Hodgepodge

volume one

HODGEPODGE CITIES / WILDERNESS / FEMINISM / MOVEMENT / CURIOSITY

TABLE OF CONTENTS CITIES

MOVEMENT

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44 Vinyasa Vibes Chloe Oliver Ali Miller

Migration, Memory, and Neighborhood Nostalgia Natalie Heneghan

12 Urban Wanderings Victoria Downey

54 November Project Natalie Heneghan

WILDERNESS

CURIOSITY

20 The Visitor Lauren Sewell

58 Waking Shelby Maidl Photograph: Luiza Montesanti

22 Spirit of the Shallows Molly Sowash 24 Monarch Erin Hauer 26 Illustrations Sherry Muyuan He 28 Inner Wilderness Amanda Leaveck 30 Painting + Poem Rachael Meadors

FEMINISM 34 One-Way Mirror Audrey Kelly 37 Be Still Julia Hobart 38 Needle & Thread Taylor Rose 40 Big Election, Tiny Village Laura Bretheim

60 North Shore Fire Tower Luiza Montesanti 62 Walden 2.0 Shelby Maidl 63 Disoriented Erin Lynch 66 Avenue of Flags, Oceti Sakowin Camp Sarah Winter

Hodgepodge celebrates the passion and talent of strong women through visual and written works. Conceived in the Cascade mountains of Washington state and designed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this publication unites seemingly disparate topics under one cover to draw more attention to fascinating, challenging, and beautiful phenomena in life.

Deepest thanks to all the contributors and supporters of volume one of this publication.

--Catherine Bretheim

Migration, memory, and neighborhood nostalgia Natalie Heneghan

Migration Between the onset of World War I and the election of Richard Nixon, roughly six million black Southerners left their homes.1 It was a shared, welltrodden path for some, while others took it alone.

Many migrants were well connected to resources in the North and had an address in hand upon arrival.

Still others had no connections, just scant promises of a better job. As the 20th century chugged, black migrants shed the labor frustrations of the sharecropping system as they journeyed north, often only to assume new, perhaps unforeseen weights of urban life. African Americans’ decadeslong exodus constituted one of the most critical internal movements in American history. Because of its magnitude, the Great Migration has been poked and prodded, dissected and theorized time and again, beginning long before the migration’s traditional “end.”

Most migrants went to one of a handful of highindustry cities: Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, or Milwaukee,

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among others. All saw dramatic spikes in African American population, and an understanding of the Great Migration is essential to a study of these urban cores. St. Paul is never on the Great Migration map, as its black population seems too negligible.

Size, however, should not determine legitimacy of study. The Great Migration undoubtedly shaped St. Paul, and its legacy lives on. By 1920, almost half of African Americans in Minnesota had been born in Southern states.2 The black populations of St. Paul and Minneapolis grew to 10,930 and 19,005, respectively, in 1970.3 St. Paul alone had a 388% increase in black population between 1950 and 1970.4 So while the Twin Cities might have seen a slow start to the Great Migration, it did not pass over the area completely, as literature might suggest.

St. Paul Along Interstate 94 between St. Paul and Minneapolis, drivers traverse the now-buried

heart of African American life in the St. Paul. Take any exit between the state capitol and Lexington Avenue, and an “Old Rondo” street sign might catch the eye, commemorating the historic neighborhood lost in the wake of freeway construction. Rondo, the name of both the community’s main street and the neighborhood itself, was home to the majority of St. Paul’s black citizens in the first half of the 20th century. In 1956, residents and businesses along Rondo Avenue were evicted, the buildings razed, and the interstate constructed in its place.

African Americans in Minnesota found jobs on the railroad, as janitors, barbers, shopowners, lawyers, teachers, and Pullman Porters. They established community centers in St. Paul and Minneapolis, welcoming newcomers and sustaining residents with regular social activities, and black leaders formed organizations aimed at social and economic development: Sterling Club, St. Paul Negro Business League, St. Paul Urban League, and the St. Paul chapter of the NAACP.5 Restrictive housing covenants created stark boundaries around black neighborhoods isolated from the city center within which class divisions formed geographically.6 In St. Paul, Rondo was one of three areas in which African Americans congregated, the other two being the West Side Flats and a tenement district near the state capitol. Taylor even notes that in 1926 the St. Paul Echo compared Rondo Avenue to State Street in Chicago and Lennox Avenue in Harlem due to the vibrancy of these main arteries of cultural and commercial life.7 Memory Memories naturally take on a nostalgic tone, and the memories of Rondo residents are no exception.

Kate Cavett’s collection Voices of Rondo includes interviews with thirty-three Rondo residents.

The narrators reflect on their years along Rondo Avenue and, because of the lack of scholarship on the community, the collection constitutes the bulk of Rondo’s complete history. Study of selected

oral histories reveals that residents are capable of feeling deep, intense nostalgia. However, nostalgia does not have to erase the challenges and realities of life during the Great Migration, pre-integration years. Recollections of the “good old days” can coexist with very personal, real struggles, and the combination allows for a deeper understanding of the African American communities formed in the wake of the Great Migration. They show that it is not necessary to forget the struggles of segregation, housing restrictions, class conflict, or even the physical destruction of the community in order to desire to celebrate, revitalize, and preserve these historic neighborhoods.

Focusing on the Douglas-Grand neighborhood, a “racial refuge”8 on the South Side of Chicago, political scientist Michelle Boyd suggests that modern-day celebration and revitalization of the historic neighborhood stem from sanitation of the Jim Crow years in popular memory, contributing to the notion that those were the “glory days” of the community. This nostalgia assumes that neighborhoods formed as a result of the Great Migration cultivated a “more authentic, successful expression of blackness” that might have been maintained if not for integration.9 It also reflects a growing anxiety about the loss of a collective black identity in that the longing for the past contributes to a reimagining of the modern black identity.10 Nostalgic remembrances emerge in a variety of forms. Certainly it comes out in oral histories, in which older community members are asked to reflect upon their formative years. Beyond that, recent preservation efforts and celebrations in Rondo, while focused on future Rondo, are undergirded by a nostalgia for past Rondo.

Oral history helps breathe life into established scholarship. It allows for a change in the direction of the scholarship and for a refreshed stock of primary sources. They can flip traditional accounts upside down and give communities or individuals a chance to write their own histories.

Oral histories from Rondo reflect a dichotomy that African American life in St. Paul was big HODGEPODGE

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MAP Calvin F. Schmid Social Saga of Two Cities

enough to foster both beneficial social networks and contentious class divisions, but it was also small enough to cultivate an often isolated, though safe and active, black community.

