The College Hill Independent Vol. 32 Issue 10

the college hill independent Volume 32

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a Brown/RISD weekly

April 29, 2016

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Issue 10

the

NEWS 02 Week in Strange Bedfellows Liz Cory, Piper French, & Corey Hébert

Volume 32 No. 10

03 Call it a Coup Francis Torres METRO 05 Expunge This Jack Brook 16 Trash Day Lisa Borst ARTS 08 Teeny-Weeny-Festo Liby Hays 09 Grainy Photos Will Tavlin FEATURES 11 Drama Drama Sam Samore 15 Dear Indy MB & PM TOE TAGS 13 Goodbye Forever :( Indy Staff OCCULT 04 A Holy Smackdown Liz Studlick SCIENCE 07 Mother Tongue Marcelo Rivera-Figueroa LITERARY 17 Cease N. desist Marcus Mamourian & Alec Mapes-Frances X 18 Take My Breath Away Layla Ehsan, Sarah Khan, & Pierie Korostoff

From the editors: Hi friend.

It’s been a while.

We’re great, of course.

Just like always.

Why wouldn’t we be?

Our hands and pens are dripping— slowly melting onto paper that drips, in turn, down the backs of our legs.

But trust us.

We’ll be fine.

AMF / CF / FT

Managing Editors Camera Ford Alec Mapes-Frances Francis Torres News Jane Argodale Piper French Julia Tompkins

Occult Lance Gloss Literary Marcus Mamourian Metabolics Sam Samore

Metro Sophie Kasakove Jamie Packs Shane Potts

Ephemera Mark Benz Jake Brodsky India Ennenga

Arts Lisa Borst Jonah Max Eli Neuman-Hammond

X Layla Ehsan Sara Khan Pierie Korostoff

Features Gabrielle Hick Patrick McMenamin Dominique Pariso

List Polina Godz Rick Salamé

Science Fatima Husain Marcelo Rivera-Figueroa Tech Kamille Johnson

Cover Jade Donaldson Design & Illustration Celeste Matsui Alexa Terfloth Zak Ziebell

Interviews Elias Bresnick P.O Box 1930 Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 Letters to the editor are welcome distractions. The Independent, a family-run publication, is published weekly during the fall & spring semesters and is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, MA.

theindy.org

Staff Writers Ben Berke Jack Brook Liz Cory Kelton Ellis Liby Hays Corey Hébert Hannah Maier-Katkin Madeleine Matsui Kimberley Meilun Ryan Rosenberg Will Tavlin Staff Illustrators Frans van Hoek Gabriel Matesanz Teri Minogue Yuko Okabe Ivan Rios-Fetchko Web Charlie Windolf Senior Editors Sebastian Clark Rick Salamé Kim Sarnoff Maya Sorabjee Special Projects Yousef Hilmy Maya Sorabjee Henry Staley

@theindy_tweets

WEEK IN STRANGE BEDFELLOWS Rights at Risk Controversy is swirling around the recent election by the Russian parliament of Tatyana Moskalkova to the position of human rights ombudsman. Moskalkova retired in 2007 after a twenty-year career in the Soviet and Russian police force. She subsequently won a parliamentary seat as a member of Just Russia, a left-leaning, pro-government party.

In Soviet times and continuing to the present day, the police in Russia have widely been seen as a source of human rights abuses. Russian police have participated in the widespread and systematic torture of persons in custody. They have been known to beat, rape, asphyxiate, and use electric shocks during interrogations. People across Russia and the world are having some difficulty supporting this radical new conception of human rights advocacy.

The criticism isn’t just coming from the usual suspects, but even from Kremlin-friendly insiders who are equally disapproving of Moskalkova’s appointment. Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, a populist politician regarded as a mouthpiece for Kremlin policy, voiced opposition to the decision. During debates in the Duma—the Russian parliament—Zhirinovsky said: “Tatyana Moskalkova is a very nice person, but her work in the Soviet police and in the police under [President Boris] Yeltsin cannot make us believe that she is able and wants to defend human rights...Nowhere and nobody will nominate a former policeman to this post.”

The absurdity of the appointment is a break from the Russian government’s recent tradition of advocacy for human rights. The position of human rights ombudsman was first created in 1993, the same year that Russia issued its first government human rights report. Sergei A. Kovalyov, an outspoken political dissident who was imprisoned in a Soviet labor camp for seven years and exiled in Siberia for his views, was the first to hold the position. Subsequent human rights ombudsmen in Russia have had anti-Soviet and anti-Kremlin activist backgrounds. They have had strong democratic credentials and have used their position to draw attention to human rights violations in Russia and advocate for change.

Things have undoubtedly gone sour since then. There’s no shortage of political dissidents in Russia today, but Putin has decided to fill the post with an interior ministry insider without any experience relevant to defending human rights—but plenty of experience in a police force known for abuses.

Following her appointment, Moskalkova delivered a speech at the Duma, promptly confirming suspicions about her unsuitability for the role. Moskalkova said: “Western and American bodies have come to use the issue of human rights as a tool of blackmail, abuse, threats and attempts to put the pressure on Russia.” Later in her speech, Moskalkova spoke about her intention to “defend Russian values, not just the rights of one person.” It’s unclear which rights or values she was referring to, but what is clear is the likelihood of human rights remaining unprotected under Moskalkova’s watch.

-MM

Come Together (or myb Comin’ Together?)

Are Republicans finally reaching across the aisle? Not quite, but they’re at least leaning forward in the pews. In a last-ditch attempt to prevent Donald Trump from accessing the requisite amount of delegates to wrap up the nomination and avoid the possibility of a contested convention, Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced Monday that they will be joining forces— though in what form, and for how long, remains unclear.

Trump, predictably, responded on Twitter, calling the alliance “desperate” and referring to his rivals as “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” and “one-for-38 Kasich.” (Trump is rapidly becoming known for his ability to assign monikers as amusing as, if slightly meaner than, those of George Bush back in the day.) Kasich resisted this characterization of the partnership: “Me? No, I’m not desperate,” he told a reporter, “Are you desperate?”—a desperate response if ever there was one.

Reading the ‘terms’ of the agreement—Kasich would cede Indiana’s primary contest to Cruz; Cruz would pull out of Oregon and New Mexico—one can’t help but think of the ready coalition-building and even readier backstabbing of Game of Thrones. Indeed, it’s a style of politics far more recognizable on the screen than in any American electoral tradition: historically speaking, this is a totally unprecedented move.

The alliance also seems to be so unarticulated and tenuous (no one signed anything, as far as I can tell) that it is open to sabotage at any time. It’s a textbook prisoner’s dilemma, after all; the only question is who breaks first. Though Cruz seems like the last person anyone would trust to keep his word, I’d put my bet on Kasich, the underdog, as the first to back out. The governor of Ohio was overheard on Tuesday telling voters in Indiana that they “ought to” vote for him despite the fact that he’s not campaigning in their state. Kasich also downplayed the agreement itself, calling it “not a big deal” (he also failed to meet the deadline for the Oregon voters’ guide, meaning that uninformed voters won’t even know that he’s on the ballot there). In response, Trump blasted the two politicians’ inability to stick together, also on Twitter: “Kasich just announced that he wants the people of Indiana to vote for him. Typical politician—can’t make a deal work.” (The author of The Art of the Deal has, at other times during this race, proclaimed, “We don’t make deals.”) And after Trump won handily in all five states on Tuesday’s primaries—and Kasich outdid Cruz in four of the five—the partnership seems weaker than ever: “fraying to the point of irrelevance,” as the New York Times put it.

At press time, an even unholier alliance has been announced: with nearly three months to go before the Republican National Convention, Cruz has officially chosen Carly Fiorina as his running mate. This one does have precedent: in 1976, G.O.P. God Reagan announced his VP pick significantly before the convention as well. He did not win that particular election.

by Liz Cory, Piper French, & Madeline Matsui illustration by Yuko Okabe

‘Til Blue Screen of Death Do Us Part This week, a Texas man filed a lawsuit against his county clerk and the state Attorney General for refusing to let him marry his computer. For the folks in the back: a man is currently trying (very hard) to marry his 2011 MacBook laptop. While this may call for a new episode of TLC’s My Strange Addiction, stranger things have probably happened. However, unlike most marriages, this would-be union was not conceived in the name of love, but rather to broadcast a hateful statement.

The plaintiff, Chris Sevier, a former lawyer who says he is now “hardcore involved in the music industry,” disagrees with the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize same-sex marriage. Sevier believes “the Constitution is being hijacked” by marriage equality—and he wants to do something about it. His plan to save America from those bad, bad gay people and their healthy, loving relationships involves filing lots of long-winded lawsuits. Sevier has already filed similar suits in Tennessee and Utah for their refusal to grant a marriage license to him and his computer, and he has plans to file in 12 additional states. Sevier hopes that his stunt will convince the courts and general public that same-sex marriages are as meaningless and perverse as his claimed affection for a laptop.

Incidentally, Sevier is the same man who filed a 50-page lawsuit against Apple in 2013 for “hijacking great sex” by inciting his severe porn addiction. He claims the manufacturers of his now would-be life partner enabled “unfair competition” between his then-wife and “younger, more beautiful girls featured in porn.” Sevier demanded that Apple reconfigure software on their devices to feature a default “safe-mode” that would filter out pornographic content—unless a user 18 years old or older obtained an access password. He neglected to mention how soon he would need the password to reconnect with the MacBook of his dreams.

Sevier’s twisted stance is reminiscent of a statement made in 2013 by Tea Party senator Rand Paul, the man who thought “Defeat the Washington machine and unleash the American dream” was a winning presidential campaign slogan.

Of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, Paul said: “I think it’s a conundrum. If we have no laws on this, people take it to one extension further, does it have to be humans, you know?” Amid backlash, Paul’s spokesperson quickly explained that the remark was intended as sarcasm. Three years later, under nationwide marriage equality, it appears the law is doing just fine keeping marriage human—despite one man’s best efforts.

– LC

-PF

April 29, 2016

NEWS

02

For God and my family!

For the Evangelical Nation!

Against the communism that threatens this country!

For the military men of '64!

With these cries, members of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Brazil’s parliament, voted on April 17 to begin an impeachment process for President Dilma Rousseff.

One by one, 367 of the lower chamber’s 513 deputies— beyond the two-thirds threshold for impeachment—gave their reasons for voting ‘Yes’ to ousting the head of state and the center-left Workers Party government she leads. The impeachment votes rolled in during a marathon legislative session, which was broadcast live across the country on giant screens in front of immense, cheering crowds.

As the voices of deputees rang out in the chamber halls and through the plazas of Brasília, no voice caused as much of commotion as Jair Bolsonaro's. The popular far-right deputy from the state of Rio de Janeiro (and presumptive presidential candidate in the country’s 2018 elections) justified his vote with these words: “against communism, for our freedom, for the memory of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the terror of Dilma Rousseff, I vote Yes!” And so it happened that Colonel Ustra, the leader of an infamous political repression unit under Brazil’s old military dictatorship, came to be praised in a vote supposedly against corruption and totalitarianism. The Ustra that Bolsonaro invoked oversaw the torture of a young Dilma Rousseff, who was captured by the regime for her membership in a Marxist guerrilla group. The military man's terror didn't end there— beyond the over 500 cases of torture that took place under his watch, Ustra was also charged for the disappearance and death of at least 60 anti-government activists in Brazil's 2013 Truth Committee hearings.

At the time, Ustra justified his actions as necesary steps in the "fight for democracy against terrorism." Bolsonaro and his allies revelled in the spirit of this disourse, praising the military actions that toppled a left wing government and launched the dictatorship 42 years ago: "They lost in 1964, and they’ll lose again in 2016." +++ The political performance that took place on April 17 was just one particularly explosive episode in a story of popular unrest that arguably started back in 2013. By March of that year, Rousseff was riding a 79 percent approval rating, according to polling firm Ibope. The left-of-center Workers Party government, under the leadership of Rouseff and her predecessor Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, had implemented internationally celebrated social programs that were at least partially responsible for lifting millions Brazilians out of poverty. Under Lula, Brazil won its bids to host the World Cup and Olympics, and foreign investment (particularly from China) poured into the country's commodity industries even as rich economies struggled with the aftershocks of the Great Recession.

Despite the fanfare, cracks began to appear in the lead up to the 2014 World Cup. Municipal governments hiked up public transportation prices; billions of dollars were spent on unnecessary stadiums and sports infrastructure; the commodities boom that supercharged the economy started cooling down; millions of Brazilians took to the streets in urban protests. To top it all off, the national soccer team's World Cup bid screetched to a halt after a 7-1 thrasing from the Germans.

