Post- 9/21/17 by Post- Magazine

SEPT 21 – VOL 20 – ISSUE 2

In this issue... Police, Paint, and Poetry

FEATURES

Editor’s Note

The Night Patrolman— Part Two

Emblematic

5 LIFESTYLE I’ll Be Wearing Green Velvet

(Im)Perfect Summers

Radio Somewhere

7 ARTS & CULTURE We Fight, We Makeup

From Brandenburg to Currywurst

Dear Readers, Hurricanes are weird things: carrying the hope of a day off from school, and yet awe-inspiring, one of nature’s most destructive forces. While there has been extensive coverage of the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma (in the U.S.), flooding in South Asia has killed over 1,000 people during the same time period. Jokes about “blowing at the hurricane” prompt a chuckle; we forget that many people are helpless in the face of this disaster. Recognizing the ambiguity of events in our lives has prompted many of the pieces this week: from “We Fight, We Makeup” to “(Im)perfect Summers”, our staff this week has been contemplating what it means to live with contradictions. I hope you enjoy reading them, and stay safe! Best,

Saanya

editor - in - chief

Post- Staff Editor-in-Chief Saanya Jain

Head of Media Claribel Wu

Managing Editor, Features Jennifer Osborne

Features Editors Anita Sheih Kathy Luo

Managing Editor, Lifestyle Annabelle Woodward

Lifestyle Editors Amanda Ngo Marly Toledano

Managing Editor, Arts & Culture Joshua Lu

Arts & Culture Editors Celina Sun Josh Wartel

Head Illustrator Doris Liou

Assistant Copy Editors Zander Kim Divya Santhanam

Copy Chief Alicia DeVos Layout Chief Livia Mucciolo Creative Director Grace Yoon

Layout Assistants Eojin Choi Julia Kim Media Assistant Samantha Haigood

Staff Writer Alicia Mies Anna Harvey Catherine Turner Chantal Maruta Claire Kim-Narita Daniella Balarezo Daniera Rivera Eliza Cain Emma Lopez Jack Brook Karya Sezener Natalie Andrews Sonya Bui Sydney Lo Veronica Espaillat

Staff Illustrator Caroline Hu Erica Lewis Harim Choi Kira Widjaja Nayeon (Michelle) Woo Cover Vincent Chen

7 7 8

The Night Patrolman—Part Two

utierrez honed his interpersonal skills working at the Donald W. Wyatt maximum security prison. He hadn’t wanted to work there, but after marrying his high-school girlfriend and giving up his dream of playing pro football, he realized he needed a job to pay the bills and support the daughter they were expecting. He often worked the A-Block, the solitary unit where the most notorious prisoners were held. For eight hours—16 if he worked overtime—Gutierrez would stand in the hall and oversee the eight prisoners. Aquart Azibo stood out from the rest of the inmates. Gutierrez recalls that the officers crept past his cell, the other inmates were too scared to even look at him, and if you worked his block and he didn’t like you, he would cover up the inside of the glass window of his door so he wouldn’t have to see you. Gutierrez always thought Aquart prowled his cell with the contained fury of a caged pitbull. He was on death row, consigned to solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, the first person to be sentenced with capital punishment by a Connecticut court in modern times for the triple homicide of a rival crack cocaine dealer using duct tape and baseball bats. But Aquart didn’t cover up his window when Gutierrez came over. Instead, they struck up conversations, talked for hours on end—about their children, about the stories Aquart wrote, about ways to make money outside of prison. Separated by several inches of glass and the wall of the cell, they’d work out together, each on his own side, doing pull-ups and dips and calling out the reps; they would play focus and concentration games, giving each other push-ups as punishments. G, there’s something about you man. You’re real, Aquart always told him. You’re not a corrections officer, you belong somewhere else. Aquart read hundreds of books, was one of the brightest minds Gutierrez had ever met, and became something akin to a mentor for him. If I had your opportunities, man, Aquart said constantly, coaching Gutierrez to do better with his life. Every day, Gutierrez came home on the verge of tears, feeling like he was doing time with Aquart as well. He would wake up the next morning, hating his job so much that he sometimes hoped he would get into an accident so that he wouldn’t have to go into the prison. When Gutierrez heard the Providence Police Department had begun a new recruiting drive, he saw an alternative to his job as a corrections officer. The Department accepted his application. Next, he had to pass the grueling Police Academy. Every single day at the Academy, he wanted to quit. For six months he woke up at 4:30 a.m., lining up with the rest of the officers outside the gym, and a few brutal hours later he’d be sitting in class, studying law and policing tactics. When he’d finally arrive home at 6:30 at night, he’d iron his uniform for the next day, then crack open his books and not close them until 1 a.m., if he was lucky. Most of the recruits were young, in their 20s and fresh out of college or the military. Gutierrez was 34 with a

