Spring 2014
The GUM is a weird publication. I say that with the utmost love abroad in Prague, polling data on the meaning of self-gov, and an advice column answered in the spirit of Lil B, all in the same issue? I guess what I’m saying is, what makes the GUM weird and eclectic and funny and moving and special are the exact same things that make Grinnell weird and eclectic and funny and moving and special. Which reminds me… it’s no secret that the College is having a bit of an identity crisis right now. We’re contending with shifting student demographics, institutional re-branding and an administration that is not entirely transparent about these issues, and some students—like me, for example—are worried about just what will happen to Grinnell in the next few years. If they’re getting rid of Outtakes, who knows what other surprises await us? It’s not really my problem anymore, per se. On May 19th I’ll walk across the stage (God and Terri Geller willing) and become just another sketchy alum. I guess I won’t even really be around to see what happens when I’m gone. But I hope the GUM will. I hope that our little publication soldiers on, for years to come, as a glossy 28-page snapshot of all that makes life in our prairie home so beautiful and strange. And I he so richly deserves. With Love, Levya Beigel ’14
In Defense of Lil B By Aaron Mendelson Opinion | Page 3 Dancing Statues By Varun Nayar Memoir | Page 4 Self-Gov Isn’t Dead By Aaron Mendelson & Joe Wlos Analysis | Page 6
Burling Activist By Linnea Hurst Hung Up By Andrea Nemecek Fiction | Page 13 Food Justice on Campus By Tess Given Opinion | Page 17 Sarcastic New World By Gio Garcia Review | Page 19
Don’t Live in Regret By Benji Zeledon Memoir | Page 23 You’re Not Invited to My Wedding By Anonymous Memoir | Page 21 #Basedvice By Aaron Mendelson & Misha Rindisbacher Advice | Page 27
Ta b l e o f Contents
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Editors and Writers Levya Beigel Editor-in-Chief
The editor formerly known as Linda is a fourth-year French/ GWSS major. She has a tattoo of a manatee on her right arm.
Nathan Forman Editor
Nathan Forman strongly believes that the Field House in the Bear should be open 24 hours a day–or at least longer during the winter.
Linnea Hurst Editor
Linnea Hurst ‘15 hated journlaism until she realized she could interview people and write about it pretty subjectively. She thanks the GUM for providing a space where this kind of narrative journalism can flourish.
Devyn Shea Editor
Devyn Shea is a 2nd year Sociology major and first-time assistant editor at the GUM. Devyn’s interests include new media, Kanye West and burritos. 2
Joe Wlos Editor
SPARC Chair Emeritus Joe Wlos knew that he would achieve great things when Oprah Winfrey touched him six years ago. He sincerely believes that the GUM is
Gio Garcia Writer
A roaming resident of Orange County, CA, Giovanni Garcia literally loves alliteration. Pith, Pop, and people percolate with particularity through his peculiarly publicized productive poesis.
Tess Given Writer
Andrea Nemecek Writer
Andrea Nemecek is a fourthyear English major from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She likes bird watching, writing and Democratic politics, among other things.
Varun Nayar Writer
Varun Nayar ‘15 is an English major from New Delhi, India, who likes to write short stories and poems. He is 90% beer, 10% feelings.
Misha Rindisbacher Writer
Tess Given is a 3rd year who technically is enrolled at this educational institution.
I’m Misha. I’m a second-year, Political Science and German major. My interests include Lil B the Basedgod.
Aaron Mendelson Writer
Benji Zeledon Writer
Aaron Mendelson is a third-year Economics major with a concentration in Policy Studies. Aaron enjoys listening to Lil B music, long walks down the logia, stimulating ideas in the Read Third Incubator, self-gov (is love!), and meat. #tybg
Benji Zeledon is a graduating fourth-year from Miami, Florida. He has time and ideas, but nowhere else to really put them. So he wrote an article instead!
Spring 2014
In defense of Lil B By Aaron Mendelson Last semester, a student initiative authored by Misha R. called for Grinnell to award an honorary degree to the rapper Lil B. To many basedesciple’s chagrin, the student initiative did not pass. Shortly after that sad day, I was working at the Grill and overheard a conversation in which the participants proclaimed their confusion over why Lil B was nominated, given that he “isn’t even a good rapper.” Once I recovered from my initial shock at hearing this legend’s name blasphemed and reminded myself that musical preference is subjective and not absolute, I realized that people had a fundamental misunderstanding about why Lil B was nominated. When I think of successful Grinnellians, I think of someone who is willing to brave Iowa’s winters (Fuck you polar vortex), willing to learn, and willing to question their core beliefs and values. Since he hails from California I doubt the Basedgod would be particularly keen on the win-
ters (Are any of us?), but in his pursuit of knowledge and of us. This Spring Break, Lil B was busy creating music, encouraging based lifestyle choices, and facilitating large-scale discussions on rape culture. The forum started off rockily, initiated by a tweet from Lil B stating, “Girls and guys and younger friends be aware of agendas with what you watch and also the clothes you wear and whit it could attract to u – Lil B.” Oof. That was victim blame-y. Many of Lil B’s activist fans tweeted at him saying so. At this point, the Basedgod had 3 choices: ignore, contest, or accept the criticism. He could have ignored, which would have been possible given the sheer amount of tweets that he gets daily, or he could have lashed out against the accusations, as happens far too often in the world of online feminism. Instead, the humble rapper quietly retweeted the criticism and then invited everyone to participate, asking, “What is rape culture? what does that mean to you?” In the 24 hours that followed, thousands of people shared their opinions on rape culture–ranging from ignorant to knowledgeable–and, most importantly, survivors of rape shared their stories, in brave, 140-character bits. Lil B created one of the greatest public learning environments possible on Twitter and actively participated while it lasted. His participation included a few more problematic tweets, but every time he gracefully accepted the just criticism. Lil B was mistaken in his beliefs, but willing to grow and learn from his followers’ experiences. He expressed his love and gratitude to all those who participated in the discussion and ensured everyone that their voices were heard. Lil B has taken up progressive causes before. When voiced his support for the women’s rights movement with op-ed in Rolling Stone Magazine. In June 2011, he released his encompasses all genders, sexualities, races, and people, a year before Macklemore made it popular for white America. the rest of us, but he strives to learn from his mistakes in sage of positivity. He believes in equality for all people and stands against oppression in its varied forms. He is an exemplary Grinnellian and deserves an honorary degree.
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DA N C I N G S TAT U E S By Varun Nayar
“On her way up, she paused several times to look back: below her and lifting their stone eyes to the clouds. It was the most beautiful city in the world.” – Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being 1
Spring 2014
At first, Prague was to you what it was to everyone else– a word, devoid of meaning or form. It would be fair to say that you followed Kundera to Prague. You finished your second year of college and abandoned the slow freezing prairie of Grinnell, IA to spend the summer in New York with four-dollar sandwiches and four-dollar people–indulging completely in the coked up psychobabble of trust fund babies. You took a plane out of JFK, out of O’Hare, out of Indra Gandhi International; pushed the places you knew far away until they became distant and unrecognizable, dots on a map under your thumb. The night before you left the country, you overcooked your pasta, lay on your bed, and reiterated everything you knew about the country.
