YDN Magazine

VOL XXXVI t ISSUE 1 t OCTOBER 2008

INSIDE 20 COVER STORY

ON THE BRIDGE TO TOTAL FREEDOM Naina Saligram

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Daniel Fromson

MANAGING EDITORS

Ben Brody, Jesse Maiman

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Caroline Berson, Anthony Lydgate, Vivian Nereim Naina Saligram, Kanglei Wang, Victor Zapana

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Do you have what it takes to get Clear? Then drive up Whalley Avenue to the Church of Scientology.

17 PHOTO ESSAY

SATURDAY NIGHT, SUNDAY MORNING

Ginger Jiang Trolley Night revelry soon gives way to headaches, studying, and psalms.

Adrienne Wong

DESIGN & PHOTO EDITORS

Ginger Jiang, Jared Shenson, La Wang

FICTION EDITOR

Angelica Baker

POETRY EDITOR

Carina del Valle Schorske

STAFF WRITERS

Rachel Caplan, Rebecca Distler, Jacque Feldman, Sam Jacobson, Nicole Levy, Frances Sawyer, Eileen Shim, Lee West, Jonathan Yeh

ILLUSTRATORS

Maria Haras, Sin Jin

The Yale Daily News Magazine invites letters to the editor.

Please send your comments to the editor-in-chief of the Magazine at daniel.fromson@yale.edu.

The views and opinions represented in the Magazine’s articles and advertisements do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff. We reserve the right to refuse any ad for any reason and to delete or change any copy we consider objectionable, false, or in poor taste.

COVER AND FICTION ILLUSTRATIONS BY SIN JIN “TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT” ILLUSTRATION BY MARIA HARAS “QUICK AND THE DEAD” SKETCHES COURTESY YALE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

10 FEATURE

PLEASE BELIEVE OUR HYPE Vivian Nereim The rising stars of a gritty local hip-hop scene overshadowed by New York City, A.B. and Keith Lo of Northern League are clawing their way to the top.

27 FICTION

SOMETHING YOU AREN’T TELLING ME

Angelica Baker The lingering taint of divorce haunts an annual mother-daughter trip to New York City.

34 FEATURE

THE QUICK AND

THE

DEAD

Kanya Balakrishna A partnership between the Yale School of Medicine and a nearby high school has 17-year-olds handling cadavers. Do they learn more than just anatomy?

The Yale Daily News Magazine October 2008

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3

MY YALE

THE ET CETERA AROUND THE CORNER Nicole Levy

5

UP THE HILL

BABY GOT BACTERIA

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AROUND ELM CITY

GUERRILLA JOURNALISM Snigdha Sur

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JARED SHENSON

Jonathan Yeh

According to testimony by a former Scientologist, human misery results from parisitic alien spirits. Turn to p.20 for more.

STUDIO SPACE

RENOVATING CONTROVERSY Sin Jin

8

PROFILE

THE PHYSICIAN OF FOLK Rachel Caplan

16 POEM EVOCATION OF BUTTERFLIES Alice Hodgkins

30 POEM FRUITFLIES Christine Kwon

33 POEM RENGA

Adam Gardner and Carina del Valle Schorske

40 TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT ROMEO MUST DIE David Thier

42 BACKPAGE THE ONLY MATH YOU’LL EVER NEED Hunter Wolk

I

f L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, were to rise from the dead today — which, as far as I can tell, is at least as possible as many of the things Scientologists allegedly believe — he could come to New Haven and find a clean, functional office specifically for him. He wouldn’t even have to adjust his calendar, which is flipped to the correct page on a daily basis. He could also find a similar office in Boston, San Jose, or Wichita, though presumably not in Germany, where the state has declared Scientology unconstitutional.

I know about Hubbard’s office thanks to Naina Saligram, whose feature in this issue explores the Elm City’s local Church of Scientology. In addition to probing the depths of this enigmatic religion, her article profiles the faces behind the New Haven organization and their reasons for supporting what people alternately call a haven for wackos, a flagrant violator of human rights, and the world’s fastest-growing religion.

Other highlights of this issue include Vivian Nereim’s piece about local rappers Northern League, Angelica Baker’s short story about a mother and daughter struggling to overcome their mutual resentment and guilt, and Rachel Caplan’s profile of Dr. Bill Fischer, a tremendous portrait of a life of exuberance and passion.

In addition, I’d like to congratulate the new editors and staff writers of the Magazine. I am confident they will help grow and improve this publication; already, they have made numerous design changes that will ensure that the appearance of this magazine is as stylish as its content. We hope you enjoy this issue of the Yale Daily News Magazine, the first of the 2008-2009 academic year.

Best wishes, —Daniel Fromson

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

MY YALE THE ET CETERA AROUND THE CORNER by Nicole Levy n the peeling placard that reads “Neverending Books,” the grain of the wood punctuates white words as if to convey a sense of understatement. Browsers in this bookstore and community space are welcomed by the bibliophile’s pheromone: the scent of decaying tomes. I am aroused by the fragrance and aghast that these books are unattended, with no shopkeeper to supervise their sale. There is, however, a weathered banjo case, whose innards are painted a vivid red varnish, and a nearby sign reads: “Case of the donation banjo, make donations here.”

The banjo case stands in for a man who proves difficult to pin down, a man named Roger Uihlein. Uihlein is the unofficial coordinator and cultural liaison for Neverending Books, the center of his universe. He is best characterized by a magnetic inertia. Without force, simply by being himself, he galvanizes New Haven’s fringe community and channels its energies into his establishment at 810 State Street.

In the bookroom, Uihlein’s lax organization scheme lends insight into his character. He admits of the books shelved — books donated by the community — “we don’t really put them in aisles, just blah, blah, blah.”

In his nonchalant way, he has exaggerated the disarray: there are, in fact, handwritten headings grafted on bookshelves for subjects in the Dewey Decimal system, and the literature collection is alphabetized by authors’ surnames. Yet beyond these constraints thrives what can only be described as casual, organic disorder. 8 Real SATs is sandwiched between World Book encyclopedias. Books overflow the gnarled wooden shelves into plastic cartons from U-Haul and Fabulous Frybreads.

While some have suggested that he catalogue his archive and sell the volumes on Amazon. com, Uihlein cannot imagine devoting 40 hours a week to what he nonetheless deems a “good business idea.” This endeavor, it seems, would compromise the spirit of Neverending Books as a personal forum for genuine human interaction.

Before Neverending Books was founded 17 years ago, the building housed a traditional bookstore whose proprietor, a “nice

DANIEL CARVALHO/YDN

The spiritual home of New Haven nonconformity is a garden/theater/kitchen/meeting space/circus ring/bookstore. Browsing is welcome — in fact, it’s the only way you can fathom this place and the community it serves.

The community room, a multipurpose space, is the heart and soul of Neverending Books, and it emphasizes the collective ownership ideals of owner Roger Uihlein. guy named Frank,” spent his days outside in a wicker chair, dejectedly unsuccessful in his enterprise and conspicuously lonely. Uihlein, who to this day lives nearby, made efforts to alleviate Frank’s taxing solitude by visiting periodically. But after a year of dwindling profits, Frank vacated the site, and Uihlein proposed a new, revolutionary bookstore that would be a community project.

When an assembly of 150 friends convened to brainstorm and determine the bookstore’s name by vote, “Neverending Books” was born, with the goal of using it as a space both for the distribution of used books, records, and magazines, and for collectively organized events. The venue for these events is the community room adjacent to the bookroom, where collages — a symbolic medium of choice — are mounted on the wall.

Early on, Uihlein espoused the utopian ideal of communal property: everyone who gave 20 dollars and 20 books to the cause had a key to the space. Privileges were naturally abused, and Uihlein ultimately assumed sole possession of the space, though he insists “there is nothing to own.” The site is available to anyone who requests it. In this way, Uihlein facilitates a kaleidoscope of events, everything from film screenings to art exhibits, puppet shows, premiere performances by the

Uncertainty Music Series every second Saturday of the month, New Haven Improvisers’ Collective jam sessions every last Monday of the month, open-mic nights, book clubs, knitting sessions, and secret vegan cafes.

When Adam Horowitz ’09 first came to Neverending Books, he found himself in the midst of a circus act with acrobatic feats on a tumbling mat and trapeze bar, only to have Uihlein cajole him into playing the drums as accompaniment. Horowitz had never played a drum set before, but he would visit Neverending Books again, with enthusiasm and his own ukulele.

Those who have passed through Neverending Books have all left their artifacts: local artist Bob Cuneo’s postcards of “Caricatures of the Human Comedy,” fliers for the Bioregional Group’s next canoe trip, tchotchkes that Rainbow Recycling has salvaged from downtown dumpsters. As I leave the bookstore and the barefooted man who one friend says may now be “just this backwater bookstore owner, but [will] be a legend when he’s dead,” I am seized by the impulse to leave something of my own. I slide the 50 cents that Uihlein has assured me suffices into the slot of the donation box, paying my respect to the understated banjo case and nostalgia for what has yet to pass.

The Yale Daily News Magazine October 2008

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UP THE HILL BABY GOT BACTERIA by Jonathan Yeh Germophobia has reached a fever pitch in 21st century life. However, Dr. Li Wen of the Yale Medical School is proving that when it comes to autoimmune disorders we get by with the help of our (microbiotic) friends. ment lead to more diabetes?

Dr. Li Wen was already studying diabetes before she came to Yale 15 years ago, and while her research was focused on various genetic indicators of diabetes, she soon became interested in the missing link between diabetes and the environment. Dr. Wen examined the work of researchers who, while studying allergies two decades ago, hypothesized the existence of “friendly” bacteria that help the immune system function properly – bacteria which are scarce in the sterilized environment of a developed country. She became determined to test this hypothesis for type 1 diabetes.

To do so, Dr. Wen and her team studied two groups of mice that were genetically predisposed to develop type 1 diabetes. One group was raised from birth in an entirely germ-free environment; the other group was routinely exposed to harmless bacteria normally found in the human gut. The researchers found that the exposed group had a decrease of more than 50% in the rate at which they developed diabetes, resulting in a disease that progressed slower, occurred less frequently, and was less severe than that of the germ-free group. “I’m not saying that

COURTESY CDC

magine a world with no bacteria.

No bubonic plague or tuberculosis. No staph in the locker room or anthrax in the news. These changes might seem welcome at first, but not all bacteria are killer scourges that propagate disease and decimate populations. To the contrary, a team of scientists led by Dr. Li Wen of Yale Medical School has uncovered startling evidence of bacteria playing frontline defense against a formidable opponent — type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes — unlike type 2, which is associated with unhealthy lifestyle choices — appears in childhood and is an autoimmune disorder. This places it in the company of respiratory allergies, asthma, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis, disorders in which the immune system malfunctions and attacks the body’s own cells. While these are largely genetic in origin, scientists have noticed that the rate of autoimmune disorders is much higher in developed countries. For example, the U.S. rate of new type 1 diabetes cases is well over ten times that of China. This sharp disparity suggests that environmental factors must also be in play.

But why would a clean, developed environ-

Not all bacteria are killer scourges: Staphylococcus aureus, while especially virulent in patients whose immune systems are compromised, is found on everyone’s skin.

the bacteria prevented diabetes completely,” Dr. Wen noted. “But the reduction was huge.”

In her opinion, this was unequivocal evidence that “friendly” bacteria could modulate the immune response, making autoimmunity problems less likely. “It’s like our immune system needs target practice,” Dr. Wen offered as an analogy. “When there are so few bacteria around, it’s more likely to start attacking our own body.”

So if germs can push down rising rates of autoimmune disorders, should we boycott anti-bacterial soap and start taking dirt baths? “You can’t tell people to not wash their hands,” Dr. Wen cautioned, “and you can’t tell hospitals to not sterilize their equipment – the risks are too great. But if the findings of this study hold true in humans, there are definitely other habits that people should change for the better.”

One of her suggestions was simply to get more fresh air and sunshine — along with an extra dose of beneficial germs from the great outdoors. Dr. Wen implied that the sedentary lifestyle of many Americans — staying cooped-up in hygienic homes and offices all day — could be a large contributor to the rising severity of allergies and the up-tick in diseases such as type 1 diabetes.

Similarly, Dr. Wen’s findings may point to a wider beneficial role for “probiotic” foods such as yogurt products, certain cheeses, and miso soup, whose health claims are abundant but relatively unverified. These foods contain a small amount of live bacteria, which are harmless and are already thought to aid in digestion. Now, there is even the possibility that these bacteria, along with the foods they inhabit, might also confer protection from a huge spectrum of autoimmune disorders.

But don’t be mistaken. The existence of “friendly” bacteria changes very little about how we should fundamentally care for our bodies. If anything, the research conducted

by Dr. Li Wen highlights, more than ever, the delicate balance of biology that keeps us in good health. So go ahead. Go outside and tumble in the dirt for awhile. Just don’t forget to wash your hands when you’re done.

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

AROUND ELM CITY GUERRILLA JOURNALISM by Snigdha Sur

tanding in his cargo shorts and blue T-shirt, waiting for the 30 kids in the fluorescent-lit cafeteria to quiet down, Jason Braff glances down, almost timidly, at the index card scrunched in his hand before starting the weekly Monday night meeting.

But when he starts speaking, everyone listens.