wife and three kids. Training proved a constant ebb and flow of chaos, shrouded in secrecy and intense paramilitary training. People routinely passed out, puked, or had nervous breakdowns. Gutierrez wasn’t allowed to make eye contact with any of his superiors, had to endure push-ups and sit-ups and constant scrutiny of his appearance and performance in the fiercely competitive environment where each 10th of a point in the grading system carried tremendous weight. Shoes had to be shined daily, faces shaved clean. The Academy started with 60 recruits and a reserve list of 10, but by the end of the six months, only 53 graduated, the reserve list exhausted. What are you doing here, Jimmy? He’d think every morning while lacing up his sneakers before the workout. Why don’t you go back to the prison? Here you’re just a nobody. You had respect over there. It’s not too late to go back. He thought of his family to get him through the training, but after a certain point, not even that could sustain him. Instead, Gutierrez found himself falling back on the strength he had summoned to endure his own childhood, which made police training seem like nothing. Gutierrez remembers the feel of his mother’s fingers running through his hair, caressing the long curly locks he used to have. As she sat on the bed watching the evening soap opera, he would close his eyes, feel time extend before them for what seemed like hours. Every evening, he knelt before her bed, sitting there silently and letting her hand rest on his head, knowing in the pit of his stomach that as darkness fell, George would inevitably stumble home and the comforting stillness of the room would be shattered. After the worst nights, his mother would wrap him up in her arms and whisper promises into his ear, promises that George would stop hitting, that things would change, that one day soon she would leave him, that they wouldn’t always be as poor as they were and, Jimmy, if only you stay being a good boy things are going to change for you. They will. I promise. Except, at breakfast, they kept having to pick roaches out of their bowls of cereal, and George kept coming home smelling like pot and rum, and he kept wrapping the boy’s hands up with towels to fight his brothers, and the screams kept ringing through the walls into the night, and Jimmy kept having to run down the street, run as fast he could, to pull that alarm, and he kept living in a house where every day he thought someone would die. If you are a young boy living like this, you grab those whispered promises and bring them close to you and hold on tight. The promises strengthened his nightly prayers, and he let the words expand in his imagination until they were more than just promises—they were the truth of the future he so badly wanted to believe in. Then one day he is the one promising. They are driving cross country in the old station wagon, all the way to California with the five boys squeezed into the back, when George and Maria start arguing and George smacks her right across the

The Making of Officer Gutierrez face. I’m done, she screams, clawing back as they race along the highway through the mountains. She’s reaching for the door, trying to pry it open, and George has his hand on her, holding her in. The boys are crying and all the while Maria is screaming I’m sick of this shit until George swerves off the road, and she pushes open the door and races out, right up to the edge of the mountain road where the precipice drops off below. She sits down, lets her feet dangle over the side. Jimmy scrambles out of the car, sprinting and diving onto her leg, trying to pull her up, crying and yelling—Ma, if you jump, I’m not staying, I’m going with you—and she’s struggling with him, shaking with tears, her blond hair a mess, muttering that she doesn’t want to live anymore—and he’s clutching her leg, holding it so tight and close because he knows that if he lets go… Ma, you gotta think about us, please think about us, and she stops struggling, just sits there, convulsing on the side of the highway, with George in the car watching them and his brother’s faces pressed up against the window. Mommy, please stay with us, it’s gonna stop. I promise. The futile words of an 11 year old. For weeks, he wonders if his words, his promises are enough. Will she leave? Will she kill herself? Will we end up living with George forever? No one prays harder than Jimmy Gutierrez does for his mother, not a priest or a nun, nobody. But in that moment, the physical act of saving someone else, of preventing an evil from occurring, imprints itself in Gutierrez’s psyche and lies at the core of why he puts on the blue of the Providence Police uniform each night. It is the memory of his promise that gives him the strength to make it through the Academy. Despite the perception of the public and the press, Gutierrez continues to hold a positive outlook on his work. Six months into the job, he receives a dispatch for a 911 hang-up. Dispatch says it heard only one thing: the sound of a female screaming. Gutierrez comes to the door of a dingy apartment, knocks at the door. He waits as the minutes tick by, knocks harder, then pounds the windows. Something tells him to wait, to stay a bit longer. He keeps pounding. Finally, a man opens the door a crack. Everything’s all right, officer, he says. I live here with my girlfriend. She’s been smoking hookah, acting weird. Gutierrez replies that he has to see the girlfriend to check on her wellbeing. The man hesitates. Move over, Gutierrez says, or I’m gonna have to force my way in. He walks into the apartment cellar, pushing past the man. On the floor a young woman lies completely naked, crying softly, Ayudame, por favor. Help me, please. The man doesn’t think Gutierrez understands the Spanish, says something about the hookah. No, Gutierrez says, feeling his voice rise and pulse pound. You threw her on the floor, you hit her. She’s asking for help. He hears the woman’s story, learns

