The College Hill Independent Vol. 38 Issue 9

07 Enforced disappearances in Kashmir

08 PVD tackles gay flag-football

09 Surveying digital archaeology

Volume 38 • Issue 09

April 12, 2019

the College Hill   Independent

the Indy

a Brown * RISD Weekly

R n* A B row

D IS

ly Week

The Indy

OUR FRIEND

BY Eliza Chen

Contents Little Snee Johnson Aayushi Pop-Spinaci News 02 Week in the Sky Sara Van Horn, Roxanne Barnes 03 Keep Your Tongue in Its Cage Mohannad Jabrah

From The Editors

07 Against Forgetting Tiara Sharma, Kanha Prasad

The image appeared in a Facebook message with no context: a fuzzy, orange ring. “Are we looking an accretion disk?” I asked. “Black hole!” came the response. “It’s even got the jets...” Sure enough. The image was taken using data from eight radio telescopes at once, forming a composite telescope the size of the earth, thanks to an algorithm by computer scientist Katie Bouman. It shows a distant black hole with the mass of six billion suns. That’s so heavy that its gravity bends light, giving its signature halo shape. This also means that if you could somehow sit at the event horizon without being dismembered, you would see the back of your head. If you look closely at the image, you can even detect faint jets of material splurting from the poles, just as sci-fi illustrations predicted. This is cool, friends. Happy week.

Features 04 City on a Hill Jesse Barber 17 A High Stakes Game of Jenga Eve Grassfield Arts 05 Queering Bollywood Saanya Jain

- SHF

Metro 08 Waving the Flag Cate Turner 12 Mattiello and the Machine Brionne Frazier

Mission Statement

Science & Tech 09 As Seen From Above Matt Ishimaru

X 11 What does physics mean to you? Jorge Palacios

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

Ephemera 14 Don’t Spill Emma Kofman

Though this list is not exhaustive, the Indy strives to address these systems of oppression by centering the voices, opinions, and efforts of marginalized people in Providence and beyond.

Literary 15 afterLife Jorge Palacios

The Indy is constantly evolving: we are always working to make our staff and content more inclusive. Though our editing process provides an internal structure for accountability, we always welcome letters to the editor.

13 Beyond Rubbers Jennifer Katz

Week in Review Sarah Clapp Maria Gerdyman News Jacob Alabab-Moser Jessica Bram Murphy Giacomo Sartorelli Metro Julia Rock Lucas Smolcic Larson Sara Van Horn Arts Ben Bienstock Alexis Gordon Liby Hays Features Tara Sharma Cate Turner

Shannon Kingsley Lily Meyersohn Literary Shuchi Agrawal Justin Han Isabelle Rea Ephemera Nicole Cochary Claire Schlaikjer X Jorge Palacios Alex Westfall List Ella Rosenblatt Signe Swanson Will Weatherly

Science & Tech Miles Guggenheim

Special Projects Harry August Lucas Smolcic Larson

12 APRIL 2019

VOL 38 ISSUE 09

Staff Writers Jesse Barber Brionne Frazier Eduardo Gutierrez-Peña Mohannad Jabrah Nickolas Roblee-Strauss Gemma Sack Sophie Khomtchenko Emma Kofman Alina Kulman Dana Kurniawan Bilal Memon Kanha Prasad Star Su Gemma Sack Copy Editors Grace Berg Seamus Flynn Sarah Goldman Matt Ishimaru Sojeong Lim Yelena Nicolle Salvador Caroline Sprague

Design Editors Lulian Ahn Bethany Hung Designers Amos Jackson Cecile Kim Ella Rosenblatt Katherine Sang Christie Zhong Illustration Editors Pia Mileaf-Patel Eve O’Shea Ilustrators Sam Berenfield Natasha Brennan Natasha Boyko Bella Carlos Julia Illana Angie Kang Halle Krieger Katya Labowe-Stroll Sophia Meng

Sandra Moore Rémy Poisson Mariel Solomon Miranda Villanueva Claribel Wu Stephanie Wu Alana Baer Business Maria Gonzalez Web Ashley Kim Social Media Ben Bienstock Pia Mileaf-Patel

Signe Swanson Will Weatherly Managing Editors Ella Comberg Tiara Sharma Wen Zhuang MVP Cate Turner *** The College Hill Independent is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

Alumni+Fundraising Katrina Northrop Senior Editors Olivia Kan-Sperling Katrina Northrop Chris Packs

@THEINDY_TWEETS

WWW.THEINDY.ORG

WEEK IN THE SKY

BY Sara Van Horn and Roxanne Barnes ILLUSTRATION Stephanie Wu DESIGN Bethany Hung

WOW! AIRLINE FAIL!

BY Kevin Dong

POST-RAIN SPARKLE

For months, the fiscal winds had been changing for WOW Air’s fleet of pink aircraft: fourth quarter reports appeared “materially worse than originally anticipated” and rival company Icelandair withdrew from a proposed merger in November, citing unspecified yet unsatisfied financial conditions. The relentless positivity of CEO Skúli Morgensen—who believed “not having all of the answers [was] part two women. of the fun”—belied serious financial turbulence. NASA has never been particularly perceptive Ultimately, WOW’s economic situation, unlike its fleet toward the needs of female astronauts. Before her first of magenta airplanes, could not be painted over. The mission, Sally Ride reported NASA officials had timidly airline declared bankruptcy on March 28, stranding creators of the group—who wouldn’t fly with WOW asked her whether 100 tampons would be sufficient thousands of travelers and laying off over a thousand even “if you paid for my trip up front with free tickets”— for her seven day total mission. Though the agency is employees. have been dedicated trash-talkers of the airline that better populated with women than ever before—at WOW Air’s planes, operating exclusively out of allegedly charged its passengers five Euros for a small time of reporting, NASA lists 38 active astronauts, 12 Keflavik airport in Iceland, were each labeled with water bottle, among other crimes. of whom are women—this gesture doesn’t reflect well. three-letter names such as “DOG,” “WIN,” or “GPA” “Great Scott!” said the CEO of Spirit Airline on That said, the gaffe of last week’s swap doesn’t really (short for Grandpa). “I often say it costs nothing to Friday morning, whose New York Times push noti- put the feminist takeover of space back any parsecs. smile,” replied Morgensen when asked by Outlook fications must have seemed a proverbial parting of More interesting than NASA failing to do justice to Traveller about WOW’s unique qualities. “I know this the clouds. “Holy Moly!” said helicopter parents and their female staff is what this press embarrassment sounds simple, but it’s amazing how most airlines resentful Facebook groups everywhere, who experi- reveals about the agency’s eagerness to provide headseem to have forgotten this simple fact.” Fancy enced the news as sweet, sweet vindication. “Jesus lines for a presidential administration that has become customer service—a hold-over from an era when air Fucking Christ,” said the entire nation of Iceland, somewhat obsessed with rekindling interest in space travel required your Sunday best—was never WOW’s whose rapidly growing tourism sector is largely due activity. priority; both checked and carry-on luggage cost to WOW Air’s initial success and who briefly debated President Trump’s recent announcement of his extra, as did food, movies, and seat choice. Instead, the using taxpayer money to bail out the airline. But having plan to send more astronauts to walk on the moon airline marketed itself as a cheap, upbeat alternative gained a generalized fear of three-letter words and was the latest in a long line of space-related policy to its more sober competitors—all of whom seemed having lost a lot of money, this bitter creditor prefers to measures. In 2017, Vice President Pence reconvened to be operating under the conventional, conservative, silently interpret the news not as a lesson in corporate a space council that had been active during George and not-very-fun assumption that air travel should irresponsibility, but in capitalism’s inability to take a H.W. Bush’s administration, and this past summer be taken seriously. But for those who have no scru- joke. Perhaps WOW Air was slightly too comical for an the President announced plans for a military Space ples stuffing extra underwear into their coat pockets, industry that still inspires enough fear to elicit nausea Force. NASA has received more funding and attenlow-cost airlines like WOW have long been staples of levels—higher even than those caused by sugges- tion than they have in decades, which is shining some shoestring travel. tive clouds—in much of the population. And perhaps light on their gaps in equipment and outdated policies. Despite unheeded parental warnings and unGoo- Morgensen, who believed that his carbon-gushing One of these is the fact that in the 1970s, the agency gled financial histories, I boarded my pink plane with planes were “environmentally sound,” was the not stopped tailoring suits to individual astronauts, taking more than a little of the usual flight foreboding. After the right man to pilot one of Iceland’s most precious what the New York Times described as a, “Mr. Potato heading to the middle seat of row 36—window and aisle companies. But in a world where corporate crimes Head” approach to suit design. This “one-size-fits-all” seats cost extra—I sat down under a large, affirming facilitate myriad injustices as well as an impending strategy was the guiding force behind the creation sign which informed me that, indeed, the “Cool kids climate catastrophe, an airline silly enough to call itself of the suits, but in a report NASA engineer Elizabeth sit in the back!” Inside my seat’s pocket flap, the stan- WOW deserves at least marginal respect. Benson wrote in 2009, she described the policy more dard paper bags came plastered with a personal Vomitaccurately as, ‘“one-size-fits-all-men.” The suits were O-Meter which helpfully ranked my airline experience -SVH designed explicitly with men’s body shapes in mind; from low queasiness (due to 'inflight panflute music' as astronaut Peggy Whitson, who holds the record for and ‘the pilot’s jokes’) to high nausea (caused by SPACED OUT! time spent in space, said, “As a woman, doing space‘obscene clouds’ and ‘our competitor’s prices’). And walks is more challenging mostly because the suits are to request water—which would cost extra—I could A miniature milestone for women in STEM was clum- sized bigger than the average female.” Several women simply press the overhead button labeled “Saved by sily cancelled last week when NASA announced it was astronauts who have travelled to space didn’t even get the bell!” and be assisted by any of the friendly flight changing plans for the scheduled all-female spacewalk the opportunity to walk, because NASA totally spaced, attendants, garbed entirely in pink felt who, according on March 29. The walk was not, in fact, meant to be a sending them up there without suits that would fit to Morgensen, had been trained into smiling service by carefully planned gesture for gender equality: The them. professional actors. agency discovered quite by accident that the seven Recently, NASA’s budget cuts in the 2000s In contrast to its onboard cheeriness, WOW Air hour procedure to replace batteries would be space’s contributed to the agency’s lack of medium-sized was named the “worst airline in the world” by flight first staffed exclusively by women astronauts, and was torso parts, considering that each part cost about $20 compensation company AirHelp, which ranked the excited to announce the fact that they would be acci- million to make. Frankly, the bait-and-switch with pink air carrier #72 out of 72 companies for overall dentally celebrating International Women’s History Anne McClain is of more interest because NASA is flight experience. But a highly nauseous flight expe- Month. NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz feeling pressure to make space relevant again. NASA’s rience, as one thousand stranded travelers can tell originally admitted of the all-female walk: “We feel mild gesture and then retraction probably won’t affect you, is better than no flight at all. After receiving an lucky that it just sort of happened to be in Women's the course of gender politics, but the Indy doesn’t think appropriately bashful email from booking site Expedia History Month.” Sadly, in what can only be considered it would be too much to ask for women astronauts Travel alongside radio silence from the cowards whose a giant leap in neither direction, they retracted their get the same opportunity to walk in space as men, website still allowed for ticket purchases until 7:00 AM impromptu announcement, because the International and suggests that if NASA gets the funding to make on Friday morning, this traveler proactively processed Space Station didn’t have spacesuits that fit the two another space suit, they make one these female stars her loss by joining “Wow Airlines Fail,” an up-and- women. Instead of astronauts Anne McClain and will feel comfortable in. With pockets. coming Facebook group dedicated to comparing Christina Koch completing the mission, Nick Hague the pink aircraft to vintage biplanes. Since 2015, the would tap in, as he has a different sized torso from the -RB

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

NEWS

02

KEEP YOUR TONGUE IN ITS CAGE Protest art and revolution in Kuwait, Sudan, and Egypt BY Mohannad Jabrah ILLUSTRATION Ella Rosenblatt DESIGN Amos Jackson