Jason Braff is the editor in chief of the newly established Quad News, a web newspaper for Quinnipiac University students published weekly but updated throughout the week. He had been the EIC of the Quinnipiac Chronicle, the university’s official print paper, but when administrators said they would choose editorial board members and forbid the Chronicle from publishing breaking news online, Braff withdrew his editor application for the 2008-2009 school year.

He didn’t realize that his editorial board would follow his lead.

“Everyone walked out. Every single person,” he said. “I was kind of surprised, but I knew how everyone else felt.”

After deciding to found Quad News last May, the former Chronicle editors spent the summer raising funds and establishing their independence. Now Quinnipiac has two news sources that both receive substantial attention: Quchronicle.com and quadnews. net both rank among the top 100 sites by page views on College Publisher, the world’s largest network of online college newspapers. Still, Braff notes that some freshmen think the Chronicle is the only campus paper.

A more pressing concern is that the Quinnipiac administration has not been kind to Quad News.

As reported in the Yale Daily News, Quinnipiac’s Vice President of Public Affairs Lynn Bushnell has called the site a blog that has “aggressively sought to undermine the continued existence” of the school’s official paper. While the Chronicle is still allowed to speak to the Quinnipiac Public Relations department, the Quad News is

SNIGDHA SUR

Free speech watchdogs everywhere were enraged when Quinnipiac University administrators tried to meddle with its student newspaper. But editor Jason Braff knew getting angry was useless. Instead, he went rogue.

Jason Braff’s leadership at Quad News has challenged the conventions of campus journalism. The endeavor may be idealistic, but Braff insists he’s anything but a rebel. barred from speaking to administrators, as well as to sports players and coaches. “It’s really forced us to be more creative,” said sports co-editor Steve Nicastro, who is considering publishing running diaries of games to overcome the sourcing limitations. Quad News is also making the best of not being a print publication: its blogs extend traditional news coverage, and video and photo slides are on the way.

Quad News’s openness to innovation during difficult times reflects Braff’s unresentful attitude. Despite the ordeal, he doesn’t consider the administrators to be the “bad

to pick editorial board members instead of leaving the choice to the editors and faculty advisor missed the mark.

Despite the distractions, Quad News has its goal in sight. “We try to keep our focus on why we did this in the first place,” Braff said. Quad News eventually wants to put out a printed edition and have an office, but for now, its fundraising pays for publicity. Braff also stresses teamwork and wants to improve news coverage so it does not fall on one person to cover breaking news.

Braff’s leadership and the experience of the editorial board have allowed Quad News to witness early success. By the time the Chronicle had published its first issue this year, the Quad News had posted about three weeks’ worth of content.

But the publication must eventually also include freshmen if it is to remain a viable news source. Writers will apply for editorial positions at the end of the semester, and current editors will hand over their positions in the spring. Braff isn’t that worried, and as he puts it with characteristic optimism, “I have confidence in the kids.”

Braff withdrew his editor application for the 2008-2009 school year.

He didn’t realize that his editorial board would follow his lead. guys” and says that they are “not trying to block content.” Braff, who wasn’t allowed to criticize administrative policies publicly as EIC of the Chronicle, notes that administrators had been following a transitional plan to make the Chronicle independent. But he also points out that the administration’s decision

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STUDIO SPACE RENOVATING CONTROVERSY by Sin Jin In Yale’s architecturally snooty environment, most renovations invite debate, especially when the building in question is Paul Rudolph’s controversial classic. But what resulted from last year’s hotly disputed restoration?

Gwathmey a formidable task — his work would need to echo the rough strokes of Rudolph’s brutalist giant without compromising function or its own identity.

Whether or not he has succeeded is a heated question; few sing the building’s praises. The building simply isn’t pretty, and its strategic location next to the home of frustrated architecture students invites highly articulate criticism.

“The massing on the street feels awkward and arbitrary,” says architecture major Benjamin Sachs ’09. “The zinc cladding material… seems to lack his sense of purpose and intentional, careful detailing of the concrete surface.” He adds that “most architecture students, secretly or openly, seem to think that they could have done better.”

Yet can one evaluate the building by its exterior alone? The Rudolph building did not have room for elevator shafts to make the building handicapped-accessible, so the elevators were installed in the History of Art building, which is connected to Rudolph Hall. The two buildings share the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library as well as a ground-floor entryway far more inviting than Rudolph Hall’s cavernous stair

entry. Although one may hesitate to deem it a masterpiece, the Gwathmey building serves as, in Sachs’s words, “a harmless addition to an invincible piece of architectural and university history.”

As Cruickshank puts it, “There is a dialogue between Rudolph Hall and the new History of Art building, as well as Saarinen’s Ingalls Rink, Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges, and Kahn’s two pieces across the street.” The Rudolph and Gwathmey twins may not be pretty, but they have become a part of the campus’s intricate architectural identity.

As I turned and began walking back up Chapel Street, I was swarmed by tourists eagerly photographing the Center for British Art. In the years to come, the guide might narrate to future crowds the controversy behind the Rudolph and Gwathmey buildings, maybe pointing out the limestone blocks or the vertical windows and explaining how they did, or did not, accentuate corresponding elements in the Rudolph building. And perhaps these tourists will discuss the incomprehensibility of these new buildings in comparison to Sterling Memorial Library or Harkness Tower.

Would that really be so bad?

ERIC ANDERSON/YDN

approached the monster twins on a cloudy Monday afternoon, when Rudolph Hall’s rough béton brut columns and the Loria Center’s limestone and zinc façade drearily resembled the leaden sky above.

The two soundlessly rested on the corner of York and Chapel, their shadowy presence looming over the intersection, where pedestrians passing by invariably glanced at the shiny planes and corduroy columns.

The former Yale Art and Architecture Building, now renamed Paul Rudolph Hall, dates back to the boisterous sixties, when frank brutalism was still a novel choice even among European architects like Le Corbusier. In contrast to the architectural license of today, late modernism had barely emerged, and cold functionalism had yet to perish. When unveiled, the singular building both charmed and repelled with its delightfully ominous exterior and volumetric interior. This mixture of love and hate would remain for the next four decades as misfortunes befell the building, ranging from a 1969 fire to a series of careless renovation projects.

In 2007, Yale began the formidable task of renovating the A&A Building. The goal, according to Laura Cruickshank, Yale University Planner, was to restore the original fabric of the building and to upgrade infrastructure. Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, the firm hired for the renovation, encountered enormous difficulties as the use of concrete placed heavy restrictions on how the team could improve the building’s accessibility and habitability. In addition, past modifications had rendered the building visibly different from its original state: according to Cruickshank, the windows were ugly and “the original sense of space was gone.” The renovation restored Rudolph’s original concept through changes to the building’s windows, exterior walls, and penthouse and rooftop terraces, which now host wildly colored seats.

Far more interesting, however, is Gwathmey’s addition next door, the Jeffrey Loria Center for the History of Art. Yale handed

The recently renovated Paul Rudolph Building has always been one of Yale’s most contentious. Now, the new Jeffrey Loria Center for the History of Art is joining the debate.

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

PROFILE THE PHYSICIAN OF FOLK by Rachel Caplan Every month, thanks to a dreadlocked man with a twinkle in his eye, past and present link arms in Bethany, Connecticut for a time-honored hoedown. Meet Dr. Bill Fischer, the contra dance master at the center of it all. dance to begin, people listen. In the early fall air, the pavilion seems transformed into an old-time barn, draped with strings of lights and candles that illuminate the expression on his face.

“Barns have always had a special magic for me,” he told me, describing a childhood spent around his grandmother’s barn. In a place like this, Fischer is in his element and very much at home.

A weekend later I head to Fischer’s real home, an enormous converted barn in Bethany, Connecticut. Driving towards the house in the half-darkness, you can hear music floating into the yard.

This is Bethany Music and Dance, Fischer’s monthly informal gathering devoted to live music, good food, and contra dancing. Inside, there are musicians and instruments everywhere, along with perhaps 80 revelers. I push past a man who mumbles, “too many guitar cases” — there are four stacked up in this particular corner. To the side of a table piled with

heirloom tomato salad and homemade cookies is a cluster of musicians strumming banjo, mandolin, and guitar to no audience in particular. Fischer comes in with a penny whistle and, without sitting, catches the gist of the music and improvises a little before addressing the crowd.

Soon, he announces, we’ll all go upstairs for dancing.

Though Fischer spends most of his time and energy these days on the local contra dancing circuit calling dances and leading events, he is also a 1966 Yale College graduate and a retired doctor who still spends a few days each week tending to medical duties. Sometimes, the two circles of his life overlap, and one of his patients will become a guest at one of his dances, or vice-versa. But to him, being an expert in these two different areas is no big deal.

Looking at the newspaper clippings and mementos pasted to the walls of his house, you get a sense of a life full of curiosity and

BLAIR BENHAM-PYLE/YDN

ook at your feet. Your feet are where home is.”

Students and alums dressed in jeans, prairie dresses, and cowboy hats check their feet on the packeddirt floor. Dr. Bill Fischer surveys the crowd from his post. Standing on a heap of timber and leaning on the high rafters of the pavilion built just this morning at the Yale Farm, he watches the even lines of dancers and makes sure they are in position. The air is sweet with the smell of freshly cut white oak, and only a few of the roof beams have been placed, leaving the dance floor open to a starry sky.

Fischer, longtime local contra dance caller, music man, and lover of all things folk, is here to teach the age-old dance form step by step. Dressed in a red flannel shirt with a thick grey beard, long yellow-gray dreadlocks down his back, and a keen look in his eyes, he has a powerful physical presence. When he calls for a

A central figure of the local contra dancing scene, Fischer is a retired doctor who still tends to medical duties a few days a week.

The Yale Daily News Magazine October 2008

was quick to join in the wake of this renaissance.

He started contra dancing in 1980. “I only had to walk into that to know it was something I was entranced by,” he said.

Some dancers are bolder than others.

A woman with toe rings and furry legs dances joyfully barefoot over the plank floor. A ten-yearold kid do-si-dos around his partner — a middle-aged woman with a long brown braid down her back. Some men spin their partners clear off the floor, while others exuberantly follow Bill Fischer’s shouted direction, “and now, a five elbow turn!”

Soon, the only one sitting it out is a disAt Bethany Music and Dance, Fischer, center, finds some time to tinguished, whitetake a break from calling and indulge his passion for dance. mustached, woolbut what it’s really about is people dancsweatered man in a neck brace.

“Did you hurt your neck at the last ing together.

After twirling with a handful of plaidhoedown?” someone asks.

The fourth and last dance brings us shirted, sweating men, I reach Fischer into one big circle around the dance floor, himself. With a powerful spin that lifts and soon we’re off. You spin a few giddy my feet off the ground, Fischer breaks measures with your partner, promenade the circle and grabs my hand, leading us a few steps forward, and then hook the in a weaving, hairpin-turning, grape-vineelbow of the next person. It’s a new part- dancing chain around the barn and briefly ner every minute. There are a lot of names out into the cool night air of his backyard. for contra dancing, says Fischer — barn Flying through the chain of dancers, I dances, country dances, social dancing, look at Bill Fischer. He is laughing.

Soon Fischer is calling out directions over the whirr and hum of the tuning band, aided by a wireless microphone that leaves him unfettered and able to dance.

“I truly love to dance,” he says.

BLAIR BENHAM-PYLE/YDN

passion. The ceiling is hung with chimes, gongs, and a string of bright, now-withered balloons from some past celebration.

The walls are covered in announcements for hurdy-gurdy workshops and barn dance events, and the rooms are studded with collectibles and oddities like a washboard and a collection of shaking gourds.

A black and white picture shows Fischer at a May Day celebration. He has a thick bunch of maypole streamers in his hands, a crown of blossoms on his woolly head, and a radiant smile on his face.

The guests move to a rough dance floor upstairs where the planks will soon shift beneath their feet as they stomp and twirl.

Tonight there are four dances. Before the first comes a hush of excitement, then a scramble to find partners. Even the shyest girls get pulled off the benches. Soon Fischer is calling out directions over the whirr and hum of the tuning band, aided by a wireless microphone that leaves him unfettered and able to dance. “I truly love to dance,” he says. “When I get to go someplace, dance and call, that’s everything in the whole bucket together.”

The tune starts with a fiddle and the high fluttering notes of flutes and pipes.

The stooped accordionist jumps in with a lively accompaniment. Soon the band has another song underway, and Fischer is leading the dancers, many of them doing this for the first time. When asked what draws people to contra dancing, he says it’s the live music. Some callers, he said, work with cassettes, but he swears that he has never in his life backed up his dances with anything but the real thing. Prominently displayed on his website is a strict rule: “leave your amplifiers at home!”

Fischer says you can trace these dances back centuries. Contra dancing almost disappeared as a pastime around the turn of the last century, but it experienced a resurgence in the seventies, and Fischer

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

By Vivian Nereim

While trying to make it outside of New Haven, two local rappers are building a new model for success in a music industry in flux.

here is a minor problem with this story: No matter how much I protested, no matter how many ethical obligations I raised, and no matter how many times I stuttered the word “objectivity,” our intrepid protagonists — New Haven born-and-raised hip-hop duo Northern League — would not take no for an answer. They paid for my dinner.

So let’s get that out of the way. After all, at its heart, this is a story about two local rappers — A.B. and Keith Lo — who have systematically turned their street savvy into business savvy. This is a story about aggressive marketing and in-your-face promotion, and what better way to promote than with a good-natured bribe.

