MIR ROR
APRIL 12, 2013
POETRY IN THE AIR // 2
MIND IF I SMOKE? // 4
TFA: TRIALS OF TEACHING // 3 TTLG: NOVEL IDEAS AND POETIC PEACE // 6
THE CHARM OF WOODSTOCK // 8
REBECCA XU // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
2// MIRROR
EDITOR’S NOTE
Hanover springs are a tease. When we think of spring term, we often fast forward to Green Key days, forgetting the rain, and snow, that make spring the wettest season of all. Sixty-degree days are dangled before us, then snatched away. Shorts season begins, but never officially. By the time the sun is out to stay, it’s the fourth week of May and reading week imminent. Like with so much else at Dartmouth, we hold off on the present for the sake of the (near) future, leaving ourselves little time to appreciate the mud for what it is. We’d do well to remind ourselves that it doesn’t have to be a perfect, sun-filled day for us to make the most of the season. Nearby hiking opportunities call our name, Jurassic Park is playing at the Nugget, in 3D no less, and gelato tastes good on any day. In this week’s issue we explore an Upper Valley gem and investigate Teach For America’s widely criticized organizational structure. We inquire about smoking culture at Dartmouth, and reflect on the lack of poetic breathers we take as students, constantly overwhelmed by commitments that perhaps matter less than we would have ourselves believe. As looming exams and harsher weather take a toll on our initial springtime euphoria, let’s take a moment to appreciate the now instead of just jumping ahead. One day the sun will come out for good and the Green will be green, but until then, the gray skies will just have to do. Happy Friday!
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MIR ROR MIRROR EDITORS AMELIA ACOSTA TYLER BRADFORD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF JENNY CHE PUBLISHER GARDINER KREGLOW EXECUTIVE EDITORS DIANA MING FELICIA SCHWARTZ GRAPHICS EDITOR ALLISON WANG
OVER HEARDS
FINDING A POETIC PRESENCE MELISSA VASQUEZ //THE DARTMOUTH
Students have many opportunities to experience spoken poetry on campus. On Thursday, John Murillo read from his poetry collection, “Up Jump the Boogie,” at an event hosted by the English department.
B Y MARY LIZA HARTONG Spring is in the air, and so is poetry. In middle school, your teacher probably began the month of April by writing an inspirational stanza on the blackboard and performing a passionate reading of Walt Whitman. As she clutched her dogeared copy of “Leaves of Grass,” you probably listened with rapt attention on the edge of your seat thinking, “Gee, I wonder what’s for lunch today.” Whitman, you assured yourself, would be around for a while. The waffle fries would not. Then again, you might have been that kid sitting at the back of the classroom reading along in your own dog-eared copy, hoping by some miracle you would become Whitman, or at the very least, write a passable limerick. Now that you’re at Dartmouth, you probably aren’t pounded over the head with villanelles anymore. No one forces you to observe the sanctity of National Poetry Month. This news comes as a relief to many. But, for those who revere the written word, the divide between those who roll their eyes at poetry and those who keep it by their bedside is concerning. Fortunately, Dartmouth is no “West Side Story.” While there are poets and non-poets, Sharks and Jets if you will, no one gets stabbed over whether poetry is worth celebrating. A variety of student groups and English department initiatives promote the proliferation of poetry among both enthusiasts and skeptics. Whether you’re a poet, listener, reader or just a supporter, there is a way for you to experience poetry on campus. Of these groups, Soul Scribes is arguably the coolest. Nothing against any other poetry-loving organization, but these folks simply radiate cool. It could be because of their tendency to snap instead of clap, or maybe it’s the way they can render you speechless after a reading. Whatever it is, Soul Scribes reigns as the only spoken word group on campus. They competed at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational in New York City earlier this month and though ther didn’t bring home any medals, president Anna Winham ’14 called it a successful trip. “The best part of CUPSI was comparing experiences with people from different schools,”
Psychology professor: My whole life is a hallucination punctuated by meals.
