The College Hill Independent — Vol. 44 Issue 9

THE INDY*

03 CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED 06 POWERLIFTING 15 WASTE LIFE

Volume 44 Issue 09 22 April 2022

THE ETHEREAL ISSUE

* The College Hill Independent

THE INDY* This Issue

Masthead* MANAGING EDITORS Ifeoma Anyoku Sage Jennings Isaac McKenna Alisa Caira

00 “BRICK BY BRICK” Sofia Berger

02 WEEK IN ASTROLOGY Masha Breeze & Nora Mathews

03 CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED Billie McKelvie

06 POWERLIFTING IN THE AGE OF INDIFFERENCE Zachary Braner

08 MAGIC MUSHROOMS Nell Salzman

WEEK IN REVIEW Masha Breeze Nora Mathews FEATURES Anabelle Johnston Corinne Leong Amelia Wyckoff NEWS Anushka Kataruka Nicole Kim Priyanka Mahat

10 “AFTER HOURS”

ARTS Jenna Cooley Justin Scheer Arden Shostak

11 INTERMISSION

EPHEMERA Chloe Chen Ayça Ülgen

12 JAMES IS OUR LEADER

METRO Jack Doughty Nélari Figueroa Torres Rose Houglet Sacha Sloan

Bryson Lee

Loughlin Neuert

Charlie Medeiros

14 CHAMBER OF REFLECTION, NO GLASS, NO MIRROR Zihan Zhang

SCIENCE + TECH Rhythm Rastogi Jane Wang

15 WASTE LIFE

BULLETIN BOARD Deb Marini Lily Pickett

17 “HIDE AND SEEK”

X Soeun Bae

18 DEAR INDY

DEAR INDY Cecilia Barron

19 THE BULLETIN

LITERARY Alyscia Batista Annie Stein

From the Editors

OUTREACH COORDINATOR Audrey Buhain

Katherine Xiong Justin Li

Cecilia Barron

SENIOR EDITORS Alana Baer Audrey Buhain Mara Cavallaro Anabelle Johnston Deb Marini Peder Schaefer STAFF WRITERS Hanna Aboueid Caroline Allen Zach Braner Rachel Carlson Lily Chahine Swetabh Changkakoti Danielle Emerson Osayuwamen Ede-Osifo Mariana Fajnzylber Edie Fine Ricardo Gomez Eli Gordon Eric Guo Charlotte Haq Billie McKelvie Charlie Mederios Bilal Memon Loughlin Neuert Alex Purdy Callie Rabinovitz Nick Roblee-Strauss Nell Salzman Peder Schaefer Janek Schaller Koyla Shields Ella Spungen Alex Valenti Siqi ‘Kathy’ Wang Katherine Xiong COPY EDITORS Addie Allen Evangeline Bilger Klara Davidson-Schmich Megan Donohue Mack Ford Sarah Goldman Zoey Grant Alara Kalfazade Jasmine Li Abigail Lyss Tara Mandal Becca Martin-Welp Pilar McDonald Kabir Narayanan Eleanor Peters Angelina Rios-Galindo

Oh, how I wish I could photosynthesize.

*Our Beloved Staff

As Providence tilts towards the sun a bit more each day, rays of light have less atmosphere to pass through, and less energy is diffused by the gases around our planet. The plants know this. It feels like every tree and bush and weed is spreading their arms, drinking the readily available nectar of photons that is all-pervading.

Mission Statement

I, too, have been pointing my face at the sky more. Feeling the heat beating down on my skin, I imagine my body turning carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen, and feeling a rush. In a way, I can convince myself that it works—the deep warmth feels like it touches my bones, as if it is refracted through my blood vessels which, flowing with imagined chloroplast, tick my battery icon from [ ] to [ ϟ ].

Maybe photosynthesis is just a social construct. Maybe if I imagine hard enough, spend enough time running my hands along the fuzzy new leaves of early spring, enough moments of quiet to start to understand the language of the trees rustling or the birds chirping, I can also learn how to photosynthesize. A sort of ‘fake it til I make it’ situation.

Ife says she knows how to photosynthesize. Whether or not I can too might just hinge on whether or not I believe her.