While you may not know Northern League’s name, if you watch “The Real World,” “Entourage,” “Greek,” “Weeds,” “CSI Miami,” “Tilt,” or “Making the Band,” or if you’ve seen the major motion pictures “Stomp The Yard,” “Delirious,” or “The Architect” — all soundtracks on which they were featured — then you’ve probably heard their music.

This is also a story about navigating a music industry that has been badly wounded by the advent of the internet download: This is not a game for the weak.

If Northern League is uncannily good at marketing, it’s because they need to be.

Finally, this is a story of struggling to claw a way out of a claustrophobic local hip-hop community — a scene haunted by the shadow of New York City.

In the words of A.B.: “If there’s a shit pile here, we’re at the top of that shit pile.

Know what I mean?”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LA WANG

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

C

limbing that proverbial pile has been a long journey for Northern League. A.B. and Keith met somewhere between 10 and 20 years ago — “You can’t ask an artist how old they are!” A.B. chastised me — just after they graduated from high school. A.B. attended Hamden High, where he also met their producer, FS Beatz, and Keith attended Hillhouse, a public high school in New Haven. Even then they were hip-hop heads.

A.B. was a self-described hip-hop-dancing Steve Perry fan (he

school he was in a rap group that made it to “Showtime at the Apollo.” “They were doing a lot of bubble gum rap,” joked A.B., “like getting good grades, and my first date.”

After they graduated, Keith was in another group for which A.B. was working as a promoter, but the two soon realized they had musical chemistry of their own.

“We’re like that yin and yang, two different sides of life,” said A.B. In interviews, he’s outspoken and Keith clams up, but both agreed that in most other contexts, A.B. is quiet and Keith is “the rowdy street one.”

Despite their distinct personalities, they share the same work ethic, and both Keith and A.B. expressed a desire to make hiphop with a broad appeal.

“Everybody is talking about the regular guns stuff, the regular street stuff, street crime, blah blah blah,” said A.B. “It’s over and played out.” While Northern League’s sound is grind-friendly — and yes, there’s sex, yes, there are girls — their songs are much tamer than most contemporary hip-hop.

“We’ve all had our bad times, but there’s no need to be constantly exposing people to that,” said A.B. “Expose people to something different.”

“You can dance to this music, you can clean your house to this music,” said Keith, with a grandiose flourish.

So with their aspirations and goals in order, Keith and A.B. christened Northern League.

“Everybody is talking about the regular guns stuff, the regular street stuff, street crime, blah blah blah,” said A.B. “It’s over and played out.” still pledges love for Journey). “I was kind of like the fresh hiphop kid — I danced all through high school,” he said. Hamden High let him out of class early to teach after-school dance classes to the students at the middle school. He claims he was “the shy kid,” but dancing brought him out of his shell.

Keith, on the other hand, has always been outgoing. In high

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y all accounts, the two have taken a decidedly backwards route to making a name for themselves. They dabbled in mix tapes, — the paradigm most independent hip-hop artists use to gather fans — but their big successes came through corporate licensing. That meant you could hear their music on MTV before they had even dropped an album.

Their first breakthrough came in 2005, when ESPN was debuting “Tilt,” a fictional TV series about poker.

Their plugged-in producer FS Beatz signed with Universal Records, a subset of Universal Music Group, at the tender age of 16. Using his connections, they started distributing their music to marketing companies who sent their songs along to major television networks in an effort to land a placement.

A.B. recounted the story to me between bites of his turkey burger. (He is an unusual rapper in more than one way. “I haven’t had any red meat in six months,” he explained to me, staring at a menu full of cow at Prime 16, a burger joint in downtown New Haven.)

ESPN, he said, was seeking a hip-hop track to play during part of the first episode of “Tilt” on a quick deadline. They were considering Northern League among a roster of artists including Missy Elliot.

“She wanted some crazy amount for her song,” said A.B. Meanwhile, their producer FS gave him a call.

“He says, ‘Hey, we have an opportunity to be in a TV show,’ and I said, ‘Take it!’ And he’s like, ‘Well don’t you want to know

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A.B. and Keith Lo, center, may be redefining the path to hip-hop stardom, but they still know how to make a flashy entrance.

how much it is?’ and I said, ‘No, take it!’ And he said, ‘Well there is money involved,’ and I said, ‘Great! Take it! Just make it happen!’”

Because they valued exposure over cash and were able to produce songs on a tight deadline, Northern League undercut Missy, and their music appeared on the debut episode of “Tilt.”

Northern League began to build a relationship with MTV and other networks, and by the time “Stomp the Yard” was in the works in 2006, their name and reputation had spread. So it wasn’t a huge surprise to them when they were offered a placement in the hip-hop dance movie.

Their contribution to the soundtrack, “Gone in 60 Seconds,” is a solid if conventional hit. It balances clean, catchy rhymes with clubby beats — FS juggles layers and rhythms with the polyphonic flair that makes Timbaland so hot — and the song has been a runaway success relative to the rest of their releases.

When they released their debut album Wet Paint on June 24, “Gone in 60 Seconds” undeniably drove its sales both in stores and online.

“I’ve been a big fan of these guys ever since I heard them on Stomp the Yard,” wrote one reviewer on iTunes. “…had to check out the cd — WET PAINT IS HOT!”

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oon, A.B. and Keith began to realize they had a business model.

“A lot of artists don’t even know they can go this way because they don’t take time to actually research it,” said A.B. He believes that given the challenges artists face today, seeking placements before putting out an album is a viable way to build an image.

“You’ve got to do alternative marketing, you’ve got to do something that sticks out,” said Chris Knab, a music business consultant and author of “Music is Your Business,” when asked about Northern League’s approach. Otherwise, “you disappear in the cloud.”

A.B. and Keith have hit on an idea that is gaining ground: If hip-hop has saturated the mainstream market, why can’t independent artists take advantage of that to advance their careers?

“We can go anywhere else and get so much love,” said Keith, “but right here in our own home” the support of local artists is “shabby” at best, he said.

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“The way the world is changing, you hear hip-hop in everything,” said A.B. “20 years ago there was a tiny percentage of music on TV shows, film soundtracks, and adverts,” wrote Sian Pattenden, UK journalist and author of “How to Make it in the Music Business,” in an e-mail. “Now we are bombarded by music all the time as aural wallpaper.”

Established artists have taken advantage of placements as a way to earn extra money for years. More recently, both Feist and Yael Nim found their success surging after both artists had songs featured in Apple commercials.

“TV and these national campaigns can take an artist that is relatively unknown and turn them into stars,” said Steve Gordon, entertainment attorney and author of “The Future of the Music Business.” Gordon was more skeptical that an unsigned artist would be able to get airtime. He was cautious to point out that Feist and Yael Nim had both been around before and “didn’t come out of thin air.”

But with smart promotion and a few connections, Northern League is finding a way.

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y now it’s probably apparent that A.B. is more publicity-inclined than Keith — who is charming, but prone to statements like “Northern League was a good pick for us, so we decided to go for that name” — so in a natural division of labor, Keith focuses on the music, and A.B. has taken the role of promoter.

These days, that means A.B. is perpetually glued to his iPhone. Ready to dispense a Northern League business card — printed on a faux $100 bill — at a moment’s notice, he can also dispense any number of sound-bites to describe Northern League’s brand: “that party hip-hop,” “that club feel,” that “get up and move our feet” music, and perhaps most conspicuously, “a universal sound that touches everybody.” He followed every interview for this article with a prompt thank-you text message.

“This is a business,” said Joe Ugly, founder of New Haven’s Ugly Radio, an online radio program that airs local talent. “When you’re an unsigned artist, you have to take the responsibility of a label. You have to get out there and you have to create that buzz.”

While Northern League is signed to small, independent, New York-based label Hustle Now Records, A.B. says that their recent work has attracted some major league names. Specifically, they are being closely watched by Ruben Rodriguez, a “super-promoter” who, over his long career, has worked with artists spanning the spectrum from Public Enemy to Alicia Keys.

As of this writing, their debut album Wet Paint has moved just under 10,000 units.

To put that in perspective, according to Billboard, in 2007, there were 80,000 new CD releases in the US, up from 30,000

just three years ago. Of those 80,000 CDs, over 60,000 sold fewer than 100 copies.

“Technology has changed the game,” said Joe Ugly. “If you’re looking for this thing to come fall out of the sky for you, it’s just not gonna happen.”

Regardless of whether this change is a good or a bad thing, manufacturing and distributing their own product “will become the norm for many artists in a few years,” said Pattenden.

To make it today, independent artists need to be smarter, they need to be shrewder, and they need to understand the interpersonal politics of promotion. In short, if they ever want to see their name in lights, they need to hustle.

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f Northern League did sign a contract, quit their day jobs, and move to New York, it wouldn’t be a huge jump across the map, but figuratively, they would be traveling a world

The Yale Daily News Magazine October 2008

away from their roots. While Keith and A.B. are New Haven’s sons, they have a complex relationship with the city that’s nurtured them.

“We kind of screw it up for ourselves,” said A.B. of Connecticut’s place in the hip-hop world. He cited old-school legend KRS-One’s recent visit to Toad’s Place: Someone threw a cup at him while he was performing. “It’s like, why would you do that?” said A.B. “They go back to New York and say, ‘Wow, Connecticut, they’re assholes down there.’ We’re killing ourselves, and we sit here complaining.”

“We can go anywhere else and get so much love,” said Keith, “but right here in our own home….” the support of local artists is “shabby” at best, he said.

“Everyone is trying to beat everyone else out of barrel,” said A.B. ILL, a local rapper who grew up in Bridgeport, echoed A.B.’s

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worries: “The better you do, the more distant others become, because they want to be where you are,” he said. “Instead of saying ‘F everybody, I’m gonna be the next one,’” he believes artists should make an effort to reach out to other artists.

“The hip-hop thing is very territorial,” said Joe Ugly. “People support their own.” He said the competitiveness of the Connecticut community is not necessarily unusual, though ILL and Northern League seem to agree that areas of the South are more open and welcoming communities.

Without a sense of community, it’s hard for New Haven artists to build an identity, especially because Connecticut is so close to New York City. Hip-hop was born in the Bronx, and while Los Angeles gave it a run for its money, New York is still considered the Mecca of the genre. Chicago has its own sound, and even Minnesota has steadily carved a place for itself in hip-hop — but Connecticut?

“I think that there’s so much talent in Connecticut that remains to be seen,” said ILL, diplomatically.

“I call Connecticut the no ID state,” said A.B. Despite their misgivings, Northern League knows that New Haven has given them the space to develop as artists in a way New York could not have done.

“In New York, you’re in a population that’s oversaturated with hip-hop,” said A.B., and it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. “There are some New York artists that can’t get on some mixtapes we’ve been on.”

It’s a paradox. All he knows is that he likes the chance of “peace and quiet” that Connecticut gives him. Since both A.B. and Keith Lo have daughters — Keith’s daughter is just one year old, but A.B.’s little girl is 13 now — the question of moving up and moving out is a troubling one.

I

n any musical group, disagreements are bound to surface.

Keith and A.B. didn’t always see eye-to-eye on the path they should take; from the beginning, the debate was whether to follow the typical “street” route or whether to branch out and try the corporate side.

Pattenden, in expressing her distaste for the unapologetic commercialism of even “indie” artists in the US, hit on a sentiment that Keith and A.B. have struggled with too: “Rap music used to be automatically considered anti-establishment,” she said. “If Northern League are happy being a TV Band, then good for them, but it also limits their voice as artists and what they want to say. True dissent is rarely featured on MTV.” From the beginning, said A.B., Keith distrusted the licensing

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

idea. “That’s another battle me and Keith had,” he explained, “because Keith was, ‘I want to do a mix-tape, I want to do a mixtape, I want to do a mix-tape, keep it on the street,’ and I’m like, ‘We can always go back to that.’”

“You always have a little bit of tension because everybody has their own idea of what’s right,” said A.B. He then (un-ironically) followed up with, “but for the most part everyone really agrees on the direction I want to go in.”

In particular, A.B. cited the pitiful longevity of most mixtapes. In contrast, he said the first episode of “Tilt” had 2.9 million viewers, and ESPN flashed the album cover at the end of the episode. “People called me up and said, ‘I saw your face on TV!’” said A.B. He felt a taste of celebrity for the first time.

Keith was finally won over when he got his first check. He realized “I can sit and have a daily job, and still do music and be on TV no matter how old I get,” he said.

“The licensing thing is always the bread and butter,” echoed A.B. “That’s where the checks come in.”

Sitting in Northern League’s studio on Chapel Street — a rented space A.B. decorated himself in a theme that appears to be “burgundy” — he mused, “We can be in our forties and fifties and not have to worry about going onstage and jumping around.”

What would they do instead?

“Sit here and do jingles.”

I couldn’t resist asking him if he would really be happy doing that.

A.B.’s pause before his confident “Yea” was almost imperceptible.

Evocation of Butterflies I once had an affair with a married man Leaving the trees, we stride out Into the over-world.

Wings in the first light – brows glistening Tips touching, the sunrise transparent Through fluttering stain-glass windows.

We were called – evoked from the earth In the last hours, and all was still.

Above a treeline, above the skyline – such a stillness A breath after water.

Toward wild-fire light we wait as mirrors, Indian Paintbrush to wings, Elephant Head in our eyes – The world below – lights, shadowed hills – Moved gently.