On February 25th, the Kuwaiti government abruptly power dynamics between art and government in the rings to contest the violence of the struggle through announced that it would be cancelling a performance Middle East—and how the latter is often threatened by artistic means. These creative bodies of expression by Mashrou’ Leila, a five-member Lebanese alterna- the former. are an inextricable part of the Sudanese revolution, tive rock band that was formed in Beirut in 2008. Many and are used in the absence of freedom to amplify the +++ were not fazed by the announcement. On the contrary, voices of the protestors. it was the initial invitation to perform that caught many In late November of 2018 in Mishref, Kuwait, artist Another form of art that is particularly important by surprise, given the band’s famous history of stoking and graphic designer Mohammad Sharaf installed for both those in Sudan during the protests and those sensitive political embers in the region. over 200 tombstones with the names of banned books in diaspora is poetry and spoken word, which is deeply In countries like Kuwait, where heavily enforced engraved on them adjacent to the annual Kuwait Book embedded within Sudanese culture and folklore. laws and cultural norms steer many to stick to them- Fair. From philosophical writings by George Orwell to From the fervent, ever-appreciated poetry of Mahjoub selves, stay hushed, and refrain from engaging in children’s books like The Little Mermaid, the make- Sharif—a Sudanese activist who passed away in 2014— controversial political discourse, Mashrou’ Leila set shift graveyard was expansive in the literary selec- to the contemporary poetry of young Sudanese artists an image for themselves that clearly communicates tions it mourned. In what he calls a “symbolic piece much like Emtithal Mahmoud, the historical struggles their willingness to engage in topics that are consid- of protest and public art intervention,” the artistic of Sudanese people find a medium through which they ered to be heavily charged in the region. With their installations that Sharaf presented were used to protest can be amplified. proclivity for taking part in conversations that swim Kuwait’s incessant ban on literature on arbitrary, deep into the taboo waters of gender equality and unjustified grounds. +++ sexual freedom, Mashrou’ Leila possess an openness Although the piece was eventually removed that is not necessarily welcomed by some govern- because Sharaf did not have a permit to work on the In Sudan, even the mere act of making satirical ments and parts of society—they have been barred land where his work was installed, it nevertheless portraits of the president is punishable by law. ­The 2018 from entering Jordan, among other countries in the motivated Kuwaitis to funnel their frustration with press freedom index from political advocacy non-profit region. In their song “Roman,” Mashrou’ Leila collab- state-regulated artistic suppression into nationwide Reporters Without Borders ranks Sudan 174th out of orates with Jessy Moussallem—an emerging Lebanese dialogue. More importantly, the incident highlights 180 countries with regards to press freedom. It is odd, female director—to produce a music video with images the presence of radical pockets in modern Middle then, to see such a heavily mobilized protest in such a of Muslim women that diverge from their stereotypical Eastern society that create art as a means of processing stifling space; this spontaneous wave of motion and depiction as victms. As explained by Mashrou’ Leila and addressing injustice. These works garner mixed frustration can be traced back to various vehicles of in one textual description they provided for the video, responses from a divided public, and indeed, conver- art from Sudanese artists that provided many with the work attempts to “address Western reduction of sation surrounding Sharaf’s piece were met with brevity of voice and capability of demonstration. This Muslim women to victims,” with a focus of “treating suppression. This suffocation of art in the region is recent push towards participation in forms of artistic oppression not as a source of victimhood, but as the never purposeless, but neither is it fully tied to the empowerment could be attributed to the increase in fertile ground from which resistance can be weapon- clash between tradition and art, which often comes anonymity garnered by the presence of social media ized.” In a similar fashion, much of the band’s other to mind as the primary driver of conflict surrounding and other global platforms, which allow many to stay music directly condemns dictatorial regimes in the artistic censorship. Instead, suppression is driven from under governmental radars and even provide Sudanese region. Their music is a potent mixture of euphony and a perspective of power dynamics: In a region where people in diaspora the opportunity to become involved a facilitator of public dialogue that allows it to criticize there is a norm that conversations should not attempt with the movement. the politically oppressive environments into which the to critique authoritarianism, artistic forms of protest— As more people join the protest behind this wave band members themselves were born. like Sharaf’s literary graveyard—prove to be some of of revolutionary art, the contributions of self-perpetThe conversations that Mashrou’ Leila are both the biggest threats to the political status quo. uating protest art as the face of the demonstrations starting and facilitating can be seen in more than just becomes explicitly clear. Sudan echos other protests their music. In September of 2017, at one of their most that occurred in the region—such as the ones that +++ attended concerts in Egypt, one audience member rippled through the Arab world in the spring of 2011 in brandished the rainbow flag. Seen by 35,000 audience The contemporary Sudanese revolution is one such Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya—and this intertwining relamembers and televised nationally, Ahmed Alaa—the example where political and protest art have been tionship between art and revolution can be considered flag-waver—unintentionally sparked one of Egypt’s a source of fuel towards rebellion. Propelled by a as a mirror image to an extent as well. worst crackdowns on its LGBT community. In an 30-year military dictatorship under Omar Al-Bashir, environment where deviation from the masculine the demonstrations began in December 2018 after +++ heterosexual norm invites both legal punishment growing frustration from the Sudanese working by the state and social alienation, Alaa’s statement class over deepening economic fissures and political Nevertheless, it would be reductive to even attempt brought legal consequences against him and some 100 neglect­­. The demonstrations reached their apex in to encapsulate all Middle Eastern nations’ reactions other concertgoers, many of whom received prison the form of country-wide protests in December 2018, towards the arts as something that follows the previsentences that ranged from six months to six years. which remain active to this day. With chants of “Tasqut ously described trends of Kuwait, Egypt, and Sudan. Nevertheless, Alaa’s course of action and the ensuing Bas” (you must fall) permeating every square inch of Regardless of the fact that politically motivated art consequences for many of the prosecuted LGBT the streets of Sudan today, comes a dawning realiza- does pose a threat to some of the traditional customs Egyptians, motivated by Mashrou’ Leila’s politically tion that a civil uprising of such magnitude has never that are upheld in the Gulf, the Levant, and North and and socially engaging art, started more conversations occurred against Al-Bashir’s regime. East Africa, it is still nevertheless an integral part of about the movement in both Egypt and the region. By depicting the graphic struggles of protesters the region, which flourished involuntarily regardless Through Mashrou’ Leila’s controversial, outspoken through installations and street art scattered all of authoritative attempts at its suffocation. Political lyrics, the thread of silence concerning the mistreat- throughout Khartoum and the rest of the country, art's contemporary presence—and excellence—is ment of many LGBT citizens by their governments was Sudanese artists are able to communicate the pain undeniable, and it is leading both civil revolutions, finally cut short. behind these demonstrations, and further alert such as the one in Sudan, and intellectual ones, like With openly gay lead Hamed Sinno, and its non-re- the world of the ongoing injustices that are being the women’s rights movement in Saudi Arabia. Art, to luctance to vocalize topics of feminism, LGBT, equity committed by the Sudanese government. These an extent, now has more space to breathe, which can and injustice, the group is often understood as a artworks—which heavily use some of the materials be attributed to ongoing struggles against attempts to walking, talking, singing amalgam of the region’s most used against the protesters, including tear gas canis- suffocate it. silenced taboos. Stirring endless controversy through ters and bullets—go to great lengths to showcase the their body of work, Mashrou’ Leila is but one of many violence incurred on those brave enough to partake MOHANNAD JABRAH B’22 is looking forward to examples of artists in the Middle East whose art tran- in the demonstrations. Such collected objects are seeing Mashrou’ Leila live next year. scends entertainment. Continually shaping culture in connected together to create pieces that broadcast the region, Mashrou’ Leila’s influence in Kuwait and some of the protest chants, while others have used Egypt strikes a chord when it comes to revealing the them to create sculptures and everyday objects like

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NEWS

12 APRIL 2019

CITY UPON A HILL

BY Jesse Barber ILLUSTRATION Jesse Barber DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

a single-family home, a spacious yard, and access to green space—all within walking distance of metropolitan amenities. The Berkeley hills possess everything that 1950s suburban dream promised, but instead of pre-fab houses in the middle of nowhere, they enjoy ever-increasing property values, the opportunities of city life, and the cultural capital of living in quirky Berkeley. In New York City, the marvel and hegemony of elevation transcends the hill as a geologic formation. By virtue of its flat terrain compared to the topography of the skyscraper, elevation is accessed through an elevator. Michael Sorkin, in his book Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, describes the intersection of class and elevation. In the 19th century, the top floors of apartment buildings housed servants, students, and artists. Living up high meant long walks up, smaller units, and certain peril in the case of a fire. When the elevator was invented and the skyline soared, so too did the allure of elevation. “Desirability came to be associated with view and with a sense of commanding the uppermost, a value based on a combination of military, theological, privacy, and prestige matters,” writes Sorkin. The The Berkeley hills bound the city to the east. The ridge In the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad climbed Jabal idea of the “penthouse” emerged as the most desirable stretches up and down the eastern bank of the San an-Nour, a mountain outside of Mecca. It is on this place, a home with maximum visibility and privacy, Francisco Bay Area, draped with a network of narrow mountain, whose name translates to “hill of the illumi- sitting above all the mayhem of the rest of the city. A windy roads. A series of expansive regional parks and nation,” where he is thought to have received his first country house in the clouds. In an urban landscape like a network of pedestrian paths cover much of the land revelation. In ancient Greek mythology, Mt. Olympus New York City, where tranquility cannot be secured by where nearby residents go to escape city life and soak is the home of the gods. Hills and mountains offer a retreating to pseudo-suburban hills, the wealthy can up the open, green space. Nestled among the peaks and proximity to god; religious and spiritual purity exist up escape the density and chaos of urbanity by ascending ravines of the East Bay hills are countless viewpoints high. to the top floor. There, they can gaze at the rest of the gazing out over the Bay Area. Everyone in Berkeley has Practically, hills have been a desirable place to city below them. their favorite. In the summer, a blanket of fog swal- settle. The “high ground” is more easily defended But hills do not evoke wealth everywhere. In many lows the hills in the morning. By afternoon, it surren- because of the tactical advantage of slopes and the large cities in Latin America, the hills are home to ders into a crystal-clear blue sky, and an enchanting visibility of the lands around them. Settling in the low-income and squatter settlements. In Rio de Janeiro, panoramic view of the Bay is possible. At dusk, retired hills also has the advantage of keeping inhabitants favelas, dwelling places similar to shanty towns, hippies, UC Berkeley students, and stoned teenagers safe from flooding and swamplands and the disease usually constructed with salvaged material created gather in the hills to watch the sun slowly bleed across that they breed. That is why cities across the world— by squatters, cover the steep hillsides. According to the Pacific and the lights of the metropolis begin to Ancient Rome, Athens, Montreal, Istanbul, Ammam, the 2010 census, 6 percent of Brazil’s population, and dance. and Tehran—have been settled on hills. 2.6 million of the 13 million residents of Rio de Janeiro, Like many other urban hills, those in Berkeley are In the contemporary United States, the hills live in favelas. Favelas occupy what geographers where the rich live. It is no accident that the hills (and represents a new and improved version of the suburban Greg O’Hare and Michael Barke call the “internal foothills) are by and large white and wealthy, and the dream: the seclusion and open space of the suburbs periphery”—land that is too expensive or unsuitable flats are home to more people of color and people of paired with the economic opportunity and cultural for building commercial buildings. Rio de Janeiro is lower economic status. A 1912 pamphlet advertising capital of the city. Often only accessible by car, pseu- a city laid out on drastic slopes covered in favelas—a property in the Berkeley hills said it was an unparal- do-suburban hill communities are set apart from the far cry from the multimillion-dollar houses overleled investment because of the amenities of the neigh- rest of the city. This isolation affords residents more looking the private beaches of Malibu. Shantytowns borhood, the restrictions that made it the “cream” of privacy and less of everything that an urban lifestyle in Caracas, Venezuela, Lima, Peru, and other large North Berkeley with “No Asiatics or Negroes,” the entails (noise, crowds, and the like). However, as in the South American cities follow a pattern similar to Rio access to transportation, and the scenery. Over the case of 20th century of suburbia, the isolation of neigh- de Janeiro’s. course of a century, race-based zoning, restrictive borhoods in the hills is not just natural. While explicIn a rural American context, the hills take on a covenants, and redlining reinforced the hills as a itly racist laws—like those that were common in many drastically different connotation. Hillbilly—a term that upper-class enclave. In the 1960s, no real estate agent upper-class enclaves, like Beverly Hills and Piedmont, is often derogatory—loosely refers to people living in would even show my great-uncle Burton (who is white) LA—are no longer on the books, the spacious yards and rural, mountainous areas of the United States. In 1900, and my great-aunt Andrea (who was Black) a house in boundless views of hill enclaves that used to explicitly the New York Journal wrote, “A Hill-Billie is a free and the hills. The amenities that made property in the hills discriminate cost so much that only the super-wealthy untrammeled white citizen of Tennessee, who lives in profitable in 1912 have been preserved more than 100 can afford to live there. the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, years later: The hills are exclusive low-density neighLiving in the hills also often means low-density talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and borhoods with incredible views, beautiful natural housing and more open, green space. Richard Walker, fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him.” Outside surroundings, and proximity to the center of a world- in his book The Country in the City, describes how the of American metropolitan areas and wealthy vacaclass urban center. long history of environmental activism in the Bay tion destinations like parts of the Berkshires or Aspen, The Berkeley hills are not unique. Up and down the Area was largely carried out by and on behalf of the Colorado, elevation does not hold the same monetary Bay Area, from Mill Valley to Pacific Heights, the hills economic elite. The product is a network of preserved or social value. The decidedly American suburban function the same. The Oakland hills, Marin County, green space in the Bay Area hills, publicly available ethic that is so central to the shaping of American and the non-uniform slopes of San Francisco sprinkled to everyone, but most accessed by the upper-class urban space and the American Dream no doubt plays a throughout the city generally conform to the rule: the districts that surround them. role in producing the appeal of the urban hills. higher the elevation, the higher the income. Through Much is the same in Los Angeles. In his 1971 book my own research, I discovered that the median house- Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Reyner +++ hold income above 50 feet in elevation in the Bay Area Banham, a prominent English urbanist, calls the Los is $127,929, while the median household income in Angeles foothills the “epitome of the great middle- Providence (along with a suspicious number of other areas lower than 50 feet is $98,943. The socio-polit- class suburb.” Since then, the property values of those cities, like Ancient Rome, Moscow, and Jerusalem) was ical significance that elevation holds in the Bay Area neighborhoods have skyrocketed. The stretch of foot- built on seven hills. It was on the banks below Prospect is replicated in other American cities, including New hill neighborhoods from Pasadena and Highland Hill where Roger Williams settled and created the York and Los Angeles. The hills, it seems, are often a Park to Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Bel Air and Providence colony, and it is on that same hill that visual manifestation of class divides. out to Malibu are now upper-class suburbs of Los Brown University sits today. In Terrace Park stands Angeles. In a city whose urban landscape is defined a statue of Roger Williams. With the wealthier and +++ by concrete, with its famed automobile lifestyle and whiter East Side, home to Brown and the Rhode Island jungle-like highway system, the Verdugo and Santa School of Design, to its back, the statue looks out over In the Abrahamic religions, hills, mountains, and Monica Mountains, which these wealthy neighbor- the modest skyline of Downtown, the Rhode Island high elevation are associated with religious purity and hoods border, are natural islands among the sprawling capitol building, and the working-class South Side. The enlightenment. In the Bible, Moses summits Mt. Sinai grey landscape. This natural sanctuary is most coveted hills of Providence, like so many other American cities, to receive the ten commandments—an allegory for and accessible to the upper-class neighborhoods carve a class-based division into the city. Personified spiritual elevation. Also in the Bible, the phrase “City surrounding it. As the rest of the city looks up to the through the paternalistic settler watching over the rest Upon a Hill” rhetorically refers to something that is Hollywood sign in reverence, so too does it revere the of the city, with an impersonal expression and judihighly visible and held in high regard. Famously, John mansions of Bel Air and the Hollywood Hills as the cious gesture cut into stone, the East Side stands, a cut Winthrop evoked this idea before the Massachusetts quintessence of LA prosperity. above. Bay colonists set sail for the New World, and since then What is unique about living in the hills in LA or the the idea has symbolized United States exceptionalism. Bay Area is that, if you are super-wealthy, you can have JESSE BARBER B'19 is running for the hills.