Fact: There are over 2,000 castles, keeps, and castle ruins in the Czech Republic, one of the highest densities in the world. You contemplated the meaning of ‘ancient’ and ‘ruin’ and imagined yourself time travelling. Out of both precaution and habit, you packed obsessively: printed pictures of your friends from home, a collection of cotton sweaters, running shoes, journals, underwear, a map. You sensed an odd spiraling in your stomach, its momentum surging slowly up your chest and into your throat. Unable to speak, you fell asleep; woke up on LH1694 from Munich to Prague. On a warm, rainy Thursday morning, you landed at Vaclav Havel Airport. The pre-rain fog rendered everything around the airport out of focus. Every window was a wall. Outside, you boarded a bus overflowing with American University film kids–students from a program different than yours. The bus dropped you outside your apartment in Southwest Prague and your program advisor–sporting an unkept beard and grey hair controlled neatly in a ponytail–handed you an envelope with an itinerary, emergency contacts, a syllabus, and a used Nokia 1200. You turned to face your apartment building and thought, home. You stared for longer, more carefully, said the word ‘home’ eight to ten times just to get the image to stick. The next few months turned to mush. You met wonderful, new people with wonderful, new ideas on the Prague that you all temporarily shared. Before you are able to call a city your own, you must meet those who have owned it long before you. In and outside class, you absorbed Czech literature and history at an unrelenting pace; spent most of your time lolling in coffee houses and beer gardens, inhaling Kafka and Havel, Kundera and Klimt. You were sold completely on the bookish culture you manufactured in your mind, associated yourself almost immediately with its people and history. You saw your classmates become preoccupied with an idea of ‘abroad’ that you all had been taught–that transcendence was pocket change, that experiences like these ceased to exist if not consistently recorded and filed. In their quest to be the anti-tourist, they forgot how to be humbled by nuance.
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Fact: On January 19, 1969, Jan Palach, a history and economics student at Charles University, ran up the slope of Wenceslas Square, drenched in petroleum and lit himself on fire to revolt the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was one of many that year. How long can you burn before you become poetically relevant? You soon realized that a city can’t solely be learnt through its literature and art–it demands to be walked. With the fast moving demeanor of a freight train, you were propelled into the innards of nighttime in Prague. You stumbled deep into bars with the people you now knew fairly well, pushing back Becherovka and beer until the ground turned soft and the city turned warm and bioluminescent. You stood outside bars for hours–sometimes, even days–exchanging cigarettes for conversation, meeting heartbroken spacemen, war journalists, professional mimes. It did not take long for the rhythm of the city to take you completely. Its regal, near-Baroque bongo drumming charm–centuries old, soaked in art and conflict. You tapped your feet and bobbed your head to the Arcadian thumping and clapping of dress shoes on wet cobblestone pavements. You made music of this as well, before returning to the sky that grew dark from the factory exhaust near your apartment, churning mechanical clouds while you slept. You swallowed sunsets whole, did this until it saturated you. That really was what Prague became for you in the end, a kind of miasmic assemblage of booze and literature, of conversation and an elegiac love that dissipates in the absence of its subject. The bags you packed on your last day were heavier than the ones you rolled in on. There was no music to your departure, no grand goodbye. You decided not to sleep the night before leaving the city, spent most of the evening wandering empty corridors in Old Town–long after the street saxophonist had abandoned his regular station. You took pictures of the places you had lived in for the past five months, pressed your palm against the cold, stone walls of Charles Bridge, convinced yourself that the city would remember you.
Fact: Prague sees an average of 1.6 million tourists every year. Can places love you back? As the plane pushed itself off the ground and began to wrap itself in the thick, cotton clouds, the first stanza of Ashbery’s “Late Echo” hummed in your head:
Alone with our madness and favorite flower We see that there really is nothing left to write about. Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things In the same way, repeating the same things over and over For love to continue and be gradually different. What an interesting arrangement, you thought. A love that is gradually different, and more importantly, growing, from the point of conception. You were sure that your love for this city would evolve in many different ways once you were in its absence. Surely, you would never stop writing about Prague. Surely there is a kind of beauty that can come of lack. Surely, there was never anything new to be learnt here in the first place. Maybe that is what distance did to places and people after all, brought them back to life in a strange, almost unbearable way. If this was the case, then there was substance to your sadness. The city had orphaned you almost as quickly as it took you in. It was true; there was loss here, but also renewal. You had to leave Prague to love it better.
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Spring 2014 The Crane Review and the front cover of this magazine, reports that Grinnellians self-gov,” which has been our college’s organizing principle for decades. In Grinnell’s online catalog, the college openly admits that self-governance is responsibility for the community, accountability for choices, respect for others’ rights, com-
munication, and the discussion of important issues. Over the past several years, dozens of incidents have forced Grinnellians to discuss this vital question: Is self-gov dead? From alcohol hospitalizations to student vandalization, self-governance has certainly seen better days. The positive aspects of self-governance, which are inherently consider, are easy to dismiss, especially in the face of heavily
publicized shortcomings. The Grinnell Student Analytics group was formed to answer compelling questions about the college, using student insight and opinion to derstanding of Grinnell. Our polling results indicate that self-governance is alive, but it is on life support. Grinnellians still support and cherish self-governance–several poll respondents mentioned that “self-gov is love,” and they
V O G F L D E A S E D T ’ N IS By on ndels e M n Aaro oe Wlos &J
– 6 4 8 1
? ? ? ?
still love self-gov–but students view its implementation as half-hearted, at best. Who is to blame for this failure? One of the poll’s most majority of Grinnellians blame other Grinnellians’ habits for self-gov’s shortcomings. While close to a quarter of respondents blame administrative policies for the perceived collapse of self-governance, over 65% believe that alcohol and drugs or other students are the primary culprits. This makes sense, givdo not believe that they are most accountable to the campus community. Instead, they are most accountable to themselves. nance and recommit Grinnell to this essential component of our identity, this report suggests several changes to college policies and student attitudes. First, because self-governance plays such a critical role in the lives of Grinnellians–three quarters consider it important or very important–the college should prominently advertise and feature self-government’s guiding values in its admissions literature and on the grinnell. edu website. Students were divided on self-governance’s impact on their admission decision; this should not be the spect, and communication will always be vital aspects of the Grinnell community, and accepted applicants need to be aware of their importance before choosing to attend Grinnell.
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Second, the more concrete elements of self-governance should be deemphasized as guiding values and should instead be used as examples of self-governance at its best. Respect for student and college property was a prominent phrase in the
open-ended response section of the poll, tive care. Self-gov is not an insurance polthat way. Finally, on-campus communication
should be promoted to bolster compromise. Self-governance is not an ideology or lifestyle; it is an organizing principle. There will always be major issues at Grinnell that require a hard line or a strong position, like the college’s sexual assault
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SELF-GOVERNANCE?
23% 53% 13% Administrative Policies
Other Students
Alcohol and Drugs
ON A SCALE OF ONE TO FIVE... How Important is Self-Governance in Your Grinnell Experience?
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How Important was Self-Governance in Your Decision to Attend?
How Well Does the Campus Community Practice Self-Governance?
