MIR ROR 4.12.2017
SELF-CENTERED WORLDS | 3
FROM ROOTS TO REVOLUTION | 4-5
GUO: SPRING, SUMMER, SPRING | 6 JEE SEOB JUNG/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
2 //MIRR OR
Editors’ Note
From roots to revolution ARTICLE
ELIZA MCDONOUGH/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
Happy week three, readers! When The Mirror squad met to brainstorm this week’s theme and stories, resident French enthusiast and Victor Hugo fanatic May suggested “revolution.” “Vive la Résistance!” she cried. Seeing Annette and Lauren’s blank stares, May translated the phrase: “Long live the Revolution.” Alternatively, the theme reminded Annette — a highly untalented linguist herself — of the Washington, D.C. Women’s March. While living in the turbulence that was (is?) in the country’s capital during her off-term, she proudly paraded the mall with friends, wielding the sign “Repeal and Replace Bigotry.” Lauren, meanwhile, fondly remembered her favorite Nintendo Wii game, Dance Dance Revolution (aka the highlight of her middle school slumber parties). As you’ll see, this week’s issue explores these several different interpretations of the word “revolution” through politics, astronomy, the Dakota Access Pipeline and even social media. Annette, drowning in midterms (as are her co-editors — why, week three?) considered abandoning this week’s Mirror production as a personal act of “revolution.” However, recalling May’s description of the French Revolution’s result, the consideration quickly evoked images of heads stacked on pikes for public display. With that in mind — and the threat of Lauren and May’s wrath looming large — she relinquished the idea. Enjoy the issue!
follow @thedmirror 4.12.17 VOL. CLXXIV NO. 58 MIRROR EDITORS LAUREN BUDD ANNETTE DENEKAS MAY MANSOUR
ASSOCIATE MIRROR CAROLYN ZHOU EDITOR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RAY LU
PUBLISHER PHILIP RASANSKY
EXECUTIVE EDITOR KOURTNEY KAWANO PHOTO EDITORS ELIZA MCDONOUGH HOLLYE SWINEHART TIFFANY ZHAI
By Cristian Cano
It perhaps goes without saying that many Dartmouth students are very politically active. Anyone who was on campus this past fall probably remembers the excitement and tension that increased as Election Day grew closer and closer. Many voted in New Hampshire, while others voted in their home states. For some of us — myself included — it was the first election in which we were finally old enough to vote. On a campus as politically charged as Dartmouth, one might momentarily forget that grassroots movements exist beyond campus. I interviewed leaders of the Hanover Town Democrats and the Upper Valley Young Liberals to learn more about their work. Deb Nelson, the president of the Hanover Town Democrats and a teacher at Lebanon High School, has been involved with the organization for close to 30 years. She reflected on how much the Democratic movement in Hanover has grown since she began. “I think that one of the biggest differences is that, when I first got started, a lot of the work was really up to the town committee,” Nelson said. “That’s just expanded so much in this age of so much money in the political scene.” The work of the Town Democrats varies depending on the time. The organization’s efforts are most active near election years: Some of the specific jobs that members do include posting advertisements in newspapers, canvassing, organizing food for volunteers, managing phone banks and offering their homes as workplaces for other volunteers. They also take advantage of Hanover’s large Democratic population to help other New Hampshire cities. “One thing Hanover does is raise money that we share with Democrats in other towns that may not have as many Democrats,” Nelson said. Nelson recognized the important role that Dartmouth plays in the culture of the town, and she spoke positively of her collaboration with the Dartmouth College Democrats. In fact, just before our interview, she met with the current and future presidents of the group. She recalled once instance one specific instance in which Dartmouth’s help was crucial. “A couple years ago, when Hillary Clinton came to Hanover in July, the event was supposed to be held in someone’s home,” Nelson said. “It quickly became apparent, within a couple of days, that the number of people who wanted to participate were way more than could be accommodated. Some people in our town committee were working with Dartmouth, and we ended up moving the event to the BEMA.” She acknowledged that the Dartmouth community’s votes are very important, especially for a state whose elections can be neck and neck. When asked about Senate Bill 3, which would alter the definition of domicile in the context of voting and consequently restrict college students from voting in New Hampshire, she said that she hopes that student Democrats and Republicans alike make their opinions heard. “Any kind of academic community has people moving in, and then after a few years, they move out,” Nelson said. “Since when has