The neo-developmentalist promise of the Workers Party began to buckle—though the worst was yet to come. As Rousseff's approval began to dip and Brazilian's post-Cup blues soured into hard-set frustration, the country was hit by the political equivalent of a meteor shower: the Petrobras Scandal. +++ In mid-2013, Brazilian police brought in Alberto Youssef, a money launderer who had been already been arrested nine times, on yet another money laundering charge. According to a report from Brazilian news source Globo, Youssef had a different story to share this time. Speaking to lawyers from his jail cell, Youssef claimed that the republic "would fall" if he shared the information he was privy to, the New York Times reported.

Youssef's testimony revealed the largest corruption scandal in the country’s history. He unveiled a kickback scheme in Petrobras, Brazil's massive state-owned oil company, which funelled public money into overinflated contracts for developers who used part of the windfalls to pay politicians back for the favor. Hundreds of elite business owners and politicians from all stripes were implicated. "We know that corruption is a monster," one of Youssef's lawyers told NYT, "But we never really see the monster. This was like seeing the monster.”

The ensuing quest for justice—titled Operation Car

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Media Narratives about Brazilian Corruption

by Francis Torres illustration by Frans van Hoek Wash, as some of the dirty money was actually laundered through such a business—has seen dozens of business owners and contractors jailed and hundreds of politicians indicted for graft, acording to Globo. Brazil's independent judiciary branch launched it just weeks after Rousseff's reelection in 2014. The investigation seriously compromised her governing coalition, casting a pall over the already struggling Workers Party. It didn't help that Rousseff served as energy minister throughout the years the scheme took place, effectively in charge of monitoring Petrobras.

As if the scandal wasn't enough, Brazil's economy took a nosedive into stagflation. Now, the country is shedding jobs while struggling with rising inflation, a worrying Zika epidemic, and dire setbacks in Olympics preparations with just 100 days to go for the flame to be lit.

It's no wonder that Brazilians would want to turn over the table and through their elected leaders out of office. Ibope places the president’s current approval rating is around 10 percent—a shocking fall from the 79 percent she enjoyed just 18 months ago. In a first wave of anti-government prostests in March 2105, over one million people marched in favor of impeaching Rousseff. Brazilian pollster DataFolha recently found that 61 percent of Brazilians were in favor of impeachment. +++ On the night of the impeachment proceeding in Parliament, members stood to address Eduardo Cunha, Brasil's de facto equivalent to Speaker of the House, with their reasons for voting. Cunha, one of the lead proponents of Rousseff's impeachment, faces charges of taking $5 million in bribes through Petrobras, according to the Guardian. Cunha's ally in the impeachment campaign, Vice Present Michel Temer, faces a similar legal predicament for his hand in shady Petrobras ethanol buying deals. According to nonprofit Transparência Brasil, 60 percent of Brazil’s current federal legislators have been convicted or are under investigation—many of these are also vocal proponents of the impeachment campaign. Rousseff, by comparison, has not been implicated in the Petrobras scandal or charged with any crimes.

The legal reasoning behind the president’s impeachment lies on shaky foundations; Rousseff is charged with manipulating government accounts to downplay the size of the federal budget deficit, a juridical misdemeanor that several Brazilian constitutional experts argue is not sufficient ground for an impeachment proceeding.

Tellingly, the charge was not mentioned by any of the 342 delegates who voted ‘Yes’ to impeach Rousseff. The issues that were brought up—religiously conservative, tough-oncrime, anti-LGBT, pro-free market ideologies—had much more to do with the Workers Party track record so far in challenging traditionally elite political spaces in the country.

The ideological motivations under the impeachment's juridical process go beyond Parliament. At the largest of the

anti-Rousseff protest before the vote, in São Paulo, 77 percent of the demonstrators self-identified as white, and 77 percent were university graduates, AFP's Joshua Howat Berger reports.

"Nationwide, those figures are 48 percent and 13 percent, respectively."Pro-Rousseff counter-protests, Berger reports, have been noticeably less white. This makes sense. The Workers Party greatest successes have come in tackling inequality and poverty, so it's natural that Brazil's marginalized groups would be the least willing to give up on her. The impeachment charges currently being debated in Brazil's Congress are about completely unrelated fiscal improprieties.

Criticism for the anti-democratic nature of the impeachment process has come from way beyond the Brazilian left.

Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, argued in a statement that the accusations against Ms. Rousseff “are not crimes, but they are related to poor administration.” The Guardian released an editor's note decrying the dangerous precedent such a process creates in a young democracy plagued by a history of reactionary militarism.

Regionally, other 'Pink Tide' left-leaning government have pledged support for Rousseff and threatened to kick Brazil out of the Mercosur trading block should impeachment proceed, according to the New York Times.

The importance of international media is not lost on those waging Brazil's political battle. Tellingly, both Rousseff and her opposition recently traveled to the United States in order to legitimize their competing claims. Cancelling a trip to Paris to sign international treaties on climate regulations, the president instead made an impassioned bid at the UN, calling the attacks on her party and presidency a "coup."

Just a week prior, the the Brazilian Senate’s foreign relations committee chairman, Aloysio Nunes, of the opposition PSDB party, met privately with US government officials in DC. Nunes was on the PSDB’s 2014 election ticket as Vice President for for presidential candidate Aecio Neves, who lost to Rousseff. +++ Despite the pro-impeachment camp's difficulty in swaying international opinion, their victory seems near. After the vote last week, the upper house of Parliament must decide if impeachment will be finalized. If two-thirds of members approve, which is seems incrasingly likely, she will be ejected from office and Temer will be president until the next election in 2018. With a new president who is directly implicated by the Petrobras scandal, it's almost foolish to expect that the investigation will continue. Conservative Brazilians may try to spin the ousting of the Workers Party as a cathartic moment of national vindication, but the rest of the world will see it as a blow to the institutions of a young and still promising democracy.

FRANCIS TORRES B'16 is young and still promising.

The College Hill Independent

FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church, was midway through his Sunday morning sermon when seven men seated near the front of the stadium stood and began shouting.

“Shame on you, Joel, shame on you,” one cried, while others opened Bibles and began to loudly read scripture.

The men were quickly escorted out of the church by impromptu ushers, mostly armed off-duty cops. Six of the men were charged with criminal trespass. This was June 28, 2015. After nearly a year of legal stalling, they were to face trial on April 19, which has, yet again, been postponed.

This trespassing was no isolated incident. The men— Jacob Gardner, a church elder, and other members of the controversial east Texas Church of Wells—have a history of public disruption. In March two members were arrested in Saranac Lake, New York, for their impromptu sermons at a Baptist church and a park; in December, they were arrested for telling a pregnant employee of an auto parts store that she would burn in hell.

But, in some ways, this disturbance was unique. The interruption and its subsequent trial bring together two conflicting faiths, with differing views on everything from the Bible to sin to money. The Church of Wells sees the trespass charges as a threat to their religious freedom and beliefs, which require them to save Christians who have been led astray. Lakewood Church, on the other hand, sees the outburst not as a challenge to its views, but as a matter of threatened safety and order. What’s curious is that the stranger point of view is the one that may be worth listening to. +++ Lakewood Church is often considered to be the largest congregation in America, though it took third on a 2015 list.

Around 38,000 people attend Joel Osteen’s four English and two Spanish weekly services, which are held in the former Compaq Center basketball arena, five minutes away from downtown Houston. Osteen has his own Sirius XM channel (number 128, should you wish to tune in) and seven New York Times bestsellers. His service is broadcasted Sunday mornings on over 60 local TV stations, as well as on USA, Lifetime, and the Discovery Channel. About 20 million Americans watch each month.

His message is not so much about particular Biblical views as it is about a general outlook. The church is nondenominational, falling somewhere between Southern Baptism, Pentecostalism, and the Charismatic movement, resulting in a vague and optimistic Christianity that speaks more of salvation and the healing power of the Lord than it does of fire and brimstone. The church shies away from most contemporary social issues; you won’t find Osteen preaching about gay marriage or Black Lives Matter, neither for nor against. Its most contentious belief is its most positive: the prosperity gospel.

The prosperity gospel is the idea that God rewards the faithful—not ambiguously or spiritually, but literally and financially. “God wants you to do well” is one of Osteen’s most common themes, often followed by, “God blesses you so you can be a blessing to others.” To be fair, Osteen avoids directly mentioning money; it’s all about a generic “prosperity,” which he says refers to health, personal relationships, and peace of mind. But it’s difficult to decouple that from televangelism’s longstanding relationship with prosperity theology, which preaches that wealth is a gift from God that can be obtained through faith, positive thinking, and generous donations to the church.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the prosperity gospel. Its focus can be optimistic and empowering despite lacking theological rigor. The message is rarely “pray for wealth to fall from the sky”—Osteen talks about taking control of your life and working hard. And financial relationships between churches and their congregations are nothing new. Tithing has long been a feature of Judaism and Christianity, and, though it may not have the same quid pro quo attached, we don’t consider the average message to donate to church coffers to be abusive.

However, it’s worth thinking about who this message appeals to, as well as who it benefits. The primarily Pentecostal churches that preach the prosperity gospel skew toward the working and middle classes, and have significant numbers of immigrants, especially first-generation Latinos. Nearly 40% of Lakewood Church’s members are Hispanic, and Osteen’s bestselling Your Best Life Now had more readers without a college degree than with. This is a world of paycheck-topaycheck living, and the congregation’s prayers for wealth emerge from real conditions of poverty and alienation.

Meanwhile, successful televangelists can make millions, if not through donations then through broadcasting fees and book sales. Pastor Joel Osteen is estimated to have a net worth of $40 million.

April 29, 2016

+++ The Church of Wells is a revivalist church of a different breed.

The group believes in a strictly fundamentalist view of the Bible and an imminent Judgment Day. It also considers itself the only legitimate form of Christianity. The 70-member group used to be known as the Church of Arlington, Texas, but the name changes with the city to signify its status as the one true church of wherever it happens to be.

Two Baylor University graduates, Sean Morris and Ryan Ringnald, along with a friend, Jacob Gardner, formed the church in 2010 after a two-year preaching tour of the country.

They felt that the secular world was diverging dangerously from God’s word on issues from the role of women to consumerism, and other congregations were either powerless to correct it or riddled with corruption themselves. Modern Christmas and its idolatrous worship of Santa Claus was a common culprit. Despite finding that “most people did not want to hear their message,” they amassed a following large enough to merit running a congregation out of Morris’ brother’s home in Arlington. In need of more space for their growing followers and a lower cost of living, they settled in Wells, a sleepy town in east Texas, a year later.

The group quickly made a name for itself by inciting controversies. In 2012, a couple in the church called a prayer meeting over their suffocating child instead of calling 911; the child died despite their prayers. In 2014, Catherine Grove, a young nurse, alarmed her parents when, after leaving Arkansas to join the church, she began giving away her possessions and refused to return their calls. When her parents visited her, they found her a changed person: submissive, depressed, quoting scripture, and not making eye contact. Church elders told them that she no longer needed them.

In early 2015, Grove walked away from the church on foot and called 911. After being picked up from the local police station by her parents, she spent two days trying to convince them to return her to Wells and to convert themselves, then four days involuntarily committed in a psychiatric ward. Members of the church picked her up at her release, and she’s been back ever since, claiming to be there of her own free will.

Grove’s story, covered in fantastic detail by Texas Monthly’s Sonia Smith, paints the Church of Wells as a textbook example of a cult. Its members live as if the Revelation could come any day, desperately trying to convert sinners even as they attract scrutiny for their isolationist tendencies and aggressive behavior. Today, despite zealously preaching the word of God to all who will listen, Church of Wells has closed its services to outsiders.

There’s something quite wholesome about the Church of Wells despite its cultishness. Its members all sleep in the same building, though not in a communal bed; they read scripture together; they cook meals together. For a short while, members worked shifts at their gas station and country goods store, where they now merely preach after Wells residents boycotted the business. Sometimes, they take road trips together to preach the good word to Lakewood Church. +++ I grew up under a mile away from Lakewood Church, though it didn’t used to be called that. Until I was about ten, it was the Compaq Center, where I would go see the circus or Disney On Ice. Lakewood leased the stadium in 2003 and dumped $95 million into renovations. It quickly became a reason for my parents to avoid driving on Sundays between 11 AM and 1 PM. I’ve long held a strange fascination with Lakewood, though it wasn’t until last August that I finally ventured inside. I’m not a religious person, but the idea of watching a service as a tourist had always seemed wrong. What swayed me was the idea of Gardner and his companions yelling from the floor. I couldn’t picture it. How could six men disrupt a rousing sermon with multimillion-dollar production values in an arena of thousands of shouting believers?