Spring 2014
WHO TOOK THE POLL?
policies. But everyday concerns and frustrations–stolen bikes and late-night parties–require a more nuanced response, to promote the best interests of every member of the community. The next several paragraphs will provide a question-by-question breakdown of the poll. Check out gumag.net in the coming weeks for a longer version of this report, with full results and more analysis. When considering your actions and choices at Grinnell, to whom are you most responsible? Self-gov dictates responsibility toward peers, but only 34% of respondents attempt to live up to the community’s expectations. The majority of Grinnellians only hold themselves personally responsible for their actions. While it is a good sign that Grinnellians are self-aware, if this beautiful experiment is going to survive, more students are going to need to value the entire community instead of their own convenience. The majority of respondents shunned
The poll had 183 respondents. 4% were neither a
responsible to their family and their professors, and no one felt responsible to Grinnell’s administration. How important was the idea of self-governance in your decision to attend Grinnell? Less than 20% of those surveyed felt that the concept of self-gov had no effect on their decision to come to Grinnell, and less than 35% feel it was not that important or somewhat important. Just under 50% of respondents felt self-governance was important or very important to their decision to attend Grinnell. How important is self-governance in your Grinnell experience? Although Grinnellians are split on self-gov’s impact on attendance, a clear majority–over 90% of respondents–report that self-gov at least somewhat affects their Grinnell experience. The rest can go to the University of Chicago, where fun goes to die. What do you believe is the biggest obstacle to the implementation of self-governance? Around 25% of Grinnellians feel that administrative policies are the biggest obstacle to self-governance’s implementation and 7% blame the academic workload. Surprisingly, given the amount
TO WHOM ARE YOU RESPONSIBLE?
felt that the alcohol and drug culture of campus was the biggest obstacle for self-gov. Over 50% of respondents felt other students were to blame, but only 7% blamed themselves. This suggests that more Grinnellians will have to examine their actions if self-gov is going to be sustainable. In your opinion, how well does the campus community practice self-governance? While Grinnell Student Analytics thinks that the college is anything but normal, ironically, our perception of self-gov is statistically pretty normal. 8% said that it is effectively non-existent, 20% said it was not implemented well, 46% think it is implemented somewhat well, 24% reported self-gov is implemented well, and 1% said it is implemented very well.
We counted the 4% as administrators or alumni.
When considering actions and choices,
34% 60% The Campus Community
Yourself
0%
College Administration
WHICH WORDS AND PHRASES ARE PART OF SELF-GOVERNANCE? Respect for Student Property Respect for College Property Following Institutional Rules Trust Compromise Active Care for Others Communicating Concerns Responsibility to Community Methodolgy Between May 1 and May 2, the Self-Governance Poll was available on a Google form and gumag.net. An all-campus email, posters, and Facebook poll, which has a margin of error of approximately +/- 7%.
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Burling “I am an Iowa hog Farmer. How do you explain that?” Burling Library Circulation Supervisor of 23 years Chris Gaunt asks me from across the table at Chuong Garden. This question would be pretty easy to answer, except for the fact that Gaunt has been a vegan for the ing at bits of tofu. I had been meaning to talk with Gaunt about her seemingly paradoxical life ever since I worked as her assistant last year. What little she said was fascinating: once she mentioned being in jail, another day she mentioned traveling to London to visit an old friend from her activism days. Everyday at work, I wistfully daydreamed about being able to sit down with her and ask all the questions I wanted. Finally, on a sunny afternoon in early March, that is exactly what I did. Gaunt and her seven siblings grew up on a farm outside Gilman, IA, a small town just twelve miles north of Grinnell with a population of roughly 600. “My roots are rural Iowa. My
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mom and dad’s parents were farmers in this same area,” Gaunt tells me. Growing up, her family’s dinner table conversations were devoid of politics, and this silence carried into her college years. “I want to Central College in Pella,” Gaunt says. “It still wasn’t a liberal atmosphere.” When I ask Gaunt what did spark her political awakening, she gives me a surprising answer. “I think I was thirty-seven years old,” she recalls. “I had an experience with my dad right before he died. I felt like we were communicating not with words, just with a spirit connection of some kind.” Gaunt describes how this experience opened up her eyes up to the possibilities of a spirituality that transcended closed-mindedness. “My God got bigger! Christianity became way too narrow for me when I looked at the way it was being acted out [in].” As Gaunt’s God got bigger, she began to notice problems with the the United Church of Christ she attended in Gilman. “I was on the Open and
Church of Christ] Iowa Conference, which just means advocating for acceptance of gays in the Church.” The only problem for Gaunt was that each individual congregation decided whether or not to align with the Committee’s values, and her church decided not to. Instead, the church acted discriminatingly, not hiring a new pastor simply because she iden“I’d known my brother was gay since college,” Gaunt tells me, “but I kept quiet until I realized this was a life or death matter for my teens at the church.” Recognizing how helpful a faith-based support system could be for the well-being of LGBT youth, Gaunt encouraged her church to make an open statement pledging their acceptance to the LGBT community. Unfortunately, the church did not respond well. “For most people, I went too fast,” Gaunt admits. “I paused later and realized that they thought this because there were many families in the communities with a
Spring 2014
Jails in Georgia, Grinnell Librarian Chris Gaunt Has Seen It All
Activist
By Linnea Hurst
gay member that was closeted. They were scared that I was going after their child.” This push-back did not stop Gaunt, however. “I kept doing my thing,” she tells me with a sly smile. “I left my message with the youth I worked with, and they understood it.” Despite surreptitiously teaching values of acceptance to the teens at Sunday School, Gaunt began feeling more and more like an outcast. “I walked out of the door of that church trying to follow the non-violent footsteps of Jesus,” Gaunt says. Although Gaunt parted ways enced her life long after she left it. “We [at church] had written to some nuns who had been jailed because of their involvement with the School of Americas Protest. One Sunday this pastor invites anyone at church to go to the protest so I looked at my daughter and she looked at me ... and we said yes,” she says. The rest, as they say, is history. thirteen consecutive years Gaunt has
protested the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, (formerly known as the US Army School of the Americas), which provides United States-sponsored military training to government personnel in Latin American countries. “I got together with people from all across the country at the protest. We all believed deeply in non-violence, we all wanted to do something about it,” Gaunt says. “We were willing to put our bodies across the line.” The line Gaunt refers to is the line distinguishing between the area the protesters are allowed to inhabit and the boundary to Ft. Benning, the army base that houses the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. “It is a federal misdemeanor to cross this line,” Gaunt tells me, “and in 2002 that is what I did.” For Gaunt this arrest was just the beginning of a long string of arrests, due mainly to trespassing charges accrued during her efforts to protest war and torture. “I’d estimate I’ve spent about a year in jail, if you add up every time,”
Gaunt says. “Most times it was just overnight, but I’ve served a three month, and six month sentence before.” Gaunt smiles as she tells me this, and I am shocked that she does not seem more torn up. I ask her if spending time in jail ever got hard. In typical fashion, Gaunt just the situation: “When you’re locked up in order to just survive.” Gaunt found not only humor, but also meaningful relationships while she was behind bars. “When else would an Iowan farmer get to meet people from all over in jail?” Gaunt exclaims. Gaunt recalls spending time in a single sex county jail in Georgia where she met many women, most of whom were seeking political asylum, who began to open up to her and tell her their stories. “I spent the whole time listenmate in that Georgia County Jail was from Haiti, the rest of my roommates