Blitz overheards to mirror@thedartmouth.com
Winham said. “Every school has its own style. The Northeastern schools have similar styles, but Dartmouth has a distinct voice.” While she admitted to becoming “poetried out” after hearing over 30 poems each day, Winham said the team learned a lot both about other schools. “You have to audition for the team and then you get groomed for four years,” she said. “At Dartmouth, it’s an egalitarian form of art.” The team stopped by Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a sharing space for professional spoken word artists. After being invited to Nuyorican’s own slam, the team earned second place. Audiences in New York obviously enjoyed the Soul Scribes’ work, but what about here on campus? Winham said finding the right listeners can be difficult, especially when most performances take place in fraternities and sororities. “In the past few years I’ve typically performed for drunk audiences, which can mean having to tailor your poems,” she said. “However, it’s an audience that maybe doesn’t listen to poetry normally so I guess it’s a good thing.” Soul Scribe Simone Wien ’16 attributed the importance of poetry to the powerful emotions spoken word can evoke. “The fact that someone can connect on such an emotional level with someone they don’t know is amazing,” Wien said. “It’s the control of human emotion. That’s the highest art form.” Another prominent creative community on campus is the Stonefence Review. The literary magazine, one of the oldest of its kind, finds its home in the basement of Sanborn Library on Tuesday nights. In the words of editor-in-chief Naomi Elias ’13, “We don’t reserve the space. We just haunt it.” And what wonderful ghosts they are! Each term, Stonefence publishes an online volume of poetry, prose and art, and often compile a print edition of the entire year’s work. In addition to publishing students’ work, Stonefence partners with Left Bank Books to promote writing in town. Their annual winter reading event at Left Bank Books, complete with romantic ambiance and
ANTI-FEMINISM ’14 Girl: I really like my new backpack but it’s really brightly colored, and I don’t want people to think I’m a Kappa.
’13 Girl: Honestly, I think he likes my bed more than me.
an assortment of cheeses, is not to be missed. “We’re trying to get poetry out there,” Elias said. “People assume Stonefence will be pretentious because you have to submit, but it’s really cool. We want to make people comfortable with poetry.” Getting a poem to the final edition of the magazine involves plenty of editing, a process that helps to create a dialogue between writer and editor, Elias said. “Poems we get often focus on love, platonic, romantic, wanting it, losing it, having it,” she said. “People write about wanting to meet people at Dartmouth.” Editor Mitchell Jacobs ’14 agreed, citing the dissatisfaction with the hookup culture as a frequent subject of so-called “Dartmouth poems.” “Sometimes you get a poem that takes on the entire world and some take on just one night,” Jacobs said. As students work out the problems of adolescence in poetry, so does professor Cynthia Huntington, whose poetry collection, “Heavenly Bodies,” was a finalist for the National Book Award this year. “Most people’s first book is a coming-of-age collection,” Huntington said. “I guess I skipped that. When you’re writing about your adolescence in your fifties, you have a different perspective. I wonder if all these years of teaching finally made me write about it.” As for poetry month, Huntington waxed humorous. “Most poets have a genial hatred for it,” she said. “It speaks to the marginalization of poetry. We’re in great demand for a short amount of time.” For those interested, Dartmouth boasts events from poetry readings to the Creative Writing Awards ceremony in May. This year’s guest judge is John Jerrimiah Sullivan, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine and southern editor of The Paris Review. To those brave souls who bare their hearts in poetry through spoken word and published work, I tip my hat, and my dog-eared copy of “Leaves of Grass,” to you.
’15 Boy: I see myself GoodSamming myself.
’16 Boy at Jones Media Center: I would like to rent the first Twilight movie, please.
CS prof: Just pretend you’re on acid...that came out wrong.
MIRROR //3
THE TRIALS OF TEACHING
Teach for America has admirable goals, but has received criticism for parts of its structure. B Y MAGGIE SHIELDS AND LINDSAY KEARE By definition, teaching is the opposite of learning. We think of it as an action that we do unto others. But as many Teach for America corps members have discovered the act of teaching itself is a learning experience. Teach for America gives recent college graduates two year assignments in under-ser ved rural and urban neighborhoods. Emma Routhier ’12, who is teaching at a charter school in New York City, explained that TFA appealed to her almost immediately. “I was struck by how awesome of an opportunity it was to dive really deep into really purposeful work after graduating,” she said. Members of academic circles as well as TFA and alumni have criticized the program. It has admirable ideals: to encourage under-resourced students to achieve by providing highly educated, enthusiastic teachers. But several problems arise in its structure. How much impact can a teacher make in two years, critics ask? How will the constant turnover of teachers effect educational attainment in these already struggling districts? Some have proposed extending the ser vice period to five years, giving more time for teachers to adjust and make an impact. The longer commitment may weed out applicants simply looking for a resume booster and attract those who seek a career in education. By involving more career teachers, the hope is that long-term education reform will occur. Michelle Shankar ’12, who is currently teaching chemistr y at a public high school in Oakland, Calif., said that a significant part of TFA’s mission is to educate college graduates about the education
gap, which might not require an increase in program length. If TFA graduates move to other careers and use their influence to bring about education reform, TFA’s mission will be realized. Angela Callado, a program recruitment manager for Dar tmouth, explained that though only one in six corps members originally plans on a career in education, more continue in the field after their experience. “Over 61 percent of the corps ends up staying for a third year,” she said, “One-third of all alumni end up staying as classroom teachers, so again that really speaks to the broader experience.” Katie Renzler, a 2010 Brown University graduate, ser ved in the greater New Orleans corps and plans to go to law school and work in community development and juvenile justice. Many of her friends in the program have continued working with their schools after the two-year requirement. “I have friends who are writing curriculums,” she said, “I have friends who started after-school programs and now r un those, so maybe they’re not traditional classroom teachers, but they’ve still wound up doing stuff that they never thought they would before.” Another criticism of the current system is the lack of training. Although participants are some of the brightest in the nation, they are not always adequately trained to deal with many of the situations they face. Their students’ educational experiences are often complicated by difficult home lives or other environmental factors. They may act out in the classroom, and TFA employees are often unprepared to handle these cases appropriately. Additionally, corps members receive
PATTON LOWENSTEIN//THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
Teach For America CEO Wendy Kopp spoke at last year’s Commencement, urging students to make a permanent impact on the world.