that been anything new?” The Mirror also spoke with Ashley Andreas and Devin Wilkie, the chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Upper Valley Young Liberals. Some of the work Andreas does includes guiding the group toward their goals while connecting the group to other political organizations across the Upper Valley area. Wilkie manages much of the group’s organization, announcing meetings and serving as a liaison between the group’s executive committee and other individual committees. One challenge that the Young Liberals face is the difficulty of finding meeting times that work for members, many of whom are in school and working inconsistent hours. Wilkie emphasized the group’s recent efforts to increase its online presence: In addition to a Facebook group with over 350 members, it also has its own website. The group’s demographic is, as the name suggests, primarily on the younger side — Andreas noted that leadership positions are reserved for members under the age of 35. However, they have not allowed their ages to restrict their work. On the contrary, the group already has an impressive record, with many of its members successfully holding a variety of positions such as Justice of the Peace and delegates to the State Convention. Of course, the group does not limit itself to only young people. Rather, the group works very closely with a variety of organizations in the area. “I would say we’re very closely intertwined with the other groups in the area,” Wilkie said. Some of the people who attend meetings are older members passionate about young people’s involvement in politics. “We have people who will somewhat regularly attend our meetings who are not in that age restriction,” Andreas said. “People of all ages attend meetings and help with events.” Andreas and Wilkie admitted that the most recent presidential election discouraged some members, but many of their members have since become even more active to contribute to the causes they support. A relatively recent shift in focus from national to local politics has also occurred. For those who reside in Vermont, local politics offers the venue to be a part of an even more liberal movement than the Democratic Party. “Vermont has a progressive party, and in Vermont it’s a lot easier to step out of the Democratic Party,” Andreas said. “New Hampshire doesn’t have that, so the furthest left they have is Democratic.” Both the Hanover Town Democrats and the Upper Valley Young Liberals encourage all to become politically informed and involved. Dartmouth is a part of both Hanover and the Upper Valley — such a statement may seem obvious, but it is a useful reminder that, however students become involved, they impact those far beyond the technical boundaries of campus. “I certainly hope that students don’t give up,” Nelson said. “I think this country is worth fighting for, and I think that political involvement is one of the most noble volunteer and work efforts that people can be involved in.”
MIRROR //3
’18: “Are you gonna slap a fatty NRO on that or what?”
’18: “Don’t touch me. Don’t get your sad all over me.”
Guy #1: “Dude, stop looking so happy.” Guy #2: “I can’t help it. I’ve been writing haikus.”
’19: “I wish I was a dog. Yeah I would live less, but I would also live more.”
’19: “Memes are cyclical, but there’s a fundamental difference in creative longevity between dark Kermit and wot in tarnation.”
Self-centered worlds: exploring social media ARTICLE
By Nelly Mendoza-Mendoza
According to psychological and brain interactions, and they make us feel good they make us look. sciences professor Todd Heatherton, the about ourselves very temporarily,” Eldredge “People are very concerned with taking sense of self is what keeps us from confusing said. “But in the long pictures, rather than ourselves with other people. It protects us run, I don’t think that focusing on the fun in from forgetting who we are and the essential social media is good “We get kind of a thrill everyday life,” Eldredge essences that makes each one of us human. for self-esteem.” from lights and filters and said. However, this notion is self-created and Danielle Glinka She also pointed not always based on reality. We tend to see ’17 expressed a similar all of these superficial out how we often think ourselves as immune to bad things that could idea. forms of interactions, and that other people’s lives potentially happen to us or those that we “Seeing other are more glamorous they make us feel good love. We are full of biases that act as lenses people looking good than ours because of through which the self interprets the world and happy demotes about ourselves very the things we see on around us. your sense of self temporarily.” social media. We are “You exist over time and across because you think, essentially comparing circumstances, so there is this feeling, this ‘What if I am not our own ordinary feeling of self that is being produced by the feeling the same way -ALEXANDRA ELDREDGE ’19 moments to others’ that brain,” Heatherton said. as these other people? have been filtered and We pay attention, in detail, to our I’m not living the modified for a certain experiences. Then we interpret them same happy life as audience. according to how they make us feel. they are,’” she said. Maxwell Parker ’17 “People feel their own experiences,” Glinka commented said that when we post Heatherton said. “They don’t feel other that we often use the online