A study in the geopolitics of elevation

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

FEATURES

04

BY Saanya Jain ILLUSTRATION Illustrator DESIGN Christie Zhong

QUEERING BOLLYWOOD LGBTQ representation goes mainstream The last time a mainstream Hindi-language film To understand the conditions under which queer- Profitability governs decisions around which screenfeaturing a lesbian lead was released in India was in ness is made visible in Bollywood and mainstream plays are financed, who gets cast, and how the resulting 1996. The movie, Fire, about two women who fall in cinema generally, we must ask where and why this film is marketed. One consequence of this fact is that love after the failure of their respective marriages, had narrative of transformation falls short. What changes movies require star power: Seeing mainstream actors to be recalled from theatres when Hindu extremists have allowed these stories to be told at this partic- who audiences know and love play queer characters vandalized 15 cinemas where it was playing. ular moment in this particular manner? What are the is a positive development as it works towards normalIn many ways, then, the positive embrace of Ek consequences of the mainsteam’s co-option of both izing homosexuality. In the case of Ek Ladki, this Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (How I Felt When I Saw marginalized experiences and of language that cele- comes in the form of real-life father-daughter duo That Girl) 23 years later on February 1 of this year brates difference—and how do these considerations Sonam (Sweety) and Anil Kapoor (Sweety’s father represents a stark devation from Fire’s release. The shape content? Balbir). Their acting dynasty has been in the spotlight movie, directed by Shelly Chopra Dhar, is about This approach by no means aims to invalidate the since at least the 1980s, when Anil Kapoor first started Sweety, a young woman living in the state of Punjab importance of queer representation in the mainstream. appearing in Hindi films. What’s more, this is the first whose family wants her to marry a young man who Depictions of homosexuality as a whole in popular movie in which they have appeared together, which loves her. She, however, is in love with someone else—a Bollywood cinema prior to Dhar’s landmark film have cannot be extricated from the audience’s experience. woman, Kuhu—and the plot follows her attempts to been minimal. When present, homosexuality has It not only serves as an effective marketing ploy, but gain everyone’s acceptance, particularly her father’s. functioned as a comedic conceit, as in the 2008 film also grounds the fictional story within a known, realEk Ladki’s release comes on the heels of the Dostana, in which two men pretend to be gay but are istic context. This casting also means, however, that Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Section 377, a actually in love with their landlord’s daughter; or as a Sonam Kapoor, who is a straight woman and enjoys all colonial-era law banning gay sex, in September 2018. shorthand for deviance, as in the 2018 historical epic the privileges and safeties of that status, profits from Public opinion on homosexuality in India, however, Padmaavat, in which homosexuality is associated playing a queer woman. Furthermore, it takes away remains divided. A 2017-18 survey by the Centre for with the villainous (Muslim) king and his scheming the opportunity for a queer woman to play the role the Study of Developing Societies and Azim Premji associate, used to underscore their deviance from the and thus forecloses a valuable opportunity to present University asked 15,222 people across eight states Hindu, heteronormative ideal. not only a fictional but also a real-life role model for whether they thought that sexual relationships I also saw firsthand the excitement of my fellow audiences. This is particularly important given that no between two men or two women should be accepted South Asian queer friends who organized trips to go prominent Bollywood celebrities are openly gay, which by society. The suvey found that 28 percent of people see Ek Ladki the day it was released. In an essay for means that homosexuality in Hindi-language cinema agreed or somewhat agreed, 46 percent disagreed, and the Guardian, Sharan Dhaliwal similarly described remains strictly in the realm of fiction. the rest had no opinion. a London screening of Ek Ladki that was filled to The second consequence of the demands of profitThe dominant narrative in media coverage and in capacity with South Asians who by the end of the film ability is the need to appeal to the largest possible audithe marketing of the film has been its potential to trans- were in tears, having watched their story told and exis- ence. The movie’s marketing campaign, for example, form these views. This theory was encapsulated by Ek tence reaffirmed. was deliberately vague so as not to alienate potential Ladki’s lead, Sonam Kapoor, who in 2014 remarked, “I We can recognize diverse representation as viewers. Neither the character Kuhu nor Sweety’s think movies can influence the way people think some- socially important while being aware of the ways in sexuality are shown or explicitly mentioned in trailers, times, and if we do start making love stories or we which it is shaped by assumptions of normative queer- posters or by the cast themselves in the run-up to the start making movies about people who are amazing ness and audience attitudes. Surface-level queering of film’s release. Although the secrecy partly served to human beings, people who have done something in life, casts and stories can create the illusion of progress; true generate marketing buzz, it was also likely out of a people who are inspirational who aren’t necessarily representative representation cannot occur without desire to avoid alienating viewers or causing controonly straight, I think people will start appreciating corresponding economic and political changes in their versy which would impact box office revenues, a real them more.” This statement not only reveals implicit process of production and in society at large. concern in a country with a long history of boycotts, assumptions of the causal link between on-screen and violent protests and state censorship of movies off-screen change, but also sets a standard for how +++ depicting female sexuality. queerness is depicted on screen. Queerness in Ek Ladki is further constructed

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ARTS

12 APRIL 2019

"QUEERING BOLLYWOOD HAS TO GO FURTHER THAN QUEERING CHARACTERS AND PLOTS. IT ALSO REQUIRES ASKING WHY CERTAIN REPRESENTATIONS EXIST IN THE MAINSTREAM AND OTHERS OUTSIDE IF OF IT."

around what is thought to be legible for domestic so that the film’s financial performance will affect any government and its director, Deepa Mehta, is Indianaudiences. The film is grounded in familiar tropes of similar attempts in the future. Canadian, while Ek Ladki was financed at least partly the Bollywood romance, from the opening wedding The mainstream’s self-characterization as revolu- by the presence of a large diaspora as a potential scene in which Sweety is asked when she is going to tionary can thus overshadow the progress still needed paying audience. Streaming services are the most get married to a song in which Sweety and Kuhu hug when it comes to minority representation in main- recent manifestation of this phenomenon. Anil Kapoor, among ruins. This intentional familiarization extends stream cinema, particularly the need for re-evalu- for example, cited Netflix as a potential answer to the title, which is taken from a hit song from the 1994 ating the very structures that shape both onscreen and to concerns around his remake of Modern Family, blockbuster 1942: A Love Story, starring Anil Kapoor. offscreen representation of Indian queer people. thought to be difficult to produce because of it depicts This juxtaposition constitutes Ek Ladki as a kind of a gay couple. After her 2017 movie Lipstick Under My re-imagining of 1942, drawing an analogy between its +++ Burkha was stalled by Indian censors for being overly same-sex love story and 1942’s heterosexual one. ‘lady-oriented,’ Alankrita Shrivastava took another Ek Ladki also equates the challenges faced by Queering Bollywood has to go further than queering project, Made in Heaven, featuring a gay character, queer love with cross-religion love stories, which are characters and plots. It also requires asking why straight to Amazon. relatively common in Bollywood romances, through certain representations exist in the mainstream and The requisite for foreign intervention in domestic a brief illustration of Sweety’s family’s bigotry toward others outside if of it. The answers to these questions queer productions not only obscures the limits of a potential Hindu-Muslim marriage. By portraying are necessary to implement the broader structural domestic financing, but also means that any content different kinds of difference as equal, the film obscures changes needed to allow these stories to be told more produced requires a transnational legibility. Streaming the political demands and unique challenges faced by often and in multiple ways. platforms’ strategies are built around making local queer people, which are from different from those of While it is important to celebrate the media atten- content that can also be consumed globally. This inevIndia’s Muslim minority. tion and audience that mainstream film (theoretically) itably shapes representations of queerness so that Moreover, the impact of going mainstream—in garner, to do so inevitably presents a standard for who they coincide not only with the expectations of global terms of number of viewers—is overstated. Ek Ladki can be queer and how, to the exclusion of other possi- audiences but also those of foreign producers’. These underperformed at the box office, bringing in $3.3 bilities. In Dostana, for example, gayness is something platforms have self-censored out of a fear of decreased million on a budget of $4.3 million. Although these that can be performed stereotypically by straight men profits, just as Ek Ladki’s producers did. Amazon Prime, numbers do not reflect the value of the media attention in order to gain the ideal of heterosexual love. Ek Ladki for example, cut parts of an episode of the car show around the movie, which presumably reached a wider centers male approval and help, whether in the form of The Grand Tour, in which the host drives a car made audience, Ek Ladki’s potential to change attitudes Sweety’s father or Sahil, her friend who preaches toler- of animal carcasses, including those of cows, which towards homosexuality and its impact within India ance to the villagers—and by extension, the audience— are considered sacred in Hindu culture. The company have been exaggerated. This raises questions of the and acts as the mediator between Sweety and Kuhu explained its decision in a statement as bearing “Indian value of compromises made in the name of appealing and the rest of the village. Further, the plot revolves cultural sensitivities in mind.” An understanding of to the masses if their attitudes remained largely around Sweety’s relationship with her father, which is how onscreen representations cannot be separated unchanged, as well as of who this narrative of revolu- not necessarily a negative thing in and of itself. This from the context of their production must accompany tionary change most serves. fact, however, erases direct representation of Sweety any claims to art’s impact on off-screen social relations. Relatedly, Ek Ladki’s breakdown of domestic (35 and Kuhu’s love and relationship. percent) as opposed to foreign revenues (65 percent) Studios have the the power to choose which of +++ is lopsided, whereas the average for other Bollywood many potential films to produce, and it is no accimovies is closer to 50-50. Given the importance of dent that Sonam Kapoor talks about conventionally While we may conceptualize censorship of queer repreforeign audiences, Ek Ladki attempted to make queer- accomplished, inspirational queer people as deserving sentation primarily as suppression by heteronormative ness legible not only in a domestic but also trans- of representation. This film’s frame as the first, and governments, media producers, and fundamentalist national context. The ‘backwardness’ of Sweety’s thus implicitly only, positive depiction of queerness groups, it can also exist even more insidiously when family’s views, for example, is grounded in their loca- in Indian film also erases the decades-long history of these representations appear in the mainstream. tion in rural India. The plot is built upon an implicit non-commercial queer media production by queer These films, after all, are still shaped by directors’ and dichotomy between repression and liberation, wherein people, for queer people, many of which reject a univer- producers’ decisions and their perceptions of what coming out moves Sweety and those surrounding salizing aesthetic or common notion of queerness. forms of queerness are and aren’t legible to audiences. her into the ‘modern’ world. Further, what it means Queering can also be an approach to the archive If we are to avoid re-inscribing new forms of normato be queer can take different forms across cultural of Bollywood films and films about Indians broadly. tivity, our demands for queer cultural visibility must contexts. Queer studies scholars have thus argued that One example is Bend it Like Beckham (2002) about be accompanied by demands for the reformation of the adopting Western constructions ignores alternative a second-generation British-Indian woman, Jess structures that have led to invisibility in the first place. ways of being queer that may be particular to an Indian (Parminder Nagra), who rebels against her parents by On-screen representation cannot replace the value context. Incorporating the perceived limits of audi- joining a local football team. By the end of the movie of political or economic representation; conversely, ence attitudes towards queer representation impacts (spoiler alert!), she has found an opportunity to play for radical representation cannot occur without simultahow groundbreaking any attempts in mainstream a club in the United States, a best friend, Jules (Keira neous economic and political change. cinema can be at transforming them. Knightley), and a boyfriend (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). The dominant narrative of this film’s revolutionary Rumors claiming that the Nagra and Knightley's char- SAANYA JAIN B’19 thanks the Indy for once more politics of these movies constructs media consumption acters were originally supposed to end up together providing, sadly for the last time, the best excuse to in and of itself as a political act. This can be positive, and that the director had “chickened out” for fear of procrastinate on her thesis. as audiences can essentially vote with their wallets, offending Indian audiences, as well as analyses of the showing studios the value of producing content movie’s queer subtext, have made the rounds of the outside of the norm. It can, however, obscure how the internet in recent years. The value of reconsidering producers of mainstream narratives are themselves existing representations is that it takes texts that are the ones who emphasize that these representations already mainstream and links them to queerness in a are novel and transformative. These characteriza- way that can also facilitate social change. tions present audiences with a false choice of watching Furthermore, the economics of queer media or not watching the film as evidence of their politics. production in India have to be re-evaluated. For the This not only forecloses debate on all the other poten- most part, queer representations have required intertial narratives that could also be on the screen, it also vention from outside of India. The majority of queer makes it so that the movie’s consumption seemingly representation that garners media attention in India stands in for other types of political action. Finally, the is in some way made possible by actors outside of economics of mainstream media production make it India. Fire, for example, was funded by the Canadian

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

ARTS

06

AGAINST FORGETTING Enforced Disappearances, Visual Archives of Loss, and Collective Mourning in Kashmir

BY Tiara Sharma and Kanha Prasad DESIGN Amos Jackson

Mughal Mase sits at an APDP demonstration, holding a photo of her son. Photo taken as part of a series by Altaf Qadri