-IM

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Volume 44 Issue 09 22 April 2022

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

DESIGN EDITORS Anna Brinkhuis Sam Stewart COVER COORDINATOR Seoyoung Kim DESIGNERS Briaanna Chiu Ri Choi Adelle Clark Ophelia Duchesne-Malone Clara Epstein Elisa Kim Amy Lim Tanya Qu Emily Tom Floria Tsui WEB DESIGN Lucas Gelfond ILLUSTRATION EDITOR Hannah Park ILLUSTRATORS Sylvie Bartusek Ashley Castañeda Hannah Chang Claire Chasse Michelle Ding Rosie Dinsmore Quinn Erickson Lillyanne Fisher Sophie Foulkes John Gendron Amonda Kallenbach Joshua Koolik Lucy Lebowitz Olivia Lunger Tom Manto Sarosh Nadeem Kenney Nguyen Izzy Roth-Dishy Lola Simon Livia Weiner GAME MAKERS Loughlin Neuert Maya Polsky WRITING FELLOW Chong Jing ‘CJ’ Gan MVP Deb Marini — The College Hill Independent is printed

by TCI in Seekonk, Massachusets.

The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Our paper is distributed throughout the East Side, Downtown, and online. The Indy also functions as an open, leftist, consciousness-raising workshop for writers and artists, and from this collaborative space we publish 20 pages of politically-engaged and thoughtful content once a week. We want to create work that is generative for and accountable to the Providence community—a commitment that needs consistent and persistent attention.

While the Indy is predominantly financed by Brown, we independently fundraise to support a stipend program to compensate staff who need financial support, which the University refuses to provide. Beyond making both the spaces we occupy and the creation process more accessible, we must also work to make our writing legible and relevant to our readers.

The Indy strives to disrupt dominant narratives of power. We reject content that perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism and/or classism. We aim to produce work that is abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist, and we want to generate spaces for radical thought, care, and futures.

Though these lists are not exhaustive, we challenge each other to be intentional and selfcritical within and beyond the workshop setting, and to find beauty and sustenance in creating and working together.

WEEK IN REVIEW

Week in Astr logy Anyone who knows me knows two fundamental things about me: I hate boundaries, and I LOVE astrology. Also, I didn’t have a lot of time this week because I’m in this stupid fight with my crazy mother-in-law (see next week’s Week in Review: Am I the Asshole for Plotting the Murder of My Husband?). So we’re doing a horoscope!

Aries As the ram sign, you have a heart of gold and hooves for feet. Usually, your lack of patience (and toes) gets you in trouble, but this week, try to lean into your impulsive nature. Go on adventures! Stop taking your prescribed medications! Flirt with your professor!

Taurus You’re probably a thirty-year-old man who listens to Dave Matthews Band, in which case, hit me up! I have a big forehead and a bigger personality. Let’s do whippits and watch Say Yes to the Dress together! I like Randy.

Gemini Hey there all you intrusive thots!!! Gemini, you’re CRAZY in the best way. You’re my type of girlie: you love going to the movies, you NEVER say no to a dental checkup, and you kick animals when no one’s looking. This week, all your fingernails will fall out!

Cancer You’re a milf from Long Island with a psychosexual relationship with your daughter’s boyfriend. You call it “St. Paddy’s Day.” You are a mountain surrounded by mere grains of sand; a whale in a sea of protozoa. You knew this day would come. The world is a plum in your hand. Swallow it whole.

Leo Eat shit!

Virgo You give great advice, buuuuuttttt you’re also bisexual. Let’s change that! As a Virgo, you’re super analytical, to the point that you have a hard time making choices. This next week will be especially difficult; on Monday you have your clarinet recital, and on Tuesday you’ll be forced to choose between Abnegation and Dauntless. Family vs. individuality? Yikes!

Libra And on the fourth day, God said, “Let there be mid!” and that’s how Libras happened. Your vibe screams “I will be reincarnated as a lamp,” queen! You’re an introvert who needs their space, and that space is a black box theater at Sarah Lawrence. Try bangs.

Scorpio Design the most uncomfortable house you can imagine, and then imagine that it’s full of your enemies inventing “a new form of longform improv.” That’s what this week will feel like!

Sagittarius You’re the babysitter with games on your phone! You’re a John Green character who smokes a cigarette in one drag and has a mysterious magnetic force irresistible to high schoolers in model UN! This week, you’ll take the first major step towards healing your gut biome.

Capricorn Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Aquarius Go into real estate! Train yourself to think like an algorithm! Practice having no redeeming qualities! This week is all about honing your mind into a sharp sharp needle and then using that needle to sew a Harry Styles patch onto a denim jacket that is sooo heinous. Get it slay!

Pisces As a water sign, use this week to direct your energy into convincing your lover that you invented saying “damn Daniel.” Start sharing your location with your boss from three years ago just because!

