LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
Dear readers,
In the first print issue of Volume 77 of the Yale Herald, we look to see the world anew, illuminated by the people we exist alongside. We are excited to proceed from Volume 76 with all the hope brought about by a new year, a new semester, and new opportunities for relation. We retrace the histories of the communities that serve us and recount the ways that we are meant to feel like family even in places we find ourselves utter neophytes.
For this issue, Herald writers contemplate intimacies, newsprung and deep-seated. Sophie Lamb ’27 attends a weekly Thursday meeting at the New Haven Ski Club and explores the lives of local skiers whose lives, for decades, have been attuned to the seasonal rhythm of snowfall. Sophie Garcia
THE MASTHEAD
Editors-In-Chief
Connor Arakaki / Madelyn Dawson
Creative Directors
Alexa Druyanoff / Alex Nelson / Alina Susani
Managing Editors
Emily Aikens / Eva Kottou / Jack Reed
Reviews Editors
Sara Cao / Theo Kubovy-Weiss / Dorothea Robertson
Reflections Editors
Amanda Cao / Cameron Jones
Arts Editors
Diego Del Aguila / Ashley Wang / Everett Yum
’26 ruminates on the certain shade of blue that reminds her of her late grandfather. Cassie Watts ’26 reviews the Off-Broadway Theatre production of Steven Sondheim and George Furth’s Company and considers how Yale’s undergraduate cast takes on the imperfect art of marital commitment. Finally, in honor of the 55th anniversary of the Afro-American Cultural Center—and for the cover feature of this issue—Richie George ’27 retraces the House’s history, full of community protests and activism.
As Richie writes, “The House tells its students that history itself can be re-defined.” The history of the House reminds us that radical self-definition is possible—and it has always been. In the wake of the Trump administration’s inaugu-
ration, and its aggressive policies dismantling migrant protections, transgender rights, and federal DEI programs across the country, we acknowledge that this political climate threatens our ability to define. Yet, in refusal to turn our heads from history’s reminders, we hold onto our ability to improvise.
We hope these stories are ones that commit you to definition, and re-definition, over and over.
Yours most daringly, Connor Arakaki and Madelyn Dawson
Features Editors
Amber Nobriga / Calista Oetama / Jisu Oh
Culture Editors
Sophie Lamb / Alex Sobrino / Will Sussbauer
Voices Editors
Gavin Guerrette / Lana Perice
Opinion Editors
Richie George / Oscar Heller
Publisher Bella Panico
Business Manager
Avery Lenihan
Design Editors
Madysen Green / Michelle J Lee / Natalie Leung / Matthew Messaye / Malina Reber / Claire SooHoo / Sarah Sun / Nicole Tian
Photography Editors
Tashroom Ahsan / Natalie Leung
Copy Editors
Lu Arie / Diana Contreras Niño / Cameron Jones / Alina Vaidya Mahadevan /
Staff Writers
Robert Gao / Richie George / Cameron Jones / Anna Kaloustian / Julian Raymond / Natalie Semmel
This Week's Cover
Photos courtesy of the Afro-American Cultural Center / Alexa Druyanoff
Cassie Watt on the Off-Broadway Theatre production of Steven Sondheim and George Furth’s Company
Cameron Jones on Ethel Cain’s Perverts (2025)
Julian Raymond on Nosferatu (2024)
The New Haven Ski Club by Sophie Lamb
The first installment of Here Is Our Happy Place begins on the slopes.
Decay in a Temperate Rainforest by Benny Seidman
The westbound drive to Wolf Creek.
by Sophie Garcia
The
The
Beyond Past and Future: Remembering David Lynch by Angel Hu
Retracing Twin Peaks and suburbian nostalgia.
No Stone Unturned (Or, Natural Philosophy) by Gavin Guerrette A eulogy for the backyard salamanders.
The Falling Man by Theo Kubovy-Weiss Arms / windmill in / a flap or flail.
The Missing Ingredients of Black Recognition by Isabella Pedroza
The first installment of Plated Perspectives takes us behind the scenes of Yale Hospitality’s MLK dinner.
A Transgenre Masterpiece
In Great “Company” At Off-Broadway Theatre
Hannah Szabó, MY ‘25
Cassie Watt, MC '26
I spent the summer of 2021 impaling myself with various colorful, elongated plastic rods and reading Milton. The months-long convalescence after gender-affirming surgery involved dilating four times a day to ensure a proper recovery, and it left me in a pit of depression. My solution was to enroll in an online Yale Summer Session literature course called “The Problem of Evil.”
Yale’s Off Broadway The atre sold out all four perforfrom January 23 to 25 of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company. Co-directors
AJ Walker, BK ’26 and Emiliano Cáceres-Manzano, BF ’26 led the production, which not only high lighted the depth of Yale’s theat rical talent but also demonstrated the Creative Performing Arts grant’s ability to support ambitious student work beyond the Yale Dramatic Association. Producer Abby Asmuth, JE ’26, and stage manag er Maya Evans, SY ’27, along with their creative team, delivered a polished production that honored Sondheim and Furth's work while working within the constraints of collegiate theater.
Trapped in my stuffy childhood bedroom, I spent the summer full of teenage angst and excruciating existentialism. My semi-autobiographical final paper for the class showed it: “Personhood and place tangle together — Hell is within Satan, and even when Satan is not physically within Hell, it clings ‘round about him,’” I lamented. I certainly hadn’t expected the philosophical work’s pretentious 17th-century poet to speak to my own experience, but Milton somehow had given words to the self-obsessed, self-possessed state I found myself in: “… myself am hell,” Satan cries out in Book 4 of Paradise Lost, “And in the lowest deep a lower deep / Still threatening to devour me opens wide.”
deep inside my body. It makes my heart ache. It also makes me long for a hard cock down my throat.” I flipped to a random page. “Knowing a kiss and a bite were both a taste, Mary’s son restaged the Fall of Man. Gethsemane played Eden, Roman centurions played blazing angels, and Judas played Eve. The Christ was fatally ripe.”aphical narrator suggests pain and pleasure are merely two forms of “extreme embodiment. ❧
Today”—when Amy (Sadie Pohl, SY ’26) unraveled into a panic attack as her wedding-day jitters channeled into a whirlwind of rapid-fire lyrics. Emily’s nerves were hilariously supported by her devoted fiancé Paul (Crawford Arnow, ES ’27) and priest (Emily Patrick, TD ’26). The ultimate Sondheim patter song jolts between the priest's soaring soprano notes, Amy’s frantic meltdown—the closest thing musical theater had seen to rap until Lin-Manuel Miranda came onto the scene—and Paul’s Disney-prince-like confession of love for Amy. This number is one of the “Simone Biles” routines of musical theatre, requiring exceptional vocal agility and comedic timing. This trio stuck the landing.
Another Article
Ed Desciak, MY ‘25
Beyond her impressive vocals, Pohl delivered a performance that was both convincing and heartfelt. Arnow and Patrick grounded the number with warmth and humor, while the ensemble—adorably outfitted with parasols and sunglasses—added an extra layer of whimsical theatricality, perfectly capturing the eccentric moments of Company.
more scripted rather than organic. This hesitation between actors, at times, diluted the intense marital dynamics needed to drive Bobby’s character arc in the show.
The production found its surest footing in numbers with a heightened theatrical style. In addition to “Getting Married Today,” standouts included Marta’s (Isabella Walther-Meade, BR ’25) New York City love song “Another Hundred People,” and the dream-like sequence “Side by Side” brought life with playful kick-line chore ography by Thomas Kannam, GH ’26, and Amara Neal, GH ’26, as well as matching pajamas and “I Love Bobby” shirts designed by Elizabeth Stanish, SY ’26.
“It made me think of how you talked about recovery,” a friend of mine told me towards the end of an impromptu weekday dinner last month. She slid the pastel pink book across the table to me, THE FIFTH WOUND written in futuristic baby-blue letters across the top.