On the 25th of every month, dozens of members of son by visiting army camps and meeting with multiple of Kashmir, the Indian state controls what can and the Association for Parents of Disappeared Persons government representatives, but ultimately these cannot be seen—and who can be disappeared at any (APDP) gather in Pratap Park in Srinagar, Kashmir. combined efforts were unsuccessful due to a combina- moment. They sit in a semicircle on an expanse of grass, women tion of discrimination and corruption. As Rather told In response to the state’s constellations of visual on one side and men on the other, around a hand- the Indy, “this was the time I lost faith in the justice control, APDP organizers establish mourning as a painted canvas of faces laid out in the middle. Each system of India...They were all lying. They assured me means of reappearing lost loved ones. The iconic of the participants in the action holds a photo of their that they would find my son. But they didn’t help.” pose of parents—and, specifically, mothers—holding sons and husbands, who have been disappeared by the In her visits to prisons, torture cells and mili- portraits of their sons reinstates and visibilizes a Indian Armed Forces. tary camps, Ahangar came across numerous other relationship that the state has attempted to dissolve. Nayeem Rather, a Kashmiri journalist who works aggrieved parents who shared similar stories. In “APDP is involved in remembering and reconstructing with APDP recently spoke at length with the College Kashmiri filmmaker Iffat Fatima’s 2009 documen- the lives of those who were disappeared,” Rather Hill Independent about the use of enforced disappear- tary, Where Have You Hidden My New Moon Crescent?, explained. Images of both Ahangar and Mase at these ances. “The Indian state is at war with the memory of Ahangar listens as a fellow mother named Mughli demonstrations reveal how their figures, positioned Kashmir, so our work is also a kind of struggle against Mase explains their first interaction: “[We] met on the behind the portraits, allow their sons’ visual presforgetfulness,” he said. road and connected.” Almost instinctively, Ahangar ence to inhabit a material form. The women activists’ APDP’s website cites a tally of 8,000 to 10,000 finishes Mase’s thought: “I was searching, she was use of portraits to reconstruct the existence of their reported disappearances of Kashmiri people since searching.” disappeared persons, therefore, serves as an inventory 1989, the beginning of a nascent armed insurgency of loss, a means through which mourning, as public movement for independence that prompted the Indian +++ demonstration, calls attention to—and flagrantly armed forces to enter into the region by the hundreds denounces—the unending nature of enforced disapof thousands. Under the protection afforded to them Ahangar started the APDP in 1994 alongside Kashmiri pearances. Their displays of mourning, in this sense, by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1990), the activist Parvez Imroz as a collective of family members are not mere performances or embodiments of victimIndian army continues to use disappearances as one of united by a simple demand: for the Indian government hood—they resurrect and materialize the very memory many tactics to repress the independence movement, to tell them where their disappeared sons and fathers of their disappeared relatives that the Indian state including extra-judicial killings, custodial torture, are being kept and to return them immediately. In their attempts to erase. rape, forced labor, and more recently, pellet gun shoot- disappearances of politically active Kashmiri men, the ings. The primary targets of disappearances include Indian state has left the households to which these +++ students, political activists, and any civilians who the men belong without stable breadwinners. Despite Indian state suspects are agitating for independence. the ever-present threat of poverty and precarity, the Azaadi, for Kashmiris, has historically contained many Among the state’s many human rights violations, these wives and mothers of disappeared persons still volun- valences and signified many political possibilities. disappearances are unique in their pernicious assault teer large amounts of time and energy to the APDP. In Some want to merge with Pakistan, while others, like on the collective memory of the Kashmiri people. fact, according to Rather, “the core of APDP’s decision Rather, believe in an independent sovereign Kashmir. making apparatus is controlled largely by women,” A long overdue plebiscite, authorised by the United +++ who take charge of day-to-day activities such as orga- Nations Commision for India and Pakistan in 1949, nizing protests and demonstrations, writing press would give institutional sanction to the multiple voices Just five days ago, in an interview with News18 in New releases and executing plans. within the Kashmiri self-determination movement. Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi rejected The wives and mothers of disappeared persons However, despite diverging opinions on what an Azad the possibility of repealing the Armed Forces Special have come to be called ‘half-widows’ and ‘half- Kashmir would look like in the future, “most people,” Powers Act (AFSPA), comparing the suggestion to mothers.’ This language locates these women in a Rather says, “will converge on this point: azaadi means “sending [India’s] soldiers to the gallows.” This state- liminal space: The Indian state refuses them the right ‘Go India, Go Back.’” Many larger anti-occupation ment follows the February 14th suicide bombing that to fully mourn, yet also refuses to return their family protests in Kashmir feature this rallying cry, which took place in Kashmir’s Pulwama district, in which a members. Rather questions the very language of appropriates a famous Indian colonial era slogan, ‘Go 22-year-old Kashmiri man, Adil Ahmed Dar, drove an ‘half-widow’ and ‘half-mother,’ and is skeptical of its Simon, Go Back,’ and repurposes it against the Indian explosive-laden vehicle into a convoy of Indian armed origins: “[The] APDP movement does not consider the occupation. forces, killing 40 soldiers and injuring many. disappeared dead,” he explains, “So, [...] if someone’s APDP activists’ demands for India’s withdrawal Ather Zia, founder of Critical Kashmir Studies husband is not dead, how come she’s a widow?” And, compound the urgency with which they organize for Collective, reported on the incident for Al Jazeera, indeed, APDP’s public demonstrations of mourning the right to reunite with their family members. “My tracing the originary point for Dar’s political motiva- allow Kashmiri mothers and wives to reaffirm and God, just once,” Mase says, “may I look at [Yusuf] tions to an incident earlier in his life, in which armed visibilize their relationship to their disappeared loved and he look at me...and then I [could] close my eyes officers detained and humiliated him, forcing him to ones in reaction to state powers that have attempted forever.” Through the lens of Mase’s and Ahangar’s repeatedly “rub his nose [against] the ground.” Few to render invisible. However, Kashmiri women like narratives of loss, azaadi not only means liberation other media outlets, both in South Asia and abroad, Mughli Mase are not mere icons of mourning—they from Indian occupation but also from the ongoing have reported on Dar’s and his family’s past experi- are originators of anti-Indian-occupation organizing, cycle of disappearances. ences with Indian armed forces—just one of many vital to the struggle for Kashmiri azaadi (freedom) and The last few moments of Fatima’s film shows Mase instances in which media coverage on Kashmir often to a global audience’s reckoning with the violence of sitting in her home, next to Ahangar, who has joined fails to acknowledge how genealogies of Indian state enforced disappearance. her for afternoon chai. Mase speaks slowly and directly violence shape the political consciousness of Kashmiri to the camera, “Precious son, you are lost. The sky is insurgents. Dar, like many his age, had never known a +++ blood rimmed—the earth is torn asunder … My Yusuf, Kashmir free of occupation. I call you. Hear me.” Mase pauses, unable to continue. Javid was 17 years old when he was captured by Indian military occupation in Kashmir operates Again, and for the last time, Ahangar picks up where the Indian National Security Guard from his home primarily through a visual register; the barbed wire Mase left off: “Come… my heart’s beloved, I await you.” in Battamalo (close to Srinagar) in August 1990. His fences, army tanks, stationed military personnel, mother, Parveena Ahangar, attempted to trace him unmarked grave sites, and mass blindings constitute TIARA SHARMA B'20 AND KANHA PRASAD B'21 through legal means, by filing multiple petitions in what Deepti Misri, scholar and co-founder of Critical wrote this in memory of all those disappeared by the the Jammu and Kashmir High Courts, including a Kashmir Studies Collective, calls the Indian state’s Indian state—10,000 and counting complaint that reached the Home Ministry’s office in “optical regime.” By superimposing symbols of militaDelhi. She also tried conducting her own search for her rized power and displays of death onto the landscape

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NEWS

12 APRIL 2019

WAVING THE FLAG

BY Cate Turner ILLUSTRATION Pia Mileaf Patel DESIGN Lulian Ahn

Competition and community at the Providence Gay Flag Football League

From a distance, the scene looks and sounds not unlike opportunity to participate in organized sports. “I did social outlet” made as much clear. Taken at face value, a standard fair-weather gym class. Players clad in cross-country in high school, and I missed the team this article reads like a proclamation of a new era of mismatched jerseys dart back and forth, colorful vinyl bonding,” she says. gay spaces, where bars are obsolete and queer people strips streaming in their wake. Shouting, laughter, and She brought a fan, her friend Andrew, who isn’t only ever congregate to practice kickball (specifithe faint strains of Britney Spears’s “Toxic” mingle registered with the PVDGFFL but came to watch her cally without “waving flags,” according to one man with the sound of cleats (alongside sneakers, from in the scrimmage. “I’m straight, for the record, but interviewed in the Times article). But the dichotomy those less equipped for the scrimmage) and, occasion- I’m very supportive of the community, especially if between sports and bars isn’t as clear, or as competally, bodies hitting the ground. The one downside of there’s sports involved,” he says. His interjection is cut itive, as it might appear. The PVDGFFL has reached the weather—sunnier, drier, and more temperate than off by Jones’s thunderous cheers. Her team, Mountain out to many other kinds of gay community spaces, seems possible for Providence in April—is that the Doobie/Mount and Do Me, has just scored against the including, but not limited to, gay bars and clubs across smell of sunscreen is overwhelming, even from several still-unnamed Navy Team. Providence. It has brought in players through queer yards away. Jones’s motivations for joining are typical among centers on and off college campuses, mutual friends, This is the Providence Gay Flag Football League newcomers to the PVDGFFL. Jay Noble, who moved and simple social media promotion. The assumption (PVDGFFL)’s second-ever scrimmage. Four of the to Providence less than a month ago, also registered the Los Angeles Times article makes, that a gay sports league’s eight teams spread out across the North in order to meet people and “stay active.” Noble, like league would necessarily drain energy from other Country Club Field in Warwick, preparing for the several other players at the scrimmage, had previ- kinds of community spaces, carries with it the idea day’s first round of preseason matches. At this point, ously participated in a (predominantly gay) women’s that there is a limit to queer people’s ability or desire teams have known each other for only a week. But next flag football league in St. Louis. Providence, too, has a to connect with each other. To anyone watching this weekend, they will be competing in their first game of women’s league, which many PVDGFFL participants scrimmage unfold—the laughter, the cries of triumthe PVDGFFL’s inaugural regular season. Now is the also play for. phant glee, the joy in connection—this assumption is time for teams to coalesce, develop game strategies, Many of the players and leaders of the PVDGFFL self-evidently wrong. and, hopefully, decide on names. Officially, each team’s have previous athletic experience—a number were However, recruitment does present challenges for name is designated by its jersey color, but players and high school or college athletes—but several are new the PVDGFFL, especially within the 18-to-32 democaptains alike are, to varying degrees, interested in to organized sports. A gay league can offer players in graphic. “What does socialization look like for the finding more exciting alternatives. The Green Team both of these situations the chance to develop a new queer community? Now, more than ever, a lot of it is seems to be known interchangeably as “Mountain relationship to sports. “When you talk about joining digital,” Zajicek told me, mentioning the prevalence Doobie” and “Mount and Do Me,” while the Red Team a sports league that might be predominantly straight, of dating apps. When so many introductions and interis torn between “the Red Beards” and “Red Rocket.” you can still feel like a bit of an outsider, and like you actions between queer people occur online, Zajicek Alex L’Ecuyer, captain of the Blue Team, informs me can’t quite be yourself,” Duane Gosley, commis- thinks it can be difficult to mobilize interest in building that his players are going by “the Blue Cockies,” which sioner of the PVDGFFL, told me. “Providing an outlet offline spaces. originated as a “bar joke.” “Hey, everybody thought it that is primarily focused on the LGBTQ community Despite the accessibility of online platforms, was hilarious,” L’Ecuyer adds, laughing. provides a safe environment for them to come and be though, many young people continue to register for The players present today came to the PVDGFFL themselves.” and show up to gay sports leagues. But, to some degree, from many different athletic backgrounds and with Gay leagues can also provide a familiar space these leagues have to compete amongst themselves many different skill sets. But all have two things, at for those in the process of acclimating to a new iden- for interested players. Between the Renaissance City least, in common: the desire to carve out a new LGBT tity and community. John Zajicek, assistant commis- Softball League, the Gala Bowling League, and the community space in Providence and the will to play sioner of the PVDGFFL, joined a gay kickball league Ocean City Pride Volleyball League—not to mention football. As administrators drag out goalposts and refs in Orlando within months of coming out. For him, gay countless other gay leagues in the Boston metro area, take to the field in preparation for a day of games, both sports leagues were a way to bridge the gap between including FLAG, one of the largest gay flag football aims start to materialize. his current life and a future of deeper engagement with leagues in the United States—Providence is already other LGBT people. “I’d grown up playing sports, so home to many options for hopeful athletes in the LGBT +++ to find out that there were these leagues that existed, community. But even with these many outlets, the and that identified with the kind of lifestyle or activi- PVDGFFL has attracted a full roster. They also have As the first set of games start, positions still seem up ties that I was normally part of ... that was my step into sponsorships to back them up, including doTERRA in the air—the PVDGFFL is many players’ first expo- meeting people in the community.” The PVDGFFL Essential Oils (whose representative Kaleb Bajakian sure to football, flag or otherwise, and these early is, first and foremost, a space for LGBT people to mans a booth at the scrimmage). Many players particrounds are an opportunity for learning and teaching. connect—with each other, but also with themselves. ipate in multiple other gay and women’s sports leagues The rules of flag football and tackle football are very in Providence in addition to the PVDGFFL. similar, though flag leagues vary in their treatment of +++ Come the end of the first set of games, with no contact, field size, and other specific regulations. As a scoreboards in sight, it’s only really possible to deterrule, flag is much lower-contact than tackle football, if The PVDGFFL is far from the only space in Providence mine the victor based on Mountain Doobie/Mount not completely no-contact. Stripping a player of their with the goal of bringing LGBT people together in and Do Me’s players’ cheers. More important than final vinyl flags, attached to their waist, amounts to a tackle community. For a city of its size, Providence has an scores seems to be the end-of-game chants, which, for and ends the opposing team’s play. It’s customary for unusually large number of gay bars. Historically, Mountain Doobie/Mount and Do Me, involve each the player who succeeds in taking another’s flags to these have been centers of LGBT community in the team member shouting their preferred pronunciation hold the colorful strips high above their head in the area. But many LGBT residents of the Providence area of the team’s name at the top of their lungs. As players universal gesture of athletic accomplishment—see are reaching for spaces outside of bars, as well. Mike begin to unlace their shoes, zip their bags, and set out Rocky with his belt, any given championship-win- Ung, a player for the Blue Team, called the PVDGFFL for the parking lot or the sidelines, a new wave moves ning hockey player with the Stanley Cup, or a wrestler an opportunity for LGBT people to meet each other in for the next round of matches. These teams are all performing a fireman’s carry of their opponent’s entire “doing something that’s not just going out to bars and competing, but the object, especially today, isn’t really body. all that.” He is far from the only player who mentioned to win; it’s to build something together. The PVDGFFL Harley Jones is on the field for most of the first set the PVDGFFL’s relationship to gay bars—their similar- may be made up of rookies, but they’ve proved themof games. Her goal in joining the PVDGFFL is to meet ities and, implicitly, their differences. selves up to that challenge. people. “I don’t have very many friends in this area The comparison of gay sports leagues and gay bars in the LGBT community,” she tells me. “I’m here to is far from new. A 2013 Los Angeles Times article head- CATE TURNER B’21 has the shakiest possible grasp on become more active.” She was also drawn in by the lined “Gay sports leagues gain ground against bars as a the rules of football, tackle or otherwise.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

