The College Hill Independent: March 17, 2011

THE COLLEGE HILL

INDEPENDENT VOLUME XXII, ISSUE 6 MARCH 17, 2011 BROWN/RISD WEEKLY

Arizona // 3 Nate Dogg // 12 Low Anthem // 13

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Re: “Life After War: Perspectives on PTSD from Rhode Island Veterans” (March 3):

The author is to be commended for his evident concern about America’s war veterans, and there are many important points in his article, but it is filled with signs that he did not do some of his research with care and certainly did not always quote at least one interviewee—me—accurately. Indeed, something he attributed to me is the opposite of what I believe.

As the author of the forthcoming book, When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans, the daughter of a World War II veteran, and friend to many veterans from many wars, I would never: (1) say that the only way to rehabilitate veterans is through routine engagements with civilians. When I spoke to the author, I said that very specific kinds of conversations with civilians can be extremely helpful, certainly not those that are routine... or else why would I have gone to the trouble to write an entire book about what is needed? I have never said that engagements with civilians are all that veterans need. I have always said that many veterans find it extremely helpful to talk with other veterans.

(2) vilify Veterans of Foreign Wars branches. I was sickened by his attribution of such vilification to me. The fact is that, when discussing with many veterans the myth that veterans from wars before Vietnam did not suffer very much, the veterans themselves readily responded along the lines of, “People of earlier generations did not tend to talk about their despair, fear, confusion, or guilt. We see them in VFW halls and other meeting places, where they deal with those feelings by being in the presence of other veterans and often getting drunk out of their minds.”

The author stated that because I believe that what is called PTSD is often not a mental illness but actually a set of completely human, understandable reactions to war, “those that aren’t diagnosed with PTSD are somehow abnormal.” I certainly never said such a thing, and anyone who knows me would know I would never make such a simplistic, slapdash statement.

He also states that I am “onto something in seeking a better distinction between the psychological toll that occurs from war, and that which occurs from trauma.” I find this distinction bizarre, and certainly not one I ever made or would ever make.

War IS, of course, often traumatic.

Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D. Associate, DuBois Institute Fellow, Women and Public Policy Program, Harvard University

THE ISSUE: News WEEK IN REVIEW

by David Adler, Anna Matejcek, and Sam Levison

SLASH, CUT, AND BURN

by Emily Gogolak

NOTES ON THE EARTHQUAKE

by Korey Aaronson

p.3 p.5

Metro HIGH PROFILE

by Emma Berry

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Opinions GOPROUD TAKES ONE ON THE CHIN AT CPAC

by Daniel Stump

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Features A TRIBUTE TO NATE DOGG

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BILLBOARD HITS REMASTERED

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by Mimi Dwyer

BURNING BOATS

by Anna Maine

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Arts INDUSTRIAL ACOUSTICS

EPHEMERA:

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by Alex Spoto

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Sports A ROOM FULL OF KNOCKOUTS

by Katy Eng

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Literary EXCERPT: CLAUDE PIRON

by Emily Martin

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THE INDY IS: MANAGING EDITORS Gillian Brassil, Erik Font, Emily Martin • NEWS Emily Gogolak, Ashton Strait, Emma Whitford • METRO Emma Berry, Malcolm Burnley, Alice Hines, Jonah Wolf • FEATURES Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, Eve Blazo, Kate Welsh • ARTS Ana Alvarez, Maud Doyle, Olivia Fagon, Alex Spoto • LITERARY Kate Van Brocklin • SCIENCE Maggie Lange • SPORTS/FOOD David Adler, Greg Berman • OCCULT Alexandra Corrigan, Natasha Pradhan• LIST Dayna Tortorici • STAFF WRITER Erica Schwiegershausen • CIPHRESS IN CHIEF Raphaela Lipinsky • COVER/CREATIVE CONSULTANT Emily Martin • X Fraser Evans • ILLUSTRATIONS Annika Finne, Becca Levinson • DESIGN Maija Ekey, Katherine Entis, Mary-Evelyn Farrior, Emily Fishman, Maddy Jennings, Eli Schmitt, Joanna Zhang • PHOTOGRAPHY John Fisher • STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS Sarah Friedland, Annie Macdonald • SENIOR EDITORS Katie Jennings, Tarah Knaresboro, Erin Schikowski, Eli Schmitt, Dayna Tortorici, Alex Verdolini COVER ART Emily Martin The College Hill Independent PO Box 1930 Brown University Providence, RI 02912 Contact theindy@gmail.com for advertising information. // theindy.org The College Hill Independent is published weekly during the fall and spring semesters and is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, MA The College Hill Independent receives support from Campus Progress/Center for American Progress. Campus Progress works to help young people — advocates, activists, journalists, artists — make their voices heard on issues that matter. Learn more at CampusProgress.org.

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IN PUTIN’S RUSSIA, ALCOHOL DRINKS YOU!

REPUBLICANS FRENCH KISS DEMOCRATS (IN PUBLIC!)

To the surprise of protestors, the absent Democratic representatives, and the nation at large, Wisconsin Republicans maneuvered their way around the law to pass Governor Scott Walker’s “budget repair bill” on Thursday, March 10. The following day, Walker officially signed the bill into law as protestors’ chants of “shame, shame” spilled in from the Capitol hallways. The bill will restrict the collective bargaining rights of government workers’ unions to wage disputes; discussions of issues such as pension benefits, health care, and medical leave are prohibited.

But Wisconsin Democrats aren’t packing up and heading home. Tens of thousands of protestors have stormed the Capitol, directing their collective middle finger at the governor. The bill may be enough to tip the politically precarious state back to blue. Despite the Republican victory, the bill has had an extremely counterproductive effect: recalls for Republican representatives—and the governor himself—appear imminent, and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin reported that in the 24 hours after the bill was passed they received over $360,000 in donations.

It’s beginning to sound like the Republican shotin-the-foot heard round the world. With collective bargaining debates heating up in many neighboring states, the rallying cries of frustrated Wisconsin workers may not be in vain. The precedent set could spark equally loud protests when states like Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio face similar bills. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, who has long sought to revitalize the labor movement, said it best: “Thank You.” –DA

NATIONAL SURVEY REPORTS SURGE IN VIRGINS

Bye-bye American Pie, hello chastity belt. A half-century of horny teenage culture may finally be on the outs. According to the U.S. Department of Health’s recently released National Survey of Family Growth, 27 percent of males and 29 percent of females between ages 15 and 24 have not had any sexual relations with another person—that means no heavy petting or penetration of any sort. Randomly sampling 13,495 Americans aged 15 to 44, the survey marks significant jumps in abstinence for both sexes since 2002 study, when 22 percent of men and women claimed to refrain from carnal contact.

So what’s been keeping the nation’s most hormonal demographic away from sex? Bill Albert, head of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, believes that the rise is a result of teens’ positive response to a prominent message for delayed sexual activity. Where exactly does this message come through in American culture? Maybe MTV’s hit adolescploitation series 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom have shocked America’s youth into chastity. Or, since the Department of Health conducted the survey in 2008, perhaps the thenrelevant Jonas Brothers and their purity rings were striking a chord with American teenagers. Real Clear Politics columnist Maggie Gallagher, however, proposes a more likely cause: George W. Bush’s push for abstinence education—he always did prefer screwing nations instead of other people. –SL

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Russia’s parliament is currently grappling with a question that could force us all to re-examine the premise upon which we live our lives: does beer count as alcohol?

A new bill may finally subject beer to the same regulations as vodka and other beverages formally acknowledged as containing the ethanol we all know and love.

In Russia it is not unusual to witness the well-heeled Muscovite or gruff Siberian factory worker casually swigging a beer as he navigates morning rush hour. The less culturally sensitive foreigner might assume he’s observing alcoholism in action—but in Russia, beer isn’t considered alcohol. Beer is a “foodstuff,” and thus a perfectly acceptable component of any balanced breakfast.

Beer may hold the status of a soda in the country’s popular imagination, but if Putin gives the nod, Russians will find beer aggravatingly unavailable in subway stations, fast food joints, and street kiosks between the hours of 11pm and 8am. The bill would also ban the sale of beer in school neighborhoods and cap container sizes at 11 fluid ounces, outlawing the extra-large, more-bangfor-your-buck cans popular among Russian teenagers.

The anti-beer bill is not an attempt to frustrate Russian fans of the beverage; it simply seeks to raise the life expectancy of Russian males, which is currently a sobering fifty-eight years. According to a recent Oxford study, half of all premature deaths in Russia are alcoholrelated, whether they involve liver failure, overzealous bar brawls, or a fleeting belief in the possibility of human flight.

Regulating the sale and advertising of beer may prevent a handful of alcohol-related deaths, but no bill will change the fact that Russians living under Putin’s regime feel the need to consume three times as much alcohol as they did under the Evil Empire. Despite increasingly strict regulations on the sale and advertisement of both beer and vodka, the average Russian now drinks 4.57 gallons of pure alcohol every year, which is equivalent to twelve shots of vodka every other night for the rest of your life—i.e., a permanent hangover. –AM

K N E I E

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jcek e t a M Anna d n ,a vison e L am ler, S d A d Davi

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3 |NEWS

SLASH, CUT, AND BURN Rewriting immigration–and the constitution–in Arizona

by Emily Gogolak Graphics by Annika Finne and Becca Levinson

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lmost one year has passed since Arizona sent the nation into an uproar over its controversial anti-immigration law. The most radical attempt at immigration reform in American history, the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” or Senate Bill 1070, gave unprecedented autonomy to local law enforcement, declared the mass expulsion of undocumented immigrations to be official state policy, and was largely said to encourage racial profiling. This sent critics into a tailspin and Arizona into the dregs of national— and world—opinion. Boycotts followed, tourism and convention business faltered, and lawsuits ensued soon after, including one by the Obama administration. Eleven months later, the state finds itself in an even worse moral light.

While states across the nation are working urgently to reboot their economies, fight job insecurity, and turn around faltering budgets, Arizona is setting its sights elsewhere: introducing a new wave of immigration restriwctions. The most recent development in Arizona’s immigration debate introduces a series of nativist bills that make even SB1070 look mild.

Dubbed the “omnibus” measure by Arizona Senate President Russel Pearce, the sweeping reform package would repeal the Fourteenth Amendment (which defines national citizenship and forbids states to restrict the basic rights of citizens), prevent the children of undocumented immigrants from enrolling in public school, and deny medical care to undocumented immigrants in Arizona.