Voices Kate Cavett’s Voices of Rondo collection makes up a large proportion of all published material on African Americans in the Twin Cities. African American residents of St. Paul, more than other cities on the receiving end of the Great Migration, have been able to determine how their history is told and remembered through this singular publication. Beyond oral histories, celebratory festivals, commemorative pamphlets, videos, and token “blacks in Minnesota” chapters in larger collections make up most people’s understanding of Rondo. More often than not, sketches of the community take on a nostalgic tone as they emerge in the wake of the I-94 construction, which ruptured the neighborhood.11 The neighborhood’s skeleton figures

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prominently in recollections of Rondo and provides a frame for the narrators’ memories. Residents remember exactly which streets delineated the neighborhood and which corridors were safely “in-bounds.” It is within these bounds where some scholars see the culture of poverty finding its Northern roots, where others see the flourishing of a rich and vibrant black community, and where Boyd sees the promulgation of a collective identity and memory. The entire neighborhood extended from Selby Avenue on the south up to University Avenue, and from Lexington Avenue on the west to Rice Street on the east. Within this little onesquare-mile neighborhood, streets offered a sense of safety and community, and narrators remember them fondly.

The most important street in the community was of course Rondo Avenue. Lifelong resident Yusef Mgeni remembers the variety of life along the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare: “On Rondo the barbershops, the beauty shops, the shoe repair shops, the record shops were all cultural centers where, in addition to conducting trade and commerce, you also interacted with other people and there were

“Within this little one-square-mile neighborhood, streets offered a sense of safety and community, and narrators remember them fondly. ”

social gatherings...So there was a lot of oral history in the community.”12 Mgeni recalls other geographic markers in Rondo, citing St. Peter Claver Church and the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center.

While the neighborhood boundaries reinforced the thriving community within, they also quarantined the black community inside welldefined lines, and members of the community recall the limitations just as clearly. Selby Avenue, for example, formed Rondo’s southern barrier.

Mgeni remembers the struggles associated with leaving Rondo, particularly in coming back into the neighborhood. He remembers having to “fight” his way back into the neighborhood if he ever ventured south of Selby or north of University.13 “[E]ven up here we had de facto segregation,” says Nathaniel Abdul Khaliq, who grew up at 304 Rondo Avenue and later became a St. Paul firefighter and president of St. Paul chapter of NAACP. “In Saint Paul our de facto segregation was that certain places you just knew you didn’t go - Rice Street, even Grand Avenue. Later on when I started going to Marshall Junior High School, we had some White girlfriends that lived on the other side of Selby, we would go over there and once we got tired, we would have to sneak back across Selby into our area.”14 Marshall Junior High was a focal point for many narrators in Voices of Rondo. Local historian David Vassar Taylor remembers fondly the ease of navigating Rondo (“all that we ever needed, including a Dairy Queen, was within walking distance”), but he recalls: “the conflict where it did arise along racial lines was Selby Avenue, and because many of us attended Marshall Junior High, we had to cross Selby Avenue and in doing so, conflict erupted between Blacks and Whites.”15 Thus, as the streets served to reinforce system of city-sanctioned oppression and segregation, they also compounded the strength and comfort of the black community.

Safety comes up repeatedly throughout Voices of Rondo and is one of the most nostalgic elements of many narrators’ stories. For them, the essence of Rondo does not necessarily center upon the vibrant social life it boasted or the opportunity for black

organizations or businesses to flourish; rather, the mere fact that doors could be left unlocked and that everyone knew everyone else was enough to make it a neighborhood worth celebrating and remembering. Mgeni offers a particularly heartwarming reflection on his home: “The Rondo community was a multifaceted, complex array of social arrangements and relationships. It was an extended family, it was a mutual assistance association, it was where you fell in love, where you got your heart broke, where you skinned your knees, where somebody’s grandmother would stick her head out the window between the curtains and put her hand on her hips and say, “Boy, if you don’t quit throwing rocks at them bottles I’m coming out there and whooping your ass...It was a place where you knew who you were, you knew where you came from, and you knew where you were going...So the values, the character, the integrity, the close-knit connection, the extended family. I mean, we never locked our doors until I got into high school. And ninety-five percent of people on our block put the key under the doormat...So I miss that. It’s romantic, it’s nonchalant, it’s in part naïve to even wish that...This was my world. I mean, when I walked out on to the sidewalk, this was my neighborhood.”16 Mgeni misses this Rondo of old deeply. His Rondo is not necessarily just a product of decades of hindsight; he and other narrators in Voices of Rondo identify specific qualities - its size, businesses, familiarity, people, and relationships that made Rondo so livable and lovable and worthy of his nostalgia. He implies that this sort of safety and comfort are no longer key characteristics of the area at the time of his interview in the early 2000s. Still, his poetic description decades later might also suggest that these memories still inform the “Rondo” of today and that traces of what once existed might still be found.

As economic opportunities developed, the community cleaved into distinct, named neighborhoods, and some narrators focus heavily on the topic. “The rough cut would be people from HODGEPODGE

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Cornmeal Valley and Oatmeal Hill, and Oatmeal Hill is generally considered those that are middle class, the professionals,”17 according to William Kelso “Corky” Finney. Finney’s father worked on the railroad, and Finney himself served as St. Paul’s chief of police 1992-2004. Finney delineates the two areas, conceding there was some overlap. “[B]asically it was like this: people that live west of Dale Street were considered Oatmeal…People below, east of Dale Street on Rondo, would have been considered Cornmeal Valley.” His own family lived on Rondo between Western and Arundel in Cornmeal Valley, although his parents were “definitely Oatmeal.” He remembers Cornmeal Valley as a “wonderful, diverse community” where “doors were left unlocked and open. Everybody on the block was an adjunct parent of yours.” The Finney’s owned multiple properties, including a cabin in Northern Wisconsin. “The term then,” he remembers, “and it sounds so vulgar now, but I think many people considered us nigger rich.”18 And so even in a community no larger than one square mile, these distinctions and prejudices surfaced and are remembered decades later. Finney’s situation is important in that it emphasizes the fluidity of the two areas, subtly reminding readers that Rondo Avenue served the entire neighborhood.

Beyond the Oatmeal-Cornmeal divide, there was Deep Rondo. Don Gough Wilson describes life on Rondo as “bittersweet.” His memories stand in stark contrast to many of his neighbors’: “I have an idea that a lot of people will try to make Rondo into something that is all grand and glorious, and I may tell you, I’m a rebel. I’ll tell you that that’s not the case. It wasn’t my experience, nor the experience of people I knew. There was Deep Rondo, there was Cornmeal Valley, and there was Oatmeal Hill. And Cornmeal Valley and Oatmeal Hill had character, but none of it had the character of Deep Rondo. I was down in Deep Rondo.”19 These class divisions within black communities are complex and blurry. According to Wilson, “It’s colorism. I refuse to use the term racism, because I think there’s only one of those and that’s the

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human race. It’s colorism. It’s powerful. It’s just as powerful in Saint Paul as anywhere I’ve ever been in this country, and I’ve been all over this country, so far south you can’t go any farther unless you can swim. And I’ve been treated better there than I was in Saint Paul, on Rondo.”20 While others identify struggles of segregation or class divisions as an element of a relatively enjoyable, memorable life in Rondo, Wilson’s entire experience suffered from the realities of intraracial conflict within the community. His “rebellious” testimony alerts readers to take the pre-I-94 glorification of Rondo with a grain of salt.