The ushers were so businesslike that I was surprised I wasn’t asked for a ticket. From my vantage point in the nosebleed seats, I watched a Christian rock song performed with the aplomb of a stadium concert, complete with light show and cheering fans. And then I watched another one.

And another. By the time Osteen reached the stage, the band had been playing for well over an hour.

His sermon was just what I anticipated—plenty about being grateful to God and thinking positively. His wife delivered a quick speech about not listening to the haters, ending with a callout about those who claimed that “Lakewood just wants your money.” Moments later, they began passing around the donation boxes.

What surprised me was not Osteen, but the crowd.

by Liz Studlick illustration by Yuko Okabe

The elderly Indian couple sitting in front of me was as glued to their phones as I was. Throughout the nearly two-hour ceremony, people continued to stream in and out of the seats below. They sometimes joined Osteen for an “Amen,” but there was a dull conversational roar that had little to do with what was happening on stage. He seemed not to be preaching to them but to his televised and radio-broadcasted audience, looking directly into the strategically positioned cameras rather than at the mass of people.

It occurred to me that the representatives from the Church of Wells who crashed the sermon last June had no real hope of changing the crowd or making himself heard; Osteen couldn’t even do that. All they could do was to try to make some noise. +++ The court cases that typically attract coverage have both interesting parties or strange details, and also potentially powerful results. This isn’t the case with Lakewood Church v.

Church of Wells. The charges are criminal trespassing, which is only a misdemeanor, and the proceedings are happening at local courts, not Supreme. Church of Wells members have been convicted of trespassing before for their unwelcome sermons, most notably at a Nacogdoches, Texas McDonald’s.

The decision is unlikely to do much more than hand out some fines and probations.

Though it’s not a freedom of religion or freedom of speech case—since it’s one group pressing criminal charges against another—the Church of Wells would certainly like to make it one. One of their central beliefs is that they have the duty to save as many souls as possible, so kicking them out allegedly restricts their rights as Christians and citizens.

Another is that modern churches, especially materially focused ones like Osteen’s, are misleading their flocks. The members’ defense attorney, Jon Stephenson, told the Houston Chronicle, “What one person might call a disruption, the other person might call [what] God is telling them to do.” He’s also stated that he’d like to call Osteen to the stand at trial.

What’s strange about the Church of Wells’ statements about Lakewood Church is not merely that they think Lakewood is wrong, but that they think Lakewood is a cult.

And if you squint, it is: thousands of followers, urged by a charismatic leader, donate their money in the name of a cause that clearly departs from traditional theology. More people would agree, though, that Church of Wells, with its isolation of members, radical beliefs, and attacks on other creeds, better fits the bill.

But for a group that focuses on interpretation of the Bible and seeking ultimate truth, Osteen makes an ideal target. The Church of Wells claims that he makes unrealistic promises and promotes an overly materialistic viewpoint.

In the Bible, Jesus condemns the Pharisees, Jewish religious leaders, for their hypocrisy and materialism, a fact to which the Church of Wells has been quick to point. The statement they released after their arrest sounds more like what atheist skeptics, not faithful Christians, might say of televangelists: “Joel Osteen has glorified himself and not God. He has heaped to himself riches, while he promises the poorest of the poor a life of health, wealth, and prosperity. Joel’s religion is a worship of SELF, and not of CHRIST.” The results in the upcoming trial, if it ever stops being postponed, will probably be as inconsequential as they are predictable. The Church of Wells has been cast by the media as the villain, even if its message in this case may ring more true. At the end of the day, many of its members are regarded as fringe weirdos who watch babies die and spout hatred. Lakewood is clearly the more reasonable side despite its potentially exploitative actions. It’s rational that a church would want to kick out shouting guests, especially those calling their pastor a charlatan (even if he is one).

Who comes off as right has less to do with beliefs than with appearances. That this is a foregone conclusion raises questions about what makes religion legitimate and respectable and what separates a cult from a megachurch. The legally correct answer to this case may have little to do with the moral and spiritual argument that the Church of Wells is trying to incite through their trespassing and subsequent sermons in the Houston courthouse, which they’ve traveled to every few months as the pre-trial drags on. The trial won’t decide anything beyond a trivial and routine legal matter even as it illuminates broader questions about faith, money, and public reputation.

When asked for a comment by Houston’s CBS station back in June, the Church of Wells responded with Proverbs 23:23: “Buy the truth, and sell it not.” Lakewood Church declined to comment.

LIZ STUDLICK B’16 is a one-woman cult.

OCCULT

04

THE NEVER-ENDING SENTENCE “I was young and dumb in the early ’90s and got into some trouble,” Michelle says, shrugging. By trouble, she means two non-violent felony charges: one drug-related, the other assault on a police officer.

Before these charges, she had received her Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) license and had managed to hold down a steady job at the Rhode Island Hospital for years, until she left the state in 2014. When she returned last December, she applied for her old job at the Rhode Island Hospital. To her surprise, she was rejected.

She applied to 30 more CNA-related positions; the response she got back became familiar: “Unfortunately, we chose another candidate.”

She says she is certain that the felonies have been holding her back from employment. It doesn’t matter that they are over 18 years old and that she has an excellent employment history. When employers inevitably learn she has a criminal record, they pass her over.

Her friend, Beverly, a middle-aged woman, agrees.

“I’ve been out of trouble for 16 years,” says Beverly, who, like Michelle, requested that her last name be withheld. “That’s including ten years of probation.” Her record contains two misdemeanors for possession of marijuana and a felony charge for possession of an unregistered gun. She says the gun was her boyfriend’s, and he left it at her apartment. She didn’t serve time, but the felony, along with her two marijuana misdemeanors, has continued to haunt her: she hasn’t been able to get a job since 2008.

“Filling out the applications, then knowing you’re not going to get it...”

Beverly says, bitterly, her voice trailing off. Both women have also been unable to receive public housing due to their records, and as a result, currently stay with family members. We’re standing outside the McAuley House, a large red building in South Providence that serves as a transitional housing program for low-income individuals and hosts a free monthly clinic on expungement; that is, having past convictions removed from a criminal record.

Michelle and Beverly aren’t residents of the McAuley House, but they’ve come to learn about their legal options for getting their criminal records cleared. Unfortunately, as with most people who come to the clinic, their legal options are very few.

“It can be really heartbreaking, the worst part of my day,” says Emmett Hardiman, Community Outreach Liaison for the Public Defender’s Office, of having to explain to people that they are not eligible for expungement.

People like Michelle and Beverly often come to him to learn about their eligibility for the process.

In the month of March, Hardiman screened 43 people for expungement, and of the 29 people who did not qualify to have their records cleared, the majority (16) were ineligible because of multiple misdemeanors.

“People come in with a lot of misinformation, they think it [expungement] is a sure thing,” Hardiman. “They think that I’m telling them they can’t, but it’s not me, it’s the laws.” Having multiple misdemeanors, he adds, is the number one reason why people are not eligible for expungement.

“First time offender equals the first and only time,” says Mike Dilauro, Assistant Public Defender of Rhode Island, explaining why people with multiple felonies or misdemeanors cannot get them cleared. “No matter when, how far apart, how insignificant [the convictions], you are forever banned from getting any of that expunged if you have more than one.”

Yet a series of bills making their arduous way through the Rhode Island General Assembly could, if passed, provide some measure of relief for many Rhode Islanders who want to get their records with multiple charges expunged. One of the most important of these bills, House Bill 7417, would allow people with six or fewer misdemeanors to apply for a motion of expungement ten years after they have finished serving out their last conviction—a massive expansion of the current law, which only applies to those with a single misdemeanor.

“I grew up in South Providence and lots of guys I knew went to jail,” says House Representative Joseph S. Almeida, the sponsor of Bill H-7417 and a former police officer. “They were good people who made bad mistakes.

They’re doing well now, but it took a while for them to get their lives turned around.”

The issue of making expungement laws more lenient, particularly with regard to nonviolent misdemeanors, reveals the extent to which certain por-

05

METRO

tions of the population—low-income individuals, people of color, people experiencing homelessness, or those who struggle with substance abuse or mental illnesses—end up with lasting records for often trivial offenses, leading to extensive repercussions for the rest of their lives. Many of the issues that lead to individuals attaining records in the first place, particularly mental health and substance abuse, are not being properly addressed by Rhode Island, says assistant Attorney General Joee Lindbeck. Instead, “the first time many people get their mental health or substance issues addressed is when they get into the criminal justice system.” Instead of being rehabilitated, the system often leaves them back where they started, except now with a permanent record.

“If I’m an employer and there are three candidates, one with a record, who am I more likely to hire?” says Andrew Horwitz, director of the criminal defense clinic at Roger Williams Law School. “If I’m a landlord, and I have an apartment free, who am I more likely to rent it to? That’s the daily reality that expungement seeks to address.”

Legal discrimination is the biggest roadblock most homeless individuals face when trying to apply for housing, says Jim Ryczek, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless, despite the fact that the state saves some $8,000 per person annually when a homeless person is granted public housing. “You can’t do that on the basis of race or gender, but it’s not illegal to discriminate against a person with a criminal record.”

Although Rhode Island has adopted “Ban the Box” legislation, which prevents employers from asking about an applicant’s criminal record until after the first interview, the reality is that most employers and public housing officials can easily check background records without forcing people to report their record beforehand. And many do. +++ If you walk into the arraignment courtroom in Providence’s Garrahy Judicial Complex, where a person’s charges are read against them, it won’t take long before one thing becomes very clear: almost everyone is being charged with driving on a suspended license, or else for not having one in the first place.

Both the Public Defender’s office and the Attorney General’s office, along with other legal professionals, have confirmed that this is one of the principal causes of misdemeanors, especially first-time offenses.

This is essentially a crime of poverty, says Horwitz, and one that most often leads to people ending up with permanent and unexpungeable criminal records. People usually get their licenses suspended in the first place on economic grounds, for being unable to pay a speeding ticket or drivingrelated offense. Later, if they get pulled over by a police officer, they will be arrested for the suspended license—a misdemeanor charge, unless you can pay to have your license reinstated. There isn’t even a payment plan for suspended license charges, meaning that if you can’t pay your fines straight out, you won’t be able to get your license back. Instead, you’ll end up with a misdemeanor.

“It’s very unfair that we allow people who can get it dismissed to do so [by paying the fine], but a person who can’t afford it can’t get it dismissed,” Horwitz says. “If they had the money they wouldn’t be convicted. It’s driven entirely by the person’s ability to pay unpaid fines.”

It’s also driven by a person’s legal status. Rhode Island law requires a social security number to apply for a driver’s license, disqualifying anyone without legal residence in the country from having a license and greatly increasing the odds that they will end up with a criminal record because of it. (Bill H-7610, currently being reviewed by the Rhode Island legislature, would allow undocumented immigrants to receive licenses, as reported in an article in last week’s College Hill Independent).

The misdemeanors that primarily affect those of lower socioeconomic status extends beyond suspended licenses. Jim Vincent, President of the Providence NAACP, says that many people ended up with misdemeanors for possession of an ounce of marijuana. In 2009, the law decriminalized possession to a mere fine. Still, “even though it’s a fine, if you don’t pay it, it becomes a misdemeanor,” Vincent says. “A lot of people can’t pay the fine because they’re destitute.”

The College Hill Independent

Rhode Island’s Expungement Problem

by Jack Brook illustration by Celeste Matsui

Horwitz says that this initial inability to pay fines often leads to a snowball effect where people end up with misdemeanors and increased fines for small offenses, leading to an extensive criminal record for a minor offense.

Others, like one woman I interviewed, a 50-year-old we’ll call Mary, go through periods of relapse into a drug addiction and end up with a string of convictions in an extremely short of amount of time. Following these periods, they end up with a record that renders them permanently ineligible for expungement. In Mary’s case, she shoplifted to support the crack addiction she had been battling since age 21. Before slipping back into addiction in December of last year, she had received her Certified Nursing Assistant license and had been going through programs at the Amos House, a shelterlike program providing transitional housing and support for the homeless.

As of two weeks ago, she is back at the program, but with three shoplifting convictions. She will likely never be able to make use of her CNA license.

“Who wants somebody who shoplifts their possessions?” she says, sighing. “I think that I need to take responsibility for what I done. I take responsibility for it; you punish me, okay, and I did my time in jail, then I also have probation, all this time that I’m doing, and then I gotta come out on the outside and then serve more time because I can’t find a job.”

Assistant Public Defender Dilauro says that he believes more low-level misdemeanors such as Mary’s shoplifting violations should be reclassified as civil violations, making the consequences less drastic and the expungement process down the road more lenient. +++ Even when people are eligible for some form of expungement, they often remain unaware.