Already, here we are, bathed in orange, Color that trembles as Monarch wing veins Against the drops of dewed ground.

A pillar of smoke cresting – We twist off a stream current To walk among the living Giving permission, as the larks do, For the new hours to begin.

-Alice Hodgkins

Saturday Night Sunday Morning

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By Naina Saligram

Scientology, though popularized by figures like Tom Cruise and John Travolta, remains enigmatic in the eyes of the public. Naina Saligram examines the inner workings of this controversial religion and its New Haven mission.

he Westville Center has all the staples of small-town America: a coffee shop, a clothing boutique, a hair salon. Lined with colorful awnings, brick storefronts, benches, and trees, the neighborhood is charming, and though cars gurgle down a busy Whalley Avenue this afternoon, there are few pedestrians on the road. I am, in fact, the only person to get off the bus at the corner of Whalley and Blake, and when I do, immediately, I see it. Sandwiched snugly between Sally Goodman Antiques and an empty lot “For Lease” is a yellow sign branded with the words I have been waiting for with both excitement and dread: “Church of Scientology.”

I pause before stepping over the threshold into 909 Whalley, the home of the Church of Scientology of Connecticut. Over the past few days, I have been asking several Yalies what they think of the religion, and their words are now running through my head.

“Be careful. They believe in aliens.” “It’s a bogus cult.” “Scientology is a big, big scam.” “Tom Cruise is crazy.” “Isn’t it a joke?”

My parents haven’t been any more helpful. My dad claims to have been “kidnapped” 30 years ago by Scientologists who tried to force him to convert and donate money to the Church, and he called me last night, alarmed. “Naina, You’re very gullible. You always want to see the good in others, but these people are dangerous and you don’t know what they can do to you. Do not go alone.”

I didn’t listen. Recently, the Church ran a PR campaign with the slogan “Find out for yourself.” So that is what I am here to do. I turn the knob and walk in.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JARED SHENSON

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

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he Church of Scientology of Connecticut — a branch of the Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology International — was opened in 1984 to consolidate several smaller missions in the region. While as many as 1,000 people are affiliated with it, about 100 families make up its core membership. Although Church officials cannot release demographic information about parishioners, none, presumably, are Yale students. The University Chaplain’s Office reveals that no one at Yale has self-identified as Scientologist.

Looking around the Church, at first I am surprised. Carpeting, desks — it looks more like office space than a religious center, distinguished mainly by flashy posters promoting Church organizations and founder L. Ron Hubbard’s writings. In the Church bookstore, miasmic erupting volcanoes and beams of light enliven the covers of books such as The Way to Happiness, Self Analysis, and Dianetics: the Original Thesis. Other ornaments include posters of Scientologist celebrities, and in one corner hangs a signed photo of John Travolta and his wife congratulating the Connecticut branch for its good work.

Not everyone, however, is equally pleased.

In February, masked members of the group “Anonymous” swarmed Westville in conjunction with a nationwide Scientology protest, attacking the Church’s policy of soliciting funds from members and its status in America as a tax-exempt religion. Some went so far as to send bomb threats to the Connecticut staff.

Internationally, Scientology ferments even greater political controversy. Last year, it was declared unconstitutional in Germany, and this month, the Church remains on trial in France, having been sued for “organized fraud.”

Antagonism is also present at Yale. One graduate student has mockingly placed “Scientology” under his religious views on Facebook — alongside JDAM, “a GPS guided bomb that is dropped by warplanes.”

But it is hard to evaluate the justifications for this hostility to what

called yesterday?

She nods knowingly and hands me a form of personal information to fill out as well as a pink sheet of paper. The words “Are you curious about yourself?” look up and taunt me. The standard way for newcomers to get started with Scientology is to take a personality test which gets them thinking about their strengths and weaknesses and Jay Little and Carol Yingling do commupinpoints areas that nity work in New Haven for the Church, they might need to work on in their lives. I look down at the first few questions: 1. Do you make thoughtless remarks or accusations which later you regret?

2. When others are getting rattled, do you remain fairly composed?

3. Do you browse through railway timetables, directories, or dictionaries just for pleasure?

Realizing that there are 197 more, I slip the test into my bag to fill out later. In any case, Carol has just walked into the room.

Carol Yingling is wearing a red blazer and khaki pants, with a fauxcollared shirt that conveys her religious occupation. She is comfortable, familiar. Tufts of strawberryblonde hair frame her face; an eight-pronged star pendant hangs from a gold chain around her neck.

Her voice is gentle yet enthusiastic — I would be able to tell that she is smiling even if I were to close my eyes.

Carol is Director of Special Affairs and one of about a dozen ministers at the Church of Scientology of Connecticut. In addition to leading services and rituals, she works on anti-drug and human rights programs affiliated with the Church and participates in interfaith organizations in New Haven.

Scientology came to Carol late in life. Growing up in a small town in Minnesota, she attended Lutheran services regularly with her family. But the Sunday school teachers, she says, never really liked her — she used to always ask “the hard questions.” Why does immortality only work one way? How did we get here? Were souls just “pumped out” of the universe? These questions stayed with her, and even after she moved to the east coast, went to college, and got married,

You are a soul, or thetan.

Man is essentially good and aspires to survival.

Spiritual betterment is possible. claims to be the world’s fastest growing religion. Since the Church has historically been resistant to the media, and since some high-level information is secret even to most members of the Church, the validity of criticisms cannot be easily proved. And when members and ex-members provide conflicting accounts of Scientologist doctrine, the line between myth and reality blurs.

H

i! Welcome to the Church of Scientology of Connecticut!”

Monica rushes over to shake my hand, careful to be cheerful enough but not transparently overzealous. Nervous and not sure what to expect, I fumble through my words. I am here to see Carol Yingling…I go to Yale…I’m interested in Scientology…I

The Yale Daily News Magazine October 2008

she noticed a void in her life that she found herself unable to fill.

Until one day when she saw a TV special on Mother Teresa.

“I looked at her and thought to myself, she has what I want. I knew that I didn’t want her wardrobe, I didn’t even want her job, but she had that something that I was looking for.

Spiritual strength.”

Charged with a purpose, Carol Reflecting Scientology’s commitment began a serito progressive technology, the Materials ous study of the Guide Chart presents 40 years of founder world’s religions.

L. Ron Hubbard’s lectures for public use.

Only after reading a book on Dianetics, a theory of mental health therapy that forms the basis of Scientology, did she finally begin to find answers to her lingering questions.

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ccording to Church literature, the word “Scientology” is defined as the study of wisdom, derived from the Latin word scio (knowing) and the Greek word logos (study of).

Scientologists believe that humans are essentially spiritual beings.

You are a soul, or thetan. Man is essentially good and aspires to survival. Spiritual betterment is possible.

But Carol is quick to emphasize that Scientology is not a dogmatic religion. “We don’t tell people what they have to believe. They don’t even have to believe in the Creed.” Touting itself as the first applied religious philosophy, Scientology is less about faith than action: Grounded in technology, it strives to provide people with tools so they can improve their own lives.

To teach me more about the Scientology mission, Carol takes me upstairs to the Materials Guide Chart, which digitally catalogues Hubbard’s more than 3,000 lectures and books on Scientology and Dianetics. I choose to listen to “The Hope of Man,” a lecture from 1955 in which Hubbard expounds the potential for human liberation.

Before founding Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, or “LRH” as Scientologists affectionately call him, gained a reputation for his riveting science fiction and adventure stories. But according to Church literature, his forays into novels were simply a means to fund his true passion: the study of man.

In 1950, having spent years traveling and studying the world’s cultures, Hubbard published his findings on the human mind in the bestseller Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. It was out of the teachings of Dianetics that Scientology was born, for Scientology applies Dianetics’s discourse on the mind and its rela-

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tionship to the body to the realm of the spirit. In 1954, Hubbard founded the first Church of Scientology in Los Angeles and remained Executive Director for the next several years.

Although Hubbard died in 1986, Scientology centers remain an ode to his legacy. Framed quotes from his texts pepper the walls of the Church of Scientology of Connecticut, alongside black and white portraits. A life-size bust graces the hallway upstairs.

“It’s a reminder that we have to constantly look back to our source,” Carol says as she looks fondly at the bust.

Across the hall, a room with bookshelves, a stately desk, and a globe is roped off and designated by the placard “L. Ron Hubbard, Founder.” I peer inside and notice a small calendar sitting on the desk. It is correctly flipped to today’s date.

All Scientology churches have an office for Hubbard, and when he was alive, he used the study upon his visits to New Haven. Even when the Connecticut branch moves across the street as part of a Church-wide phase of expansion to “ideal premises,” a new office for Hubbard will be built.

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he Bridge to Total Freedom, which charts the Scientologist’s progress toward spiritual enlightenment, shows “the gradient path an individual takes to reach higher states of awareness.” As a non-Scientologist, I am at the bottom of the Bridge — at a level of -4, need of change. Apparently, once I’ve finished reading some of Hubbard’s books, I should take an introductory class entitled “Scientology: A New Slant on Life.” It will help even out the “ups and downs” in my life that were revealed by my personality test.

Many beginner classes are offered at the Church of Scientology of Connecticut. In addition to those that introduce Dianetics and Scientology are classes on the key to a successful marriage, how to work with others, how to manage your finances. There are picture books for children, and “extension” courses for those who cannot make it to the Church for study.

At first, these courses — based on Hubbard’s texts — seem to me out of place in a religious setting. But Carol tells me that even the practical aspects of our life are connected to and determined by how we understand ourselves as spiritual beings.

Matthew, a freshman at UCLA whose last name has been withheld at his request, remembers taking courses on “learning how to learn” and “communication” as a child. He had been diagnosed with ADD, but instead of opting for medication, his parents enrolled him in Scientology classes to help him focus and study.

Matthew, who graduated from Harvard-Westlake, a prep school many Yalies have attended, was born into Scientology. His parents are Scientologists, and his sister and her husband work for the Church.

But the decision to be a Scientologist was his.

Around the age of 12, when Matthew was beginning to be uncertain about his religious beliefs, his best friend, who had been diagnosed with depression, tried to commit suicide in front of him.

“Her parents didn’t know what to do, so I had to bandage her arms. I had to be the one to hold her, to help her. And do you know how she tried to kill herself? She took all her Prozac. Why wasn’t it helping her? If that stuff really works, why didn’t it stop her?”

The incident solidified in Matthew the Scientologist belief that there are ways other than drugs to help people, and it cemented his connection to his faith. “We don’t have a problem with medicine — I take Advil — but we are against the use of psychiatric medicine.

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It may look like a train schedule, but the Bridge to Total Freedom conveys the path Scientologists take to spiritual enlightenment.

Instead of doping people with drugs, maybe we should look for an effective way for people to solve their problems.”

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atthew is still relatively low on the Bridge, but he wants to continue his ascent. Next in store for him are more advanced courses, part of the Scientology Academy.

Many of these courses involve auditing, or one-on-one spiritual counseling, where an auditor listens and purges a parishioner of past negative experiences using instruments called “E-meters” as aids. The goal of auditing is to reach a state of “Clear,” where one is free from hidden psychological influences.

Carol takes me to an E-meter to try it out: I hold on to two metal cylinders as she watches a needle turn to measure how my electrostatic levels change in accordance with my thoughts.

“What did you do today?” she asks me. Nothing juicy is revealed.

Beyond Clear are the “OT” or “operating thetan” levels. It’s here that Scientology gets interesting. At the OT levels, one has the ability to master Matter, Energy, Time, and Space. Today, the highest level is OT XV, but the Church keeps adding new levels as it conducts more research on the capacities and depths of the religion. Classes and exercises at the highest levels of Scientology can be practiced only

in Church headquarters.

In 1993, a lawsuit between the Church of Scientology and former Scientologist Stephen Fishman brought many OT-level documents out of secrecy. After the case, they remained unsealed and open to the public; having leaked onto the Web, they have created buzz and rampant mockery. Of particular interest is Fishman’s account of the OT III level. OT III training reveals some of Scientology’s most confidential and powerful information. At this level, Hubbard reveals his understanding of cosmology.

According to Fishman’s documents and his testimony about OT III, 75 million years ago, an evil lord Xenu ruled a Galactic Confederation of 76 planets. To overcome severe overpopulation throughout the confederation, Xenu transported many of the alien inhabitants to Earth, or “Teegeeack.” In an attempt to destroy them, he dumped them into volcanoes, which he then blew up with hydrogen bombs. Because the alien souls survived the explosion, Xenu was forced to capture them and bring them to cinema-like complexes where they were exposed to projections of false realities, which included the notions of Christ and the Devil. When the souls were eventually released, they latched on to human bodies, where they remain today. Their presence explains why we experience fear, pain, suffering, and, more generally, all the problems of the world.

Thus the goal of Scientology becomes ridding the body of parisitic alien spirits in a search for spiritual freedom.

Scientologists argue that this information has been perverted and is misunderstood and dangerous in the wrong hands, but they do not comment specifically on its veracity. Critics note that OT III training allegedly costs upwards of $15,000, which might help explain why the Church would want to keep its deepest secrets hidden, even from most of its members. Carol does not explicitly deny the Xenu tale. Instead, she refers me to a website: www.scientologymyths.info, which merely indicates that “Scientologists do not discuss this information as they have been asked not to.”

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he strangeness of its purported mythology — an attack that could apply to almost all world religions — is among the least substantial criticisms of the Church.

