The Daily Egyptian - April 5, 2023

THE Daily Egyptian

p. 2

Lonelinesss: A Modern Torture Device

Salem after the tornado: A town that sticks together when things are torn apart

A cool breeze swept through the morning air of Sunday, April 2, as residents of Salem’s “The Orchard” neighborhood walked through the streets, taking in the sights of their shattered homes and speaking to whomever they saw.

According to the National Weather Service, a much different kind of wind rampaged through the south side of Salem on March 31: a confirmed EF1 tornado, one of about 50 twisters, some of them catastrophic, that swept the Midwest and South, killing at least 32 people.

While much of the damage in Salem was concentrated on a small radius inside town, there were still victims outside of it, like the Henns.

Brooke Henn said, “You could hear, it was coming diagonal this way.”

Back in town, Ada Wethorford, Jason and Deborah Vaughn, and Shirley Sweet stood together on a central corner and talked about the night of the storm together. Many residents of “The Orchard” had little to no warning before it blew through.

Jessica Schoonover said, “Pretty much as soon as the siren started sounding, the tornado, the sound of the tornado, completely drowned it out.”

Donald Linder said, “Before I could even get out of my chair, it hit… I didn’t even have time to get to the bedroom.”

Mayor Nic Farley said there was only a few minutes of warning.

“We got the alert from the National Weather Service at 8:09 PM. At 8:14 was the first confirmed report of a funnel cloud.”

The storm passed as quickly as it came. The high winds blew a tree through Shelley Westman’s home, and destroyed three storage sheds and a fence.

Westman said that about 30 seconds

after the tornado sirens went off, her family lost power. They then took shelter and in “no time” the noises were over.

“It was just a sudden occurrence that didn’t last long, and it was over and done. Within five minutes, it was over and done, everything, if that long,” Westman said.

As soon as the storm was over and each knew they were ok, many residents went to make sure everybody else was too.

“As soon as it hit, I went outside and all the neighbors had come out and everyone was checking on everybody, I mean, pretty much instantly,” Linder said.

Jason Vaughn said, “As soon as

it was over, it was dead silent. All I could hear was the neighbor here hollering, ‘help, she’s trapped.’ I don’t even know if I touched the ground the whole way across here. She was in her house, Jeff [another resident] was out here. It was just chaos.”

Downed tree limbs and insulation littered the yards of several residents. Odder objects, such as toys and books, layed in the yards of others, while chunks of tin were suspended high in trees. The roof, insulation and miscellaneous objects were all displaced from a storage complex, which was devastated by the storm.

Schoonover and Linder lost the front porch of their house and still had neither power nor gas nearly two days after it hit.

“We’re the only ones left on the block. Everyone else has moved out,” Schoonover said.

Other houses in the surrounding area were also affected. One anonymous Salem resident’s home was moved completely off its foundation and detached entirely from the garage. Another had a massive tree fall, crushing the carport and the cars inside, as well as damaging the main roof.

Jeremiah Gibson, an SIU alum and sixth generation farmer in Salem, lost a machine shed, while the Henns lost a large tree and had damage to the ceiling and roof of their home. The unpredictability of tornadoes was on full display in Gibson’s case.

He said, “It literally picked up that whole building and threw it over there, and left the wrenches sitting up there on the sprayer… it was like, ‘ah, just leave me here.’”

There was a swift response from the city; Farley said that “within an hour”, there were dozens of emergency services personnel “going door to door to make sure nobody was hurt.”

p. 3 Book bans in a polarized age

p. 10 SIU Rugby Teams Host Annual AllFools Tournament

p. 12

“Cowboy butts drive me nuts”

Ryan GRieseR RGRieseR@dailyeGyptian com

Bud Miller (right), owner of Midwestern BBQ, works with Royce Bringwald (left) to clean up the remains of his local barbeque place that suffered damage from the Mar. 31 storm that touched down April 2, 2023 in Salem, Ill. “...They are already donating,” Miller said. “If I can get enough I’ll start it up somewhere else in Salem, they want me to really bad… ” Lylee Gibbs | @lyleegibbsphotography

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Lonelinesss: A Modern Torture Device

Daniel Bethers DBethers@Dailyegyptian com

The concept of loneliness in modern times is often felt close to home, even in times of instantaneous connection. It’s a knot in your chest when you step into a silent room with no posters to look up to, and not a pigment of paint to color the walls. It’s a lack of personal effects, projects, or little games, the kind that gives you the feeling a person doesn’t have so much as a picture to put to frame. Solitude coils through the air like dust in an abandoned warehouse, and rests its heavy tendrils on your shoulders, nests in your hair, weaves itself in and out of each quiet moment until you feel the staccato shifting from second to second, thought to thought. Until you’ve lost even the rhythm of your own heart and can feel nothing but the time, abrasive, and ceaseless as it flows against your mind, with not another soul to tell you what is real. If too prolonged, solitude can be the death of, not only our mind, but the purpose of it: To relate, to compare, and to feel things. To see another person and know that you’re one too.

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them, to come up with imaginary friends to talk to. If there’s an insect in your cell you become very emotionally tied to anything else living because you’re so desperate for any kind of relational experience in you know, nightmares, hallucinations. extreme stress, and pacing. And really, like, people that I talked to and I myself became, you know, often just kind of risen, reduced to like a feeling of an animal in a cage; just desperate, pacing back and forth, desperate for any sign of life outside of the confines of that cell.”

condemned the United States for it’s massive excess of prisoners in longterm solitary confinement.

However, the U.S. has declined to ratify the Convention Against Torture, as well as many other U.N. documents despite often sponsoring them. The U.S. often writes in clauses and conditions exempting itself, but, as an increasing number of studies have connected the practice to severe psychological damage, modern movements have begun to push officials to end the practice.

According to the famous philosopher Hegel, true consciousness is only achieved in the presence of another, so that both minds know that they are something more than the objects which so easily fool our minds, slipping in and out of our awareness from moment to moment. The mind is a muscle that withers just the same as a person’s limbs might in a tiny seven by ten foot cell, smaller than a parking lot space.

This is the world Sarah Shourd, a trauma-informed investigative journalist and longtime anit-solitary confinement activist, left at the end of her 410 day stay in solitary confinement at Iran’s Evin prison, where she was taken as a political prisoner, after her group was snatched from a tourist site near the Iran border with Northern Iraqi Kurdistan.

She was abducted just as Iran’s Green movement sprang up in response to the controversy of Iran’s 2009 presidential election, which kept the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power through results nearly universally believed to be fraudulent. This, combined with escalating nuclear tensions at the time caused the country to lash out like a cornered animal, finding Sarah Shourd, who was an anti-war journalist and ESL teacher at the The International School Of Choueifat, guilty of espionage.

In an interview with the Daily Egyptian on her recent visit to campus, Shroud said:

“The way that I adapted, and the tools that I developed to keep myself on track and keep myself from going over the edge of sanity are very similar to people that I’ve interviewed in this country. You know, a human being locked in a small cell has only you know, so many things to do. You start to talk to your body parts and name

Although Iran’s government could procure no evidence for its claims, Shourd was kept in complete isolation for 22-23 hours a day in a cell with a metal grate over the window. Her only interactions were with her interrogators, and occasionally with her fellow detainees. The right to visit the latter group, which included her then-finance Shane Bauer, only came after she went on a week-long hunger strike, which won her only a handful of minutes blindfolded in a padded cell with them. Eventually daily half hour visits were arranged in an open air cell, though Shourd was in such a powerless state that she could never be entirely sure they would continue to happen.

“We all need to feel belonging and connection: we are a social species. When we don’t feel belonging, when we feel hated and targeted and devalued, we have nothing to believe in and nothing to direct us. Some people will endure because they, at some point, have enough love, or a strong enough belief system can overcome that, but the vast majority of people decompensate [lose the ability to maintain normal psychological defenses] and turn on themselves. They become their own torturers. The suicide rate in solitary confinement is much higher than in general prison. People self-mutilate. People that go in with mental illness become more and more mentally ill until they are near catatonic.”