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were from Ethiopia, Cameroon, Nigeria, Brazil, and China.” Gaunt recognizes how incredibly lucky she was while locked up— “I have this white skin privilege and I have much wealth and access. I had people supporting me from the outside the whole time when my cellmates didn’t.” Gaunt’s smile has completely faded as she recounts injustices these women went through: “In 1986 we started jailing every asylum seeker that came to America. No one gave a shit about their stories.” Gaunt did care about the stories of asylum seekers though, and has even stayed close friends with some of these individuals. “I met my soul sister in jail,” Gaunt recalls, referring to a young woman who was seeking asylum from Ethiopia and who she now visits in London. Gaunt tells me that in England, asylum seekers aren’t treated like they have committed a crime—“In England my friend wasn’t kept in jail. She was taken to a detention center, but only for one night. They made sure she had a place to live and gave her money for transportation, food and the medicine she needed. She eventually met an Ethiopian man and now they have two British babies.” Gaunt shakes her head. “When you shut the door behind me in that cell, it is no longer about the School of Americas protest. It is about all the justice issues inside that jail.” pressing injustice she noticed while spending time in jail. “There is only one thing that happens when female non-violent offenders are locked up,” Gaunt tells me with with conviction. “You separate women from their families.” Gaunt pokes angrily at her broccoli. “You tell me who wins in that situation. Nobody.” While lots of Gaunt’s activism
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has taken place far from home, she hasn’t shied away from involvement in Iowa politics. “I have gotten to know my senators in Des Moines pretty well,” Gaunt tells me with the mischievous smile that I have come to realize marks the beginning of a good story. I ask her why, and she tells me that over a tenacious period of 15 months she alternated weekly Wednesday “die-in” visits to Senator with a sign that says, ‘No More $$$ for War.’ I would sit in a chair for a few minutes and meditate. At the end of the day, I would lay down on the
not have as much faith in changing the system as she used to. “I was undergoing spiritual changes, accepting the fact that change wasn’t going to come, at least the way I was doing it. I am looking for something else. I am not giving up.” I ask Gaunt what new direction she is taking, and she tells me that she doesn’t know yet. “I will know when I know,” Gaunt assures me, “just like I knew that the activism I did during those ten years was what I was supposed to be doing at the time. Some call it a calling.” Grinnell College has been a
outline of a dead person around my had to haul me off.” Gaunt describes how protesting can result in more than just jail time— “Two consecutive weekly sit-ins at instead of giving up, Gaunt learned how to advocate on her own behalf in court to defend herself against these charges. “I think they had a plan to put me away for good, but the guys started slapping charges on me that they shouldn’t have. I started winning, charges were dismissed, and I started to be found not guilty!” In recent years, however, Gaunt has turned her attention elsewhere. “I’ve quieted from activism,” she tells me calmy, seeming neither disappointed or proud of this shift. “My friends around the country are asking ‘Where is Chris?’ and I am just kind of like, ‘I’m just sitting!’” Gaunt jokes that “just sitting” is new to her. “I’m an Iowa workaholic, it’s ingrained in my blood to be active! But you know what? I think the other way is better. Let it come to you.” Gaunt tells me that part of the reason for her change is that she does
through both phases of intense activism and of quieter spiritual searching. “I’ve been paying attention all these twenty years [at Grinnell],” Gaunt says, “and I see students working on and understanding sustainability issues. It gives me hope, when it could get really devastating sometimes when you think about how awful it all is.” ence watching issues of sustainability worsen, as she and her husband own a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feed Operation). Gaunt is hesitant to tell me she works on a CAFO, making “I married a man who knows pigs in and out–that is what he’s doing since he was twelve years old.” Whereas Gaunt’s father was a tenant farmer who did not own his own land, her husband Jay’s family did. Gaunt recounts how “in the 1980s the bank began to encourage Jay’s father to buy bigger farm equipment, borrow money. But then it all crashed. Only the year before his dad got a Marshall County Farmer of the Year Award for his conservation practices, the next he loses his farm.” There is an unusual silence in our conversation, and I realize that out of
Spring 2014 all the social causes Gaunt has fought tirelessly for, this issue is clearly one of the most personal. Gaunt continues, telling me in 1984, the same year Gaunt and Jay were starting out married life with two little girls. “We were tied to that [bankruptcy],” Gaunt explains. Gaunt got a teaching degree and her husband took a couple of factory jobs. “It crushed him. He used to be a self employed farmer,” she says. Yet this freedom to farm independently, as Jay’s father and his father had done, had ended for many Iowans. “Land values crashed and interest rates at the bank went up 18%,” Gaunt tells me, shaking her head. “How are you supposed to pay your can’t farm anymore because the bank suddenly refuses to lend you the money to plant the next year’s crop?” “Some farmers went back behind their shed and shot themselves,” Gaunt says, “and some went in and shot their bankers.” Despite the blow of the 1980 farming crisis, Gaunt tells me her husband never lost his desire to raise pigs. “We haven’t owned our own pigs since bankruptcy,” Gaunt says. “We feed them now for someone else, on contract. We get paid to do the dirty work, we are a cog in the industrial agricultural machine. But we raised our family on that.” Gaunt clearly has a complicated relationship with her role in this machine. Yet instead of shying away from the reality of the situation, she is eager to inform me of the disheartening and stinky details— “We have a Their poop falls in an eight foot pit and gets pumped once a year out on antibiotics. I see it as a totally unsustainable way to go.”
I ask Gaunt what she thinks the solution, or at least a starting point for a solution, could be for the problems CAFOs pose to the environment and to humanity. Gaunt tells me that one possibility she has discovered is one so simple she didn’t even think of it
Jay and I share. It is a base thing, “ Gaunt says. “You just draw resources from this base and it gives you the Both Gaunt’s husband and Grinnell have been behind her during every step of her journey, even if this right away. “My husband hated my
I’ve been beginning to see that my decision to avoid eating something that has to be killed does something to end violence too–sometimes even more than the protesting does.” Yet Gaunt acknowledges that there may never be a solution, at least not before the earth itself gives up. ready have lots of money can make a instead of fertilizer. It all makes me sick, but I think the whole thing is going to crash. It is not stable.” In the meantime, Gaunt does see some hope. “We have little movements like food co-ops. I’m a member of my daughter’s co-op in Northeast Iowa! Little pockets of things are working,” Gaunt says. “You just have to keep trying, like you guys [Grinnellians] coming out with ideas and trying to do things.” Gaunt has only good things to say about Grinnell students and the community. “From the pastors in town to the faculty that know me so well, I love the Grinnell bubble!” Gaunt recounts a particularly fond memory of the Grinnell community: “Somebody from the college actually volunteered to do my job while I was locked up in jail, and they [faculty and towns members] actually ended up raising the money to pay my I was gone.” As Gaunt tells me this story, she seems moved by these acts of kindness even today, comparing this support from the Grinnell community to the support of her marriage. “It is kind of like the love that my spouse
a hearty chortle. “The fact that I was willing to go to jail, for my beliefs? My family had never heard of going to jail for something you believe in, and now their loved one was doing it!” Gaunt shakes her head as she laughs, and I can tell she understands why this information would be hard to process. “At one point, I got the Dingman Peace Award [an award distributed by the Catholic Peace Ministry], and my whole family came to the ceremony in Des Moines,” Gaunt says. I am just beginning to exclaim how humble Chris has been this whole time, never bringing up this award, when she cuts me off: “The story isn’t over!” I smile. I should have known the story never ends where you think it will with her. We pause in our conversation as the waiter hands ment on how excited I am to watch in life. Indeed, she has mentioned to me several times she wants to write a book about her experiences. I am snapped back to the present as the waiter leaves and Gaunt continues, in typical fashion, with a plot twist—“ I got arrested the day before [the awards ceremony], and I barely made it there!” We both are laughing now, but Gaunt takes on an earnest tone as she wraps up this last story—“Anyway, they were mad at me for that, but at the same time they looked at me that night and said, ‘Oh my god, if that makes her happy, maybe this is what she should be doing.’”
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HUNG UP
By Andrea Nemecek
I had almost forgotten about Grinnell until I got the phone call. I was eating peanut butter out of the jar when my cell phone lit up and started to ring. I looked to see that a number with the 641 area code was calling. I sighed. Reluctantly, I set down the peanut butter and the spoon, and answered the call.