how she is an undocumented Dominican immigrant, how the man said he could beat her and hurt her and the cops wouldn’t do anything, then choked her until she fell unconscious. The police would scare George off, but they never locked him up; he always got away with it. As Gutierrez puts the man in handcuffs, childhood memories resurface and open up before him. He can feel the tears on his face and his mother’s hand in his curls, can still picture George holding his mother by the hair with the hammer raised, his mother’s legs dangling over the cliff the day she almost left him, and the soothing words she whispered. She kept her promise: When Gutierrez was 13, the family left George and the Bronx behind, moving to Providence. Gutierrez found his outlet through football—he sought out the impact, relished the ability to finally hit back for the first time in his life. Now, every night, on his way to work, he repeats the same phrases to himself, what he calls his “affirmations”: how lucky he is to be alive and how his family, his culture, and his mother, whom calls every night, are all still a part of him. The words are his protective armor, calibrating his state of mind to the night ahead. He doesn’t want to be a cop forever—he wants to go back to school, start a company. No matter what, though, he knows he will never be able to fully move on from his job as an officer. He’ll always carry with him a heightened sense of alertness, instilled in all police officers by the unpredictability of people and their lives. But despite all the anxiety and apprehensions of policing, Gutierrez comes away each night with the knowledge that he has done something, however small or seemingly inconsequential, to help someone, whoever the person may be. And when a little boy climbs out the fire escape window to pull the alarm, Gutierrez can sleep at night knowing that he is the one who will come. In a world full of uncertainties, that much is certain.

Jack Brook

staff writer

Doris Liou

he ad illustr ator

Emblematic

The Threads That Wind between Us

AS220, a community arts organization based in downtown Providence, has flourished because it has kept its independence paramount. In 1992, founder Umberto Crenca purchased a 21,000 square foot building in the heart of downtown Providence, in a derelict part of town, with no running water or electricity. In the span of a year, it became a haven for artists struggling to find affordable housing and a productive art community. In the following years, Umberto and AS220 managed to acquire three more buildings, which they now rent out to restaurants and shops that share its social justice aesthetic – a revolution from within, disassembling the master’s house without the master’s tools. The funds from these rents go towards buying new art supplies, putting on events, and upgrading AS220 facilities. AS220 now hosts all kinds of arts spaces – from spoken word slams to rotating gallery spaces to programs for Rhode Island youth. Umberto boasts that he turned Providence from “the armpit of Rhode Island” to the booming artistic and cultural center it is today. He came in with a mission - that performances in the space would be “unjuried, uncensored, and open to the general public”. He claims that his missive of “fear no art” is what made the Providence community what it is today. But what does it mean to be a part of that community? At the CUPSI (College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational) show, the first thing that strikes me is that even though it is a small room there is still so much space. I am used to listening to spoken word from afar, in the cold seats of college auditoriums. Here, the stage stands uncomfortably close. Here, I see how warm the dark

really is. Spoken word still feels like an onslaught, 1.5 hours of shifting bodies yelling and cursing and crying, listeners stomping and snapping and whooping when they hear something they like; it is beautiful, but still hefty and dark. Do the performers lounge here pre-performance, all jitters and excitement? Change into their performance outfits, wear them all day, keep them close to their chests until it’s time to shine? How do they prepare to step into this building, or are they constant ghosts? I like daydreaming about creating art outside the chokehold of buildings, with the city sprawling around, the goal not to understand it but to capture its pulse. That is why I am caught off guard when they distribute whiteboards to the audience members and tell them that they are now the slam’s judges. A person gets up on stage. One side of their head is shaved close and their long blond hair stands off their head with a green streak running through it. They are wearing a dark green and purple plaid dress, offwhite knee-high socks, and chunky boots that look vaguely Doc Martens-ish. The poem is not spoken word style; it is not hard-hitting and immediate like most poems I have heard. The poet is gentle on stage. I don’t get the sense that they are being particularly vulnerable, but their words have a little lilt and hue—soft purple, or something like that. Quiet poetry, loud appearance. The white boards go up. The emcee announces the scores. 6 out of 10, 6.5 out of 10, 7.3. They sit back down, and I feel bad because I predicted what happened before it did. How do they enter this space? Do they think about the creator’s