Opening the book, the first thing I read was a review by author Carla Monir: “I have never read anything like Aurora Mattia’s writing. I would say less that I have read her work and more that I have felt it,
Company follows Bobby (Ben Heller, DC ’27), a 35-year-old grappling with the idea of marriage as he observes the highs and lows of his friends’ relationships. Throughout the show, we witness Bobby around his birthday as he visits four different couples, navigates relationships with three girlfriends, and seeks guidance from his older confidante, Joanne (Hannah Kurczeski, BR ’26), gradually opening his mind to the imperfect art of commitment. The unit set featured a simple apartment layout, evoking the New York City setting, while each scene was differentiated with lighting by de signer Rhayna Poulin, MC ’25. The show thrived on its outstanding production numbers and full orchestra pit, led by musical director and conductor Coco Ma, BF ’25. The show’s standout moment came in its most demanding number—“Getting Married
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Given the show's exploration of long-term relationships and mar riage, the production grappled with an inherent challenge: how does a cast of college students au thentically portray the depth and complexity of years-long marriag es? At times, particularly in the scenes between individual cou ples, the chemistry felt underde veloped. Moments that required the effortless familiarity or sim mering tensions of established marriages often felt strained, with interactions coming across as
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Ultimately, Company’s exploration of married life still resonated with a collegiate crowd, proving that Sondheim’s insights into love and commitment transcend age. The cast’s fresh perspective, as college students who have yet to experience the mid-life crises of Bobby and his peers, brought a new dynamic to the tension between newfound independence and the desire for intimacy and connection. Under Walker and Cáceres-Manzano’s direction,
This Is Where the Long One Goes
Whowould Writethis, MY ‘25
Cameron Jones, BF '26 Herald staff
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her newest EP, “Perverts,” Ethel Cain weeps to us. She punishes the listener with sparse deserts of static and droning, broken only by desperate entreaties, somber instrumentation, and the voices of ghosts on crumbling tape. Cain leads the listener through a desolate waste while she explores her experiences with sexual trauma and organized religion.
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The opener, “Perverts,” lures us in with a choir: “Nearer, my God, to thee,” they croon. But we are far from God. As a grim rumbling builds in the background, a distorted voice declares, “Heaven has forsaken the masturbator.” The last word echoes, and like a condemnation, repeats: “masturbator,” “masturbator,” “masturbator.” A sound like the lowest note on a derelict organ burns through the track before disappearing. In the final seconds, a voice tells us, “It’s happening to everyone.”
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On the following track “Punish,” Cain provides no chance for redemption. Over whimpering and plaintive piano, she laments, “Nature chews on me” and “Only God knows, only / God would believe / That I was an angel, but / they made me leave.” Her nature, her sexual desire, is condemned in the name of its creator, yet it burns stronger than ever.
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HAROLD RECOMMENDS:
It’s Happening to Everyone: Ethel Cain’s “Perverts”
1. Zillow: find us a new office.
2. Apologizing to your local white woman: sorry for your loss of Jaylor.
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6. Deleting Fizz: it was destined to
9. The Pope’s Exorcist: bippity boppity boo!
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hisses, imitating the insatiable serpent in the Garden of Eden. From there, we descend until we reach “desolation”: “Therein lies sacred geometry of onanism / of ouroboros / of punishment / I am that I was as I no longer am for I am nothing.” In search of a solution, she finds either a vicious regress or a brute contradiction. Her shame is both circular and self-inflicted. Together, “Houseofpsychoticwomn” and “Vacillator” form a diptych of speech and silence.
10. Spoiling your girl: rumor is they work better wet.
ities haunt this track and the entire album, mirroring the cyclical, iterative nature of abuse. The way Cain is spoken to becomes how she speaks to herself. Throughout the album, Cain can only frame her struggle in the vocabulary of the church; her own speech is that of an unwelcome stranger. But “Vacillator” provides a solution. Cain’s voice floats above sleepy drums and a wandering guitar; she makes one request: “If you love me / Keep it to yourself.” Any speech will only echo the false promise of another.
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Cain wrestles with these paradoxes and finds only more agony in “Pulldrone.” Cain recites a series of steps, those that have brought her to her damnation. It begins with a simple curiosity to “see what happens in the room.” What’s inside? Something so beautiful, Cain pledges, that she will “dislocate my jaw to fit it all in.” She
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In the first, Cain’s voice is barely heard over whistling and highpitched beeping. She speaks softly, as if practicing a speech alone in her room. She says: “When you were young, you said you wished that someone loved you / I do.” And she takes away: “Do you think you understand what it means to be loved / You don’t, and you never will.” Who is speaking? And who is being spoken to? These ambigu-
Ethel Cain speaks nonetheless. Her voice keeps us company amid the dins and drones. She can explain how we got here. She just can’t tell us how to get out. ❧
chicken but moist.
Design by Alex Nelson, SM '25
Sex and the Vampire: On Egger’s Full Frontal Nosferatu
Julian Raymond, TC '28 Herald staff
Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu (2024) is all appetite. From Count Orlok’s (Bill Skarsgård) castle—lush and fertile with decay—to the ornate yet sterile interiors of Wisborg, Germany, sexual desire illuminates each of the dim, macabre scenes characteristic of Eggers’s cinematography. The original Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) subtly wove eroticism and sexuality into the encounters between the vampire and his victims. Eggers opts for a blunt reinterpretation of both sex and the vampire.
Lily Rose-Depp stars as Ellen Hutter, a newly married woman plagued by erotic nightmares and accompanying convulsions. These visions predict the arrival of Orlok, the vampiric presence she claims is a manifestation of her shame and sexual appetite. Ellen’s near-orgasmic spasms herald the arrival of this demonic sexual presence. Ellen is possessed by sexuality: her hips thrust into the air as men tie her down, she tears her bodice from her chest as her eyes roll back into her head, and she tells her husband Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) that he will never satisfy her as Orlok does.
Thomas’s encounters with Orlok are more rooted in sexual violence than sexual possession. Thomas is pressured to drink from a cup poured by Orlok, and he wakes the morning after, naked on the stone floor. Shredded, mottled wounds near his nipple are the only evidence of an encounter with Orlok he doesn’t remember. In a scene starkly different from the 1922 source material, Orlok rises from his coffin—completely nude—to chase Thomas, delivering Skarsgård’s vampiric full frontal. The chase culminates in a forced encounter on Orlok’s lavishly decaying bed, Thomas squirming beneath the pressure of the vampire’s sharp-toothed mouth on his chest. Eggers discards the clothed vampire in
favor of a hulking wall of pale flesh, reminiscent more of Edward Cullen than the original Orlok.
Sexual unions reverberate throughout the original film, but Eggers amplifies this element to its maximum. Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) displays uncontrollable lust for his wife, defiles her corpse at the climax of the film, and dies between her splayed legs. Thomas attempts to prove his sexual superiority
by shoving his wife against the wall in one of her trance-like fits. Eggers transforms Orlok’s bedside bloodsucking of Ellen, featured so prominently in the original film, into morbid coitus on a pseudo-marital bed. Ellen calls out to Orlok with a voice no previous adaptation afforded her and converts the
violence inflicted upon her into a scene of agency for the victim-turned-heroine. Ellen willingly submits herself to Orlok, trapping him with her irresistible blood and irresistible sexuality. In a wedding veil and hair woven with pale violet flowers, Ellen does what no male character can do: destroy the beast.
These changes may seem excessive, indulgent, or pandering to the drooling vampire fanbase spawned by Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer, but the sexuality that bleeds from Nosferatu is intentional and poignant. Eggers amplifies sexual deviancy, appetite, shame, violence, and agency of the original film for a contemporary audience that might need those concepts outlined in block letters. Although lacking in surgical precision and subtlety, Nosferatu is nevertheless a well-crafted work of art and a blockbuster treat. ❧
Decay in a Temperate Rainforest
Benny Seidman BR '27
Ihadbig plans for the winter break, but my dreams ended as most do, thudding back to earth. I woke up as the airplane landed, my forehead pressed to the cold window pane. My native Willamette Valley sprawled before me. It wasn’t bathed in the vivid summer light of my memory but in a fine mist shrouding fields of subdued green. Moist air quenched any sense of ambition. It was a wet winter, “La niña,” my dad said when he picked me up at the airport. It was raining as we walked through the parking lot. Not a cleansing summer storm, but a persistent rain saturating anything that ventured outside in the winter months. This was the work of a bone-tired god who’d lost a great many creatures with the fall frost and sought to flood the land for a fresh start in spring. We drove through the rolling foothills of the coast range to my house on parkland abutting dense doug fir timberland.