Information courtesy of The Washington Post MULIN XIONG// THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
the same training regardless of the grade levels and subjects they teach. “My training was effective insofar as I definitely had a foundation on how do you create roles for a classroom, how do you make a lesson plan,” Renzler said. “But content-wise I was over my head and also just over whelmed behaviorally by my classroom.” Shankar believes that the best way to learn how to deal with difficult situations is through experience. TFA gives her the support she needs, and the rest is part of a learning cur ve. Callado affirmed the idea of learning by doing. “We are a two-year training program,” she said. TFA’s targeted recruiting policies have also been a source of controversy. “They’re ver y aggressive and it’s almost annoying,” she said, “Within those schools they target
so-called leaders, like a president of a frat, a president of a journal, anyone who exhibits leadership skills.” Critics say that teachers who grew up in similar situations have less difficulty managing underprivileged classrooms and are more likely to continue ser ving low income communities. Shankar notes that because of a dearth of qualified teachers willing to ser ve in challenging environments, enthusiastic college graduates are the best some schools can hope for. “Who better to do it than young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed college grads,” she said. Callado added that the disparity of experience forces corps members to reflect on societal issues. “I’m just really appreciative of the fact that we’re pushing our corps members to think about identity and privilege and class,” she said. “We want to consider how all intersects within our classrooms so that you can empower our students to end generational cycles of poverty.” Scouring the Internet, I found many accounts of success stories. Several current teachers were former students of TFA par ticipants,inspired by their teachers to get a college education and pursue teaching themselves. They admit that although the turnover was difficult, teachers are always replaced by equally enthusiastic educators. Each successor had something new to offer to the classroom, and many cited the inspirational role these teachers played in their lives. TFA is not a perfect system. The teachers are not per fect, the structure is not perfect and the support is not perfect. Callado explains how TFA takes the criticisms seriously, and is always looking to improve. “Ever y single summer we tweak and we tweak to make sure that we’re becoming more and more effective ever y time,” she said. “I think that’s something that I do appreciate about the organization, they’re ver y receptive to feedback. You really want to know what they can do better.” TFA is an important effort to close the education gap in underprivileged communities. It offers college graduates an opportunity to continue learning and contribute to the learning of others. For teachers, this may mean bringing their knowledge and passions to other professions, while continuing to fight to fix the wrongs they witnessed during their time in the corps. For students, the hope is that they are inspired to persevere and overcome their educational situation to attend college and to realize the joy of learning.
TRENDING @ Dartmouth SA CHUCK Dartmouth has a country band? Stay tuned for more.
SUNDRESS DAY
Has it come? Are we still waiting? Does it count as sundress weather if you can’t actually see the sun? Cheers to the brave few who raise hemlines even when temperatures don’t match.
REASONS MY SON IS CRYING
From Dartmouth students’ facebook newsfeeds to Humans of New York, one father and his moody toddler have swept the nation with crying justifications like “The milk isn’t juice.”
COMPLANING ABOUT COLLIS
Despite a term’s worth of renovations, lots of lunchers are still relegated to overflow seating, and no one knows quite where to stand when you’re ordering eggs.
AD Definitely not the fraternity. The cult hit “Arrested Development” returns for a fourth season on Netflix May 26.
