong removal package, early-game ramp options, and, the centerpiece, “Mosswood Dreadknight,” which I can loop into card advantage and sacrifice-based synergies.

I fumble with the cards but not noticeably. The Magic the Gathering club is funded by the Alcohol Initiative, so you have to pregame beforehand. It’s a Saturday. It’s 9pm. The game is best played with the golden intuition of skirting the legal limit.

My masthead companion says it’s funny there aren’t any women.

He drafts a fairies deck with a similar competitive edge.

The draft organizers assemble a tournament-style bracket–I pull my chair in front of your table.

You tell me your name, but I forget it. I can tell you’ve played before because you overhand mash shuffle your deck, which gives me a chance to check you out. Your hairline thins and pushes toward your temples. Your band t-shirt pulls tight across your breasts.

You don’t make much eye contact.

We cut each other’s decks and roll to see who plays first. It feels like foreplay.

I can see the reflection of your hand in your glasses. You tell me that you’ve drafted riskily, which I like. Most of the room seems afflicted with this paranoid humility: a sentiment that reduces to It’s okay because I don’t usually play much Magic: the Gathering.

The first game doesn’t go your way. You’re stuck on lands, and you don’t draw into your strongest threats. I’m nice about it. When

you concede, your hand brushes against mine, and we glance up at each other.

As we push deeper into the second game, you start sweating. Your voice rises an octave. It looks like the first game might be repeating itself.

Suddenly though, the game is tight. I pass the turn. And look, you’ve got a “Decadent Dragon,” and my board is wonderfully, astonishingly open, except for this “Mosswood Dreadknight”–and he can’t block the Dragon. Your eyes widen. You attack. Of course, you attack. I cast “Leaping Ambush,” untapping the Dreadknight and killing your dragon. It’s an impossibly classic maneuver.

Now, my turn. I swing in with Mosswood Dreadknight. The knight connects. It’s over. It’s always been over. It was over the second you walked into this basement.

Charlie Nuermberger’s discussed the chase cards, the Nassau Weekly, and the most efficient methods to reduce your opponent to zero life.

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Volume 48, Number 2 PAGE DESIGN BY VERA EBONG

Chuquimamani Condori’s DJ E A cathartic, eardrumexploding record from Bolivian “epic collage” artist Chuquimamani Condori

By FRANKIE DURYEA

“T

his is the sound of our water ceremonies, the 40 bands playing their melodies at once to recreate the cacophony of the first aurora & the call of the morning star Venus,” writes Chuquimamani-Condori with the release of their return album DJ E. “If you ever cared for me, if I ever loved you, if I ever did you wrong, if you ever broke my heart, then fuck w me now.”

The eclectic trans producer, formerly known as Elysia Crampton and E+E, returns to their Aymara name to drop this smashing internet hit. The first song of the album, Breathing, begins with a timestretched sample of the Bolivian music group Yuray’s Un Vaso de Cerveza. Lethargic and drawn out, the song is overlaid with pounding bass, as the only part of the sample that begins to be audible over electronic loops is the siku, an Andean pan flute.

The release is preceded by the

opening of a visual art exhibition

by Chuquimamani-Condori and their brother Joshua Chuquimia Crampton. The two Norcal natives opened their exhibit, Q’iwanakaxa/ Q’iwsanakaxa Utjxiwa, at the Queens gallery MoMA PS1, in March of 2023. The exhibit features black and white portraits of their great-great-grandparents, Francisco Tancara and Rosa Quiñones, Aymara activists, nestled between two futuristic speakers and other collaged materials.

The visual display is a collision of indigenous Bolivian history and the technologically futuristic potential the two siblings envision.

Chuquimamani-Condori works in the genre of epic collage, best described as a mash of pop and eclectic sampling (think Rihanna with a car crash sound effect over it.) Even in 2014, when Fader Magazine first wrote about epic collage, they identified Elysia as a pioneer, joining a legacy of trans artists dominating the genre since its inception. ChuquimamaniCondori says in an interview, “I’m finally finding my place in this live setting that incorporates the use of spoken word as well as musical performance (...) I never thought that I would have to create a new space like that, but maybe it’s part of queer experience.” Employing Bolivia’s history of trans representation (in cross-dressing mariposa performers and fluid gender dynamics pre-colonization), Chuquimamani-Condori creates their own unique musical space through forward thinking production.