TEXT MASHA BREEZE & NORA MATHEWS DESIGN TANYA QU ILLUSTRATION JOHN GENDRON

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 09

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CONT METRO

How Brown Drains the Wages, Health, and Blood of Low Wage Workers

TEXT BILLIE MCKELVIE

DESIGN FLORIA TSUI

ILLUSTRATION SYLVIE BARTUSEK

O

n On a Saturday in March, Student Labor Alliance met with a third-party contract worker for Brown Security, whom the College Hill Independent will refer to as X in order to comply with their request to remain anonymous. He is employed

by Allied Universal, a popular third party security company, and that morning we met at Blue State where he is often stationed at the unseen border of Brown’s campus. He originally asked if it was possible to meet Friday night, where he would be working until 3:00 AM, despite needing to go to a medical appointment with his wife the next morning.

Like many people working low-wage contract jobs on campus, he has not been able to pay his medical bills due to stagnant wages. He reports that even those who have had these jobs for a decade haven’t seen their wages increase

03

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by more than a few dollars. Combined with a lack of proper winter gear and bathroom access in the buildings they guard, these conditions call into question whether “dignity” is a provision of the job, X said.

In an effort to pay rent, bills, and keep food on the table, X has begun selling his blood and plasma to make ends meet. Why should anyone be reaching silver membership on plasma sales to meet their costs of living—especially under the watch of a wealthy university like Brown? +++ Allied Universal, a security company based in Pennsylvania, holds contracts with other Ivy League universities and several colleges across Providence. Student Labor Alliance had the chance to speak with X in a group and later for

an interview. X hopes that his story will raise awareness of the poor working conditions and gross undercompensation that Brown security workers face as they prepare for major contract negotiations coming in August. We were also able to confirm X’s specific accounts with two other security workers over text. “There are some big issues,” one said: “It’s hard when we’re so separate.” “We’re all struggling,” said the other, adding that transportation costs had begun preventing them from getting to work or repairing their car. Specifically, both corroborated accusations of low pay and little change in wages over time.

As third-party contractors, Brown’s security workers’ demands frequently go unanswered.

Their contractor classification means the university relinquishes all legal responsibility for their working conditions, wages, and safety. Instead,

METRO

TRACTUALLY OBLIGATED contracting places the burden of providing key worker infrastructure on external, third-party firms such as Allied Universal. This business model allows Brown to evade liability by minimizing labor costs and distorting the distribution of profits and power afforded to contracted workers.

The downside of contracted labor as opposed to direct hire—meaning direct employment through the University—has to do with the environment for workers as well. Labor without a local base often entails a loss of typical provisions, like a break room, that build out the workplace into a functional working environment and allow workers to organize.

Brown’s expanding surveillance apparatus comes at the expense of low-wage workers who make a fraction of the salary of Brown’s Department of Public Safety officers, which sits at over $50 an hour. The Providence Police and DPS “...look down on security guards,” X said.

“And you can feel it.” Security workers’ jobs are predicated on the idea that the simple presence of guards will deter casual theft and other petty crime. Given this concept, it is bitingly ironic that these workers’ reflective uniforms often render them invisible to the broader campus community, like nothing more than fixtures of the architecture. This invisibility is no accident.

“Our wages just haven’t kept up. And why is that? Because we don’t have any power. We don’t have unions,” X said. “The work is set up in a way that it’s very difficult for people to eat, to ever come together. There’s a reason why Brown turns to contractors instead of hiring directly themselves. [It’s] a great way of avoiding responsibility for what’s happening with their workers. We’re hemmed in by our contract with Brown. So you can see the dilemma right there, it becomes doubly hard to push to get out wages that you can actually live on.”

As contracted workers, Brown’s security guards are not able to rely on collective action to voice their needs, closing off a crucial avenue to improve their working conditions. Contracting firms like Allied Universal are practically anti-union by definition. They rely on undercutting the wages of regular employees to compete with other firms, resulting in subpar employee treatment. In this arrangement, Brown is not accountable for contracted security laborers; on the other hand, Allied Universal can point back to Brown as the real source of influence, as their workers’ manager is directly employed through the university. This dynamic is present in Allied Universal contracts with several other Ivy League universities, as well as various public health institutions, airports, and K-12 schools.

Each party will often claim their hands are tied by the other, and the result is sustained inaction.