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“THERE USED TO BE A SAYING: IF YOU WANTED YOUR KID NOT TO SMOKE, YOU SHOULD SEND HIM TO COLLEGE.” TODD HEATHERTON
MIND IF I SMOKE? BY MYREL ITURREY AND ERIN LANDAU
A
t first, her demeanor betrayed no sign of minding the 10-degree wind chill. She stepped out bravely from the double doors that guard the 1902 Room just as I shuffled out of Sanborn’s back exit, my chin tucked as far into my scarf as humanly possible. In a sweeping and practiced motion, she extracted an open pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her back pocket, tapped the cardboard carton to her palm, and brought a small, white roll to her lips. She muttered an expletive as she turned her back to the wind and used her hand to cup the flame that
MIRROR //5
curled atop the lighter. I walked past just slowly enough to notice she had trimmed her knitted gloves to not lose dexterity in her fingers while keeping them warm. She was no stranger to the winter cigarette break. If you were to sit on the steps that lead up to the ver y same overhang and count the students who stepped out of the librar y for a quick smoke throughout the course of a day, you would likely watch the sun set before hitting double digits. The girl I passed on my way into the librar y is just one member of a minority of students on Dartmouth’s campus who are likely to identify themselves as “smokers.” Even fewer would go so far as to identify themselves as “chain-smokers.” Yet, puffing through a pack a day, Eli Rachovitsky ’13 openly acknowledges his place within this categor y. He also recognizes that the average Dartmouth student smokes “far less” than he does. “There used to be a saying that if you wanted your kid not to smoke, you should send him to college,” said psychology professor Todd Heatherton, who has collaborated on research regarding tobacco use in adolescent youths. “As smoking went down dramatically in the ’80s and ’90s, it became really uncommon to see college students smoking.” Like many campuses across the countr y, Dartmouth was quick to respond to the urgent warnings about the health risks of cigarette smoke. A signed notice by College President Ernest Martin Hopkins, who ser ved from 1916 to 1945, requested that “smoking be avoided in
recitation rooms and recitation halls.” In 1975, students favored the prohibition of smoking in the classroom two-to-one, with approximately one-third of the undergraduates represented in the vote. “Ver y few Dartmouth students back then smoked cigarettes,” John Donaghy ’75, a writing professor, recalled of his undergraduate years. Until recently, most campuses have been satisfied with a regulation to ban smoking in shared work areas. Yet over 1,000 colleges have come to adopt policies that forbid smoking anywhere within their campus borders, even in public areas, Fox Business recently reported. When asked whether smoking should be banned at Dartmouth, Noah Smith ’15, a nonsmoker, responded that instating such a policy could enable the College to set more invasive decrees in the future. “It sets a precedent of the school deciding what is bad for your health,” Smith said. Alex Velaise ’15, agreed that students should have the freedom to decide their own behavior. “America is in a trend where it’s not socially acceptable to smoke anymore, but it’s a matter of principle,” Velaise said. “We’re all adults, so we should be able to make our own choices.” Heatherton mentioned that the justification for smoking bans on college campuses often has less to do with preventing students from smoking of their own will then creating an environment that respects non smokers’ rights to not be harmed by toxic tobacco fumes.
Maggie Tierney ’14 rolled up her sleeve to expose two pink cigarette burns she received on her right hand during a night out at Bones Gate fraternity last Wednesday. “I’m not gong to be offended if you’re smoking outside the librar y because I can avoid you,” Tierney said. “But when you choose to smoke in a basement or any type of enclosed space, and you then elect to flail your arms around and accidentally burn the people around you, it’s just not okay.” Like Tierney, many students interviewed indicated that they had certainly encountered inconsiderate cigarette smokers while at Dartmouth. However, these episodes pale in comparison to the insensitivity of European smokers. Velaise, who spent his winter term working at a bank in Europe, noted that most adolescents there smoke incessantly. He described how half of the men and women he worked with took regular, hour-long smoking breaks sanctioned by the bank, as each floor was evenly divided into designated smoking and non-smoking areas. “Coming back to Dartmouth, I noticed that smoking isn’t ingrained as a part of American culture,” Velaise said. Smith, who spent winter in Paris on the French Foreign Study Program, agreed with Velaise’s assessment. He noticed that smoking is less stigmatized in Europe than in the United States. “It was completely different. In France, even people who looked like they were 14 smoked,” Smith said. “If you see of-age
people smoking on campus, you just look at them funny.” In fact, at least some of the stigma that he refers to was born right here at Dartmouth. Since the mid-’90s, Heatherton has collaborated with Geisel School professor James Sargent to document the portrayal of smoking in popular Hollywood films and its influence on adolescents. The study revealed that 95 percent of 600 popular films from 1988 to 1997 featured tobacco use, and adolescents who routinely watch these movies are more likely to smoke themselves. Heatherton theorizes that the national attention directed at similar findings indirectly led to the decline of smoking in movies in the last decade. A more recent study published by the researchers in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicated a drop in adolescent smoking in accordance with the drop of tobacco use in film. For reasons that aren’t entirely understood, through there may be fewer frequent smokers than in past decades, there appear to be far more “occasional” smokers than ever before. Some students, like Tierney, are strongly opposed to “social smoking,” but many more don’t see the harm in lighting up ever y once in awhile. “We have smart people here who know that it’s not the case that having one cigarette is going to kill you,” Heatherton said. “But that one cigarette makes it so much more likely that you’ll have another one, and another one... and we do know that will probably get you.”