Rupture Of all the streets, whether they served to distinguish black from white or Oatmeal from Cornmeal, “Rondo was the thoroughfare, the main drag, the main contributory, the focal point, the center, the epicenter, the nexus, it was the hub, the foundation, the strip, the element.

It was the headstone of the community,” in the words of Roger Anderson, cofounder of Rondo Days.21 And with the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956, Rondo began to disappear.

That year, 650 families were forced to move off of Rondo Avenue. The original “Remember Rondo” pamphlet notes that by the time the highway came through, Rondo Avenue was already in decline.

Physical and economic deterioration of the homes and businesses along the corridor were part of the reason for the strip to be chosen as the site of the future interstate.22 Nathaniel Khaliq was thirteen years old and living with his grandparents Rev. George and Bertha Davis when the police came to remove the elderly couple from their home on Rondo. The Davis’ were the last people to leave Rondo. Khaliq remembers, “As they started one by one knocking down these houses, this cocoon that many of us had been blessed to be a part of started falling apart.

One minute we’re living in this community where

“a categorical denial or collective forgetting of past struggles is not necessary to maintain a rosy view of their old neighborhood”

there’s Black businesses and people getting along and everything is just wonderful, you can sleep on the porch. All these insulators were there to protect us, by the grace of God, and then all of a sudden, you’re losing this family, and you’re losing that family...It was like they dropped a bomb and pieces of the cocoon went scattering all over never to be put back together.” 23 Teresina Carter Frelix remembers, “It was scary...Because all we knew was Rondo. We had to honor the color barriers. We couldn’t move past Lexington, and so there were certain confines that we had to move within, too. I think that was as scary as moving off of Rondo.” 24 And so while many see the construction of I-94 as the culprit in Rondo’s destruction, perhaps the problems to which some narrators only just allude were indicative of larger problems facing the community, namely the persistence of discrimination from outside the comforts of Rondo.

Analysis The Jim Crow nostalgia theory maintains that by expressing fondness for neighborhoods of old, residents or former residents sanitize the realities of pre-integration communities. Struggles of segregation and discrimination so apparent in Voices of Rondo coexist with traditional “good old’ days” recollections, forming a nostalgia that both agrees with and complicates Boyd’s Jim Crow nostalgia theory. Narrators from Rondo show that a categorical denial or collective forgetting of past struggles is not necessary to maintain a rosy view of their old neighborhood. Still others prove that the hardships can never fully be erased. Residents on either side of the class divisions recognized how they added a layer of complication to the fond memories of the neighborhoods. In Rondo, the community split into Cornmeal Valley and Oatmeal Hill at Dale, yet narrators like Finney note the fluidity of the two sections. Furthermore, Rondo Avenue ran through both sections and provided a sense of

centrality and unification for most.

In over-studying Chicago and larger northern urban centers, scholars and locals alike have come to care less about smaller pockets of black communities like Rondo. Voices of Rondo proves that nostalgia can powerful among a tiny, nearly forgotten neighborhood. Narrators do not lament the size or stature of Rondo. The pages of the collection are bursting with happy memories, struggles and suffering, and lessons learned, and they are mostly conveyed by people with a continued interest in the preservation and celebration of the old neighborhood.

Not one of the oral histories collected in Voices is a standard or baseline; all of them are anomalies.

Thus rather than applying Boyd’s Jim Crow nostalgia across all these recollections of past black communities, I suggest adjusting this theory to incorporate both the sanitized stories as well as the more complex, uncomfortable pictures of the past, rife with discrimination, employment struggles, and both interracial and intraracial conflict. This duality exists in most of the residents’ narratives.

As one Rondo resident put it, “a person could be a shoeshine man during the day, but he could be Mr. President at night.” 25 Voices of Rondo informs both the formal and popular histories of the neighborhood. The stories and memories assert that Jim Crow nostalgia certainly exists. Plenty of “good ol’ days” tales fill the collection’s pages. While the nostalgia theory smooths out the bumps of history, oral histories maintain originality, the roughness of reality. It is not necessary to forget the segregation, racism, housing discrimination, class conflict, and even the decimation of a community in order to remember, preserve, revitalize, and celebrate historic neighborhoods.

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Urban Wanderings Victoria Downey

FIRENZE CAROUSEL Florence, Italy

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VENICE, ITALY

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CITY OF THE DEAD Noord, Aruba

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KOKO HEAD O’ahu, Hawai’i

NEXT Florence, Italy

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The Visitor

By Lauren Sewell

Out on the Olympic Peninsula, wildlife appears with such frequency that sometimes I forget to notice it. Deer traipse through gardens and open meadows each morning, and I barely stop to give them a glance. An eagle soars over Port Townsend. A shrew crosses the road. A wild rabbit bounces in the garden, and I look toward each small creature with the same reaction—one that is practiced, perfected over many years of seeing these animals. A trite “wow” or “cool” might leave my lips. The curiosity that pulsed when I was a child has now flatlined; its flame has become an ember.

Running through a wooded trail and crossing paths with a moose or a black bear or an elk might shock me out of my system, in more ways than one. But everyday species like heron and harbor seals and squirrels and fawn have become a normal sight. Seeing live animals doesn’t contain the same majesty that it used to. I’m afraid I’m becoming immune.

My mother and I sat knitting and reading from the comfort of our couch. In our silence, she noticed a visitor.

“Look” she inhaled, motioning toward the back door.

I twisted my torso. My pupils adjusted to the wine-soaked evening as they searched for the outline of a hidden creature. I noticed his eyes first.

Gentle. Two gentle eyes stared at us through the glass. Two gentle eyes, tinged with a bit of melancholy, mystery, and helplessness.

Eyes like a child waking up from a nap, curious and full of expectation.

A small black nose stained his snout, and whiskers flanked his face.

Grey, salt-and-pepper fur covered his body. A black mask framed his eyes. Nearly everyone has witnessed a raccoon at some point in their life. I’ve seen plenty. I’ve seen one crawling across the bay’s low tide, another hiding in a tree at dawn, a family in a den by the boardwalk, a carcass on the side of the road. They are so ubiquitous that I shouldn’t have been shocked to see one at my door. But I was.

The raccoon reached his paw up and touched the glass. I noticed his fingers—long, distinguished, and leathery. A bit unnatural, a bit too human. Raccoons, extremely dexterous creatures, have hyper-sensitive, five-fingered paws. Even without an opposable

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thumb, they still can easily catch food, open garbage cans, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they could figure out how to work a cell phone. To eat, a wild coon will loiter near the shore, catch a crayfish or frog, and then fiddle with their meal in their hands to decipher what it is. They rub their food, looking like obsessive cleaners, but really, they are just sensing. As this guy looked at us, I wondered if someone had fed him—if he knew that this was the house to come to if he wanted apples or bread or meat or cat food.