On Sept 14, 2010, the Iranian government released Shourd for a sum of $500,000 dollars, paid by the government of Oman. She could reasonably have thought herself free from the barbarous clutches of one of the West’s greatest villains - Iran, a rogue state responsible for funding a litany of terrorist groups and violently foisting its theocracy on democracyloving Iranians. What she discovered upon her return home was that, in the United States, the practice was standardized: used casually as a tool to separate inmates in U.S. prisons.

The United Nations’ Convention Against Torture defines torture as any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person” for information, punishment, intimidation, or for a reason based on discrimination. This includes solitary confinement, and the UN Committee Against Torture has repeatedly

“Solitary confinement as a practice was invented in the United States. It was invented by the Quakers at the Walnut Street jail, which later became the Eastern [State] penitentiary, which is now a museum in Philadelphia,” Shourd said. “They thought that leaving someone in isolation would help people find their inner relationship to God. But they quickly saw that the opposite happened; that people lost their minds and hurt themselves and decompensated. We’ve exported this model, so the conditions that I was in, in Evin prison in Tehran, for 410 days, are very similar to the conditions in this country. Except people are put in solitary in this country far longer. I mean, I was in for over a year. People here are in solitary for decades for petty offenses, an offense being speaking up for their rights or organizing in some way.”

According to a 2021 Yale Law School study, approximately 45,000 prisoners are held in solitary confinement in the U.S. (a figure that includes juveniles). Solitary confinement being defined as isolation for 22 hours a day or more for a period for 15 days or more.

As recently as 2022, Alfred Woodfox, a survivor of 42 years in solitary confinement, died of Covid-19 related illness, only 5 years after a plea deal for his unsettled case allowed him to walk free again. Three separate indictments allowed his torment to continue for decades, due to evidence against him often proving unreliable in the case of his bank robbery and manslaughter charges. He was a member of the Black Panthers, having encountered them in a New York jail before he was transferred to his permanent cell at Louisiana State Penitentiary, or “Angola”, the name of the slave plantation the prison replaced.

“Some of them [people in solitary confinement] had connections to the Black Panther Party and more like leftist political movements, and were doing prison organizing, and that’s perceived as a threat to the control that prison administration has over incarcerated populations,” said Sara Vogel, an editor for Solitary Watch, a group of journalists and researchers (including Shourd) that scrutinize the use of solitary confinement in the justice system.

Book bans in a polarized age

anything outside of the ordinary. Here at the university, we don’t really have that trouble, but if I were a high school or elementary school librarian and I wanted to teach about all people and ideas, I’m going to get challenged and it’s going to be a hassle and I might lose my job,” he said.

According to Pollitz, the American Library Association (ALA) holds an annual Banned Book Week in autumn to raise awareness of commonly banned books, with the 2023 week set for October 1-7. He said, while there will be events at that time celebrating banned books, there is plenty that can be done currently against bans.

“You can fight censorship,” He said. “You can go to school board meetings, you can write letters, you can advocate for the free and open exchange of information. Libraries in the past haven’t always been the best, but it is our mission to provide for the free exchange of information, and that makes us stronger as a country.”

The Illinois State House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday, March 22, cutting the distribution of state funds to libraries who ban materials due to partisan pressure.

The bill comes as, at the end of March, all of Illinois’ neighboring states: Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin have approved bills strengthening the ability of parent and advocacy groups to ban books or make it easier to prosecute those who disregard these bans.

“I think it’s alarming,” said Illinois State Representative Anne Stava-Murray. “I think everyone should be alarmed. The free exchange of ideas from diverse perspectives is fundamental to our democracy.”

Stava-Murray said the original idea for the Illinois bill came from the office of the Secretary of State, Alexi Giannoulias, but Stava-Murrary took up the bill proposal because of events in her own district.

“I was very excited to step on as the sponsor because there had been an attempt of a few radical parents and a hate group, called the Proud Boys, who came from out of town and disrupted several weeks of school board meetings over a book called “Gender Queer,” she said.

Scott McClurg, a professor of political science at Southern Illinois University (SIU) said the recent trend comes as a result of Republican legislatures using their positions of power as a means to define the terms of conversation around minority issues, usually centering on religious objections to societal changes.

“It turns out this is something that has been going on for a long time, it’s not a new thing,” McClurg said. “But people forget about that, so, right now, we’re coming back into some of these issues, and they might change over time, but the one that always comes up again and again is our religious issues.”

He said a large reason bills restricting access to information get passed today comes as a function of the higher voter turnout of older populations as opposed to younger populations.

“Especially with transgender issues right now, there are a lot of people, older people, for whom that’s a real issue,” he said. “It’s something you never had to think about in that age and now, all of a sudden, we have to try to understand these things quickly. And for our age, that’s a little harder for people.”

Along with the increased complexities of modern culture; the advent of the internet and modern forms of misinformation and disinformation; as well as the increased ability to self-segregate into echo chambers; it can be difficult to have effective discussions, according to Robert Fox, a professor of

“I lived through the 60’s, and that was turbulent, but at least we only had one reality people were quarreling over. Now people can’t even agree on what reality is,” he said.

Fox said, rather than attempting to restrict or remove access to information, efforts should be made to come up with more intelligent ways to discuss sensitive topics.

“It really depends on the circumstances, and I think sometimes censorship or efforts to censorship could actually be avoided if people had some intelligent discussion about the issues,” he said.

Stava-Murray said, if parents feel material is inappropriate for their children, they should be telling that to their children and establish rules to maintain their style of parenting at home without interfering with other students’ education.

“If they want to say their children can’t be reading certain books, they need to be detailing that to their children and expect their children to follow their own rules,” she said. “And if they don’t trust their own parenting, that’s on them.”

According to her, Illinois has recently earned a welldeserved reputation for fighting against Republicanled national initiatives like the discrimination against abortion access and LGBT+ healthcare.

“We have been fighting hard to earn that reputation of one that protects and champions women’s rights… and we believe it’s up to an individual to control their own healthcare decisions,” she said.

While major arguments surrounding the implementation of book bans have centered on the Republican push for parental rights in education, Fox said the actual instituting of bans only makes the information harder to find, but not impossible.

“You know what it is with kids, if you tell them they shouldn’t be doing something, they’re going to want to do it anyway,” he said. “When it came to books or intellectual things, I didn’t feel I had to wait x number of years if I can get my hands on it. And if I can understand it, why not?”

Fox said, while it’s important for parents to be able to exercise some control over the information their children receive, the danger comes from the lack of agreement over what is considered appropriate or not.

“I get it up to a point, but not all parents think alike. A parent has the right to say, ‘I don’t want my kid to see that,’” he said. “But you don’t have the right to get rid of it and let nobody see it.”

John Pollitz, Dean of Library Affairs at Morris Library, said recent book bans come more as a result of a dominant culture fighting to maintain dominance over the discussion of minority groups and their issues.

“What we see recently is a lot of attempts to take books about LGBTQIA+ topics off the shelves,” he said. “These books get banned because they depict these groups and their depiction is deemed sexually explicit by their definition.”

Pollitz said the purpose of these bans is to cause a chilling effect on the states and communities affected, making it more difficult or costly for teachers to bring up the subjects involved without facing consequences, thereby curtailing the spread of the ideas.

“It causes people to be more afraid to do

Stava-Murray said the purpose of the U.S. education system should be to provide a safe place to freely express a diversity of ideas.

“We want to make sure that we are creating a better world for our children and all their friends and peers,” she said. “We want to make sure that we are just working toward making our state a great place to raise a family where you can be proud of the politics as well.”

Staff reporter William Box can be reached at wbox@dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at @ William17455137

Africana Studies at SIU.

William Box | @William17455137

Books on the banned book list lay out on the floor March 24, 2023 at Barnes & Noble in Carbondale, Ill.