The new bill, SB1611, was passed in the Senate Appropriations Committee on February 22. Pearce, a Republican from the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, said he sees the new measure as a simple way to strengthen a 2004 voter-approved measure denying public benefits to undocumented immigrants. Pearce, who wishes to be known as the “John Wayne of immigration policy,” announced: “If

we’re going to stop this invasion—and it is an invasion—you’re going to have to stop rewarding people for breaking those laws… I make no apology for demanding the taxpayers be protected.’’ He specifically defended the legislation that would bar illegal immigrants from free access to public education and medical services: “You can’t keep incentivizing people to break our laws with a wink and a nod and think you’re going to have any effect on securing that border,” he said.

Just how much the bill would protect the border and taxpayers remains unclear.

The new initiative looks less like an effective solution to illegal immigration – undeniably a critical problem in a state that is home to over 500,000 undocumented people – than an attempt to devalue the very rights of the Americans Pearce seeks to protect. Arizona is entering a moment of constitutional subversion, and with huge consequences.

LOOKING AT THE ISSUES: KIDS, CLASSROOMS, AND CARE The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in the aftermath of the Civil War to grant citizenship, protect citizen’s rights, and guarantee due process to the Americanborn children of emancipated slaves.

Radically reinterpreting the amendment’s section on birthright citizenship, Arizona would issue a different type of birth certificate to newborns with undocumented parents.

The Fourteenth Amendment has become a cornerstone of our heritage as an immigrant nation. And this is the very paradox of the Arizona effort: in claiming to promote Americanism, it is decidedly un-American in its character. Birthright citizenship is embedded in our constitution, and Arizona’s efforts have been met with public outcry. In a statement in Washington, Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Human and Civil Rights, announced, “For the first time since the end of the Civil War,

these legislators want to pass state laws that would create two tiers of citizens, a modern-day caste system.”

The bill also seeks to shake up undocumented children’s enrollment in public school. In doing so, Arizona’s leaders are attempting to overturn a 1982 Supreme Court ruling on the right of undocumented children to primary education. In Plyer v. Doe, the Court declared it unconstitutional to deny education funding to undocumented immigrants. Simultaneously, the ruling struck down a municipal school district’s practice of charging each illegal alien student an annual $1,000 tuition fee to compensate for the lost state funding.

While SB1611 would still allow undocumented children to attend school, it would legally require the students to report their families’ immigration status to local law enforcement and to the Department of Education. The danger of this measure lies in the possibility that immigrant families— in fear of deportation—will be too afraid to send their children to school, perpetuating an uneducated underclass of deportable young people. A former member of the American education taskforce at the Gates Foundation—who currently works in philanthropy in Arizona and wished to remain unnamed—said in an interview with the Independent, “We would end up with tens of thousands of uneducated young people... The social costs would be mindblowing.” It’s likely that the law would only exacerbate crime—ironically, as fighting is one of the main rallying calls among anti-immigration hardliners supporting SB1611. Not only would government agencies and local authorities have to monitor students’ citizenship, but SB1611 would force school officials themselves to check for papers, turning teachers into immigration officers. The Arizona philanthropist decried this scenario: “As an educator, it is my job to educate, not to check for papers. Every child has the right to an education. That is a universal right in this country, and borders have no relevance to this right or to my job.”

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Along with classrooms, Arizona’s emergency rooms would also become “papers-please” environments. Hospital personnel would be required to check patients’ immigration status and report to federal officials, distracting physicians from performing their real jobs: providing care to people who need it. Dr. Bob Baron, an emergency medicine specialist at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, said in an interview with the Independent, “There is a real political problem with immigration, but this law is absurd. I can’t serve two masters. My duty is to my patients, to provide the best medical care I can to who really needs it, and not to be an INS agent. And in checking papers,” he paused, “I could be wrong! I must focus on what I know, and that’s the medicine ... My job is tough enough with just the medicine. Otherwise, it’s just not worth it.” Although emergency cases would be allowed to receive care before their citizenship is checked, the measure would likely make immigrants avoid hospitals in fear of deportation.

If the bill passes, it would not only harm undocumented immigrants themselves, but also the community at large.

“I know that people will not come in,” says George Pauk, a retired doctor with the Arizona Coalition for a State and National Health Program of emergency room patients. “They will stay away, and people with communicable diseases that affect us all may even stay away and be out there,” he told Fox News. When the bill runs contrary to its proponents’ own supposed goal to protect American citizens, what’s the real incentive of Arizona’s legislatures?

AND OUR POINT IS… Some have suggested that Arizona’s elected officials are proposing radical immigration restrictions in order to get the attention of the federal government. Illegal immigration is a crucial problem in the state, and it is about time—they say—that Washington makes it a priority, provides funding, and recognizes the burden it

puts on border states. Alternatively, Arizona’s staunch stance on undocumented immigration could be the byproduct of an intense xenophobia within parts of the state. As the unnamed philanthropist said, “Maybe the leaders are doing this because they identify with the ‘we want these people out of here’ [sentiment]—they simply want to kick them out.”

SB1611 is another iteration of a state’s rejection of strong national government, taking matters into its own hands; and, at the end of the day, the omnibus may have more to do with rising antigovernment political ideology than with illegal immigration itself. Arizona leaders are not only revoking constitutional rights for undocumented immigrants, but they are also cutting back on public services for citizens across the board. Recently the legislature passed cuts on the maintenance and construction of public bathrooms and rest stops on state highways. Public education and healthcare have seen massive funding setbacks. Under last year’s budget, the AZ state legislature cut $1.1 billion in spending from education – an effort to remedy the $2.6 billion projected budget deficit for the 2011 fiscal year.

Kindergarten funding has lost $218 million, and over the past three years, over $100 million has been slashed from higher education. Taxes, meanwhile, remain unaffected, as the state fails to consider the overarching structural picture of its economy: cutting public programs alone cannot solve Arizona’s budget crisis, and the government would benefit from select low-cost, high-yield taxes (e.g. on items like milk and services like haircuts). The current measures are making Arizona progressively less competitive and are tearing down an infrastructure that Republicans and Democrats have worked together to build in the 100 years since the young state’s founding. In addition to its history as a tourist, convention business, and sports mecca, the state has become a center for the international Bio-Medical, IT, and alternative energy industries. By the end of this year, it will house the larg-

est solar plant in the world. And Arizona, with its capital Phoenix, now boasts the fifth most populous city in the nation. In an interview with The Independent, Arizona Democrat Jon Hulburd said, “This is sending Arizona down the wrong path.”

Hulburd was the 2010 Democratic nominee for 3rd Congressional District and lost the race to Republican nominee Ben Quayle, the son of former Vice President Dan Qualyle. With the ethical and employment implications of its immigration restrictions, fewer and fewer out-of-state businesses will want to expand to or invest in Arizona. “What Fortune-500 company is going to want to do business in what they see as a rogue state with a bunch of rednecks[?]” Hulburd said. “This is going to hurt us, badly.”

SB1611 will move to the Arizona Senate this week. Its passage would send the bill to the House, and then into the law books and onto the streets. While the omnibus does face mass opposition, especially from the medical, business, and education communities, what is important to remember is the state reaction to SB1070: according to pollsters last April, 70% of Arizona voters – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike – supported the bill. When political players like Pearce see this newest package as the logical extension of 1070, its passage could be likely. Hulburd said, “Politically and constitutionally, the law doesn’t fit.

But it really could go either way.” And the stakes are high. What’s at risk is not only the state’s image, but also a fundamental transgression of a national value system, and citizens and non-citizens alike have reason to fear. Arizona’s exceptionalism is not only unprecedented, but it is also unconstitutional. Drastically rewriting the core values of the country does nothing but harm for Arizona—and the American ethos at large.

EMILY GOGOLAK B’12 is an Arizonan.

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5 |INTERNATIONAL

NOTES T ON

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EARTHQUAKE

Korey Aaronson is a recent graduate of Tufts University who lives and works in Tokyo. He wrote about his experience during the recent earthquake and its aftermath.

FRIDAY THE 11TH: I was out of the office for most of the day for various meetings. There was a back-to-back movie screening scheduled to start at 3pm. I made my way through reception and sat down. After about five minutes, the building began to shake heavily. We could clearly hear the foundations rocking back and forth. Having lived in Japan for a total of two and a half years, I am somewhat used to earthquakes (as much as one can be). But right away, my co-workers and I knew this one was different than the usual light tremble. The force the building shook with was tremendous, and when the lights began to flicker, we knew we had to take some sort of action. Building staff directed us to an emergency exit on the side of the theater, and we proceeded down the stairs quickly and calmly. My mind actually felt completely blank. We made it outside the building. I recalled being told that in the event of an earthquake you should look for open ground, but we were in one of the busier areas of Tokyo, surrounded by skyscrapers, all of which were visibly rocking back and forth. This

was actually a good thing—the buildings were absorbing the shock rather than submitting to it—but a scary sight to see nonetheless. I saw some coworkers who had just arrived and made my way over to them. They told me it was the largest earthquake they had ever felt.The shaking eventually stopped and we waited for further instructions.

After about twenty minutes, we were redirected back into the theater, and the movie began. Several times throughout the film we were greeted with lesser but still substantial aftershocks. When the movie ended, the news was brought up on the screen. We saw images of a large fire in neighboring Chiba. This was when we began to realize the situation was more serious than the shaking we had felt in Tokyo. We were told that train service had been suspended and that there were already huge lines for taxis, so with nothing else to do, a few of us made our way to a nearby bar for some drinks.

The mood was tense, but at that point we weren’t aware of the gravity of the situation. Happy that we didn’t have to go back to the office, we drank and joked around. There was only one confirmed death at this point. Phone service was completely out, but somehow data on my phone was still fully functional. This made Facebook the only means of communication. My roommate whose office was nearby told me that he was going to walk home (about a three-hour walk, as it turned out), but I

MARCH 17 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

decided to wait and see if the trains started up again.

At about eleven-thirty, we heard that some trains were starting up again. We made our way over to the nearest train station and caught a train relatively quickly. However, repeated aftershocks kept interrupting service, and what should have taken twenty minutes took about an hour and a half. When we got to the final stop, I ended up going for a drink with a fellow American I met on the train. When I finally made it through my door, it was three in the morning. In my room, my TV had fallen and smashed my turntables. Records and books were all over the floor. Luckily, there was no structural damage to our house. I spoke with my father briefly on the phone, and told him that although a little shaken by everything, I assured him I was fine and that he didn’t need to worry. I found out that my friend Lisa was stuck at her office, so I told her that she could crash at our place. I made it to bed at around five in the morning.