free spirit beating up at the wooden floors, or the legacy of the building we huddle in together? During the poem they hold up two hands in front of their face and make metaphors about mirrors, and I hear the ground agree. The emcee deadpans another advertisement for something else happening in the space, and I can tell he is having trouble not inserting commentary to bridge the transitions. Unapologetically black, he tells us in his own slam. Wears sandals even though Providence is beginning to double in on itself from the cold. You can tell he has experience here, that this building is like a second home. The judges are hesitant to give scores throughout the slam, so the emcee encourages them to help him out, for Christ’s sake, since there’s only so much stalling he can do (cue laughter). I am on guard, aware of how public this is and how everyone can see and judge their decisions. Do the judges feel this? Do they feel like they are performing too? The city outside sounds small, wrapping itself in the opening and closing of the door, the strangers that stand by the usher’s booth and politely keep their scarves and coats on despite the heat. AS220 is small but the stage is big. Every time an audience member stomps in awe another heartbeat darts between us. A girl from ProvSlam Youth gets up on stage. She has fans; there is cheering and whooping as she walks up. In terms of the spoken word aesthetic, she is unassuming. Blond hair, a smile that spreads as the lights rise, red lipstick, simple dress, and combat boots. She spreads her arms wide and performs a poem about a crush on her favorite male celebrity, in a voice just confident enough to sell the sincerity

behind the wit. I don’t like to ask why to everything, but I find myself asking why this time. It’s not bad but it’s not what I’m used to, and I’m sad to feel the heartbeat beneath us stop. This is art for the artists, art for the purpose of art, but what are the fractures under the surface? Where does the city create itself? On the stage? In the motley audience? I wonder how much of the show is determined before we even get here, before we even sit down to write, to see, to live. Scores: 6s, 7s, a 5.7 that is particularly harsh. She doesn’t seem shaken and goes into her next poem. It is about sexual assault. Now her lips are alive, moving fast, eyebrows pressed down and eyes darting in rapid motion. She is angry. She is not sad, not lilting, not lilac. She is excavating, and we are watching her burn the remains. This is the art I’m used to, the art that leaves me burned out after the first few rounds but demands I keep the candle to the flame. It doesn’t seem any different for her, unhinging art from her chest versus swirling it around in her palms. She looks like a performer through and through and takes the better scores in stride, her bounce off the stage reminding me of her youth. Did she expect this? Did she plan on it? I don’t quite know if she was successful; she doesn’t advance to the next round. But her first poem was a moment of levity in 1.5 hours of shifting bodies and passing trauma, and she seems experienced enough at her craft. She is the one who is from here, not me. She is the one who has lived here, and I haven’t. And yet, she is the one who seems least aligned with the threads that wind between us all in this small room, in this small cozy building.

Dianara Rivera staff writer

Erica Lewis illustr ator

I’ll Be Wearing Green Velvet

It’s hanging in my closet now, nestled between T-shirts and button-downs, carving a category for itself. My Going Out Shirt. Shirts, if you count the other vaguely shimmery pieces on either side, the ones I wear to class and the library and, most often, while lounging in bed. It’s green, my Going Out Shirt, green velvet, and crushed just a bit to reflect the light while dancing. Or, at least, I’d assume. I’ve only danced in the dressing room while wearing it because as much as I’d like to try , I’m not quite sure how much of a Going Out Person I can be. There’s something about late summer (or early autumn) that makes reinvention seem possible. Perhaps it has to do with the start of a new school year. We sharpen our pencils, we reconnect with friends after a summer away, and on some level, we feel different. We are older, sure, though not necessarily stuck in our ways. We are more well traveled, though not necessarily world weary. We have spent the last few weeks whiling away the last sunlit nights and wondering about the days to come, about how we’ll fit into them and how to shape them to fit us. We are, essentially, ourselves, hardly different at the end of this summer than we were the last, and yet, we feel like we could be someone more. More interesting. More fun. More exciting. Or less, depending on what we’ve done with our lives up until now. We experiment with changes both visible (dyed hair, new piercing, a set of shiny shoes) and invisible (cooler temper, kinder heart, a greater sense of responsibility,). We dial up or tone down aspects of ourselves to correspond to lives lived at a different volume. Reinvention is a tricky concept because on the surface, it seems so easy. Put on the Going Out Shirt, and you’ll become a Going Out Person. In many ways, it is this easy. I love the way a slick of red lipstick and a good song to walk to makes me feel powerful, even if the hour before, I’d been struggling to leave my room. We feel a little bit like new people when we make these small changes; and if we make enough of them, we start to feel like we can change who we’ve always been. Sometimes, that’s a great thing, and it’s definitely something that we’ve all heard college is for. Becoming someone new is exhilarating, a flying leap into uncharted territory. But there