Chuquimamani-Condori identifies the dynamic production of their music with the Aymara idea of taypi. They describe the term as

“a sort of juncture where the spacetimes of the here and now and the unknown, de-known, co-mingle.”

Their music employs this idea, simultaneously drawing influence from Bolivian indigenous history and internet culture. This collision of histories carries a radical potential of transformation, a space outside the colonial narrative that defines musical expectations. The climactic songs of DJ E, “Return” and “Know,” are just this. Mixing thumping 808s, the sampling of a literal circular saw, and cumbia, the songs seem to exist outside the traditional measures of musical “goodness.”

When interviewed, Chuquimamani proudly reports that the album is “unmastered” – meaning that none of the instruments or sounds are compressed or lessened. This fact is obvious when experiencing the album (and it is an experience); your speakers grumble and crack as the textured soundscape exceeds doctor-recommended-decibel-listening-levels.

But don’t get it twisted – this ear-drum-exploding violence doesn’t make the listening experience harsh. Critics have called the album “cathartic,” pointing to the deep underlying joy that stands out even in the muddy mix. On the song “Engine,” angelic keys float over the Andean drums and industrial crackling. The radical dream Chuquimamani-Condori offers is one where beauty lies in the wreckage of their musical mash-up.

The album carries radical potential, and I think that’s a good reason to listen to it. But just in case, here’s another reason: it bumps.

Chuquimamani-Condori has been at the top of epic collage for a

while, and this latest album is a labor of love, made from the honed skills of a caring artist. Listening to it is giving yourself to their radical dream, and succumbing to the destructive power of unrestricted noise. If you like what you hear, Chuquimamani will be performing in New York on March 14th. Go support, go take part.

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by KAILA AVENT

February 29, 2024 PAGE DESIGN BY VERA EBONG

11

by KAILA AVENT

Volume 48, Number 2

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February 29, 2024 PAGE DESIGN BY JASMINE CHEN

Ancestral Burdens

““Oh, Alexita! I thought you were just fat, but I see the baby bulge.” She continued crying as she spoke, drying her tears on Alexandra.”

By MARIANA CASTILLO

“I

’m not obese,” Alexandra told her mother, Noemi, who was loudly blowing her nose and simultaneously signaling for a waiter nearby.

Noemi had invited Alexandra out to lunch only to trap her into being the only audience member to a spiel describing the latest of her spiritual courses—Ancestral Burdens. Noemi had traveled to Colombia for it and been taught by a widowed woman who had received some sort of spiritual certification from a made-up institution somewhere on the web. For the past half an hour, Alexandra had endured a convolutedly nonsensical explanation about why her mother’s three divorces were a result of her having been born in March. She then transitioned the conversation to address Alexandra, telling her that because they were mother and daughter with birthdays exactly three months apart, they were doubles in some cosmic way—their fates were irrevocably meant to mirror each other.

Noemi threw the abused napkin onto her unfinished plate and wiped her hands. “Obesity is not a state, it’s a mentality—it’s my fault. I’m the reason you can’t seem to lose weight, Alexandita.

It’s because ever since you were a child I cursed you. Your weight is the universe’s expression of the weight of my secret. I never told you. Oh, I’m sorry! I was terrified you’d judge me for it, but I’m ready now. You’re not the only one who’s suffered because of this either.

This secret is the reason I’m obese too, the reason I’ve been dieting my whole life yet can never lose weight—it’s why you can’t lose weight and why my mother died a fat woman. It’s generational.

Don’t look at me that way—I’m fat and you’re fat, I’m single, you’re single—don’t you see? There’s no denying this. It’s a pattern, it’s repeating, and the only way to—” Alexandra scooted her chair back, letting the sound echo through the restaurant. There was a brief hush from some conversations around them. Her mother’s words reminded her of a podcast she’d been listening to called “Unlikely Diets,” where the host—a woman with a thin, blonde voice—had been talking about the subconscious side of dieting and the way that stressors could creep into a person’s mind and stand as a barrier between them and their dieting goals. She’d never tell her mother this, however. Instead, she pulled out a bill from her wallet and threw it on the table before looking at her and saying, “I’m not fat, I’m pregnant.”

That had been Tuesday. It was now Saturday morning and Alexandra hadn’t spoken to her mom since.

She was currently washing dishes alone in her apartment. She had chosen this apartment when she’d moved to New York a couple of months ago because, though a tiny studio, it had floor-to-ceiling windows that spanned almost every wall. They were so big that she rarely had to turn the lights on.