The absence of employer accountability

exacerbates and perpetuates the exploitation of Brown’s contracted workers. X describes that the long hours and little sleep required for the job increase the dangerous risk of psychosis, among other harms. Guards are allowed to use only one bathroom, in MacMillan Hall, despite being stationed all around Brown’s campus.

They don’t receive swipe access to the buildings they sit in front of and guard all night. Though workers have asked for weather-appropriate uniforms, they have not been provided more than a thin windbreaker for night shifts in Providence winter, a potential Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) violation.

Additionally, Brown’s security guards receive insignificant pay raises compared to the years spent in their position; one guard started at $12 an hour, but after a decade, his wage has only been bumped up to $14.50.

X described how these challenges take a personal toll on him. “All those little things may sound like a little bit to people, but believe me, it adds up, you know, the invisibility and all the rest of the things,” he said. “It’s hard to get much sense of worth, or anything like that when your paycheck is basically gone before it even hits your bank account. Do I eat? Do I pay rent? Do I pay this medical bill? I’m way behind on a medical bill that is right now preventing me from getting needed treatment.” +++ X has been pushed to sell his blood to make ends meet. Since July, X has sold his blood twice a week, receiving $50 to $55 per liter of plasma.

The donation site gives out a special card to donors, with bronze, silver, and gold tiers. X is a bronze member set to move up to silver in the coming weeks.

“Once a week, but like every once a while, I have to take a couple of weeks off for what they refer to as, uh, vein—They actually have a term for it: vein rest. So that’s, that’s what kind of keeps you know, groceries on the table and gas in the car,” he stated.

We reached out for comment from Suzanne Flynn, Director of Finance/Admin for DPS; Jillian Rourke, Financial Coordinator for DPS; Brown Media Relations; The Brown Purchasing Office; Allied Universal; and Brian Clark Associate VP of News and Editorial Development, none of whom responded, except for Brian Clark.

In response to the worker complaints brought up in this article, Brown News and Editorial Development’s Brian Clark said: “First, Allied is a third-party contractor hired by Brown and many other clients to provide supplemental security services, so terms of employment are a matter managed directly between the company and its employees.”

(This response underscores broader complaints security workers have: that their grievances are immediately dismissed and often redirected towards two corporations pointing fingers at one another.)

Clark went on to add, “It’s important to clarify that there’s no broader trend toward contract labor when it comes to campus safety, or tradeoff that comes at the expense of employees in the DPS. Rather, staff from Allied Security are deployed as a complement to Brown’s regular DPS presence, particularly in high-activity moments and locations—major events, for example, or late nights on weekends in high-traffic areas. Much in the way that Brown students are essential partners in making the Safewalk program available, staff from Allied Security are important partners with DPS and other departments at Brown in serving as additional eyes and ears for community safety, deterring incidents of crime and assisting community members in need.”

Brown’s history stands in direct contradiction to Clark’s statement. For nearly two decades, Brown has pursued a policy of outsourcing low-wage labor. The University does business with faceless contracting companies to improve their bottom line with “data-driven” approaches, drawn in by phrases like Allied Universal’s “keeping your campus safe - and your budgets lean.” The success of these initiatives, according to their own stated aims, has been dubious. The current generation of undergraduates are likely unfamiliar with these stories, but here we draw from our own archive of campus labor organizing, as well as the archives of campus publications, to trace this continuity in Brown’s contractual let downs. +++ Take, for example, Brown’s move to outsource the Bookstore. In 2006, a University review recommended that Brown Bookstore employees be replaced by a contract vendor like Barnes and Noble or Follet Higher Education Group, both of whom were among the top picks. Shortly after the initial recommendation, former Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Elizabeth Huidekoper presented these findings to the Brown University Community Council, which voiced overwhelming opposition to this plan and support for the preservation of the Bookstore’s independent operation. The ‘Bookstore Review Committee Summary of Findings’ noted that “a vendor is likely to provide a consistent contribution that could help support Academic Enrichment initiatives and also fund capital improvements in the Bookstore,” pointing to another role of third party contractors as potential investors in existing university spaces. The Brown Daily Herald also

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 09

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METRO DESIGN FLORIA TSUI ILLUSTRATION SYLVIE BARTUSEK TEXT BILLIE MCKELVIE 05

reported on the issue at the time, collecting student voices that hoped the Bookstore would stay University-operated. After months of resistance, the Save the Brown Bookstore campaign won independence for the store.