Many worry about what they perceive to be its forceful missionary character. When I tell Carol about two of my friends who were approached by Scientologists in Times Square, she responds, “that culture — it’s a New York thing, not a Connecticut thing.” In New Haven, they put out flyers and host events for newcomers now and then, but most novices hear about the Church through word of mouth.

More potent is the critique of the Church’s highly commercial nature, as Scientologists who want to reach advanced levels have to pay for classes, books, auditing, the E-meter — with prices increasing as one moves up the Bridge. Former Scientologists who have advanced to OT levels claim to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Jon Butler, Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of Religious History at Yale, says that the commercial nature of Scientology is “very unusual.” While he recognizes that other religions, such as Mormonism, require high tithes from its members, there is something different about Scientology. “In Scientology, they openly sell their printed materials. There is this idea of religious production.” It becomes, he says, something of a business transaction.

But Carol justifies the Church’s policies and downplays the extent

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“Scientology is masterful at cloaking its own human rights violations by framing itself as a human rights organization.” of the costs. “Because we are a new religion, we don’t have years of tradition or funds to rely on. We have to worry about paying the electricity bill! So we do ask for donations based on what people want to get.”

A $60 donation is quite common for an introductory class, but for one-on-one counseling sessions, a higher donation is requested. No concrete numbers are ever put forth.

Carol also emphasizes that much can be done in Scientology at minimal costs. Since Scientology is so firmly grounded in its scriptures, much progress can be made simply through reading and study, she says, and the center has a library where parishioners can use materials without pay. In addition, staff members and volunteers for the Church receive free and reduced costs for auditing, and parishioners can provide auditing to one another without charge.

If people are willing to put in personal effort, they do not have to be burdened financially, Carol says. “You can talk to God without our help.”

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works for the Church and is the coordinator of Connecticut branch of Youth for Human Rights International, where he works with college campuses on fundraising and spreading awareness that human rights exist —“You have no idea how many people have never even heard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!”

Most of the people Jay collaborates with are non-Scientologists, which makes their work more meaningful to him.

“It’s really not about the Church. It’s about human rights.”

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cientology is masterful at cloaking its own human rights violations by framing itself as a human rights organization,” says Stephen Kent.

Kent, Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta, is a long-standing critic of Scientology practices. His biggest concern is the conditions of the Rehabilitation Project Force, a punitive program for deviant members of the highest ranks of Scientologists, the Sea Organization. He tells me that those put in the RPF are required to work, in some cases for upwards of five years, seven days a week, eight hours a day, on top of at least five hours of study each day. In return, they are only paid one fourth as much as regular employers, and during their time of service, they are not allowed any contact with family members. Some of the reasons why people get put in the RPF are “frightening” according to Kent: striking E-meter readings, diappointing job performance, questioning of superiors.

The RPF isn’t Kent’s only cause for concern. He worries about Scientology’s violations of privacy, its intrusion into families, health risks, poor benefits, and its infringements on free speech and resistance to internal and external criticism.

“I told a Scientologist once, ‘no organization is perfect. Tell me one thing you would want to change about the Church.’ He couldn’t do it. There is an inability among members to say anything negative,” Kent says.

ay Little doesn’t look like a Scientologist to me. He is in his twenties, he is polished, he is attractive. There is something raw and energetic about him. Although he is dressed like a child of Wall Street — grey trousers, a blue sweater vest — he wears a braided leather bracelet with a turquoise stone on his left wrist, as if to declare that coveted balance between edgy and mainstream.

Like Carol, Jay wasn’t born into Scientology, and though both his parents practice, they never imposed their religious views on him. Jay came to Scientology because he had been struggling in school. Scientology courses gave him the proper study tools, and soon he went from barely passing most courses to being a high honors student.

I ask how and when Jay “officially” became a Scientologist. “You become a Scientologist when you use and apply Scientology. When I noticed that I began using the techniques of Scientology in my own life, there came a point when I said to myself, ‘Hey — I am Scientologist.’”

Jay’s involvement with the Church did not stop with coursework. When he was in high school, Carol asked him to participate in a conference for a Church-affiliated organization, Youth for Human Rights. “Until then, I had never really considered human rights an issue in the U.S.,” Jay says, but as soon as he realized how human rights were being violated even in his own neighborhood, he joined the cause. Now Jay The E-meter is used as a tool in Dianetics counseling to pinpoint negative thoughts.

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“I have no doubt that in New Haven, they truly believe they are helping people,” says Kent.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions...”

Kent describes this control as stemming from the hierarchy of the Church where all decisions are made at the top, from the reality of the Church as a “total institution.” This reality, he posits, is why Scientology is so contentious in Germany and France. “Germany and France are both countries that have experienced first-hand authoritarian regimes. They see Scientology as a threat to the democratic state itself.”

Frank Flinn, Professor in Religious Studies at the University of Washington, has a different perspective. He admits that in the past, “individuals did things that were, let’s say, ‘not quite kosher.’”

But in 1983, the Church reorganized, and certain policies were discontinued. Corruption was tamed. “Now, they are very careful — of course, in every religious group there can be people who were not created right, just think of the Catholic Church, but I am confident about saying that there are not any systematic abuses in Scientology.” France and Germany, he says, are “still living with the old image of the Church.”

Flinn, a practicing Roman Catholic himself, has spent his career interviewing three to four thousand Scientologists, and has testified on behalf of the religion in numerous court cases. Why, then, is there so much animosity toward Scientology?

“The attacks, in my judgment, stem from the reality that Scientology is a new religion, and all societies are afraid of the new because it is unknown and different.”

Carol agrees. “It’s new, so it’s interesting... the same thing happened with Christianity. Although they fed them to lions. I guess they feed us to the media.”

I

t’s bullshit,” UCLA freshman Matthew says, almost venomously. “People just don’t know what they’re talking about when they criticize Scientology. Why is there so much negativity? I honestly believe that while there are a lot of good people in the world, there are also a lot of people who don’t want to see good being done. They see that we’re doing good, but they want to keep America down so they can keep selling drugs, so they can make money….”

Hesitantly, I bring up the RPF that Kent has told me about, and Matthew sighs, as if he’s received this question before. “They only get put in it if they have done really bad things.” Matthew knows some family friends who were in the RPF for a few years. “One distributed personal files to government agencies, another stole from the Church.” When I mention the long hours, the low pay, he says, “Of course they don’t get paid a lot – they’re working for a Church! They’re not exactly doing this to make money. And they work longer hours because they’re there to learn discipline.”

We change the topic.

When I ask Matthew why he is a Scientologist, his response is interesting. It is the same response I get from Jay, the same thing countless others say in promotional videos.

“I’m a Scientologist because it works.”

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e pray that…people may believe and worship freely, so that freedom will once again be seen in our land.”

I don’t know why, but I just can’t do it. I mouth the words, but I can’t bring myself to say them out loud.

“Freedom from war, and poverty, and want. Freedom to be, freedom to do, and freedom to have.”

I wonder what is stopping me. Will I betray…my religion?

Myself?

“Freedom to use and understand man’s potential...”

But why would any God — anyone — have a problem with these words?

It is Sunday Service at the Church, and we are reciting the Prayer for Total Freedom. Eric, another of the ministers, has just led the service, having read the Creed, the doctrine of Personal Integrity, and a sermon by Hubbard on Scientology and the Group. The whole thing only lasted about 15 minutes.

Ten of us are in the room, which is usually used for introductory classes but has been set up with rows of chairs and an altar for the service. I recognize some of the faces in the group: Jay, Monica, Carol’s husband. Others are new to me. Sitting across the aisle is a boy who must be about my age, wearing a navy blue t-shirt and jeans. He keeps fiddling with the laminated sheet on which the prayer is typed.

After the service, I go up to Eric and thank him for letting me come. When I ask his last name, he simply says, “I’m just Eric — just a normal guy.”

It is this normalcy that I notice most about the religious service, a striking normalcy possessed by all the Scientologists I have met.

But when I walk out of the service back into the bookstore — when I see the volumes mass-produced for all the centers by the Church’s Bridge Publications, volumes whose covers look like they would be better suited for Hubbard’s science fiction tales — I sense an incongruity. There is a tension between the people and the products of Scientology, between the local character and the international brand.

When I tell Professor Kent that what I’ve witnessed in New Haven doesn’t seem to match up with the intentional malice, the “toxic corporate environment” that he believes to characterize the upper echelons of Scientology at its headquarters, he isn’t surprised.

“I have no doubt that in New Haven, they truly believe they are helping people. The road to hell is paved with good intentions…”

I think back to the words that Eric read in Hubbard’s Doctrine of Personal Integrity — “What is true for you is what you have observed yourself” — and wonder, what is the true nature of the Church of Scientology International, the institution, its highest levels and authorities?

Kent says of the New Haven staff, “They can’t know.”

Perhaps, then, neither can I.

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FICTION SOMETHING YOU AREN’T TELLING ME by Angelica Baker An aging actress in the midst of a bitter divorce takes her teenage daughter, Gwen, to New York City. Despite their best efforts, however, the vacation is marred by Gwen’s resentment and by her mother’s lingering guilt.

It has become abundantly clear to me, sitting in this restaurant, that my daughter is every bit as capable of being sullen on this coast as she is in Los Angeles.

She removed her sunglasses right away when I told her it was impolite to continue wearing them once the meal was served. She squinted at the brief wash of painful brightness when the white sun hit her eyes but calmly folded the shades and placed them squarely beside her silverware. By the time she lifts her eyes again, they have adjusted to the light and her blue-eyed gaze is once again still and even.

I am reminded of the first (and perhaps the only) time I ever tried to send Gwen on a time-out. I left her in her room with the blinds closed, creating that particularly depressing sort of dark that

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

fills a room when you know that there is daylight to be found outside. When I checked on her five minutes later, she was peacefully reading a Peter Rabbit book.

“No,” I had said, trying not to cringe at the wavering grasp for authority I could hear in my voice. “That’s not what this time is for. No reading.”

She had looked up at me from her reclining position on her bed and had wordlessly closed the book. Then she had shrugged ever so slightly, stood slowly and deliberately and walked to her bookshelf, replacing the book where it belonged. Without ever acknowledging my remaining presence, she had walked back to the bed and lay down again, neither annoyed nor affected by my efforts at rebuke. She just waited for me to leave. Which I did, after deciding that I had no appropriate response. She was five years old when this happened. I do not recall that I ever imposed a real time-out again.

T

he thing about Gwen’s sulking, however, is that it can’t really be called that. To refer to it as typical teenage sulking or moodiness is to be left with the feeling that you’ve overreacted, that you yourself are the immature one. She is silent without being antisocial, hostile without saying an unkind word,

she stood with a wine glass in her hand and her shoulders thrown back and told him, “My mother has just the most amazing stories about Lucille from when they were in college! Did you know that they were roommates together at Vassar?”

I looked over at her as she tittered and took another sip of her wine, hiding behind the glass. She spoke again, and the perfect lilt in her voice made me shiver.

When we got into another taxi after drinks with the man and Lucille, she murmured, “So who’s the geezer, her new sugar daddy?”

“I suppose so,” I replied. “The latest one.” I leaned forward to interrupt the driver’s frantic cell phone conversation. “We’re going to the corner of Canal and West Broadway, please.”

“This isn’t even a long drive, Mother,” she had said. Another thing about Gwen: she knows how the word ‘mother’ irks me.

“We could’ve just taken the subway.”

“It’s a vacation, Gwen,” I said. The false cheer in my voice convinces not even me, and my daughter’s head turns an almost imperceptible centimeter further away from me.

Gwen does all of these things, to be sure. The only real sign is the way her shoulders hunch when I touch her, as though every muscle in her body longs to shake me off and carry her as far from me as possible. No one besides me would see this, the way her entire body shrivels from my fingers as though they were darts of flame. To anyone else, she is almost painfully poised. To me, to her mother, she is only painful.

We are also, if we are going for truth, here because I thought we might be less likely to fixate if we were here rather than sitting at home with nothing to think of but our bitterness. withdrawn without ever refusing to do one single thing that you might want her to. She is almost a parody of the perfect child when we travel together, and has been since her babyhood. She never cried on airplanes, not even her first time – just sat there in wide-eyed silence for the entire flight.

Even now, she has not complained once that we are taking this trip to New York as planned, despite what may be called changes in our circumstances. She got on the plane with me.

She squealed with glee when we checked into our usual room in Soho and put on pajamas and padded down the hall to get our usual cups of free hot chocolate. She rose early on our first day to go shopping with me. She stood for twenty minutes in front of her favorite Vermeer at the Met with her head tilted and her face thoughtful. She put on her new dress and more makeup than usual and took a taxi with me to see Lucille’s new play at the theatre in the Village last night, and when that unbelievably dull man sitting with us tried to chat her up during the intermission

A

nd so. Here we are, sitting on a Manhattan sidewalk in April, pretending to be interested in our large blue bowls of pasta. We are here because we take a trip to New York together at least once a year. We are also, if we are going for truth, here because I thought we might be less likely to fixate if we were here rather than sitting at home with nothing to think of but our bitterness.

The fact is that Gwen’s father and I are getting a divorce. Gary, is his name. Gwen and Gary. I should have seen when I gave her a “G” name that I was endorsing their bond, giving my permission for their secret club and giving my acknowledgement that I would never be part of it. Of course, I just liked the name Gwyneth. Actually, I had pushed for Guinevere, but Gary convinced me that she would be the laughing stock of her elementary school if she had to carry around the burden of Guinevere.