“Low-income people just don’t have sufficient access to information about their rights,” says Eliza Vorenberg, who runs the McAuley House expungement clinic and is the Director of Pro Bono & Community Partnerships at Roger Williams University School of Law. “They often don’t know how to access and secure their rights.”

Many people simply don’t know that when a case is dismissed against them, the charges remain on their record, although they have an automatic right to get them removed each time.

“People with means get it filed to remove,” says Dilauro. “But poor people often develop a criminal history, even of dismissed cases. You go back to court, and the prosecutor looks at your record [of dismissed cases] and holds it against you, as can any employer or landlord.”

And most people who qualify for misdemeanor expungement don’t apply for expungement after five years, the minimum number required to do so. If they end up with another charge outside of this period, it will not be possible for either conviction to be taken off.

“Unfortunately, most of them laugh it off. They make jokes, ‘Oh, I’m never gonna get my record expunged so why bother,’” says Carol Leveillee, a McAuley House employee who has been working with chronically homeless people for ten years. “I don’t think people know the importance of having their record expunged. I don’t think people realize that even if they have something dismissed, it’s gonna be in there until even after they die.”

But for those who have suffered the lasting consequences of a record, the significance of expungement cannot be overstated, even if solely as a weight off the shoulders.

Dorothea Jackson, 50, a resident of the Amos House, recently succeeded in clearing six charges of prostitution, which are easier to expunge than other misdemeanors and felonies. She had received letters of support from the Amos House, as well as from the church where she volunteers. She told the judge of how she had graduated from a three-month women’s program at the Amos House in December.

“God was on my side,” she says of her day in court. She knew the judge would clear her record when he started smiling. “I cried in the courthouse I was so happy…I was jumping up and down, I was hugging the lawyer, I was hollering. It was just such a relief that I was able to get some of it done.”

It will be up to the Rhode Island General Assembly to determine whether or not cases like Dorothea Jackson’s become more common. Given that it is currently an election year, legislators tend to want to avoid appearing soft on crime, says Joee Lindbeck, which may be a reason why they would vote against the proposed bill. But supporters of Bill H7417, like Lindbeck, say that increasing the number of misdemeanors a person can get expunged is, at its core, a matter of basic human decency.

“I’m hopeful that letting people know that they have the ability to get their record cleared will inspire them to work towards that,” Lindbeck says.

“Hope is what will empower people to change and work to better their lives.”

In addition to Almeida’s bill, others in the works would reduce shoplifting, disorderly conduct and trespassing to mere civil violations. Another would redefine the term “first time offender” to not include convictions of driving on a suspended license, further increasing the number of people who would be eligible for expungement.

Although the passage of such bills alone can only do so much, each would be a step towards slowly dismantling a system that essentially amounts to, as Horwitz and others stress, the criminalization of poverty.

The criminal justice system tends to be only punitive. But it is also about rehabilitation. Yet when we saddle people with convictions that permanently remain on their records and prevent them from improving their lives, regardless of how far they have come, we’re not helping anyone.

JACK BROOK B’19 thinks people deserve second chances.

+++

April 29, 2016

METRO

06

COGNATES Romantic forays into comparative linguistics

by Marcelo Rivera-Figueroa illustration by Teri Minogue

Español Spanish is my mother tongue (la lengua de mi madre). She tried to teach me when I was young with the help of many picture-filled grammar books (libros de gramática). But in preschool, I worried that knowing Spanish would prevent me from knowing English, from speaking to my friends, so I made a conscious effort to forget my Spanish.

First language attrition is the process by which native speakers lose their ability to speak the language with which they were raised in favor of their environment’s dominant language. Immigrant languages are typically lost over three generations. The first generation speaks and teaches; the second may learn but does not teach; the third is acclimated to their surroundings and monolingual. The amorphousness of Spanish in the United States even grew into its own speech, Spanglish.

I went to Puerto Rico (Borinquen) for the first time when I was a month old. In Puerto Rico I learned a lot of things, like how to deal with aunts and uncles and how to swim and how to be the gringo cousin and how to enjoy a rum drink and how to weather a hurricane and how to light fireworks and, just to be clear, I learned over several trips.

I went to Spain for the first time when I was thirteen.

There, my bastard Spanish set me even further apart than it had in Puerto Rico. But still I learned a lot of things, too. I learned that Spanish (Castellano) is properly called Castilian. I learned that my family is properly more Celtic (Galego) than anything and that St. James (Sant Iago) improperly drove the Moors out hundreds of years ago (la Reconquista) and in his honor they have erected an enormous cathedral.

But my bastard Spanish (mi lengua) has always been my problem, since Puerto Rico. My mother’s family makes it hers, saying, why didn’t you (por que no lo) teach him, but I knew it was my fault, my fate as a heritage speaker, and I’d known since I made my choice when I was younger (cuando era niño).

The worst is how many English words I know to describe my bastard Spanish. Broken, second-generation, accented, native.

I took Spanish in high school, was accused of cheating a couple times, that’s how good I was, and I read Junot Diaz a whole lot, which made me feel like someone else got it. But living as we do in an English speaking world (estadounidense), the improvement was minimal.

In an article for the Wall Street Journal, Dr. John McWhorter writes that the vast majority of the world’s languages will wither over the next century, dying or simplifying as our cities get taller and wider and closer together—Babel in reverse.

English will survive, unwritten languages will fade.

For all of my life, Spanish will be my mother’s tongue

07

SCIENCE

(mi primer idioma), the language I associate with family. I see images on T.V. and movies of the sexy Latin lover, whatever gender. Such characterization (fetichización) of this culture always feels off. Spanish is beautiful to me, but never in a romantic or sexual way.

Français French, on the other hand.

In fourth grade, my class was given the choice between learning two languages, Spanish and French, the teachers hoping to open our young, plastic minds. After a certain age— pubescence—the brain starts to concretize, losing the ability to pick up accents, to format grammar intuitively.

I chose French for a few reasons. It’s the language of love, appealing to my elementary school-aged romantic tendencies.

And because (parce que) I swear I heard my mother say that employers want you to be able to speak Spanish, Portuguese, and French, and even then I considered practicality. And because it’s the language of love and I was hopelessly in love with a girl named Natalia (est-ce que tu veux aller au cinema pour regarder un film avec moi ce weekend?), a girl whose presence stole all English words from my throat (zut alors).

She moved back to Bogotá in sixth grade, (mais Marcel t’aime) and of course I never said more than a couple sentences to her, cumulative. ‫العربية‬ Chris Rached was (‫ )كان‬my best friend from the first through the eighth grades. Chris Rached (‫ )كريس راشد‬is Lebanese.

Chris Rached takes part in rapid Arabic exchanges with his parents whenever he wants something he needs to push for— scientifically proven as the M.O. of every heritage speaker born to ESL parents. Calling him Chris Rached is so ingrained that it is impossible to say one name without the other.

The French-spattered Lebanese Arabic sounds different from each member of the family. From Chris Rached and his older sister, Helen, it is high and pubescent. From his father, George, who speaks Mandarin (‫ )الصينية‬and has some unknown job in China, who brings from his work stories of monkeys roasted alive for their brains, it comes out both gravelly and jocular. And from his mother, Dolly, the preschool teacher, it is lilting and sweet and beautiful (‫)علم الجمال‬.

Chris Rached used to live down the street, and his house was a second home (‫)بيتنا‬, until after eighth grade when he moved far away.

Arabic in its standard form has no P- or V- sounds. What it has are F-(‫ )ف‬and B-(‫)ب‬, which it uses to represent the sounds of the previous two when needed. Remember this.

‫עברית‬ I don’t know Hebrew. Not really. I’m literate on a base level, can read and write, but slowly, meaninglessly.

Reading and listening are variations of the same process.

Information reaches your eyes (‫ )עין‬or your ears (‫)אוזן‬, and from there is processed through like any other bit of light or sound. But after processing, it it sent to the brain’s Wernicke’s Area, coined by German neurologist Carl Wernicke, author of our mental dictionaries, this piece of cerebrum connecting bits of shaped light and sound to a parcel of our lived human experience.

Anyway.

Rachel taught me the alphabet when she was spending that month in Chicago. Well, it wasn’t a month, it was three weeks in July, and she didn’t teach me, she told me to learn it and I taught myself, but she was gone for what felt so long and I wanted to feel close to her somehow.

I can say “todah” (‫)תודה‬, thank you, and “shalom” (‫)שלום‬ hello, goodbye, peace. I can say, “this is my coffee” (‫)זה הקפה שלי‬, but we always shared anyway.

Hebrew has B-, P-, F-, and V- sounds. The B and V sounds, a voiced bilabial stop and a voiced labiodental fricative, respectively, are conflated, assigned to the same letter (‫)ב‬, a maneuver my Spanish family would find familiar when pronouncing vale, bale, okay, (‫ ;)בסדר‬as would my Puerto Rican relatives, pronouncing “green,” verde, something closer to beide. And where in written Arabic the P- belongs to the same family as the B- , in Hebrew it shares a form (‫ )פ‬with F, P’s fricative, voiceless cousin. Differently charactered permutations of the similar sound, survivors of Arabic and Hebrew’s shared Semitic ancestry— Spanish their bastard Romance child— evolved from centuries of Muslim rule and Jewish diaspora.

There was this one time Rachel (‫)חנה‬, long before anything started happening, wrote a bunch of mean things about me (‫ )מרסלו‬in Hebrew on the cover of my Arabic notebook. To this day she refuses to translate them, revealing only that they were mean and she’d rather not read them. She says she meant it in a flirting way, at the time (‫)שלום‬.

English I think English is beautiful (English is the only language I can really call my own).

MARCELO RIVERA-FIGUEROA B’18 talks to himself.

The College Hill Independent

TWO MANIFESTOS AND A STRONGLY WORDED SUGGESTION

by Liby Hays

The Mini Manifesto (It is important for the purposes of this argument that you note the semantic difference between Minimalism and Mini-malism.)

There is little in the sphere of contemporary art that Duchamp, in his genius, failed to anticipate. His prankish and provocative creations have informed the work of conceptual artists, kinetic sculptors, installation artists and the like from their inception through to the present day. But there is one crucial way in which Duchamp still remains more progressive than most of the contemporary art world in 2016: his embrace of the MINI. Duchamp’s Box in a Valise (1935-41)—created in an edition of 20—contained, along with pictorial reproductions of the artist’s most famous paintings and readymades, tiny replicas of select works themselves, such as Fountain. It can be interpreted as both the artist’s attempt to reclaim his legacy by summarizing the scope of his accomplishments, and an ironic jab at the reproductions of artworks that museums hocked to generate revenue. The shrinking allows the works to be considered all at once, but also further complicates their relationship to functionality and commodification. But since Duchamp, the mini’s presence in the art world has been scarce, and contemporary sculpture has been, to a great extent, wedded to the human scale. That is to say, a large percentage of the objects accepted as sculpture within the fine arts sphere approximate the dimensions of the human corpus (it’s the one formal characteristic that unifies most of Minimalist sculpture, for example). The mini, on the other hand, is seen as pure illustration; souvenir; kitsch—incapable of self-reflection—and is more or less excluded from highbrow discourse.

BUT! The mini, in fact, has potential to transcend these categories and actually become a symbol of FREEDOM and EQUALITY for artists.

It comes down to the fact that not everyone has the SPACE, TIME or RESOURCES to produce large-scale works. To create a mini, one needs no studio space, power tools, or technical education. There are virtually no health risks (RIP Raymond Johnson, crushed underneath Richard Serra’s “Sculpture No. 3”) and one can easily work with scraps acquired for FREE. And since they are so low-cost to produce, there is less pressure to sell mini works—guarding them from the pressures of today’s increasingly trendy and market-driven art world.

There is the presumption that the mini can produce only certain affects, lacks a presence in the room, and is inexorably tied to femininity and babies. It is the mission of the Mini-malists to CHALLENGE these assertions, perhaps through photography, video, and other curatorial and display strategies, in order to prove that Minis, too, can be selfaware and critical. Not to mention, scale is void when it comes to online documentation. Indy readers, the time has come: clench your nimble fingers into a fist and join the Mini-malist revolution today!

April 29, 2016

The Spine Manifesto There has been much feminist consternation over the puerile bent of psychoanalytic discourse, which can’t seem to completely uncouple the idea of the “phallus” as a sort of active, privileged symbol that anchors the symbolic order, from the penis, a biological organ we associate with maleness. In literature and art criticism, too, anything instrumental (a pen, a sword) or longer-than-it-is-wide is interpreted as a reference to the phallus/penis. Despite the common objection that these associations promote a patriarchal world order—that even in attempts to dismantle these prejudiced structures, connecting power with penises creates an inherent bias towards the masculine—it is difficult to counteract this collective mentality.