Other initiatives against outsourcing were not so successful. In 2014, the University decided to contract mailroom workers with Ricoh USA following an internal review of Mail Services. Ricoh USA is a multinational electronics company that has expanded into data and industrial print services. With its introduction to the mailroom, one mailroom worker suspected, “Ricoh will then spread through the campus like a cancer. They’ll next target the non-academic departments—Graphic Services, Athletics.

Registrar and so on.” With one foot in the door, what’s to stop Ricoh from making a larger mark in the background informatics of the University? On the employee level, a former mailroom worker told the Student Labor Alliance at the time, “The current plan for the University is to outsource all the non-union support staff. It already started with the outsourcing of the mail room[...] Ricoh will receive all the money, staff, space and tech support they need. They’ll have a blank check. [...] This is only the beginning. [...]

All non-union Brown staff should start signing union cards.”

One month later, nine unionized mailroom employees were given notices of termination; only two union workers were spared their jobs.

A student petition against this action garnered over 1200 signatures from across the campus community, but bore no fruit. The mailroom today is still contracted. The pattern of outsourced labor interrupting or even preventing union membership now seems more like an intention rather than a coincidence.

In 2017, a student/worker solidarity campaign emerged when the University quietly announced a massive reorganization of library resources on the first night of Spring Weekend.

This move involved the continued downsizing of library staff and the adoption of more and more non-union labor to fill the gaps. In a similar example—perhaps the most well-known— dining contractor Bon Appetit was brought into Sharpe Refectory in 2016 with the promise that their contract would last only four years while the company ‘modernized’ the dining hall’s operations. Conversations with workers about dining hall conditions (like the Ratty’s three-digit heat spells without air conditioning until 2018) revealed that the tenure of Bon Appetit administrators has continuously eroded the work environment there, and has now outlasted its original four year mandate. A recent Brown Daily Herald article exposed complaints of understaffing, facility issues, and inability to negotiate the Bon Appetit contract. One dining hall worker, referring to the piles of unwashed plates, told

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

the BDH “if the city comes and sees that we would get in big trouble,” and more go on to recount fridges catching on fire and other hazards.

These conditions, coupled with years of inaction on the university’s part, indicate that controversial outside management is here to stay. +++ When you hear contracting, you may think of construction subcontractors, or Uber’s independent contractors. But it is hard to underscore exactly how much the American labor landscape has been transformed by contracting over the past forty years.

According to Community Labor United, based out of Massachusetts, employment services (otherwise known as administrative and management services) grew 284% between 1985 and 2012. This inflation of admin staff

“[Brown] does business with faceless contracting companies to improve their bottom line with ‘datadriven’ approaches, drawn in by phrases like Allied Universal’s ‘keeping your campus safe - and your budgets lean.’” and salaries occurred in tandem with internal restructuring and budgetary cuts. In comparison, other private sector industries grew by only 36 percent over the same period. Major transitions in the private sector workforce along these lines lead to new contract law in the 90s and early 2000s, like the 2004 amendment to the Massachusetts Independent Contractor Law, which reclassified many low-wage and part-time workers as contractors.

The Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training lists the misclassification of workers as independent contractors rather than employees “a serious problem in Rhode Island and across the country,” and provides a report form and quiz for workers to assess their situation.

Under Rhode Island’s definition, “An employee is anyone performing service for an employer who controls what will be done and how it will be done by the worker.” Brown draws on an expansive network of low-wage contracted labor that is often managed by direct hires and, in practice, has limited contact with the third party ‘employer.’

The DLT notes that employers have many incentives to misclassify or turn to contractors:

employers “avoid paying many state and federal taxes, they avoid providing workers compensation coverage...they may fail to follow wage contractor registration or other laws, they have a competitive advantage and may underprice legitimate employers.” And, as previously stated, contracts tend to outsource workplace negotiations.

Clearly, the situation contracted security workers find themselves in is not unique, but rather a consequence of Brown’s commitment to improving their bottom line at the expense of workers who have little to no say in how they are treated, supplied, or compensated for their labor. It is part of the broader way that Brown exploits Rhode Islanders in the name of a crudely imagined ‘campus life.’ Subcontracting and outsourcing can be understood as one component of Brown’s strategy to reorganize power on campus, siphoning money from the hands of workers into its endowment. Workers must wait until major contract negotiations in August to air their grievances, when the vast majority of the campus community will be absent and unable to vocalize support.