we are second people’s experiences, and they fail to notice number of likes we g u e s s i n g o u r s e l ve s, what they miss. What I mean is that if you get on posts as an ego-booster. Although, as rather than allowing events to unfold are not paying attention to something, you Eldredge said, people’s lives or personalities organically. don’t notice it. But you also don’t know you are not necessarily the same as the personas missed it, and that’s the danger of people who they have created for themselves online. text and drive. It feels fine to them because According to Heatherton, people who they think, ‘I didn’t miss anything.’” use social media the most are sometimes Heatherton also discussed social media as a the least happy. factor in our sense of self. If we are constantly Glinka believed that this statement differs being “evaluated” by others on social between individuals and their personal media platforms, how engagements with social does it affect our self media. She said that some “Belonging to a concepts? people really don’t care “Belonging to a group has been of for it, while others live group has been of prime importance, so for it. What we see online prime importance, is often not an accurate s o w h e n e v e r w e whenever we feel our representation of reality. feel our connection connection to a group “I think that we have t o a g ro u p b e i n g become hyperaware of being threatened, people people’s feelings and threatened, people are very defensive about are very defensive about how they are portraying that and things like that, and things like t h e m s e l ve s, b e c a u s e Facebook exploit these we see them posting ideas,” Heatherton Facebook exploit these photos smiling, looking said. happy, doing all of these ideas.” Alexandra Eldredge activities and with filters,” ’19 runs a popular Glinka said. “It makes Instagram account -PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR you reflect on your life w i t h ove r 1 3 , 0 0 0 TODD HEATHERTON and think, ‘Why don’t I followers for body have moments like these positivity. She says that all of the time?’, and it when we are engaged kind of takes away your in social media, we’re sense of reality.” always aware of what Eldredge explained others post and thus subconsciously that social media can lead to decreased compare ourselves to others in the process satisfaction overall because the images that of managing our own posts and profiles. we post on social media are often filtered “We get kind of a thrill from lights and images of ourselves. It is easy to become filters and all of these superficial forms of obsessed with certain angles and the way
“Social media makes people greatly overthink their sense of self because their image can be perfected for the people around them, behind closed doors,” he said. The real problem is not in social media itself, but in the way that it’s designed to keep us connected as much as possible, as well as the way it controls us. “I think that self-obsession is getting worse and worse with Instagram stories and these different modes of communicating constantly with people, so there is pressure at every moment of every day to prove to others that you are actually having fun and that you are engaged in perky activities,” Eldredge said. Glinka, on the other hand, said that as she has gotten older, she has become more relaxed about what she posts. Instead, she is worried about social media’s future effects on people’s self concepts in general. “I think that the future is a little scary with regards to how much control [social media] has over our egos or senses of self,” Glinka said.
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#NODAPL: moving beyond the hashtag STORY
By Carolyn Zhou
In late February, Oceti Sakowin, the main protest camp erected in North Dakota near the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers, was closed down. The camp had been a home for thousands of protesters for several months. The protesters were attempting to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and its supporters say is an ecological threat to its source for clean drinking water, since the oil pipeline will cross the Missouri River. The protesters had a temporary victory under former President Barack Obama’s administration, but with the new President’s administration, construction has resumed and will likely be complete by the end of the spring. Polimana Joshevama ’19 and Augusta Terkildsen ’19 both spent considerable amounts of time at the camp. The two sat down with The Mirror to talk about their passion in the cause, the challenges in protesting and why they believe that the revolution has come. Terkildsen explained her personal connection to the issues with the pipeline; she has family from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and would also be directly affected if the pipe ever leaked. “My number one interest is protecting the water,” she said. “My family and the whole Wambli [part of Pine Ridge reservation] gets their water from the rural water system, which taps straight out of the Missouri river system. Standing Rock are the same people as my people. Those are my relatives up there; it’s my problem too.”