Spring 2014 “Hello?” I said. “Hi!” the person on the other line said, way too enthusiastically. “Could I please speak with Ellen?” “This is Ellen.” I shifted my weight in an attempt to get a little more comfortmy new apartment’s kitchen. It’s about a mile from campus. It’s a little farther than I wanted, but this was the best place I could get on short notice. I haven’t had the time, or more importantly, the money, to buy furniture yet. I’ll get around to it. “Hi there, my name is Liz, and I’m calling tonight with Grinnell College Phonathon.” I came to Grinnell almost four years ago from my high school in suburban Chicago. Though I told my friends and family I was happy throughout my or even liked, Grinnell. There was just something about it that made me feel constantly uneasy. It’s hard to describe. My parents came with me on the tle brother, to help me move-in and learn more about the place where I’d be spending the next four years of my life. We drove in two cars—my parents in one, and me and my brother in the other. I got to campus before my roommate, so I was able to claim my side of the room and unpack without worrying about having to make awkward small talk. As I settled in, my dad held me a spot in the P-card line. When I came to meet him, I found him talking enthusiastically with someone else’s dad about sandhill cranes. “Have you ever come out for the spring migration? It’s really something else,” the man said. I guess he lived on a farm near Kearney, a town in central Nebraska that hosts a festival every year in celebration of the cranes’ arrival. “You know, they call Kearney the ‘Sandhill Crane Capital of the World’ for a reason.” “Oh man,” my dad said, mesmerized at the thought of hundreds of sandplains at twilight. “No, I’ve never been,
but I would absolutely love to.” “You’ve got to make the trip,” the man said. “A guy like you, you won’t regret it.” A few minutes later, the man was joined by his wife and he left to go to the bathroom. Before he was even out of earshot, Dad turned to me. “This might sound a little crazy, but I think you should become friends with that man’s daughter.” I raised an eyebrow. “That way, I can make a trip to photograph the cranes during the springtime and camp out on their land.” “You’re so weird,” I said. “Indulge me for just a moment. I can already picture it. I’ll wake up early to get some nice shots of them as the sun rises. He says they have several ponds and even a river running through their property, so I should be able to see tons of them. It’ll be perfect.” I frowned. “But no pressure,” Dad added. “I’m not going to tell you who to be friends with.” My parents stayed at hotel in town that night because my dad is a slow driver and he didn’t want to drive back in the dark. I pretended to be annoyed that they were sticking around so long, but I was actually relieved. I couldn’t sleep on that comfortable, my roommate snored all night, and there were too many thoughts and feelings rushing through my head. At about midnight, I snuck out of my room and drove to the hotel where my family was staying to sleep with them. My parents didn’t ask any questions, and I drove back to campus just a few hours later, at about 5 am, to make sure I was in my bed in the morning when my roommate woke up. As far as I know, she never found out that I snuck away that night. during orientation. I heard about the parties when I visited as a prospective student and I was pretty excited to actually go to one. My tour guide told me about all of the themes: Disco, ‘80s, ‘90s, 2000s, Halloween. Though I knew what Harris
parties were, I was completely unprepared for what I would see and experience there. I guess I expected them to be like the fun and innocuous dances I had at my friends’ houses during high school, where there were homemade snacks and a parent always a few yards away. I actually showed up early to the party with a few equally clueless girls from my dorm because I didn’t know that the earliest acceptable time to arrive at Harris was 11:30. I thought Harris was fun until some random guy tried to get me to dance with of the fall—‘80s, yes, because I was wearing a bright pink off-the-shoulder sweater with a tank top underneath and turquoise leggings. It was dark, with the exception Me” had just come on when he grabbed I thought it was one of my friends trying to get my attention, but then I looked in that direction and saw a mysterious man wearing sunglasses and an orange windbreaker. Though I couldn’t see his eyes, he looked threatening. I panicked. Without thinking, I swung my arm a few times to break away and then ran off to the bathroom to seek refuge. The bathroom was packed. By the hand dryers, I saw a group of girls talking animatedly as I entered. “Did you see me dancing with Jack earlier?” a girl wearing a leotard with leggings underneath asked. “Yes, are you going to get some of that?” another girl wearing a purple dress with puffy shoulders said. “I don’t know. Do you think he likes me?” I kept walking. On my way, I passed a few girls hunched over the toilets with their friends overlooking and the stall doors opened. I stopped when I reached the last stall before the handicapped one. I locked the door and took a seat on the toilet. I heard “Call on me, call on me,” in the distance. Suddenly, I felt dizzy. I covered my face with my hands. I still went to Harris after that, but
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it was never the same. I had a heightened awareness of my location compared to the location of others. I kept lookout for the solo men who cirMy roommate at Grinnell was under the impression that she was much closer to me than she actually was. It’s not know for sure because I haven’t talked to her since I left. with my roommate is characteristic of our relationship. When my roommate saw me on move-in day, she sprinted towards me and gave me a huge hug. But because she was coming at me with so much momentum, she almost knocked me over. It still would’ve been a nice gesture, except at that point I had no idea who she was. I was standing outside of our room, taking a break from all of the unloading and unpacking. I still had one or two loads left from the car. She had just arrived and was coming inside to check out the room before bringing anything in. She recognized me instantly from my Facebook picture and was excited to see me. I didn’t register who she was, though, until after she ambushed me and knocked me against the wall, later causing my elbow to bruise. When she embraced me, I didn’t know what was happening. I was startled. I longer to process what was happening, but I didn’t because it occurred in a short amount of time. “Ellen!” she yelled as my back and elbow hit the wall. I didn’t immediately respond yet she kept hugging me. “Hi?” I said eventually. She was unable to see my surprise and discomfort. “Hi!” she said as enthusiastically as before. “I’m Meg. I’m so excited to meet you!” If we never had to interact, Meg would’ve been the perfect roommate. She was clean and kept the room tidy. She liked to bake and randomly made me cookies and other desserts for no
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reason. She never hooked up and rarely had anyone over, so I never had to deal with unwanted guests. The problem with Meg, however, was that I couldn’t avoid interacting with her. She wanted to intershe would back off if I pushed her away. I tried to do this subtly. Whenever she asked me to do something, I made up an excuse. Whenever she asked me a question, I responded in as few words as possible. Whenever she did something nice for me, I never gushed or got excited. I just replied plainly and without emotion: “Thanks.” Somehow, she took my lukewarm attitude and passivity to mean that we were best friends. I guess I never expressed this explicitly, but believe me, I left plenty of hints. Meg never wore pants in the room, even when I was there. This wasn’t that big of a deal. I, too, believe pants are unnecessary and uncomfortable. The big deal was when I came home after class to discover her wearing my underwear. I didn’t notice right away, but she pointed it out to me. “Hi, Ellen! How are you?” she said when I shut the door. “Fine.” I untied my shoes. “I borrowed a pair of your underwear because all of mine are dirty and I didn’t have money for laundry. I hope you don’t mind.” I froze. “No, it’s okay,” I said after a few seconds. What was I supposed to say? She was already wearing them.