So Gwyneth it was. He and I were so good at compromises back then. It boggles the mind how people change, doesn’t it?

But the divorce is no recent development. The divorce itself actually was set in motion even before Gwen and I had begun to plan our annual trip to New York. The trip would not have been canceled on account of the divorce. But the unfortunate side to the matter is that Gwen’s father – Gary, that is – chose last Saturday, the day before Easter, as the ideal moment to reveal a few choice facts to his beloved and only child. Facts such as, the divorce was your mother’s idea. Facts such as, your mother wanted a divorce because she slept with someone else, had dinner with him at the Bel Air Hotel and then spent the night upstairs in his room, and the guilt was bleeding out of her and onto anyone

The Yale Daily News Magazine October 2008

else in her path. Facts such as, the someone else with whom she spent the night was James. James, your mother’s former colleague and the father of Claire, your former best friend.

Gwen left her dinner with her father, I have no doubt, with a calm smile on her face and a few words of loving encouragement whispered in his ear. Then, she drove to her friend Anna’s, where from what I could smell later she drowned her sorrows (and perhaps her entire body) in several bottles of vodka with the occasional splash of orange juice. Rather than pass out on a sofa, she had her new boyfriend – the child with the unfortunate stringy hair and the penchant for wearing skinny jeans – drive her home at the height of her bender. She arrived in a state, what my college boyfriend used to call “uniquely drunk.” I was still awake when she clashed her way through the foyer. Something she does not know is that I never really fall asleep until she is home safely; she may think she knows everything at the ripe old age of sixteen but she does not know that.

So. I was entirely conscious for the catastrophe that was her

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struggle to make it to her bedroom. I was also conscious enough to debate letting it go. Not so long ago, I was undeniably the hip mother in residence in Gwen’s group of friends. It used to be enough that I had played the mom (the hot mom, may I add) on a TV show that was canceled before Gwen was old enough to watch. That used to be enough to make her beam at me, to make her look at me as though she’d never seen anyone more wonderful. And she met Claire on the set of that show. They would play Pretty Princess together while they waited for me or James to be done for the day, to scoop them up and take them home and pretend to be real parents again.

The fact that I had once been an actress is no longer enough for Gwen. And I was no longer working overtime to remain cool.

So that night, I got out of bed and followed Gwen’s periodic bumps and crashes through the house until I found her.

“Don’t walk by me like this is normal,” I said when she turned slowly and saw me standing in the kitchen doorway. “You don’t get to stay out until 3 a.m. without calling to tell me that

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

you’ll be doing so, and you sure as hell don’t get to come home this drunk like it’s your goddamn right. You are still sixteen and I am still your mother, and while you live in this house you do not get to behave this way. Where the hell have you been?”

“While I live in this house,” she had said. Pronouncing each word was an effort for her and yet was cloaked in contempt.

Something else she and her father have in common: the ability to maintain the higher ground even while humiliatingly plastered.

“While I live in this house,” she repeated after taking a gulp of water and spilling some down her neck, the trail of liquid disappearing into her exposed cleavage. She focused intently on each word, as though she could see it floating before her, as though she were sharpening a weapon. “While I live in this house, will you be fucking any more of my friends’ fathers? I’d just like to know in advance.”

Having been able to get that much out, she left it there and waited for my reaction. I could not see the blue of her eyes clearly in the dark kitchen, but I could see the whites shining sharply in the light from the neighbor’s window. They fixed on me, unwavering and unforgiving, and I knew that she could sense me crumble under the weight of her hatred. Without another word, she brushed past me and walked down the hallway to her room.

We woke the next morning and went to church for Easter, like we have every year since she was born. She now wears a backless yellow dress rather than the full-skirted, wide-sashed dresses I used to pick for her, but otherwise this morning never varies from a routine established years and years ago. Neither of us ever thought to suggest that we cancel our trip to New York.

The next morning, we were on a plane together.

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ell,” I say while we wait for the waiter to bring the check. “What shall we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Gwen says tonelessly, her eyes turned to the passersby on Mercer. “It’s so fucking hot, I –” “Gwen, language.”

“Sorry. I was just going to say that I don’t feel like walking anymore, really. We could go see a movie. You said you wanted to see that one about the crazy family in Brooklyn or something?” Her voice is expressionless, but she knows that movie is about a divorcing couple.

“I don’t know about a movie,” I say, letting out a sigh and reaching for my water glass. The waiter returns with the check and flirts a little with Gwen, ending with a flourish and a “Ciao bella, you come back soon, yes?”

“Is there something you aren’t telling me about you and

Fruitflies I once had an affair with a married man who took off his things facing the wall.

In the rented room, we set our aloneness ablaze, which burst in the shape of the Guernica.

At work I made him laugh and he paid me to dissect the heads from female fruit flies.

He discovered that males still courted them, faceless and all. The paper was published and I left for Spain to see the real Guernica, which I found took up an entire wall.

I tried a chain of phones over six streets, each line lighting up and dying quietly.

I once imagined us a Pangaea, more sensible fastened to another, but continental drift— wives occurred. He left me a jar of fireflies.

-Christine Kwon

The Yale Daily News Magazine October 2008

Paolo?” I laugh, and am so relieved to see her smile in response that I could cry.

“Please. You know I don’t usually like pretty,” she shoots back, glancing over to the waiters’ station and laughing at Paolo’s cocked eyebrow. “Do you think his name is really Paolo even? Like it just seems so cliché. I wonder if they reassign them a token Italian name as soon as they hire them.”

“Could be.”

“Seriously, Mom, whatever you want to do. Want to walk a little and shop? Let’s just walk.” And with that she’s up, pushing her chair into the table and folding her napkin in its place.

P

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Of course, I hated my mother too.

I hated my father more, while we’re at it.

But when I was angry, they knew.

My mother and I screamed, cried, shrieked, and threw things.

erhaps I am so unnerved by my sixteen year old daughter because she is the utter opposite from what I was at her age. Of course, I hated my mother too. I hated my father more, while we’re at it. But when I was angry, they knew. My mother and I screamed, cried, shrieked, and threw things. I may not have had the courage to stand up to my father in the same way, having watched him take his belt to my brother in my childhood, but I still made my displeasure felt.

When he stopped bothering to come home at all on Saturday nights, when my mother took to spending her days in her silk bathrobe in the study, with her cigarette holder in one hand and a martini in the other, I sure as hell made my displeasure felt. I found as many shiftless, shirtless stoners as I could, and in the seventies those weren’t hard to come by. The more working class they were, the better. My mother saw me high as frequently as she saw me studying, and when I still managed A’s I paraded them in front of her with a malicious joy, knowing that she herself had only attended UCSB because her father had called in a favor to a board member. Yes, the anger in our house was many things. But quiet it was not.

After the morning I told a boy to stay the night and my mother awoke to find a tattooed twenty-five year old making waffles on her Limoges plates, she decided it was high time I saw a therapist. I protested violently and had to be dragged kicking and screaming (almost literally) to the first session, where I chain-smoked and was determined to refuse to answer a single question. That lasted five minutes before I was pouring out my soul and explaining why my parents were singularly fucked up human beings who should never have been allowed to procreate. I saw that therapist regularly until I got married, an event I apparently took as proof that I was healed and no longer in need of psychoanalysis.

I asked Gwen to see a therapist once, right after Gary first moved out.

“If you really want me to, I’ll go,” she said in a throaty whisper, staring at her knees and worrying the fringe of her scarf between two fingers. She quickly caught herself and raised her gaze to meet my own furrowed brow.

“I don’t see the point, really,” she said with more conviction.

“But if that’s what you want, of course I can go.”

After the first session, the therapist had told me that she had never met a teenage girl with the poise and sense of self she saw in Gwen. She raved about their conversation and told me that she “couldn’t say enough” what a “perfectly delightful” girl Gwen was. Gwen saw her for three months and repeatedly reassured me that the therapist was a “really great” woman.

I do not know how to tell her that I know she’s fooling everyone. I do not know how to explain that if she convinces everyone she has not one single weakness, no one will ever think to offer her their shoulder to cry on. I am terrified that this is because, deep down, I’m afraid that trying to convince my daughter to show frailty will only highlight how completely I have shown her mine. It will seem as though I’m goading her into showing her flaws to make myself less ashamed of my own.

That is not how I see it. But that is how Gwen will see it. Of that I am relatively certain.

I

do not remember whose idea it is at first, or how we seized on this little excursion, but at some point in our dinner the subject of the Trade Center memorial is brought up and Gwen attaches to it as though it were something being put on especially for her, something that it would be inexcusable for us to miss.

“They’ll probably have stopped doing it before we come back here again,” she says. “Or at least they won’t still be doing it every night? Come on, I bet it isn’t even hard to get to the roof.

Those doors always say that an alarm will sound but it never actually does. And our room isn’t even far from the top. Mom… we have to try. We absolutely have to.”

I tell her I’m not so sure.

“Come on,” she says with a hint of disgust. “Every time we’ve come we’ve seen them. Even if we didn’t go just for them, we’d look up and see them when we were downtown. Every single year I used those buildings to get my sense of direction when we were downtown. If we’re going to keep doing this trip we can’t

The Yale Daily News Magazine October 2008

just pretend like they never happened.”

She pauses and fixes her eyes on mine.

“Mom,” she says in a mock whine, wheedling in the way she never did as a toddler. “I bet they don’t even lock the dooooor!”

I agree because of the way her face finally relaxes when she talks about it, because of the teenager’s squeaks that slide back into her speech, because of the way her smile doesn’t look like it was stretched into position with a coat hanger. I agree because I love that this is her idea, because I know that if I had suggested it, then it would have seemed like a pathetic attempt to seem madcap.

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s we tumble up the stairs we are giddy, laughing as though we were both teenagers, and for once when she laughs I can hear actual mirth. The toe of one of her sandals snags on a step and for a moment we both think she’s going to fall. She throws a hand out, involuntarily, to grab for my sleeve, but she’s already caught herself and is continuing on up. But she does grab for my sleeve.

Then all of a sudden we’ve reached the door to the roof and we burst through, finding ourselves in a cradle of skyscrapers.

There, almost directly downtown from us, are the two beams of light. They shoot up into the sky with such frankness, with a sense of purpose that scolds the rest of us. They do not seem to end but are finally absorbed by the blackness all around them, fading into wisps of light where there is nothing but darkness but you can still see the trace of their glow.

“Wow,” Gwen breathes, standing slightly in front of me.

“They’re so beautiful. God, they’re gorgeous.” I can hear her struggling not to cry. Crying in public is a cardinal sin for her; at this point, I would count as public.

“I’m glad that they did this,” she says, her eyes still on the twin streaks in the sky. I think of resting my hand on her shoulder but I know that if I saw her shrink away from me now, everything would be ruined. My fingers hover over her shoulder blade. She cannot see them, but I know that they’re there.

“Me too,” I respond. There are so many words I could offer her now; I can see them all, spread out in my head like the pieces of a puzzle just before you have begun to fit them back together.

I can pick up this piece, or that one. I can try to find a corner, or to fit as much of a border together as possible. If only I could be certain that, once I opened my mouth, I wouldn’t find myself left with six pieces that would never fit together. If only I knew that for sure, then I would tell her that not a day goes by that I don’t regret that night. I would tell her of the way her face flashed before my eyes when I loosened James’ tie, when he slipped my shirt over my head. I would tell her that each time he kissed my neck it burned, because even as he did it I was looking forward and seeing the chill in her blue eyes when she finally saw me for the woman I was. When she finally saw her mother for the first time. I would tell her how I felt when I saw my mother for the first time, and how I had hoped she would never feel the same. How I had failed, then. I would tell her all of these things if only I could be certain that she would hear them. But that is not what she needs to hear from me now. If she even needs to hear anything at all.

For now, my daughter stands in front of me. All around us, the city hums.

Renga Deliberately, I make my way through the field towards the old well.

Old well, dry mouths, and the birds in heat again: what shrieking.

Like men and women, the birds create a landscape with their suffering: blue eggs snatched warm from nests made of human hair, yours and mine.

This miscellany, the waste and waste of our lives.

Can we move? Will we?

Green rains sweeping through again…

Resist this talk of seasons.

From above, we must look like two symbols, moving in less and less light.

A bird’s eye view: not, I know, what you meant by “from above.”

-Adam Gardner and Carina del Valle Schorske

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

By Kanya Balakrishna

One writer finds out what she, some devoted medical students, and a group of local high schoolers can learn from 25 feet of small intesines and the dead body they’re in.

an you guys take me through the thorax in three minutes?” Daniel Okin, the instructor, asks a bit too enthusiastically while surveying the four sets of eager eyes focused intently on him. There is not a moment’s lag as the students launch into a three-minute recap of last week’s lesson.

Peering into the open chest cavity of the cadaver lying in front of them on the cold, steel table, the students point out the sternum, the vertebrae, and where the rib cage would have been had it not been sawed off to reveal the rubbery, deep-red organs within. With some gentle prodding from Okin and fellow teacher Adam Kaufman, they go on to identify the diaphragm, the heart, and finally the lungs.

Okin and Kaufman are impressed.

They begin today’s lesson with the lungs, launching into an explanation of the organ’s three lobes (Okin says they look like a “really cool” gang symbol that they should all start using, to which a short boy with long hair responds, “we might get beat up”). They probe their students — asking them to name diseases of the lungs. “Speak up man,” Kaufman says to a student mumbling “pneumonia.”

