LIFESTYLE
TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2016
PAGE 18
AROUND CAMPUS ALUMNA TALKS GEEK CULTURE
Paley Library is hosting a lecture with Ariell Johnson, a 2005 Temple alumna and the owner of the Amalgam Comics and Coffeehouse in New Kensington. Johnson will discuss fan fiction, a genre in which fans continue the adventures of their favorite characters from other series. She will also discuss gaming, science fiction and cult classic texts. The event is today at 2:30 p.m. in Paley’s lecture hall, and it is open to the public. -Brooke Williams
TEMPLE TALK: DISCUSSING “PORN AND THE PAST”
DANIEL RAINVILLE TTN
Marvella McDaniel, the group leader of Compassionate Friends, holds a photo of her son Eric, who studied architectural engineering at Temple.
Group works through grief together Continued from page 1
FRIENDS
had, there should be more parents or children coming,” McDaniel said. “It’s hard to deal with this alone.” Since her first meeting, McDaniel has come every month and now, as the group’s leader, helps to see others through the place of pain she was in 20 years ago. “It took years to get to this place,” she said of her grief. “Don’t put a limitation or a time on it. Don’t say, ‘In two months, three months, I want to get back to my old self.’ It doesn’t work like that.” Someone who has lost a loved one never gets over it, McDaniel said, but rather gets through it. She said attending meetings helps, if in no other way, to show that progression can happen and life can find some sort of a “new norm.” One of the mothers who stood out to McDaniel was Donna Garnett, who lost her 23-yearold daughter, Diamond in a car accident two years ago. When
she went to identify Diamond’s body, she received a packet on how to deal with loss and called McDaniel. It took her 10 months to come, McDaniel said, but when she did, Garnett reminded her of a balled-up fist—tight and tense with everything bottled up inside. “It was affecting my health,” Garnett said. “I told Marvella I’d love to come to the meeting, but my body wouldn’t let me do it.
instructor. She loved animals and had two pit bulls and a cat named Coco Chanel, which Garnett still takes care of, even though she is allergic. “She had a special kind of heart,” Garnett said. McDaniel said the growth she’s seen in Garnett during the last year and a half prompted her to make Garnett co-leader of the group. “Once she opened up, it was
nett said, explaining that no two people process death the same way. “People say, ‘I don't want to feel happy because my child is dead.’” McDaniel said. “I want to say, ‘You can be happy, you can laugh and dance. Your child would not want you to feel like this.’” Garnett hopes that even if it takes a while, people return and realize their purpose in life isn’t
“There should be more parents or children coming. It’s hard to deal with this alone.” Marvella McDaniel | group leader of Compassionate Friends
Finally I said, ‘I’ve got to stop beating myself up. I’ve got to do something positive.’” Garnett, who has two other children, now talks about her daughter often. Diamond loved kids, Garnett said, and worked for the School District of Philadelphia as a special education
like, ‘Oh my god,’” McDaniel said of Garnett. “She is a light now.” The pair want to impress upon the group’s attendees that grieving and working through the loss of a loved one is a slow process. It’s OK to cry or to talk as if their loved one is still here, Gar-
gone. “I just want to lift some of their heaviness,” she said. “I want them to know you can give back through what you have lost.” * paige.gross1@temple.edu T @By_paigegross
Student exhibit won director’s award Continued from page 7
FLOWER
prior to the American Civil War. According to the National Parks Service, Hopewell Furnace was Pennsylvania’s second-largest iron producer by 1789. The park now has 14 restored structures and 52 features on the “List of Classified Structures” by the National Park Service. Eight students from the Junior Design Studio took part in the creation of the flower show exhibit. Christopher Onder, junior landscape architecture major, said he worked 35 hours a week for eight weeks to prepare it. “It was a lot of long days and nights,” Onder said. “But it was well worth every minute because the exhibit came out looking better than I could have ever imagined.”