I didn’t intend to. I actually went to Walmart to buy allergy medicine and I ing bunch. They were just sitting on a shelf in small plastic cups. They all looked so cramped and miserable that, on an impulse, I decided to buy one. I felt bad for them. I would’ve bought more than one, she convinced me not to. Even though I did my best to take
think it was partially dead when I got it, but I still felt responsible. After it died, I couldn’t remove it from the bowl and dispose of it. I tried to several times, but I just couldn’t do it. Having pets die crabs growing up and they died randomly sometimes. However, my parents always took care of them afterwards. But since my parents weren’t there to handle it, I was almost like it was alive except that it never swam or ate. Meg noticed that the me to do something with it, but I kept putting it off. One day, I woke up and the
but I hated all of them except biology. I wasn’t expecting to like biology, but it ended up being kind of fun. My section focused on genetics using C. elegans as a model organism. C. elegans are basically just really small, almost microscopic, worms found in compost; they’re often used in experiments because they’re simple in structure and homologues to humans. We did experiments with different strains of C. elegans to learn about their breeding and other behaviors. I followed along and recorded all of the proper data, but this wasn’t the part of the class I liked. The part of the class I liked wasn’t really part of the class at all, and that was staying long after lab ended to watch the C. elegans. The whole semester, I don’t think anyone found out I did this. I guess I tried to be sneaky about it. Once lab was over, I’d put away all of my things and pretend like I was leaving with everyone else. After the lab cleared out, however, I’d pull microscope back out and get a few petri dishes of worms from the incubator. I watched them under the microscope for hours. I liked watching the worms move about, leaving dozens of paths in the E. coli behind them. I grew too attached to the C. elegans. They are impossible to individual-
Spring 2014
ly identify and keep track of, but I got of them. After only a few days, as the C. elegans quickly multiplied, the dishes became starved and we had to move them to a new dish with new E. coli. But we could only move a few worms to the new dish. We left the rest to die. We sealed the petri dishes of the starved dishes, which became moldy, and threw them away like trash. I wish I could say there was some dramatic event that led to me leaving Grinnell, but there wasn’t. Instead, it was a series of small things. My parents didn’t even know I was leaving Grinnell for good until I came home in December with all of my belongings crammed in my car. When I pulled into the driveway, they were looking out the window. I didn’t look at them. I got out of the car and walked inside without saying a word. They didn’t say anything to me, either. I think they were too surprised. I walked up to my room, shutting the door behind me. I guess I fell asleep after a while, and I guess I fell asleep for a long time. When I woke up, I looked around, confused. Sometimes when I sleep, I forget where I am. It didn’t help that my mom or dad had brought some of my things to my room. I saw a stack of boxes, two suitcases, books sprawled school from when I awoke. I got up and somehow managed to navigate my way around my bedroom, crisscrossing around all of my belongings. I caught a whiff of my comforter and sheets as I picked my glasses up from my dresser. They smelled like lavender. My mom must have already washed them. That afternoon, we had a serious talk. My brother was at some athletic practice when my parents came up to my room to ask me to join them for coffee. I knew what was going to happen, but I complied. I followed them downstairs to our table, where I sat down without saying anything in my usual spot. Mom set a mug of coffee in front of me. I let
the steam rise into my nostrils. “Would you like any sugar or cream?” she asked. “No, I drink my coffee black now.” “Very well.” The coffee was decaf, of course, because my parents don’t drink caffeine after lunchtime. I reached down and scratched the rash that had started to develop around my ankles. When I looked up, both of my parents were seated with their coffee. They were staring at me with eyes full of concern. “Ellen,” my dad started off. “We are worried about you. We take it that you aren’t going back to school after the holidays. But why? We thought you were so happy there.” I didn’t know what to say, so I just my right thumb. I should really trim that later, I thought to myself. My dad’s voice echoed. We thought you were so happy there. nell, I’m starting classes in a month at a large research university. I was given the option to live on campus with a roommate, but I opted to get my own apartment. I’m excited but also worried. I can’t help but think that it’s not going to work out again. I purposely picked a school that was completely different than Grinnell. This place even has sororities and fraternities. I received a pamphlet shortly after I was admitted inviting me to some Greek Weekend to learn about Greek life on campus. I laughed when I got it, until I realized that everything in the pamphlet was completely serious. Even though my new college is different from Grinnell, I feel like the same issues might come up. What if it was just me and not Grinnell? I asked myself. A scary question, yet I thought about this as I was on the phone with Liz from Phonathon. However, Liz from Phonathon interrupted my thought. “Can we count on you to donate $50?” she asked. Not sure what to do, I hung up.
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Food Justice By Tess Given
This article is gonna talk about food, obviously, and eating practices on campus and the practice of policing eating practices on campus, and why it’s fucked up, and changing eating practices, so if any of that would be a bad thing for you to read, here’s your heads up. So. You’re in Iowa, and you’ve made literally three-thousand jokes to your friends back in New York, or Los Angeles, or Chicago, or Minneapolis, about the corn. I know. I K N O W. But it’s really time to dig deeper into food politics on Grinnell’s campus. Iowa, and other states across the Midwest and Plains, are the breadbasket (corn basket, wheat basket, beef basket, chicken basket, pork basket, rice basket…I could go on) of the nation, and yet many students know nothing about the web of food politics and practices they engage in. First of all, even though we all spend at least eight months out of the year in the Midwest, people still think it’s acceptable to shit on practices that, stereotypically or
not, define Midwestern standards of life. If I had a dollar for everytime a hipster from Portland or Seattle (I always confuse the two) told me about how atrocious the coffee is here, I’d be able to send them back to wherever it is they’re from. Same goes for people who complain about the quality of fish at the dining hall—you’re right, it’s terrible, sorry that Iowa, like much of the middle of the country, exists in the middle of the country and as such is landlocked with no access to fresh fish on a level to feed all of us. I’ve even heard professors from coastal areas talk about the trauma of finding out what comprises Midwestern buffet dinners, to which I say, if seeing jello and potato salad next to each other is so life-changingly awful maybe just eat at home from now on. And, Walmart. People at this college talk as if they’re buying food from Walmart ironically— they would N E V E R consider buying food from there if they weren’t so isolated in this god-forsaken town. What, we can get a ri-
fle distributor but we can’t get a Whole Foods? The humanity! As if this problem were indicative of how little the school and town value you. As if this absence of high-quality food wasn’t indicative of a much larger trend. As if a myriad of economic factors are not colluding all across the country to keep high-quality food out of the hands of the people who make it, and shuttling it to the people who can afford it. As if the draining of resources away from poor and working class folks to create food deserts where the only resource is Walmart is directly targeted so that you can’t buy your brand name free-trade specialty organic GMO-free hand-crafted artisan bullshit. Never mind the fact that the Midwest supplies the raw materials and manufacturing of the country’s domestic foodstuffs. Never mind the fact that laborers, both in fields and in factories for processing raw goods from farms, are nearly invisible to consumers of the goods in urban and/or coastal areas.