Even at night, the lights from the city around her illuminated the apartment just enough. She’d recently listened to another podcast, this one all about how to get ahold of one’s sleep pattern to optimize rest at night, that stressed the importance of avoiding artificial lighting at night. So, she had taken to wandering her apartment in the dark rather than turning on the lights when she was getting ready for bed.

Her cell phone rang.

Through all the glass in her apartment, she’d been keeping an eye on the setting sun as she hurriedly scrubbed the pans before her. The thought of leaving them overnight made her nauseous. So, she let the call go to voicemail. She finished and dried her hands just as the last rays of sun left her apartment. In the dark, she found her phone but hesitated before checking who the missed call had been from.

If somebody really needed her, they would find a way to contact her. She told herself this and put her phone on Do Not Disturb mode. She put on her PJs in the dark and went to bed, proud of her self-restraint—the same podcast

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Volume 48, Number 2

about sleep had also encouraged its listeners to keep their dopamine in check. Be the boss of your own chemical releases.

The next morning, she was awakened early by the overabundance of light that quickly filled the room, so bright it made her white sheets glow. Go to sleep with the sun and wake up with it.

Inspired by her self-control from that previous night, she decided to leave her phone on Do Not Disturb for the next few days, taking the opportunity to do that dopamine cleanse she’d watched a forty-five-minute YouTube video on. She didn’t have a job yet, and she thought the cleanse would conveniently also serve to punish her mother a little longer for calling her obese—she was used to her mother making comments about her weight, but the O-word had been too much. She deserved a bit of the silent treatment.

Alexandra went out and bought a couple of books and ingredients to prepare the dishes she’d downloaded from her Instagram page. She also ordered some Magnesium-Glycinate because she’d heard it was supposed to naturally shut off your brain at night.

Ever since the fight with her mother, she’d noticed it had been taking her longer to fall asleep at night.

This made her angrier at Noemi.

Three days passed and Alexandra successfully left her phone untouched in a corner of the kitchen counter. Her apartment had become a yellow hub of self-improvement—that is, till late afternoon on the third day when somebody knocked on her door.

She thought it strange. Though she had a couple of people she knew in the city, none were close enough to drop by unannounced.

It could only be her mother.

She breathed in and out and prepared herself to forgive and forget before slowly making her way away from her coffee and book.

When she opened the door, she was met with the three-inch lens through which peered the teary eyes of Señora Roberta, her mother’s next-door neighbor and only real friend.

Señora Roberta, sneaking a look inside the apartment and the youthful, rested face of Alexandra, wasted no time in scolding her for having missed her own mother’s funeral. “I know you’re pregnant— don’t worry! Noemi told me. I know everything. I know these first few weeks can be tough, but I really wish you could’ve gone and said just a few words. You know your mother didn’t have very many friends,” and with that, she embraced the stunned Alexandra.

She was speechless, almost annoyed. Her brain seemed to have evaporated into a cloud of white.

She didn’t know what to process first—the news of her mother, or the fact that she had told people Alexandra was pregnant.

She decided to tackle the easiest of the two, not wanting to face the other. “She told you I was pregnant?”

“She was so excited and she kept telling me she had found something new to live for—and she was so motivated she got the gym membership that same afternoon. Said she wanted to get fit, to live long for that baby. But I’m sure you’ve heard all that. Oh, Alexita!

I thought you were just fat, but I see the baby bulge.” She continued crying as she spoke, drying her tears on Alexandra. She dropped her hands to Alexandra’s stomach and she flinched back, a black feeling shooting up her spine. Her legs felt weak.

“Noemi will live on through that child.” These were Señora Roberta’s last words before excusing herself, leaving Alexandra holding onto the door frame.

The apartment behind her suddenly felt cold and solitudinous.

Her hands gravitated toward a belly that drooped past her frame, and a terrible feeling of guilt brought tears to her eyes.

She ran back into the blue of her apartment and found her phone.

She turned it on and a flourish of calls, texts, and all sorts of notifications flooded her blurring vision.

Every cousin and aunt had called or texted, her old boss had sent his condolences. Even her ex-boyfriend whom she hadn’t talked to in over a year had texted her to ask how she was holding up. Her reading setup, where she’d been blissfully sitting for the past three days, seemed ugly and gray. She let herself fall to the floor and she stayed there as the sun set all around her and bathed her apartment with darkness.