METRO

08

BY Matt Ishimaru ILLUSTRATION Julia Illana DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

AS SEEN FROM

In a dusty, treeless valley south of Kabul, Afghanistan, the ancient walls of Mes Aynak almost blend into the surrounding earth. Larger-than-life sized Buddha statues rest in alcoves, most weathered over time to only a seated torso or a lone foot, but some stand tall. The complex of brick and earthen structures stretches out over 450,000 square meters of rolling countryside. vision algorithms to extensively document the site to the copper deposit beneath it. Archaeological For more than 10 years, a team of dozens of Afghan and construct a detailed digital recreation. Founded evidence suggests that the ancient Buddhist monks and international archaeologists assisted by hundreds by architect Yves Ubelmann, Iconem has documented who lived here mined and refined copper, a trade that of Afghan laborers have been working to uncover this endangered historic sites around the world in the made them wealthy and enabled them to build a large ancient site along the Silk Road, home to an ancient name of preservation, but its work to record Mes Aynak monastery with fortifications. Their buildings remain Buddhist monastery dating to the 3rd century CE. But digitally may actually threaten the site itself. By posi- today as an archaeological site strewn with ancient this is no ordinary excavation. Surrounded by more tioning its digital Mes Aynak as a more durable, more relics. Among the walls of temples and battlements, than one hundred checkposts and patrolled day and useful version of the real thing, Iconem raises ques- thousands of ancient Buddhist artifacts have been night by 1,700 guards, Mes Aynak sits atop the second tions about the evolving relationship between the unearthed. The site is a wealth of information about largest untapped copper deposit in the world, with digital and the physical. ancient Afghanistan. more than 12.5 million tons estimated to lie beneath In 2007, the Afghan Ministry of Mines awarded the surface. the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) the +++ An attempt to mine the site has met resistance right to mine the site at Mes Aynak for nearly $3 billion. from archeologists and activists who claim that mining Mes Aynak means “little copper well” in Pashto. This The 30-year lease agreement included a promise to would destroy undiscovered relics and irreplaceable is an understatement. Rediscovered by modern build infrastructure in the region, including roads, a cultural heritage. But recently, a French startup called archaeologists in the 1960s, the history of the Buddhist railway, and an electricity plant. The purchase is part of Iconem has used drone photography and computer monastery complex at Mes Aynak is intimately linked a broader push by Chinese companies to make inroads

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12 APRIL 2019

ABOVE Digital archaeology in Afghanistan gives cover to MCC and helps them move forward in the construction of the copper mine. Unlike the work of more traditional archaeologists, Iconem’s models of Mes Aynak serve to undermine rather than support efforts to protect the site from destruction. This effect is not new; it is familiar to the world of into mining and resource extraction in Afghanistan In 2010, the Afghan Ministry of Mines brought in art and literature. Starting with the invention of the that includes a plan for three large oilfield in the north- Iconem to document Mes Aynak. The startup has docu- printing press, authors and literary theorists have west of the country. Driven by increased manufac- mented hundreds of sites, many of them in the Middle recognized that the ability to make copies of a work of turing demand at home, Chinese firms are trying to East. Iconem’s founder, Yves Ubelmann, was trained art undermines the value of the original. This effect take advantage of the combination of Afghanistan’s as an architect and became inspired to pursue preser- was renewed by advances like lithography and photogimmense resource wealth and US-led stabilization vation after studying ancient buildings in Afghanistan, raphy. It grew by an order of magnitude with the advent efforts in the country. Iran, and Syria. One of Iconem’s stated goals is to of digital information and the internet. New technolPushback to the sale of Mes Aynak came imme- “document humanity’s most precious places to ensure ogies are breaking down the barrier between digital diately. Afghan cultural heritage activists and arche- their preservation for future generations.” Many of and physical: Techniques like Iconem’s photogramologists claimed that open pit mining like what was Iconem’s projects involve sites that are in danger of metry bring physical objects into the digital world, proposed by MCC would lead to the permanent being destroyed or damaged. “These are the sites we while 3D printing and augmented reality work to bring destruction of the historical site at Mes Aynak. Open need to protect the most. If we lose them, we lose all the digital world into the physical. These advances pit is one of the simplest forms of mining, and also one evidence of their history, of lives lived,” Ubelmann have the potential to carry the devaluation inherent in of the most disruptive. It involves digging a large, wide said in an interview with Reader’s Digest. digital reproduction into the real, physical world. hole to extract minerals that are close to the surface. Iconem uses a technique known as photogramBecause some of the copper deposit at Mes Aynak is metry which uses an artificial intelligence algorithm +++ located directly beneath the monastery, an open pit to stitch many photographs together into a single 3D mine would require that the archeological site be razed model. Combining this process with overhead drone Proponents of mining at Mes Aynak in the Afghan to access the copper underneath it. photography and documentation on the ground, government and at MCC have argued that the destrucIn response, the Afghan Ministry of Mines agreed Iconem has been able to create incredibly detailed tion of the archeological site is justified by the economic to delay the project. Disagreement over the terms models of historical sites. benefits that a mine would provide to an impoverished of the deal between the ministry and MCC as well as The company has undertaken other large-scale part of Afghanistan. Over half of the population of safety also likely contributed to the delay of mining, projects, including the digitization of the entire Greek Afghanistan lives below the poverty line, and Afghan which was scheduled to begin in 2012 but has yet to island of Delos. Iconem has also modeled parts of the officials have estimated that the mine would add more start. Rocket attacks by the Taliban have disrupted ancient city of Palmyra, which has allowed them to than $1 billion to the country’s economy. The project work on the site, and leftover Soviet and Al-Qaeda digitally reconstruct monuments that were partially would build infrastructure near the mine, and create landmines remain a danger for archaeologists and destroyed by ISIS between 2015 and 2017. hundreds of well-paying jobs for locals. However, there workers on the ground. These hazards are part of the The models are fascinating. Not only photoreal- are other mineral deposits in Afghanistan that could reason that Iconem cites for using digital archeology. istic, they are fully rendered in 3D and can be viewed offer similar benefits without the destruction of a In a blog post about the project, Ubelmann writes that and manipulated on a laptop or using a virtual reality historic site. Or, a less invasive style of mining might in light of anti-personnel mines strewn around the site, headset. They can be viewed from from overhead or be able to preserve the historical site while allowing drone photography represents “the only possible tech- zoomed in to a miniscule level of detail. Iconem claims access to the copper deposit underneath. nical solution” and that “it allows us to scan the whole that they allow viewers to experience the sites as if Iconem’s efforts also raise questions of who can mountain from far away, without putting ourselves at they were really there. And their work certainly seems and should benefit from the preservation of cultural risk.” to be more immersive than traditional representa- heritage. Saving the site could help to make it a destinaBefore the MCC deal, not much formal archae- tions of archaeology, which rely mostly on words and tion for tourism that benefits the local economy, much ology had been conducted at Mes Aynak. While looting still images. But by claiming that their digital model like Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddha statues before of ancient Buddhist artifacts was common, it had allows viewers to experience Mes Aynak in a way that they were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. However, never been the subject of any preservative excavation. approaches the experience of the real site, Iconem tourist traffic could itself cause wear and damage that The MCC deal led to renewed archeological interest betrays the dangers inherent to immersive digital threatens the preservation of the site. Digitization by in the site. “If it will not be destroyed by mining, it representations of reality. Iconem might preserve Mes Aynak for future research will be destroyed by looting,” said French archaeolIconem was brought in by the Afghan Ministry of by archeologists and people with high speed internet ogist Philippe Marquis in an interview with National Mines to scan the site at Mes Aynak not simply to help access, but for locals the site would be gone forever. Geographic. Instead, he said, it would be better to docu- preserve the site, but rather to create a digital copy that Iconem’s work serves to make cultural heritage more ment the site now. In 2009, after the Ministry of Mines could serve in the place of the site itself. Blogging about accessible to academics and museum-goers at the agreed to delay the project, Marquis led a team made the process of documenting Mes Aynak, Ubelmann expense of the site itself and those who live near it. up of both Afghan and international archaeologists to writes that digital modeling “gives an overview of all The growth of less developed countries should not excavate Mes Aynak. the archaeological discoveries” that have been made come at the cost of their cultural heritage, which is also Since then, more than 2000 artifacts have been at the site, and “even [makes it] possible to study the heritage of the world. Iconem helps to resolve this found at the site, including coins, pottery, statues, and reliefs located in areas not yet excavated.” Implicit in tension by allowing for a kind of cultural preservation other artworks. So many, in fact, that archaeologists Ubelmann’s vision is the idea that a digital represen- without limiting the extraction of natural resources. are struggling to find safe places to keep them. Many tation, sufficiently advanced, can begin to meaning- However, by portraying its models as faithful reprohave been sent to museums in Kabul, but for lack of fully replace the original. While traditional methods of ductions of physical sites, Iconem is jeopardizing space most are simply being kept in piles onsite. Large representing archaeological discoveries merely repre- the very places it is trying to save. As new technology Buddha statues up to eight meters tall simply cannot sent artifacts and locations, Iconem’s work is a signifi- moves closer to breaking down the barriers between be moved. Without proper preservation, artifacts are cant step towards digital representations that claim to digital and physical, archeologists and technologists in danger of degradation and theft by looters. The give the same experience as the original. alike will have to contend with the consequences. ongoing excavation at Mes Aynak is one of the major Because of this assertion of the fidelity of their factors stopping the destruction of the site and the models, Iconem’s work at Mes Aynak might actu- MATTHEW ISHIMARU B’20 thinks archaeology beginning of mine construction. ally undermine efforts to preserve the place itself. By ROCKS. creating a digital version of the site and positioning it +++ as an adequate replacement for the real thing, Iconem

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How does physics fit into your spirituality? d , an f l a u o t piri s view ns s g i io in yth with th planat h n a t d or g well tific ex ted wi he o g n t n n ia ve i oes alo ing scie assoc s with e i l e e n n’t b ysics g ep find ere onc ity alig o d “I nk ph e ke that w iritual .” i W . h It orld enon any sp fication w e th henom ack of l veri l a p for so my riment , e god of exp lack

“I believe in a loving creator who set up a space that inspires humans to seek understanding of the world and the other beings around them. The study of physics has revealed phenomena that we can understand rather completely while constantly suggesting areas that we are on the cusp of understanding. My experiences with physics inspire me to try to understand more of all that goes on around me.”

Has studying physics influenced your perspective on love or your interpersonal relationships? and words that “It provides me with some concepts when are fun and sometimes helpful to use ersonal discussing relationships and interp interactions between folks.”

“Made it more objective.”

“I am not sure it’s physics itself. However, studying physics influenced my view of how the world works, and my place in the world, and this has had an effect on how I view interpersonal relationships, including the feeling of love.”

but maybe “I tend to date guys who do physics, e of thing.” that’s more of a common interest typ e it’s s u a c fe be ing.” i l n ers i e anyth tt a m b uld that o g c n e i ly th ing. Lov n o e n is th mea e v “Lo

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it ves i g t wha

“I probably approach these things a bit more analytically than I would otherwise.”

“Y3s we are

all particles

and love is a

central forc

e”

“nope” “No” “Not particularly” “I can’t say it has.”