The Missouri River won’t be the only water source in danger; according to Terkildsen, the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest, could also be contaminated. Terkildsen believes that her view of water has changed as well. Ever since a young age, it has been important. Now, she has learned to appreciate it even more. “Growing up, my parents, grandparents, everyone told me, ‘Water is your first medicine,’” she said. “Whenever you get sick, you always drink water [first]. Throughout my whole life, I’ve always treated it as something very sacred. [Once] I became more educated on these kinds of problems, I’ve realized what state we’re in; it’s definitely become more important to me.” Terkildsen lives a couple of hours away from Standing Rock, and she was one of the first to set up shop there. Before the camp was cleared in February, it had grown to the size of a miniature city of makeshift buildings. “My tent and that tepee were the first ones to start off the camp,” she said. “It’s pretty interesting to see the camp grow from my tent and my neighbor’s to this huge thing of thousands of people. That was really great to see.” According to Terkildsen, protest started out as mostly standing on the road, but soon things began to escalate. “I saw it shift from just staying there, saying ‘we’re here,’ to becoming actively involved,” she said. There were several challenges in protesting,
mostly in the health of the protesters, who frequently suffered from dehydration and sun stroke. Diabetics were having seizures. Supplies were low because the state started cutting down supplies. Soon, the protesters faced violence. “Officers hired by DAPL started using pepper spray, trained attack dogs, rubber bullets, water spraying; there’s been reports of a lot of people who have tested positive for rat poisoning; there were reports of pepper spray water,” Terkildsen remembers. “When the water dried on the road, it dried white, which normal water doesn’t do.” Terkildsen recalls that there were limited numbers of medics at times. Joshevama, a premed student, went to Standing Rock to work as a paramedic, and her help was greatly needed. Joshevama’s personal interest in Standing Rock comes from her long term interest in social activism. “I’ve never had the ability to go out and protest and do something,” she said. “Because it’s always been, like, school, school, school. But then I had the opportunity to take off a term ... Everything kind of fell into place.” As a paramedic, Joshevama worked in the one main medic tent, which dealt primarily with western medicine. When they didn’t have enough supplies, they had to make “cocktails” of traditional and western medicine, which surprisingly worked. There were professional doctors who came to the camp to help; Joshevama estimates that
a new doctor came every two days, although he or she usually did not stay for very long. They let her handle minor injuries. Having taken a Wilderness EMT class at Dartmouth right before flying out to Standing Rock, she had the knowledge and skills to be of assistance. Joshevama said she usually worked from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Occasionally, she would pull 24-hour shifts; in fact, her first occurred on her first day at the camp. One of the biggest challenges for Joshevama was the time she spent 14 hours trying to convince a young Lakota man not to commit suicide. He eventually overdosed and was arrested so that he would not further harm himself. Both Joshevama and Terkildsen contributed greatly to their cause; Joshevama with her medical skills and Terkildsen with her early commitment to the camp. Terkildsen also helped out on the medical side, such as delivering medical messages, since cell phone calls were being blocked, and keeping an eye out for those who were getting hurt. Terkildsen had a couple of suggestions on what she believes others can help with. People can “educate themselves on these problems,” she said. “Biggest step is being more knowledgeable on these things. Talking, donating, going to meetings or non-violent direct action workshops. Dartmouth does a lot of those. [Go to] deciphering media workshops — you can get the truth from things. You can become a pretty involved activist or a pretty
MIRROR //5
involved ally.” At Dartmouth, Terkildsen hopes to spread the word about Standing Rock. “A lot of the first reactions when I came here was people were like, ‘Oh my God, you’re native. I didn’t realize you guys were still alive,’” she said. “Yeah, we’re still alive. We have a lot of problems.” Other than educating oneself on these issues, Joshevama believes that there are also more direct actions people should take. “I think it’s time for people to mobilize,” she said. “We need those people to stand in front of us when we get beat by cops. We need people to go out there and be pepper sprayed and get shot at because we need more people on the front line, and the front lines are everywhere.” She also listed a number of other ways people could indirectly help, such as paying for protest gear — bulletproof vests to combat rubber bullets and milk of magnesia to alleviate the effects of pepper spray — since the gear is often expensive. Joshevama thinks people can also write letters to their politicians, run for political office and, importantly, take care of themselves. She noted that one can easily burn out from protesting. “[Find] a way to help the cause in a way that’s comfortable for you,” she said. “[Find] what suits you. And it can be whatever cause you want. It can be something really simple.” Both Terkildsen and Joshevama believe that a revolution is about to come. “A lot of indigenous people prophesize