Then, cocking his head to one side and closing one eye, Okin reaches into the cadaver’s thoracic cavity and, with some force, pulls out a single lung. All but one of the students, a brown-haired girl, are tentative. But when she works up the courage to hold the organ in her hands, the others follow suit one by one.

Okin meets my eye. “Do you want to hold it?” he asks. I nod, tuck my notebook under my arm, and take the lung from him. It’s heavy.

The Yale Daily News Magazine October 2008

The scene is typical of a medical-school anatomy class. The centerpiece is a cadaver. Students and teachers are bent over it — all dressed in white coats and, within minutes, all sporting bloody gloves.

But the players in this particular scene are anything but typical.

Daniel Okin and Adam Kaufman are not tenured professors, but rather first-year medical students. And their captive audience does not consist of Ivy League 20-somethings, but 16- and 17-year-old high school juniors.

For one hour twice a month in this medical school anatomy lab, the dead put young, energetic New Haven public-school students and the country’s top medical students in the same room — and somehow manage to bring the class, and all the kids, to life.

The real question is: how?

J

ust minutes after I send an e-mail to Dr. Bill Stewart, my cell phone rings. “Hi, this is Bill Stewart, from Yale’s anatomy program,” the voice on the other end says. “We would love to have you come and observe our class.”

His voice is shaky, and his cadence is slow. I respond in kind, unprepared, stuttering a “thank you” as I pull a shirt over my head, attempting to get ready for a class for which I am already late. We exchange details. He tells me he looks forward to seeing me in a week. And we hang up.

For the next seven days, I try not to think about Bill Stewart, high school students, or dead bodies. But it’s difficult: not because I’m nervous, but because I’m so excited.

Stewart — the chief of the Yale School of Medicine’s section of Anatomy & Experimental Surgery — is something of a legend on the medical school campus. Medical students, all of whom have taken or are currently enrolled in the first-year anatomy class he has taught for the past 30 years, rave about his engaging teaching style, his approachability, and his freshlybaked sugar cookies. And in whispers, they all tell me that professors like Stewart are reason enough to come to Yale.

In addition to teaching medical school students, Stewart heads the program that I am interested in visiting — a partnership between the School of Medicine and a New Haven public school that allows high school juniors to take anatomy classes taught by first- and second-year medical students. What makes this program unique is that it isn’t a typical chalkboard-and-diagram-only class. These kids

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learn anatomy using real cadavers.

The walk from Yale College’s campus to the School of Medicine down College Street-turned-Congress Avenue on a blustery Thursday afternoon in November is inexplicably nerve-wracking for me. Maybe it’s because I am worried that as I start to daydream, I’ll become victim to a speeding car while trying to cross the bridge over I-91. Maybe it’s because I know that this particular day, the walk will culminate in a laboratory filled with high school students and dissected cadavers. But most likely, it’s because this walk has, in many ways, been my dream since I was old enough to answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I’ve always had only one real answer: I want to be a doctor.

On this first visit to anatomy class, I am a couple of minutes early. I walk into the four-yearold, $200 million Anylan Center, sign in at the front desk, and tell the security guard that I am looking for Bill Stewart. He doesn’t miss a beat. “Anatomy labs are upstairs on the third floor, straight ahead. You’ll find him there.” Sure enough, just a few paces down a long, white hallway, I peer awkwardly into the first room on the left to see a dress shirt- and bowtie-clad Stewart at his desk, talking loudly on his phone.

I wait outside his door in the hall (linoleum floors, walls dotted with a donor’s amateur art, imposing steel doors leading to incubators and cold rooms) — it is chilly, quiet, and lifeless, save for a few medical students standing in a circle about 20 feet away from me.

Somewhere in his early sixties, Professor Stewart is of average build, average height, and average hair color — but he walks with a cane. When I enter his tiny, cluttered office, he smiles warmly, pushes himself up from his chair, and shakes my hand. Speaking takes obvious effort for him, but he does so frequently, confidently, and articulately. This is all the result of a tumor on his spine that had to be surgically removed in February of 2007 — an illness that prevented him from teaching, kept him from his research, and hindered his ability to tie his beloved bow ties for over a semester.

I am standing in the hall with Stewart when the door opens. In walks Shirley Neighbors followed by a sea of 25 of her Hill Regional Career High School juniors, all wearing white lab coats and talking nonstop — about school, about boys, about what the cafeteria served

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“Are you going to pass out?” he asks.

Don’t worry, I tell him, I want to be a doctor someday.

“That doesn’t always matter,” he replies. for lunch. All the students pause to greet Stewart as they walk by.

The once-dead hallway is replaced by a roomful of exuberance and life.

He asks me if I’ve ever seen a body before. I say no. And despite my smile, my stomach jumps.

Stewart’s booming voice silences the hallway as the Career students and about 10 medical students stand around in small groups.

“Yo!” he says loudly, bringing all conversation to a halt. I smile from among the students, who eye me and my notebook. Stewart welcomes the students and then hands the floor to Terry Huynh, who, along with fellow second-year medical student LJ McIntosh, is coordinating the high school anatomy class this year. Huynh tells them today’s focus will be the abdomen, reminds them they have a test next week, and emphasizes the importance of gloves and a lab coat.

Students file into the lab — ultra-modern, with fluorescent lighting and stark white floors — grabbing a pair of blue latex gloves from a box on the wall on the way. All of the three connecting rooms contain 12 silver metal cases, each of which bears an uncanny

resemblance to a barbeque grill, that soon reveal themselves to be homes for the dozens of cadavers tucked inconspicuously away until class begins. Every lab also boasts half a dozen brand-new computers, which the students use to take tests that cover material they learn during the lab sessions. The room is bright and sterile, but, perhaps because of the initial chill of the hallway, I expected much worse from a room containing so much death.

I am instructed to walk down the hall with the medical students — some also eye me suspiciously — to get a white coat from a nearby closet. As I prepare to enter the lab, Stewart stops me. “Are you going to pass out?” he asks. Don’t worry, I tell him, I want to be a doctor someday. “That doesn’t always matter,” he replies. He and Terry both smile at me knowingly.

As I walk around, struggling to pull on my own gloves, I watch the Career juniors identify the medical students they’ve worked with in the past and circle around them and their large silver cases. I approach a group led by two first-year students surrounded by four kids and hesitantly peer over their shoulders to get a good look at the cadaver. My stomach is completely still. I am unfazed — and ridiculously intrigued.

B

ill Stewart’s high school anatomy class began in 1993 through a collaboration between Stewart and Neighbors, a long-time teacher at Career. According to Yale’s Director of Public Partnerships, Claudia Merson, who calls herself the program’s “midwife,” the idea for the class was born after Neighbors, who always had a keen interest in anatomy, completed a summer internship with Stewart. Realizing that her students could uniquely

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benefit from hands-on lessons, she and Stewart sat down and developed the program.

“What’s totally perfect about it [is]… it has everyone doing what they do best,” says Merson, who more than once praised Stewart as an “unsung hero.”

Three years later, a formal partnership between the Yale School of Medicine and Hill Regional Career High School — the former, one of the foremost institutions of teaching and research in the world, and the latter, an urban public school in a system constantly struggling for funding and resources — was enacted through an agreement signed December 4, 1996 by New Haven Public Schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo, Yale President Richard Levin, Career Principal Charles Williams and the then-Deans of the Yale School of Medicine and the Yale School of Nursing.

The document pledged to “promote the vitality of the City of New Haven, which is our home” and made provisions for increased public transportation between the medical school and Career, as well as the exchange of library and recreational facilities at both institutions. In fact, medical school faculty and staff are still spotted at Career from time to time — swimming in the high school’s pool and running on the indoor track.

Today, the partnership continues to evolve and grow. In addition to the anatomy class, Career students can receive training to become emergency medical technicians and attend the Yale Scholar Program, a three-week residential summer science camp held on campus. Other New Haven schools also collaborate with the University — students from Coop Arts and Humanities High School, for example, have a relationship with Yale’s art galleries through which they visit the sites and work closely with the curators.

Merson refers to each of these as a “win-win” collaboration.

W

ide-eyed first-year medical students seem to suddenly become wise, seasoned teachers as the class continues that Thursday afternoon. I am hovering behind a group of four tentative Career juniors — two girls, two boys, all brown-haired and white — as Okin and Kaufman unwrap the plastic and gauze that envelops their donor’s body. The cadaver’s skin is drained of blood and almost mummy-like, and because its abdomen has been dissected, its outmost layer is balanced precariously over its internal organs. The scent of formaldehyde is almost overwhelming. I soon learn that the donor, who the students simply refer to as “sir,” died an old man.

After the lung is passed around — and I have taken off my bloodstained glove so I can continue writing — the kids run their hands along 25 feet of small intestine as Okin and Kaufman point out fat deposits that indicate that the donor had unhealthy eating patterns.

The students laugh at Okin’s explanation of the unidirectional movement of food during digestion — “mouth to anus, not anus to mouth.”

Next up: the appendix, which the kids find surprisingly small

and unremarkable. They are far more interested in the liver, which is passed around while Okin and Kaufman explain the link between alcohol and the disease cirrhosis.

“You don’t want to drink too much,” Okin instructs the students authoritatively while catching my eye, “because it’s really bad for you.”

One boy looks at the body and then at his classmates as he tells them that his uncle had cirrhosis of the liver. The group first responds with uncomfortable laughs, but in a minute, the reality of the disease presented in the dead man’s body sets in. The kids start racing through questions about whether alcohol could affect them like it affected the man lying on the table — an undeniable moment of self-reflection.

When Stewart walks up to the group, his cane swinging in front of him, to encourage the students to look at the color around the heart’s bicuspid valve, Okin and Kaufman quickly revert to being

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doesn’t help.

“Every time I talk to somebody, they want to be a cardiologist or something along those lines,” he says.

But Viscuso doesn’t. He wants to be a journalist. Still, being in this class — deconstructing the complex curriculum, living up to the expectations of the “brilliant minds” at Yale — is a “humbling” and meaningful experience for him.

He says the quick, enthusiastic responses that he and his classmates deliver every time a question is posed to them are partially because they’re trying to show their intelligence in front of the medical students. But the setting — the cadavers — contributes to the unique interaction between the students as well, he says.

“Subconsciously, it’s running through your mind that it is a dead body in front of you,” Viscuso reflects. “It was a living person at one time. And those people loaning their body to you for you to benefit intellectually really humbles you.”

Okin says he can best assess the way working with cadavers is affecting the class by watching what he calls “their transformation” in the last several weeks. At first, he said holding class in a room “filled with dead people” made the Career students cautious and scared. But within just a few sessions, that hesitance transformed into inquisitiveness.

“Over time, it’s really amazing because the presence of those dead people has inspired them to become curious about the human body,” he says.

T students first and teachers second as they fire a series of questions at their anatomy guru.

Stewart tells the students they only have a few minutes left.

“Why does this class always get out so fast?” one student in another group asks.

Okin and Kaufman race through the last few minutes of their lesson, an upright skeleton now accompanying the flat cadaver as they quickly explain the kidney, the pancreas, and the gall bladder. The kids and I look on in awe as they remove each organ one by one, discuss it, and place it back into the cadaver’s abdominal cavity.

Okin then sums up the allure of the human body in just a few words, something that can only be captured by learning with cadavers, rather than with diagrams, or even 3-D models — an “up close and personal” approach which 17-year-old Chris Viscuso, who is taking the class, says is one of the greatest aspects of the lab sessions. “[There’s] nowhere to start,” he says, reassuring a student who cannot find a particular organ in the last 30 seconds of class.

“Everything is connected.”

V

iscuso says the class is in constant demand at Career High School where — because of New Haven’s practice of designating high schools to focus on certain professions or fields — most of the students are already inclined toward careers in health. The fact that there are only 40 or so seats for 800 students

he discussion surrounding the decision to donate your body to science is not a new one, and while I probed the medical students about the level of respect they accord to their donors and the seriousness with which they communicate this to the Career students, I am less fascinated by that debate than by the concept of using cadavers for study at all, especially at the high school level. Yes, it is clear that the students are responding so well and so vibrantly to the course partly because they are being taught by people that they feel like they can relate to, but every single one of them is also motivated by the half-dissected body lying on the cold table in front of them.

But how can something so dead — so depressing — be such a motivating tool for everyone in the room, myself wholeheartedly included?

How do the dead bring a young, vibrant class of high school juniors to life?

T

he second time I visit Bill Stewart and the anatomy class, three weeks later, I am running a few minutes late, and I enter the building at the same time as a long line of Career students, once again led by Shirley Neighbors. She greets me warmly and asks about my Thanksgiving break. The dynamic between the medical students and me is different this time. They are now familiar with my task and my notebook, so they circle around, ask me questions about undergraduate life, my work with the Yale Daily News, and, above all, whether they are going to see their names in print eventually. I tell them I hope so as much as they do.

After the customary “Yo!” from Stewart, the kids enter the anatomy lab, each one gets on a computer, and they embark on a 40-point test that features high-resolution images of the human body and asks questions on everything from the effects of alcohol

The Yale Daily News Magazine October 2008

on the liver to the purpose of an electrocardiogram. When the kids raise their hands, one of the medical students leaves my side to rush over to answer their questions. “Now I know what it’s like to be a teacher,” Okin says.