are moments when I wonder: Just how much of that vast expanse—that great unknown— have I been carrying with me all along? In a 2015 interview on BBC Radio 4’s iconic program, Desert Island Discs, the great comedian/writer/actor Stephen Fry grappled with this idea. In between discussions of the music he would take with him to a desert island (mostly classical, a bit of Brahms, and some Wagner, which he described as “transcendent,” in case you were wondering) he came up with the following musing: “The nature of oneself is a bit like a signature. As a teenager you practice your signature all the time; you think ‘oh, I’ll do a straight down Y or an F that’s backwards’ or something. And then after a while it becomes your signature. It’s a bit the same with your personality. When you’re a teenager and a young adult you think ‘I’ll try this pose, I’ll try this interest, this style of dress’ and then slowly, it is you.” We often view reinvention as something that just happens. You change your signature, you change yourself. To extend the image of “the great unknown,” throwing oneself across a chasm seems less daunting if the other side is clearly visible. If we can embrace change immediately, with every fiber of our being, of course we should be able to leap gracefully across. With the end in sight, the journey, the actual act of transformation, doesn’t matter as much. Despite fun bits like backwards Fs, I think the most important word in Fry’s speech is “slowly.” It explains why I and many people I’ve known have trouble with the concept “New Year, New Me.” The year changes, of course; but somehow, we can still feel static, no matter how hard we try. Bursts of frenetic activity during moments of beginning, all-or-nothing attempts to get fit, get smart, get cool, almost inevitably die out. And if they don’t, the drastic transformation can be jarring. To change oneself so quickly is, in essence, to sacrifice one’s signature, as Fry would say. You can change the way you draw your Ys, but at the end, you should still be able to read your name. This is not to say reinvention is impossible, or unworthy, or a process reserved for posers. Rather, reinvention is, at its core, a process of rediscovery, of figuring out which

(Im)Perfect Summers Anonymous

contributing writer

Caroline Hu illustr ator

An internship with The New York Times. A research program at MIT. A community service trip to Peru. In communities like Brown, there is an unspoken pressure to have a perfect, enlightening, sparkling summer experience. Yet sometimes, even if we follow the traditional

Some Words on Reinvention parts of ourselves we’d like to highlight at a given moment in time. It’s a constant process and one whose allure I’m not sure we’ll ever truly be able to resist. And maybe that’s good. Maybe we’re all constantly striving to be a different—if not necessarily better—version of ourselves, and when we get there (if we get there), we’ll have shone enough light into enough dark places for us to be able to see a little clearer. If we cultivate our appearances, or behaviors, or the types of music we listen to, maybe, just maybe, we’ll get closer to becoming the people we want to be. The kind of

people we might have once admired, whose traits we may have taken note of and tucked away in an ever-growing list of attitudes toward living. The kind of people who, if we were to see them across a crowded room, might be wearing green velvet.

Anna Harvey staff wrtier

Linda Liu

illustr ator

In Defense of the Expiramental

path of an overachiever by getting a desk job or traveling the world, our experiences still fall short of our expectations. This summer, I had two part-time internships—one with a small publishing company, the other with an eco-conscious lifestyle magazine—both wonderful learning experiences. I saw the day-today life of someone in the industry, learned how publishing works, and even got to try my hand at writing an article here and there. But as exciting as that may or

may not sound, there were some dull moments. My goal was to determine if the benefits of the industry outweighed the costs. I loved the process of interviewing, writing, and revising articles. I did not love the days of countless emails and endless phone calls and bottomless voicemail boxes. I loved the relationships I built with my friendly coworkers over company lunches. I did not love the lonely days I spent trapped in my cubicle with only the rush of the icy A/C and clack of my keyboard to keep

me company as I did my data entry. These summer experiences taught me more about what I don’t like than what I do. I don’t like feeling as if I’m wasting my time. I don’t like being isolated at work. I don’t like being chained to a desk all day. Perhaps the publishing industry is not for me, or perhaps those experiences were not the best representations of the publishing industry. Either way, it’s okay, because I am one step closer to answering my initial question about my future career plans. Even

negative information is information, and finding out the aspects of the job that I don’t enjoy helps me narrow down my search for positions without those characteristics. For these reasons, I think it is essential to take advantage of each summer as an opportunity to experiment, especially the summers after freshman and sophomore year (although it is never too late to try new things). There are so many exciting and realistic opportunities to do something different with your summer—like work on an organic farm, for example, or backpack in Nepal. These unconventional experiences can be just as rewarding and informative as an internship, as long as you have the guts to try, the will to learn, and the mindset to explore. Take Hannah Seckendorf ‘20, for example. She spent her summer on a 50-foot sailboat in the Caribbean, shadowing two marine biologists working on Project AWARE, a global movement for ocean protection. Hannah says, “We dove two to three times a day, recording the number of endangered vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as the physical damage done to the reefs,

to find out which reefs needed what type of conservation efforts. I had heard about this research opportunity the summer before while doing an accelerated certification program.” Even though there is no marine biology program at Brown, Hannah was able to explore her passion in a hands-on environment through her summer experience. She confirms, “I’m really glad I found a way to make it happen.” Sam Berube ‘19 also spent his summer doing something he loves. He explains, “I was taking the Introduction to Oceanography course during my first year at Brown when I saw a photo by National Geographic Photographer Brian Skerry in an article we were reading. I checked out his website, found out he lived in Boston, sent him an email, scheduled a call, and have been working with him since then. This summer, I continued to work with him, running and coordinating his social media platforms.” Sam has also done a lot of work with the National Geographic Instagram account, helping to write captions for certain posts and increasing their following by about a million followers every couple of