Her mother had died at the gym, a truly tragic event. She had tripped and been ejected off of some equipment and hit her head on a pole on the way down. The sound echoed hollowly over the hum of machines, but had been drowned out by the noise-cancellation headphones worn by everybody in her proximity. Nobody heard her.

Throughout the next month, she grieved her mother. She focused on setting all her things in order and busied herself with the maintenance of her mother’s apartment and belongings. Three weeks later, after a long day of running errands and with the looming reality that she had to find a job soon, she walked into a surprise baby shower that Señora Roberta

had organized in Alexandra’s apartment. In all the flurry of activity and grief, Alexandra had forgotten to tell the world she wasn’t actually pregnant. As she smiled and opened presents, she thought about how she knew she hadn’t really forgotten to tell people about the fakeness of the pregnancy. She was simply ashamed. She stood up and said a short speech about how her mother would’ve loved this baby more than she could even begin to describe. They cut the cake but, rubbing her stomach, Alexandra refused to eat any.

For many days after she thought about the last conversation with her mother.

She couldn’t stop thinking about that secret. The desire to know gnawed at her. She thought back to “Unlikely Diets” and wondered if the skinny-voiced host would ever make a podcast on the relationship between secrets and dieting.

She probably would.

14

February 29, 2024 PAGE DESIGN BY VERA EBONG ART BY ALEXANDER PICOULT

I’M MOVING OUT OF “I’m moving offline. I really mean it this time. After writing this essay on a cloudconnected word processor, you’ll never see me surfing these waves again.”

I

By MOLLIKA JAI SINGH

’m packing my bags. I’m moving offline. I really mean it this time. After writing this essay on a cloud-connected word processor, you’ll never see me surfing these waves again. You can find me in class, on my purple bicycle, or trying and failing to break my new Mexican hot chocolate habit at the town’s favorite and most overrated-but-still-good coffee shop.

Let me tell you what happened, why I’ve decided to shake this addiction.

First, I freaked out about being on a particular social media site too much, read a post on said site about eating chips when you should eat real food, and got the craving, so I put on my headphones and went down to the kitchen, at almost two in the morning. My fingers still smell like tomato chips, which I had instead of the masala ones because the new masala recipe sucks. I can smell it all the way from up here; my fingers are a whole torso away, tapping away by my crossed legs.

Then, I tapped into a slow-productivity vlogger I hadn’t watched in a long time. The video I chose

was titled “how to reset for 2024,” and only a couple of minutes in I grew frustrated to not be given actionable steps, to just be hearing a monologue about the last twelve months of this person’s life, which I haven’t been keeping up with and so was not actually that interested. I later realized that the second half of the title read “reflections & lessons I learned this year,” and in that moment, pacing in the kitchen, the only lit room in the house at this witching hour, I let myself relax into this person’s bitter and sweet reminiscences. Yes, like her, I really could be optimistic about being different in the new year, being better. Yes, watching videos online — or listening to them while staring out the window to the backyard — really could change my life for the better. Yes, I really could change. It felt meditative. Pacing, snacking, listening. Her words felt meditative. She’s talking about mindfulness.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. She’s gone into an ad read about a mindfulness app.

It was so smooth. I would call it suave if that word didn’t remind me of another stupid brand. She’s clearly written her own copy. She’s talking about her personal experience with the app. I think I believe that she’s actually used it. I fast forward through the rest of the ad, feeling icky inside, used. I am the product, right?

I rush upstairs and start typing while the video is still going, already

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Volume 48, Number 2

THE INTERNET thinking about how good this will read in my campus alt-weekly news magazine. I am the product, right?

As the video ends, she says she’s on vacation with her partner and “his cofounder’s family.” I don’t know what his company does, but all I can think is oh my god, another one.

I recently watched a video on the dangerous practices and recklessness of freight train companies, and the top comment read “I love how the vast majority of problems highlighted by this show are a direct result of nothing but corporate greed.” My friend who interviewed with one of these freight companies for a job responds, “All the freight railroads are big companies that do big company things.”

It’s not an excuse, I think. He just knows how things are.

Another personality says that the corporation gatekeeping diagnostic tests is not the enemy–the enemy is the disease. It’s great rhetoric, the kind of speech that gets you speaking time at international governing bodies. But I’m just so tired of being nice. The orange and mango juice at the airport costs sixteen dollars.