Touch of Nature presents annual Maple Syrup Festival

When you think of maple syrup tapping, what’s the first place that comes to mind? Most likely Canada or the northeastern states like Maine, New Hampshire, or Vermont. Southern Illinois definitely isn’t on top of that list, but the abundance of woods located in this area has a surprising amount of trees that make maple syrup tapping easily accessible. So much so that maple syrup has become a staple of southern Illinois due to how much this little area is able to produce a large amount of high quality syrup.

Carbondale’s Touch of Nature has been collecting maple syrup for more than 30 years now, but the annual maple syrup festivals officially began 12 years ago, back in 2011, to bring the community together through this local environmental center.

Unofficially however, it has been going on for over 20 years bringing together a few families who ate breakfast and spent time outside for the day.

“We really, over the past 10 years, especially tried to make it a family friendly kind of day where you just come to Touch of Nature for the day,” said Touch of Nature director Brian Croft. “Yes, you can have the maple syrup, the breakfast; but then there’s vendors, there’s music, there’s stuff for kids, and we’re all about just getting people outside.”

He started his connection with Touch of Nature 20 years ago as a student worker and began working full time soon after.

“I love it here, and when I became the director, I told everybody this is my dream job… and I know it sounds corny, but it’s legitimate,” Croft said. “I think my absolute favorite part of the event is the fact that this is sort of our season kickoff, like reemerging from our winter hibernation… I get to see these moms and dads and kids just coming out and having that first outdoor experience of the year.”

Touch of Nature’s maple syrup festival has been continuously growing among the community over the past ten years and resonating with the locals.

During the morning hours, Touch of Nature cooks up hundreds of pancakes with its signature local maple syrup for the attendees, staff, and volunteers alike to enjoy before they venture out into the rest of the grounds of the festival to enjoy the live music, nature trails, demonstrations and local vendors producing a vast array of different items.

These local vendors fill the grounds selling everything from gemstones and crystals to local art for the general public to purchase and enjoy. Others bring out local

supplies produced in Carbondale such as organic milk, honey, baked sweets and even mushrooms. The mushroom vendor sells varying types, some of which can be used for seasoning and in different dishes to add flavor and others for medicinal properties to quell a sore throat or

from the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fleetwood Mac and many others were heard throughout the day. Biver has begun to make a name for himself, not just in southern Illinois but in a few surrounding states such as Kentucky and Tennessee by

animals available for anyone to enjoy. The ranch has been up and running for 12 years, the work of mother-daughter duo Judy Hoepker and Morgan Stevenson. Their popularity grew within the community a few years ago when they were shown on the

both years and everybody gets a kick out of them,” Hoepker said. Out of all the vendors located on the ground’s of Touch of Nature, the alpacas were definitely visited the most.

SIU’s own Forestry Club also made an appearance, producing different lumber activity demonstrations. The first up was the wood splitting activity where different members of the club would try to split large chunks of wood with an ax. Second was the dual-handed saw demonstration being performed on a tree-sized log of lumber, being split in half to create large plate-like wooden pieces. Next was the log throwing face-off between most of the Forestry Club, where one team had to throw enough logs within the boundary points. Saving the best for last, the club members presented an ax throwing demonstration where they had to land the ax in a wooden target, needless to say the crowd was hyped when the blade hit the target. All in all, it’s harder than it looks!

naturally produce melatonin to aid in sleep. Of course, souvenirs and merchandise were similarly for sale for those whose interest lies outside of mushroom growing and production.

Live music always accompanies any Touch of Nature event. Local guitarist and singer Isaac Biver played a variety of folk tunes that attracted a large audience fairly quickly the more the strings of the guitar were strummed and heard throughout the grounds. Songs of his own creation as well as classics

performing at small venues to slowly add to his reputation.

A new fan favorite of the festival has been the three alpacas from Rolling Oak Alpaca Ranch located in Makanda, Illinois. This is their second year at the maple syrup festival. The three alpacas are trained for public events and showcases for the public to feed and enjoy as well. The ranch also sells merchandise crafted from alpaca wool from the shearing seasons. There were bracelets, clothes, and stuffed

local news and had to take an elevator up to reach the studio for filming when they got stuck with the alpacas inside! Of course, the fire department had to be called out to help and when the fire department got the call, rescuers thought it was fake because of how wild the story must have been, says Judy Hoepker. After all, three alpacas stuck in an elevator does sound pretty unbelievable.

“It’s been a lot of fun to do this, we’ve brought the alpacas with us

Touch of Nature has always been known to use the natural resources available to allow the general public to have fun outside while still maintaining its educational roots to help others really get to know the environment around them. The Maple Syrup festival is just one of the many events it hosts to bring the community together through a balanced combination of learning and entertainment.

Staff reporter and photographer Mo Collar can be reached at mcollar@dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram @m0.alexander.

Mo Collar | @M0.alexander

Honey and animal hide vendor blows a conch shell horn at the Maple Syrup Festival at Touch of Nature March. 25, 2023 in Makanda, Ill. Mo Collar | @m0.alexander

Mushroom vendor and attendees converse across a table at the Maple Syrup Festival at Touch of Nature March. 25, 2023 in Makanda, Ill. Mo Collar | @m0.alexander

SIU student picks a bouquet from a vendor at the Maple Syrup Festival at Touch of Nature March. 25, 2023 in Makanda, Ill. Mo Collar | @m0.alexander

Young attendee climbs the rock climbing wall at the Maple Syrup Festival at Touch of Nature March. 25, 2023 in Makanda, Ill. Mo Collar | @m0.alexander

Family feeds alpaca at the Maple Syrup Festival at Touch of Nature March. 25, 2023 in Makanda, Ill. Mo Collar | @m0.alexander

SIU Forestry Club member slices wood in half at the Maple Syrup Festival at Touch of Nature March. 25, 2023 in Makanda, Ill. Mo Collar | @m0.alexander

Isaac Biver plays the guitar at the Maple Syrup Festival at Touch of Nature March. 25, 2023 in Makanda, Ill. Mo Collar | @m0.alexander

“So as these people continue to make connections and build any form of solidarity, whether it is related to gang activity, or if it is genuinely some kind of connection to other people within prison, they’re perceived as threats and they’re put in solitary for extended periods of time.”

Woodfox credited the Black Panthers with giving him morals he had never had before, curing him of his desire to commit crimes. According to the New York Times, Woodfox and other prisoners were often forced to work the fields by guards on horseback wielding shotguns. Accusations of sexual slavery plagued the prison. Despite witnesses to the case often proving to be unreliable in some shape or form, Louisiana’s attorney general, Buddy Caldwell, called him “The most dangerous person on the planet,” according to NPR in 2008. Woodfox wrote a memoir called “Solitary” in 2019 on the system that claimed his life for the possibility that he took another’s.

Vogel said, “A lot of the time these long term sentences are used for people who are perceived to be great threats to prison safety, or for people who are severely mentally ill. They continuously go through the cycle of having two weeks to a month sentences in solitary confinement and then they are released from solitary back into the general population and get sent back because they disobey orders or they stand up too slowly during Roll Call, or they talk back to a guard, which also happens in solitary confinement. When you’re in solitary, if you continue to do things that break prison rules, regardless of what those rules are and regardless of if it is actually a threat to safety or not, they just compound your sentence in solitary and continue to not release you.”

Shourd, who visited and spoke with 75 prisoners in solitary confinement from prisons all over the U.S., condemns modern prison labor and solitary confinement as racially-biased, noting that prison wages are so little, often lower than 50 cents an hour, and the percentage of black prisoners so high, that our system is better referred to as a “carceral state”.

According to a study from the Justice Policy Center, a research group dedicated to improving the justice system, “Solitary confinement in prison is used more frequently among Black and Hispanic/Latino men. Bertsch and coauthors (2020) found that of all men in solitary confinement in the summer of 2019, 43.4 percent were Black, a higher rate than their representation in the US prison population (40.5 percent).”

