Spoke online edition V. 14 Issue 1

Page 1

The

Volume 14 Issue 1

Spoke

The Wheeler School

Fix Your Gaze to the West...

In This Issue -

by Ian Steller

“The next level of student housing,” as Gilbane Inc. dubs it, is going to turn into College Hill’s newest low rise. The College Hill Neighborhood Association, however, a long-time spectator of Brown’s development in the community, sees this student housing instead as being the next level of “institutional creep.” From Wheeler, though, most community members have likely noticed not only our own expanse of construction, but also the across-the-street demolition between Euclid, Brook, Meeting, and Thayer Streets. Even the beloved Ben & Jerry’s, a community fixture for several years, was forced to relocate next to Starbucks. Notwithstanding, the new development is no monstrosity, but instead a unique circumstance that we as side-court neighbors ought to be wellinformed of. With regard to the construction, some folks are mad, some are happy, others indifferent, and/or confused. The reality is that most are going to go along with the transformation.

Fundamentally, Brown University, in conjunction with Gilbane Inc., a Rhode Island-based construction firm in its 140th year, correlated an addition to Brown’s student housing system that would cost $28 million

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Brown Construction p. 1 Senior Presidents p. 1 PARL p. 2 New Faculty p. 2 The Conjuring p. 3 #PrepSchoolProbz p. 3 18 Wheelers p. 4 YouTube & VidCon p. 4

EATING Jacob: Recently I’ve been going to the Crêperie a lot. At Duck and Bunny, I love the lemonade with lavender extract and mint. Also: one of the habits my mom has is having whipped cream straight out of bottle. You see us two going around the house spraying whipped cream into our mouths. It’s a family thing.

Rye: Humans of New York is a website I love. This guy goes around taking pictures of people he meets in New York and writes some quick interviews about them. They’re really raw and real but I think that that’s what makes them so beautiful. I also love to go on YouTube and look at all the music videos—I don’t really have a lot of Apps except Temple Run. I’m a Temple Run champion.

Rye: When I work at the restaurant [The Bayside] I eat dinner at like midnight. It’s usually a Greek salad with lettuce, goat cheese, strawberries and walnuts. It’s so good—I sometimes eat it twice a day. I always have ice cream no matter what time of the day it is. I once had ice cream for breakfast…of course my mom wasn’t too happy about that.

C E L E B R A T I N G Jacob: For New Year’s Eve, there’s this tradition where everything’s symbolic. We dip lettuce in honey, take off all jewelry and put it in a sardine can, and drink pomegranate juice. I don’t get the symbols. My mom always tells me but I forget. Fish is for prosperity or something.

FOLLOWING Jacob: RFI (Radio France Internationale) because of Madame Greenberg. I get my news from New York Times. I also like reading the editorials. I like to go on Collegehumor (comedy website) and watch the funny videos and pictures. Drew Zwetchkenbaum is there, by the way! There’s this video of him and his friends—they go around asking girls their numbers (but actually just asking what a number is). I also like the website Stuck in Customs, which is about this guy who travels the world and takes these amazing pictures every day. They’re really cool, you should check them out.

Rye: We never get a Christmas tree until a couple days before Christmas. Last year we got it at seven o’ clock on Christmas Eve and I almost had a panic attack. My birthday’s in October so we always do a Halloween party, which is always fun. I also love celebrating Easter. All of my cousins and family friends come over and we do a massive egg hunt. Since I’m old now, I get to hide the eggs and then help little Will (my two-year-old cousin) find them.

at 257 Thayer Street. In the end you’ll find 102 apartments into the fourstory, 50 by 50 yard lot with room for 277 residents, predominantly Brown students. There will be, for college

Stop & Chat: Jacob Mukand & Rye Carroll by Rebecca Greenberg

Stop & Chat: Featuring Rye and Jacob, Senior Class Presidents READING Jacob: I’m reading a lot of Clarice Listor, a Brazilian writer. She once said: “writing is the act of blessing a life that was never blessed”. Her characters are usually women who have had difficulties in life or who have had bad relationships. She gets into their minds, explores their lives. One of her characters, Macadeas, is a migrant worker who goes to the fortuneteller who tells her she will meet a tall blond man. Macadeas later gets run over by a truck driven by a blond man. Listor has tragic characters, bringing their lives to a higher level. Their lives become blessed through her writing. I’m also reading Belle du Seigneur by Albert Cohen. One of the main themes: love is reserved for the beautiful (Karenina-esque love), but the beautiful have to live with the fact that their love is based only on beauty and that it fades. For example Anna’s love for Vronsky weighs two milligrams, the weight of his two front teeth. Love, which is everything for those who don’t have it, is worthless for those who do have it because it is contingent on appearance. Rye: I just read Goddess, a Greek mythology love story. I love Greek mythology so it was perfect. I’m also really getting into Hamlet with Ms. Bruno’s English class. This weekend, I read this other book about World War II. The author has you follow different

people and experience the war through their eyes. I picked it up and decided to read it because it had great reviews and was apparently “beautifully written”, but all of the affairs and secrets inside really made me feel slimy afterwards. LISTENING Jacob: Jazz. I’ve gotten back to Coltrane. I love a lot of Latin music, like Debo Valdez and this Argentinian saxophonist Gato Babieri. I listen to Serge Gainsbourg’s—Je t’aime moi non plus and Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais. I like reggae and this Venezuelan-American contemporary folk/ psychedelic singer, Devendra Banhart. Oh yeah—and also John Legend. Rye: I recently discovered Pandora when I got my iPhone. I love Norah Jones and the Red-Hot Chili Peppers. My favorite song is Tell Me Baby. I also love the The Main band. WATCHING Jacob: I’ve been going back to cutesy old romantic movies. I love Breakfast at Tiffany’s—also old classics like Casablanca, Pete Teller’s Being There, and Dr. Strangelove. I like to let my favorite actors and actresses revisit my home for the weekend. Rye: TV shows! I love to go on Netflix binges. My favorites are Once Upon a Time, Friday Night Lights, and Revolutions. I am obsessed with Bones (Vampire Diaries) and the movie Cinderella Story—the one with Hillary Duff, not Selena Gomez.

December 6, 2013

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