Things are falling apart so slowly that it’s nearly imperceptible. In the months that I’ve been gone, entropy has prevailed; an antler I found a few years back has split under its own weight on my bookshelf. My dad’s old truck sits in a fallow field, her blue paint chipping with the cycles of freeze and thaw, rain and dry.
Exchanging my baggage for a few wet dogs, we drove west to Wolf Creek where the accreted coast range eroded before my eyes. The steep walls of the roadcuts were carved by mud-brown streams as culverts strained to keep the water off the road.
The forest slowly turns over, as always, digesting itself. We hunted winter chanterelles and hedgehog mushrooms for dinner. My old dog whimpered, trailing at a distance as we approached the remains of a stone foundation with a rock chimney. What once was a sturdy house of stone crumbled under the prying embrace of a sea of moss.
Back at home, I shimmied out of an old raincoat that clung to my sopping hoodie underneath. The rain won’t let up before March, leaving everything in the temperate land to decay. Somewhere in the recesses of my weathered brain, I’d already resolved to ride out the storm by the fireplace with my family.
My grandpa regaled me with faraway fishing stories. My grandma saved newspaper clippings for me and smiled sweetly as I read about some backup quarterback who grew up herding cattle. Eventually, my grandparents grew tired and napped, my parents and sister worked, and all the while, the rain fell.
The land shouldered what it could as water rose through subterranean caverns and porous rock. Topsoils swelled, lichens held bulging beads in their hydrophobic hairs, and monocultures of young Doug firs binge drank, but soon their thirst was sated. The land drained creek basins, shuttling water to the sea in rivers, moving high, fast, and formless. I grew restless, watching as the world was swept away around me. In a downpour, I drove back to Wolf Creek. There, amongst the chanterelles and Doug fir, I saw the old chimney. I saw my family aging into an ever-changing topography, my home reclaimed by the land. Come spring, the rain will be calm and the land verdant. Tall grasses will sprout atop the sessile corpses of last year’s medusahead, healing old scars. But by then, I’ll be gone. ❧
Winter Blues
Sophie Garcia, SM '26
My fingernails turn blue in the cold. Bitter January air seeps beneath my skin and bruises my nails the steely color of winter skies. The pigment pools in my nail beds—it is richest, deepest there, aglow with purple hues—before spreading upwards and fading at the curved edges. My lips turn this shade, too.
Just before he died, my grandfather’s nails turned blue. This is how the nurse knew it was nearly time. She told my mother that he only had a few hours left, but my mother shook her head fiercely: No, no, not today. You’re wrong, we need more time.
Still, she allowed the nurse to clean my grandfather and dress him in his good clothes. A button-down shirt and nice slacks to replace the thick, gray robe he had been wearing to keep warm. My mother sat by his side for those next few hours. She folded his thin, crinkled hand in her own and watched his fingertips change color. Tiny blue shadows fell across each nail.
I was not with my grandfather when he died, but my mother told me that his passing was calm. His pulse weakened and became irregular. His skin cooled. The pauses between his breaths lengthened, leaving my mother wondering if each exhale was his last. Just after his heart stopped, a soft sigh floated from between his lips, as if his soul had been untethered from his body and released, balloon-like, into the air.
Later that day, I arrived to see my grandfather. He laid atop his bed, his eyes closed, looking peaceful. The warmth had left his body, and I kissed his head, resting my hand on his cool one. It took me hours to say my goodbye. Who
arrives each spring, just as the ground is thawing, I think of my grandfather. I think of him in the summer when I visit his old house and wander through its rooms. I think of him in the fall when the leaves turn, and it becomes cool enough to wear his sweaters around campus. I think of him in the winter, when his birthday passes and he is not here to celebrate it. My mother has always told me that death is not the end. She believes we are meant to reunite with the people we love, and I must believe this too—it is the one hope still keeping me warm.
I thought of my grandfather this winter when I was back home for the holidays. The cold lingered beneath my skin, and for the first time, I noticed the odd hues of my own nails. I showed my mother my fingertips, blue like tiny cornflowers blooming from my nail beds. She put a hand over her
mouth. After rushing to the nearest drugstore, she returned with a tiny oxygen monitor that clamped over my pointer finger and displayed a number. The number was in the normal range. I was not dying. She let out a sigh, relieved for a moment, then spent the next half hour researching every possible illness that could lie behind the blueness. I watched her, blowing hotly on my hands until the blue dissipated. ❧
Mali Obomsawin Isn’t Here, But There
Connor Arakaki, MC '26 Herald staff
Thedouble bass was the first sound, evergreen and lonely in the lowest register. But what soon followed in the Morse Recital Hall on the night of January 31, 2025, for part of the Ellington Jazz Series hosted by the Yale School of Music, was a thunderous performance from the Mali Obomsawin sextet. The hour-long setlist was a suite of resistance, spearheaded by bassist-bandleader Obomsawin of the Odanak First Nations, hailing from the Wabanaki reservation in Quebec and Maine.
No introduction suffices for Obomsawin’s work, which since childhood, has been unabashedly unfaithful to genre. Jazz critic Peter Margasak declares in The Quietus that Obomsawin’s work “seamlessly meld[s] chorale-like spiritual, folk melodies, and post-Albert Ayler free jazz.” But elsewhere, Obomsawin is deeply steeped in the folk scene, an involvement which they’ve said began from their childhood summers tucked away in the woods at the Maine Fiddle Camp playing traditional Québécois folk music. My entry point to Obomsomwin’s music, like many, was their duo with guitarist Magdalena Abrego, Deerlady, on account of the shoegaze band’s triple-feature on the soundtrack of the third season of Reservation Dogs. Obomsawin sometimes names their place within a more traditional sort of jazz genealogy, most often citing Ornette Coleman as their inspiration, but their work is more boundless than this configuration can reveal.
An eighteenth-century field recording of the Odanak storyteller, Theophile Panadis inaugurated “Pedegwajois,” the first released song that the sextet performed live and the fourth track of their debut album Sweet Tooth (2022). This performance was the portal to
the universe of Obomsawin’s indigeneity, time-skipping and space-leaping back to their undergraduate years at Dartmouth College—and shouldering the heavy inheritance of being an Indigenous student implicated in a university established from colonialism. Founded in 1769 by Congressional minister (and Yale graduate) Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth was one of the first nine pre-Revolutionary, colonial charter schools established to proselytize Native Americans such as the Wabanaki. Over a century and a half later, Obomsawin studied composition (in addition to comparative literature and government), and conducted research in the university’s archives. There, they found the field recordings that conceived the first source material for the album.
Pinpointing genre, then, becomes an impossibility. Obomsawin’s free jazz is an anticolonial, political act. Syncopations aren’t merely breaks in the time signature, but interstices of history. As they finished “Pedegwajois,” Obomsawin tossed the melody line not only to the other big band players but to ancestors off-stage—by the end of the song it was difficult to say who they were really composing after.
At the Morse Recital Hall, Abrego took over for Mirian Elhajl, who played on the original album (recorded just a couple blocks away at New Haven’s own Firehouse 12). In the live performance, Abrego played electric guitar instead of Elhajl’s acoustic, layering her own sounds like the slap of her hand against her guitar’s shell. Obomsawin admitted the next morning, at a breakfast hosted by the Native American Cultural Center on February 1, that before shows, or during practice sessions, they tell Abrego of an image
they wants to hear—and entrusts her to paint the sonic landscape with the pedalboard.
Although Obomsawin’s name is obviously on the sleeve of their performance, in typical bassist-as-bandleader fashion, rendering their indigeneity legible is not in their politics. Rarely speaking to the audience between songs, they retained an insiderness, withholding all but one translation to song titles and lyrics. Prior to the formation of their sextet in 2021, Obomsawin was most known for their folk-rock trio Lula Wiles, which in its six-year stint produced three well-received recordings for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. The trio’s breakup was precipitated, in part, by the lack of political stake in folk music and Obomsawin’s radical presence in politics. In the middle of the setlist, Obomsawin asked the crowd if anyone knew what the Anishinaabe word “ode’imin” meant, almost in a hush, as though they could anticipate the unresponsiveness from a Yale audience. Someone from the balcony, however, cut through the silence: strawberry.