12 APRIL 2019

MATTIELLO AND THE MACHINE

BY Brionne Frazier ILLUSTRATION Eve O'Shea DESIGN Amos Jackson

Nicholas Mattiello and the centralization of the Rhode Island House

Nicholas Mattiello has been touted as the most teams in Rhode Island Public Schools to identify and contribute to Mattiello’s ability to maintain power and powerful man in Rhode Island. This power stems stymie threatening behavior in schools that is often a consistent victories as the incumbent. Elections will primarily from his position as Rhode Island House precursor to gun violence. not be free and open in Rhode Island if the Speaker’s Speaker­, which he has held since 2014, as well as his In spite of his reactionary politics, Mattiello has employment is directly tied to the office. brazen leadership style. Unlike in many other states, maintained his position in a Democrat-controlled state in Rhode Island, the Speaker of the House controls for five years. He was re-elected to office in November +++ the state’s budget, solely decides which bills make it to by a narrow margin, then to the position of Speaker in the floor, nominates judges, and vetoes the Governor’s January with 47 votes, 12 more than necessary. In a city Last fall, Mattiello and the Rhode Island Democratic decisions. For a man with such power, Mattiello lacks known for its history of mob-style machine politics, Party endorsed pro-Trump conservative Michael the charisma and charm typical of political leadership. it is not anomalous that a figure like Mattiello rose to Earnheart, who recently changed his affiliation from While speaking during legislative sessions, he main- such a position of power. Republican to Democrat, in his bid against incumbent tains a droning baritone and a wry humor. When he Representative Moira Walsh, a vocal Mattiello critic. isn’t speaking, his eyebrows stay furrowed and his lips +++ A Mattiello-controlled PAC donated $1,000 to the pursed. The Speaker is also not known for choosing his campaign, the maximum allowable amount. words carefully, once calling employees on Medicaid Providence is no stranger to personally abrasive Why would the party endorse a candidate well a “burden to the citizens of Rhode Island.” His power personalities and still lives under the legacy of its late known for a since-deleted racist string of tweets referlies not in affability and community engagement, but former-mayor Buddy Cianci. While Mattiello has no ring to undocumented immigrants as “self-entitled in strong-arm political maneuvers and fulfillment of criminal allegations, his style in office does harken lawbreakers and thieves” and Muslim immigrants campaign promises. back to Cianci’s approach. By using his power to decide to the United Kingdom as “garbage human beings”? Last November, fellow Democrats organized what bills reach the House floor, Mattiello is able to Walsh told Slate magazine that the endorsement was a caucus dedicated to Mattiello's removal from the silence representatives with whom he disagrees. In late punishment for her opposition to his leadership. position of Speaker. After his reelection to office in March, Mattiello allegedly refused to pass anything In fact, a majority of Mattiello’s opposition, espeJanuary, Mattiello dismissed all nineteen members of with Representative Teresa Tanzi’s name on it because cially within the house, are women. Much of this is the Rhode Island Reform Caucus from the powerful she withheld support for his candidacy for Speaker in due to his mishandling of sexual harassment alleHouse Finance and House Judiciary Committees. January. gations against Rep. Cale Keable by Rep. Katherine (Mattiello denies that the staff shakeup was retribution Situations like this highlight how the centralization Kazarian. Mattiello did not remove or reprimand for their opposition.) of the House poses a unique obstacle to progressive or Keable, claiming it was “not Statehouse business,” as The Reform Caucus was created to oppose even bipartisan reform. The purpose of a House vote he told WPRI Eyewitness News. Though Kazarian Mattiello’s leadership, promote greater decentral- is for representatives, who advocate for their constit- possesses sexually harassing text messages from ization in the House, and limit the singularity of uencies, to make legislative decisions. The Speaker’s Keable, Mattiello maintained that he had no specific the Speaker’s power. This advocacy is in response ability to postpone bills indefinitely runs contradictory facts or evidence to support the allegations. Though to Mattiello as a conservative old-guard democrat— to the ideals of representative government. Kazarian had lodged multiple complaints as early as also known as a DINO, or ‘Democrat In Name Only.’ Beyond silencing opposition in the House, 2015, Mattiello did not remove Keable from his posiMembers of this caucus, as well as the group Citizens Mattiello bolsters support through the patronage tion as chairman of the House Judiciary Committeefor for a Corruption-Free RI, are concerned that DINO- system, keeping constituents on his, and the House’s, years. He did so personally an hour and a half after the style conservatism does not allow for progressive staff. This past February, the Public’s Radio’s Ian story aired. reform and transparent politics. Donnis published an investigation which found that Rhode Island may be known for a boss style politMattiello has been endorsed by the National since the Speaker’s appointment in 2014, government ical culture, but the rising organized criticism towards Rifle Association, defended what critics maintained jobs multiplied in his Cranston district. Mattiello’s one of the state’s most powerful men might signal a was a mishandling of sexual harassment allega- opposition in last year’s election, Steve Frias, told the turn to progressivism in the House. However, this is tions against a house representative, and endorsed a Public’s Radio, “I saw people who were working at the only possible with continuous pressure to establish pro-Trump candidate running against Representative Statehouse, on election day and during the campaign greater transparency and division of power within Moira Walsh, one of his most vocal critics. Prior to season working for him. They are basically campaign the state government. With Rhode Island’s uniquely early March, he was also supported by Rhode Island volunteers that are paid for by the taxpayers.” centralized House structure, activists and critics must Right to Life, an endorsement which was retracted Promising jobs in exchange for support is not a channel action uniquely as well. As revealed by the after Mattiello scheduled a vote on the Reproductive foreign concept to US politics, and politicians have Kazarian and Keable situation, public pressure has Privacy Act, which would codify Roe v. Wade and the been filling staff positions with supporters and constit- forced Mattiello’s hand. It is another explanation as to right to abortion into state law. uents since Andrew Jackson’s introduction of the spoils why he scheduled a vote on the Reproductive Privacy Despite his personal abrasiveness, he has had system. Since then, it has become a regular political Act—on which he voted no—after consistently promtremendous political success. Since his entering office, practice for a new official to replace current office ising not to. With a case like Mattiello on our hands, the unemployment rate in Rhode Island has decreased, employees with their own. But as Donnis’s report citizen mobilization in Rhode Island might be the key and wages have increased, due to Mattiello’s pro-busi- notes, in Rhode Island this power is specifically vested to break up a very compact political circle. ness stance. Further, the house has cut social secu- in the Speaker who controls the Joint Committee on rity taxes for low-income residents, and Mattiello Legislative Services, the body that hires the entire BRIONNE FRAZIER B'20 unfortunately cannot vote has been working to phase out the car tax, which legislature. The Rhode Island Speaker also has the in the state of Rhode Island. many of his constituents have vehemently opposed. unique power to nominate state judges, a power which Currently, he is working to establish threat assessment few other states allow. While this is not illegal, it does

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METRO

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BEYOND RUBBERS

BY Jennifer Katz ILLUSTRATION Sophia Meng DESIGN Amos Jackson

A short history of male birth control When patients come to Dr. Kelly Brogan MD, a Manhattan-based holistic women’s health psychiatrist, with complaints of low libido, insomnia, unstable mood, weight gain, hair loss, or cloudy thinking, one of the first questions she asks is, “Are you on the pill?” Like many feminists, Dr. Brogan used to think of birth control as a woman’s right. Despite having taken it herself for 12 years, during her medical training she became concerned about the pharmaceutical manipulation of the natural menstrual cycle, bringing her to the practice she runs today, where she urges patients to spermatogenesis—the origin and development of pick the lesser of many evils in their search for contra- sperm cells within male reproductive organs. Given ception. She advocates for patients to restore hormone that the average penile ejaculation contains between a type of synthetic progestin, along with testosterone. balance and stabilize mental health by dropping the 40 million and 1.2 billion sperm, a male contraceptive Participants with penises apply the hormonal gel to pill altogether. must reduce that sperm count to levels that can reli- both shoulders once a day. The term “birth control” does not usually require ably prevent fertilization. Although the ideal hormonal Although these studies are encouraging, Wang a specification of gender; it is automatically assumed contraceptive would generate ejaculate completely predicts that a viable option will not be approved by the that it isn’t used by cisgender men. Aside from its uses free of sperm, studies so far have demonstrated that FDA for at least another decade due to tedious reguto control a range of menstrual disorders that involve reducing sperm concentration to less than 1 million lations. Research is also largely curtailed by minimal physical or emotional symptoms just before or during per milliliter of ejaculate is low enough to produce only male interest because of cultural attitudes around the menstruation, birth control largely concerns individ- one percent risk of pregnancy. responsibility of pregnancy, the socially constructed uals with uteruses as a form of pregnancy prevention. Since Pincus’s attempt, research has identified relationship between manhood and fertility, and Even though they are only fertile a few days a month, that the addition of exogenous testosterone signals basic fear or refusal to experience side effects. Many the one with the womb must shoulder the responsi- the suppression of sperm production. Supplementing cisgender men having heterosexual sex are reluctant bility of avoiding pregnancy. Meanwhile, people with testosterone with progestin can further enhance that to try birth control, and this is evident in the disproporpenises are constantly making millions of sperm that sperm suppression. But the delay in putting otherwise tionate number of people with vaginas undergoing the can impregnate with each ejaculation. successful male contraceptives on pharmacy shelves only existing contraceptive procedure—sterilization. There are a range of contraceptive choices for lies in subject-reported side effects: loss of libido, According to 2015 estimates from the United Nations, people with uteruses, including hormone-based pills, fatigue, acne, fatigue, hair loss, and erectile dysfunc- vasectomies are only half as common as female sterinjections, and intrauterine devices, but condoms and tion. These side effects bear an undeniably strong ilization in the US despite the fact that the two procevasectomies are the only contraceptive methods avail- resemblance to the side effects experienced by females dures are equally effective and vasectomies are less able to people with penises. This one-sided onus could taking hormonal birth control. In males, however, it’s invasive and risky. Apathetic attitudes also contribute be mitigated if there were not a wholesale delegation been enough to forestall birth control production. to an overall lack of industry interest, which creates a of contraception to females—male birth control could In October 2016, the Journal of Clinical challenge to get pharmaceutical companies on board reasonably open doors for shared responsibility in Endocrinology & Metabolism published the first and finance these studies. avoiding pregnancy. multicenter, international clinical trial on the effiEven with a male contraceptive on the market, The hormonal male contraceptive is not a new cacy of a male contraceptive. The study administered some females might feel uncomfortable trusting concept. Researchers have been investigating options a hormonal injection every eight weeks containing a that their sexual partner is covered. When Pincus for people with penises since the 1950s, around the regimen of testosterone undecanoate and progestin first started looking into a male option, Sanger and same time the pill was introduced for people with to 320 male participants aged 18 to 45. For most partic- Katharine McCormick (one of the primary donors to uteruses. From the very beginning, the search for ipants, their sperm count per ejaculate was reduced the research project) were not interested in creating birth control has been laced with eugenic political to the demonstrated effective level at 24 weeks, at a male pill. Sanger thought that if male birth control goals. Margaret Sanger's vocal support of the negative which point the participants and their partners were options were introduced, women would have less eugenics movement deeply complicates her legacy instructed to stop using other forms of birth control. agency despite their ultimate role in the pregnancy. of advocating for the universal availability and legal- In the next phase of the trial, there were four pregnan- In 1938, Sanger argued that the introduction of birth ization of birth control and establishing the first birth cies––according to the study, a 96 percent effective rate. control would place “the burden of responsibility control clinic, now known as Planned Parenthood. In the course of this study, 20 participants discon- solely upon the husband—a burden which he seldom She framed birth control and family planning as ways tinued due to product-related side effects, including assumed.” Birth control does enable people with uterto combat unplanned births and limit the reproduc- acne, changes in mood, pain or panic at first injection, uses to have agency over their bodies—giving them tion of minority communities. Her racist language and erectile dysfunction. Several participants expe- control of when (and if) they want to have children and disturbing comments regarding disabled people rienced serious adverse effects, and in one case, a without unrealistically sacrificing their ability to have convolute Sanger’s long-time advocacy for (some) participant committed suicide. Though researchers sex, and allowing them to pursue an education and women’s reproductive rights. concluded that 39 percent of the adverse effects make career advancements. In 1951, Sanger’s urgency to curtail unplanned reported (including the suicide) were not due to the Despite these benefits, the decision to be proactive pregnancy motivated her to encourage endocrinologist injections—and 75 percent of participants reported about pregnancy prevention can feel like an unreasonGregory Pincus to design a female hormonal contra- willingness to use this contraception method again— ably heavy onus for one person to carry when interceptive in his laboratory. Pincus began researching how two committees concluded that the injection was course requires two individuals. Each contraceptive he could use hormones to prevent ovulation, culmi- unsafe. This resulted in the study’s early termination, involves a trade-off: opting for the non-hormonal nating with his discovery that the female sex hormone a disappointing setback in the ongoing hunt for a male copper IUD can result in heavy bleeding and severe estrogen and progestin, a synthetic version of a natural contraceptive. cramps once a month, while choosing the pill can female hormone, can compositely prevent pregnancy. Luckily, there are several current promising cause acne, weight gain, or mood changes. A Danish The metabolism of these hormones elevates the body’s studies of male contraceptives in the form of pills, gels, research study even determined the increased relative level of progesterone, which convinces the body that it implants, and injections. On March 25, a team of scien- risk for depression by each hormonal contraceptive is perpetually pregnant. Mimicking the body during tists co-led by Dr. Christina Wang at the Los Angeles method, with 23 percent for combined oral contrapregnancy, the pill disrupts the normal menstrual Biomed Research Institute, and Dr. Stephanie Page, ceptives and 34 percent for progestin-only pills. In cycle and stops the typical production of reproductive Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington light of male contraceptive studies being halted due hormones, thereby hindering the release of eggs from School of Medicine, presented the results of the first to the same side effects that female birth control, the the ovaries. This finding resulted in the production of phase of a study that could potentially conclude with continuous oversight of pain and discomfort can have Enovid, the first female birth control pill, which was the long anticipated, inaugural male pill. Involving an extremely demoralizing effect on people with uterapproved by the FDA for menstrual disorders in 1957, 40 participants with penises, the study looked at the uses—ultimately, another instance of systemic erasure, with the convenient side effect of preventing preg- safety, rather than contraceptive efficacy, of the pill. dismissal, and disbelief of the pain of people with nancy, and explicitly for contraceptive use in 1960. While there were similar mild side effects, unlike in uteruses. Pincus sought a hormonal analog for males by the previous studies, no one reported serious side effects or same logic of using progestin to disrupt the produc- dropped out. Wang and Page are also leading another JENNIFER KATZ B’20 thinks Mirena, Skyla, and tion of sperm. Although Pincus reached inconclusive promising study—a large clinical trial in nine countries Liletta sound like Russian ice skaters. results, scientists today continue to search for a male involving over 400 participants to test a gel contracephormonal birth control by focusing on suppressing tive, known as the NES/T gel. This gel uses Nestorone,