“I heard examples of someone who was forced in Arkansas prison to pick cotton. And when he refused to pick cotton, he was beaten,” said Shourd. “We live in a big country and prison looks different in different places. But for prison labor I’ve never heard of anything even approaching fair,

prisoners don’t have rights. They can’t unionize. So, to call what they do labor as far as an actual legitimate job is just not accurate.”

To Shourd, a prison abolitionist, race has always been part of the picture, which she considers part of a dichotomy between transformative justice and punitive justice.

“So prison abolition is actually an invitation into reimagining safety and justice in our country, saying, locking people up, you know, punishing them, depriving them of any resources or any ability, or means to be accountable for the harm they may have done. Because, for sure, there are people, people in prison that have done a lot of harm. It’s also true that almost everyone that perpetuates violence, has experienced violence. No one experiences violence for the first time by doing it. So abolition asks us to look at the cycles of harm, and the root causes, and not blame the individual. We live in a very individualist society that says, ‘you did something bad, therefore you are bad’, not ‘let’s be curious about why and what happened to your sense of belonging to something; to your community, or your family? What happened to you that would cause you to do that? Let’s get to the root of it so it doesn’t happen again and we can understand why other people do this.’”

According to Shourd and Solitary Watch, there is no federal apparatus regulating the use of solitary confinement in prisons, making it extremely difficult for journalists to collect any information uninfluenced by state officials on the sites of the prison. According to Shroud and Solitary Watch, communities around prisons are often forced to simply take prison official’s word that circumstances inside of prisons are humanitarian.

“I don’t do traditional journalism. I’m a trauma-informed journalist and my investigations have been adapted into creative projects,” Shourd said. “So, I’m much more interested in personal testimony and narrative and doing and practicing a form of journalism that does no harm to the people that I’m interviewing and the people who are sharing their stories. So that is, to me doing no harm. In traumatized communities and populations, it is far more important than some kind of outdated idea of objectivity. I think it can be thorough, and you can be transparent about the limitations of getting data to support the claims, but personal testimonies are often all we have to contradict what a sheriff or a warden says about their prison and the people that are incarcerated. And the sheriff or warden is in a position where often journalists will see their perspective as legitimate but not the person incarcerated.”

Vogel, who started out at Solitary Watch sorting through the mail the organization gets from prisoners, says that the vast majority of Solitary Watch’s reporting on the conditions of modern prisons relies upon prisoners who have themselves become journalists

or advocates after witnessing the brutal conditions of U.S. prisons first hand.

“A lot of times, how we get started on articles is that we hear something either from the advocacy community, who has like this humongous network of advocates who are either formerly incarcerated themselves or who are friends and family members who have been or are incarcerated,” Vogel said. “And from there we form our articles and we do our investigations. It’s really hard because of the limits on communication in and out of prisons, and specifically with prisoners in and out of solitary confinement. It’s really hard.”

In the past, Solitary Watch had provided grants to prisoners interested in writing their own articles. Currently, the organization is preparing to send out a second round of grants.

“When past sheriffs or wardens have lied to the public blatantly and been caught in lies, they shouldn’t be seen as reliable sources just because of their position of power,” Shourd said. “So I think traditional methods are a very flawed metric for determining truth when we have these institutions that have no oversight and no transparency.”

Solitary Watch publishes the best prisoner letters it receives, including the following excerpt from a (at the time) 54-year-old woman held at New York Correctional Institution that describes the start of a stint in solitary confinement.

“Upon arrival in the cold, dreary backdrop known as “SEG” [Administrative Segregation], I could already hear the madness that occurs under such dire conditions,” L. LeDonne wrote. “I heard the yelling between two girls recently brought in for fighting.

One girl’s nose was sprawled across her face, covered in crimson streaks that had not yet dried, confirming the violence. I watched the COs chuckle and laugh as they placed bets on which girl would win if they let them fight, and they decided to place them in our rec cages (my dog had a nicer one) outside to see it play out. I was appalled by their barbaric behavior. “Video et Taceo”—”I see and I am silent”— had become my survival mantra. I was brought into a cell, stripped, searched, and given stiff red scrubs. The finality of the door slamming shut will reverberate forever in my psyche.”

According to Vogel, prisoners are barely ever able to receive proper medical care, only receiving about 20 to 30 minutes of practitioner’s time when health issues, including psychological issues that solitary confinement complicates, come up.

According to the Prison Policy Institute, prisoners in solitary confinement usually only make up about 6% to 8% of the prison population, but represent half of the suicides.

In the Washington Journal of Law and Policy, Dr. Stuart Grassian found that extensive solitary confinement in the early days of the prison system was discontinued for similar reasons.

“The results were, in fact, catastrophic. The incidence of mental disturbances among prisoners so detained, and the severity of such disturbances, was so great that the system fell into disfavor and was ultimately abandoned. During this process a major body of clinical literature developed which documented the psychiatric disturbances created by such stringent conditions of confinement.”

According to Vogel, many prisoners are sent to psychiatric institutions when symptoms become severe enough but, due to capacity issues, these institutions are unable to retain them after they become stable again. They are sent directly back to prison and its solitary confinement-reliant system, which caused their illness in the first place. A 2014 Treatment Advocacy Center study found on one of Solitary Watch’s fact sheets says that 350,000 individuals with severe mental illnesses were being held in U.S. prisons and jails in 2012, while only 35,000 were patients in state psychiatric hospitals.

“You can even go even further back to the late 50s early 60s, when there was the closing down of all of the public mental health hospitals,” Vogel said. “And so there was this movement for deinstitutionalization in the mid20th century, and the thought process behind that was that taking people out of these institutions and putting them back in the communities would allow for the communities to support them in ways that the institutions couldn’t. But what ended up happening was that as these institutions were defunded, and as these institutions were closed down, that money was not redirected to the communities to provide adequate care to individuals who are coming home.”

Consequently, people were forced out of the structured environment of institutions, and back onto the streets, where they returned to violence and crime as the solutions to their problems. This landed much of the severely mentally ill population of the U.S. in prison, an environment designed only to keep them off the streets.

In his studies, Grassian found that solitary confinement was capable of producing its own set of symptoms, completely independently from any previous mental illness of the detainees.

“The paradigmatic psychiatric disturbance was an agitated confusional state which, in more severe cases, had the characteristics of a florid delirium, characterized by severe confusional, paranoid, and hallucinatory features, and also by intense agitation and random, impulsive, often self-directed violence. Such disturbances were often observed in individuals who had no prior history of any mental illness. In addition, solitary confinement often resulted in severe exacerbation of a previously existing mental condition. Even among inmates who did not develop overt psychiatric illness as a result of solitary confinement,

such confinement almost inevitably imposed significant psychological pain during the period of isolated confinement and often significantly impaired the inmate’s capacity to adapt successfully to the broader prison environment.”

Shourd and Vogel are skeptical of many solutions to the behemoth creature of bureaucracy which is our prison system. Shourd is wary of most attempts to imprison people rather than incorporate them into specialized reform programs, believing that all forms of imprisonment traumatize and damage prisoners. According to her, the only real value in the prison system is its ability to isolate people from the circumstances which led to their crime, giving them room to change. Enlarging our surveillance state by placing prisoners under house arrest or otherwise allowing the government to monitor them is dismissed, but reallocating police funding to the right groups is most supported by Vogel.

“We have this thought that prisons are a place for rehabilitation, but then when we actually look at what prisons do, and the programming that is available in prisons, and the resources that are available in prisons, we realize that they’re not built to actually rehabilitate people,” Vogel said. “They’re built to punish people. And so, I think that working with models of restorative justice and community care-based models of justice is really important in preventing people from going into prison in the first place. But that doesn’t mean that the people who are already in prison aren’t deserving of care themselves.”

Shourd said, the U.S. needs to learn from its mistakes.