The final songs of the night, “Blood Quantum (Nəwewəčəskawikαpáwihtawα),” another track off of Sweet Tooth, and “Medicine Song,” an unreleased song, test the asymptotes of cacophony. Right when percussionist Zach O’Farrill rolls down with brash cymbals in “Blood Quantum,” approximating surrender, reedists Allison Burik and Campbell, and trumpetist Adam O’Farrill, flatline the chaos with a three-part harmony. At the ten-minute mark, Obomsawin’s chant becomes the fourth part, and “Blood Quantum” reaches a climax: some of its final lyrics translate to I stand to face him, I face him defiantly, unflinchingly, I confront him.
It’s difficult to articulate Obomsawin’s music through language. It’s difficult to transliterate free jazz, without some compositional or improvisational margin of error. What I mean to say is that the thesis is in the conceit, Obomsawin’s compositions are already ahead of the language, autonomous, improvising constantly atop themselves. Mali Obomsawin is no longer here, but there. Any attempt to construct an image will be swept by Obomsawin’s next performance and will become a mixed metaphor; the fate of subversion is both beautiful and inevitable.
Halfway through “Medicine Song,” Abrego strummed and suddenly decided on a modulation, her foot on the pedal, and I’m unearthed from the recital hall. There, I’m sweating through the comforter of my younger sister’s bed at our dad’s house, in the casually cruel humidity of seasonless Hawai‘i. Obomsawin sings “There There” through my wired earbuds, as I pledge to fall asleep with her on the extra bed in her room, which once held someone who no longer lives with us.
Like my sister, I search for whatever the feeling is called for the presence in absence. I sweat through Obomsawin’s voice and its feverish estrangement, reminiscent of the Tommy Orange novel and Radiohead Hail to the Thief (2003) track “There There” lays claim to. Lush and haunting, they sing out another portal and universe: Making space for who we really are / despite this world will let me into you. My feet are overgrowth on the conjoining beds and dangle near her head while she’s sleeping, like an accident waiting to happen. I remember the difficulty of letting her fall asleep while I lay awake—did I dream that night? I chalked up this memory to the thunder over there. ❧
Design by Madelyn Dawson, SM
Beyond Past and Future: Remembering David Lynch
Angel Hu, MY '28
After my philosophy class on Thursday, January 16, I received a flurry of texts containing the news that David Lynch had just died. It’s one of those pieces of information that I had to read again and again, processing the sentence in shattering silence, feeling estranged as if I had just finished watching one of his films.
I went online to see thousands of tribute posts and people expressing their grief. It was comforting to see that everyone was sharing their favorite photographs, quotes, and moments from Lynch’s life and praising the way he challenged conventional narratives and embraced the perverse. We all engaged with Lynch’s works dif-
ferently. For me, their absurdity taught me to look for possibilities beyond the surface–– what could lurk beneath a quintessential suburb, an iconic Los Angeles street, or a conversation between two friends.
“Is it future or is it past?” asks MIKE in Twin Peaks: The Return. The show’s main character, FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, has been trapped for 25 years in another dimension and is questioned by an interdimensional entity named MIKE about the fluidity of time within the real and alternate dimension.
Beginning as a typical murder mystery in a small-town story, Twin Peaks plunges into a mind-bending trip through super-
natural entities and dimensions. In Twin Peaks, Lynch blurs distinctions between time as well as place. Reminiscent of the interplay between multiple worlds, the summer before arriving at Yale was a limbo between the Southern town of Murfreesboro I had lived all my life and the once-unfathomable realization that college—once a hazy dream—was approaching reality. I had watched the world pass by at breakneck speed and always attempted to keep its pace. During the summer, I had a list of media to consume, people to see, memories to make, and places to visit; each task blurring so quickly into the next that they became disoriented dreams I’d happen to stumble upon into recollecting. It was also
Design by Madelyn Dawson, SM ’25
this time that I wanted to tackle the infamously slow and impenetrable works of David Lynch. I was struck by how Lynch imbued even the most mundane moments with an unsettling atmosphere, forcing us to savor each gesture, glance, and awkward exchange.
As my nightly walks veered into a mundane routine, I somehow felt more estranged from the familiar houses and trees and people I passed by. Soon enough, I would become a distant observer, a spectre lingering by flickering streetlights and holding silent gazes like I had just appeared in a place I once knew.
The night before I left, I went for a walk through my neighborhood like I had been doing every night that summer. The tranquil but eerie Twin Peaks soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti, coupled with the haunting vocals of Julee Cruise, filled my earbuds. The soundtrack evoked a sense of nostalgia, but it was one I couldn’t pinpoint––unattached to a distinct person, place, or memory. I was simultaneously filling and leaving behind an empty space. I didn’t know where my own self began, now that the place that had shaped it was no longer in view. What parts of myself would remain constant?
Out of all of Lynch’s works, Twin Peaks captivated me the most because of its multifacetedness––simultaneously containing a devastating exploration of teenage girlhood, enigmatic quips between idiosyncratic characters, and surreal dream sequences. It was the first of Lynch’s works that I watched, hurling me deep into his feature films, then his short films, interviews, paintings, and music.
Amid the supernatural weirdness, it’s easy to forget the intensely palpable humanity that lurks behind the mysterious red curtains. Laura Palmer’s corpse, wrapped in plastic, is just as much of an iconic symbol as her picture-perfect homecoming queen photo. Both depictions strip her of her hu-
manity, confining her to a fixed, aestheticized image. Still, the most disturbing part of Twin Peaks is how real Laura Palmer’s story was.
Laura’s realization that she was being raped by her father and that she had to die to escape her pain formed the emotional crux of the show. Her subsumption into the supernatural is not an escape from humanity, but a way of exposing the evils that bury themselves within cycles of abuse and complicity. It’s a reflection of how Lynch subverts familiarity by distorting narratives of normalcy.
The firs t two seasons of Twin Peaks featured scenes of warm red-brown hues and shots of mountains and waterfalls outlining the whimsical and charming Pacific Northwest. Yet in the third and final season, aired 25 years later, Lynch grappled with the cracks that broke the facade of an idyllic, small-town Americana. All that remained were corrupt institutions, deteriorating structures, empty landscapes, isolated individuals, and defeated heroes.
Over the past few years, my city has been in constant development. Developers carefully curate another corner of consumption, masses of modern apartments graze flattened landscapes, highways spiral everywhere as people are confined in a state of nowhere. The only way I recognize where I am is by which chain store is on the horizon of the endlessly fluctuating rows of cars–– stopping, going, never lingering for more than a moment. Even the traffic lights are invisible in the sprawling suburban mirage.
The highways connect to uneven roads that are perpetually under construction. These roads lead to the historic downtown streets, abandoned and peeling buildings, closed-down strip malls, empty theaters and restaurants and outdated shops that I’ve never wandered into. Even when I’m away, I try to recognize places by what they used to be, tracing the parts of myself that remain. I smile and shake my head when my father
still calls it a small town because Murfreesboro has expanded past the once-distinct boundaries that I perceived and has changed more than I ever have.
I continue my walks under the Yale streetlights, Badalamenti and Cruise still in my ears. I take my earbuds off, and the familiar synths of the soundtrack are replaced with jarring background ambiance, the nostalgic image temporarily shattered. Like Agent Cooper returning to the town of Twin Peaks 25 years later, I allow my hometown–– though not quite what it used to be–– to follow me everywhere I go. ❧
On Strong Foundations: The AfAm House Celebrates 55 Years
Richie George, GH '27 Herald Staff
Mid-life is often marked by crisis. Anxiety concerning the past places one in a state of perpetual discomfort and indecision. But, after 55 years of continued operation, the Afro-American Cultural Center—affectionately known as “the House”—has not encountered this crisis. Fortunately, the inverse has occurred. For many Black students, the House remains a shining monument to the past’s bounty: Each step up the stony stairs marking the entrance reminds you of the weight of struggle and solidarity. At the same time, each day is an opportunity for Black Yale students to reimagine what the House could be. The House’s project is not finished. In fact, it has only just begun.