ALLISON WANG // THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF Photos Courtesy of Modern Mechanix and Vintage Advertising
6// MIRROR
Through the Looking Glass
A NOVEL IDEA AND THE PEACE OF POETRY B Y MADDIE LESSER
Anyone who knows me well knows that I discovered this quote by Stephen Dobyns last week — “Writing a poem is to engage with the world; writing a novel is to escape from its immediacy.” A poem arises from an intense emotional response. A novel arises from escaping your own emotional life, instead choosing to inhabit the emotional life of someone else. Of course, I don’t wholly agree with Dobyns. A novel can make you feel your own life deeply. Novels often stem from their author’s emotional life. More importantly, poetr y and novels inhabit far more interconnected spheres than Dobyns suggests. Yet what struck me so intensely about his obser vation, what caused me to find an excuse to bring up his words with anyone unlucky enough to cross my path last week, was its accuracy as a metaphor for Dartmouth. Dartmouth writes novels. Let me explain what I mean here. Have you ever walked through the 1902 Room during finals? And you see someone you know, and you say, “Hey, how’s ever ything going?” and she responds, “Not great, but it’ll be over soon
enough!” Have you watched someone walk into a tree while checking his email on a phone? We so often daydream ourselves away from Dartmouth, whether it’s to the weekend, the next break, the next off-term or even to memor y, that we forget we are here. We are busy writing the novels of our lives. We research our characters via Facebook. We think of the time spent studying for an uninteresting class, or going to meetings that we never wanted to go to, as already dead. What we refuse to acknowledge is we are the ones with the knife, stabbing at time with the finely sharpened point of an obligator y lunch date. I should know. At risk of extreme pretension, I’m going to quote a few lines by the poet James Wright that I went around repeating for about a week some time ago now: “Annie, it has taken me a long time to live/ And to take a long time to live is to take a long time/ To understand that your life is your own life.” As linear as it sounds, my understanding of Wright’s words provides a distinct divide for my time at Dartmouth.
CIRRUS FOROUGHI // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
Looking back on her Dartmouth experience, Maddie Lesser ’13 encourages us all to take a moment to appreciate the opportunities around us.
CIRRUS FOROUGHI // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
For Lesser, the differences between a poem and a novel provide an important way to conceptualize a greater sense of internal peace.
Before: Sitting in office hours with a professor during my sophomore fall, I gush about how lucky he is to eat, sleep and breathe poetr y. I love the professor, and I love the class. I even love his office: a dim lamp, armchair, rows and rows of books. After talking a while, he asks me why I’m pre-med. I explain that I think I’ll like the end result. And, instantly, his slow nod, a sad, knowing look. I spend a night in a dark, crowded lonely basement. And another, and about a hundred more after that. After a phone conversation with my father, which consists of him repeating “Well, what are you going to do with your life?” over and over again, I experience my first panic attack. I write down all my extra curricular activities in the back of my planner, and wonder what I should join to lengthen that list to five. After: A series of long, empty afternoons. Noticing the bird nest outside the window. Cooking, reading, writing, walking — doing things that “count” for nothing. Deep, deep peace. I think this trajector y is pretty similar for many upperclassmen. As your time at Dartmouth goes on, you finally realize that you can do whatever you want with it. Many of my favorite people here are those who understood this all along. For me, and again, I think this is true for many Dartmouth students, this realization stemmed from an off-term. When my planned job fell through, I found myself with unscheduled, unmediated time. I walked around. I read in the park. I knew no one in a city. I learned to love solitude. I remembered the wide, wide world that exists outside of Dartmouth. And when I returned, I didn’t so much realize that my
time at Dartmouth didn’t matter. I realized that it mattered profoundly, because fiction writing can become an infection. When do we stop writing ourselves somewhere else? On the day we graduate? The day we get the job? When do we write the poem? How can we deeply feel our own lives as they exist in this moment? What I’m proposing here is the upside of apathy. Quit. Quit doing things that make you bored or unhappy. Quit mediocrity. Quit the sloppy paper for a class you never even went to. Quit spending free time on Facebook, and quit FOMO. Quit the club with those people you never liked. Quit your iPhone, and please quit your resume. Do join the Gospel Choir, Prison Project or whatever it is that makes you feel something. Get more lunches with the friend from freshman year who you miss. Above all, do nothing. Schedule nothing. Take time to find peace. And I don’t mean senior spring YOLO. I don’t mean the fourth game of pong. I mean true feeling and thought. I mean poetr y. I realize that I have hated unabashedly on the novel throughout this article. But I love novels and the escape they offer. Life is a novel. Any good poem has a plot. And life should certainly not be limited to deep emotional experiences. Sympathizing with the friend working frantically to finish a final, laughing with your roommates over bad telvision — the frequency of these experiences is as important as the time spent meditating. Keep writing the novel. But, occasionally, write the poem. Think about where you are now and what you are doing. Do the things you love, and learn to love doing “nothing.” I promise it will love you back.