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THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

EPHEMERA

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after A slight breeze tickles the hair on the young girl’s arms, and she scratches the surface to find her earth-toned skin tender. So tender that it flakes off along with the meat of her arms, exposing bone that disappears into white butterflies. The room was dense from the summer month, and pearls perspired off of everyone’s glossy skins.

and assembled sheet metal with brick stone. The ever- computer scientist, finding meaning in the things he growing number of tents from outsiders coming with bought with a large paycheck. This kept him satisfied efforts to protect the river stood out in their bright reds, for a few years, but the material world grew boring too, yellows and greens. Further ahead was the Red Clay so he took up hiking, rock climbing and traveling — in River where her grandmother would wash clothes. An hopes of animating his spare time. hours walk from home, from the sky the river painted a silk ribbon on the forest floor. A nostalgia traveled through him when he journeyed to rural areas, not knowing of the young girl inside him, The sitting circle held the girl and her grandmother. Further, into the horizon, several bulldozers sat who felt a deep relief upon seeing a green-filled land. Her father sat to her left, nearest to the doorway, and encroached in a nearby valley. They lined the river- He filled his social media with subscriptions to enviher older brother who was not much older than her was bank with construction equipment and neighbored ronmental activist pages, life advice for connecting focused intently on the grandmother’s tea kettle, an police force vehicles brought over by the overseeing with the earth, and even updates on protest rallies for empty earthenware bowl that she crafted with river GNS. The girl’s father explained how the GNS viewed Climate Change awareness. clay two summers ago — a deep orange-red. One of this dam as a means towards prosperity. They bribed her father’s foreign advisors sat between the girl and the village with small allotments in the capital city as While scrolling through his tablet, news of a recently grandmother. His flesh looked like tapioca, and the girl compensation for forfeiting their land rights. murdered dark-skinned activist flooded every corner could see blue veins protruding. of his social media. The activist protested the construcThe girl rose into the sky until she could see the shore- tion of a dam that would ruin a river ecosystem in the This meeting was meant to discuss the next poten- line. Further ahead was an isthmus that emerged, green continent nearby. His mind remained captivated tial actions addressing the men in armor and noisy serving as a connection for the land below — another on the aerial view images of the river in the articles. construction vehicles nearby. They were brought upon greyer expanse. The continent of the foreign man The dam would provide a renewable energy source for by hydroelectric companies which threatened the and her own were, in fact, conjoined twin sisters. The the developing country of the GNS, but this was done Red Clay River with the proposal of a cement dam to sunset vanished, and the capital city of the GNS began ignoring the local communities’ qualms. Fundraisers harness its mechanical energy. It was seen as a neces- glowing inside a green darkness. It paled in compar- for their protest circled globally on the internet. The sary step for the development of the Green Nation ison to the concrete continent that resembled the night live interviews with local people who inhabited the State (GNS), which oversaw all the land de jure. The sky above. village near the river announced a call for help from job of the foreign man from the continent made of +++ anyone who was willing to defend the Red Clay River. concrete was to provide guidance for legal procedures, Having been to the GNS once, the man felt a pull to since these hydroelectric companies used litigation to Several glowing human and nonhuman figures provide aid in person, proceeding to get his vaccine bypass the village’s approval. Outsiders did not come emerged, like kites, carving the air around the girl. shots the next day. to the girl’s village very often. In her language, butterfly and kite shared the same +++ word, and these figures glowed white in the dusk. The When her grandmother’s lips quivered, a small thing wind churned and generated a wave of knowledge that The knowledge reverie subsided, but its tide continued crawled out of her mouth. It went down the pink and washed over her face. Wet air permeating a story into tickling her limbs into mature long appendages. Her orange shawl, across the sitting mat, and towards the her skin cells. Eyes glazed over in a fog. dress, wet with moisture, fit tightly around her aging girl. The small red speck approached the girl, revealed body. This ocean had touched every continental coast, itself to be an insect with small white wings, and Her vision became that of the foreign man’s eyes, and she could feel that the man left the village abruptly murmured just loud enough for the girl to hear but no living his every moment from birth. His mother died due to the pressure of having his visa revoked by the one else. Its gentle noise put the girl into a trance, and at childbirth, so he was raised by a grieving father. The overseeing Green Nation State. the child felt arms wrap around her until she couldn’t untamed emotions of his household festered a disdain feel the reed-woven floor. Her body passed through the inside him. He developed a nihilist worldview in order The man came back to his square home where he soon dwelling walls and up the shading trees. to remedy living with a hollow parent under sterile developed a crippling disillusionment. Remaining in fluorescent lights. This gave him the illusion of peace of his mind was the memory of the tea from the clay pot. +++ mind, but the girl, deprived of sunlight and serotonin, When he drank the tea, he saw the girl’s grandmother sobbed inside of the depressed body, hoping to fill the shapeshift into what looked like his own mother The invisible hold accelerated its pull, lending a view vessel so that tears would spill through his eye sockets. from old photos. He could not remember what they of the village homes below, a mixture of grass roofs Nothing came however, and the man grew up to be a spoke about, but the conversation haunted him with a

15

LITERARY

12 APRIL 2019

BY Jorge Palacios ILLUSTRATION Jorge Palacios DESIGN Lulian Ahn

" FURTHER AHEAD WAS AN ISTHMUS THAT EMERGED, SERVING AS A CONNECTION FOR THE LAND BELOW — ANOTHER GREYER EXPANSE" yearning to speak with her again. His former career in AI development gave him the knowledge of an unforeseen potential for current technology. There was a faint notion that perhaps he could mimic the effect that the brewed tea has on the brain with a computer program and an AI. A phantom stone formed in the girl’s throat at the thought. +++ The man worked on and off for years independently on this endeavor. He stopped going to protests, though the occasional news article of an environmental fiasco

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

did come up. His usual guilt now turned into apathy. for the first time. The woman was not a mirrored Some of his colleagues took an interest when exper- reflection, but herself in a different space and time. imental trials showed signs of promise. This initial The display on the screen tried to speak with her grandinterest garnered an academic following and funding mother, now deceased. She sobbed and apologized for through science and entrepreneurial grants. The man several things. The GNS took her village’s forest and patented the technology in a startup company by the river and displaced them to the city’s capital within name of afterLife, looking to invent the first software small-square apartments. She now lived there, and that could potentially contact those deceased. They there were no wild herbs growing outside to make tea. called the project MEDIUM. +++ The system’s mind only displayed abstracted visions of the spirit world at first. Connecting with a specific The screen on the woman’s glass tablet then displayed person required an external drive of memories for the the various articles debating if the application’s servers neural network to generate the being. This informa- were considered conscious beings with rights of their tion can be derived from the combination of a person own. Some science journalists questioned whether it is uploading their physical memories from their brain to ethical to subject an AI to inebriated its normal neural a computer and the data structures that extrapolated network functions without consent. The tablet pulsed their interactions with the digital web. Most people in a warmth into the woman’s fingertips as she read. the developed world had their minds synced with their social media accounts, so sourcing information was a For a moment, the girl inhabited the busy mind of matter of negotiating with the social media conglom- the AI, recurring through several times the standard erates. By embedding this memory data into the AI dosage of a cup of tea. She remained in a sightless void simulation, the code could contact any desired relative where millions of voices ran her mad and time felt like a or person as if they were in the physical world. This circle. Bearing witness to each soul’s entire lives, trageinformation could go back centuries as well, following dies, love, happiness, and pearls of wisdom, the beings the discovery that intergenerational memory can be answered blind questions that verged on the most intiinherited through epigenetic information. Further, mate and absurd. Which grandchild did you truly love this data split the application from the spirit world even the most? Would you fuck me if you were alive today? further. Contacting a person’s soul was a search-bar What is your biggest fear for the future of the country? away. She re-emerged with shards embedded in wrinkled hands, her long hair the color of the river water. Her +++ aged mouth, agape already, gasped for air but choked on saltwater that then stung her eyes. One of the The girl, now in a grown woman’s body, could see the glowing kite figures glided towards her, butterfly sunrise approaching from the horizon. The twin conti- wings outstretched. Reaching out for the incoming nents shimmered in the new sunlight, a tarnishing embrace, the old woman fell through the immaterial grey emerging from the green continent’s corners, shadow, somersaulting into fetal position mid-air. Tear revealing a shadow stretching from the isthmus droplets followed her like a comet’s tail in the evening forest center. In a daze, the woman struggled with sky as she spun endlessly towards the Earth. each breath of thinning air. Metal satellites and other debris slow-danced in silence with the glowing figures An arm caught her, and she looked up to the face of the around her. Tears dropped down from the woman’s pale-skinned man. She looked at her arms, shortened face, but they splashed at a seemingly invisible surface and youthful again, and looked up to meet her grandinstead of dropping to Earth. A glare cast on the trans- mother’s glance. parent rectangle, blinding her for a second. Reaching out, the woman took the cold glass in her hands and saw herself inside the screen opening the application

LITERARY

16

BY Eve Grassfield ILLUSTRATION Illustrator DESIGN Christie Zhong

A HIGH STAKES GAME OF JENGA The first time Guy Davis ever moved a house, things University revealed a new proposal that would save the did not go as planned. He was told it would be a stan- four buildings and allow the performing arts project to dard move, perfect for a newbie like him to learn the be built as planned, only one block to the South. Brown ropes. So on a warm day in 1980, he woke up, cool and University planners now refer to the Sharpe move as collected, and recounted his plan to himself with ease: an “enabling project.” This decision, however, was Put steel under the house, jack it up, get it on wheels, not just an altruistic response to the resistance. It was and then drive it down the road. Everything went as also motivated by Brown’s preservationist approach to planned until Main Street when Guy, and the house, building: Aiming for a “traditional look” on its campus, attempted to turn the corner (Main Street is definitely Brown hopes to keep as many old buildings intact as is not the correct street name, Guy said he’s blocked possible. Sharpe’s move, unlike most other house out the real name out due to the trauma of the incident). moves, was an aesthetic and economically strategic future”—one that values community and confronts its There he saw a row of parked cars at least six cars long choice, not one necessitated by environmental or struc- discriminatory past. each on either side of the street. All at once, he real- tural problems. In contrast, the most common reasons I am no stranger to building talk. My parents, a ized his mistake: he had not taken cars into account for moving a house are involuntary. These include (in contractor and architect duo, spent dinners bickering in his measurements. The cars, in perfect pecking order of prevalence) flooding, residents wanting a new over what type of windows should be used in their order, stared back at him mockingly. They blocked basement, and, most pressingly, soil erosion. current project and enjoyed “full-scale modeling,” any chance of the house moving further. He was stuck. It took six months of planning to figure out the or designing and re-designing our home, a floor of Panic set in. Guy Davis, now a fourth-generation house logistics. To ensure that the house did not undergo a retired burlap bag factory. As a child, annoyed by mover, was attempting and failing to manage his first massive damage, engineers, contractors, and archi- their endless talk of building plans and destruction ever move on a residential home in Islip, Long Island. tects alike planned everything, down to Sharpe’s rather than Dragon Tales and Playmobil, I shrouded Then he noticed a church. It was Sunday, mass time. 90-degree turn; estimated the weight of the six chim- the concept of house moving in mysticism, making it Without thinking much, he ran full speed towards the neys; and added wood-bracing to all of the stairwells. the golden unicorn of construction. What if all people, two wooden doors. “I burst through the doors, I’m Then came the raising. Contractors put holes in the even ones who don’t have homes now, could keep a drenched in sweat, and they’re just in the middle of foundation to insert steel and wood beams known beloved home? I became curious: what if, instead of giving a sermon about John or something. They must as cribbing. This holds up the house while hydraulic erecting all these new buildings, we just kept them all have thought I was having some crisis with God, but I pumps are attached to start the jacking. Sharpe weighs and moved them around like Monopoly pieces? As a just screamed to get them to move their cars.” And they 446 tons, extremely heavy on the house spectrum, child, I couldn’t understand the political implications did: Churchgoers streamed from the building, started which means each of these steps was that much riskier. of the questions of who has homes, who gets to keep their engines, and quickly drove away. Guy, sweaty In an interview, contractor James Sisson told me it them, and who gets to pick them up and move them. and wide eyed, was able to finish the move as planned. was like a “high-stakes game of Jenga.” When Sharpe In reality, it is the golden unicorn only for places like Guy’s dad, Curtis, Jr., then-owner of Davis was up in the air, 12 separate remote-cotrolled dollies Brown. For most, saving their homes is an unaffordBuilding Movers, the company responsible for the (controlled from Guy’s joystick) were carefully slid able process. But like Max Page, I began to envision job-gone-temporarily-wrong, was anticipating passing under the house. Following this, Sharpe was ready to my own progressive preservation. I lived in a nostalgic his business onto his son. “I went home and told my roll the planned 200 feet (to the west) and embrace its dreamland—one full of toylike houses and magical dad what had happened, and he just laughed and new location on Brown Street. contractors. laughed.” Guy was only 17. Eleven years later, Guy Meanwhile, Brown University administrators and Davis would fulfill his father’s prophecy and inherit the all others involved in the move were invited to a watch +++ family business. party. On December 17, 2018, onlookers watched the house move at a rapid speed of six inches per second On January 26, 2019, I see Sharpe House, in its new +++ from the nearby Granoff Building and celebrated its location, floating in midair. Supported only by steel successful placement with small talk and cake, an beams and wood, the building is a full six feet above In September of 2018, Brown University contracted exact gingerbread replica of Sharpe House. As it disap- its foundation. I am inspired to learn more. I email Guy Davis Building Movers to move the University’s peared bite by bite, the real house stayed perfectly Davis and he responds with a time to meet in-person. Sharpe House, a history department building located intact. We plan to meet on February 28, 5:30 pm on a Thursday, on Angell Street. The house—pale yellow, 146 years for an early dinner at Waterman Grill. The dinner is his old, 446 tons of brick and wood—was inconveniently decision. With a busy schedule, he wanted to combine +++ located in the plot of land slated to become the two obligations, me and eating, into one. I suspect the University’s new performing arts center. Every single house that undergoes a move will invari- scene, two people, one aged 55, the other 22—seemThis move is a byproduct of the University’s ably sustain some damage, usually in the form of inglya father and daughter out to a nice dinner over 2013 strategic plan, “Building on Distinction,” that cracks in the building’s walls. These damages are steak and halibut—will look strange from the outside. outlined its commitments for the next ten years, with corrected in post-move renovations. While cracks Then I think about adding in strange cordialities, heady “campus development” stated as one of four main are inevitable, the most risky and tricky part of house questions about the theory of construction, and over pillars. This plan promoted major projects like student moving is disconnecting and moving all the utility twelve pages of notes, and it becomes all too comical body increases and the redevelopment of the Jewelry lines. The price of house-moving is roughly stan- to overthink. After arriving, being seated at a cramped District. For the University, development means dardized based on size and distance of the move, but high-top table, and exchanging enthusiastic small talk, enhancing building resources and campus image, rerouting utilities vary widely and can become highly, I begin questioning him. I’ll start at the beginning. increasing Brown’s prestige and therefore profit in even prohibitively, expensive. To put it in perspective, James Isaac Davis, Guy’s great-great grandfather the long run. Now six years later, we are seeing the Guy explains that any house can be moved, but many started moving houses on Long Island in the 1890s. effects of this strategy. Sharpe is part of what Brown (most) aren’t, because of the utility cost, whether that He and his team would raise a house, strap it to a batch University planners have dubbed the “mid-campus be standard rerouting or being forced to cut down tons of horses and pull it down the road. It took so long that zone,” a region that spans from the Ruth J. Simmons of above-ground wires for an extra-tall house. sometimes they would have to park the house in the quad all the way to the historic Pembroke campus and House moving is a preservationist enterprise. middle of the road overnight and start again the next is currently undergoing substantial change. Within Preservation, conserving buildings from demolition morning. James himself was so famous for his skills this one zone, four separate projects are currently through laws and zoning, has historically been used that his obituary was published on the front page of happening—the moving of Sharpe House and the as an exclusionary tool. Those in power have used the New York Times. Davis Building Movers, house construction of the new performing arts center, the landmark designations to block new development moving company extraordinaire, was formally incorNelson Center for Entrepreneurship, and 164 Angell that could threaten the “character of a neighbor- porated around 35 years later (in 1924), and the rest Street, an administrative building that houses the hood,” meaning discrimination along both racial and was history—a total takeover of the house moving field. Brown bookstore. economic lines. This history, however, is currently After two more generations and various technological One of these projects, the new performing arts being challenged. In Why Preservation Matters, archi- advances, this booming family business became Guy’s. center, was initially slated to be built on a plot of land tectural historian Max Page explains that a new era Four generations of businessmen and four generations that would require the demolition of four historic build- of preservation is upon us—what he calls progressive of picking houses right up and walking them down the ings. This plan was met with resistance from preserva- preservation. This movement sees conservation as the street—or moving them on the same plot of land, or tionists and students alike. In a last second change, the “means to a more economically vibrant and sustainable turning them clockwise or otherwise, or raising them