about the seventh generation, which is now,” Terkildsen said. “[The seventh generation is] where we’re given a decision, and depending on this decision that we make, this can either lead to the continuation of life on earth, or it will lead to the demise of life on earth. [Standing Rock] is part of the revolution ... Right now, the right decisions are not being made.” Joshevama, looking back on her time protesting, remembers: “The motto of the camp was peaceful and prayerful protest ... When you go to the front lines, it’s pounded into you: ‘You stay peaceful, you stay prayerful, but you’re still there to protest.’” One powerful incident forever burned into her mind was when the police came to arrest a girl who was singing a prayer song. “They tackled her into the ice, slammed her head in, buried it in the snow, and she kept singing,” she said. “She didn’t stop. “One of the things that kept me sane, once I was arrested, was [thinking], ‘It’s not their fault, they’ve been raised that way. They view violence as a way to answer to protect their resources.’” Joshevama believes that Standing Rock is only the beginning of the revolution. “We showed the world that we can be peaceful in the face of violence,” she said. “We have shown the world that we have tried to protest peacefully, and it was answered with violence. Now, it’s shown that there has to be more. You know that everyone who was there is now going to go out into the world and teach everybody what they learned.”
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Guo: Spring, Summer, Spring COLUMN
By Clara Guo
In elementary school, we learned that the seasons are caused by Earth’s tilted axis and its revolutions around the sun. Differing amounts of heat and light strike the northern and southern hemispheres, resulting in distinct seasons dependent, in part, on Earth’s position relative to the sun. I have never lived somewhere void of the four seasons. I don’t know if I ever could. Growing up in northern Virginia, I feared summers. I spent my free time indoors at the ice rink, occasionally popping outside to swim in our neighbor’s pool, roller skate down our driveway or lose to my grandparents at badminton. I would walk down the forest path snaking behind our backyard with family, after the sun had set just enough for the temperature to cool. This past summer, our apartment in Boston came without air conditioning. My roommates and I chose not to install window units, trusting in the power of fans. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that the windows in my room faced east. Mornings and early afternoons were always the hottest, despite
my attempts to block the heat’s entrance into my room with a bath towel hung in front of the blinds. I brought a fan with me when I moved in — the same one I’ve been using since freshmen fall at Dartmouth. It’s a sturdy fan, small and lightweight, easy to store and surprisingly effective at circulating air. I soon realized that, if my fan were to win the battle against the summer heat, it would need a companion. I proceeded to buy the cheapest fan I could find on Amazon. When it finally arrived, I spent half an hour rearranging my two fans to maximize comfort when sleeping. The first sat on my desk directly aimed at my face; the second rested on the ground, angled upward to abate the heat spooled beneath my chin. And for all of June, this was enough. But then July came. There were two or three consecutive days of intense heat, when I forced myself to exercise in the mornings because the 20-minute walk to the office would result in another 30 minutes of wiping the perspiration
off my body. I woke up repeatedly in the night, sticky with sweat. September finally arrived, and I was relieved. It brought with it an equal shining of the sun on the northern and southern hemispheres. In October, I accepted an offer of employment and held a human brain in my hands. In “Systems Neuroscience,” I learned to localize brain regions that had for too long been thought to be in the middle temporal lobe, parietal lobe or prefrontal cortex. For a few weeks, I cut my own sheep brain, first midsagittally, then horizontally and, finally, coronally. I identified the 12 cranial nerves, felt a bump denoting the head of the caudate, saw an intact septum pellucidum and learned to localize the hippocampus upon recognition of the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle. At our last brain anatomy laboratory session, we dissected human brains. The dura mater, the outermost membrane, was still intact. I realized, after peeling off the dura, that in my hands, at the mercy of knives,
were someone’s thoughts and creativities and hopes and dreams and, arguably, their consciousness and soul. I didn’t know who that someone was or what had caused his or her death. I stood too terrified to ask, ashamed that my excitement for the job had overshadowed my respect for humanity. “Be thankful,” our professor told us. A few hours after the first midsagittal cut, we threw away our purple gloves and handed in our aprons. Slices of brain remained on our tables. Already, we had learned to adopt a medical gaze. It’s April now. The sun is shining a bit more on the northern hemisphere than on the south. Monday felt like the first official day of spring in Hanover. Students and families were sprawled on the Green, Collis was empty for the first time in months and I pulled out my sundress. Today, I stand hoping that the graduation heat will feel less like summer and more like spring.