Radio Somewhere

“This place is a shithole!” yells Annie Clark, the face behind the indie/art rock icon that is St. Vincent. Clark is giving a concert in downtown Providence at the famed Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, a spacious yet intimate venue on Washington Street. Clark, donning a dress of sequined silver and black flames, is perched up on a balcony that she excitedly climbed during her encore set. With her untamed curly hair everywhere and eyes wild and open, Clark clutches the balcony, which has begun to fall apart. As the molding from the veranda begins to fall onto adoring fans, a lucky security guard hugs Clark into his arms and attempts to bring her down to safety. Clark then screams out the memorable phrase and quickly struts to center stage, where she throws herself onto the multitude of people and begins to crowdsurf. As she holds out her arms to both sides, parting a sea of bodies, one can hardly overlook the giant banner behind her. The flag of sorts reminds us just who exactly was able to bring this huge artist to a tiny venue in an ever tinier state: WBRU.

6 weeks. While my internship experiences weren’t quite as offbeat as those mentioned previously, they were equally experimental in that it was my first foray into the publishing industry. My experimentation taught me that I don’t have to enjoy

every moment of the summer to have a fulfilling one. I don’t have to fear an imperfect summer experience because a flawed one can be just as revealing and important. Most importantly, I have the freedom to change my mind. And there is power in that.

Commemorating WBRU

According to most sources, WBRU has been around since the mid-1930s. The first college radio station in the country, WBRU was started by two undergraduates who wanted to share music from their own room in Slater Hall. After decades of growth and studio visits from bands like Nirvana, WBRU became a New England institution. Now that the FM signal has been sold in response to a declining, profit-losing radio industry and the station has begun to shift into online radio content— a decision that came with its fair share of media controversy and community and alumni protest— WBRU and its listeners look back on what this entity has meant to themselves and the community around them. For Sam SaVaun, who has worked at WBRU as a DJ, a Media Director, and a Music Director, working at the station meant an opportunity to learn. SaVaun credits the station for teaching her valuable business skills that were incredible to obtain in college. A live music fiend, SaVaun was also given the unique opportunity to attend showcases, concerts, and music festivals as a part of WBRU, even attending events like Lollapalooza for free. It was not unusual for colleagues— music representatives from the area, or New York and Boston— to take SaVaun out to dinner to talk business. She was wined and dined and treated like a professional, all while having midterms and finals to worry about. Evidently, part of the magic at WBRU has always been this notion— that the station is largely student-run. Its ability to innovate and be a riskier, more experimental radio station stemmed from students who loved to push the boundaries of what was playing, including advocating air time for local music. And

when WBRU wasn’t supporting local talent, it was bringing in new talent, hosting annual events like the Summer Concert Series which evolved into a staple of the New England summer music scene. Hannah Maier-Katkin, who has worked as a General Manager and a a DJ, recalls that WBRU brought bands such as Paramore and The 1975 when these groups were still running in alternative circles rather than performing on sold-out tours. Now, without an FM radio to pull them in, SaVaun is worried bands will skip over Providence. For Maier-Katkin, live music is only one portion of the community engagement that WBRU carried out and seems to be of lesser importance; she instead seems to propose a focus on efforts to keep WBRU News and “360” programming running, as these two programs are unique to the station and crucial to WBRU’s commitment to service the community. WBRU’s “360 Degree Experience” was a program on Sundays (now available 24/7) that exclusively featured hip-hop, soul, and R&B. “360 largely served the incarcerated community of Rhode Island because our signal could go through concrete walls,” Maier-Katkin explains. Incarcerated people would send letters to loved ones to be read on air via 360. Maier-Katkin says WBRU is currently looking for a way to get an FM signal for 360 back on the air. “Those listeners can’t just transfer over to a digital stream,” she points out. The community is at risk of being left behind. In a similar manner, WBRU’s news team, which covered local events and local

organizing, served as a foil to “big news” organizations like The Providence Journal. In the hopes of filling voids in local coverage, WBRU News will continue as an online podcast. “It is a huge gap,” says SaVaun, explaining that alternative radio made room for this kind of unique programming. “A big part of what WBRU meant to Providence was that— we’re the only alt radio station.. and [the] signal is huge...if you’re the kind of person who listens to alternative radio in your car, you’re going to feel that gap.” Maier-Katkin says WBRU can find a way to stay true to its community-centric history. While a SaVaun-ian way of looking at the pivot to online may evoke feelings of true loss (“For decades, [alumni] knew they were kind of getting home because they’d be driving and start to get the signal”), Maier-Katkin suggests the station pursues a future that is committed to its past, rhetorically asking, “Is WBRU, as an entity, more than a radio station?” For those of us who love old school radio, who grew up listening to WBRU, and who hopefully won’t have to go to Boston for our live music needs, St. Vincent sang some timely words during her now-iconic Lupo’s performance: Call the twenty-first century / Tell her give us a break. And for those of us— all of us— who are moving forward in this digital age with WBRU, she sings a brilliant next line: Every tear disappears.