The ’60s were fertile ground for the House’s planting. New Haven— like other urban centers—incubated
a new social consciousness, turning a need for social change into an urgent demand. In 1965, 14 Black men became Yalies: a record number. They stepped foot onto a university that functionally segregated Black and white students, once tilled by enslaved Black people. But the growing passions of the ’60s prompted mass organizing. In 1967, Donald Ogilvie YC ’68, SOM ’78, Armstead Robinson, YC ’69, and Glenn De Chabert, YC ’70, along with fellow students, founded the Black Students Alliance. In the years after its founding, they collaborated with faculty, New Haven organizers, and community members to redefine Blackness at Yale. Activism led to the creation of the African-American Studies Department, increased Black enrollment at Yale, and ultimately, the founding of the Afro-American Cultural Center on 1195 Chapel St. in 1969. Consequently, the House became Yale’s first cultural center and one of the first in North America. Since its inception, the House has been a home for solidarity, innovation, and radical self-definition.
I reexamined this history with Timeica Bethel, JE ’11, Director of the
Afro-American Cultural Center and Assistant Dean of Yale College. It was a chilly fall afternoon: an array of leaves decorating the ground, a slight wind shifting the hammock outside. Soft light poured through the windows to reveal the wooden alcove between the Founders’ Room and the E-Room (short for “Enormous Room”). Walking through the House’s first floor reminded me of the building’s grandeur. I searched through the Founders’ Room, the Purple Room, and the Mural Room for students: some studying, some sleeping, and some, simply, sitting. Eventually, Dean Bethel called me into her office for conversation. I sat down between her desk and some boxes set aside to replenish the House’s snacks. Notes, pamphlets, and materials were scattered across the room, cluttering the small area with evidence of past House programming.
Our discussion of the House’s origins quickly led to something more personal. The House was a place within a wider university that allowed
Dean Bethel to find herself. As a young Black woman, her life “was focused on taking care of [her] siblings and [her] grandmother,” but as a student, she was granted valuable alone time. As she found herself increasingly in the House’s spaces, Dean Bethel’s presence swelled into leadership in Yale’s Black community. She became involved with several student organizations on campus: Black Church at Yale, the Dominican Students Association, and the Urban Improvement Corps, to name a few. And it granted her newfound mobility, agency, and freedom. Dean Bethel said, “The House is where I found my voice.”
Her sentiments resonated with me. I was raised in a community where Blackness was fodder for jest and
Bethel. “It is a place where you come to feel a sense of solace. It is a place where you can feel the sense of home.”
Community is built here, and it is made of humans moving in and out of its stony interior.
And many have. It is difficult to discuss the House without acknowledging its almost mythic stature. The House’s founding is a historical flashpoint, signaling a wave of ethnic inclusion into predominantly white universities. Its revolutionary origins have left birthmarks. Images of the three founders, along with other important leaders of the House, decorate the Founders’ Room. The library carries books signed by the likes of Cornel West, with texts produced by students—now, professors—who passed through the House’s
bigotry. But the House made it an acceptable way of life—a place where, in Dean Bethel’s words, “the resilience of Black people” is visibly evident. The House’s presence was a reason I applied to Yale. The House is not merely a physical building—a center—that hosts programming and offers resources to students.
“It is a place where you come to find comfort and community,” said Dean
doors. Enter the Lighten Room, filled with bean bags and couches around a flatscreen TV, to see images of when the House was once called the “AfAm House” and “Afro America.” History molds the House’s nooks and crannies. Being surrounded by history is not uncomfortable there. Although eras of Black history such as slavery and Jim Crow ignite longstanding traumas, the House—from its layout to guiding philosophy—is a place where dominant tropes of Blackness are contested. And its continued survival is a reminder that Black communities have always been here and will always be here— defending, fighting, and redefining
the conditions of social and political life. These redefinitions begin at the House’s very name.
“The name has always been interesting for people,” noted Dean Bethel. “When it was first chosen, the Black community at Yale at the time was predominantly generationally African-American. What I think is really important is that the founders did not want to name the House, ‘African American Cultural Center.’ I think that, in my opinion, choosing Afro-America was more inclusive and pulled more of the sense of diaspora.”
Language is always slippery and never meets the full extent of its immediate demands. And the demand to define Blackness—and name it—remains a tall order. But, operating as a place that serves the African diaspora, the House always approaches Blackness from a diasporic lens, displacing “Africa” as either homeland or origin. Blackness looks, feels, and acts differently; it is made manifest in different ways. By affirming the diversity within Blackness, the “res groups,” or residential groups affiliated with the House, prove crucial to the House’s internal dynamics.
“We have over 50 student organizations affiliated with the House that really reflect the Black diaspora as a whole,” said Dean Bethel. She listed just a few: the Yale African Students Association, the Nigerian Students Association, the Caribbean Students Organization, and the Dominican Students Association.
The Yale Black Women’s Coalition (YBWC) operates alongside them. Though established in 2006, the pandemic disrupted student activities, causing the YBWC to cease operations. Now, co-presidents Shelley Duodu, BF ’26 and Elise Joshua, ES ’26 are working to “revive the organization,” collecting age-old flyers and documentation from former YBWC members as they chart the coalition’s future. Recently, they have hosted events ranging from wellness to professional development, seeking a “holistic” approach to care.
“The Coalition is a space for Black women to essentially breathe,” said Shelley.
Both noted the centrality of the archive—both living and non-living—in the coalition’s operations. The absence of physical documentation may be a limiting factor in recovering past traditions, but the House is itself a viable space where students build new traditions from the old. Their biggest event: the first-ever YBWC induction ceremony, hosted on October 27, 2024. Dozens of Black women from across grade levels came together to “celebrate, empower, and embrace Black womanhood,” taking pleasure in the joy found through connection. Their solidarity counters dominant narratives held against Black women.
Elise said, “For Black women, specifically, the world very often sends the
message that we have to work harder to make our voices heard and to be seen.”
For Black female Yale students, the Coalition offers care in a world—and a campus—that fails at such, within a House that affords “safety,” “visibility,” and “proximity.”
Shelley put it simply: “The House serves as a place where I can just be me.”
These intimate spaces foster enduring relationships between Black female students across class years, facilitating support and guidance. The two presidents noted lessons they learned from older Black female students: “it’s okay to not be okay”; “it’s okay to ask for help”; “we are stronger as a collective.”
Outside the classroom, the House installs a new pedagogy—one of sensitivity, grace, and compassion—birthed
out of new genealogies. Preserving them requires the formation of a new history.
Dean Bethel advised the coalition to “document everything,” guaranteeing their presence in history. “Longevity” and “sustainability” are their central goals for the year—securing YBWC as a vibrant space for belonging among Black women at Yale. They plan to host a Women’s Retreat in the spring and a brunch for graduating seniors in the last few weeks of classes.
“My hope is that all the work we’re doing is something that lasts,” affirmed Elise. “That Black women for the next 55 years can join, be welcome, and be at home.”
The YBWC’s efforts reflect the historical role of student leadership in the House. When it first opened, Yale gave students the physical key to the
building. Dean Bethel described how students would use landlines—not smartphones—to call each other in their dorms to figure out who had the key and who could let another person inside. The House’s management was entirely horizontal, volunteer-based, and student-run.
“They ran it how they wanted to,” declared Dean Bethel.
The students’ initiative spilled over into their activism. De Chabert, one of the House’s founders, coalitioned with fellow students and New Haven organizers during the Black Panther Trials in the spring of 1970, receiving incompletes in his classes during his last semester. He was more interested in protecting the Panthers’ right to a fair trial—housing them, like many other students, on campus and at the House. Students who managed the House protested on the Green, marched on May Day, and were arrested during Yale’s anti-apartheid protests in the ’80s. As blackface incidents and racist graffiti ignited student life, Dean Bethel participated in organizing the “Rally Against Hate,” as students marched across campus on November 14, 2007. Years later, in 2015, more than 1,000 students gathered in solidarity during the “March of Resilience,” as they championed for racial inclusion and the renaming of Calhoun College.
“That spirit of activism has continued to the Yalies of today,” explained Dean Bethel. “The protests in 2015 about the renaming of colleges and the titles of the heads of colleges, and everything that happened this spring… It’s hard not to see the connection to the founders from 1969 to now.”