My solution is one of substitution.

In a proportional (as well as symbolic) sense, humans themselves are phalluses. This is due to the integrality of the SPINE to human anatomy. What I propose to counteract phallogocentrism is a reconstitution of the empowered columnar object as a metaphor for the SPINE, the vital nexus of nerve information that separates us from the squids and clams! The spine may very well be the URSYMBOL, as it is LITERALLY the body’s conduit for symbolic messaging from the brain. It is the endogenous, rather than extraneous, mechanism of power and extension. Its main relationship to instrumentality lies in its transference of internal information—although it also serves as an external signifier.

Like the penis, its power is related to rigidity: a stiff, upright spine signifies confidence and authority, whereas a hunched spine signifies weakness and subservience. So the next time you want to interpret a skyscraper as a steel and glass embodiment of the male member, think again. Perhaps it instead echoes the evolutionary triumph of the human race—our arched, apish backs unfurling over the millennia until we finally stood tall enough to look over the tall grasses at approaching predators. #RECLAIMTHESPINE!

The Printer Page Hack As a general rule, 20th century modern artists honed a certain “shtick” and stuck with it—Georgia O’Keeffe renders erotic close-ups of nature, John Chamberlain mashes up industrial materials, Lawrence Weiner does starkly poetic, sans-serif wall text, etc. Entering a gallery show by one of these artists, you would know, roughly, what to expect. But contemporary art is increasingly defined by a different pattern of activation.

The shows that feel most successful emphasize the crossdisciplinary diversity of a single artist’s efforts. Paralleling how corporations have diversified to the extent that a golf club brand might also market bags, apparel, apps and the like, the most exciting contemporary artists are working in every medium at their disposal. The incongruous artworks shown side-by-side (or on adjacent walls, floors, and ceilings) may now be engaged in a pataphoric (beyond metaphoric) dialogue. For example, a casually framed and hung school portrait might stand in contrast with a labor-intensive analexpulsive plaster assemblage. The most involved, hyperrealistic wax body sculpture might be offset by a flippant three-minute wall drawing. (Think of the otherworldly object juxtapositions of Helen Marten, Parker Ito, Ed Fornieles or Dineo Seshee Bopape, to name just a few.) The works on display are countercharged by one another: i.e. streamlined perfection can be offset by simple, sloppy, painterly, or overtly sentimental works which reveal the artist’s heart and hand. At the same time, these intimate products must be legitimized by tasteful framing, or be surrounded by other technically accomplished works. The discordances of a group show are accomplished by a single schizoid creator, the unofficial Master of Everything.

The near-mythic narrativization of the work’s making becomes its crux, its freshness, the core of its energies. Wall captions are another tool to exploit for poetic potential, detailing the nittygritty specifics or sentimental significance of certain objects and materials used. For example, Brad Troemel will specify he’s using not just any kale juice but Whole Foods organic kale juice to paint with. A recent (albeit inconsequential) Dylan Lynch sculpture is captioned: “Sandblasted steel on dyed Merino wool, knit by the artist’s mother.” These artists’ desire for their work to be carefully parsed, each of the constituent objects or materials vibrating in its urgent obsolescence. They fetishize exactitudes and niche markets, in another corporate parallel. The intertextuality that enlivens these works elevates gallery shows to the level of superfictions: as if there is a mysterious, artful conspiracy afoot whose creative corruption exists on an institutional scale. It’s a new spin on the gallery as medium, in which what was formerly supplemental comes to the fore.

In summation, contemporary art values heterogeneity, specificity, nostalgia and the aestheticization of failure. As I see it, it has created a perfect storm for personal printer art. For there is no medium more impoverished than an 8 ½ by 11 print out, and therefore none more ripe for countercharging another more formally developed piece. In addition, the specificity of the printer itself could one day lend it cache as a material, particularly once that model of printer is discontinued. As a test run, try printing some of the google results for “wrinkled face collectible” or “baby shrek plush” (two of my personal favorite things to google.) As I described in the Mini Manifesto, this strategy eliminates economic and technical barriers to entry for the gallery scene. You may one day be able to sell a printed page for thousands, if you take note of its specifics. I can’t recommend everyone do it, because it would stop being cool (this is no manifesto), but at this moment, at least, it is a highly legitimate and chic fabrication strategy.

ARTS

08

PUBLIC SPACE IS THE PLACE

Art and Politics in Battery Park City

by Will Tavlin

In May 1982, Hungarian artist Agnes Denes, with a handful of volunteers and assistants, cleared four acres of trash from the Battery Park City landfill, spread 225 truckloads of topsoil, dug 285 furrows by hand, and planted nearly two acres of golden wheat. The installation, entitled “Wheatfield - A Confrontation” and supported by the Publuc Art Fund, was tenderly cared for over the six month growing season: an irrigation system was installed, volunteers cleared away wheat smut, weeds, fertilized, and treated the crops with protectants from mildew fungus. The installation was harvested on August 16 and yielded over 1000 pounds of healthy, golden wheat. For Denes, her “decision to plant a wheatfield in Manhattan, instead of designing just another public sculpture, grew out of a long-standing concern and need to call attention to our misplaced priorities and deteriorating human values.”

“Wheatfield - A Confrontation”, planted next to the towering epicenter of commerce—the World Trade Center—highlighted the swallowing gap of wealth between those who rely on the production and sustenance of staples such as wheat and the high-speed trading economy a few blocks south on Wall Street. But most of all, “Wheatfield” complicated the foundational idea on which Battery Park City was supposedly built. The landfill’s $4.5 billion dollar value was based on an economic potential that spectacularly failed in 1976 when potential was no longer seen as a viable economic model amidst the city’s bloated budget and crippling debt. “Wheatfield” was in this way everything the proposed Battery Park City was not: a physical, naturally grown, living organism, fully realized by those who planted its seeds.

Between 1987 and 1990 the harvested wheat traveled the world to 28 cities in an exhibition called “The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger,” organized by the Minnesota Museum of Art. The harvested grain was distributed and replanted by volunteers around the globe, thereby completing the ecological cycle.

Wheatfields - A Confrontation, Agnes Denes, 1982 Wheatfields - A Confrontation, Agnes Denes, Battery Park Landfill, New York City, 1982.

Before the World Financial Center, the glass skyscrapers, the open-air cafes, the high-end boutiques, the promenade, the luxury high rises and corporate offices, the disaster that emptied them in September 2001, Battery Park City—a 92 acre planned community with all of this and more, that juts westward out of the base of Manhattan—did not exist. The artificially installed land mass, which today serves as a playground for Manhattan’s financial elite and a postcard for New York’s revitalized downtown, was once a few dilapidated shipping piers—victims of the container industry which drove sea-traffic to the modernized Port Elizabeth, New Jersey. In 1963, with support from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, brother David Rockefeller, then president of Chase Manhattan Bank, and the Downtown Lower Manhattan Association (DLMA), championed a plan to cement downtown as the financial hub and created a residential neighborhood to support it. In 1966, construction began on what became the first in a series of largescale building projects that attempt to redevelop and revitalize lower Manhattan: Minoru Yamasaki’s World Trade Center. The debris collected from constructing World Trade Center’s was deposited along the Hudson River, creating a valuable stretch of vacant, city-owned territory on which residences and offices were later built. In 1968, the city tasked the newly established Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) with the responsibility of financing and developing the newly landfilled 92-acre site. Conversations between the city and the BPCA were held regarding using the Battery Park landfill for subsidized housing, but these plans quickly dissolved. Just as the Battery Park City landfill was completed in 1976, New York approached bankruptcy; NY Daily News printed boldly, “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD,” and federal and state housing subsidy programs vaporized. The Battery was reduced to a useless plot of sand.

But New York’s failed development project became fertile ground for early experiments in public and site-specific artworks. Between 1978 and 1985, Creative Time, a non-profit arts organization based in New York, sponsored a series of sculptures, performance pieces and earthworks in a series known today as “Art on the Beach.”

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ARTS

Thomas Hoepker, 1983

untitled by unknown (year unknown)

The College Hill Independent

Untitled, Susan Rethorst and Dancers, July 1982

Subsidized housing would never be realized in Battery Park City. The former head of New York state’s Urban Development Corporation (UDC), Richard Kahan, took over the BPCA in 1979 and immediately ceded ownership to the UDC for a dollar—freeing the landfill from the city’s regulations regarding mixed income housing. Kahan’s new development plan was less a residential housing block than it was an extension of burgeoning lower Manhattan. A review done by the BPCA in the early 80s stated: “among the internal reasons for [Battery Park City]’s failure were the master plan’s ‘excessively rigid large-scale development format,’ which had prevented gradual development of the site; and unduly complicated controls over every detail of the project.” Kahan imagined Battery Park City, like most of New York, as a grid, with matching (but updated) architectural styles, and ample space for commercial and residential use. In 1986, the BPCA restructured their financing agreement with the city such that all Battery Park City residences were authorized to go at market value. Affordable housing was invested in Harlem and the Bronx, and a portion of new BPCA revenue streams were directed back into the city.

Battery Park City faced more hiccups along its route to completion. A real estate slump in the early 90s stalled development and it wasn’t until 1995 when private development kicked up and the luxury residences began to fill. In 1999, with Battery Park City at full throttle, the BPCA posted on its website a timeline entry that commemorated the moment Battery Park City cleared the way to establish itself: “1986: New York Legislature passed, and Governor signed, legislation which allowed Battery Park City’s excess revenue to be used for low- and moderate-income housing in the Bronx and Harlem.”

Untitled, Blondell Cummings & Dancers, July 1982

Untitled, Alan Petrulio, May 1995

On August 28, 1985, Sun Ra and his Omniverse Arkestra presented “Omniverse II” for a crowd of hundreds as the final installation of “Art on the Beach.” The band played in front of David Hammon’s Delta Spirit House—a shack constructed from materials scavenged from the streets of New York—which would soon be destroyed. Bulldozers had begun clearing the landfill for construction.

A chain linked fence was installed at the site’s edge, cutting off access to the Hudson River. Art critic Patricia Phillips lamented in Artforum: “The encroachment of Battery Park City Authority development was imminent.” As the sun set, Sun Ra repeatedly chanted “Space is the place,” announcing to the audience that he was from the moon. In the final number, Ra and his Arkestra began their procession, marching single file through the crowd and eventually returnig to the stage. Blasting brass and percussion, they exited the landfill on foot, still playing, with their audience behind them, fingers pointed to the sky.

The landfill Ra and his cohorts left remains public today—in a way. Over four million people visit Battery Park City daily, on lunch break, skipping through the playgrounds, lounging under the sun in Rockefeller park, swallowing the mouth of the Atlantic. That in merely three decades the BPCA turned a derelict shipping port into a tourist magnet and smashing financial hit is just part of the reason critics have heralded the megaproject’s success since its completion. “Battery Park City was an economic success,” writes political theorist Susan Fainstein. “Moreso, thanks to its location on landfill next to the financial district, it did not displace anyone either economically or spatially.”

There are no signs to tell visitors and residents of lower Manhattan when they are standing on former landfill and when they are not; when they are trekking across the land-birth of the World Trade Center—land that was once a social experiment for both artists and developers alike (and in some ways still is)—or land that was simply always there. If there were, they might clarify what’s been made private in making Battery Park City ‘public.’ We might shift in our seats a little, knowing that the stitches that surgically attached the artificial island of debris are not as seamless as they appear to be.

WILL TAVLIN B’17 is filled with land.

Rock Steady performance August 1982

April 29, 2016

ARTS

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THOUGHTS ON THE TWO “It’s important to have shitty relationships in high school” my friends often say, in order to learn from them, learn how to choose better, wait for people to grow up. This kind of education isn’t actually taking place. There is a different sort; the real reason to have shitty relationships as soon as possible is to learn to tell a story.

My own heartbreak was the first opportunity to fully narrativize my life. A break up even has its own soundtrack.

I already have an easy hook, a smell: leather and cigarettes. This may or may not be an appealing scent, but it was her scent. What I mean is this is what I can tell people. It is a particular kind of conversation, sharing past loves, hard to describe without falling into its rhythms. Rhythms determined by theater, comics, movies, novels. I enjoy the rhythm too much, so I say: “The smell of cigarettes and leather will always remind me of her. I was 16, I still fetishized ‘troubledness’ in that immature way.”

Or someone might play a song, The Sweetest Kill, by Broken Social Scene, and I can say: “My terrible high school girlfriend showed me this song. She broke my heart.”

And it’s a true joke, and people laugh, say “awwhh”. It’s easy. I have gotten very good at telling this story, and it is fun to tell. In the right context I get the reaction I’m looking for.