Daniella Balarezo staff writer

Kira Widjaja illustr ator

We Fight, We Makeup

The musical War Paint chronicles a bitter rivalry between Helena Rubinstein (Patti LuPone) and Elizabeth Arden (Christine Ebersole) as each strives to monopolize the cosmetic industry. Rubinstein and Arden each have their own major cosmetic companies, make large sacrifices for their work, and deal with a variety of pressures and prejudices. War Paint tries to highlight the groundbreaking nature of these women’s lives through their feud but ultimately falls short in the implementation. As businesswomen in the mid-20th century, Rubinstein and Arden are pioneers in their own right. They overcome society’s expectations of women, launch themselves into the male-dominated business world, and emerge at the summit. According to War Paint’s Broadway website, “in creating an industry, they reinvented themselves and revolutionized how the world saw women.” The show’s publicists may tout this as a selling point, but loneliness, spite, dissatisfaction, and even regret tinge almost every scene in the production. If one were to believe War Paint, Rubinstein and Arden may have even made it worse for women by fostering a specific view of beauty. Throughout the show, it seems that for every significant moment (and therefore song—this is a musical) that Arden has, Rubinstein has a coincidentally equivalent one. War Paint places its two leading women in direct parallel, seeming to try to make their lives synonymous

Alicia DeVos copy chief

Seo Jung Shin illustr ator

Watching the Musical War Paint

in their challenges and successes as well as in their aspirations. But forcing the two women’s lives to be almost identical not only shows a lack of empathy in the musical’s writing but also dehumanizes Rubinstein and Arden by making them into into caricatures of themselves and of each other. In retrospect, Rubinstein and Arden are difficult characters to attempt to equate, as War Paint so often does. For one, they are remembered in vastly different ways: A simple Google search yields about 2.2 million results for “Helena Rubinstein” but 24 million for “Elizabeth Arden.” However, popularity may not be the most significant difference in their lives. Rubinstein was a Polish Jew who immigrated to the United States late in her life; throughout War Paint, she speaks English with an accent. Though certainly significant to Rubinstein’s American life, War Paint does little to explore or otherwise address these elements of her life besides placing them next to “similar” elements of Arden’s. For example, in the show, when Rubinstein is kept out of an apartment building because she is Jewish, Arden is faced with rejection from a social club because she has not been rich long enough. Rubinstein and Arden share a common goal: Be remembered. Reflecting upon this desire provides the heart for the most effective scenes of War Paint. Arden sings “Pink,” in which she muses over her legacy—Arden pink. When put

into such simple terms, Arden realizes that a color may not have been worth her lifetime. Rubinstein sings “Forever Beautiful,” directly after Arden’s “Pink,” true to the show’s mirror format. The song packs less punch, perhaps because it seems somewhat contrived due to its placement, but resounds more strongly than any other song in the musical besides “Pink” nonetheless. In “Forever Beautiful,” Rubinstein sings of her many paintings as her legacy—she is an avid art collector and possesses many paintings of herself. Similar to Arden, she recognizes that, although she may stay “forever beautiful” in her paintings, she spent her fleeting time building her empire. War Paint displays the lives of two women who dared to be ambitious in a time when ambition came only next to a man’s name. But the show fails to celebrate them as great leaders or revolutionaries, as it claims to do. Rather, it promotes a skepticism of greed and ambition for ambition’s sake. Had War Paint been framed in another way, it might have accomplished its goal, but its focus on Rubinstein and Arden as women in roles occupied by few women makes it difficult for it to parade their lives as unhappy and relatively fruitless. War Paint occupies a place of contradiction: It presents Rubinstein and Arden as trailblazers but makes others hesitate to follow.

From Brandenburg to Currywurst

erlin is a city that has seen an immeasurable amount of heartbreak, injustice, and death. From the brutal Nazi regime to the atrocities of the forced East-West divide, this city has endured its fair share of oppression and segregation. Yet, walking through its vibrant streets, flanked by the beauty of both classic buildings and modern architecture, I saw little trace of the bloodshed and trauma that at certain points in history characterized the city. Of course, the many monuments erected around the city ensure that Berliners and tourists alike don’t forget the suffering of those who perished in the 20th century. Still, despite these reminders, the city has refused to be buried under the rubble and has risen above being merely a memorial to the fallen. Instead, it has emerged from the ashes and turned into something new. As I wandered the city with my very knowledgeable guide (my high school best friend who is a proud Berliner!), I felt like I was navigating a sea of reactions. I walked through the imposing, frighteningly beautiful Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, mourning the deaths and celebrating the lives of those lost. A few minutes later, I was at the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol of victory, peace, unity, and welcome that