The House continues to form leaders: those who recognize the wealth of the past as a foundation for change. And it is made sustainable through an active process of reckoning. The House’s 55th anniversary demonstrates how the House is not mired by history but transforms it as a seed for continued development.
Dean Bethel asserts it herself: “It’s all about acknowledging that this
house has a firm foundation, that we were formed by steady hands, because wonderful things have come from this place. We still have a long way to go, right? So we’re planning for our future.”
The House’s students will lead it into the future. Although the President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Elizabeth Alexander, will headline the House’s anniversary celebrations from March 28th to 30th, current student leaders will discuss their visions for the future throughout panels. Alumni and administrators are individuals who will “empower them to lead this house going forward,” said Dean Bethel.
50 student staffers—student assistants and peer liaisons—manage the House’s internal and external operations, such as media, advising, political education, and event management. Dean Bethel and Assistant Director Sydney Feeney are the House’s two professional staffers, tasked with organizing these programs, but the House’s initiatives primarily come from students themselves.
Head Student Assistant Kennedy Odiboh, BK ’25 discussed the labor structures that maintain the House. Working alongside the House’s two other Head Student Assistants—Darren Markwei, BK ’25 and Jude Meares-Garcia, ES ’26—he serves as a “liaison between professional staff leadership and the student employees” to help “bridge the gap between what [the Black] community needs and how the administration can meet those needs.” He aids in day-to-day operations, while leading “critical discussions about the House” and how its staff can “shape student culture.”
Black Yalies do not stop contributing to the House after graduation. “When [alumni] come to the House, when they are back home, they are
curious as to how it’s changed and the things we’ve preserved,” explained Kennedy. “As one of the [Head Student Assistants], doing research and understanding the impact of the House is a big responsibility, and being able to appreciate and interact with the people that build the history is a big responsibility.”
The House’s continued presence on Yale’s campus is only possible through alumni and student engagement. At the intersection of these two spheres, Kennedy recognizes the House’s power within Black community building— across generations.
“If there is no House, all the avenues for Black students will not exist,” he affirmed. “We risk losing that. We risk ostracizing parts of our own community.”
This is why the House’s preservation was dependent on its “institutionalization.” Kennedy explained, “It now receives support from Yale as a university which, in turn, supports Black students and their endeavors.”
Still, its place in Yale’s administrative penumbra does not preclude student action. The House is built on roots of “radical practice.”
“The House has a role in society, as well as Yale,” said Kennedy. “It allows the House to be an agent of change by allowing students to do what they want to do and addressing student needs in ways that balance longevity and action.”
What will the House encounter in the next 55 years? The future is always an open question. But we know current threats.
Twenty two states have introduced or passed laws restricting education on race, Black history, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The Trump administration has dismantled federal DEI programs, denied the existence of transgender Americans, and pardoned
Photo courtesy of courtesy of the Afro-American Cultural Center
more than 1,500 Jan. 6 insurrectionists involved with white supremacist groups. When popular culture contests the existence of white supremacy, Black American life is under threat.
“For Black students coming from [affected states], they can find a place of affirmation in the House they will not have experienced before,” assured Dean Bethel. “And for non-Black students, they can come to a place to learn things they weren’t able to learn before. I don’t think that any person with the level of empathy you need to be a well-rounded, global citizen will say that places like the House should not exist.”
The House marks more than a flashpoint of history: It represents an active demand for new history to be made—by changemakers who carry a legacy of justice into their chosen professions and everyday lives. The House tells its students that history itself can be re-defined.
“I believe that Yalies want to leave the world better than they found it,” said Dean Bethel. “I feel like that’s who we are, and I believe that spaces like the House and the other cultural centers are crucial to that mission.”
A brisk wind slipped through the folds of my coat when I left the House that afternoon, arousing an uneasy chill. But the House’s residual warmth persisted. It pressed against the chill, carrying me to my next destination. It left an imprint, and it has not worn off. ❧
CULTURE
The New Haven Ski Club
Sophie Lamb, JE '27 Herald staff
In the first installment of Here Is Our Happy Place, a small-town Wyoming native searches for the wild of New Haven. For skiers, bikers, birders, fishers, trail runners, backpackers, for the people who like the look of a sunset over mountains, or a sky through tree branches, or a river in winter.
New Haven Ski Club members introduced themselves to me with just the necessities: their name, years with the club, and years skiing.
“We just celebrated our 50th anniversary at this club,” said Georgiana Meyers. At last week’s Thursday meeting, she sat at the corner table with her husband, Frank, bundled up in her deep purple ski jacket and nursing a glass of red wine. It’s the same table they’ve sat at for every weekly club meeting for half a century. Georgiana hasn’t skied for two years now.
“I just feel it's too risky. I can’t keep up with my grandchildren anymore. He still skis,” she said, pointing at Frank. Frank’s also bundled up in a ski jacket, bright turquoise. He’s soft-spoken and all smiles; Georgiana does most of the talking.
Founded by Kriste Hille and the inventor of the snow machine, Walter R. Schoenknecht, the Ski Club has hosted weekly meetings in the Harugari German-American Club in West Haven since 1941.
The meeting room is all wood panels and wood tables and rosy cheeks; a bar stretches along the back wall, and beer is dished out pint after foamy pint; in the middle, a pool table sits, covered in papers and club stickers. Despite the warmth, many like Georgiana stay dressed in their ski jackets. Throughout the night, members ebb in and mingle: everyone circles by Georgiana and Frank’s corner table—the club is a family, and the Meyers are its grandparents.
40-year member Jim McDonald was the first to arrive at last week’s meeting. He wore a blue New Haven Fire and EMS jacket and held a briefcase bulging with binders. As if I were a new member, he shook my hand and sat me down at a greasy wood table at the back of the room. He spread the Club pamphlets before me in a papery fan.
Holding up a pamphlet, he explained, “When you have a membership card, you get discounts, so if you have a day off school you can go to Mohawk and ski for $30.”
And, pointing at another: “We have racing, we happen to be the first place Ski Club for the last three years, and so far this year, we're ahead, and you don't have to be a racer. I’m not a racer, but I’m going this Monday night. I’m 84.”
Handing me a booklet: “If you want to try out the club and go to the lodge in Killington, Vermont, you can. We have that lodge in Killington for new members. I love the lodge in Killington.”
This was all I learned about McDonald. He wasn’t interested in telling me where he was from, or what he does, or why exactly he skis—on Thursday nights in the Harugari Club those things don’t matter.
“You leave your title outside,” said 26-year member Paul Weiss, another New Haven local. We met two hours into the meeting, sitting down in the middle of the room with a crowd of other members. He wore a Lake Louis fleece from a club trip five years ago. “You have blue-collar workers, you have people who worked for Chase Morgan-Stanley. But you leave your title outside, and here you’re just a regular person. It doesn’t even matter what level you ski at.”
“I mean, look at our president. He won the snowboarding world cup,” Weiss said, pulling a tall man with worried eyes and dressed in a green quarter zip to our table.
Connecticut is far from the playgrounds of World Cup skiers and snowboarders. New Haven is even farther. Jackson, Wyoming, where I grew up, is one of these playgrounds. I know skiing as it is in the Rockies, where snow falls 500 inches a year and the mountains reach 14,000 feet. My parents got bit by some ski bug in their twenties, which brought them to Jackson and made them professional ski instructors. Such is the story for most of the town: neither students nor teachers go to school on good snow days; sweet falls and sweeter summers are just warm
periods of waiting for the next ski season. Everyone—the doctors, yoga teachers, baristas, neighbors, therapists—ask not how you’re doing, but whether you’ve been skiing.
Ski Club President Kevin Blagys spent a winter bumming it in Jackson two decades ago. There he worked as a snowboard instructor and won first place at the local Dicks Ditch race in 2001. Blagys doesn’t much like talking about his previous life: “Sure, raced a little in the World Cup, yeah,” he said when pressed.
“I got to grow up with the sport,” he said. Blagys began snowboarding in high school, in Connecticut, in the days when the sport still seemed like some snowy surfer fad, headed by bandana-clad Californian Tom Sims and mustachioed “Godfather of Freeriding” Craig Kelly. But for Blagys, the sport was all-consuming.