These reactions make it a tempting story to write. It’s the affirmation that my small-time heartbreak is interesting.

But I am suspicious of writing anything that feels indulgent, or too much like a cheap commercial, or invisible. My life has been easy, and I need to know how I can write about it today, without bland profiteering. If I make clear the intention to escape my boring-ness, am I absolved of the sin of a cliché narrative? Is it enough to be meta? I don’t mean to suggest that any meta-commentary would be a ploy to seem “creative”; I am genuinely curious. Why do I get so much pleasure from the laugh/awwhh reaction? Is it a story at all worth writing about?

Fine then: I want to write my life as melodrama.

I’m interested, though, in the other forms melodrama might take. Serial romance comics, Girls’ Romances, published by DC, popular in the fifties and sixties. A common practice in comics is to bold and italicize, in combination, certain words—for emphasis. Girls’ Romances used the italibold to great melodramatic effect. For example:

+++ All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A play. I’m well versed in melodramatic theater; as a small child in acting camp I was placed in the melodrama company. Maybe— Cast of Characters Sam Samore: Kayla Hansgen: Phillip Vernon:

A boy age 16.

A girl age 16.

A boy age 16.

No, new names.

Cast of Characters Rock Hudson: Dorothy Malone: Biff Miley:

A young man, 16, dark and handsome The most dangerous girl at school, 16.

A thin boy, 16, Rock’s best friend

Rock Hudson and Biff Miley recline on the hood of Biff’s car. It is the summer after their sophomore year of high school. Eve-‐ rything in their lives is changing. They both face up, staring at the sky.

Neither of them speaks for a long moment.

Rock I meant to tell you Biff, I ran into Dorothy toBiff Never say that name to me again! She tore my heart out Rock, and I can’t forgive her.

Rock There was no way for you to have known, Biff… known her heart was black as tar.

Biff After everything with Hannah…It was supposed to be perfect with Dorothy, Rock. I had all my hopes pinned on this one night—the night of the Ratatat concert.

Rock turns to look Biff squarely in the eyes.

Rock I’ll never look her in the eyes again, Biff. +++

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Even more than italibold, I’m enchanted by Girl’s Romances’ covers. Running along the top: “Love stories that could happen to YOU” Is this a threat?

“Love stories that could happen to YOU”

The College Hill Independent

by Sam Samore Girls’ Romances is credited to Mike Sekowsky, Gene Colan, Lee Elias, Gil Kane, Win Mortimer, Bob Oksner, John Romita, Sr., John Rosenberger, Art Saaf, Jack Sparling, Alex Toth, and George Tuska. Were the tales taken from their own lives? Certainly there was a degree of fantasy, a group of grown men dreaming of girls’ romances, how they might differ from their own.

Why stop with comics? Other forms—Cinema: the trailer, with voice over— “He was just a lonely young man, lost in melancholy” “She a wild rebel, abandoned by drug addled parents at the age of 5” “Their love seemed unbreakable, until that fateful night…”

Movie trailers and Girls’ Romance share this: the frozen look, the teary face turned to the camera, framed in a panel. Images I can return to at night, fill in with Dorothy’s (or is it Kayla’s?) face, perfect teeth. I was surprised; she never had braces. +++ Is there melodrama in the romance novel? No image, but the tantalizing prose, the dogeared page.

They had known, upon arriving at Mary’s wooded cabin, that it would be a night to remember. Now that they were finally alone by the rope swing, Dorothy could feel her heart thumping against her ribs. She watched Rock grip the thick rope, his biceps straining.

He turned to her and smiled, that impossible smile that made her stomach do somersaults. Suddenly, in one smooth motion, he was in the air, straddling the wooden disc with his tight thighs.

“Jump on!” he yelled, laughing. “What!?”

Dorothy cried.

“Don’t worry! I won’t let you fall”. As Rock swung back towards her, he reached out his hand. She grabbed the rope and jumped as he gripped her waist, holding her body tightly against his. She felt herself flying through the starry night, freer than she had ever been.

Her legs wrapped around him…

This was not the memory I wrote at first, just after the fact; it’s two degrees separated. At first, it wasn’t a melodrama. The melodrama requires a distance, a memory lapse. I don’t want to reduce melodrama though, its origins, to a tool for a boy to cope.

When I say “it wasn’t a melodrama” I mean: it was, to a greater degree, accurate.

For example, when I tell it dry:

+++

Kayla texted me, “Hey can I pick you up? I need to talk to you”. I responded, “Yeah, definitely!” She picked me up in her grandmother’s car, a Chrysler Spit Fire. We drove to the base of the “H Rock”, where we had kissed for the first time. She said “I had sex with someone at the Skrillex concert. We probably shouldn’t do this anymore.” I opened the door. “I think I’ll walk home.” She preferred to give me a ride. I let her.

But here the prison between accuracy and narrative is suffocating. On the one hand, it has the beginnings of a craftedness that marks “story”: the H Rock recurrence, the Skrillex reference for a quick laugh. On the other, though, it’s too stuck to the facts to arrive at any fruition; it’s only a convenient template, something I can use again and again. Melodrama is about excess, how a person’s emotions could escape them, rip through the screen and startle you. This is what I meant by two degrees separated; a memory becomes a stuck narrative before, given an unsubdued form, it might surprise you.

But melodrama is unfashionable. This is, after all, a nonfiction essay. A form which requires an official definition upon which I can elaborate with clever wordplay, borrowing and lightly mocking some form of technicality. Such as: Melodrama: “a sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions.”

“Sensational.” The summer appealed to my senses; that much I’m certain of. I remember clearly the smell of her camel cigarettes mixed with the leather seats of her little Saab. They say smell -memory carries more intense emotional associations than any other sense. Perhaps therein lies the key to the nostalgia of melodrama; the ephemeral whiff of the unknown sending you hurtling backwards through time, every sensation and emotion writ large by the depth of the smell. +++ Is this what my story lacks in its original state (the structure from the past-love conversations, the memoir -heartbreak)? A palette of smells to accompany it? I think, sometimes, that my usual heartbreak narrative is too grounded, self-conscious, unwilling to sob in the back row of the theater, nose sniffling. Like I said, these conversations about past loves have a particular rhythm. Melodrama is the same; more than anything else it’s generified. There’s a particular opportunity in this, to exceed the strict rules while using them, to have fun, precisely because the rules exist so starkly. Isn’t that a subversion all its own? Imagine your favorite soap opera—it feels naughty. There is nothing naughty in writing simple memoir-heartbreak, which is too self -conscious to appreciate the danger of leather and cigarettes. When I was sixteen I would have understood this.

April 29, 2016

FEATURES

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GOODBYE FOREVER :’( WC a gentleman, pen in hand, or balanced between your lip: lightening eyes traverse our tri-columnary scripture scribbling prayers in the margin, to who-knowswhich-gods : cusack, not malkovich but our cusack, the one-who-writes-the-news that-black-haired-jean-pants-to-your-left

MS

FT

who is that grey dictionary coyote? checking for rhythms at the wrist and neck of tall buildings sure behind sunglasses for some reason it don’t matter she typebiter I mean her scribbles have fangs matter of fact she weeps as she kills it matter of fact she proceeds to smile as she eats it keeps a nest in the basement address exclusive got a brain got buckshot aiming at you *toothless* that forty-yard em-dash girl didn’t even stretch still unfolds your whole posse like newsprint keeping you captive from epitaph to prologue and always a good friend to prairie dogs.

PRo Tips: Meeting Francis 1-Take International Law Our professor asks the class if anyone’s from Haiti, to properly channel the voice of a Haitian diplomat when reading a quote off the board.

Nobody raises their hand.

“Nobody?” Our professor asks. “Any other Caribbean?”

A couple hands raise. Mine. Francis’. He picks Francis.

“Where from?”

“Puerto Rico.”

I’m intrigued, and slightly miffed. That was my answer.

2-Join B-Side Magazine “We started this magazine because it’s shocking that there’s no publication dedicated to music on campus,” 2/3 editors told me at my interview to join as an overeager sophomore. The third founding editor wasn’t there.

3-Academia del Perpetuo Socorro “What high school did you go to?” I asked at the second or third copy of the year, aware of exactly two Puerto Rican high schools due to my cousins there.

Whaddayaknow. It’s one of them. We’re practically family. ...

I just started trying to write this in Spanish. This is about as far as I got: empezó este año con mucho dudo en mi sitio en brown entre b-side y indy ha sido un placer conocerte y gracias también por los PRo tips. la próxima vez que estamos en la isla te compro un trago -and then I remembered the talk we had about fifteen minutes ago where you mentioned you helped fix some of my Spanish syntax on my article.

I’m going to try though, damn my Nuyorican lack of faculty with Spanish.

FrancisYo empezó este año con mucho dudo en Brown y en lo que yo quería de mi tiempo aquí. Pero durante este año, he conocido muchas personas especiales y tengo que decirte que sido un placer tener la oportunidad conocerte y trabajar y escribir contigo este año. Me ha agradezco mucho tenerte como otro boricua, como mi mentor para Indy y B-Side, y como amigo.

Y gracias por los PRo tips. La próxima vez que estamos en La Placita yo te compro un trago.

so long, wilson!

IE

JB Jake hitches up his slightly-oversized houndstooth pants as he does a loose-hipped move across the concrete outdoor dance floor of MOMA PS1. This ain't his first rodeo, and he couldn’t resist the disco beat blasting from the dj’s Behringer speakers hooked up to a 4 track cassette mixer.

His intellectually-bespectacled boyfriend, Ludvig, catches Jake’s arm and points to the young dj: “She looks a bit like Chloë Sevigny, don’t you think?” “Like, lol, tonight a dj saved my life from a broken heart,” Jake laughs back, before wandering once more into the crowd.That triple fudge special brownie has started working it’s magic on him, and, catching his reflection in the bright pink neon tube of a Tracy Emin installation piece, he can’t help but touch the art. Seeing a dreaded old college acquaintance approaching him in a bratop and culottes—what is she doing at a party like this—Jake braces himself for the obligatory banter. The edible makes it smoother sailing, and before he knows it he has slipped into a full-on conversation and is gesticulates iconically: rolling his hand inward towards his face while lightly bopping the rest of his body: like he’s trying desperately to waft a scent towards his nostrils, or imitate Queen Elizabeth’s royal wave while on muscle relaxants. Although his mouth is moving, his mind wanders onto more important matters, fantasizing about a time to come, probably during his children’s generation, when 90’s fashion has been forgotten, his retro-rectangular wire-framed sunglasses suddenly appear wildly futuristic, and his mulleted curly locks recall the St. Vincent of St. Vincent more than the Grace Zabriskie of Twin Peaks. He’s holding out for that. He gives an endearingly goofy smile, tips back the rest of his dry vermouth martini (two olives), and heads on home for the night. For now, at least, he feels comforted knowing that by the time he has left the party, everyone there will have adopted his infectious tone of conversational speech.

Coming into view through a misplaced, intentional hole in the young lady’s garment, a glimpse of pale skin is illuminated by moonlight. We find ourselves in a plot of yard (could this be the East Side? East Hampton? Brooklyn Heights?) Dirt smears the tear-streaked face of a babydoll (is it real and stuffed? did she get it on Etsy?) as it strikes midnight—it’s time for the sacrifice. She saturates the soil with her libations (a Negroni? a fresh-pressed juice?) and chants the incantations to summon the spectre (is she a witch? a faerie? I'm sure I've seen her in possession of pixie dust...). The wind blows; the ghost won’t be appearing tonight (has his presence been deferred?); she climbs into a tan sportscar, disappearing behind the wheel while flicking it’s startup switch (do we now know how to steal her car?). She returns to her abode for a snack and, hanging her riding crop up on the wall, takes a tupperware from Citeralla out of the fridge and begins to eat tiredly (sautéed strignbeans? lentils?)

She opens her flip phone, punching the keys: “Heya dood.”

“Whatcha up to?” She might not have brought the spectre to presence, but who says she can’t have a good time tonight?

BB If you ever walk into Captain Seaweed’s and see a guy that looks like Big Bird—but handsome—, ask him about his experiences being an extra for Hot Tub Time Machine. He got his entire wardrobe from the costume department. Don’ tell him about your opinion on the film, however. He isn’t interested in your snobbery.

This is because Ben is democratic. I like to imagine him as the upstanding newbie investigative journalist in a film about an asbestos infestation. He’s so democratic and so antisnobbery that if you’re ever the lucky one to bring him home to your grandmother, he’ll probably talk to her for longer than you’d be willing to. Your grandmother looks over at you, gives you a wink that says, “how’d you find this young Jimmy Stewart?” He’d come out of the conversation with a story. It’d be a scandal.