I couldn’t stop staring at him—his hands, his eyes—and he couldn’t stop staring at us. Instinctively, I grabbed my phone to take a photo. Messing with the zoom and flash, I tried to get the best shot without any glare from the glass door. I needed to document this special witness, to show all my friends this young raccoon’s adorable face. I needed to remind my whole social circle that nature literally exists in our backyard. And I needed to remind myself. Connecting with wilderness is still possible, even in our comfortable age. So naturally, I took a few photos.

I tried to get a decent one before this wild creature ran away.

I knew time was fleeting and that he wouldn’t stay too long.

Creeping up from the couch, I approached the door slowly, the cold glass separating our bodies. Neither of us broke our gaze. I stopped a few feet in front of him and bent my knees, crouching to reach him at eye level, hoping to provide some message of equality.

But as I squatted, he grew. He raised onto his hind legs and reached his arms up like a mama bear protecting her cubs. His eyes weren’t malicious. My pupils widened.

Still with my phone out, I captured his balancing act. One shot, two, three—a ripple of flashes flooded my phone screen. He didn’t react to any of it. He didn’t lower himself onto all four legs. He didn’t flinch or run away. Not camera-shy in the least, maybe this raccoon had been photographed before. Maybe he had become immune to the habits of humans. Or maybe he wasn’t the one being watched.

“It’s like the opposite of a zoo,” my mother said, breaking my trance. “He came here to look at us.”

The raccoon kept staring at me—me, the spectacle. Me, the creature confined inside the warm, comfortable glass box. Me, the one with the phone glued to her hand so she could preserve the image, the memory, the interaction with a wild creature. The one who could, with the click of a button, tell even her most distant

acquaintances about the adorable little raccoon that came to her door on a chilly evening. The one with a story so saccharine, like the plot of a children’s book, just waiting to be told and garnish a few likes and comments. The one who desperately needed an audience to perform her life to.

Raccoons have been tamed. Though they aren’t kept as pets, they have adapted to the modern world. Raccoons inhabit suburbs, and they choke down dog food. These wickedly intelligent creatures sneak into garages and don’t run away from cameras. Once, a kid at my sixth-grade graduation fed a raccoon a hot dog. In state parks or public grounds, we have special fences and garbage cans to keep them from getting into mischief. Anymore, we don’t associate raccoons with the wild. They are like possums and squirrels and mice, relatively harmless pests that are nuisances to our tame lives.

I haven’t been trained to jump out of the water for fish or pick up a log with my trunk. I won’t sing a song for peanuts or flap my flipper for applause. I am not a circus elephant, but I have been trained to put on a show. My hands reach for my phone and its stagnant images constantly; I wonder who I can tell something, anything. Online, I watch others and they watch me, seeking immediate validation with a like or a tag or a post. But online, our eyes aren’t gentle. Our eyes are malicious. We tear each other apart, wild teeth exposed and fuming, as we cite a photo or a post as proof—look at their ugly new car, look at who they’re listening to, look at their inane beliefs, look at how unhappy they must be… my life is so much better.

I have been trained to continue this charade of updates and statuses and photographs of the highlights of my youth. I have been trained to expect a reaction from others. Most days, my modern life is completely devoid of wildness. It is unhealthy and unnatural. With so much content to react to, we begin attacking each other. And we begin attacking ourselves. Look at my ugly new car, look at who I’m listening to, look at my inane beliefs, look at how unhappy I must be…their lives are so much better.

Looking into a phone or a laptop or the glossy eyes of a young raccoon doesn’t illuminate some mystery of the outside world—it is a reflection. And it can be dangerous to stare into something that wild.

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Spirit of the Shallows Molly Sowash On the farm of knowledge you find truth on the surface.

Lifting your gaze, you take a harvest knife to the greens, put their leaves on your tongue and taste sunshine, crisped and curled.

To the orchard you shake loose apples from treetops.

Red fists drop from twig ends, heavy with a wisdom their roots cannot find.

They have seen the most of crow flight and constellations, the children’s feet climbing bigger each year.

You bite into dark skins, throw their cores to the compost.

Everyday gets easier, this return to the peripheral.

Today you parse creek babble and look for the spirit of the shallows.

Tomorrow you will ask the peanut shells to tell you who you truly are.

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Monarch

(Danaus plexippus) E.J.E. Hauer

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Black, white, and bright yellow-striped Monarch caterpillars munch on milkweed, their sole food source and the only plant upon which the mature butterflies lay their eggs. Once hatched, caterpillars paste themselves upside down from thin dogwood branches, spin into a chrysalis, and begin metamorphosis.

The monarch will soon emerge as a butterfly, unfolding and spreading delicate wings painted vibrant orange like an early sunset.

Millions of monarch butterflies journey from southern Canada, across the United States, to small mountain forests and moist canyons of northern Mexico, where they can survive to feed and breed during winter.

Once abundant along their springtime return migration routes, milkweed has declined by twenty-one percent across the United States due to deforestation and agricultural use of herbicides.

Without this host plant, monarchs do not exist.

Finding the monarch’s spiritual uplift, symbolism of the divine feminine, and service of pollination worth saving begins first in our own yards. Plant native milkweed in sunny spots to support and help save these magical, fluttering creatures on their flight for survival.

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ILLUSTRATIONS Sherry Muyuan He

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Inner Wilderness Amanda Leaveck Can you weather this storm?

Can you keep your feet on the ground as I rage and whirl, trying to be honest with the constant chaotic movement within me?

My wild woman is crying out, and she wants to be seen by you.

She wants to be heard.

I am a tornado and a sunrise, a forest fire and a butterfly kiss, all at the same time.

I am a water lily.

A praying mantis.

The tip top of an icy mountain peak.

My whole being shape shifts on a moment to moment basis, and there is nothing I can do but intimately open myself to each transition.

I am a continuous whirlwind of fleeting thoughts.

A perfect mess.

An honest contradiction.

Maybe I’ll never be fully understood.

Perhaps I’m just meant to be experienced.

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we four are sardines. matchsticks tucked neatly into our tiny box. our bodies are warmed, pressed near each other in order to guard against the bitter chill of the night. pressed near each other in order to not feel alone. thoughts are expressed into the void in hushed voices. gentle, tentative tones, cautious because once spoken aloud the thoughts become real. we catch each others fears with outstretched palms. we catch each others grief. we are not alone.

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we are kept company by the stars and the mountains and fourteen homes curving up the hill. the valley swells. it grows to make room for the BIG THINGS. there is space here for our fear. for our uncertainty. for our bravery and growth too.

the valley knows us and loves us. it whispers affirmations into ears. you are loved. you are enough. you are valuable. you are not alone, and you matter.

here in the stillness, the broken continents of our spirits drift together, they mend. we sew ourselves together. stitch by stitch.

words + painting rachael meadors

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The One-Way Mirror Audrey Kelly

AUGUST 16, 2016

walk away as he responded,

Last night my boss gave me a tirade about why Hillary is so awful that it might actually be better for Donald to be elected so that “people will take to the streets,” “we can change our political system.”