“As a society, we should want a system that actually makes us safer and what actually makes people less likely to recidivate is, not to torture them with isolation to dehumanize them, to stigmatize them to deny them more resources, but to really address what is the root cause of the actions that led to them doing harm if they did harm. And in many cases, people are just in prison for being poor, for being Black, for being at the wrong place at the wrong time or being targeted. Some people have done harm and those people you know, studies show that that a very, very, very small percentage of people actually harm again, the most violent crimes are the least likely to ever harm again, because people are very often traumatized by having committed a violent crime, and it sticks with you the rest of your life and people want to heal they want to change. They want to live in a world where something that horrible doesn’t doesn’t haunt them anymore, right. People want to be redeemed. people want to do ‘sorry’.”

Staff Reporter Daniel Bethers can be reached at dbethers@dailyegyptian.com

Electric vehicles: A “game changer” or more of the same reliance on fossil fuels?

Ryan GRieseR RGRieseR@dailyeGyptian com

Electric vehicles are taking over in the media. It’s rare these days to turn on the TV and not see a commercial for a new futuristic-looking EV.

Every major brand in the automaking world is either pledging to or starting to produce electric cars, and with that, more will make their way to Carbondale.

Many are already present in the community, like Katherine Martin’s 2021 Ford Mustang Mach E.

“I love talking about it. Even though I’m not a big car person, I love when people stop me in the parking lot,” Martin said.

Christian Baril, a criminal defense lawyer in Carbondale, is on his second Tesla, this one a Model 3 Performance.

“EVs are so much faster than gas cars, it’s not even close… it’s more fun to drive.”

Though electric vehicles are increasing in prevalence, many people are still reluctant to buy them.

Martin said, “I think that more people would like it than they think they do.”

Baril said, “A lot of car guys think, ‘oh, the EVs just like driving a computer. It’s lost all its soul.’ That’s not really true. It’s just different… once you drive a fast EV, you don’t really want to go back.”

Carbondale does have a bit of a charging issue though.

Oliver Keys Jr, an associate professor in the automotive school at SIU, said, “There’s not much of an infrastructure in Carbondale as it relates to electric charging.”

According to Google Maps, the only places that an electric vehicle can be charged in Carbondale is at the EV Connect Charging Station on East Walnut Street. Keys also said that there are chargers at Home 2 Suites by Hilton and at Vogler Ford, though those chargers are for “typically people who are patronizing those businesses.”

The next closest chargers are a Tesla Destination Charger in Makanda, a few charging stations at a Mach 1 gas station in Marion, and a Tesla Supercharger in Marion.

Essentially, if you are going to own an EV in Carbondale, an at-home charging station is a necessity.

“I’ve owned [the Mach E] for over a year. I still have not charged it publicly anywhere,” Martin said.

Baril, who routinely drives long distances, has used chargers in several nearby towns.

Keys explained that there are several different levels of chargers.

“Your level one charger can take… almost three days to fully charge a battery. You have your level two chargers, that’s what’s typically installed in people’s homes, which in most cases you can charge a battery fully in about eight hours,” Keys said. “...And there are some cases where you may have to go to what we call a supercharger or level three charger, and in those cases, you could typically charge you,

somewhere around 45 minutes.”

These superchargers could potentially be detrimental to a battery’s longevity, though Keys notes more research does need to be conducted.

“It is stated that if we charge with more current from the level three chargers, it can typically deteriorate the battery faster,” Keys said.

While many people feel as though they are doing a lot of good for the environment when they buy an EV, Martin didn’t share the same sentiment when she purchased her Mach E.

“I am definitely pro paying attention to environmental things, but it honestly wasn’t a huge motivator for my particular case,” Martin said.

“The thing I think is tricky about EVs is that people say that they’re called like no emissions, like zero emissions. Well, they still have electricity, and the electricity has to be generated somehow,” she said.

Martin noted a large portion of electricity is still from coal burning plants.

“We’re still a very small proportion of true renewable energy like solar [and] wind. So it’s sort of a shift in where the emissions are.”

But, she said, she doesn’t think EVs are inherently bad for the environment.

“I think they’re probably a net gain,” Martin said.

Whether people like it or not, technology is advancing. Many governments are trying to speed the process by adding incentives to produce, and purchase, EVs, too.

Keys said, “It has nowhere to go but forward because, based on legislation that’s been passed by the government, automakers are… strongly encouraged to produce electric vehicles.”

Keys also thinks the pace at which EV technology is moving forward is going to increase

“I think it’s gonna accelerate for a few different reasons… again, there’s a big push from the government,” he said. “ The only other things you have, the economy can affect that, right, so gas prices. If you look at gas prices, last

year, there was a peak where you could barely get your hands on EVs.”

Baril likens the advancements in EV technology, and the adoption of it, to when the iPhone came out; people thought the iPhone was weird and that they would never use it, until they got used to it.

“Once you get used to charging your phone every day, it’s really not a problem. I just sort of like, ‘better plug my phone up before I go to bed.’ It’s exactly like that.”

Automakers are making lots of lofty promises too. According to Consumer Reports, nearly every major company is pledging millions in research and setting benchmarks for both the number of models they will have in production and the timeframe in which EVs will make up more of their sales.

“I think they’re being as realistic as possible, simply because they don’t have much of a choice,” Keys said. “Because you know, they have to reduce the carbon footprint. And the only way to do that is to produce electric vehicles.”

With more vehicles being produced, there will be more options than ever for consumers to try out an EV. Keys doesn’t think they’re for everyone, though. Multiple factors go into whether someone should have an EV, including whether a person can have a home charger and how many vehicles you own.

Money is one of the biggest drawbacks to EVs. According to Car and Driver, even the cheapest EV will cost nearly $30,000. Nearly all of the vehicles on Car and Driver’s list of the 10 cheapest electric cars for 2023 were small to mid-size vehicles, meaning, for Americans who love their large vehicles, there just isn’t a cheap option.

Government incentives available through tax breaks can make prices a little more palatable though.

“You probably want to understand the tax credits. It’s kind of confusing, so it’s not as straightforward. It used

to be, one bought a new vehicle, you get a $6000 tax credit. Now it… depends on where the battery came from,” Keys said.”

These tax breaks can be found in the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act [IAR]. According to NPR, “only SUVs over $80,000 and cars under $55,000 qualify.” There is also a $150,000 adjusted gross income cap per individual for buyers.

These numbers may soon change though; one aspect of the IAR requires certain percentages of the battery materials to be sourced from the U.S. or a U.S. trade partner. If a vehicle does not meet these requirements, the tax break may be reduced or non-existent.

Some manufacturers are trying to help consumers out; in early 2023, Tesla recently dropped its prices so its cars are under $55000, allowing buyers to take advantage of the tax break and lowering the overall cost of buying an EV.

This translated into the used market too; because the new vehicles cost less, the used ones also dropped in value.

Baril is all for the lower prices on EVs.

“The more people drive them, the more charging infrastructure we have, the more people that are out there, the bigger the better.”

While they may have a higher initial purchase cost, EVs are theoretically much cheaper to own, as there is virtually no maintenance to do besides tires and occasional coolant recharges.

“It’s probably seven or eight times cheaper to drive… I went from spending about $4000-5000 a year on gas to spending about $800 on electricity,” Baril said.

How much a potential owner will travel in their EV is a major consideration and something that gives a lot of potential owners anxiety. While EVs are well-suited for commuting and then charging in the

evening, long trips will usually require at least one stop to charge the vehicle.

“If we needed to take it on a road trip, there’s a lot more planning involved to make sure that you have a plan for charging and then a backup plan for charging,” Martin said.

While high mileage in a day may be some cause for concern, there isn’t much to worry about if you stack lots of miles in a year though.

“I drive about 20-25,000 miles a year… it’s not anything super far, but it’s a lot every day,” Baril said.

Winter driving is an additional complicating factor for EVs.

“So for example, my vehicle [a 2022 Kia EV6] typically has a 280 mile range, and in winter that 280 [miles] drops to 247, which is a considerable amount,” Keys said.

SIU’s automotive school is far from being left behind by the herald of electric vehicles. There are several classes and activities that teach students about battery chemistry, how to work on EV motors, and how to safely work on EVs.