Worlds revolving in Hanover and beyond ARTICLE
By Andrew Sosanya
Dartmouth’s physics and astronomy department is conducting groundbreaking research that seeks to understand the cosmic wonders of space. Assistant professor of physics and astronomy and West House professor Ryan Hickox’s research group tries to answer the mystery about the origins of and physics behind black holes. Along with his group of researchers, comprised of post doctorate fellows, graduate students and undergraduates, Hickox uses a variety of technological tools to survey the galaxy to uncover the truth about black holes. “We use pretty much every kind of telescope there is in the world,” Hickox said. “It’s pretty fun.” Once it gets to the telescope, Hickox’s group uses quasars, or bright black holes, to analyze the growth of galaxies. Hickox said that quasars shine brighter than the all the stars in the galaxy because of the heat from extreme friction from all the mass caving in. “It’s like a census,” Hickox said. “Take an image of the sky in many different wave lengths, look for the signature of the galaxies and then you try to piece together exactly where the black holes are growing.” The astronomy department, while rather small, has access to an immense wealth of resources, namely the deeply-coveted observational time with the South African Large Telescope in South Africa and the MDM observatory in Kitt Peak, Arizona. Through the Weed Fund, sponsored by Jay Weed ’80 Tu’82, the department also allows an undergraduate to use the telescope for research. Christine Black Gr’17 researches supernovae — exploding stars — up to a year after they explode. For Black, waiting some time after the
TIFFANY ZHAI/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
The Shattuck Observatory is located on Dartmouth’s campus and used by researchers and students in the physics and astronomy departments.
explosions is crucial because the star’s inside becomes clear, and she can work backward to analyze it. “We don’t actually know how stars explode,” Black said. “We don’t know the physics because we can’t see the inside.” Black also helps coordinate the weekly public observing nights, where anyone can come to the observatory and look at the night sky. On these Friday nights, graduate and undergraduate students run the observatory and operate two 12-inch telescopes. This month, observers with an ordinary telescope can clearly see Jupiter aligned with four of its largest moons and Saturn next month. In fact, observers looking to admire the beauty of the sky can use JSkyCalc, a
program developed by physics and astronomy department chair John Thorstensen that became the standard for planning observations. Thorstensen released the widely-used software for free in 2008. Over the course of his 37 years at Dartmouth, Thorstensen has mainly focused on researching cataclysmic binaries — double stars that orbit each other and eventually explode. Thorstensen uses SALT, the MDM observatory and even the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the orbits of the binaries, which hold the key to a deeper understanding of these stars. “The time it takes to do that is the single most important parameter you can measure,” Thorstensen said. One of the most interesting aspects about
Thorstensen’s research is the ease of producing a wealth of new information. “You can measure something interesting — that nobody knows — with a relatively small telescope in a small amount of time,” Thorstensen said. Thorstensen accompanies students on the astronomy foreign study program in South Africa, one of the hidden gems of off-campus programs at Dartmouth. In Cape Town, where the sky is crystal clear and unobstructed by city lights, students can use the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere. “The revelatory thing for most students was to see a really, really dark sky with the Southern Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds,” Thorstensen said.