PG A flag of blue and yellow billows and clings to the flaxen angel descending on Bin 312, where the owner addresses her by her first name, syllables that cascade into the air like three silvery and lustrous marbles: “Polina, a pleasure to see you.” You wonder at her impossible outfit, the single sheet practically emanating lemon and cerulean, but she unmistakably makes it work. She has a thing for color blocking. “I’ll try number three, please,” she says in dulcet notes the linguistic equivalent of placing five ripe strawberries in a wishful palm. As she removes her sunglasses, you remember where you’ve seen her before - last week at Campus Fine Wines, clad in black turtleneck and eggshell winter vest. She is patron saint of wine tastings, her hair the color of champagne. She dabs her lips with a cocktail napkin, pops a ginger chew, and glides out the door as swiftly as she came. You check to make sure she’s not wearing roller skates. She is due up the hill to list your futures and lay out your desires, an Eastern breeze leaving fibers of the corn silk floating down to rest upon many Macbook keyboards. Yearning fingers collect them because they’ll be worth good money someday.

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TOE TAGS

LE When I want to post on Instagram I think to myself, what would Layla do? If she would post it, I post it. But Layla would also go bowling, and score a strike. And Layla would also sit down and draw little people with animal heads, and even littler fingers and toes. Layla would take her tiny backpack to Cafe Zog and draw women with floppy pancake breasts in the corner of her notebook while she works on her French homework. Layla would go to brunch at Julian’s with her brother and her boyfriend, and they’d all be wearing matching pants. Layla would wear better pants than me.

Come to think of it, Layla just has better taste. I guess that’s why my Instagram sucks.

WWLD?

CF She taught me once that in the very center of the Earth there are remnants of space collisions three and half billion years old. And it is this very core, quietly emitting heat, that keeps everything anchored to the surface.

I met Camera Ford when I was young and new and scared and it was her job to tell me (and a hundred other kids just like me) you’ll be fine, my doors always open, here’s a condom. No small feat, to be sure.

So what I’m trying to say is that Camera Ford is both the compass pointing due north and the invisible magnetic field that points us that way. Hell, she’s also the core that makes the magnetic field possible in the first place.

You may ask yourself: Can I ever be as cool as Camera Ford? The simple answer is no. Because Camera Ford isn’t cool, she burns. She burns hot and slow and sure. That girls got liquid nickel running through her veins, cool granite in her belly. But if you wanna try to get close, you can try this: lace up a pair of lavender Doc Martens, square your shoulders, ask someone how they’re doing and actually mean it.

The College Hill Independent

RS

PK

Around 8 am, on August 12, 1853 two trains of the Providence & Worcester Railroad collided head-on on a single set of track near Valley Falls, RI, killing fourteen people and outraging locals. Rick Salamé leans back in his thesis carrel, satisfied.

He knows it’s the best one in the Rock. Looking out over Providence, he sees something moving. Is it a duck? The Big Blue Bug? A dog? He considers going outside to pet it. But this ‘pre-history’ of the techno-politics of time won’t write itself!

Did you know that the mechanical clock is the most important invention of the past 1000 years? I didn’t, until Rick kindly explained it to me. Did you know that there’s really great $3 banh mi off Broad Street? I didn’t, until I went for a bike ride with Rick once. Do you know what the ‘correct politics’ are? Rick wants to know what you think.

He asks because he cares. And he’ll remember what you say long after you’ve forgotten. Because no matter how hard he listens, there’s always more to hear; no matter how good he is, it’s never good enough; no matter how much he learns, he is never sure; but as far as he will travel, he will know that nothing ever does begin like nothing ever ends, ask every atom in your body and they’re sure to tell you... so we’ll listen harder, too.

@FoucaultScholar pushes up his glasses. Hunches over his computer. He’s writing about you. Yes YOU! You with the tweed jacket and the macho mustache. He looks forlornly back at his screen. He’s been nursing this cup of Ethiopian medium roast for an hour. It was helping him make a playlist.

He calls this playlist Future Playlist. He’s going to walk the streets of Cairo to this playlist. He’s going to dance until he’s sweaty to this playlist. He’s writing a poem/vignette/ experimental lyric piece to this playlist. He pushes up his glass. Poetry is dead ‘cept for the poets. YH dwells under the moon but he’s taking notes on the way the stars sound.

SC The yellow blades of compass emerge from behind the tips of Urizen’s finger as he places his device in the void to articulate a universe, a perfect circle to be set in chaos. And smoke from a Lucky Strike splits his teeth, obscuring Blake’s masterpiece.

Between a scattered and cool respiration, a Notting Hill drawl punctures the silence, recounting floods and quakes, the end of the world several times over.

But it has always been this way. Sebastian crouched beneath The Ancient of Days, telling a tale from a time not far off, and it’s an allegory. An elbow rested on a pile of dogeared monographs, espresso-stained, secret marginalia under the drum of ochre fingernails; or maybe he’ll be supine on a piece of Astroturf in his attic, a genie of the 21st century, floating off to somewhere on his polyethylene carpet. He says, “I’m just expressing continuity with place. Did you not know that Moses Brown was the first place in the world to ever install ChemGrass?”

Even if no one is there to listen, a tale is being told. So listen. There is something perfect in the chaos.

HS Henry is a fool moon. he is fall’s moon; he is moonful.

Henry, you must not forget, is manful. he is a virile specimen.

Henry is a darling’s wet dream, his clogged tubes seep dreams.

Henry’s gait is that of a man who reads too much Freud.

Henry’s ego is that of a man who can turn off the subtitles while watching Godard.

Henry’s new earring also signals a complex relationship to the early rave music of 90s Manchester.

Henry might be 70% semen, but his semen is 70% tequila sunrise.

Henry googles youtube looking for your tube. He does not see the disconnect, his wiring is of a bygone age.

Henry is a telegraph in cyberspace.

JD With Jade it’s easy to feel like you’re a cynic. She’ll talk to you about flower farming, about doing hand stands on the beach, and if you take a ride in her car she’ll play Mandinka loudly from its hoarse speaker. Her plate spells 1CY and it reminds me of how she used to text. ladizzzz B I R D S — either all caps & numbers or full-page paragraphs. She’ll share her idols with you and will make sure you’re on board. It isn’t easy to match her irrevocable love for the world but if you both find yourselves looking in the same direction, it’ll be hard to remain a cynic.

YH

KS You ring the doorbell to Kim’s house. A cranky, monotonic chime of Hotline Bling loops as you wait, knees wavering, on the stoop. Kim is preparing herself. Cigarette in one hand, authentic replica of Levin’s scythe in the other, Kim waves you in with the charm of a Russian madame. Welcome to Kim’s living room, her epistemological plane. Crown Russe on tap, poster of Christine Lagarde. We’ve watched Kim transform from a lush brunette to a blonde lush. She pulls back her hair, opens the tap, rips Christine in two, the night begins and ends. Returning the next day, Elinor Ostrom graces the living room. Always stumbling over her own ambition, nobody pops back up like her.

SK

GH Gaby Hick can write about writing more beautifully than anyone you’ve ever met. She knows how to talk about earlymid aughts alt rock six ways to Sunday. At a party, she always introduces you to people 1. because she was raised right and 2. because she actually, truly cares that you know the name of the person you’re talking to. She believes in love, and letters, and Jess Mariano. She has great wedding stories—tales of rural and and surprisingly prolific forms of Canadian warmth. She is also brilliant, but in a way that never has to announce itself before entering a room. It’s more the kind that makes you wanna sit next to her during class, frantically copying her notes. But later that night, you sit next to her again as she dispenses couch-cousin wisdom: the party is over, but next to her you feel a little drunk, content, warm. She always says the exact right thing, and its surprising, but also you’d expect nothing less.

To our lady of the flower-fruity fragrance, our queen of the serger and bandsaw, our midnight ramen girl. She’s lifting one eyebrow and conjuring the perfect adjective. She’s pouring maraschino cherry juice into your iced white wine.

She’s awake before you and out later but still ready to lead an impromptu discussion on what makes Carrie Bradshaw the perfect antihero. She makes your heart skip a beat every time you see a tangerine Subaru. Can we borrow your eyeliner?

Baby, you don’t even gotta ask.

April 29, 2016

TOE TAGS

14

ADVICE

by M+P illustration by Gabriel Matesanz

How do I prepare for the real world?

M: I recommend that you buy organic shampoo. We’re beginning to find that wastewater treatment facilities aren’t able to handle all the chemicals that the average consumer disposes of through drains and toilets. For example, Environmental Pollution will publish in June a report on the massive quantities of cocaine and antidepressants in the tissue of Chinook salmon found in estuaries near Seattle. With a bottle of organic shampoo, you may wake up a little less worried about your environmental impact. This could give you just the drive you need to get in the shower and out the door with a fresh head of hair.

P: Even considering that college is mostly just a playground for those who can afford it, the idea that there’s any strict divide between the life you’re living now and the one you’re about to start living is an unhelpful delusion. Your relationships, interests, and thinking patterns will continue despite the new challenges and life situations you will inevitably find yourself in. More relevant is the question of how to prepare for the specific challenges that you see confronting the difference between your life as it is now and what it might become.

Thinking in the abstract terms ‘college world’ vs. ‘real world’ won’t get you any closer to the real challenges these things entail. Or welcome to the Real World, you’re already being surveilled.

At this point in my college life, it feels as if almost all of my relationships are superficial. I don’t seem to have a clear group of friends; instead, I hover around the periphery of various social circles but am never at the center of any of them. The worst part is that, throughout the year, various people have reached out to me and tried to become friends, and for stupid reasons, like getting caught up with school, I often missed the opportunity. It’s not just focusing too much on school, though, because I do make an effort to hang out with people a lot. The problem is that I feel as if I never get past being acquaintances with someone. It seems to me as if after a certain point, people decide they think I’m interesting or nice or cool (or not) but for whatever reason they don’t really want to be better friends with me.

Maybe I’m just a boring person? I don’t know. Basically, I don’t often get included in things, I just see people around; they seem glad to see me, but they’ll never say “Hey, we

should get dinner sometime.” How do I get past this and actually make good friends, especially when everyone has their own insular groups?

M: I’m really bad at making friends, too.

P: Often I’m inclined to chalk this up to a sort of dangerousanimal-confrontation problem, where something like ‘they’re as afraid of you as you are of them’ would apply. But mostly I find that sort of unhelpful. I have some friends who are just better at initiating friendships and I—fairly or unfairly—often rely on other people’s skills to put me in positions where I can get to know people more intimately. My advice would then boil down to two threads: to understand that forced and artificial situations sometimes have to be engineered by yourself (or through others) to put yourself in a position to get to know people better and to be patient, that these things really do take a while, and that it’s okay that it may take longer for you to really find your people. Hit me up for ice cream in the meantime.

How do I help someone who’s going through the same thing I am? If I’m depressed right now and can see that one of my friends also is, what can I do?

P: I always hope that there’s some way my own sufferings or problems can be made to help others. Without this hope, it can feel like I’m suffering for no reason and that can make me feel even more lonely and purposeless. Depression especially feeds off this kind of feeling, trapping one into feeling that one’s problems are uniquely and specially—and often incommunicably—one’s own, that there can be no way of sharing and working them out with others. In my experience, recognizing that this is the case and even beginning to share this doesn’t solve much of anything. Rather, I’ve found the best thing to do is to be very patient with your own suffering, to understand that sometimes you are unable to do certain things or provide certain types of care. Letting others know how they can contribute to your own patience—how they can check in, occupy you with other things—then goes a long way to helping them to see that they too can lean on you for help.

Just doing activities that don’t center on the spiral of thinking about how depressed you are often does the most for me. Find the things you have the energy for and ask your friend to join you. These can be really simple: go to the movies, go read in the park, get an ice cream. Personally, I like building puzzles.

Forgive my vagueness, but: I made a stupid, thoughtless mistake that may have fucked up my relationship permanently. How do I ask for forgiveness although I’m not sure I’m worth forgiving?

M: Why does it matter that you be forgiven? It seems that there’s two obvious answers to this question. This relationship matters to you and forgiveness might mean saving your relationship. A fortiori, it matters to you that you be forgiven.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this answer. However, it seems self-serving in an important way. Forgiveness would really be a way of skirting around the consequences of whatever it was you chose to do. You’ll get what you want in the end, even if what you want is a good thing. But it might also matter to you that you be forgiven, because it matters to you that you rectify the situation, regardless of the outcome. If this is the case, asking for forgiveness means acting like someone deserving of forgiveness. It shouldn’t be enough to simply ask.