“Huh–best part of your night!”

Three nights ago, a 70ish year old man gave me an unrequested, slobbery kiss on my neck as he left my table after two drinks. Definitely not unprecedented, but terribly unpleasant, and every time I went in the back my affable, customerservice smile turned into a furrowed, frustrated brow.

“You doin alright?” the same boss asked.

“Meh, I mean, yeah. An old man just kissed me on the neck and blegh,” I responded, urgently continuing to put wine glasses into the rack in order to not show him how much it had actually bothered me. I was starting to

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Good thing I was walking away so that he couldn’t see my face turn into–well, I can’t exactly think what it turned into. Repulsion? Anger? Shock?

Incredulity?

A lesson for everyone: first of all, don’t kiss girls on the neck who don’t want to be kissed on the neck. But what my boss said was actually far worse: joking that I enjoy old white men taking advantage of me?? Here’s how he should have responded (and how I hope you respond if one of your friends ever experiences something similar): “What?!?!? That’s disgusting!! Where is he? Is he still here? Shall I go talk to him?”

Knowing that such a conversation will not fix the grossness and only exacerbate the awkward and horrible, your friend will say no. Then you say– “Okay, okay, if you’re sure. You stay back here and hide until he leaves, what can I take care of for you? Do you want a drink?”

Shoutout to Clara, my female friend at work who was properly outraged at the man and at the boss for his response, and who bought me a beer at the end of the shift. Shoutout to Ariel, who responded to my story with her story of a male co-worker twice her age patting her ass to get her to move out of the way, thus reminding me that I’m not alone and these abhorrent interactions are experienced daily by women all over. Yes, that made me feel better because I felt less alone–how awful is that?!

Shoutout to Michael and Luke, who were there the first time an old man kissed me by surprise, and who were appropriately shocked.

Bernie was a stupidly good-looking guy from London. He was visiting his brother in Barcelona on his parents dime, waltzing through life, aka quite akin to many of the people that appeared on my Facebook feed. By that time, Hillary was the clear leader in the polls and Bernie was on his way out of being a threatening candidate. We talked politics, me trying not to *visibly* drool over how handsome he was (his name was Ronan, and he had a London accent!!! Like sweet Zeus could you get any more dreamy). This Ronan fellow supported Bernie and disparaged Hillary and what she stood for. I got really excited, finally able to talk to someone who knew what was actually going on–and then:

When I got back from being in Europe for four months, I didn’t know what a Bernie Bro was.

Based off of the articles posted on my Facebook newsfeed, which swarmed with overly liberal, overly young, overly educated, and overly idealistic Bernie supporters (I went to a small liberal arts school on the west coast, okay), I had decided that Bernie was the guy that should be president. I, too, believe that the system is broken and has to change, in the grand tradition of educated twenty-somethings. From my privileged distance across the Atlantic, I disparaged Hillary for being, for perpetuating, the system I thought so broken. All very easy when I was alone in bed scrolling, but when Spanish people asked me about the upcoming election (which became inevitable in any conversation that lasted more than ten minutes) no one knew who Bernie was.

Zero people. I had to try and explain why I didn’t want Hillary to be president over and over again, each time to shock and awe. People in Europe LOVE Hillary.

(Please remember to read this in a British accent)

People in Europe LOVE Hillary.

They think she’s strong, she’s badass, and that she knows what she’s doing. They think that she should be the president of the U.S.

“I almost think that Trump should win, you know? I mean, he’s an abomination, but if Hillary’s in office nothing’s going to change. It’s just going to be the same problems getting worse. If Bernie was still an option then you lot would get the revolution and change that the world needs. But Hillary is too much a part of the system. If Trump’s elected, the whole world is going to turn upside down because it’ll all go to shit. But maybe it might be that it needs to go to shit before it can get better..?”

He leaned back and stretched out his long legs to rest on the coffee table and ran a hand through his dark hair. Stunned by his perfection, I could only nod at that possibility. It seemed radical to me at the time, and just plausible enough to be excusable when it came from a mouth that beautiful. I had also had a couple beers… but I shouldn’t use that as an excuse. I will give myself credit and say that as I got up the next morning and hauled my stupid body and stupid backpack to the airport, that comment rolled around my brain, thudding against my knowledge I had of real Americans, Americans whose lives would change immediately following a Trump election, Americans who ~Ronan~ probably would never encounter in his life.

The first person I ran into that was familiar with

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Less than two weeks later, after being deported from Britain and having my dreams of ever seeing Ronan again crushed ruthlessly by StupidImmigrationLady, I found myself in Portland. One of my good friends was dithering about how to vote for the Oregon primary, which at first confused me. Bernie, no?

That was when she explained Bernie Bros to me, a phenomenon I had not encountered in my transatlantic virtual following of the election. I can’t remember the words she used, but the image I had that stuck in my mind were the ultra-masculine, “f*** the patriarchy,” liberal hipshits smothering the very breath out of anyone who attempted to support Hillary. I pictured a steamroller of scorn, smooshing all difference of opinion with their “superior,” “revolutionary” ideas. My friend described interactions she had had with revered young liberal men, who told her both aggresively and passive-aggresively that Hillary the worst thing to ever happen to America. Ronan’s Trump idea jumped to mind, that utter inability to see past grand ideals to the literal reality of people living in America. Not in London or the hallowed halls of P-town, but people that can’t afford tattoos or flaxseed or holidays to Barcelona.

I stood there in my work uniform, a ludicrous white shirt and tie, and listened to my boss go on and on.

I listened to him and didn’t say anything. I was thinking about the flippant “best part of your night.” This guy, and Ronan, and many of the Bernie Bros, have zero clue what it is to not be a white male. That was the first time that it hit me.

They think that their reality is everyone’s reality, and so naturally, their ideas apply to everyone.

White male privilege is a one-way mirror. We can see them in the interrogation room, posturing and talking on and on, creating a rhetoric and

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society within themselves, oblivious to the rest of us beyond the mirror, trying to laugh at how ridiculous they are while shaking our heads and yet still somehow being kissed on the neck. ** I started to try to tell him that, to point out that he’s a white male and so he can have NO CLUE what a Muslim person fears from Donald assuming power in this country. He immediately dismissed me, and so I gave up, knowing that there was no way to get through to him, that he just saw his own reflection in the “mirror” instead of seeing through to where I stood. I spent the rest of the night quietly fuming, yet smiling and making him laugh because he’s my boss and I need him to like me so that he gives me good tables.

Think how many times Hillary has done that.

And that’s why I used to be for Bernie and now I’m for Hillary. As everyone in Spain told me, she’s strong, she’s badass, and she deserves to be president–regardless of the fact that just by her existence in this election we have the option to stop Trump. At least she sees through one window/ mirror, and she has shown valiant efforts to try and see past her own reflection when it comes to the well-beings of black Americans, immigrants, and the very earth.