SATURDAY THE 12TH: I woke up sometime around ten to a call from my mother. She warned me about the problems they were having at one of the nuclear power plants in Fukushima. I checked Japanese news, but they weren’t reporting much on the plant. This was when I first really got to see the extent of the damage from the tsunami further north. I was truly at a loss for words. I checked foreign news and saw that the authorities were struggling to cool the reactors. Fears of a radiation leak were reported, but officials said there was nothing to worry about.

I got a text message from a few people telling me that there would be forced blackouts at some point during the day, so Lisa and I went to the convenience store to stock up on food, water, and flashlights. We were shocked to find all the water gone already. We bought the remaining stock of tea, some food, and headed back to my house. Reporting on the plant had increased by this point, but we got the feeling the government wasn’t telling us everything that was really going on. I realized how difficult it would be evacuate all of Tokyo should something happen, so I assumed the government was doing everything it could to prevent panic (even if it meant withholding information or lying).

There were a lot of conflicting reports and misinformation.

Japanese news seemed to be downplaying the situation, while foreign media seemed to be sensationalizing it. A friend began posting measures to take to prevent against radiation sickness on Facebook. At this point we got news of the first explosion.

With the rumored blackouts scheduled to start shortly, a flood of thoughts went through my head. What if it was the last time I’d be able to speak to my family? I made two emotional phone calls to my parents. This was when they began to seriously worry. With conflicting information everywhere (including the lack of information coming from officials), we didn’t know if radiation had leaked with the explosion, if it was spreading, if it would reach Tokyo, or if it had already. We didn’t know whether it was safer to stay inside, or to evacuate. This confusion continued throughout the night. I came very close to taking off for the train station several times (figuring I would try to make it to Osaka, where it would be safer and I could fly out of the country easily if I had to), but the thought of getting stuck somewhere worse off than my house prevented me from leaving.

The blackout was delayed until further notice. I decided to wake up when the trains first started, assess the situation, and make a decision from there. I went to bed at around three in the morning.

SUNDAY THE 13TH: I was woken up at five by a call from my mom. It seemed as though the power plant situation was finally under control. Temperature and pressure were both reported to be down. With a sigh of relief, I told my still nervous mother I would be staying. I went back to bed, only to be awoken again at eight by a call, this time from my father. He said the news was reporting a full meltdown. I asked him what he thought I should do. He said he really didn’t know. Thinking that it was now or never, I decided to make a run for it. Lisa, who was still at my house, said she would be staying, but would consider leaving if it got any worse. I told one of my roommates that I was leaving (our other roommate had been at her boyfriend’s place the whole time), but he was half asleep and apparently didn’t remember.

Five minutes later I was in a taxi on my way to the airport.

I was expecting heavy traffic, but the roads were eerily quiet. I made it to the airport in about twenty minutes, and was surprised again to see barely anyone there. I went up to the ticket counter and asked for the first ticket to anywhere. The woman working there looked at me with surprise (I guess not that many people had actually left yet), and said there was a ten o’clock to Hong Kong. I told her I’d take it. I was put on a standby list, but was confirmed shortly after. Ironically, it was by far the smoothest airport experience I have ever had. I woke up at eight-fifteen, and was on a plane out of the country by ten. I have never felt more relieved than at the moment the plane lifted off of the runway. Heavy with fatigue, stress, and continued disbelief about the situation unfolding around me, the journey went by in what seemed like only a few minutes.

Upon arrival in Hong Kong, I checked my messages to learn that my roommate would be coming as well. Not knowing the city at all, I decided to wait for him at the airport. After taking a much-needed shower, I settled myself at the airport lounge. I found out that the reported meltdown might not have actually happened.

TUESDAY THE 15TH: I am still in Hong Kong, waiting for the situation to become clearer and to make a decision on what to do next. There have been more reports of explosions, meltdowns, radiation leaks (spreading as far as Tokyo), and of course reporting on all of the devastation up north. It feels different watching things unfold from here. On one hand, I am relieved to be on safe ground.

On the other, I cannot help but think of everyone I left behind, friends and strangers alike. Everything hasn’t quite settled in yet.

Many of my friends (some Japanese included) have either left or are trying to leave Tokyo and Japan. I hear the airports are much more crowded now, so I guess I left at the right time.

AFTERWARDS: This has been a truly surreal experience. I realize that the above account is somewhat subjective in its telling, and it relates mostly to the events of my weekend, not touching much upon the more horrifying events up north, but I don’t know how to collect all my feelings and thoughts and put them to words right now. I have never been so close to something so horrible.

That being said, I know that the Japanese are perhaps the most resilient people on the planet—my boss had trouble understanding why I left; despite rolling blackouts, interrupted train service, and fears of radiation things were business as usual there on Monday. They are facing this situation with their heads up and I have no doubt in my mind that Japan will emerge from this as strong a nation as ever.

by Korey Aaronson Design and Graphics by Eli Schmitt

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7 |METRO

HIGH

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by Emma Berry Illustration by Shay O’Brien

PROFILE

Overhauling Rhode Island’s education system in the public eye

D

eborah Gist describes her entry into education administration as almost accidental. Originally trained as an elementary school teacher, she was teaching in Tampa, Florida, in the mid-1990s when she wrote a grant to establish a family literacy program there.

“I thought somebody should write it,” she said, “and nobody would.” The grant was awarded, and Gist was asked to run the program.

Now, Gist is the Rhode Island Commissioner of Education. In 2010, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world, following similar awards for two other school reformers: former head of Washington D.C. schools Michelle Rhee in 2009, and Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp in 2008. All three women were portrayed as smart, tough-headed iconoclasts ready to take radical action to transform failing urban school systems.

But prominence has its drawbacks.

Teach for America has attracted its fair share of critics. Rhee recently resigned her D.C. post following a series of unpopular decisions—including closing a number of schools and laying off hundreds of teachers—and the defeat of her political champion, Mayor Adrian Fenty, in the 2010 Democratic primary.

With the Rhode Island school system making national headlines, Gist’s agenda has come under fire—as has Gist herself.

RACING TO THE TOP Gist held her administrative position in Florida from 1996 to 1999 before earning a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In 2000, she began working for various public sector agencies in Washington, D.C., eventually serving as State Superintendent of Education there.

Gist has headed the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) since 2009, when the Board of Regents—a governor-appointed body that dictates broad education policy—brought her here by promising great latitude to make reforms.

“I came to Rhode Island to make change,” she said. Without that latitude, she said, “I wouldn’t have come.”

Rhode Island’s school system needed change. During the 2008-2009 school year, the state graduation rate was 73.9 percent. Only 16 percent of high school students tested proficient in science. But most troubling were persistent achievement gaps: black and Hispanic students,

non-native speakers of English, and students who attended urban schools all scored significantly worse on statewide tests than their peers. To address these issues, Gist accelerated work that had begun under her predecessor, Peter McWalters, while also introducing new reforms.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education was rolling out its Race to the Top competition, which awarded grants to school systems that were planning education reforms. “The timing of all that was really serendipitous,” Gist said. The program awarded states points for implementing certain reform measures, including “Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance” (58 points), “Ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charters and other innovative schools” (40 points), and “Using data to improve instruction” (18 points).

Rhode Island came in eighth in the first round of grants but was not awarded any money. So for the second round, Gist fought to elicit broad community support for the plan—including a notable endorsement from the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers. That revised proposal earned 451.2 out of a possible 500 points, and it won Rhode Island schools $75 million.

RIDE plans to use most of the money to develop statewide programs that will, among other things, train teachers, assess schools and students, and collect and disseminate data about their progress. Ellen Foley, the Associate Director for District Redesign and Leadership at Brown’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, said that the Race to the Top money increases the state’s power over local school districts, especially as those districts face budget shortfalls: “It’s an important chunk of money, and [the state will] have more leverage because they have it.”

PUBLIC FACE Gist’s high visibility is largely her own doing. Her face adorns the header of the RIDE website, and she keeps a rigorous schedule of public appearances and meetings at schools across the state. Rhode Island’s “size really lends itself to being able to build personal relationships,” said Gist, who plans to visit every public school in the state this year.

For Gist, being the public face of education in Rhode Island has its advantages and its disadvantages. “It can be helpful initially because it helps to bring a human element to the reform work and can be sort of a way in which to focus people in

the state around the work,” she said. “But it absolutely is something I have to be very cognizant of and try hard to divert, because it can’t be about me. It can’t be about one person ever, no matter who that person is.”

The tension is even borne out on her Twitter account: @deborahgist. (Sample tweet: “This wk I read to 1st graders (got a hug), talked education w HS students, & met w parents in different parts of RI. Love being Commissioner!”) The RIDE website header describes her as a “teacher who happens to be Commissioner of Education for the state of Rhode Island.” But for the background, Gist chose to tile a copy of the cover of what Gist calls “the plan,” the state’s roadmap for education policy. (It’s officially named “Transforming Education in Rhode Island: Strategic Plan 2010-2015.”)

According to Foley, Gist comes from “the same vein of reformers” as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who espouse a form of educational neoliberalism that stresses, among other things, tying teacher pay to merit rather than years of service, investing in alternative educational models like charter schools, and designing ways to assess student learning. “The plan” mirrors these goals.

But while popular among policymakers, these ideas have their critics—particularly from teachers’ unions, which were incensed by Gist’s 2009 announcement that decisions about teacher hiring, firing, and placement cannot be decided “solely on seniority.” Though McWalters had made the decision shortly before he left his post, when the Providence Teacher’s Union sued to prevent the order from going into effect, its lawsuit named Gist.

In 2010, Gist defended Central Falls Superintendent Fran Gallo, who had fired all of the teachers at Central Falls High School after the teacher’s union refused to make concessions on its contract, like longer workdays and requirements to tutor and supervise students during lunch and before and after school. On February 24 of this year, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras said he planned to issue notices of dismissal to all Providence teachers, announcing in a press release that the move would allow the city “to retain the maximum flexibility we could to manage significant cuts to the school budget.”