“There were some early races up in Stratton, Vermont, and I became part of that group, in that era. It was an era,” Blagys said.
After high school, he first went north to college in Vermont and then West, racing and competing, floating through ski towns like Jackson, securing podiums at international races in the Andes and Alps. He narrowly missed qualifying for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics—the second-ever Winter Games to feature snowboarding.
It’s a passion-filled and exhausting and lonely way to live; it’s a life built on the violent rhythms of snowfall, on the risks of broken backs and broken hearts. My parents left family, friends, and livelihoods behind for snow. My friends left high school, skipped out of college, and lived out of cars. And when it’s bad, it’s bad: my mom always told me the story of the two little girls she saw in the waiting room in the Jackson emergency
room, who watched on silently as a doctor explained to them that their mom and dad had died in a skiing accident.
“After living out West, I moved back east, to be with my family, and I started a boat cleaning business,” Blagys said. “It made me appreciate Connecticut more, after living out in the middle of the country.”
Blagys doesn’t elaborate. I understand him; the land is smoother, easier out here by the sea. The skiing, and the people who love to ski, are too.
“People appreciate going to the mountains here. We appreciate our little mountains, our Monday night racing,” Blagys said. “Nobody is alone here. The club makes sure nobody skis alone.”
This is why Kate came to the ski club. 12 years ago, she was newly divorced and newly sober. That’s when a club member approached her. As she recounts the story: “He goes ‘so I hear you ski’ he goes ‘So, you should join the ski club.’ And I said ‘I don't want to join. I'm not dating this and that. I'm a single woman. I
don't want to go anywhere.’ And he goes ‘Just come. We ski. That’s what we do.’” That Thursday, she showed up. She was given a seat next to another sober club member. The pair would become best friends: all these years later, they host Galentine's brunches and scuba dive in Aruba.
“She goes, ‘You’re gonna need a lot more Christmas cards this year. About 300 of them.’ She goes, ‘Cause we have one big family here,’” said Kate, laughing. She wore an American flag infinity scarf, she had red hair and red boots, and she laughed with her whole body. She’s found her people, she’s at ease here. So are all the members, it seems: the night is all banter and shining eyes.
I wonder what the magic is. I wonder if it has to do with skiers, with a life lived in worship of snow, mountains, and gravity, a life of constant humility. Or, it might be something simpler, a peace found among people who love the same thing. For now, what I can say for certain is that the Harugari Club, on cold Thursday nights, is a happy place. ❧
Designs by Alexa Druyanoff SY '26
No Stone Unturned (Or, Natural Philosophy)
Gavin Guerrette, BR '25 Herald Staff
We used to hunt salamanders in my neighbor’s backyard after the summer showers. With dead leaves and mowed grass stuck to our legs, we trudged through the woods in search of flat rocks. We always flipped the first one together. Knelt around the stone, there was a silent assenting nod shared between us, then someone dug fingers into the mud and heaved it upwards. I was in fourth grade and the others were in second and third, so I often had the honor.
Once sunlight struck the tender mud, life flooded outwards. Worms, rolly pollies, centipedes, and slugs squirmed about. But we were after the salamanders. These were Eastern red-backs, endemic to Pennsylvania, with dark undersides and a rust-colored stripe spanning from their noses to the tips of their tails.
Scrambling to catch them, we grabbed them by their tails and cupped them between our hands. Their slimy bodies tried to escape between our fingers. We placed the salamanders into a cheap plastic box with a grated green lid and a little white handle. Once we had caught a few, we furnished their home with small stones, patches of moss, crushed leaves, and grass. We tossed some slugs in for good measure.
Salamanders are capable of self-amputation to escape from predators. We were, justifiably, perceived as predators. So, the salamanders often shed their tails in our hands or in the box. We watched their separated bodies and tails wriggle until the latter came to rest. The self-amputation was difficult for our young minds to understand: an act of desperation, but not emotional. The practicality of such a drastic measure, the destruction of a part to preserve the whole, was not translatable. We wondered whether our fingers would wriggle
if we cut them off, though I knew they wouldn’t grow back like the salamander’s tail. A man my father worked with had cut his finger off. Now it was just a puckered stump.
While the tailless salamanders roamed around their enclosure, we observed intently. One of my friends took to drawing them. We left the salamanders in their containers outside overnight, with promises to return in the morning. But without fail, the harsh midmorning sun killed them. For a while, we convinced ourselves that the salamanders didn’t suffer, but with each container dumped into the mass grave behind the shed, our resolve faded. I cannot forget the odor of their shriveled corpses. By the end of summer, my friend amassed a stack of salamander illustrations. We looked at the drawings and could not deny that we had disturbed a natural order. After our vow to never hunt for salamanders again, we returned the ones we had captured that day from the container and put them back in the mud beneath an overturned stone. But when we replaced the rock, we heard a crunch. ❧
The Falling Man
Theo Kubovy-Weiss, BR '26 Herald staff
Did he laugh when he fell out of history?
Plunging into oxygen
His body limp, arms windmill in a flap or flail Did he know he could fly When adrenaline licked his toes
And thrashed into his kidney?
Did he know He would miss
What he was falling for?
Design by Alina Susani, ES '26
Plated Perspectives: The Missing Ingredients of Black Recognition
Isabella Pedroza, DC '27
Plated Perspectives is a new bimonthly column by Isabella Pedroza, detailing food culture in an institutional space and the histories behind everyday cuisines.
Yale hosted a dinner in its fourteen residential colleges to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This was the menu:
Featured Dinner
Herb-Marinated Chicken Stew GF
House-Made Biscuits V Barbecue-Style Country Pork Ribs AF, GF
Southern Gumbo VG, V
Fried Green Tomatoes
Maple Glazed Sweet Potatoes
Creamy Macaroni and Cheese V
Dinner Desserts
Peach Pie Cobbler V Pecan Pie V
The main dish was a creamy macaroni and cheese—but not just any mac and cheese. This recipe came from James Hemings, an enslaved chef of Thomas Jefferson who became the first American to train in the culinary arts in France. While French cuisine of the time introduced macaroni and cheese as a pasta mixed in cheese sauce, Hemmings revolutionized the dish by making a layered casserole of pasta, cheese, and butter, baked until golden brown. He transformed American cuisine by introducing dishes like mac and cheese to the American plate and creating a legacy that would influence Black American cooking traditions for generations to come. Hemings’ contribution represents just one of countless innovations by Black chefs who have shaped American cuisine. Only recently
have we begun to acknowledge these foundational figures in our food culture.
Thanks to the combined work of Yale Hospitality, the Afro-American Cultural Center, including Director of Culinary Excellence James Benson, Silliman College First Cook Lamar Bowers, and Assistant Dean and Director of the AfAm House? Timeica E. Bethel-Macaire, JE ’11, this dinner showed that it’s possible to have culturally and historically meaningful dining experiences at Yale. Yet our understanding of cultural heritage and historical narratives through food is contingent on the labor of these individuals and not Yale as a whole. Rarely will you find explanations of the rich histories behind Yale’s dishes, the cultural significance of their ingredients, or the stories of innovators like Hemmings who shaped American cuisine. Perhaps the most recent YouTube video on Yale Hospitality’s series called “Making the Menu” marks the beginning of an attempt to historicize the food on our plates, explaining how the menu featured dishes from cities where MLK Jr. traveled to deliver his pivotal speeches. From 1965 “Where’s There’s a Will, There’s a Way” speech in Selma, Alabama, to his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” address in New York City, James Benson and Lamar Bowers explain how each event in Dr. King’s life was paired with a dish. They demonstrate how the menu bridged the past and present, fea-
turing both historical recipes and living culinary traditions—like the fried green tomatoes based on Lamar Bowes’ grandfather’s recipe— all while bringing personal history directly onto Yale’s tables. Among these carefully chosen dishes was a contribution from another figure in Black culinary history. On the menu was a dish from Edna B. Lewis: a pioneering figure in American cuisine who, despite her inclusion in the menu, deserved more recognition during the dinner celebration. The oldest known written cookbook by an African American woman is attributed to her, and through her four cookbooks, Lewis not only preserved recipes but captured the stories of freed slaves and their descendants. She revolutionized what we consider Southern cooking and was a pioneer to what is now called food studies. In 1948, Lewis opened her restaurant— Cafe Nicholson—when Black female chefs were rare. Her buttermilk biscuits and herb-roasted chicken represented more than just New York on the menu; it represented Black Southern cooking traditions and history. Yet while her dishes were placed on the menu, the full scope of her revolutionary impact on American cuisine—from championing social norms to documenting Black culinary heritage—remained untold on Yale’s dinner tables.