“They’re gonna understand and be taught things way above and beyond what the average person would know about an electric vehicle,” Keys said.

He said faculty in the auto program are working on researching several aspects of EVs, including the effects of battery superchargers as well as a cost breakdown of an EV against an internal combustion vehicle.

Keys is hopeful that electric technology will soon spread to campus too.

“Hopefully, at some point, maybe it’s a year or two, we can all celebrate the first charger we have on campus.”

Baril knows exactly what is going to happen once EVs are attainable for vast amounts of the population.

“Once there’s EVs with 300 miles range that are $25,000 bucks, it’s game over for gas,” Baril said.

Staff Reporter Ryan Grieser can be reached at rgrieser@dailyegyptian.com

Devon Moon | @woah_devon

Schoonover said, “I’m really thankful. That night, we had four different groups of people come by between the firefighters and the volunteers and the police.”

Even after cleanup efforts from a number of kind volunteers, there was still a lot of work to be done. According to Farley, the city is trying to “coordinate those efforts on what the needs are to get the volunteers in to help start cleaning up.”

Tuesday, April 4 was supposed to be a turning point for the town; a city council meeting was to be held at the fairgrounds, and residents who needed help would be able to attend and have aid directed toward them. But, things hit a bit of standstill.

According to the National Weather Service, it is predicted that the same area of would be in the path of another tornado on Tuesday, leaving residents without a clear direction of how cleanup will continue due to the potential for even more damage.

Despite the upcoming storms, much of the community was coming together to help each other out. Volunteers roamed the streets in their pickups, asking people in their yards if hands, chainsaws and trailers would be any help in their cleanup efforts.

Many of these volunteers asked to remain anonymous. One said “since we all live here [Salem], we all breathe the same, we all should help each other out.”

Linder said, “Even like three

or four hours after everything happened… they were still going door to door and checking, making sure everybody was ok.”

Bud Miller, whose business, Midwest Barbecue, was a total loss, said, “The neighborhood’s been great. The people that have been out here have been freaking awesome… there’s still some good people left in the world.”

Farley is very pleased with how his town immediately responded to hardship.

He said, “I’m just real proud of the way everyone’s working together and coming together to try and figure this out.”

Staff Reporter Ryan Grieser can be reached rgrieser@dailyegyptian.com

A fallen tree rests on top of a house, an overturned camper and some destroyed sheds after the March 31st storm April. 2, 2023 in Salem, Ill. Dominique Martinez-Powell | @dmartinez_powell.photography

Salem resident places clothing into a small storage bin to move her personal belongings out of a storage unit that was damaged during the March 31 storm April 2, 2023 in Salem, Ill. Lylee Gibbs | @lyleegibbsphotography

Salem residents work together to cut down an old car port that was damaged in the March 31 storm that tore through the area April 2, 2023 in Salem, Ill. Lylee Gibbs | @lyleegibbsphotography

The remnants of Midwestern BBQ, a local and well loved barbeque place, sit where the building once was following the March 31 storm that touched down April 2, 2023 in Salem, Ill. Lylee Gibbs | @lyleegibbsphotography

Pieces of a destroyed pole barn lay on top of some farming equipment after the March 31st storm April. 2, 2023 at the Gibson Family Farm in Salem, Ill. This building had been destroyed in a storm once before in 1996 according to the family.

Dominique Martinez-Powell | @dmartinez_powell. photography

Frank Griffy pulls scraps of metal from a nearby storage unit that landed in his son’s front yard over to pile as he works to help clear the damage from the storm April 2, 2023 in Salem, Ill. Lylee Gibbs | @lyleegibbsphotography

SIU rugby teams host annual AllFools Tournament

On the day that many are weary of a joke being played on them, there were no tricks to be had at Sam Rinella field this past Saturday, where the Men’s and Women’s Rugby teams hosted their annual “All-Fools tournament”.

The tournament, rightfully scheduled on April 1 every year, entered its 35th year running and features roughly 13 different teams across the area and even eight different schools. It raises money for area rugby teams as well as gives players an opportunity to connect with other players across other schools and in the area.

This tournament is much different than normal rugby that these teams practice. Most games of rugby are played with 15 members on each squad, with half of them in the scrum and half spread

across the field. This tournament was played in “10’s” with ten members on each squad, making for a much different style of play for each team.

Junior SIU Master’s Graduate and the women’s team captain, Shannon Haras, said spending the year playing 10’s helped prepare them for this tournament.

“All year. A lot of teams, not just us havent had numbers recently. Ideally we would like to be playing fifteens, with fifteen on each side, but we’re playing tens today and pretty much everything we did in the fall was also tens. Just because a lot of neighboring teams can’t fill the whole side. So really all the tens we’ve been playing all year have been helping us for this tournament,” said Haras

Part of the reason this is the case as well is the hard time these quads have

had post-Covid and many squads are just thankful to even have a team out there

“I think the SIU Women’s team had a really hard time during Covid. They had a lot of people who were experienced players who aged out and then couldn’t really rebuild for a couple of years. We’re kinda just building numbers back up now. It’s cool to just have a team out there. You can really see it coming together and I think that there’s a lot of opportunity for growth next year and I feel really good about our rookies.” said Haras.

The women’s squad is fortunate enough to have enough members to make a full-team, however, roughly seven members of the team had to whore (substitute) for other teams, such as Quad City and Central Missouri.

The SIU women’s squad finished the tournament with two losses against University of Illinois and Central Missouri. The Quad City Irish ended up as tournament champions on the women’s side.

As for the SIU men’s team, clobbered Meryville in game one, earned a win in game two against ISU, 14-10, but dropped the following game to the eventual champions, the Rowdies adult club.

Despite the losses by both teams, both squads are just happy about trying to spread the love for the game and building friendships.

“This is a tournament we have at SIU to raise money. It’s a good way of building relationships with everyone else in the area. The towers are right there too so maybe someone might see it through their window and be like dang that looks pretty cool. Let’s play,” said Men’s Rugby captain William Wise.

Players are using this tournament as an

opportunity to test their skills as a team for the future as well.

“This tournament is all about us competing and showing that we’ve gotten better as a team and individually,” said junior men’s rugby player Wilber Milhouse.

After their win, Milhouse said their performance was expected, yet still believed there was much to work on.

“I feel like we played well to our expectation, but I feel like we could also be better in some aspects and be better for this next game,” said Milhouse.

Without a doubt, the tournament did give many of these players and squads opportunities to grow as a team and meet other players across the community as well as other schools to enjoy the game of rugby.

Sports reporter Howard Woodard can be reached at hwoodard@dailyegyptian.com.

Howard woodard Hwoodard@dailyegyptian com

The Saluki gets defended in the game against the Illinois (Univ of Illinois) April 01, 2023 at the Sam Rinella field in Carbondale, Ill. Arjun Tsapalasetty | atsapalasetty@dailyegyptian.com

The saluki carries the ball towards touchdown in the game against Maryville April 01, 2023 at the Sam Rinella field in Carbondale, Ill. Arjun Tsapalasetty | atsapalasetty@dailyegyptian.com

The Saluki gets defended in the game against the Illinois (Univ of Illinois) April 01, 2023 at the Sam Rinella field in Carbondale, Ill. Arjun Tsapalasetty | atsapalasetty@dailyegyptian.com

The saluki carries the ball towards the goal in the game against the Illinois (Univ of Illinois) April 01, 2023 at the Sam Rinella field in Carbondale, Ill. Arjun Tsapalasetty | atsapalasetty@dailyegyptian.com

The Saluki tackles the opposition in the game against Maryville April 01, 2023 at the Sam Rinella field in Carbondale, Ill. Arjun Tsapalasetty | atsapalasetty@dailyegyptian.com

Wilber carries the ball towards the goal in the game against Maryville April 01, 2023 at the Sam Rinella field in Carbondale, Ill. Arjun Tsapalasetty | atsapalasetty@dailyegyptian. com

The Rugby coach discusses gameplay with the SIU players in the game against Maryville April 01, 2023 at the Sam Rinella field in Carbondale, Ill. Arjun Tsapalasetty | atsapalasetty@dailyegyptian.com

The Salukis get tackled in the game against Maryville April 01, 2023 at the Sam Rinella field in Carbondale, Ill. Arjun Tsapalasetty | atsapalasetty@dailyegyptian.com

The saluki defends the ball in the game against Illinois (univ of Illinois) April 01, 2023 at the Sam Rinella field in Carbondale, Ill. Arjun Tsapalasetty | atsapalasetty@dailyegyptian.com

“Cowboy butts drive me nuts”

Picture this: A tall ruggedly handsome man stands in the doorway as he scuffs the mud off his boots. The pale moonlight behind him illuminates a deep blue sky, and gives a bit of mystery to the silhouette of this man. A small stack of smoke is visible trailing from the tip of his cigarette, drawing your eye up from his Marlboro to the holster on his hip. As he enters the room, his smile catches a glimmer, and he tips his hat and says “Howdy” with a bit of shyness.