** I want to fully acknowledge my own whiteness and realize that I am saying this in my own white privileged female interrogation room, and I want to apologize in advance in case anything I’ve written make those of you beyond the oneway mirror into my room shake your heads in disappointment and frustration. I also want to give a shout-out to all the white males out there that are managing to see a bit beyond their reflection, and to all of those who maybe aren’t there yet but are doing their darndest. Please keep trying, and please don’t think that putting Trump in office will solve all your problems.

Be Still Julia Hobart

Be still, child Be still. Be still. (x2) Stay warm, child.

Stay warm. Stay warm. (x2) Be sweet, child.

Be sweet. Be sweet. (x2) In the air outside, There's an awful chill.

Last week fifty died.

How many others will?

(Stay warm, child) Though the world may unravel, Your blanket's woven tight.

Though violence rages on, You are safe in your bed tonight.

(Be still, child.)

In the air outside, There's an awful hate.

So many children killed.

How long will justice take?

(Be sweet, child.)

Though those who govern may not be kind, Let kindness govern you.

Though men may put you down, To your own self be true.

But for now, you are young.

You are warm and sweet and asleep.

And for me, won't you stay that way?

Be still, child.

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Needle & Thread Taylor Rose

Although its history is long and varied, internationally practiced and regionally honed, since the seventeenth century, embroidery has been as much an instrument of women’s education as a creative endeavor and disciplined craft.

Recently, embroidery has reignited in popularity across the world. Innovative stitching techniques, pithy phrases, and multi-dimensional floral motifs recall the traditions of embroidery while updating the craft for a contemporary audience.

In early America, a young woman’s sphere of influence rarely extended beyond the periphery of her family’s garden, if indeed beyond her kitchen walls. Domesticity, marriageability, and the cultivation of tender maternal instincts quashed the apparent value of an academic education-grammar and arithmetic were minimized, childrearing and housekeeping emphasized. As a demonstration of her accomplished domestic studies, a young woman typically created two

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embroidery samplers during her early life. The first, a marking sampler, gave young girls the opportunity to learn embroidery and mending stitches while mastering the yet-foreign loops and curls of the alphabet and number systems.

The second sampler, created following puberty, typically took the form of a domestic scene replete with fancy filigrees and frilly florals. More than a tool for education, the second sampler demonstrated the teen’s refined taste in design, romantic availability, and mature fertility.

With an art history that is very much woven into the patchwork of women’s history and the constructs of domestic life, embroidery comes from a rich past and is headed into a richer future.

With the versatility of needle and thread, as with the malleability of brush and paint, anything can become. Let its once confined applications inform its future expressions; let its innate feminism fuel its exponential growth.

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Big Election, Tiny Village Laura Bretheim

We were sitting in Creekside, the room with the TV. About thirty of us. Rachel Maddow was on.

She was doing the filler speech on MSNBC that the stations have to do between when polls close each hour.

None of us said anything. No one said, “Seems like she’s just doing her job,” or “Brian Williams sure has a lot to say, too.”

One of us, a man, said,

“She just loves to hear the sound of her own voice.”

“She just loves to hear the sound of her own voice.”

I was taken aback — Rachel Maddow wasn’t taking up any more air time than Chris Matthews or Brian Williams or the dude by the big screen thing spouting off numbers. She was talking just as much. I mean, I didn’t do a word-by-word breakdown, but by my general brain calculations, she was running at about the same words-perminute.

No one in the room said anything. We were sitting quietly — we were told that this was a non-partisan gathering, because Trump supporters and Hillary supporters were present and we wanted to keep things respectful in our small mountain community. A few folks grumbled and grunted after his statement.

“She just loves to hear the sound of her own voice.”

The statement dismissed everything. It dismissed anything Maddow said as credible. Granted, all those cable newsthings were filled with fluff, but Rachel Maddow wasn’t filled with any more fluff than BriWi or statistics dude.

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I didn’t say anything.

She, a successful reporter, with short hair, wearing a pantsuit, who happens to be gay, couldn’t want anything more than to hear the sound of her own voice. All she wants is to be right, to be impressive, to think she’s better than she actually is. She’s intimidating, and she’s different. She’s powerful. She rubs you the wrong way.

I don’t know who this man voted for. Maybe he voted for Trump. Maybe he voted for Gary Johnson. Maybe he voted for Hillary. But this type of sexism, where when a woman exhibits qualities (intelligence, outspokenness) that are usually favored in men, is so insidious that it doesn’t even warrant a reply. We all, all thirty of us, just brushed it off.

I wish I had said something. I texted my sister about it, and she said, “I’m not trying to point fingers at you, but…”

But you are. And you’re right. Point fingers at me.

I should have said something. Because we need to start talking to each other.

A 2016 Washington Post poll found that 60% of Clinton supporters in Virginia do not have a close

friend or family member who support Trump, and 54% of Virginia Trump supporters do not have a close friend or family member who supports Clinton. This statistic is divisiveness, and this divisiveness is dangerous. This divisiveness means we can’t understand each other. Liberals are often upset that white people, rural voters, people from XYZ place don’t understand the struggle that Black Americans, LGBTQ+ Americans, Muslim Americans, Hispanic Americans, and so many others, face each day. Because we literally fear for our lives.

“She just loves to hear the sound of her own voice” If this election has shown us anything, it’s that clearly, a gigantic number of white Americans have no idea what minorities face each day. Actual danger. Fear for their lives. However, perhaps urban liberals don’t understand what rural, white Americans — who, at this point, seem to have won Trump the election — are voting for.

They are voting for something — they are voting for a guy who is somehow appealing because he’s going to save them. I don’t get it. But I want to and I need to if anything is going to change.

I didn’t vote third party (for a lot of reasons), but one of them was because I can’t afford a “protest vote.” I have friends who are black, muslim, LGBTQ+, and children of immigrants, and they couldn’t afford “protest votes.” Also, it doesn’t matter if I have friends who are different than me. Everyone is a person. But what happens if you don’t know any black people? Or if you don’t know any queer people? I have friends who don’t know any Muslim people. How does this impact your vote? Maybe you are empathetic and still understand this reality. But perhaps you don’t know (as I didn’t until embarrassingly recently in my life) that many young black men get “the talk” about police officers, because they can’t assume that the police are on their side as we white folks can. Perhaps you have fewer moments to realize your privilege in life. White folks need to educate each other so that the burden isn’t place on the oppressed.

So, we must speak up. I’m not very good at speaking up. In that moment of “she just loves to hear the sound of her own voice,” I couldn’t think of anything to say that was the perfect

combination of humorous/disarming/pointed.

It is hard to speak up. But I, and we, must start trying. We might offend people. We might not say exactly what we mean. We might not do it every time. But we must begin. And we don’t need to be that perfect combo of humorous/disarming/ pointed. The goal is to plant a little seed that, hopefully, grows.

We also must begin to ask questions. We must begin to go places that hold people who are different. I must, as a neighbor of yours in this country, understand why you voted for Trump.