On a video call earlier tonight, an emoji appeared as I was speaking to my lover, and now certain gestures will trigger certain emojis on that platform, and now I am being scanned all the time, as my lover said, or at least now, I am aware of it. I need to leave the app that made me have that craving for chips, but all of poetry happens

there, and the cutting edge of gender and sexuality theory is there, or maybe it’s in my mirror, maybe the cutting edge is in the glass of my mirror.

How my heart is beating so fast, because I got distracted and read something very very sad. How I’ve gone through this essay to scrub it of brand names, to make it feel like I could be you, or you could be me.

How my mother cried after visiting her parents who live so far away, but still she came back here, where I’ve been pampered and educated beyond her wildest dreams. I am the product, right?

So, yeah. I’m gone. Send me a letter on snail mail. Well, I guess I’ll still be on email. I’ll probably stay on the poetry app too, where I might happen to peek at hot takes and anxious news. And people have to know to read this somehow…

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February 29, 2024 PAGE DESIGN BY CATHLEEN WENG

LO S T VA L L E Y

ART BY HANNAH MITTLEMAN

Lost manuscripts recovered from a cairn in Colorado

F

By DANIEL VIORICA

ound rolled in a rusted can, by a cairn. Not far from us— halfway between the ridge and Sangre de Cristo. I asked at East Mountain, even at Zimmerman, nothing. Not sure who wrote it. Not sure when. Send thoughts.

With love,

were blood and feathers, halved corpses splayed on the rocks.

The wire front of the coop bent and twisted; it lifted a foaming paw. Tongue brushing a tooth, eggshell-white.

Why are you here? it asked.

To feed the chickens.

But there are no chickens to feed.

I want to run. I want to tumble down the path, skidding, blood on my knees.

It notices me. Blinks, eyes violet.

3.

I grew up in a house within a lull.

A small house: two rooms. Some mornings, light would come through the windows, catching terracotta mother kept so clean.

I remember leaving that house, grandmother’s house, for the other, the skeleton, on a day without flowers.

We walked. The day was grey.

1.

There is much left of the valley.

Cactus and rimrock. Scrub oak.

The broken chair we found in the woods, preserved in its age.

There are the steps we made together, still pressed into the dirt.

2.

I went to feed the chickens their many-colored grain. Up the scree, early yet, so the sky is deep like water. Past prickly pear still blooming.

Limbs catching on juniper. The air loud as I reached the ridgeline.

A lion waited for me. Its claws

There were things to do, dishes to scrub, corn to mash, garden to tend. Quiet to be kept, broken, worn to a ball.

I woke. Confused by the light. I tried to see the sun rise. I was always too late.

Then there was father, still sleeping, light soft but enough to find lines upon his face. Could never see them, any other time.

By the time he stirred, was over the hills.

4.

And the tenement below the cliffside—do you remember? We found it on a July morning, climbing the ridgeline, trying to get out of the rain. Scattered rocks. Placed carefully. Have they been here long?

No, I thought. Someone put them here.

But don’t you think, you said to me, they might have been here for a very long time? They have settled into what is quick becoming mud.

Sometimes, in the old summers especially, a stream would run through the valley. We could hear it from the house. Complement to the rain.

and bitterness.

One moment there were stars.

Then the sky was just blue enough to drown them out. Only the silhouettes of familiar trees, junipers and the ponderosa from our window.

Through Carnuel he came last night.

At sunset he walked, like a stranger, gold-flecked dust. But steady. The people watched: they knew him, tall, even spider-like, long face, skin and red veins.

I remember what mother told me: mountain lions hunt at dawn and at dusk.

I can’t move.

Will I see you again? I say, quietly.

Yes, it says. Some other time.

With grey fur—except where the blood has already started to dry— it becomes a shadow. Twists down into the valley. Sun painting hills golds and blues.

Dark like the lightning struck tree, barbed wire rusting with yucca.

The wind blew. It was breaking something away.

And there was father’s house, in front of us. Flat fronted. Crooked teeth of wooden supports.

Windows like the eyes of owls.

In the little house, mother woke early. Still dark. Took water in a kettle, baked it, turned it to steam

He went quickly. Rotting town above him. A shelf up the mountainside, rock choked, houses.

Sandia granite, and juniper and grama.

Houses until Tijeras, stream and the cottonwoods. (One day, they will build a highway here.

They will roll blacktop down the canyon, where it fits best. Cars will never stop running, from the living edge of Albuquerque, eastwards. They will glance at homes, the ones that remain, to their left and right.