MIRROR //7
COLUMN
COLUMN
MODERATELY GOOD ADVICE WITH
GARDNER DAVIS
LAUREN VESPOLI
KATE TAYLOR
I don’t understand One Wheelock. Is it acceptable to hang out and talk there during the day or is it more like the eighth library? — Whispering Wanda ’15 Gardner: I’m writing this in One Wheelock and just witnessed an illustrative example of why you should treat it as a quiet and not social space during the day. Two ’16s who seem to be lost and think they’re sitting in Collis Cafe apparently don’t notice that everyone is working and are loudly having the following conversation: “I have a bid to Psi U locked up already.” “Isn’t it a little early to know?” “Yeah, but I know a lot of brothers and they like me a lot. I beat two of them in pong too, so I’m not worried.” “Cool, I’ll just hang out with you when we go there” Well played, boys. See you at the rush event. Kate: I have found my most perplexing One Wheelock situations to occur at the twilight hours. Many a time I have enjoyed “working dinner” in One Wheelock, stewed in my lack of friends and acquaintances willing to eat with me. Suddenly, the mostly nonoperational, student-run study space transforms into the most alternative of social scenes. Is it appropriate for me to partake in microbrewsm, Lou’s pies and spoken word poetry when these nuggets of happiness are clearly not meant for the anti-social gremlin studying in the corner? The best solution I’ve found is to grab what I can, put in some Bose earphones and snap my fingers in encouragement whenever the speakers, singers or Taboo players look particularly enthused. Dear Kate, What’s on your Dartmouth bucket list your senior spring?
Jump on the AT for Alternative Transportation BY
AND
Dear Gardner and Kate,
THE BUCKET LIST
Dartmouth to learn what areas need improvement. Elope. And finally, get every frat, sorority and coed to interrupt their party, pong scene or empty basement to play the masterpiece “Booty Wurk (One Cheek At A Time)” by T-Pain (featuring Joey Galaxy). I can definitely take a study break for the last one, so blitz me. Dear Gardner and Kate, My friend is really sad that his girlfriend broke up with him, but it was clearly his fault. How do I deal with this? — Perplexed Pete ’14 Gardner: Breakups: where you get to keep telling someone that they’re awesome despite ample evidence to the contrary. Unless he was broken up with over something particularly egregious, you owe him three things: the occasional “Yeah man, that sucks,” a standing offer to buy him a beer at Murphy’s and a half-hearted attempt to find him a semi date. Kate: I’m all about telling your friends any number of half-truths and lies in the name of love. Start small by assuring him that his ex is “clearly in the wrong” and he can do so much better. Then, rebuild his confidence: “I bet she’s regretting breaking up with you now,” “I can definitely tell you’ve been working out,” “Don’t worry, you’ll get a job.” Continue to reassure him that her new man is a total scrub and that single life is so much better than a loving, emotionally fulfilling relationship until you both believe it. Also, to any of my friends reading this column, I would never lie to you and you are all literally perfect.
each, and shooting frisbees out of the air over the Green. Kate: Variety is the spice of life, baby. Alternatively, spice is the variety of life. Utilize the trays of random herbs and spices in Collis and FoCo to make your omelets, vegetarian stew and casserole creations more appealing. Every other aspect of your life will immediately improve. Dear Gardner, I’m running for Student Assembly president and wanted to know if you have any campaign advice? — Anonymous Amanda ’14 Gardner: Congratulations on seeking out the position with the highest possible ratio of power on a resume to actual power. You should target your campaign solely at freshmen. They are the most likely to vote and yet have no idea what they’re doing. Freshmen redefine lack of institutional memory. You can easily convince ’16s that your plan to send delegates out to student groups is a fresh way to connect campus and empower the Assembly instead of the same plan that has been proposed in the last four elections. And don’t worry too much, you need a maximum 20 percent of the student body to vote for you in order to win.