[1] my, expressed through consumer choice. But it is also a mode of belonging, where ritual acts of consumption initiate individuals into a global community of consumer agents. Within neoliberal logics of religious and political action, consumer transactions and corporate expansion are recast as forms of spiritual insightful and eviscerating commentaries on neoliberal economies I’ve ever read by Lucia Hulsether called “TOMS Shoes and the Spiritual Politics of Neo-
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Spring 2014
on Campus You don’t need to read Marx to think about how distancing the consumer from the means of production is a means of sanitizing the production process so that the vast majority of consumers don’t see the man-hours that go into that neat sandwich or whatever. Ultimately, my beef with the popular vegan discourse on campus is this: it is irresponsible, neoliberal 1 and over-simplistic to “raise awareness” of systemic issues such as exploitative labor markets, animal abuse, economic inequality and food deserts while claiming that these issues can be adequately addressed--even solved!--through individual students’ decisions to go vegan. What this approach leads to is policing. Food policing, body policing, and all other forms of surveillance which dictate the “proper” way to live and act are always predicated on the existence of a group of rejects. The rhetoric of food specifically always seems to target fat people. Being over a size 8 on this campus is being hypervisible, especially in the dining hall where a nutrition-
ist is hired to police what we as students should and shouldn’t eat. Every time people here engage in rhetoric that talks about food consumption, you are by necessity calling for people to surveil their food and their friends’ food. And that inevitably does more harm than good for people who are fat, who don’t have normative bodies, who deal with disordered eating, or any other manifestation of the fucked up relationship people can have with food. I mean, vegan activism on this campus is a self-referential parody, right? I can’t be at an educational institution where the narrative of veganism is that the only acceptable means of consumption is to eat the vegan bar at the dining hall. I know the vegan day wasn’t just their organization, I know it was a nationwide movement, but I don’t know how it could have been implemented in a worse, more destructive way around campus. If your message has to be forced upon someone in a vulnerable moment, like in a bathroom or at a meal time, then your mes-
sage might not have a great leg to stand on. Paying people to watch a video of animal abuse, which is not representative of the farming industry of the whole, is a flagrant disregard for the truth in order to sell a deluded agenda. I don’t endorse every farming practice used in this country and abroad. Nonetheless, I think that misleading and disgusting people in their own dorm bathrooms and directly in front of one of the most critical spaces for food consumption on campus shows a remarkable lack of consideration for how one’s actions affect others. So, while I stand by efforts to see where our food comes from 2 , I don’t support distasteful narratives told about our food. Ethical consumption on the whole is pretty impossible—throwback to those machinations of late capitalism again. Critical consumption, to whatever degree we are capable of achieving that under the current system, is the best we can work towards. All I’m saying is, our discourse has to dig into the meat of the issue.
liberalism” from the site religionandpolitics.org. The full link is at the end of this paper—along with my other sources. YEAH, I READ THE STUDENT CODE OF CONDUCT. [2] passive voice there because I do not eat ham, but I know it happened. I think this is a prime example of how sustainable, knowledgeable food production and consumption should be carried out. If the idea of eating an animal you raised is repugnant, then it’s absolutely ok to not eat it. What I admire about well-informed decision about the food they consume, and unites production and consumption in one experience.
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Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World remains a classic because its narrative world endorses and extrapolates contemporary grievances to the point of hyperbolic crisis. Unlike its peers–Fahrenheit 451, The Time Machine, or –Huxley’s work strikes a chord of impenetrable sarcasm even while it envisions a reality chilling to the reader. This trait estranges it from today’s readership, who crave fantasy, but only a Harry Potter or a Lord of the Rings. In the haziest clouds of the most common drug of today, I found myself appraising Brave New World to a young man who had spied the title upon the spine on my lap. I hadn’t anticipated relating British Lit to my present company. I had taken to the subject extremely heartily and preternaturally since starting Grinnell College. But something was off here. The youngsters around me in this chic den of ill-repute had no pretensions to prestigious degrees; “SelfGov” meant nothing to them, though they got on well enough with “One Love;” and our blazing abstraction bore no homage to the moniker “social constructionism.” These kids just wanted to have fun, and I had no idea how Brave New World would get the party popping at Mother Turf’s underground concert. Grinnellians would were loathe enough to jam to the novel, but at least there I would Perhaps the milieu that night–among stoners who, appearing in the novel discussed, would be described as pneumatic (i.e. charming, young, and fuckable); among bongs, psychadelia, and Grateful Dead posters–didn’t lend itself to literary talk, but the young person became defensive at my enjoyment of the text, and told me, in short, that he hated the book. He made little attempt to justify this, except to say that 1) the hypnopaedic (sleep-learning) indoctrination in the book had annoyed him and 2) the end would make the work contemptible even to me. Though my memory here becomes hazy, I believe that he abruptly turned back to his friends’ blazed chatter. I soon put away the book, which I had been using as a writing surface, and I packed another bowl to share among my friends, the philistines. My obvious love for Huxley’s novel, the only one I’ve read— and at that point I was only halfway through it—did not heighten or diminish the shock I felt at his statement. I am grateful that Mary Jane’s waxy veil softened my distress, for I doubt troubling my neighbors over bookish merits would have gained me any friends at a party. My surprise, I suppose, is that he should have retained the concept of hypnopedia enough to have expressed his resentment of
By Giovanni Garcia
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favorite subliminal aphorism was one he would have done well to recollect: “Was and will make me ill. I take a gramme and I truly am!” Take another rip, my friend! Don’t be so grumpy! The greatest irony of my bacchanalic experience that late evening is one that may easily be universalized. The youth of today evade
Spring 2014 and aver concern, mimicing the sentiments of a Lenina or a Linda. And whether they lose themselves in marijuana, the current television revolution (on the TV and the Internet), or a pair of earbuds, the childish affect that today’s generations covet drives intellectuality and struggle into the abandoned corner of history. Brave New World is a serious amusement the public wishes to believe it has no use for. Of course, such a dismissal is unjust, in the most objective sense of that word. The sleep-conditioned social catechisms for the youth’s sublimation recall good language. Many of these friendly reminders—“Science is everything!” “The more stitches, the less riches!”—the reader recoils from. They ring familiar to our educational economy, and we wish to prove them wrong. Huxley’s joke is and was reality to us, but we simply don’t like being laughed at, even when the grounds are evident. At these intervals, Brave New World assumes the guise of a tyrannical Mother Goose; but, as many of us never advance very far beyond Mother Goose, we don’t wish to be reminded of her, our own inadequacies, and what we believe to be our own individualistic strengths. Huxley’s most clever thrust is memorability, a device honed to a blistering point. Out-classing (to this very day) its peers, Brave New World risks much and gains more by etching itself into history and the more limited scope of cognition. Shakespeare, Henry Ford, and original nursery rhymes survives chumming about with the canonical greats by welcoming them into its humorous discourse; it doesn’t strain itself to out-verse the Bard, nor to out-enlighten the Gospel. Its saving grace is nimble, prevad-
is wrong with Brave New World’s swift conclusion? John commits suicide by hanging, after Lenina dies at the lash of his frenzied penitential whip. These are very disheartening circumstances and lamenting them timentalist. But at stake is not a matter of feeling, but an issue of quality and even more provocative morality. I can’t begin to consider or contest the author’s liberty to do as he wishes with his own oeuvre, but, then, I remain optimistic that this was never contested, even in the rad den that got my gears grinding. Rather, a succinct paraphrase: Was the ending “bad”? Huxley’s reputation and presentation, tude. But even the author states in foreword to a reissue in 1946—15 years on the heels If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between utopia and the primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity. [...] Thus altered, Brave New World would possess artistic and philosophical completeness, which in its present form it evidently lacks. In a later edition of Huxley’s masterpiece, the author and scholar accompanied the text with the supplementary Brave New World Revisited. Twelve chapters of social, ed the course Huxley had observed the world trekking down, toward its Brave New World state; caution and reserve wrack him as he points new ways to save the West its world-controllers. If Huxley feared for the philosophical integrity of his earlier work none of the former incompletion. As
the leisure of notability. The professed disinclination of my acquaintance the naysayer was a case in point. But to consider his second suit: What
is not bliss. The idea of “completeness,” wholesomeness, is a high-minded notion, but when social commentary is concerned, a moral imposition of integrity neglects ultimate guarantor of happiness by the gramme, mirrors misplaced rightmindedness. The demand for a peaceable greater good is a delusion that no drug nor logic can spontaneously generate. In his book, Huxley meditates upon the affective communication of art that is not art (e.g. the cinematic “feelies,” soma-induced orgies called Community Sings). There, everything is tone and texture, a world of feelings, pleasure, and delight where “[t]here’s a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say it’s marvelous. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactual effects.” And “Orgy-porgy!” is as good as anthem. All is indulged in perfection; even the full range of sentiment is available at the clinic. But, really, the narrative tone, British sarcasm par excellence, brings a virtuoso’s graduation of notes and senses to the text otherwise artfully artless in its emptiness. Christopher Hutchens introductorily describes Huxley’s style as a thinly-veiled projection of one “didactic and pedagogic and faintly superior: … the voice of an of the literary pupil’s discomfort in regards to Huxley. That he is British and well-read are perhaps the simplest facts in the upside-down wonderland we encounter here. The tricky and trite autour does little to mollify sour feelings. The somatic quality of the rocket-fueled future “After Ford” is a window into the coming days of a world bombarded by un-literary text that Huxley opens almost a half-century ahead of schedule.