Would it then matter whether or not your partner chooses to forgive you? It seems to me that it wouldn’t, because you’ve done all you can to mend your relationship, and that’s what mattered all along. Ask yourself what you want. If it really is forgiveness, you’ll need to act, not ask.

How to say goodbye?

P: You also shouldn’t feel that you have the sole responsibility for saying goodbye. Any really heartfelt goodbye is going to be something reached mutually between two+ persons based on all sorts of factors: the rhythms of the relationship, where you hold each other in your projected futures, what makes the relationship worthwhile. This doesn’t make it any easier but it does mean there’s no wrong way to do it. And maybe there is no satisfying way to say goodbye—that too is and will be an important and treasured part of your relationship. And to be fair: Travis does get a new dog after Old Yeller.

Summer is beginning to unfold before me like a massive black hole. I just hate it, mostly because I always feel like I waste all this time that I’ve been given. So tell me, O Wise Ones, how should I spend the coming three months?

M: It’s questions like this that highlight the inanity of advice columns. What you ought to spend your time doing depends on factors inaccessible to your advisors. What do you care about? Does anything make you happy? How can you be useful? Does being useful matter to you? You need to be asking yourself questions like these as school comes to an end.

The best advice I can really offer is to write down your answers and to revisit the questions that you’re asking. This could go a long way in helping you unearth the interests and desires that may point in the direction of a solution.

P: It’s also okay to have purposeless and bored time in your life. Often this is where you find new things to value or ways of living that sustain you beyond outside obligations created for you. It’s maybe important to remind yourself that the useful-summer-internship grind is a weird historical blip of hyperproductivity intersecting with romantically coddled youth culture. So set yourself some projects but make sure there’s some give. Bike to the beach, have a summer fling, get really into cooking. I don’t know, maybe chill out and have an ice cream?

15

FEATURES

The College Hill Independent

ANOTHER MAN’S TREASURE All the Cool Things I’ve Found in the Trash, and Where

by Lisa Borst

April 29, 2016

METRO

16

Cease N. desist

by Marcus Mamourian and Alec Mapes-Frances

I do not want to be one of those people for whom there is little else Backing away from the vehicle, slowly Why didn't Nancy "just say no" to consulting her astrologer?

Why didn't Ronnie "just say no" to his multitrilliondollar national debt sponsoring the massacres of ? A confederacy of ? bastrads.

Support the renewal of the Patriot Act SARS outbreaks spread quickly US Supreme Court rules that current sodomylaws are unconstitutional; later Massachusettssodomysodomy rules that the ban on same-sex marriages are unconstitutional in Goodridge et al. v. Department of Public Healthsodomy Saddam Hussein is captured near Tikrit They glanced at each other then at the figure that was stumbling along trying to get as far as possible from the door.

She was escaping the media at least for the time being and she didnt want a police officer living with her either.

Beagle 2 "lands" on Mars but nothing is heard from it--a few weeks later, MER-A (aka Spirit) makes a successful landing on the red planet sending back several really great photos I do not want to be one of those people for whom there is little else Preying on the subtler remodeling of what was once a tablet, i hymns, i prayers, i gather yves winked

Three on Dying the death: 1. "Yeah, the Honda flat-track racer was definitely superior to the Harley, but without factory support it died the death."

2. "We had a great L5R campaign going, but the GM started selling vacuums and it died the death."

3. "That old realtime VME Bus control board has been giving us trouble for months; I reckon it'll die the death any day now."

In Latin it's called the Crime of Enticement (Crimen Sollicitationis) Grace suffered from catatonic schizophrenia and midway through the eleventh grade she had the first of many full-blown catatonic episodes GRACE GRACE GRACE GRAVE Gra c Damascus Anicius execution Manlius Severinus Boethius a Roman statesman Who wrote his most famous work in prison while awaiting his execution If you don't want thorns, choose roses You lack imagination and improvisation skills So Where did you find this number?

Struggling Rust Belt factory towns and conspiracy theories Speeches make them feel good and So does OxyContin Some have said their appetite for bullion has been “staggering” Convicted by a King County jury on Thursday they received exceptionally long prison sentences Meant to match the exceptionally vicious abuses But the judge said the punishment was "the sentence that justice requires."

List_of_most_polluted_cities_in_the_world_by_particulate_matter_concentration This is why the world needs the punisher The Space Shuttle Columbia breaks apart over Texas killing all astronauts aboard Pope-Francis-visits-refugee-camp-Lesbos-plans-TEN-migrants-Rome-leaves.html This is why the world needs a punisher A big downside for me of Dark Souls 3 is that you can no longer two-hand your own fist and punch people by hefting your hand at them with your other hand like you could in 2

Reuse That Plastic As Earrings for Agatha’s Silhouette Robinson’s last trip to

København

HALO

FROTH

(Was last heard from on December 21, 1928 while en route from Buenos Aires to Australia. ] Where is the common Locus of thought?

Why are there no carpets, rugs, curtains, or shades in this apartment?

What did you mean when you said that the beach was fleshy?

Distraught family who hope the device's data could hold crucial clues as to what happened Out There.

You may only have just become accustomed to

Friday after a National Guard helicopter was brought in to douse the flames from the air

17

LITERARY

The College Hill Independent

4/30

Urban Vintage Bazaar The Arcade, 65 Weybosset St // 10am–5pm // free Vintage vendors, period-piece peddlers, selected sellers.

4/29

Independent Bookstore Day Symposium Books, 240 Westminster St // 10am–6pm // free

5/1

Truck Stop: A Festival of Street Eats Alex and Ani City Center // 5.30– 8.30pm // Sold Out

Tons of books for sale with deep discounts!

Symposium also buys books and records if you’re selling.

I’m letting you know about this sold-out event in the off chance that you can get a ticket from your friend who is ill or find some other way to finagle your way in. Success rates on social media can be surprisingly good.

Wickenden St Makers and Merchants Sidewalk Sale Wickenden St // 12–6pm // free Check out wares from local artists and businesses.

New Urban Arts Creative Conversation: Courtney Bowles and Mark Strandquist New Urban Arts, 705 Westminster St // 6pm // free Join NUA students and community members in a conversation with Courtney Bowles and Mark Strandquist. Bowles and Strandquist “have spent years collaborating with incarcerated men, women, teens, and those in reentry, to create public art and advocacy projects. At the core of their practice is the belief that those most impacted by the criminal justice system are the experts society needs to listen to, and that by connecting those directly affected with a multitude of community experts and political stakeholders, we can utilize art to create change on personal and systemic levels.” (from Facebook)

Critical Mass Providence!

Burnside Park // meet at 6pm, leave at 6.30 // free Critical mass is a group bike ride that brings attention to urban cyclists and inadequate transportation infrastructure. It tries to take back the streets, and the city, from cars.

Come with silly costumes or boomboxes, and give angry drivers something to look at.

Girls Rock! Rhode Island Spring Programming Community Concert AS220 // 2–4pm // free

5/5

May Day in Providence!

Conlan Park, 200 Messer St // 3–5pm // free

Bike the Night with Mayor Jorge Elorza City Hall // 6pm // free

Providence’s celebration of International Workers Day. International Workers Day was originally started by the Second International to commemorate the massacre of striking workers at the 1886 Haymarket riots in Chicago. Today, the holiday is observed throughout the world to celebrate worker power.

Providence groups include the IWW, Comité de Inmigrantes en Acción, DARE, PrYSM, ONA, Fuerza Laboral, RI JwJ, and more.

Elorza is the bicycle mayor. He is king of bikes, sultan of two-wheels, lord of my heart.

I will bike the night with him. I will stay a reasonable distance from the bike in front of me and maintain an 8–12mph pace. I will be let out of my cage…

5/2

The students at Girls Rock! RI have been working on their songwriting skills over the past 10 weeks and will be performing their original compositions at a free concert open to the public. Girls Rock! RI is a non-profit that uses music creation and critical thinking to empower girls and women.

New England Revolution vs Orlando City Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, MA // 6.45pm // $40 The New England Revolution (that’s our local soccer team) hosts Orlando City in a home game. Go see watch some soccer. It’s what the world watches.

Grownass Prom 2016 The Met, 1005 Main St, Pawtucket // 8pm // sold out?

Just like high school prom but minus all the stuff that made actual high school prom shitty. Proceeds benefit Girls Rock! RI

This is a classic line-up. Montreal’s Ought join DC punks Priests and PVD punk faves Downtown Boys and Way Out for this show.

All these bands are on their way up, so catch them now while tix are still cheap.

5/6

Life in One Night: Live Audio Storytelling from Cradle to Grave 186 Carpenter St // 7.30pm // price unclear

Boston Premiere of “Nasser’s Republic, The Making of Modern Egypt” “Six local audio producers will play and perSomerville Theatre, Davis Square, form stories that they’ve crafted from real Somerville, MA // 7.30pm // $11 people in RI and beyond. Each story relates Part of the Independent Film Festival of Boston, “Nasser’s Republic” is a feature-length documentary about the most transformative political leader in modern Egyptian history, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and his legacy.

5/3

Sax Machine is a really funny and actually good RnB saxercise set. Terror Pigeon sounds a bit like WHY? but with a little more whimsy. I don’t know how to describe Brian 4 Ever, but Joe Lou could be called bedroom synth pop. This show should be really fun and refreshing.

5/4

Ice, Lolito, Valise Tommy’s Place, 144 Westminster // 9pm // price unclear Noise noise noise

25 years of 20 issues means 500 Fridays of freshly printed Indy. We celebrate our reign by poking the archive and seeing what falls out. Join us for an exhibition of old Indy treasures + a moment of reflection + coffee + the release of our second ever comics special (!).

Sax Machine, Brian 4 Ever, Terror Pigeon!, Joe Lou AS220 // 9pm // price unclear?

Scully and B Boys Watermyn Co-Op, 166 Waterman St // 9pm // $5 Grunge/punk abounds.

Indy 500: an archival exhibition The Underground, 75 Waterman St // 5–8pm // free

Ought, Priests, Downtown Boys, Way Out The Met, 1005 Main St, Pawtucket // 8pm // $10–12

Women, Trans, Fem Open Shop Night at Recycle-a-bike Recycle-a-bike, 12 Library Ct // 6pm– 9pm // free No one knows everything and everyone knows something is the ethos of this bike repair workshop. There will be a special focus on brake diagnostics from 6:30–7. People who identify as female, transgender, femme, genderqueer, trans-masculine, trans-feminine only, please.

to a different stage of life - birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, late age, and death - through a blend of recordings and live sounds” (from Facebook). I’m a little disturbed that the stories are made out of people.

Del the Funky Homosapien feat DJ Shiftee, Sean Anonymous, ESH, and ARC Middle East, 472–480 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge // 8pm // $18– 20 Rapper and hip hop MC Del the Funky Homosapien has been jamming since the late ‘80s and has worked with Dinosaur Jr, Gorillaz, and MF DOOM.

Guerilla Toss, Downtown Boys, Houseboy, Lovesick Aurora // 8.30pm // $10 More punk! (+ see Dwntn Boys again)

Waxahatchee with Circuit des Yeux Columbus Theatre, 270 Broadway // 9pm // $15–17 Waxahatchee is the project of Katie Crutchfield, who you may know from her other project P.S. Eliot. Nice vibes.

7/23

McKenzie Wark: What if this is not capitalism, but something worse?

Granoff Center, 154 Angell St // 6.30pm // free

This talk is a self-described provocation. It asks attendants to “think the possibility that capitalism has already been rendered history, but that the period that replaces it is worse.”

It attempts to push back against what Wark considers a consensus on the “Left” and the “Right” that capitalism is eternal, only changing surface appearances and not its deep structural content. I personally think that discursive projects focusing largely on the terminology used to categorize economic relations can be distracting, but I ought to go to the talk before I sound off…

South County Hot Air Balloon Festival University of Rhode Island // 2pm // $5 for kids, $10 for adults

There are gonna be tons of hot air balloons flying around (weather permitting). You can go look at them, or even take a ride in one of them (not included in price of admission).

Bring your camera, your soon-to-be fiancé, or a picnic basket.

Rhode Island Fact of the Week: The Red Train makes a big loop. There is no beginning or end. Get on at Café Aktaion-Marina Mandraki and ride back around to the same. I can’t give you directions so I hope you don’t get lost trying to find it. But the only way you can find Rhode Island, really, is by getting lost. That’s why people around here so often tell each other, “Get Lost!” and “Go to Café Aktaion-Marina Mandraki!” Especially during rush hour. If you haven’t figured it out by now I don’t know a whole lot about Rhode Island.

But hopefully the events I gathered from the internet were real. Maybe they weren’t and nobody bothered to tell me…

Maybe I should just get lost. See you at the Temple of Apollo.