Along with the case of Central Falls, when the firings were related to Gist’s demand that the school undergo dramatic reform or face closure, Taveras’

announcement added fuel to a backlash against radical changes in the educational system. On March 2, hundreds protested the Providence firings, and the story received national news coverage, including a front-page photo in the New York Times.

Gist also drew criticism for her plan to institute a three-tiered diploma system based on test scores. The system, which would require students to show partial proficiency or significant improvement on standardized tests in order to graduate with a diploma, was supposed to go into effect with the graduating class of 2012.

Students and parents questioned the proposal, as did advocates for minorities, the poor, students with disabilities, and English language learners—all of whom, critics argued, would be disproportionately affected. Other groups, including the ACLU, argued that the public had not had adequate time to comment on the project.

Many detractors had collaborated with Gist on the Race to the Top application. In February, Gist announced that she would ask the Board of Regents to delay implementation of the plan for two years.

The future of educational reform in Rhode Island remains uncertain. Slashed budgets will likely lead to fired teachers, closed schools, and increased class sizes, especially in poorer school districts (though a proposed change in the way the state allocates education funds to local school districts may help alleviate some of the inequality). The recent election of Lincoln Chafee—who has already replaced several members of the Board of Regents and publicly questioned charter schools— has some Gist supporters worried that her days may be numbered: the Rhode Island Campaign for Achievement Now, a group that supports Gist’s proposals, recently sent Chafee an open letter asking him to support her.

According to Foley, whether Gist’s proposals succeed or fail will depend on whether Rhode Islanders feel involved in the reform process: “Unless these ideas are really owned by a community [...] you can make some progress, but you can’t sustain it.” Gist agreed, saying that reform in Rhode Island “absolutely has to be about a shared piece of work, a shared commitment that the state makes to the plan and to seeing the plan through over many, many years—regardless of who the leaders are.”

EMMA BERRY B’11 gets hugs.

OPINIONS| 8

MARCH 17 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

THE GAY ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM Conservatives Snub GOProud at Conference

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very winter since 1973, Washington D.C. has braced itself against a ragtag mob of Joe Six-Packs and corporate bigwigs; aunts and grandfathers; libertarians and people who just like Ayn Rand. Often referred to as Woodstock for conservatives, the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, is an annual conference put on by the American Conservative Union Foundation. Associating CPAC with free love and superhuman levels of drug use may surprise people: are CPAC’s attendees really capable of cutting loose like that? No, they are not, though it matters little to the people of CPAC; they’ve got their own party train, fueled by domestically drilled petroleum and driven by Hank Williams Jr. I’ve kept up with the events of the conference via internet videos.

The first clip I came across was one of master of ceremonies Steven Crowder, best known for his work as The Brain on the children’s TV show Arthur. These days he gets by as pundit and rumor snake Andrew Breitbart’s pet comedian-cumprotégé, making regular appearances on YouTube channel PJTV and Fox News’ late night comedy, Red Eye. The clip cut in at the middle of one of his sets: “I do think it’s important to acknowledge the gay elephant in the room.” He looked around with the half-smirk made famous

by George W. Bush, pleading for a smile from someone in the audience. Crowder was referring to GOProud, an organization of gay conservatives whose presence at the conference had drawn the wrath of numerous high profile pundits and organizations who condemned CPAC for compromising conservative values. Causing particular angst was GOProud’s stance against a federal ban on gay marriage and its support for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. A handful of major players, including the Liberty Counsel, the Family Research Council, and the Heritage Foundation refused to sponsor the event.

Crowder clarified that he did not support gay marriage before tossing around some platitudes about diversity. “We’re not the party that tells you that you have to agree with us 100 percent and follow lockstep, otherwise you don’t get to sit at the cool kids’ table. Let’s leave that to the Democrats!” A few people shouted yeah and the confidence boost was visible in his face. “That being said,” he continued, “gayness is still funny.” He clarified: “And that’s ok, that doesn’t mean that I hate anybody. Let me tell you why to a straight man gayness is funny... Nowhere in the natural realm of [a straight man’s] reality does it occur to be attracted to another man. It’s absurd.” Crowder went on to compare seeing a gay man say (in his best gay voice) “Hellooo! You look delicious,” to seeing a duck in pajamas, in that both are totally unnatural and hilarious to him. The rest of the bit consisted almost entirely of people laughing at things that are gay—makeup, Anderson Cooper, limp wrists and effeminate lisps—and Crowder looking like he just won a lock of Ronald Reagan’s hair.

Ann Coulter was more direct; when she took the stage she raised GOProud’s spine above her head before letting out a Predator-esque victory cry. Responding to a question about whether or not

by Daniel Stump Illustration by Robert Sandler

she thought GOProud should have been allowed to participate in the convention, she added, “I talked them into dropping the gay marriage plank, Coulter gets results.” She went on to assert that not supporting gay marriage doesn’t make her a homophobe because the liberals “just made up this gay marriage thing.” According to her, liberals simply make up causes for minorities in order to co-opt the same minorities. Why? Because liberals want to use gays to destroy the (heterosexual) family. Even more mind-boggling than her claim is the assertion that the conservative party is the place for these minority groups. Apparently conservatives will not co-opt your cause; if you’re lucky, they’ll convince you that your cause doesn’t even exist.

The awkward applause from people unsure of whether they should be clapping after she earnestly said “I am friend of the gays” stood in contrast to the rapturous exultation following her earlier declaration that “there should be more jailed journalists.” Her credibility as ambassador to homosexuality established, Coulter launched into a wonderfully uninformed and unintentionally revealing description of the debate. According to her, gay people argue that their sin is no worse than any other sin, and conservatives argue that they shouldn’t be setting up booths at a conservative conference promoting any sin. “But,” she said, “it’s different being gay—you have all of culture telling gays ‘you should be liberal.’” Coulter’s argument is not that gays should be welcomed as human beings with a natural and equal lifestyle, but as a victory over liberals. If

she really is trying to convince homosexuals that they are “natural conservatives,” labeling their lifestyle as sin (and saying that gays do the same) may have been a miscalculation. Tactics notwithstanding, Coulter was as sincere in her efforts as she was ignorant when she told everyone: “There is something to being gay apart from the sodomy. That’s what I want their new motto to be, by the way” —she paused to take in the big laughs—“gays without the sodomy.”

But as far as Coulter and Crowder are concerned, these events have no roots in harmful prejudice and injustice; they are simply acknowledging a difference of opinions like civilized people. These broadcast thugs don’t realize (or simply don’t care) that any opinion that would deny equal rights on the basis of sexual orientation is far from civilized. They have distanced their particular brand of bigotry from more ignoble types of hatred by turning to more professional and pragmatic means—no one allows him or herself to be labeled a hate-monger. Instead, they have learned that as long as they vigorously deny all claims of prejudice and never actually say the words “I hate ______,” they can claim they are simply acting in accordance with their religious beliefs, or for the more suave pundit, the laws of nature. Then the argument becomes one of infringing on the civil liberties of conservatives by destroying traditional family values, the sacred institution of marriage, and religion.

I started watching CPAC coverage hoping for some bad jokes or maybe a repeat of Karl Rove’s MC Rove rap at

the 2007 Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, but I was genuinely surprised by the meanness of the whole thing. CPAC wasn’t ignoring GOProud’s opinions on homosexuality—it was rewriting them. The more I watched, the more it seemed like the plot for a B-list political drama starring Gene Hackman.

I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for this group of gay conservatives who existed in total political isolation.

GOProud wanted to attend CPAC not just because they supported small government and individual liberty, but also because they wanted to advocate for gay rights (under the umbrella of individual liberties) among their ideological brethren. Rush Limbaugh and Mike Huckabee frothed around about the sanctity of marriage, but GOProud took the heat and gave it back. The organization’s leadership knew what they were getting into; executive director Jimmy LaSalvia told NPR before the conference, “They’re boycotting because we’re gay. It’s not just that they may disagree on one issue or two issues.” Then Anne Coulter persuaded them to drop the gay rights stuff.

And then Andrew Breitbart got up on stage and gave everyone in the room a pat on the back for being so tolerant of diversity right before pointing out that the existence of gay people is absurd and hilarious. Crowder is right: the people at CPAC aren’t the ones who don’t let you sit at the cool kids’ table; they’re much more vicious than that. CPAC are the ones who are happy to let you sit down so they can mock you to your face. And, in this case, try and get your vote.

Plenty of kids are willing to accept the abuse just for a place to sit, and it seems like GOProud is no different. In one video, a GOProud volunteer described his frustration with “stereotypical gay people,” saying that conservative values were all about being true to yourself and not pretending to be someone you are not. He must have forgotten that his organization ended its official opposition to a federal gay marriage ban shortly before the conference because Anne Coulter told them to.

The final act played out in the days after the conference. Rumors were circulating that Al Cardenas, the new president of the American Conservative Union Foundation, was not going to allow GOProud to return next year. In a post-event interview with C-SPAN he said that CPAC would not host organizations which support gay marriage or the repeal of DADT. (I know it was already repealed, but that’s what he said.) “There are a number of gays in America who don’t advocate gays in the military or gay marriage. They’ll fit within the tent.” And apparently, GOProud is just happy it can squeeze in. Referring to GOProud’s new, less gay approach for the new year, Chairman Chris Barron said, “If it’s a question of policy, based on our 2011 Legislative Agenda there shouldn’t be a question. Should be a slam dunk that GOProud is back next year.”

DANIEL STUMP B’14 would rather be watching Arthur.

1969 The “King of Soul.”

Same Cooke ‘s “A Change Is Gonna Come” was the Civil Rights’ Anthem.

He died under mysterious circumstances in 1964.

Soul Let’s get it on.

In 1972, Isaac Hayes let the whole world know: if loving you is wrong, he didn’t want to be right. The musical genius behind Stax Records, Issac Hayes won two Grammy Awards and an Oscar for his composition of “Theme from Shaft.”

The “Soul Man” starred in such films as Truck Turner and Escape From New York.

He passed away in 2008.

At age 17, Barry White was in jail for stealing $30,000 worth of Cadillac tires when he heard Elvis Presley on the radio. The song changed his life and he decided to leave his past gang life behind for a career in music once he got back home to South Central LA. This decision ultimately lead to such hits as “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” and “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.”