“Creating this exhibit taught me many lessons in being resilient and seeing the results of hard work,” he added. “[I] was thinking, ‘Your design is perfect,’ then finding out that the materials you thought you were going to use would not work for one reason or another, and not to give up on it, but to collaborate with your team members to come up with another plan to make it work.” The exhibit featured 100 to 150 flowers. Students were inspired by moss and other vegetation they saw growing on the wooden roof of a house at Hopewell Furnace, as well as the size of the park’s big timbers and the color of a stove for melting iron from the park. These scenes were all incorporated in the final product, Kuper said. “It’s pretty much what I envisioned,” said Mike LoFurno, an adjunct assistant professor
in the Junior Design Studio. “A lot of the students didn’t quite visualize it the same way because they hadn’t really seen it all together because each part was constructed separately, and then it wasn’t together until Wednesday or Thursday when they started to see it as an experience all together.” Temple has been featured in the Flower Show for nearly 40 years and has never won the National Park Director’s Award before, LoFurno said. “This may be the first time afterwards I didn’t seek validation that the exhibit was good,” Kuper said. “I knew it was great.” “I think we did the Hopewell Furnace justice.”
SENIOR | ENGLISH
“With residential space, like shared space between students and long-time residents, it’s a huge problem.”
PB&J DAY COMMUNITY SERVICE
Students can participate in the Main Campus Program Board’s PB&J Day on Wednesday from 1 to 4 p.m. in Morgan Room D301. The sandwiches will be given to no-income and low-income residents in the PhiladelphiaCamden area. Music and food will be provided. Donations of peanut butter, jelly and bread are welcome. -Gillian McGoldrick
WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH TALK: COMBATING RACIAL PREJUDICE
As part of Women’s History Month, Temple will hold a conversation with Dr. Stephanie Morris, director of the archives for the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a congregation based in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, was originally founded by Saint Katharine Drexel in 1891. The congregation works to battle prejudice, racism and oppression, specifically toward Native Americans and African Americans. Morris will discuss the congregation’s philanthropic activities and other work. The conversation will be held tomorrow at 2 p.m. in Sullivan Hall’s Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection. -Jenny Stein
DISCUSSING ‘GIRL GAMERS’
Journalist and blogger Latoya Peterson will lead a discussion about her new online video series, “Girl Gamers” on Thursday at 3:30 p.m. in Paley Library’s Lecture Hall. She will also discuss her personal experiences in journalism regarding personal and controversial topics. Peterson’s work has been in publications like Vibe, Spin and The American Prospect. She also runs a blog, Racialicious.com, which focuses on the intersection of race and pop culture. -Grace Shallow
DANIEL TORDAY VISITS CAMPUS
As part of the “2016 Poets & Writers Series,” Daniel Torday, director of creative writing at Bryn Mawr College, will be reading from his works on Thursday at 5 p.m. in the Women’s Studies Lounge of Anderson Hall, located in Room 821. Torday is the author of “The Last Flight of Poxl West,” a book about a young boy who idolizes his uncle, a plane bomber during World War II. Torday has also written short stories and essays published in Esquire, Tin House, Paris Review Daily and The Kenyon Review. -Alexis Rogers
* gillian.mcgoldrick@temple.edu T @gill_mcgoldrick
Voice of the People | SAM LUCKMAN
Naomi Taback, an assistant professor in the Intellectual Heritage department, will lead a Temple Talk titled, “Porn and the Past” today at 3:30 p.m. in Room 200A of the Student Center. Taback will use her research experience on the Enlightenment to discuss how pornographic literature was used as a form of social criticism, as well as a way to promote new radical philosophies during the Enlightenment period. Taback also argues a materialist view of sex, specifically in regard to the numerous possible combinations of sexual acts, allowed for the deconstruction of political and social hierarchies present during the Enlightenment. -Jenny Roberts
JIVANA JASTHI
“Do you think litter is a problem off campus?” SHALI PAI
SOPHOMORE | BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
SOPHOMORE | SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH
“Off campus, because of parties, litter is always a problem. It’s really hurting the neighborhood.”
“It’s such a mess. People really don’t care about trash when it comes to off campus.”