somehow managed to withstand the test of time and war. Surrounding this were pristine buildings whose modern architecture complemented the Gate’s antiquity. As I crossed decades of Berlin’s history in a short, 10-minute walk, I went from being overwhelmingly sad, to simply overwhelmed, to somehow feeling very at home in a city that is as modern and multicultural as Milan, Paris, or, New York—cities I know quite well. Yet, Berlin’s melange of history, internationalism, and fervent German pride make it unlike any other place I’ve ever visited. Above all, seeing the city’s rustic cosmopolitan beauty, and interacting with its people, who were of every race and religion possible, made me see the world in a completely different light. Berlin is proof that there can be new, vibrant life after death, and that there can be pristine reparation after unimaginable destruction. The video clips of crowds cheering and standing atop the Berlin Wall in the autumn of 1990 perfectly capture the spirited mood of a city that has seen hatred and intolerance and that has instead chosen peace and unity. This new stance of inclusion and tolerance can be seen in relation to recent incidents. On a memorial to the victims of the 2016 terror attack at the Christmas market near Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church,

Why Berlin Taught Me So Much

someone crossed out the word “Islamic” on the phrase “Islamic terror attack” to remind those reading that it was extremism—and not an entire religion—that was responsible for the horrific act. That change to the plaque has remained untouched, showing a refusal to fall back on hatred that’s caused by generalization—an attitude that had been a key premise of the country’s mid-20th-century military dictatorship. Over a mere 20 years, Berlin has removed the lines between East and West, turning the city into one huge melting pot of cultures, religions, and ethnicities. As I rode the bus through the city, I observed how different stops brought on a completely new set of people from the last. Though I am told that there is still a slightly noticeable difference in accent and conduct between those who lived in the East and West pre-1990, the city itself, and the way Berliners interact, shows little interest in that divide. There is no “one way” to be a Berliner. Despite me having caramel skin and clearly foreign features, people did not automatically assume that I was a foreigner. Shopkeepers, waiters, and folks on the street spoke to me in German, and they did not stare as if I were a foreign mule. The city’s multicultural nature can be seen, in the most straightforward way, through its food. A typical dish of Berlin, Currywurst, sees the Indian spice added to bratwurst (pork sausage). This was a concoction created from the acquisition of spices from British soldiers after the Second World War. Another typically foreign dish, falafel, has become commonplace in Berlin’s gastronomical scene. One of the most delicious ways I ate it was atop a potato salad—a plate that the popular healthy chain Immergrün calls “Falafel Kartoffel.” Thus, once again, we have a dish born out of a mix of typical German cuisine and food brought by the city’s immigrant population. Contrary to what

xenophobes may believe, this is not foreigners taking over Berlin’s culture. Instead, this new cuisine is all about merging the foreign with the local to create something innovative and even more interesting. Berlin’s refusal to be defined by its past is one of the most empowering things I’ve ever seen. During my short stay, I learned more from merely observing my surroundings than I would have listening to a motivational speech or an inspirational TED Talk. Perhaps I am overly sentimental, which is why the city moved me the way it did. Nevertheless, by visiting the museums, memorials, and historical landmarks, and by observing the way the city overcame tragedy and adversity through openness and discussion, I learned many lessons about resilience, forgiveness, and the strength that comes from human goodness. In light of the political and social events of the past few years, it can be easy to fall back on the complaint of “there is so much evil in the world, so much extremism and intolerance, that it is irreparable.” But Berlin’s renaissance, characterized by its multiculturalism and its refusal to be defined by the past decisions of a few powerful men with bad, fanatical judgment, is proof that there is also much goodness and hope within the widely perceived darkness of corruption and fear. Of course, Berlin is not all perfect and rosy. There is crime and there are grumpy people because the city is not a utopia where everyone holds hands and sings folk songs around a glowing campfire. But the city’s worth lies in the fact that it has come so far from its days of oppression and division, and its journey proves an inspiration to us all.

Chantal Maruta staff writer

Michelle Woo illustr ator

Things Pennywise Would Say to Lure You Into the Sewer

1 Obama’s still president down here 2 We have free parking 3 Hogwarts is real 4 Goldman Sachs wants you 5 Hey kid, you want a spicy with? 6 A meal credit is worth $7.30 7 Remy is down here making ratatouille 8 Let me cover your tuition this semester 9 I’ll write a Brown Bears Admirers post for you 10 This is the new entrance to Barus and Holley

ju s i g n i t l u s on BS” C “ of art

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“I took a ll APs in high sch these ST ool so I t EM clas hink ses will b e pretty easy.”