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by Erik Font

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istening to Nate Dogg is like driving slow with the top down along an LA sunset. It doesn’t matter if you’re at work or in your mom’s house: pop in your Nate Dogg tape, turn up the volume, close your eyes and you can smell the Indo through the palm trees. At a time when weak lyrics and corny beats trump true melody, a soulful voice like Nate Dogg’s is almost impossible to find. Every day feels like Sunday when you got a mean mellow accent laying down lines like, “If you know like I know/ You don’t wanna step to this./ It’s the G-Funk era/ Funked out with a gangsta twist.”

Over the past twenty years, Nate Dogg has become one of the most recognizable voices in hip-hop. The four-time Grammy nominated artist got his start singing in a Baptist church before linking up with Snoop Dogg in high school and eventually becoming synonymous with the West Coast sound. But true to any soul singer/gangster, Nate Dogg paid his dues. The artist dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen and joined the United States Marine Corps. After serving three years, he returned home to Long Beach, California where N.W.A. had recently garnered the national spotlight and put West Coast rap on the map. Together with fellow Crips members Snoop Dogg and Warren G., Nate Dogg formed the group 213 and began recording demos. The tape was picked up by Dr. Dre and shortly after, Nate Dogg was signed to Suge Knight’s Death Row Records in 1993.

After appearing on tracks by Dre, Snoop, and 2pac, Nate Dogg became a boombox legend of his own once “Regulators” hit the airwaves in ’94. Trading bars with Warren G., Nate Dog dropped some of the illest gangster shit of all time: “Sixteen in the clip and one in the hole/ Nate Dogg is about to make some bodies turn cold/ Now they droppin’ and yellin’/It’s a tad bit late/Nate Dogg and Warren G had to

Pour a Lil’ Liquor out and spark that Blunt. This is the Nate Dogg Playlist.

1. Warren G. and Nate Dogg - “Regulate” 2. Warren G. and Nate Dogg - “Nobody Does It Better” 3. Nate Dogg - “G Funk” 4. 2pac feat. Nate Dogg - “How Long Will They Mourn Me?”

5. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Nate Dogg - “Next Episode” 6. Nate Dogg - “I Got Love” 7. Nate Dogg - “I Need a Bitch” 8. Nate Dogg - “One More Day”

2011

“It’s kinda hard to be optimistic When your homies lying dead on the pavement twisted Y’all don’t hear me doe, I’m trying hard to make amends But I’m losing all my muthafuckin friends (damn) They should’ve shot me when I was born Now I’m trapped in the muthafuckin’ storm” -2pac, “How Long Will They Mourn Me.”

Thug “Hold up, heyyyyyyyy For my niggaz who be thinkin we soft We don’t, playyyyyyy We gon’ rock it til the wheels fall off Hold up, heyyyyyyyy For my niggaz who be actin too bold Take a, seeaaaaaat Hope you ready for the next episode HeyyyeyyyeEYEYyyyEYYYY.... smoke weed everyday!”

#We lost a true legend n hip hop n rnb. One of my best friends n a brother to me since 1986 when I was a sophomore at poly high where we met #I love u buddy luv. U will always b wit me 4ever n a day u put the g n g funk u put the 1 n 213 n u put yo stamp on evrybdy u ever didit wit

rdinaire

# I miss u cuzz I am so sad but so happy I got to grow up wit u and I will c u again n heaven cuz u know d slogan #all doggs go to heaven yo homie n baby brotha bigg snoopdogg!!

-via Twitter

regulate”--while still maintaining a soothe-slayin-soul tip: “I laid all them busters down/ I let my gat explode/ Now I’m switching my mind back into freak mode/ If you want skirts sit back and observe/ I just left a gang of those over there on the curb.” “Regulators” reached #2 on the Billboard charts and created a model of gangster and sexy soul that has been reproduced countless times ever since.

Whereas gangster rap has often suffered from crude, machine-gun rap, Nate Dogg’s cold rhymes over chill beats exhibited a swagger that few others have been able to match. His style is more reminiscent of fur-coated Macks and Louis Vutton Dons than thugs on the corner scrappin’ for territory. Unsurprisingly, critics of gansta rap have always focused on negative lyrical content. However, they rarely notice the thick, slow soul songs that lay with each backbeat.

Nate Dogg was perhaps the last soul man alive. As Hip-Hop has grown, soul music and the melodies of a black culture that is as old if not older than America have begun to vanish. Nowadays, the only hint of soul you can get is in Kanye sample.

Perhaps the saddest part of Nate Dogg’s passing is the long list of other African-American singers that died too young: Michael Jackson, Curtis Mayfield, Sam Cooke, O.V. Wright—the list goes on and on. As American music moves forward the torch bearer of soul music remains unclear. is pop, R. Kelly is still trapped in a closet, and John Legend is just straight-up wack. Yeah R&B will still make its rounds; but it ain’t got nothing on the hard times and hard decisions that Nate Dogg made clear in his unique style of soul and gangster. May he continue to groove hard up in Thug’s Mansion. RIP Nate Dogg.

9. 50 Cent feat. Nate Dogg - “21 Questions” 10. 213 – “I’m Fly” 11. Snoop Doggy Dogg feat. Nate Dogg - “Ain’t No Fun” 18.

12. Ludacris feat. Nate Dogg - “Area Codes” 13. 213 – Another Summer

14. 213 - “Keep it Gangsta 15. Mos Def feat. Nate Dogg and Pharoh Monch - “Oh No” 16. Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and Nate Dogg - “Lay Low” 17. Nate Dogg - “Hardest Man In Town” 18. Ghostface Killah, Nate Dogg & Mark Ronson - Ooh Wee

“They got guns to my head I think I’m going down I can’t believe this happenin’ in my own town If I had wings I could fly Let me contemplate I glanced in the cut and I see my homey Nate” -Warren G. “Regulators.”

MARCH 17 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

11 |FEATURES

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he hamburger is ten feet tall—or it will be, once Johan Bjurman finishes with it. “The meat’s gonna be the hard part,” he says, brushing his hands together, chalk clouding around his face.

“Making it juicy and real—that’s the kind of thing that either looks really good or really bad. But I think this one’s gonna be a classic. What could be more American than a burger?”

Bjurman traces the outline of the Whopper onto a billboard on the left side of the Pawtucket Red Sox’s McCoy Stadium. It’s his fifth board of the year, one of eight or nine he’ll have to redo completely before the team’s season opener on April 7. According to the tiny computer printout Bjurman holds in his hand, he board will show a giant burger, the Burger King logo, and the words FLAME-FRESH WHOPPER, with fire raging in the background. Using a one-inch paintbrush and colors mixed in his home studio, Bjurman will paint the burger tomorrow into the lines he’s stenciling today. “Look at all this,” he says, gesturing around the stadium, at the Budweiser and Stop & Shop and Amica Insurance boards. “I feel like a dinosaur saying so, but this is my life’s work… Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel the same way.” Bjurman is an artist by nature and a billboard painter by trade.

His craft is dying, and its death illuminates how technology is changing our relationship to both art and industry.

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Hoisting and lowering himself on a bed ladder strung up by yellow rope, Bjurman, 63, doesn’t seem fazed by the time crunch before the opener—he knows the routine.

He’s been at this for almost forty years.

He got the PawSox job twelve years ago when the team’s managers decided to expand the stadium’s capacity and close off the outfield from the parking lot and the highway. They wanted more customers, but they “liked the idea of a traditional baseball park with a family atmosphere,” Bjurman says. They “want[ed] people to be able to afford to be here and get a hot dog for their kids and not spend two hundred bucks.” So they made the stadium bigger—and at the same time held ticket prices around six dollars and tried to keep as many old-timey details in the place as possible. Bjurman’s hand-painted billboards are perhaps the most iconic of these details.

Bjurman is the lone painter in one of the last stadiums in the US to still use painted billboards. Save for a handful of minor league ballparks and the Texas Rangers stadium in Dallas, the vast majority of fields have switched to vinyl printouts for billboards. “Vinyls,” as Bjurman calls them, can be mass-produced quickly and cheaply, and so the few places that still use hand-painted billboards do so for sentimental reasons.

Bjurman’s process from picture to billboard is elaborate. He projects the advertiser’s image onto paper in the studio,

then uses that “cartoon” image to perforate outlines on a piece of paper the size of the billboard. He hangs that paper on the real billboard and traces the perforations in charcoal onto the whitewashed board.

This creates the image’s shell and Bjurman paints the rest in by hand. This systems “makes sense for a local business,” Bjurman says. “Somebody from a car dealership could tell me to change the shape of the convertible a little, could stand there as I did it, [tell me to] make the driver’s hair a little longer or blonder. For small businesses, skipping the up-front cost of photographer or professional layout agency is a big plus. But the big guys want the continuity of their image across the nation.” While a design agency can take tens of thousands in initial investment, a painted billboard at McCoy costs just $3000 to $5000 a month to run, making it a more affordable option for small companies.

But a painted billboard can also mean an imperfect Verizon logo, a slightly lopsided Lexus. Advertisers have embraced digital billboard design for its standardization, its circumvention of artists’ subjectivity.

Digitalization means a logo that is perfect every time, on every billboard, on every highway in every state. Familiarity—that’s what we expect.

Bjurman’s job at McCoy Stadium, which runs from January to March of every year, is his last gig painting billboards. In

his heyday, he painted boards all around Providence and the east coast, including the boards at Fenway Park, which have long since gone vinyl. He grew up painting landscapes and portraits as a hobby in a family that encouraged the arts. When he graduated high school, he found himself faced with a dilemma: he’d been accepted to art school in Boston, but he “had a nice girlfriend and a nice car,” he laughs, and he didn’t know if college was what he wanted. So he stuck around Providence.

“You can see where my priorities lay,” he says.

He eventually fell into a job with the billboard company Standish Johnson— billboards were a relatively new form of advertising and painters who could work on a large scale were hard to come by. “It was ideal,” he says. “You could be outside all day, not be confined. There wasn’t anybody watching you. You just had to get your work done.” He liked billboard work because of the skill set it gave him—practical tools he could use in his self-directed painting, like how to use gold-leaf or how to mix paint in a precise gradient. Eventually, Bjurman found an apprenticeship through the painters’ union and began to see his billboard work as a form of art. “I happened to work with a guy with a sense of artwork, who was always elevating his skill level,” he says. “That was inspiring.”