It is easy to see what I was describing, and I hope you caught on. If you saw the typical cowboy, you are in the majority. We all know this character, and we for the most part love him. We love the heroic acts that he does, the slight twang in his voice, and the clothing he wears.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of joining some friends speaking on a panel at the History Fair here at SIUC. Our topic was “How American fashion and media from spaghetti westerns clashes with the reality of historical black and indigenous cowboys”. In this seminar, we discussed how the depiction of cowboys in the movies is almost always completely wrong, from the romances, down to the things that they wore. I was very excited to speak of this topic, and see quite an importance in this discussion, both in general history and fashion history.

I went into this small research hole learning more and more random facts about cowboys, reading stories both fact and fiction, and realized many things about cowboys that I simply just never realized. Something that really interests me is how overly romanticized cowboys are as people, as well as their lifestyle, and their clothing. When I even say cowboy, you already have a picture in your mind, and I guarantee he is wearing blue denim jeans, boots, and a hat. We all already have this picture of a cowboy in our mind, whether he be from a fictional movie, or someone from our real life, but never get them mixed up, because it could be very embarrassing.

When I was six, my friend was having a birthday party. His family was a little more country than I was, and I wanted to look as if I was part of the crowd. I thought very long and hard about what to wear, and decided that I wanted to wear my version of country, which I would like to picture as rhinestone cowboy. I owned some cowboy boots because every little boy I knew owned some, and also they were a way to wear heels without being made fun of. I

paired them with some boot cut levis, and a yellow gingham shirt with a low set yoke and pearl snap buttons.

I remember thinking about how cool this outfit was to me, but I also remember arriving at the party and seeing my friend and his family and being surprised that none of them were dressed like me. Little me had to immediately address this to myself, and unsnap the top snap to appear more relaxed. I was embarrassed, and honestly still am. I had generalized a whole family, and played dress up.

Western movies have been around since the beginning of moving pictures. Usually, these movies depict a heroic figure, doing things like saving damsels in distress and being overly manly. These men are praised in the films for doing acts of “saving the day!”, which usually entails fighting and slaughtering villainized indigenous people and Mexicans. This idea of the virile man was placed perfectly to fuel both the romanization of cowboys, and the idea that people of different descents were the enemy.

In fashion, acknowledgement to the inspiration and use of different culture’s clothing can sometimes be hard to pull out of designers. When doing research on western fashions, and honing in specifically on cowboys, you’ll learn that they wore what they could get, they borrowed from different cultures, and everything had a purpose.

The cowboy hat was directly inspired by the sombreros worn by Mexican Vaqueros, and served the obvious purpose of keeping the sun off the face and keeping you cool. We typically see cowboys wearing these hats in depictions through film, but in reality many did just wear sombreros or even bowler hats. The bandana as we know it now is completely just a fashion statement, and can be bought in a plethora of colors, but in the beginning they were mostly just scrap fabric or rags, and they served many purposes. The bandana could be used around the face to keep dust from entering your nose and mouth, but they could also be used for washing up, or even bandaging a wound in a pinch. Denim jeans are stylish and comfortable, but serve the purpose of safety. With the durability of the fabric, and the strength of the seams, these pants were perfect for working cattle.

With the accidental swagger in western/cowboy clothing, especially with it amplified by the media, after World War II, western clothing started to become a fashion movement. We saw children’s play with clothes that look like little rodeo men,

and dungarees with play guns and holsters. This lasted through the 1950s, and even inspired many men and women’s garments.

In the 1960s, a bit of western wear was incorporated into hippie fashions, which escorted us to the tight denim pants and big belt buckles of the 1970s.

The ‘70s brought a whole new genre of cowboy/western, adding this bit of sexuality that had always been more subdued to the surface. Younger men of good physique started wearing things that resembled the ruggedly handsome hero from the movies of their childhood. Hair got more messy, mustaches and sideburns became more popular, and boots came back into the mainstream.

Mexican leatherwork became popular, and beading was starting to be less eurocentric looking, and visibly inspired by beadwork from indigenous American Mexican tribes.

This look is kinda what we associate with 1970s fashion, this almost overly sexualized figure of being. I always think of the Marlboro man when summoning a sexy man to mind. The actor who played that character was just a simple farmer, picked for his handsomeness. With this image of the sexy cowboy being so pushed, we saw an infatuation with these sexy men. When the graphic baby tee craze went around in the early 2000s, I distinctly remember seeing girls

wearing shirts that perfectly describe how I think society sees cowboys. The shirts read “Cowboy butts drive me nuts!”. This sexualizes a non sexual job, but amplifies the natural sexyness of the man himself.

We have a repertoire of actors that promote this image of the sexy cowboy like John Wayne, and Clint Eastwood, and movies that have sexual natures like Brokeback Mountain. We have this image of the cowboy and their lifestyle, but it completely differs from history, allowing it to glitz and glam reality.

Staff Reporter Aaron Elliott can be reached at aelliott@dailyegyptian.com

AAron Elliott AElliott@dAilyEgyptiAn com

Brooke Nicholas | bnicholas@dailyegyptain.com

Splashing back into the spotlight

During this season of award ceremonies you might’ve heard some familiar names such as Brendan Fraser or Ke Huy Quan but why are these names so familiar? For most college aged students there is a strong chance you grew up with these names in childhood movies.

Brendan Fraser in particular having been in movies such as “George of the jungle” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” just to name a couple. Ke Huy Quan was also a child star in a number of movies including “Goonies” and the “Indiana Jones” franchise.

With these actors having been such a staple why have we stopped hearing these names and why are they just now resurfacing? A big reason why we stopped seeing Fraser was a mix of his personal life and the way that Hollywood was treating him.

The revenue that they were getting from each of his movies was starting to decline. After having such a successful run with “the mummy” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” there are just as many failed attempts such as “Monkeybone” and “Dudley Do Right” causing him to stop getting new and exciting roles.

Fraser also had some underlying health issues because of the stunts he was performing in many of his movies, specifically the mummy having to have multiple different surgeries after filming.

Fraser stated in an interview “I was put

together with tape and ice. I needed a laminectomy and the lumbar didn’t take, so they had to do it again a year later. There was a partial knee replacement. Some more work on my back, bolting various compressed spinal pads together.”

With all of this along with the very public divorce of his wife in 2009 and the death of his mother in 2016 Fraser needed a break from acting. Up until recently that is with his performance in “The Whale” leading to multiple awards for best leading actor and an outstanding amount of support from fans claiming we are entering the “brenaissance”.

Ke Huy Quan had a similar story when it comes to mistreatment in Hollywood. While he was a successful child star he didn’t have much meaning to the executives once he started to try to gain new roles as he was getting older.

He wasn’t being cast as often so he decided the acting was over for him up until recently when he decided to start trying again landing a star role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once” and winning an oscar for best supporting actor.

It is obvious to see these actors are getting a very warm welcome back into the spotlight and I don’t know about you but I’m excited to see what comes next for them.