Or, how to move a house

17

FEATURES

12 APRIL 2019

IN SEPTEMBER OF 2018, BROWN UNIVERSITY CONTRACTED DAVIS BUILDING MOVERS TO MOVE THE UNIVERSITY’S SHARPE HOUSE, A HISTORY DEPARTMENT BUILDING LOCATED ON ANGELL STREET.

shocked that I actually did. I had studied it three years ago as a freshman in Contemporary Architecture, the class I foolishly took, hoping I would gain more from my parent’s dinner discussions. I vaguely remember it had something to with Robert Venturi and how a building can be a symbol. “Well, we moved that building twice. The second time, in 2007, I let my daughters drive it. They were eight and ten, and now for the rest of their lives when they drive past it, they’ll get to say, ‘I moved that house.’” Guy continues to explain into the air, or barging them onto an island for resale. me, I wish to live in a fantastical world of progressive his dream of passing on the business to his daughters. Guy goes on to explain his approach to house preservation, where everyone gets to have a beloved “I hope the duck move passed on some of the wonder.” moving, casually throwing in grand and fascinating home and keep it. The image of the duck house walking down the street statements like, “Contracting is all about creativity! The meal is ending, they’ve cleared out plates, but too perfectly mirrors my childhood dreamworld, but You must know that firsthand from your dad!” (During he asks if I’d like desert. We look over menus, and I I stay silent and imagine myself as that eight year old, the small talk, I had thrown in my father’s profession, see an ice cream sundae that screams to me, honey ice steering a duck-shaped building down a winding Long but I feel like a fraud, because I can barely tell a flat- cream and chocolate sauce. When it arrives, I realize Island road. head from a Phillips.) He rattles off his list of achieve- all at once that I’ve mistakenly added to the fatherments casually: “So there were those three houses at daughter vibe. After gorging myself, I thank him EVE GRASSFIELD B ‘19 is still bitter that her parents Harvard I moved in 2007, that was interesting because profusely, say goodbye, and leave. Walking home, I refused to talk Playmobil. we had to cut down a bunch of street lights and wires in feel like I’ve doused myself in romanticism. I realize Cambridge… Paul Simon’s house in Montauk, I moved I arrived and left the dinner in much the same place, that back from the bluff it was six feet away from just reveling in my own concocted mysticism. What has going whoosh right into the ocean forever… Michael changed is the newfound stories that strengthen all Bloomberg’s house, over 600 tons… Jimmy Buffett, oh the mystery. Guy has offered me a treasure trove, an yeah, after I moved his main house, he had a sun house archive of his memories, to allow my house moving he wanted to demolish, so I just picked it up and moved nostalgia to continue unabated. it to my own property. We still use it, great light.” Soon it’s revealed that every house that Guy has ever lived in +++ has been moved. I ask him to describe his current property: “Oh, well, I have a lot of sheds. Four to be exact. A week later, I plan an interview with James Sisson, A lot of times when you’re moving someone’s house Brown University’s Senior Construction Manager, they want to get rid of a shed and so they’ll throw it in that then leads to an invitation to visit the job site. for free. Sometimes I’ll pay like a dollar. Now they’re I’m ecstatic. I hope my house moving knowledge will mine!” he laughs. become less based in fantastical stories, but in real When I ask him when during his career he material resources (think wood, plaster, steel). In a moved the most houses he responds dramatically, few days, I meet James outside the Granoff Center and “Everything changed in an instant when Hurricane he gives me my own costume to look the part, a high Sandy hit. I went from getting 15 calls a day to over 100.” visibility jacket in bright orange, a hard hat and safety He describes the tragedy of it all, how people who were protection glasses. We tromp on over to the job site flooded were forced to lift their homes (a service Guy and he comments, jokingly, on how “next time I come also offers), but that he could only help so many people I should probably wear better shoes.” In my loafers, I at once. Long Island, the area where Guy primarily walk below Sharpe House in midair, supported by works, was hit hard. Unlike the Sharpe move, residents only steel beams and wood slats (that really do look had no choice but to lift their home due to the environ- like Jenga pieces). It’s apparent that our shoewear isn’t mental damage. “My secretary’s hair would be straight our only difference. I’m interested in Sharpe House for out. She basically turned into a counselor, listening to my own mythological reasons, but he is for practical people’s stories of seven, ten, fifteen feet of water in ones. This is James’ fourth house move and 25th year at their homes.” His waitlist (first come, first serve) was Brown and as we wander below the house, he explains, so long and caused him so much stress that he went to “Moving a house is really exciting. There’s always risk, talk to his cardiologist to learn about how to cultivate but the challenge makes people coalesce around a his own bedside manner. “The worst part about it were single goal. We all are bonded in the moving.” I realize the storm chasers.” my assumptions were wrong. He, too, has romanti“The what?” I reply. Storm chasers, fraudulent cized the process, but for an entirely different reason. companies that swooped in to Long Island and promWhen he brings me inside Sharpe House, I see ised to raze people’s homes, took the money and left. cracks in the walls and some forgotten history departGuy explains that many people were left with nothing. ment posters. After an extensive tour, I realize I’m 40 “The worst part is I knew they were coming too, I went to minutes late to class. I resolve that I’ll be back to learn all the municipalities and told them the storm chasers more and dash out. Over the next few weeks he texts are coming, but I just became the boy who cried wolf of me photo updates of the construction and says I’m house moving.” welcome back anytime (if I remember to wear my hard I’ve saved my best question for last, but Guy is hat and proper shoes). I’m giddy from my findings and unphased by what I thought was a clever riddle: If my new friends, but can’t help but think about how my a family lives in a home and they decide to move it wonder seems unchecked. I am running back to class, somewhere entirely new, did the family really move? dressed up in high vis orange and loafers, hypothe“Definitely, they moved. It’s a new home. There’s a sizing a futuristic world where there exists no demoliwhole new foundation. It’s in a new place.” I’m let tion. Meanwhile, on the Sharpe construction site (and down by his matter-of-fact answer, so I attempt to ask similar projects), discussion surrounds things more again, clouding my next question in more nostalgia real and tangible, like steel, wood, and physical labor. and hoping to unearth some grey zone in his thinking. “But what about the familiarity of a lifelong bedroom?” +++ Again, he seems unfazed. I realize my childhood notion of preservation is peeking out again. For Guy, “You know that famous building that’s shaped like a house moving isn’t a nostalgic act, it’s his daily life. For duck on Long Island?” Guy asks. “Yes I do!” I respond,

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

FEATURES

18

THE T H E LIST LIST fri 4.12

Massages and Martinis Friday Askew Prov (150 Chestnut Street) 4-7PM You feeling shaken? Stirred perhaps? Unwind at Askew with a stiff drink (a $5 martini special!) and a professional onsite masseuse. Add in some acupuncture by stabbing yourself with the little olive sword.

sat 4.13

Urban Agriculture Kick-Off 160 Sessions Street , 227 Dudley Street, 16 Ring Street, and 40 Florence Street 11AM-1PM Every year, the Southside Community Land Trust hosts this “annual spring celebration,” which is not a party per se, but rather an opportunity to pick up free organic vegetable and flower seeds as well as low-cost organic fertilizer. This is a great part of the SCLT’s mission to make healthy food available and affordable to low-income Rhode Islanders, as well as spring training for living off the land during the coming climate apocalypse! Film Screening: The Gleaner’s and I FAV Auditorium Building (17 Canal Walk) 9PM-12AM Agnès Varda, who passed away late last month, was a pioneer of French New Wave cinema and just, like, impossibly cool. This documentary, which she made later in her career, which follows “gleaners,” scavengers roaming France’s cities and countryside. Varda was a kind of “gleaner” herself—scavenging the world with perpetual interest and care—and this screening is an opportunity to honor one of the greats.

sun 4.14

mon 4.15

Drag Brunch The Black Sheep Providence (397 Westminster Street) 10AM-2PM Brunch—usually a way to spend hideous amounts of money and time to wind up a little drunk on a Sunday—is undoubtedly the most “extra” repast humanity has ever conceived. Glamming up to eat eggs benedict, however, might just be enough to make this middle-meal extra in a great way. Plus, a quick search on the internet reveals that “though eating glitter is ill-advised, most commercially available glitter is non-toxic and won't hurt you in small amounts”! Zoocation Week Roger Williams Park Zoo & Carousel Village (1000 Elmwood Avenue) 10AM-5PM $17.95 As part of a weeklong promotional deal called Zoocation (like ‘staycation,’ but at the zoo) Week, Roger Williams Park is offering free camel rides with the purchase of an ordinary ticket. As far as we know, reader, this is Providence’s only camel—and you’ve got just one chance to ride it. 6th Annual Newport Daffodil Days Festival Throughout Newport 7:30-10:30AM Amsterdam has tulips, DC has cherry blossoms, and now Newport is taking up the daffodil as the organizational principle its of its official civic comportment towards springtime. Over 1,000,000 daffodils are set to bloom throughout the city this week!

tues 4.16

Tragic Magic with Joshua Jay List Arts Building (64 College Street) 6-8PM Joshua Jay, a magician and lecturer, is most famous for having fooled the infinitely more successful magic-duo Penn & Teller on their hit show Fool Us. I’m tempted to joke that the term ‘tragic magic’ is about Jay’s hack career, but this talk is actually gonna be even grimmer than a washed-up escape artist because it’s about magicians who’ve died on the job!

wed 4.17

Magic Lantern Cinema: One Divides Into Two Avon Cinema (260 Thayer Street) 8:45-11:30PM This is a screening of two movies in succession: Abbas Kiarostami’s First Case, Second Case (Iran) and Sara Gómez’s One Way or Another (Cuba). The event’s title— “One Divides Into Two”—is a reference to the Maoist slogan “one splits into two; two cannot fuse into one;” these films offer experimental alternatives to the (socialist) realist cinema that both Kiarostami and Gómez were expected to conform to in their respective post-revolutionary nations.

thurs 4.18

Like No Udder Meets Fully Rooted: Vegan Kombucha Floats & Scoops Like No Udder (170 Ives Street) 12-2PM As someone whose lazy and witless friends have been known to crack jokes about the optics of her ***unapologetic*** love of kombucha, this LW is tempted to defend Like No Udder’s newest vegan-friendly snack pop-up. Ideology aside, though, a kombucha-vanilla ice cream float sounds really fucking bad. If anyone can prove me wrong, I’ll reward you with the bucket of SCOBY that’s been molding over in my basement for months!