And I don’t have to agree with you. But at this point, there was something. If it was because you’re afraid of what’s different, ok — let’s find ways to make different less scary. If it’s because you don’t make enough money — ok, let’s find ways to all live sustainable livelihoods. Those are the only reasons I can think of right now that I could possibly understand. Please, I would like to hear more.

Perhaps, if we are able to disarm these moments of insidious sexism that exist in the, “she just loves to hear the sound of her own voice,” moments, we will begin to disarm a larger feeling of fear, hate, and insecurity. These statements, these judgments, exist in similar forms as racism, homophobia, ablism, and many other forms of discrimination.

Perhaps I am too naive, too optimistic. Fine. But at this moment, on a night in which I just heard the phrase, “President-Elect Donald Trump,” I would rather be judged for my optimism and continue to feel this pain, this fear, this intense and deep sadness, than to say, “well, you’ll get used to it,” and crawl into an apathetic hole for the next four years.

I am afraid. I am deeply afraid for myself and for my friends and for people I have never met and will never know. But I’ve been listening to a lot of cheesy musicals this week, so like Hamilton, I’m trying to write my way out. Like Matilda, nobody else is going to change my story, because, “If you sit around and let them get on top, you might as well be saying you think that it’s ok, and that’s not right.”

Let us seek questions, let us ask difficult ones, and let us try to be human to one another. Let us be ok at failing. Let us lean on one another for support.

And let us go high. Please, let us go high.

Caveats: Conversation is not safe or practical for many people. It is often safer for white people.

Physical and mental well-being is paramount.

Please send comments if you have them.

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Vinyasa Vibes Chloe Oliver & Ali Miller

ABOUT THE YOGI: CHLOE OLIVER Each time I step on my mat I get to experience this goofy concept of getting lost in the right direction: I do believe that when you’re truly happy, time stops, it doesn’t exist or matter. I love getting lost in the flow of breath and asana, it’s the sound and dance of infinity. In a world that moves really fast, where you don’t have to think too much about moving or breathing, to move and breathe in a more intentional way feels so fresh and powerful. I’ve been really passionate about moving in a creative and meaningful way since I was very small, as a competitive dancer and soccer player.

To add the component of mindful breathing with powerful movement, it’s built a lot of physical and mental strength in my experience as a yogi and human being. There is nothing better than building confidence and freedom in breath and movement and sharing that experience with others.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER: ALI MILLER People always ask me how I first got into photography, and my answer is always the same: growing up I was surrounded by beautiful human beings, how could I not photograph them?

Over the past six years I have learned what it means to have a passion for something, I’ve learned what it means to feel pure joy, I know how it feels to capture a moment in time and be so giddy and excited about it that I can’t find the words to describe it. Photographing movement, the human body, and the grace that comes with it is my passion in life. Over the past year I have fallen in love with the art of yoga and the people that are a part of that community and cannot wait to see where my passion for photography will take me.

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Vinyasa Flow Chloe Oliver’s Surya Namaskar B (Sun Salutation B)

Chair Pose Utkatasana

Chair Pose with Airplane Arms Utkatasana Variation

Crescent Lunge Anjaneyasana

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Mountain Pose with Backbend Tadasana Variation

Open-Armed Twist Parivrtta Anjaneyasana Variation

Forward Fold Uttanasana

Half Lift Ardha Uttanasana

Reverse Warrior Viparita Virabhadrasana

Four-Limbed Staff Pose Chaturanga Dandasana

Extended Side Angle Utthita Parsvakonasana

Upward-Facing Dog Urdhva Mukha Svanasana

Reverse Triangle Viparita Trikonasana

Downward-Facing Dog Adho Mukha Svanasana

Four-Limbed Staff Pose Chaturanga Dandasana

3-legged Downward Facing Dog Eka Pada Adho Mukha Svanasana

Upward-Facing Dog Urdhva Mukha Svanasana

Low Lunge Anjaneyasana Prep

Downward-Facing Dog Adho Mukha Svanasana

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November Project Natalie Heneghan

It took years of running for me to call myself a runner. Then it took a few more for me to say, okay, I’m kinda fast. The label “runner” conjured up images of neon-clad, completely fat-free athletes wearing watches the size of small animal.

I thought of groups. Packs of runners, teams of runners, even casual runners sneaking peeks at each others’ gigantic watches to make sure they were still fast. Groups freak me out.

I’ve always been cautious of deriving my identity from groups or teams or clubs. Growing up, I enjoyed being a little out of sync with my peers.

When all my classmates played rec soccer every Saturday from second through sixth grade, I said, I’ll practice my violin and pogo stick with my sis, thank you very much. Running groups, to me, were the adult version of rec soccer. So I stayed on the sidelines.

Through high school and college I shielded just enough of myself to stay semi-detached, to float from place to place. I preferred to attack challenges solo. I attribute this to a trifecta of lessthan-perfect qualities: the ambition of a first-born, my inner control freak, and a fear of screwing up in front of people.

They are intense, but ridiculously fun. They are for everyone, any fitness level, and a lifetime membership costs $0.

Between hearing about NP and deciding to show up to NP, my anxiousness wasn’t due to the intensity or the hugs or the meeting new people.

I was nervous about being vulnerable in a group.

I’d have to expose this little “athlete” identity that I was slowly cultivating to a lot of people at once.

At my first workout, I was greeted with hugs from loud, energetic shapes, still too hazy in the predawn dark to be considered humans. The “tribe” circled up, jumped around a bit, and ran. Fast.

And I ran with them.

Identities and passions evolve, appear, and surprise us. Propelled by the infectious positivity of the tribe, I made my way to the third annual November Project Summit in Park City, Utah, in the summer of 2015. This gathering of NP folks from all tribes centers on a rugged trail race and is rounded out with copious amounts of hugging, cheering, and yelling.

Before I discovered November Project, I had been triathlon-ing for a few years, thanks to my dad.

He tried something new at age 40 and passed along the weekend warrior spirit. I liked setting and conquering individual goals and challenging myself in a new way. Health, movement, and nonacademic competition compelled me to race.

Athleticism and speed were secondary.

Never in a million, billion years did I think I’d drive across the country with friends I met through a running group to run a trail race and hang out with hundreds of people I had never met before.

Literally all of those circumstances would have scared me shitless a few years ago. But since that first workout, I felt a growing confidence that yeah, I could handle this. I’m strong; I’m a runner; I’m a racer. That confidence continued to grow at each workout since that trip.

November Project is a grassroots, free fitness movement born in Boston and now in 32 cities across the world. NP workouts are always outside, every Wednesday and Friday, all year long.

When Summit 4.0 rolled around this past July, going was a no-brainer. I trained; I felt ready and strong. On the day we planned to leave for the race in Ontario, I found out I had a stress fracture

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ABOVE Photo by Carly Danek

in my left foot. People asked if I would still make the trip. Fuck-to-the-yes. My steadfast opposition to running groups had done a complete oneeighty in two short years, and I was committed to this crew.