Bjurman watched as his field grew into an industry. “There was a community after a few years,” he says. “You’d go

MARCH 17 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

market-to-market, city-to-city, and you could see differences in quality and in talent. There were always fifteen or so people painting, too, so you’d see someone’s work on a section and say, ‘Oh, Tony’s never gonna get it.’ ” As the community got established, people got reputations for certain kinds of work. “There was a guy in Boston who was the best with cars,” he says. “My specialty was portraits. Local weatherpeople, suntan girls, models for Jordan Marsh.” His favorite billboard was a woman wearing transitional lenses when they were new and trendy a few years ago.

“I got to paint the four stages of her sunglasses along four of the same face,” he says. “It was fun.”

The problem with billboards is that Bjurman can’t choose what he gets to paint. “It’s a different sense of craftsmanship,” he says. “Some of the artistic integrity gets lost.” As he got into his twenties, the part of him that had always aspired to do “fine” art grew restless. He gave up billboards, traveled to Europe to go for the big leagues.

When he eventually returned home he got his own studio, tried to support himself through his own work alone. By the time he was thirty, though, he began to reconsider. “You get to thinking, ‘Well, maybe famous people aren’t gonna call,’ ” he says. “So I went back to billboards. It was a job—twenty bucks an hour with benefits. And this was thirty years ago.”

Bjurman found that the industry had changed when he returned. “By that time it was companies owned by individual people, like a guy in Fall River who had six or seven boards. You’d sign up with them and it paid well,” he says. So he began to balance billboard commissions with his own art; he got to keep his studio and

became a Providence icon along the way-he’s best known for large-scale works like his 1983 peeling-building mural above The Red Fez or his 2010 layout and painting of Shepard Fairey’s Providence Industrial mural at AS220. He paints fine art and movie sets as well.

His most recent commission with Fairey provides a powerful example of the way our conceptions of art have changed since Bjurman’s youth. We consider Fairey the artist, we plaster his massproduced stickers on telephone poles and stop signs, but in the case of the mural the person actually executing the art was Bjurman. Ever modest, Bjurman says the work was “not a whole lot different than a regular lettered sign, because it’s just flat.”

“You have to understand,” he says, “This was a forty-by-eighty-foot wall. That takes a whole different skill set.”

“I learned the skills I use through working with them,” Bjurman adds. “Going to art school to make artwork changes things. You have to be flexible when you’re working for people. You have to lose the ego. You look at things differently if you’re an ‘artist’ than if you’re ‘the billboard guy.’” He alludes to a general devaluing of craft and handiwork in American education and industry, the same devaluing that certain pop-academics are devoting their lives to reversing (see: “philosopher/motorcyclist” Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft). “Intellectual processes are fine,” Bjurman says. “But when it comes to hey, do this, it’s totally different. When you have to make your hand do what your brain knows, it changes the whole ball game.”

In some ways, painting billboards was liberating for Bjurman. He was doing a “job” rather than “making a master-

work.” So they had fun with it. “At 55mph from 500 yards, we could do anything!” he says. “I used to turn the griffins on scotch bottles to dogs with little dog bones. Or add little things to coins… I remember some guys painted a cruise ship with all the people naked on it once.” Bjurman and his coworkers expressed their artistic sentiments in the tiny details no one would notice, more for themselves than for their audience. They used their art as skill, as a tool, rather than primarily as self-expression. The result, at least in Bjurman’s case, is an artist with a refreshing lack of ego.

“Nowadays, people want their billboards to look like photographs,” Bjurman says.

“They used to want them like paintings.”

This works for Bjurman at McCoy stadium—he’s skilled with portraits and photorealism. But it’s also evidence of a desire for the transfer of a pre-designed image rather than the interpretation of the artist. In some ways, moreover, the painted quality and subjectivity of handmade billboard advertising reflects the dreamlike and false quality of advertising itself. An airbrushed vinyl photograph of a Banana Boat girl does not—advertisers get to display their idealized product as reality.

Bjurman’s billboards are earnest in their commercial imperfection, the historical predecessor to Warhol’s ironic Campbell Soup cans and the perfect-duplication-as-art that’s followed them andpervaded advertising. Above third base, a billboard for a liquor store stands with the Facebook and Twitter logos painted endearingly askew. It makes me smile because it catches me off guard, it imposes the human on the technological rather than the other way around. But how

FEATURES| 12

long can this cute dissonance last? Handpainted billboards have a certain nostalgic cultural appeal right now—Stella Artois commissioned a documentary on New York billboard painters last year, for example—but when that romanticism fades, the industry simply isn’t viable.

Some of the billboards at McCoy stadium have already switched to vinyl.

The ones on the lower field have been changed, Bjurman says, because players like to “practice their ohm” on the boards and crank baseballs directly into spots like the AAA logo. Vinyl takes the beating much better than paint does.

The type of art Bjurman represents is largely already obsolete, kept on life support only by our idealization, our uninformed wishes that we could make a living with our hands, too. Accordingly, Bjurman himself sometimes feels like a relic.

“I was painting a mural once, and a guy pointed up at me and said, ‘Look! A wall dog!’ ” he says. “It was like he was seeing some obscure, exotic bird.”

Bjurman doesn’t have an apprentice to train or an assistant to help him out with the billboards. When he quits the PawSox gig, McCoy stadium will likely shift to vinyl completely, and with that shift lose yet another form of art as craft in an increasingly standardized cultural environment.

“Hopefully, I’ll only be doing this for a couple more years,” he says. “I’m getting old, and I gotta retire sometime.”

MIMI DWYER B’13 feels like a dinosaur, but for different reasons.

MARCH 17 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

13 |ARTS

INDUSTRIAL T

he Porino’s Pasta Sauce Factory in Central Falls is ostensibly derelict—another New England industrial graveyards. Yet this past Saturday, a thousand people flocked to the old structure to hear the Low Anthem perform from their latest album, Smart Flesh. Last winter, the band made the record in the factory. As a testament to their commitment to the building, they insisted on having their hometown album-release party in this unusual space. For one night, the sauce factory was rediscovered en masse and transformed into a concert venue after years of vacancy.

The Low Anthem’s music is typically slow, gently-strummed, intimate, and beautiful. The band is based in Providence; singer Ben Knox Miller and multiinstrumentalists Jeff Prytowsky and Jocie Adams all graduated from Brown. They added Mat Davidson, another utility player, in 2009 to complete the current quartet. As a group, they are fixated on the tactile, the organic, and the personal— hand-cranked instruments, un-amplified singing, and hand-painted CD jackets.

Smart Flesh is the group’s second album on Nonesuch Records—the exquisitely curated and artistically diverse music-lover’s major. The Low Anthem emphasizes their quaint, DIY, and (perhaps) antiquated music-making methods— like holing up in an abandoned factory building and cobbling together an album in an improvised studio over many cold, sleepless nights.

“We labored over it. It was really hard,” said Miller. “We recorded 30-something songs for the record and trimmed it down to 11. We record 3 or 4 versions of a song really obsessively trying to do everything we can think of. The ones that work survive the process of us turning against them.”

The studio hermitage has been one of Smart Flesh’s focal points. The YouTube videos that anticipated the album’s Febru-

acoustics

ary 22 release feature time-lapse footage of the band playing and recording in the empty, cavernous space and making shadows against frozen, windowed walls. The old Porino’s Pasta Sauce Factory played an important role in the creative process.

“It became this straw man that people can talk about,” said Miller. “It’s so hard to talk about music. You can talk about it indirectly in different ways—the building becomes emblematic of the process both sonically and in terms of narrative. It’s helpful to have a way to diffuse those impossible questions asked about the music itself.”

SMART FLESH Plenty of bands record in old, abandoned, and unfinished places never intended as recording studios. Sometimes the recordings try and cover up the improvised means. Some embrace it. David Byrne made a sound art installation out of NYC’s Battery Maritime Building in 2008 called “Playing the Building.” The Black Keys recorded 2005’s Rubber Factory in a nowdemolished building in Akron, Ohio. But the Low Anthem has made a special effort to foreground Porino’s and show how it defines the ambiance and setting of Smart Flesh—it wasn’t just a place to work and record, but a place that contributed to the feel of the sound: “By going to a factory we were choosing a façade,” said Prytowsky. “We’re in this space, we can’t go back to zero—we’re here.”

He means that the band allowed the factory space to envelop the songs. You can hear the open, washy acoustics on the recording, along with all sorts of incidental noise, chatter, and creaking.

Band members’ voices elide in the high harmony of Smart Flesh’s opener, “Ghost Woman Blues.” Distant piano bangs out the rhythm. An even farther-off trumpet mingles with Adams’s haunting clarinet lines and Prytowsky’s expressive upright bass playing. “Apothecary Love”

references more conventional country music. “Boeing 737” is loud but still reverberant, and “Hey, All You Hippies”—with its sing-a-long chorus—is about the slowest romper you will ever hear. These songs are well-crafted, and Miller’s lead vocals are sung straight, not with vibrato, so they resonate in an honest, direct way. The group references a handful of common Americana folk-song tropes (see: whisky), but the songwriting doesn’t attach itself to any one time or place.

Songs like “Matter of Time” and the instrumental wind piece, “Wire,” hover with just a hint of rhythm: the band allows for extra-large amounts of space between each musical gesture. On any other recording, these songs would sound impossibly slow, but when cradled by the immensity of the group’s recording space, these tunes allow the Low Anthem’s signature sound to stand out.

Rumbling car engines and radio static mix with heavenly crotales (antique cymbals) to create a disarming, unidentifiable backdrop for “I’ll Take Out Your Ashes,” a casual and simple tune accompanied by some banjos.

The use of crotales is typical of the Low Anthem, which regularly incorporates unusual and forgotten acoustic instruments: foot-powered pump organs, harmoniums, musical saws, and antique marching horns. The band has an obsession with old, exotic things, and its style and sound is in some ways old-fashioned.

But the band’s music is most at home in the present. The factory recordings don’t capture the “oldness” of the building, but rather the emptiness. Just six or seven years ago, it was still a place of industry.

At times, Smart Flesh sounds like a chorus of ghosts, but that doesn’t mean that the band sounds old, stale, or dead.

With regards to “old things,” Miller said, “We try and keep them out of museums.

We’re trying to turn 26-inch kickdrums back into kickdrums after they have been

converted into coffee tables, or accoutrement. Instrument rescue.”