They will build a highway to cut Carnuel in half.) He reached the place where the canyon curves.

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Volume 48, Number 2

Sandstone red before him. If he looked, he could see the sun perched on slopes, all the way to the crest.

He does not look. He is sunburnt. Passing through Tijeras. He is going home.

to watch. Sometimes they helped.

Soon he built a house. A tworoom house. They had a daughter in this house who would be my mother. Grandmother built the garden again; the deer stayed away, the cottontails stayed away.

5.

Mother sat here as a child. On the granite bluff, over the streambed. Dry usually but today a tepid stream. She sat and looked at the dead top of a piñon sapling. Felt her fingers brush blue-grey lichen

Mother spoke once of a man she met. Not a stranger. Old man, who walked along the old dirt tracks— cart tracks, before they were mangled in the wash.

This was before the rain stopped.

He walked with her, talked about the way things had been.

a packrat. Fever the next day; two mornings, there were black spots on his skin. Granny Hornbeck came to wash his skin with water and corn liquor. Night fell. It was dark, very cold for the summer.

was an ocean, death and weather rubbed its mantle on the seafloor.

Then a shell. Time pressed sand and chitin to stone. The fault—fire beneath—broke limestone in silver ridges from the dirt.

I see bones, he was saying. I see bones in the ditch, I feel sand between my teeth.

When Hornbeck returned, they had already buried him in the place with the curved stones.

Grandmother always meant to

In Tijeras, they will build a factory.

Smoke on the hills, and a thin metal frame. Around will be treeless dust, terraced walls of grey dust.

Inside, bonds will be broken.

Stone and silken cement; it will smell like dead air. The factory stretches at night. In winter, they will mark it with a star.

It will be quiet. Soon part of the landscape, inextricable. It will be the first thing my mother sees on the drive to Albuquerque.)

6.

He remembered when they came to the valley, grandmother and grandfather.

Grandfather from the east.

Indiana, water, mud, green and flat. And hot. He left without saying goodbye.

The rumor and time took him to Quemado. He met the daughter of a curandera and a goatherd. They spoke in her narrow house, one room, in the dark.

My grandfather, she was telling him, was struck by lightning.

Yes? He did not believe her; her English was not good.

You can still find the spot it hit him. On the mesa.

They left in the night. She had been married, but not in the church. They moved along the plain, by days, by nights. Towards the center.

Front edge of the Sandias caught them at dawn. Flame on the basin.

A lull for a house, past Tijeras, past the great hill. Half a mile down the ridge scree.

Grandmother started on the garden. Destroyed by the cottontails.

He moved rocks, he did not understand adobe. The neighbors came

We put the stone in a ring around a tree, where mother planted an iris.

Globemallow bloom indiscriminate. After a year or two, the fossil disappears.

beside her.

Again and again she thought, I know this place.

Twice grandmother’s sisters came from Datil and Farmington, to inspect the house. They had spoken the other language, while father lingered by the pine grove, while the sisters sent side glances at the child.

It was raining. The yuccas were blooming. There was a mistake.

Grandfather was mucking out

carve his name. There was never enough time.

I go to visit, sometimes. It has an ache.

7.

A chunk of limestone, revealed by the groundbreaking.

Unremarkable except for the outline of a shell, ochre, fine as the pressed wing of a cabbagefly. Edge blurred like a shadow cast in early summer.

(It swam here. When this place

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February 29, 2024 PAGE DESIGN BY CATHLEEN WENG

The Many Rhythms of Devonne Piccaver A profile of a first-year rowing recruit in an unfamiliar milieu

T

By JULIA STERN

here is a certain rhythm to a boat race, a certain musicality to the sweeping of the oars.

Perfectly synchronized, their arms fierce and unyielding, the women of Princeton’s heavyweight rowing team glide through Lake Carnegie with a pianissimo grace.

On the port side sits first-year recruit Devonne Piccaver. She is no newcomer to the world of rowing – the strain, the pull, the push are woven into her muscle tissue, as natural as walking or breathing – but she is a newcomer to America, to Princeton, and to the team that will train, compete, and share their lives with her over the next four years. Her world is turbulent. And yet, her strokes are always on-beat.

Extroverted, smiley, and quick to laugh, Devonne is everything that one might expect from a self-confident athlete, or a good-natured Brit. The demands of D1 rowing do nothing to dim an unmistakably fun personality – as evidenced by pink Crocs, earrings, and a t-shirt with rainbow butterflies. Together with a spirited English accent, Devonne has the type of personality that could put anyone at ease within minutes.