inartistic, complete but souless. It is for this reason that I cannot agree that Brave New World might actually
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Don’t Live in Regret; “MY BEST EXPERIENCES WERE WHEN By Benji Zeledon I think through all of third year, what kept me sane was dancing and learning how to dance. Make yourself happy. Do what makes you happy. I role play (RP), I do really silly dance moves and derp around my room for most of the day. They became my outlet and after a point, I stopped caring about other people’s opinions and just enjoyed what I did because they made me happy, which I think is the most important part of all this piece. That makes me happy and it took a long ass time to realize it, but when I did, things got immediately better. Revel in your hobbies, because sometimes, like RP has for me, you find opportunity in it. You meet new people, you learn new things and sometimes that’s all it takes. I thank dance for allowing me to see that and it can manifest for you in any random way. Plus, don’t live in regret either. There were a lot of crossroads for me and I fell in, and still am in love with a good friend and I regret those things and they bug me, but soon I’ll be gone and these things will be just distant memories of a grand Grinnell experience with many highs, lows and Netflix binges thrown down the middle. Grinnell isn’t something that can be defined So, we really need to stop that. It’s a weird place, sure, but not that weird. We come in with expectations of Grinnell, but these ex-
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pectations don’t fit. It can seem like that when you’re all alone at Harris and just kind of trying to avoid the two people having sex on the bleacher but you have to remember that in a school of 1700+, not everyone’s drinking or smoking and there are people who are into the same interests as you. Seriously, there’s a comic shop, there’s restaurants and there’s history that you’d never know until you go. There’s nature and bike paths and a seeming endlessness. There are hills and fields of endless skies, also stars. Take some time to check out the stars because sometimes there are no greater skies than an Iowa sky. Grinnell can’t be defined, it’s probably best to not let it define you. Go out into town. Watch a movie, take in all the resources before you because there’s always going to be something you can learn or do. There are ghost tours and nature and everything, but you aren’t going to see it if you pretend the town doesn’t exist. Seriously, my best experiences were when I got out of my comfort zone at Grinnell. If that isn’t your scene, we’re only hour drives from various major towns that have their own exciting things going on. We have nice bars and cheap booze and Amish bread and everything you can imagine. Plus, the people! The people are generally really friendly (they’re
just as nervous about you as you are about them, believe me).They also have interesting lives and interesting takes about everything because of all the experience they’ve had. I went to Madison for a protest. I did a temp job fixing phones because I felt like it. Not to mention I found restaurants and beaten paths and enjoyed a small restaurant in Marengo, IA that had the best I ever had. Sure, I missed Miami things and eating gallo pintos and being Nicaraguan in a way, but I learned instead about what it is to enjoy Iowa Ham Balls and the novelty of a massive pig, and just the history of where we stand and all the cool alumni that are making themselves known in the world. Sure, that made me an overeager first year, but I was happy being over eager because it made that experience so magical. So, think about it. I think it can help a lot with so many people to just enjoy this place a little bit more. Explore it for a bit; make your own adventure. Sometimes that’s all that it takes. Especially when all the effort pays off. It can be tricky and it can be hard, but I really do mean it. You have to put in the effort to make this place what you want it. It will only give as much as you feel like giving and there’s always opportunity. Catch a movie, play NERF, swing a foam sword. Do something as long as you enjoy it because at
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I GOT OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE.”
A Learning Experience the end of the day, that’s what this whole experience is all about. You got four years in the prairie, enjoy it for what it is! You can’t let yourself be toxic to yourself either, especially when things in life get tough, and they will. My childhood dog died my first year over spring break and my sister developed a tumor in her kidney. In the middle of that, one of my best friends from home had his arm blown off in Afghanistan and all the guys I knew in his Platoon were killed in the attack that lost him his arm. They were good guys, so this entire event happening really did drive me through some despair. It didn’t help that I received an ADHD diagnosis at the same time and it made me wonder if I was even cut out for college. I had to learn to persevere, learn what medicines would hurt me in the long run and which would help and I had to struggle. I had to struggle with depression, paranoia and anxiety all on account of my ADHD, along with failing grades and losing my major. It was tough and I don’t know how I made through it. I account it to luck, caffeine therapy and just keeping on because I knew I had to. It worked, I’m graduating but it still popped up at times in different ways, that loneliness and isolation. Then in March, my cousin, someone I saw as my sister and who was kind of the push-forward Angelica Pick-
les of my life passed away from an infection related to heroin abuse. I didn’t know how to properly handle this. I had handled death before, but never to this level. I found myself pushing back in classes and finding my work life and social life breaking down. I isolated myself, became depressed and started feeling horrible because “how dare I mourn for others, people are feeling this a lot worse than me.” It was a weird time, but I learned one thing from it. It’s okay to mourn. It’s okay to feel loss. You aren’t being a burden because your emotions exist, and sometimes it’s best to use those emotions to create. It’s what got me back into writing. It’s what got me back to creating, and honestly I’m never going to look back. This year was the toughest of my life so far, but I learned from it. I used to hold grudges. I held one against a lot of people for forgetting my birthday and I held one when I found out my grandma had been taken to the hospice and no one had bothered to tell me. I would hold onto anger after every bad thing that happened to me, and I constantly felt that I was doing everything alone. It always came back to what my uncle told me one day in Nicaragua though. I had the capabilities of remorse and love and compassion that was lost to the rest of my family due to the war, that I could ignore what I might
think in the moment as slights to my person and understand that there are people who do care and you have to notice them. That’s what I did, and honestly, I’m better for it. I just had to work through a lot of loathing in the process. And I think that’s something else to talk about too: in which self-loathing never solved anything, neither is doing something that is contrary to you or goes against who you are as a person. It kind of goes contradictory to the whole self-awareness thing, but really, be yourself. Enjoy being yourself and never cut yourself short or take that away. Self-loathing is only going to get in your way, and the same can be said with self-doubt. It’s hard, it’s really hard and I’m still learning this one, but I’ve noticed that half the stuff I dealt with came as a result of self-doubt, deprecation and pretty much just blaming myself for all of the worlds problems and made me ashamed sometimes of just being me and my personality and who I am, which is the worst thing you can really do to yourself and each other. See, my Dad would tell me as a kid that the only thing that can never get taken away from you is your knowledge. When I was feeling worthless third year after I had to remember that constantly. It was a learning experience to be sure and it helped me when I was down.
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Edited By Aaron Mendelson & Misha Rindisbacher Dear BasedGod,
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Love,
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#basedvice
You ask. Lil B Listens. 27
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being infected by the fakebased! This is where night-
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Thomas Jones -
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Love,
the
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