SMART GROWTH The Factory itself is a late nineteenthcentury red brick structure. Like many of the old and unoccupied industrial spaces in and around Providence, it has an open, rectangular floorplan, and enormous glass windows with patched-up holes. It is one of many buildings in a ghastly and desolate industrial complex that straddles Central Falls and Pawtucket. Despite its size, the complex is hidden from the main road by an enormous, glowing PriceRite. A layer of rubble, broken glass, and weeds surrounds the vacant building.

The Low Anthem billed its venue as the “Old Porino’s Pasta Sauce Factory,” but the building in which the band recorded and released Smart Flesh was originally “Building #8” in The Conant Thread and Coats & Clark Mill complex. The Conant thread company was founded in 1868 by Hezekiah Conant, and at the height of its operation, the complex included 20 mill buildings. Coats & Clark manufactured thread there until the late 1960s. In the past 50 years, the buildings have housed the Schoolhouse Candy Company, Paramount Line greeting cards, and, of course, Porino’s Pasta Sauce.

Today, the mill complex is owned by a company called Urban Smart Growth, the same group that developed the Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket and the residential Greystone lofts in North Providence.

With the Artiste Village, Urban Smart Growth began refitting the corpse of the Hope Webbing Company in 2005.

The refinished mill space has since filled up with a variety of new local industry.

Seven Stars Bakery operates from there, as well as New Harvest Coffee Roasters and a variety of boutique artisan shops and studios. It is home to the Met Café, a Lupo’s-affiliated music venue that was,

ARTS| 14

MARCH 17 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

The Low Anthem makes music in the Porino’s Pasta Sauce Factory

by Alex Spoto // photos by John Fisher

until this past fall, defunct. During the wintertime, there is an indoor farmers market. The Low Anthem even rented studio space there before finding that the abandoned sauce factory better suited their needs.

Michael Gazdacko, director of development and operations for Urban Smart Growth, says the company has similar plans for the Thread Factory complex: “We have a large mixed-use vision for it. We were hoping it would go a little bit quicker, but due to the capital markets right now, things have slowed a bit in terms of development, which is why things like [the Smart Flesh release show] are possible.”

Renewal of the Thread Factory is an ambitious undertaking—it involves sev-

en buildings and 1,000,000 square feet.

There are plans for green spaces, live/ work lofts, and more “artisan manufacturing.” The firm is hoping the renewal will coincide with a new train station in Pawtucket, but in the meantime, local music lovers have been able to take part and appreciate this phase through the Smart Flesh release show and the Smart Flesh recording itself.

LIVE, IN PERSON, IN PLACE Weeks before the release party, Miller said “the fire marshal is making us fix the floor before we let people in there, so we’re going to be in there with putty and plywood fixing the place. There’s glass everywhere we’ve got to get rid of… people throw rocks through the windows.”

At the release party, there was no empty space, endless echo, or trumpet playing from across a deserted room. With a thousand or so guests in attendance to absorb the sound reflections and echoes, the pasta sauce factory sounded as good as any venue (if maybe a little boom-y).

Miller joked from the stage: “We wanted you all to come here to hear the sound of this building, but then you all came and destroyed the sound.”

But the band was in its element and sounded at its best. As to be expected at a Low Anthem show, members of the band juggled all sorts of obscure, humming horns, harps, and organs. The band’s harmonies were rich, warm, and resonant— perhaps the group’s most distinctive and finely honed skill.

For the first time, the band performed a cover of an Alexander Skip Spence song called “Weighted Down.” It’s a dour tune about love lost during wartime, but the chorus—“weighted down by possessions, weighted down by the gun”—resonated with the underlying urban renewal, the rediscovery of abandoned and leftover things and places. Nothing old weighs the Low Anthem down; instead, the band has found a way to use the past to cultivate music that sounds at home in the present.

ALEX SPOTO B’11 went gonzo.

15 |FEATURES

MARCH 17 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

BURNING BOATS

The Edgewood Yacht Club Recovers from Fire

F rom the windswept parking lot, it is impossible to ignore the charred skeleton of a landmark that blots out a school of Sunfish. Blackened beams rest in a pile of debris like pickup sticks, mixing with impossibly twisted metal.

A once-grand doorway leans outwards at a precarious angle, ready to topple with the slightest breath of wind.

The ocean has frozen right up to the pilings, which are also charred black. These are the ruins of the Edgewood Yacht Club in Cranston.

A GREAT LOSS The building was devastated by fire on January 13, as firefighters on land and sea were unable to contain the blaze.

Acting fire marshal Capt. Kevin Morris of the Cranston Fire Department says the fire “could have possibly been caused by lightning,” but adds that there may also have been faulty wiring. Several neighborhood witnesses saw flashes of light and a brightening orange blaze as the building was consumed by flames, according to Capt. Morris; the electrical fire was probably caused by the lightning strike.

The building, once a familiar landmark on the water and off, now seems to have collapsed in on itself like a supernova. But Commodore Jeff Lanphear thinks there’s reason for hope.

“The building’s gone, but the club is still here,” he says, gesturing to his fellow Frozen Few as he takes a moment away from the race preparations. In fact, three days after the fire, Edgewood Yacht Club had what sailor Gene Whalen calls a “moral victory.” Ten skippers were out sailing on their beloved Sunfish with borrowed gear and with sails lent by friends, exemplifying the indomitable spirit that seems so pervasive at EYC. They are still able to enjoy a good day of friendly competition.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the blaze, and no boats were damaged. In years past, many members stored their boats in the parking lot, but by some lucky coincidence, no one did this year. Had they been in that parking lot, the direction of the wind that stormy night would have blown flames, smoke, and cinders into the fleet. Still, members did lose their gear: wetsuits, sails, masts, and more. Brown University’s sailing team lost its equipment as well. Gone, too, are items of historical significance and emotional value: racing trophies and the plaques that marked where hurricane flood waters reached (well above head-level) in 1938 and 1954.

The building itself was iconic, constructed in 1908 after a fire destroyed its predecessor. It stood serenely over Narragansett Bay, supported by a delicate crisscross of wooden pilings. A red-shingled roof, capped by a cupola, made it visible from the water. It had a wraparound porch and weathered wooden walls. Hidden from the main road, the yacht club seemed from another era, according to Tom Drew, the club’s steward: “You came into a whole different world when you came down here,” he says.

One month after the fire, the former clubhouse and grounds truly feel like a different world. But even though the building has been reduced to ash and rubble, Edgewood Yacht Club is not going anywhere. The sailors out on the water prove that.

“This club is filled with energy and with tremendous members who want to do something special down here,” says Lanphear. As commodore, he is the most senior officer at EYC and its tireless leader. When asked if Edgewood is the typical “country-club-like” group of doctors and lawyers, Lanphear laughs. He lists members who are

by Anna Maine Illustration by Robert Sandler

everything from doctors to teachers to truck drivers and plumbers. “When we’re here, nobody calls anybody by a title or anything like that.”

Lanphear is excited to lead this motivated group and undaunted by the task of rebuilding that lies ahead.

He confesses a personal stake in this project: “The club has always been there for me,” he explains. Lanphear’s family joined EYC in the early 1960s and he considers the club a “second home.” He took sailing lessons in his teens, even living in the clubhouse for a few college years as caretaker. He has been an officer “off-and-on” for the past 15 years. Two of his three brothers met their wives at the club. Although he says his wife prefers gardening to sailing, Lanphear’s two daughters were both students at the sailing school.

“He’s a great person to have right now with what we’re going through because he’s been involved with this club for so many years,” says Drew of the commodore.

REBUILDING On a winter afternoon, Drew can be found in the small residential house located on the EYC property. Undamaged by the fire, it looks gutted and insubstantial as it has undergone hours of refurbishment by Drew and other members. It will someday house the offices of the yacht club. From the small seaside window on the first floor, a dozen or so boats—upwind of the fire—are visible, carefully covered and resting on cradles. They’re waiting to be launched around Memorial Day, when the club starts having regular Tuesday and Wednesday night races and other events.

Drew explains that the old clubhouse must be demolished. The wharf will then extend from the shore to the 55 docks where regular members of the club can keep their boats. Drew will play an integral role in the rebuilding process, putting in many of the countless man-hours it will require for the yacht club to be fully functional once again.

Commodore Lanphear’s plan is simple: make it through the summer. He hopes the rebuilding of the dock will be complete by April or early May. Brown University’s sailing team (which is based at Edgewood) plans to move a modular home to the site. It will be used as a classroom for the sailing team and the sailing school in the summer. The house currently under construction will become the club’s office space. They hope to erect a tent for members, too. Before anything happens, however, EYC needs the permission of the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), an agency that regulates construction on the coast of Rhode Island.

For the long-term, Lanphear imagines another clubhouse towering majestically over the water.

According to the CRMC, the new building will need to be taller than its predecessor, but they hope to bring back some of the elements of the old building, like the beloved wrap-around porch. Lanphear hopes for a room for member meetings and a “junior” room for families and kids, maybe with ping pong and air hockey tables. The yacht club is still in settlement discussions with its insurance company, and Lanphear says members will do some fundraising. At less than two months after the fire, those plans are still at the drawing board.

“People have a lot of ideas for what to do,” says Drew.

THE PLACE TO BE The presence of the yacht club in the community can still be felt as boats glide across Narragansett Bay on gear lent from fellow sailors across New England. Over the course of an afternoon, cars pull into the ash-strewn parking lot.

Some only stay for a few minutes as their occupants gawk at the sailors or to get a first-hand look at the remains of the fire. Others take the time to relive old memories.

At 49, carpenter Mark Whirty can remember his childhood in the Edgewood neighborhood like it was yesterday. He parks his truck facing the sea and takes in the charred ruins, the snow-covered docks and the fleet of Sunfish skittering gaily across the waves.

Whirty refers to the club like an old friend, with whom he has shared many memories. He remembers walking along the beach at age 10 or 11, seeing the docks being built, and being inspired to become a carpenter.

Whirty’s dad kept a boat here, “which sank about once a year,” he says with a laugh. He worked at the club, painting the cupola (which bore his and many other workers’ initials) and running the launch or “crash boat” to ferry boat owners to and from their moorings.

He proudly recalls buying his first rowboat at age 11.

Whirty paid five dollars for the old wooden rowboat and fiberglassed it himself. He used it for paddling around, learning seamanship and going fishing.

“It was the place to be.” He and his friends went on “junior outings,” paying five or six dollars apiece for “all the hot dogs and hamburgers you could eat.” They would go sailing in their parents’ 30- and 40-foot yachts, leaving Saturday and not returning until late the next day. They would sail to the Bay Islands, and have campfires on the beaches of Prudence Island.