Devonne grew up in Peterborough, England, a

mid-sized city roughly one-hundred miles north of London, in the district of Cambridgeshire.

With a wry chuckle, she describes Peterborough as “pretty mediocre” and predominantly “lower middle class,” a far cry from the wealthy milieu of her new home, Princeton. Coming to one of the best universities in America was a dream come true. “Where I come from, stuff like this just doesn’t really happen,” Even before coming to Princeton, Devonne was no stranger to elitism. Rowing, too, carries a legacy of exclusivity. There are the financial barriers, yes – equipment, travel, club membership – that contribute to the elitist nature of the sport, but there is also a somewhat ubiquitous notion that rowing is for the wealthy, the white, and the male. From the start, rowing meant breaking into a culture tainted with exclusivity.

For Devonne, this meant that opportunities to row could dry up in an instant. At 14, she was scouted by the UK’s GB Start program, who identified Devonne as having the physiological makeup of an Olympic rower; as part of the program, she trained with high-level coaches funded by the British government. But when the UK’s rowing team did poorly in the Tokyo Olympics, the money disappeared, and Devonne went back to her local club. She trained hard, but with the club’s moms and dads as volunteer coaches, progress often

came slow.

Still, rowing overtook her teenage years. It became an anchor – a way of life as much as it was an extracurricular. As a young teenager, it was rowing that first pulled her from her shell. “Before I started rowing, I was very shy,” she recounts. “But I got to meet so many incredible people.” The magic, it turns out, lay in the social dimension of rowing, and the confidence boost that comes with having a “thing.” Even a stranger could tell that Devonne is really good at something. And that magic has not faded. From middle school in Peterborough, to freshman year at Princeton, rowing has always been a source of “expanded social horizons.”

Rowing also made a mark on Devonne’s academic pursuits. A few years ago, she started writing a column for Junior Rowing News, pushing against the very misconceptions about rowing that hindered her own entry into the sport.

“Bias and unfairness is what has created a divide in the rowing culture,” wrote Devonne in a 2023 article, “and the gap will only continue to separate if the culture is not altered.”

It is tempting to assume that Devonne, a competitive rower at a competitive university, far from home, a first-year student, would be altogether stressed. But somehow, Devonne seems immune to stress. She has three life mottos: “Go with the flow. Take it as it

comes. Everything will work out okay.” Besides an incredible talent for rowing, perhaps Devonne’s most impressive ability is that her demeanor is so relaxed, stable, and fun, even in the face of immense pressure. She has ambitious goals for the future – namely, to be an Olympic rower – but she is also happy being Devonne, spending time with her dog, going on day trips to London, and chatting with friends in the garden until 2 A.M. The fanfare of freshmen orientation is over now, and Devonne is falling into the tempo of Princeton, into the cycles of class, practice, homework – rinse and repeat. Her life will take on the rhythms of a crew race, and the intensity too.

Opportunity will be closer than ever. So will Princeton’s elitism.

Determination, though, has never escaped Devonne Piccaver. After all, she’s got a head start on doing well at Princeton: when the water gets choppy, just row harder.

The fanfare of the Nassau Weekly is over now, and Julia Stern is falling into the tempo of Princeton, into the cycles of class, practice, homework – rinse and repeat.

Volume 48, Number 2

STORIES WORTH TELLING Sharon Lowe on Preserving

19 PAGE DESIGN BY VERA EBONG

the Nassau Weekly

Cleaning the subterranean Jan 1984 to Jan 1985.” In this Nass Room and reflecting on pre-computer era, the Nass “rented a typesetting machine we used the magazine’s prehistory

S

By JONATHAN DOLCE

now was falling for the third time in my life, and I felt a growing sense of dread considering the walk I’d have to make from my dorm in Mathey to the basement in Bloomberg. This was the weekend, and I had woken up too late to get breakfast. Swapping bagel and cream cheese for broom and dustpan, I made my way to the deep clean I had organized for 11 am that Saturday morning.

Behind forgotten coats and misplaced boxes was a drawer dressed with a post-it note; on the note was marked in Sharpie “‘82-’85.”

Plucking a few issues withered yellow with time, I carefully skimmed through the remnants from decades past. Flipping past names unknown to me, I stopped at a byline with the name Sharon Brady – artifact of now Nass alum Sharon Lowe, the publication’s first female publisher since its founding in 1979.