MIRR OR //7
Wien: Chasing the Wheel COLUMN
By Elise Wien
Revolution. We deal, again, with a word that has multiple meanings. (1) Revolution: an overthrow, a seismic shift. Things happened one way, then there was a revolution, and now things happen a different way. We call places by their new names. (2) Revolution: a wheel turning, (re) turning to the beginning. One day, during fall term, I met a couple of engineering students who told me about the projects they were working on. In class that week, they made a wheel. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” I said to them (I think I’m awfully clever), “but it’s been done.” It is my last term at Dartmouth, and I’ve been talking to friends about closing the circuit, looping and cauterizing the experience so that it’s its own closed body. Or like early movies, film images in a wheel that I can spin and watch play out. There are lots of possible metaphors here, but the gist is this: We crave finality. A repeating motif: a feeling of stagnancy, an ache in the belly and chest. I’ll be frank: I am writing this very close to the deadline (past the deadline, to be franker). My thesis presentation, a staged reading of a play, is going up tomorrow. There is so much to prepare and, as we approach the show date, less and less for me to do.
Come tomorrow it will be in the hands of the cast, director and stage manager. There is an enormous amount of trust required in putting on a show; my thesis is dependent on 17 people. Some are being paid to help, some are giving up their free time, but all are helping bring a dream world to life, and for that I am grateful. The process also requires trust on the part of my cast. I cast the show toward the end of winter term. I had written Act 1, and I ended up casting a friend in Act 2 for a role that did not yet exist. “It will be good,” I assured him; I hoped. Back to the bottom of the food chain, where there is certain comfort, where maybe there is more freedom because not a whole lot is expected of me. I can create the bounds of those expectations. I am moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where everyone has a graduate degree. I am restless. I approach the last show of my undergraduate career, and I think of how things will be moving forward. Over spring break, in a desperate jab at procrastination, I started to write a personal manifesto. I love a good manifesto. A good manifesto is the stuff of revolution. A manifesto may know its limitations — it just might not care. A break: I am in the lighting booth. My laptop is hooked up to the sound system for the preshow playlist. The play touches on three wars, the first of which is the Civil
War. The show is set in Columbia, South Carolina in 1869, about five years following the end of the war. I chose Columbia after doing some research into Confederate Jewry. Besides New Orleans, Charleston had the most vibrant Jewish community. But Charleston was spared in Sherman’s March, so that wouldn’t do. I was going for an aesthetic of destruction; a Seder in a burnt-out shell. With more research, I learned that the Charleston Jewry, fearing an attack by Sherman, shipped their Torahs and Judaica to Columbia. Columbia was then burned to the ground. After that, the Jewish community rebuilt the city with impressive speed and resilience. I found myself cheering for them. Yes! They tried to burn your temple down, but you came back with fury! There is a disconnect here. I find myself cheering for Confederates. Of course the moment I realize this, the feeling snaps, but it was there, and it would be foolish to ignore. Confederate soldiers called themselves “rebels.” Did they see their war as revolution? The second war is the November Uprising (which is more of a battle, really). One character’s father fought for the freedom of Poland. The final war, the caste war of Yucatán, involves Yucatecans fighting against Mayanspeaking populations. The scholarship is
muddled on this. Some say it was definitely a race war; others classify it more as classbased, as Yucatecans privatized Mayan (that is, all Mayan-speaking) commons to promote sugar production. But I’m rambling. What is the end point of all these revolutions if I shove them into one play? I’m thinking about how I’ll feel after tomorrow. This project is a deeply personal one, which requires me to reflect on my own Jewishness, whiteness, national identity and gender. I am so thankful for the people I am looking out on, here, from the lighting booth, helping me stage three revolutions in two hours. (I can see them, but they cannot see me. It’s dawning on me how creepy this rings.) But back to revolution as a closed circuit: I wonder if this circular model is a good one to live. I could say I love writing, especially playwriting, for the emotional and creative fulfillment it brings me. I get the chance to say, “I made a thing!” I get to share the thing with friends (and maybe enemies, and maybe through that process convert them into friends). I hope these revolutions don’t peter out or plateau, mocking the pattern of “chasing a high.” But if chasing a high means making more work and getting more feedback and sharing these moments of collective catharsis, maybe that’s a spinning wheel I can stand to keep up with.
Burack: Revolutions converge on the Green GRAPHIC
By Samantha Burack
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Where does revolution take place? PHOTO
By Ishaan Jajodia