Stewart comes over to stand with us and Okin’s friend Badri Modi, another first-year medical student, jokes about the test. “Is it embarrassing that some of the questions are too hard for me?” he asks. “There’s this show now,” Stewart begins with a smile, “called ‘Are You Smarter than a 5th grader?’ In your case, I guess the answer is no.”

After the test is over and the Career students join the medical students around the cadavers, I once again walk over to Okin’s group, but this time he is teaching with Modi and there are nine juniors huddled around them — seven girls, two boys; eight black, one Latina. These kids are confident and loud, firing responses to every question Okin and Modi throw at them. And some of them are a bit love-struck. Modi leans over at one point and whispers to me loudly.

“Here’s something really good for your story. All the girls have a crush on Mike,” he says, pointing to his blond friend, another medical student, standing nearby, who looks over and shakes his head.

I ask the Career student standing next to me if he studied for the test. He says he did not but then tells me his score — well above the average — and proceeds to demonstrate for the rest of the group the difference between plantar flexing and dorsi flexing (standing on your toes versus on flat feet). He studied. And now, he is using the cadaver to show off the fruits of his labor to his classmates.

Again, as they poke and prod, the students’ fascination with the lifeless cadaver suddenly unnerves me, mostly because they are so at ease with the body — really, with death. But as an aspiring doctor, it inspires me all the same. One girl reaches into the opened leg to run her hand along the donor’s rectus femoris as her classmates look on.

As Okin and Modi begin to discuss the muscles in the lower leg, she suddenly looks up, as if the cadaver reminds her of something. What happens in my leg when I get shin splints from running, she wants to know — again, self-reflection.

As co-coordinator LJ McIntosh comes over to end the class, Modi says: “Y’all are geniuses.”

I

leave the building with Okin, Modi, and their cute friend Mike (six girls say goodbye to him in succession), and when the latter two leave to get lunch, Okin accompanies me as I walk on York Street away from the medical school and Yale-New Haven Hospital toward the undergraduate campus. I tell him that, like many of the kids, being around the cadavers, watching him and his peers demystify both the most complex and the most mundane of bodily functions, reinforced my desire to become a physician.

After taking one look at the worry on my face, he reassures me that I will get into medical school, despite trading my grade point average in the sciences for a full-time (but unpaid) job editing a campus newspaper.

When I ask why he chose to be a part of the high school anatomy program, Okin says teaching the material helps him remember it better; that he’s glad to be a part of a program that provides an unparalleled opportunity for urban public school students; that, to him, being a doctor is about so much more than just memorizing textbooks. But most of all, he says, his reason is intellectual, philosophical — something he wants the Career students to learn, share, and truly understand. It’s an opportunity to experience the human

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body, he says, to gain the respect for it that made him choose the field of medicine in the first place.

And that is how the dead bodies give life — through learning.

They act not just as motivation for the young to learn in pursuit of a more fulfilling life. But they are also a chance to understand the complex, fascinating interplay that governs the function of the human body — something that plays some role in every bright-eyed student’s decision to become a doctor, including mine.

But what about the bodies inspires such curiosity in the Career students? The answer is simple: that they want to learn more about themselves.

Everyone who sets foot in the anatomy lab — the high school students, the medical students, even me — can see themselves in the bodies, whether they have shin splints from running or an uncle with cirrhosis of the liver. We look into the bodies and can’t help but imagine lying on that table, especially because, dissected, we would not look that different from the white, formaldehyde-scented cadavers before us.

“No matter how much you try not to,” Okin says, “it’s hard not to see yourself on the table.”

So from the cadavers, we get the most important form of learning — learning about ourselves.

And death becomes the stuff that life is made of.

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October 2008 The Yale Daily News Magazine

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT ROMEO MUST DIE by David Thier Thousands of men will strive to be Romeo, and each one of them will fail. Balancing fight choreography with large draughts of whiskey, David Thier meditates on the meaning of one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragic lovers. tage lights shine through the small bottle of Scotch that serves as my poison. I take a moment — have to make this one count.

Tip the long, little bottle back on my teeth and pour the whole two ounces out at once. A half second later, a jet of Scotch and phlegm shoots out of my nose. Juliet will not like that.

Seven vials, seven deaths, seven trips to the apothecary at the corner of Howe and Elm to get a nip of Johnny Walker Red Label and a can of Red Bull. It’s a small audience for our last show, smaller after the drizzle during the fight scene. At the beginning we said we would be glad if ten people showed up, but after last night’s house of 260, the scattered chuckles and big, bare spots on the grass are dispiriting. Small houses are intimate, we always tell ourselves.

Small houses are crap. To be an actor is to demand that everyone in the world stand up and notice how great you are, and if they aren’t parking a mile away to catch a glimpse of your spectacle, it’s a failure. If they are parking a mile away, you require two. At least I do. I want to be a hero, but I’m a coward, so I try and pretend to be one. Maybe that’s why I found myself drawn to Romeo — not because he is a hero, but because he wants to be one so badly. It’s a difference in commitment.

I’m willing to give up Friday and Saturday nights for a whole month to keep my ego alive. Romeo is willing to die. That’s an actor.

O

n a good night, there is maybe one second of honesty in my performance. On a great night, maybe two. They’re very brief — a gesture made with purpose, a line spoken without thinking, a rare laugh. It’s the feeling, for one second, that there is something real. Tonight there haven’t been any. I’ve dropped into my lower register to signify seriousness, I’ve fallen down at the proper times and stood up purposefully at others, and I’ve elicited laughs on the proper lines, but Romeo has been a step ahead of me the whole time, waiting for me to catch up.

Tonight there were these two little kids by the front platform. “Drink it!” they kept saying during my last speech. They saw right through me. Little shits.

Romeo feels the same pressure. The heroic death he knows he deserves is always just out of his grasp. Hotspur dies in battle, Caesar is stabbed by a pack of conspirators that includes his closest friend, even a villain like Macbeth is immortalized when his grim visage slides down a pike. Romeo is not so lucky. Killed while pursuing true love in a misty orchard? No. Slain by his family’s great enemy — Tybalt, the Prince of Cats — while defending the honor of his fallen comrade? No. Executed for slaying the Prince of Cats while defending the honor of his fallen comrade? No. The world seems intent on preventing him from playing his part, but he will have his death.

Cold, furious determination carries Romeo from Mantua to the tomb. Short lines, direct and purposeful. He had the apothecary plan worked out long before.

He memorializes himself in a letter he leaves with his servant. Somebody is in the tomb — that wasn’t in the plan. Death at the hands of some stranger isn’t the death for Romeo.

It goes: block one, block six, stomach cut, two, three, two, three, zing, shoulder check, kidney punch, duck, radar, and stab.

For once the fight didn’t blow, small victory there. The rest, though, all those little moments that never felt quite right, they’ll never feel quite right now. It’s all behind me: “I defy you stars,” the exit in 4.3, the fall in 4.1, picking up the sword in 3.1, the words “untimely death” in 1.4. The Scotch burns my nose and throat — that’s behind me too.

Fighting is something Romeo can handle, but the tomb is new territory for him.

He sees Juliet, laid out in white on the bier. She’s calm, delicate, and small. For a moment, the hero disappears and he’s a little boy, clutching a vial of poison, staring at the girl he met at a party last week. She has been dead for 41 hours and 59 minutes. Her lips are still red. “Why art thou yet so fair?”

Romeo holds strong. This is, after all, his tragedy. He won’t fail. His thoughts move fast, as always. A final moment of desperate logic.

“Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, and that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps thee here in dark to be his paramour?”

YES, comes Romeo’s silent answer.

“For fear of that, I will still stay with thee, and never from this palace of dim night depart again.”

With that contrivance, he’s made himself a hero again. He plays his part. A hug, a kiss, a speech, and poison.

His stomach tightens. The poison disperses itself as violently as hasty powder fired. He tries to speak his last soliloquy.

He musters an “O.” This is all wrong. Mark Antony had a whole scene after he stabbed himself. What does Romeo get?

“True apothecary, thy drugs are quick.”

His last words are about pharmaceutical quality.

Come on, kid, something, anything.

Has to be quick, a gesture, maybe. One final gesture. Romeo and I force our last line through the Scotch and poison: “Thus with a kiss, I die.” We don’t make it to the kiss. Romeo dies. I mess things up and fall with my arm just high enough to make it weird for Juliet to get up. Damnit. All I can do now is go limp, so I do. Dying is a relief, at least. Juliet wakes, some yelling, she lifts my head and kisses my lips. A guttural thrust, a clatter, and she joins me. Nothing but waiting left. The parents enter, Montague moans, and I can feel his fingers in my hair. The prince’s speech, the friar’s speech, the amazement, the reconciliation, the final couplet, a pause. I want to slam my boot on the platform to let them know we’re done.

They get it. Applause starts up. I open my eyes and see Lydia sitting on top of me, the lights on the roof shining around her long mermaid hair.

“That’s it,” she half smiles.

“Yep,” I half respond.

The company jogs around the circle, bows to the other side of the audience, then takes a seat. The clapping gets a little louder

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as we both take an awkward bow. Scattered woos. I jog off with Juliet and drop my sweaty J. Crew T-shirt on a pile with my jackets. The show was bad, but farewell that. Romeo has his death.

I find my girlfriend by the picnic tables.

She’s been to five of seven shows. She gives me a kiss.

After a quick strike, we have a small party to distribute accolades and stipends, but there are people missing now. Their absence is palpable, though they are only half-people: no bodies, no pasts, no futures, just passions. One of them is a boy, some-

where between sixteen and eighteen years old, lying among hostas and petunias in a stone circle. No hundred-dollar check for him, no bacon and onion pizza, no Sam Adams Summer Ale. He was bigger than that, or at least he thought he was. He said “I will die for love,” and he meant it.

T

here are a few moments of honesty in Romeo’s performance, all with Juliet. They’re very brief: a kiss in a tomb, a goodbye in an orchard, a plea on a balcony. He has the feeling, for one second, that there is something real. Those

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moments are enough. He becomes the Romeo he imagines himself to be, and the Romeo we need him to be. A million more young men will strive after those moments, and like me, they will fail. It will be okay.

Each night, Romeo will die for their sins.

I go back to into the garden. The lights, platforms, microphones, and spectators are all gone. It’s empty save a small plastic bottle half-buried in the dirt, just to the right of where the center platform was. The other six I threw out, but this one I tuck into my pocket for the melancholy of it. I think better of that and throw it out.

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BACKPAGE

THE ONLY MATH YOU’LL EVER NEED by Hunter Wolk Nothing says “cool” like ink-stained trousers and a subjunctive fetish. But fear not! Hunter Wolk is uniquely placed to put you on the path to coolness. Just don’t think this means you can talk to him in public. o, you made it to Yale, a school that, no matter your scholastic criteria, at least avoids the twin pitfalls of not-mattering and sucking. Exciting, huh? But stay sharp, Yalie, and keep your wits about you — there are still a few obstacles to hurdle. And I’m not talking about fending off the aggressive (yet romantic?) courting rituals of the a cappella groups, struggling to distinguish your Erlstad from your Ektorp at IKEA, or trying to determine whether your roommates are (if male) cool, or (if female) prettier than you. I’m talking about a problem that the self-conscious young adults at Yale (Or is that just me? Is it just me!?) always seem to be grappling with: distinguishing yourself.

So how do you distinguish yourself? A loud, artsy t-shirt, perhaps? Nope. Not when that kid over there has a loud, artsy t-shirt and suspenders. Not with an Ektorp, that’s for sure: Everybody and their roommate’s mom has one of those. Many a Yalie may attempt to express identity with some painstakingly chosen room posters, but they run the risk of displaying tastes too mainstream (Noooo…you liked “The Dark Knight” too!?) or too disingenuous (Audrey Hepburn, huh? So you must have seen a bunch of her movies, then. Some of her movies? One of her movies?). The brave ones might opt for distinctive idiosyncrasies, which proves to be a risky tactic. Positioning yourself as “that asshole in section,”1 for instance, is probably not a winning strategy. Refusing to shower might be sort of distinguished, but then few would applaud you for it.

Clearly, one has to walk a very fine line to succeed. I’d go so far as to say that the science of being cool is an art. Or… the art of being cool is a science. Huh. Regardless, it’s a complex process. But fear not — the YDN Magazine scientists have spent many a sleepless night searching for a solution, and they’ve finally developed an equation that just about any Joe or Jane Yale can use to achieve genuine coolness:

(Iv + 5Mi)(Sin (Fs)) + JT(Pi + C)3 + hc - 14 27 + DE2VGp + hfp Where: Iv = # of vintage items owned Mi = hours spent listening to indie music/week Fs = # of flannel shirts owned hc = hipster cred (i.e., you enjoy Sufjan Stevens) hfp = hipster faux pas (i.e., you pronounce it Suff – jan)

JT = tightness of jeans (scored 1-9) Pi = # of ironic possessions C = pairs of chuck taylors VGp = video game prowess DE = high school debate experience

Figure A

Like the condoms of questionable brand hung so lovingly in the entrance halls, the formula is 97% accurate with correct usage and is highly recommended by experts. So try it out; don’t be shy. And if it ends up that your coolness quotient just isn’t up to snuff, not to worry: Flannel shirts are cheaper than ever.

1

A good rule of thumb: If you can’t spot the section asshole, you are the section asshole.

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