Please send any questions in need of advice to gardnerandkate@gmail. com or tweet at @low_sinks and @ kate_h_taylor.
FILM
Dear Gardner and Kate,
There’s an oft-neglected AT that passes through Dartmouth. An AT that Bill Bryson didn’t write a book about and that is not visited by two to three million people every year. I’m talking about Advanced Transit, the free bus system servicing the Upper Valley that students, by and large, tend to ignore. Occasionally, ingenious and desperate freshman will take one of the white and blue buses from the River Cluster to Baker-Berry Library, but you generally hear less about students using Advanced Transit to get around the Upper Valley and more about people asking to borrow a car or catch a ride. It seems we prefer the convenience or privacy of our own or a friend’s borrowed car to the AT, whose Red Line stops at Walmart, Shaw’s and BJ’s in West Lebanon. I fully admit to being one of those personal vehicle drivers, taking for granted the ability to go exactly where I want when I want. But we should make more of an effort to take the AT. It’s free, it’s much more environmentally friendly than driving our own cars and it links Hanover to Norwich, Lebanon, West Lebanon, White River Junction, Enfield and Caanan. The AT, was created as part of the 2000 Upper Valley Transit plan and was intended to reduce traffic, “help preserve the small-town character of communities” and increase access to jobs. In a 2008 survey, 13 percent of 572 respondents said they were Dartmouth riders, and of these, 19 percent were undergraduates. When I boarded an Orange Line bus to White River Junction from the Hanover Inn on a recent weekday afternoon, I was the only undergraduate on board. The number of riders stuck close to an equilibrium of about five, shifting at the route’s West Lebanon stop. Most of the passengers, including a middle-aged man who boarded in West Lebanon with shopping bags and a middle-aged woman who couldn’t remember her usual stop, knew the driver’s name: Dave. Dave remembered her usual stop at the Sunset Motor Inn on Route 10 and asked her how her knee was doing. I realized that not only did many of the passengers know Dave’s name, but they knew Dave and Dave knew them. “How’s the back feelin’, Dave?” a man asked. “Where’s your friend from yesterday?” a young man in a bright green Dartmouth Dining Service polo called. “That was ridiculous. I mean, how many times do you have to tell the woman you didn’t know the stop she wanted.” A woman, perhaps slightly batty, became disruptive when Dave didn’t make her stop. Another man wearing a Dartmouth baseball cap, sunglasses and a long tan coat boarded the bus to Hanover in West Lebanon. I had seen him before at Dartmouth, sitting on Collis porch. He knew another female passenger, and the two talked all the way back to Hanover. They both helped out at the same church dinners. I learned that there had been a series of robberies on one of the streets off of Route 10 at 6 a.m. this past Sunday. When he grew up in Thetford in the 1950s, people left their doors unlocked. “But you can’t do that anymore,” he said. The AT may not run on weekends, but it’s reliable and convenient, and you never know what you might hear. It’s no city bus, either. During my commute, everyone said hello to the driver as they boarded and thanked him as they departed.
I’m trying to prevent my days from getting repetitive. Do you have any suggestions?