In Davenport College, the dining hall was uniquely transformed into a temporary museum. As you
entered the dining hall, a large screen displayed graphics with stories of James Hemings’ introduction of mac and cheese to America and the relationship between each menu dish and Dr. King. It spoke volumes. It was a masterclass in contextual dining—food as education, not just consumption.
But this attention to detail was the exception, not the rule. When talking about this experience to my friend, Richard George, GH ‘27, I learned that not all dining halls showed as much care and attention to detail. I know that not many people care about this, but this is what food culture is, and that’s sad. I am left with conversations among friends about how Yale is doing a disservice to its students, who leave without knowing the cultural roots of the food they consume.
The MLK dinner episode suggested that Yale is aware of food as something more than fuel, as a living, breathing cultural text. Still, with a lack of unified, comprehensive, and clear approaches
to history, during special cultural dinners—whether those in celebration of Black History Month or Mexican Independence Day— the underlying message often feels performative. These meals become checkbox diversity initiatives rather than genuine cultural exchanges. The food is presented, but the land it grows on—its soul—is stripped away.
Take Mexican cuisine at Yale. Fajitas arrive on plates disconnected from their origin—a working-class Texan innovation developed by Mexican laborers in the early 20th century. These aren’t just meals; they are statements of resilience, creativity, and cultural adaptation.
Unfortunately, in our dining halls, the project of adapting culinary histories into adequate food items is fundamentally limited. But it is a problem of representation that Yale has yet to seriously address. Meals are often reduced to mere “ethnic” options, and histories are offered as factoids, sprinkled unevenly across the
residential colleges. This column is my invitation to dig deeper— to consider what representation could, and should, look like.
How do we transform institutional meals from mere fuel into meaningful cultural conversations? I don’t have all the answers. This is the beginning of a personal journey—an ongoing exploration of how food carries history, struggle, innovation, and identity. Each meal tells a story if we’re willing to listen. Food is never just food. It’s memory. It’s resistance. It’s connection. It’s culture. ❧
Design by Michelle Lee, PC '26
SCREENING: Hiding in Plain Sight. Come see the process of documentary filmmaking with director Luchina Fisher! The Yale School of Art is showing a rough cut of her feature film about Black queer music making, and hosting a post-screening feedback session. Yale School of Art, 36 Edgewood Ave. Free and open to the public. 1 p.m. until 3 p.m.
SHOW: Eden. Watch Steve Carter’s blistering saga about a pocket of Afro-Caribbean Manhattan, where Eustace, falls in love with her neighbor next door, Annetta. Yale Repertory Theatre. 8:00 p.m.
The City Seeds Farmer's Market. Enjoy some locally-grown produce and artisanal jams, dressings, and breads. Dixwell Q House. 197 Dixwell Ave. 3 p.m. until 6 p.m.
wed. 02/05 thurs. 02/06 ongoing
SHOW: Pippin. Opening night of Clara YusteGolob and Elsie Harrington’s take on Stephen Shwarts’s 1972 musical, replete with Middle Ages royalty and more than one crack in the fourth wall. 53 Wall St, February 6, 2025 - 8 p.m. / February 7, 2025 - 8 p.m. / February 8, 2025 - 2 p.m. / February 8, 2025 - 8 p.m.
SCREENING: Cabin in the Sky and The Beginnings of Bebop. Join the good folks over at the Yale Film Archive for an evening of ’40s flicks on film. The Beginnings of Bebop will guide you through the history of New York’s jazz scene; Cabin in the Sky’s musical romp features some of the leading sounds, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Ethel Waters among them. 320 York St. Free and open to the public. 7 p.m.
New Music New Haven, Hannah Kendall. New York-based British composer Hannah Kendall brings her newest works to New Haven. Sprague Memorial Hall. Free and open to the public. 7:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.
mon.
02/10
Mondays at Beinecke: Reflections on Shining Light on Truth. Join Michael Morand, David Jon Walker, and Charles Warner for a discussion at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Free admission. 121 Wall Street. Event starts at 4:00 p.m.
ALONE: A Contemporary Photography Exhibit at City Gallery
Experience the evocative works of photographers Joy Bush and Tom Peterson in this contemporary exhibit, which explores themes of solitude and introspection. Free admission. City Gallery, 994 State Street. Open from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Power Line: 2025 Painting/Printmaking
MFA Thesis Exhibition. Visit the second installment of the thesis exhibition for Yale’s own painting and printmaking students. There will be a public reception on Friday, February 14 from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. that is free and open to the public, and the show will be on display from February 8 until February 14.
The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876–1917. Visit the latest exhibition in the Yale University Art Gallery and see the working sketches, studies, and models from American masters including Violet Oakley, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and John Singer Sargent. Sept. 6, 2024 through Jan. 5, 2025.
SCREENING: Short Films of Resistance. Watch Two shorts (1973) directed by Mustafa Abu Ali and THE DREAM (1987) directed by Mohammad Malas, as part of the Whitney Humanities Center’s spring film programming series, Palestine through Film. Alice Cinema. 7 p.m.
PERFORMANCE: Julia Bullock. Attend Grammy Award-winning Julia Bullock’s vocal performance “History’s Persistent Voice,” focusing on pre-Emancipation and cross-generational Black performance. Yale Schwarzman center. February 7 & 8. 7:30 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. Free. and open to the public. Tickets on Yale Schwarzman Center website.
Phatt James / ANTHMS / Suburban Surf Club / Point Radar. A good old-fashioned rock show featuring Connecticut emo band ANTHMS, New York indie rockers Suburban Surf Club, and New Haven’s own Phatt James and Point Radar. Cafe Nine. 21+. 7 p.m.
Guitar Extravaganza. Come to the Yale School of Music’s special event for all things guitar, including performances, masterclass workshops, demonstrations, and more—featuring four participating music schools and over 20 participating professional guitarists. Morse Recital Hall. 10:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
25th Annual Connecticut Renaissance Faire. Come one, come all, to Connecticut’s annual Renaissance Faire. Jousting and armored combat performances have an extra zing when you’re celebrating the quadricentennial. $15 general admission. Lebanon County Fairgrounds. 10:30 a.m. until 6 p.m.
Winter Lantern Festival. Witness over 1,000 Chinese lanterns handmade by local artisans at the annual festival hosted at the Lyman Orchards, featuring live entertainment and seasonal treats. 70 Lyman Road. 4:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m.
IRIS Run for Refugees. Join the annual IRIS Run for Refugees, a 5K run/walk through New Haven's East Rock neighborhood. Participate in person or virtually to support refugees and immigrants. Registration includes a tech shirt. $39.36 general admission; $35.19 for students. Wilbur Cross High School, 181 Mitchell Drive. Race starts at 10:00 a.m.
Pre–Valentine’s Day Hearts and Crafts at Yale University Art Gallery. Get creative at the Yale University Art Gallery's Pre–Valentine’s Day Hearts and Crafts event. Enjoy an afternoon of art-making activities suitable for all ages. Free admission. 1111 Chapel Street. 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Celebrate the beginning of Freelance Writers Appreciation Week. Sing the praises of your local freelancer; I’m sure they don’t hear it enough.
Feb. 5th, 2025
To submit events for inclusion in the Herald calendar, contact Connor Arakaki at connor.arakaki@yale.edu or Madelyn Dawson at madelyn.dawson@yale.edu.
Illustration and Original Design
Cleo Maloney
Feb club
BLOCKLIST
(Things we hate this week) (Things we hate this week)Groundhog Day Stay in your hidey-hole!
Good thing February is the shortest month of the year
The New Yorker
No longer hiring copy editors.
Wouldn’t you love to know?
The Guardian Now hiring copy editors.
Publication “Takedowns”
At least copy-edit.
Autofiction
Can’t be accused of navel-gazing if you’re gazing at someone else’s navel.
Vertigo
But we just got here!