The week prior, Sharon Lowe and I had been in contact so I could learn of her experience when the Nassau Weekly was in its early days.

In an endeavor to preserve her Nass memory, her responses have been documented below.

Lowe started our conversation with a clarification: “My tenure was 1982-85. I was publisher from

to produce the paper; an expensive behemoth that just spit out type columns used to manually lay out the paper. Every typo had to be reprinted, cut, and glued down...which is why we pulled an all nighter every Wednesday to put the paper to bed.” A far cry from the streamlined practices we do today.

Despite this gaudy apparatus, the young Nassau Weekly was paying from a fund that was entirely empty. The cost of printing, among other expenses, meant “we were massively in debt - the equivalent of nearly $100,000 in today’s dollars,” which “was about $35,000 then.”

Facing financial crisis, Lowe shared, “The fellow who was publisher before me was Jeremy Ben Ami, and he sat the staff down and explained that if we didn’t do something, we were going out of business.” Only a few years in the making, Lowe and the rest of the ‘Nass were not willing to give up just yet. They responded by “[figuring] out how to do fundraising, cut costs, sell more advertising.”

However, despite these efforts, “the University handed us a phone bill, which we had never seen and included charges going back years.”

The debt felt inescapable.

In early 1985, with the debt still unpaid, Lowe was requested to meet “at Nassau Hall, during which [she] somehow convinced the Dean of Students to not only forgive a major portion of our debt, but also

give [them] a bunch of the just released Apple Macintosh computers, allowing us to eliminate our second biggest expense.” Lowe emphasized just how revolutionary Macintosh computers were in publication: “The first one was introduced in 1984. We all wrote our theses on terminals attached to the mainframe. I knew very, very few people with PCs at that time.”

Though a major feat in the Nass’ debt relief, Lowe admitted, “it by no means guaranteed the long term viability of the ‘Nass, but at least [she] knew [she] was leaving the paper in a much better place.”

Lowe pioneered the early efforts of the Nassau Weekly’s preservation, embodying a rare ambition to take action when success strains itself–an ambition that was critical to the survival of the Nass.

Commenting on the relentless nature of the Nass, Lowe responded to me with a quick and pointed affirmation that “relentless is correct.”

After Lowe shared her memories, I was left wondering where this unrelenting motivation came from. Despite the massive financial crisis the Nass was in, Lowe and other members refused to witness the paper collapse. For Lowe, her

ambition to keep the Nass moving forward stems from “the energy, the creativity, and commitment to producing a high quality product not because it is going to advance careers, or improve GPAs, but because stories need telling.”

Decades later, Sharon Lowe now serves as a trustee of the Nassau Weekly, still embodying the enduring spirit that kept the Nass alive.

Through economic turmoil and technological shifts, her relentless drive to protect stories remains unchanged: an ambition I now think I am starting to understand after listening to her story. Between sex issues and (something), Nass members encapsulate the same spirit with what has kept Lowe telling stories to this day, and what has inspired me to retell hers here.

Behind the Nassau Weekly and misplaced boxes was a drawer dressed with a post-it note; on the note was marked in Sharpie “Jonathan Dolce”.

20

Morning Prayer

February 29, 2024 PAGE DESIGN BY VERA EBONG ART BY EMMA MOHRMANN

by TOMMY GOULDING

Little red psalm books that we gathered from a rack like basketballs: sometimes I would get three or four, for my friends, a utopian gesture of plenty that was received passively, the cheap worn covers sliding across the plastic tables. I hated the mornings when we read a long psalm, legs stiffening with pain as we hit the thirtieth verse. Either God was very angry at the hebrews or their enemies, or it was some ornate description of a banquet or the precise

metaphorical relation of obsequience and gratitude that the speaker had To God. This was all in a wide gray room we called the lockerteria: a monstrosity of a word that conveyed the dual function of storage and mealtime— a eucharistic place where we did a pantomime of mass, missing crucial sections because the school wasnt catholic and the teachers werent priests But the day, dark as it was from november to march, had to start with prayer, A prayer that in its droning sameness drew on the flat indiana snow the darkness of morning the reluctance to have been woken for this the longing for resurrection a flat male prayer unleavened with the grace of female voices.

If we strained we could sometimes hear the girls laughing upstairs at their service, the building divided between us like the mind of zeus and athena, we the unconscious rippling up below the rows of feet which I was inclined to imagine when I heard them overhead