“If to see it is to know it, — Mundane Michael ’16 this film delivers measurable, tangible that the Kate: My number one bucket list hope Gardner: Youworld should find small can be healed and helped item is completing my thesis, so I games to play with yourself throughto a better don’t have time for your senior spring out thefuture.” day. You can take time to come — Lauren Vespoli ’13
Streep shenanigans, Vespoli. However, I do Meryl up with your own. Coming from what have a list of things that someone, I like to think of as the south, I made preferably someone with a column up a game called “How much sugar dedicated to such tomfoolery, should is it possible to dissolve into my KAF complete in the coming term: Tattoo iced tea?” I play every day. I always “Live Free or Die” across your back. win. Others possibilities include the Take a shot in all seven libraries on “Like, Um, So Game” during class campus in under an hour. Interview presentations, i.e., counting the everyone you’ve hooked up with at number of times the presenter uses
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8 // MIRROR
PROFILE
Taking Stock In Woodstock Woodstock is one of the Upper Valley’s most popular tourist destinations BY LILY FAGIN
Courtesy of Woodstock Vermont Area Chamber of Commerce
Woodstock offers a variety of retail establishments for tourists and locals alike. It’s hard to use the word “quaint” in earnest until you’ve seen Woodstock. The two main streets, Central and Pleasant, host exactly the right number of shops, galleries and restaurants to fill an afternoon of aimless wandering. Mountains and streams provide the requisite pastoral backdrop, and there is an entire store dedicated to flannel. No visit to Woodstock is complete without a trip to the Vermont Flannel Company, if you’re not deterred by the strangely realistic, child-sized, flannel-clad mannequins sitting on the porch outside. Inside is truly something to behold. Flannels in more colors and shapes than one could possibly expect fill the racks, while shelves of blankets, pajama pants, scrunchies and boxers line the walls, begging to be grabbed and r ubbed against one’s face. In one corner of the store, there is a collection of “Vermont’s Secret Vongs,” thongs made entirely of, what else, flannel. People do in fact buy said flannel thongs, though “not the kinds of people you would want to see in them,” an employee said. At the Vermont Flannel Company, it’s fairly obvious what goods you might find inside. Other stores, however, are harder to tell: they’re marketed as “nostalgia”
or “gifts and souvenirs,” but offer only items that no one could possibly need, and probably not want until at least the age of 60. These are the places to snag a last-minute wind chime or get that glass squirrel you’ve been lusting after. Downtown Woodstock has more of these stores than it does stop signs. There’s Stop in Unicorn, Clover Gift Shop or the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation store, dedicated exclusively to Coolidge-related nostalgia if you want to make purchases you will regret and then learn to appreciate again 40 years from now. Despite lacking a clear reason for existing, these wares are generally fairly expensive. The line between these and the antique or artisan crafts stores scattered up and down Central Street is hazy, though the latter err more toward furniture or other items that one could theor etically justify spending money on. T h a n k f u l l y, there are also thrift and consignment stores for those of us who don’t deal with buyer’s remorse as well. Who is Sylvia has an impressive collection of vintage clothing, hats and lace. One sherbet-colored argyle sweater vest caught my eye in particular, though I could not bring myself to fork over $25 for a likely one-time wear. The hats are probably my favorite things in the
Flannels in more colors and shapes than one could possibly expect fill the racks, while shelves of blankets, pajama pants, scrunchies and boxers line the walls, begging to be grabbed and rubbed against one’s face.
Courtesy of Woodstock Vermont Area Chamber of Commerce
Gillingham’s General Store offers everything from fresh produce to tourist necessities. store — they’re colored, beaded, feathered and ridiculous. I wish there was a reason why someone might ever wear one. In the midst of all this kitsch, F. H. Gillingham and Sons general store was a refreshing dose of reality. While it had a few touristy necessities like maple syrup and moose-patterned pajamas, the store had a lot of things people use, like tools or food. Beyond the front room, the store is a network of endless rooms housing a random assortment of produce, toys, clothing and gardening equipment well worth a meander. I picked up some cheese from nearby Sugarbush Farm, a few local apples and some maple sugar candies in an attempt to be as Vermont-y as possible. Woodstock’s galleries aim for authentic Vermont as well,
showcasing local artists’ photographs, paintings, drawings and crafts. In the Woodstock Gallery, photographer Jon Olsen’s prints are impossible to miss, as they look remarkably like paintings. One of my favorite galleries, devoted exclusively to famous wood carving artist Stephen Huneck’s cartoon-esque paintings of dogs, unfortunately closed its storefront in town. If you are really motivated, though, the gallery and the Dog Chapel at the ar tist’s private home, Dog Mountain, is only a moderately far drive away in St. Johnsbury. Across the street from Gillingham’s, Bentley’s, a ’50sstyle diner filled randomly with the Victorian decor that I loved when I was little, is now also “closed until further notice,” according to a sign in the window. Thankfully, the
Village Butcher, Melaza Bistro, Pi Brick Oven Trattoria and Mon Vert Cafe offer viable alternatives, and picnicking is always an option. After Gillingham’s, a bench in a particularly sunny spot was calling from the green, just in front of the beautiful Victorian town library. Nearby, a tourism information kiosk touted skiing at the Suicide Six Ski Area, bike or fly-fishing trips and nearby historic sites, one of which was smack dab in front of me. A wooden-covered bridge, complete with spots of snow on the roof, spans the Ottauquechee River. Though it was in the opposite direction, I made sure to drive over it on the way home, munching on maple syrup candies, listening to Vermont Public Radio and wishing I was wearing flannel.