Seeing my tribe race its collective butt off at Summit was a unique privilege. As much as I craved to lace up two shoes, I watched, and I cheered, and I realized that through the magic (yeah, magic) of November Project, I am a person with different labels and identities than I had a couple years ago. I wear the November Project tag proudly; it’s a label I have no interest in shedding, and I love sharing it with hundreds of people all over the world. I am a person with fucking fast friends, people who push and pull me to do hard things like run up mountains - little Minnesota ones or big ass Utah ones. Or figurative life ones.

We lift each other up, we help heal wounds, we spread positivity, we hug, we love.

My foot injury was not a quick fix. It halted my race season and stuck me in a boot for six weeks. I’m still not back to normal. But the tribe, my loud, wacky, kind, empathetic, supportive tribe, is the farthest thing from rec soccer and everything it represented to little me: conformity and meaningless competition.

These friends, no longer just “NP friends” but real life friends, made me feel as uninjured and un-sidelined as possible. I showed up to every workout in that dang boot and did pushups and abs for the duration. I convinced a small group of badasses to swim with me before Wednesday workouts. They let me carve out a bit of the fun each week. They made me feel like I wasn’t missing out. Because the tribe makes a ceaseless commitment to me and to my potential, injured or not, feeling strong or not, running fast or not, I wake up every day and do the same.

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THIS PAGE & NEXT: Photographs by Luiza Montesanti

Waking Shelby Maidl Wake in the morning in sheets – Dewed with bad dreams – What has been.

Eyes open with a violent sigh – So ends the silence.

Shoulder blades un­crushing Meterless, and rushing.

Hissing breeze – Pollen­dusted bee’s Golden cloak crashes.

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Walden 2.0 Shelby Maidl

To dearest Thoreau – See the man and woman Hand­-in-­hand admiring The passive Walden.

See not The photographer documenting their engagement.

To be back on your Walden Is a dream that confidence has forgotten.

In our heaving hurry Fears and pleasures, as deep as puddles, form A pseudo­lawn over mortality.

How disturbing for you to see now That shadow, which loomed so close and breathed so heavy And dark like the exhale of a train, Has breathed us in – thoroughly – In the whirring black I can’t find the trapdoor.

Cogs in a maze, Rats in a machine, I’ve lost the ability to blink.

Remember the patriotic duty It takes a village to raise the GDP. But growth for the sake of growth Is the ideology of the cancer cell And America is ill – Farmers strung out on fertilizer, Beans grow in perfect circles.

Sick with gluttony But capitalism turns disease into profits, Prescribing diet pills.

The pathological mono­modernization Strip malls and sense of place Texas or Maine It’s the same.

But Walden still exists So let’s lay on the warm sand Eyes closed – Try not to hear the squeak of lawn chairs, The smell of tanning lotion.

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Disoriented Erin Lynch

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ILLUSTRATIONS Erin Lynch These drawings are reimaginations of space through abstraction, where the viewer is enticed initially through reference to the Western art convention of linear perspective. However, once the viewer’s gaze is held by recognizable forms, it’s disoriented by a split from the rules--three dimension shapes exist in different planes, bold-colored backgrounds surround muted-color foreground. With this, the space is rendered unplaceable, unrecognizable, and what seemed like physical boundary and plane turns into emotive landscape. With these drawings, my aim is to call into question different epistemes and ideologies that construct our understanding of our visual world, and to subvert and confuse them; I want to show that reimagining space, or attempting to make art at all, disrupts stagnancy and is nothing short of revolutionary.

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Avenue of Flags Oceti Sakowin Camp Sarah Winter

CONTRIBUTORS POEMS + ESSAYS Amanda Leaveck Audrey Kelly Erin Hauer Julia Hobart Laura Bretheim Lauren Sewell Molly Sowash Natalie Heneghan Rachael Meadors Shelby Maidl VISUALS Ali Miller Carly Danek Catherine Bretheim Chloe Oliver Erin Hauer Erin Lynch Luiza Montesanti Rachael Meadors Sarah Winter Sherry Muyuan He Taylor Rose Victoria Downey COPYEDITS Lauren Sewell GRAPHIC DESIGN & CREATIVE DIRECTION Catherine Bretheim

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NOTES COVER Illustration by Catherine Bretheim PAGES 4-5, 22-23, 32-33, 37 Paper marbling by Catherine Bretheim PAGES 6-11 1. Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1991), 6.

2. Ibid, 81.

3. Ibid, 74.

4. David Vassar Taylor, African Americans in Minnesota (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002), 51.

5. David Vassar Taylor, “Remember Rondo: Celebrating the People, Their Lives and Times,” History of Rondo (St. Paul: Rondo Avenue, Inc., 1983): np.

6. Taylor, African Americans, 32.

7. Taylor, “Blacks,” 81.

8. Michelle R. Boyd, Jim Crow Nostalgia: Reconstructing Race in Bronzeville (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008): xii.

9. Ibid, xiii-xiv.

10. Ibid, xv.

11. Sanders, ed., “Remember Rondo,” 30.

12. Yusef Mgeni, interview by Kate Cavett in Voices of Rondo, 314.

13. Ibid.

14. Nathaniel Abdul Khaliq, interview by Kate Cavett in Voices of Rondo, 223.

15. David Vassar Taylor, interview by Kate Cavett in Voices of Rondo, 274-5.

16. Yusef Mgeni, interview by Kate Cavett in Voices of Rondo, 316-7.

17. William Kelso Finney, interview by Kate Cavett in Voices of Rondo, 298.

18. Ibid, 299.

19. Don Gough Wilson, interview by Kate Cavett in Voices of Rondo, 129.

20.

21.

22.

23.

Ibid, 130-131.

Taylor, “Remember Rondo,” n.p.

Ibid.

Nathaniel Khaliq, interview by Kate Cavett in Voices of Rondo, 225-6.

24. Teresina Carter Frelix, interview by Kate Cavett in Voices of Rondo, 280-1.

25. Cavett, ed. Voices of Rondo, 187.

Page 8 Map Source: Calvin F. Schmid, “Social Saga of Two Cities: An Ecological and Statistical Study of Social Trends in Minneapolis and Saint Paul,” (Minneapolis, MN: The Minneapolis Council of Social Agencies, Bureau of Social Research, 1937), p.

181.

PAGES 18-19 Photograph by Catherine Bretheim PAGES 30-31 Original painting by Rachael Meadors Digital edits by Catherine Bretheim PAGES 34-36 Blog post from: http://www.akellz.com/ uncategorized/the-one-way-mirror/ PAGE 40 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ local/virginia-politics/in-virginia-astate-of-political-separation-mostclinton-voters-dont-know-any-trumpvoters-and-vice-versa/2016/09/14/ f617a2b8-75e8-11e6-b786-19d0cb1ed06c_ story.html?utm_term=.d238cd80cb70 PAGES 56-57 Photograph by Catherine Bretheim PAGES 68-69 Photograph by Catherine Bretheim

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