“It was very family-oriented. It was our home away from home,” he recalls. There were penny socials, where the second floor of the clubhouse was filled with “yard sale stuff” and scuffles ensued over coveted items.

He even remembers wanting to live in the small house (Drew’s renovation project) and sledding down the hill behind it on cardboard boxes.

There are thousands of memories like Mark Whirty’s. The club has received messages of support from the neighborhood, from around New England and as far away as Hawaii. The connection appears to be not only a love for sailing but also a love for this particular yacht club. Every donated sail and every curious neighbor who stops to watch those nuts out there sailing in February seems to share the same feelings about Edgewood.

They are the feelings echoed by Mark Whirty, decades after his last sail and years after he left the neighborhood.

“It was a part of me. It’s still a part of me.”

ANNA MAINE B’14 is not going anywhere.

SPORTS| 16

MARCH 17 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

A ROOM FULL OF KNOCKOUTS photos by Annie

by Katy Eng MacDonald

Girl power and boxing at Providence’s Striking Beauties

F

our weeks ago, my roommate mentioned that a women’s boxing gym called Striking Beauties had just opened up off the corner of Thayer and Angell. Not only was I guilty about being so out of shape, but there was also a gritty allure to the pop of a proper punch. I weighed the possibility of publicly humiliating myself against my desire for Million Dollar Baby shoulders and ultimately decided to give it a try. Pumped up with visions of myself in a hardcore fighting montage, I hit the gym.

The place was tiny and U-shaped, with long punching bags hanging from the low ceilings. It smelled like stale sweat, rubber, leather, and general badassery.

The instructor, a morose looking but scruffily handsome man in a baggy hoodie, got started right away.

We all struggled in vain with the 180-inch-long wraps.

Our hands eventually wrapped, he lined us up on the wall and walked us through the basic punches: jab, cross, hook, and uppercut. A half hour went by and I left, feeling surprised that my biceps hadn’t quadrupled in size. I guess a part of me had been expecting to emerge from my first class a fighting beast, but despite my disappointment, I decided to return.

We started the next class with more traditional calisthenics: ten minutes of jumping rope, followed by a draconian ab circuit, squats, and punching bag exercises. After the first three minutes I was huffing like I’d just run a marathon and my calves felt like they had been run over by a truck. But as I walked out the door, my fatigued hands shaking uncontrollably like an addict in withdrawal, I felt good. I mean really good.

And it’s exactly that feeling that owner Dena Paolino counts on to bring in customers.

STRONG AND SEXY Paolino founded Striking Beauties, whose main outpost opened in North Attleboro, MA in 2009 after realizing that women around the world had nowhere to box besides their boyfriends’ gyms. In a phone interview, Paolino noted that women “were either getting hit on or not taken seriously” at male-dominated gyms.

After teaming up with 4-time world champion Jaime Clampitt, she designed an authentic boxer’s workout that could be tailored to women of all fitness levels and opened shop in North Attleboro in July of 2009.

When demand proved to be high, she opened the Angell Street location in November of 2010.

Paolino says she hadn’t always planned to open a boxing gym. A practicing lawyer, she had always known she was an “entrepreneur at heart,” and years ago, she started formulating ideas about opening a gym, a health club, or a salon. Ultimately, it was the buzz on the fitness blogosphere that led her to open a women’s boxing gym.

Paolino is petite and tan, with impeccable highlights and a rock on her finger—the size of which makes me suspect that she boxes just to stay buff enough to support it. She talked about her three children and how she hopes Striking Beauties will help give girls like her daughters the confidence to be “strong and sexy.” She boasted that her gym was a place where women could go for a serious round in the ring while the other women in the class watched their children ringside. In many ways, Dena herself seems to embody the odd paradox that defines the gym’s culture: she is at once a zealous feminist, a nurturing homemaker, and a fierce (and well-manicured) fighter.

BOXING BABES

The gym flaunts its female empowerment elements— the business cards are silver and pink and feature a woman flexing her biceps à la Rosie the Riveter— which is almost a necessity for women’s boxing gyms. Though Title IX continues to permeate the public discourse about athletics, boxing appears to be trailing behind many other sports. USA Boxing, the national governing body on amateur boxing, didn’t lift its ban on female members until a 16-year-old female boxer filed a lawsuit in 1993. The first Women’s National Championships weren’t held until 1997, the inaugural World Championships until 2001, and

while men’s boxing has been an Olympic division since 1904, women’s boxing won’t make its debut until the 2012 London Olympics.

The intense, unabashed physicality of boxing and its longstanding image as a masculine activity have made it quite difficult for women to be considered “heavyweights.” Clearly, there is some catching up to be done before women are seen as serious contenders, and Striking Beauties is doing its part to help narrow the gap. Not only does Paolino introduce women to the sport and provide a uniquely welcoming place to practice, she has also upped the empowerment quotient by creating events such as “A Night of Knockouts,” New England’s first all-female boxing event, and “Wonder Woman Wednesdays,” which feature presentations by female business owners every Wednesday at the North Attleboro location. Whether it’s fostering healthy competition or encouraging entrepreneurial ambitions, behind its punned names and sugary exterior, Striking Beauties espouses a strong feminist agenda that extends beyond the ring.

However, the gym doesn’t always restrict itself to excessive “girl power” dogma. From the moment I walked in it was clear that some of my peers hadn’t come seeking feminist emancipation by means of kicking butt. I’d be lying if I said I don’t sometimes wonder if Striking Beauties isn’t just a glorified weight loss program. Its generic fitness classes resemble pseudo-feminist boot camps where well-todo college girls pay to have somebody yell at them about “feeling the burn.” The emphasis on calorie burning is something of a contradiction to the gym’s stated goals about feeling confident in one’s own body. That’s not to say that we don’t all worry about our love handles, but the duality of having to obsess over calorie count while trying to nail the perfect right hook is almost as confusing as the side-by-side portraits of Audrey Hepburn and Muhammad Ali hanging on the wall.

Thankfully though, this worrisome contradiction doesn’t overshadow the gym’s broader goal of female empowerment. Most of the women I’ve met there are strong and determined athletes who simply love the catharsis of wailing on a bag. Evgeni Tzvetkov, one of the instructors and a competitive boxer himself, even confided that he finds women to be much better students than men, since men tend to get discouraged and quit when their arms feel like Jell-O after one round on the bags.

The slight dilution of the gym’s feminist leanings and its painfully cheesy name aside, it’s undeniable that there’s something about boxing there that makes you feel like you’re on top of the world. The contrast of painted nails against black wraps and the pride of being a bruiser in a sports bra is intoxicating.

KATY ENG B’11 floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.

FRIDAY MARCH 18 7 & 11 PM “The Famished” by Max Posner @ Studio 1, The Granoff Center. A new play about the death of a little friendship & a large office. Don’t miss shows on Saturday (8 & 11 PM) and Sunday (2 PM & 8 PM). Reserve tickets online at pw.brown.edu/tickets, or get them at the door. 154 Angell Street. FREE/$2.

8 PM “The Showcase Show” from the Brown Slam Poetry Team @ MacMillan 117 (Starr Auditorium), Brown University.

Hear five dope poets on their home turf before they ship out to nationals.

Doors open at 7:30. 324 Brook Street. $3 9 PM Starla & Sons Improv show @ Salomon 001, Brown U. Theme is “crazy/beautiful,” we think. Main Green. $1.

10 PM Micah Jackson @ The Salon. Feelin’ squirrelly, want to move/groove?

Dance it out. 37 Eddy Street. FREE.

SATURDAY MARCH 19 9 PM Out of Bounds in 3D: Sometimes Say Never @ MacMillan 117. Free Sketch comedy. 324 Brook Street. FREE.

TUESDAY MARCH 22 6:30 PM “What Will We Do With the Contem10 PM porary?” Curatorial Lecture @ Studio SPACE Party @ 63 Governor. Help One, The Granoff Center. Joao Ribas, Space in Prison for the Arts and Crecurator at the MIT Visual Arts Center, ative Expression raise money for the will deliver the second of a three-part program. Nico Jaar DJs.You dance. $3. lecture series on contemporary curatorial practice.154 Angell Street. FREE. SUNDAY MARCH 20 4 PM 7–10 PM Organ Recital @ Sayles Hall. UniScreening of John Huston’s 1975 classic versity organist Mark Steinbach will The ManWhoWould Be King @ The Watperform an organ recital featuring the son Institute. Join Brown Afghanistan works of Philip Glass, Nicolaus Bruhns, Working Group Faculty for a screening and Cesar Franck. Main Green. FREE. and discussion. Pizza will be provided.

111 Thayer Street. FREE. MONDAY MARCH 21 7 PM 7:30 PM Amreeka screening from the Palestinian “Celebrating New Directions” @ McFilm Festival @ the Granoff Center.

Cormack Family Theater. A two-day An NYT Critic’s Pick, Amreeka is “one festival celebrating the 75-year-old of the most accomplished recent films publishing company. Local writers about a non-European immigrant Thalia Field and Rosmarie Waldrop will coming to the United States,” accordbe joined by Jeffrey Yang and Robing to Stephen Holden. Q & A with the ert Coover, to read the work of John Producer following the screening. 154 Hawkes & kick things off. 70 Brown Angell Street. FREE. Street. FREE.

WEDNESDAY MARCH 23 2 PM “A Conversation about the Art and Practice of Publishing,” feat. New Directions editors @ McCormack Family Theater. 70 Brown Street. FREE. 4 PM “Editors Speak About Favorite Projects” with the New Directions editors, Eliot Weinberger, and Ian MacNiven @ Martinos Auditorium, Granoff Center.

154 Angell Street. FREE. 8 PM The New Directions–related(?) rock band Holy Spirits play @ Martinos Auditorium. Our friend says one of the rockers is “my ex-boss.You should make friends with him, he is nice, so are all the editors.” N(B)D. 154 Angell.

FREE. 9 PM – 1 AM Wicked Womp Wednesdays @ Industry (formerly Jerky’s). Providence’s premier weekly dubstep night feat. Johnny Braap & Soundkeepers. Wawawawawawa-waa-wamp. 18+. 71 Richmond Street. $5.

THURSDAY MARCH 24 ALL DAY Spring Break for Brown Univeristy.