BrEE gAllAghEr BgAllAghEr@dAilyEgyptiAn com

Lane Frost | lfrost@dailyegyptian.com

You can read “Confidence” with confidence you’ll enjoy it

Sophie Whitten | @SophieWhitten

While I was scrolling through a “Most Anticipated Books of 2023” list over winter break, a bright orange cover popped out at me. “Confidence,” the title said, and to my happy surprise, when my eyes fell to the author, I recognized the name.

A quick Google search informed me that the Rafael Frumkin who wrote the book is the same Professor Rafael Frumkin who teaches creative writing here at our very own Southern Illinois University. I pre-ordered a copy immediately.

A few days after the March 7 release date, I anxiously waited by the mailbox to receive the novel and began to read it the second it was in my hands.

The story follows Ezra Green, who is sent away to the Last Chance correctional camp for dealing “coke”— his father’s sudafed ground with sea salt, which he packaged and sold to anyone who believed it was really cocaine. While in the camp, he meets Orson Ortman.

From the moment Orson arrives at Last Chance, he takes a

captivating command of the scene.

While Ezra is self-conscious and desperately wanting to fit in, Orson is self-assured and ambitious. The two quickly become a duo of grifters and continue their friendship and partnership even after they are released from Last Chance and eventually develop a romantic relationship.

Ezra and Orson start small, scamming internet shoppers out of $75 for a sweatshirt that was made from Fruit of the Loom shirts screen printed in their shared apartment, but quickly find themselves taking on larger hustles until it leads them to the creation of NuLife, a transformative spiritual experience.

Resembling a church revival, NuLife’s method of Synthesis is to “cleanse you of all the things in your body and mind that trouble you.” Orson calls individual people from the crowd to experience this tearful metamorphosis of self.

NuLife begins to thrive, developing into a much larger scheme than I had expected and the characters find themselves deeper and deeper in their lie until Orson begins to believe it himself.

The characters have such a compelling quality to them that you can’t help but to follow their journey developing an international scam.

From the beginning, Ezra is obsessed and insecure about his image. He has failing eyesight

begin to see him as a Christ-like figure, reaching out to touch him as he passes.

The characters were so well developed that I would happily read another novel following how they grow from where we leave

me almost a decade ago was that scrambling, if done effectively, can lead to hoarding.”

As the novel grew closer to the end, it became more and more action-packed and every page was filled with as much excitement

Daily Dawgs: The dos and don’ts of human food

Hi guys! It’s me Rufus! There’s been a lot of talk around my house in the last few weeks about food. I know food is a major topic for everyone - I mean, we all have to eat, right? But these discussions have been different. It sounds a lot like how everyone was mentioning food a few months ago. When that happened, the smells in the house were paw-mazing! I couldn’t even begin to describe them to you! Mom says these times with special food are called holidays, and that some people celebrate a holiday called Easter every year and have lots of tasty food! I always forget the names of the holidays, but I never forget the food!

Something I may not have already told you about myself is that I love food! And I’m not talking about those dry bits of kibble, I call those rations, and mom puts them in my bowl every day. I’m talking about human food! There is such a wide variety of smells from human food! And the tastes! Don’t even get me started! But mom doesn’t let me have a lot of human food. It seems like every time I sniff the air in the direction of her plate of food she says, “No, baby, you can’t have this. It’s bad for doggos.” Sometimes she even tells me it’s “poison”. But here’s my question: if it’s poison, then why is she eating it?

When I look at her questioningly, she always explains. She teaches

me lots of stuff all the time! She’s a good mom! What she says is that there are some human foods that are perfectly safe for humans to eat, but because humans and dogs are different in lots of ways, those foods can sometimes be harmful to dogs. Personally, I think this is a flaw in the food chain – literally –but I’m getting off topic.

Sometimes I wonder if mom isn’t just being stingy and wants to keep all the good stuff to herself and not share with me. I think she could sense that I was having some doubts about her motivations for not sharing, so she decided to ask our friend Dr. Doggett at Striegel Animal Hospital about the different human foods that dogs can and can’t have. Dr. Doggett gave us lots of good information, but I don’t remember everything, so I’ll let mom tell you!

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Most individuals, regardless if they have pets or not, have heard over the years that there are just certain human foods dogs shouldn’t eat. Searching the internet for the answer will produce a sea of results, some more accurate than others.

Rather than wade through the seemingly bottomless depths of those results, Dr. Brandy Doggett of Striegel Animal Hospital was generous enough to provide some trustworthy answers to these questions. The most common thing that will spring to mind is often chocolate,

which is deadly to dogs.

“Chocolate, due to theobromine: depending on type of chocolate (milk to baking) and amount can cause vomiting, diarrhea, increased thirst, abdominal discomfort, lethargy, muscle tremors, irregular heartbeat, high body temperature, seizures and death,” Doggett said. Perhaps a lesser-known human food that is toxic to dogs is grapes, even in the form of raisins. This one is particularly dangerous because, as Doggett said, the amount ingested does not always indicate a particular level of toxicity.

“Grapes and raisins can cause kidney failure. This is difficult because it is not “dose dependent” and it is not every pet. A [five] pound Yorkie may eat a dozen grapes and have no problems, [but] a 60 pound Labrador may eat [two] and go into kidney failure,” she said.

Many adults are aware of the negative health effects of too much sugar in the diet, and will opt instead for sugar substitutes. There has been much debate over the years about the safety of many of the artificial sugar substitutes available, which has caused a rise in popularity of natural variations. The jury is still out on their health effects to humans, but it is well known that one such natural sugar substitute, Xylitol, is extremely toxic for dogs.

“Next would be xylitol, aka Birch Sugar, although it is a natural sugar found in plants

it is considered an artificial sweetener. It can be found in foods like sugarless gum, sugarfree candy and baked goods. It can also be found in toothpaste, mouthwash, chewable vitamins, cough drops and deodorants. Symptoms include vomiting, seizures and loss of coordination, which can occur anywhere from a few minutes to several hours after ingestion and lead to life threateningly low blood glucose levels, blood clotting disorders, and liver failure,” Doggett said.

The outlook on human food for dogs isn’t entirely bleak, however, as there are quite a number of fruits and vegetables dogs are permitted to have. Doggett cautions that any seed or pit fruits on the ‘okay list’ must have the seeds or pits removed before being fed to your dog. Additionally, these foods should never be seasoned with herbs, spices, salt, pepper or butter.

“Apple, banana, melons (cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon), strawberries, baby carrots, regular carrots, cauliflower, cucumber, snap green beans, green beans, green bell pepper, canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling), zucchini, butternut squash (raw or cooked with no salt or butter),” she said.

For those who celebrate the Easter holiday, Doggett said to avoid feeding your dogs ham because, “It has a lot of salt, and the fat may cause pancreatitis which can be life threatening.”

Eggs, too, should be avoided for the same reason, she said. Caffeine is another thing to be avoided, as it can lead to, “high blood pressure and irregular heart rhythms”. Speaking in more general terms, and strictly of the foods that are safe for dogs to consume, Doggett cautions against offering your dogs too much of their favorite human foods.

“A good rule of thumb to use is always restrict “treats” to less than 10% of daily calorie intake,” she said.

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Ok, back to me! Oh my dog! I guess mom was right after all! I’ll have to give her extra snuggles for ever doubting her! She assures me that my rations, or dry kibble, is perfectly satisfactory in keeping me strong and healthy. She said there are measurements of necessary nutrients that dogs need, and most maintenance dog foods fulfill the health requirements for dogs. But here’s the thing - I prefer human food, so I always wait until I know mom isn’t going to grab a snack before I eat my rations for the day.

Well, I’m out of time right now, but next week I’m going to tell you more about my visit with Dr. Doggett and some information she told mom about me!

Love, Rufus

erica LooS eLooS@daiLyegyptian com

Day Starr-Fleming | @daydreamingdrawings

Sophie Whitten

Sophie Whitten swhitten@dailyegyptian.com

Vote Gus Bode for Mayor and I’ll fix all the pot holes