In the process of writing this article, X has sold blood twice out of financial need. Why should that be the case? Why should anyone working for a multi-billion dollar corporation be forced to turn to these ends to survive? This is one out of a landscape of stories that we, as an organization, have seen for decades, especially as Brown has turned to contracted labor over direct hire. It is time to turn outward and shine a spotlight on these stories. Maybe X puts it best: “if we raise our profile, if you become aware of us and our life stories and all that, all of a sudden, they might realize that the cost of keeping us like this is greater. The juice just ain’t worth squeezing. The more and more you students realize who we are and what we’re doing, and it becomes something initially that becomes real to you. The more that...well it’s better together.”

BILLIE MCKELVIE B’22 recently had their Instagram hacked.

FEATS

Powerlifting in the Age of Indifference their families, the meets become an indistinct fog of laboriously raised and lowered iron by mid-afternoon. Overlong competitions, slowburn movements, and weights that are hard to appreciate unless you’re also a lifter—these obstacles have kept powerlifting in the trenches of strength sports for decades, with little financial backing or popularity abroad. Amid the general decay of interest in local sports in general, which has badly hurt the larger strength sports like bodybuilding and strongman, powerlifting seems an unlikely candidate to lead a social revival. So why is the sport suddenly booming? +++

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 09

ILLUSTRATION JOSHUA KOOLIK

The RI State Powerlifting Championships were held at the TOP Strength Project gym in Pawtucket, directly across the street from a Planet Fitness. All 2,039 Planet Fitness gyms have the phrase “no critics” painted in a harmless lowercase yellow on their walls—on the alarm-red walls of the TOP Strength Project is an inscription in black gothic script: “It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the strength and beauty of which his body is capable –Socrates.” Ambient death metal plays in the background. Everybody’s very friendly.

It is Saturday morning. It is pouring rain.

There’s a restaurant calling itself the Home of the Plumpy one bus stop away. Yet by 8 AM close to a hundred people have gathered here, at this converted warehouse in a decaying industrial park, to practice sport. And powerlifting is a sport reduced to its lowest term—one naked, red-faced question: How much can you lift?

“When I started, I wasn’t able to squat the bar,” Rodriguez says. That was two years ago.

This is a common story at powerlifting meets.

“I was maybe able to squat 95 lbs,” says Clayton Malinowsky, 23, of when he started training in 2018. “I’m a chubby guy, so I realized that I probably will never be able to be on stage for bodybuilding—you see these guys on stage flexing with all this definition. I figured if I’m gonna be large I might as well be strong

DESIGN BRIAANNA CHIU

Kevin Rodriguez, 21, approaches the bar like it’s his dance partner and their routine is about to begin. Other powerlifters walk over to the rack and hunch down to shoulder the impossible weight. Rodriguez, short and slender, leaps forward, snatches the bar with both hands at once and swings himself under it in a continuous arc, billowing out onto his toes before settling back under the weight like a pilot closing the cockpit. His lone earring sways in the aftermath of the maneuver, the only thing moving now in the tense silence. But most of the effect is in his face—the grim focus that seems to shut out everything else, and the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth, revealing it doesn’t.

Rodriguez is one of thousands who have joined the growing sport of powerlifting in the last five years, and, at the Rhode Island State Championships, he knows there’s a sizable crowd watching. He hefts 374.8 lbs onto the bridge of his back, steps back in rhythm, and, when the judge’s massive arm shoots up— “Squat!”—stands completely still. For a terrifying moment he does not move, as if the force bearing down on his slight frame—more than twice his body weight—has smashed his senses.

Then he drops down and stands back up with no perceptible effort. It’s clean. Two white lights flash, meaning the lift is valid, and the state of Rhode Island has a new record in the 67.5 kg class.

Rodriguez keeps his cool, turns, and strides off the mat. Only the strut in his step acknowledges the wild outburst of cheers.

This is an individual achievement, which will be recorded under Kevin Rodriguez’s name in the post-meet results, but at the time, and in the room, it is felt as everyone’s victory.

Fellow lifters besiege Rodriguez with hugs and high-fives. Such moments, where individual effort transmutes into collective triumph, define powerlifting meets. Frank Zeiba Sr., who at 56

is competing alongside his son, says it’s because “success breeds success.”

“I’ve never been in a sport where, even though everybody’s here to do the absolute best they can, everybody’s so supportive,” Zeiba Sr. says.

But the kinds of events that make this possible—social gatherings dedicated to niche community interests of any sort—are becoming rarer in the United States, and have been consistently disappearing from American life for the past six decades. Long before COVID-19, social isolation had become dangerously widespread in the United States, with the US Surgeon General declaring loneliness an ‘epidemic’ and citing it as a root cause of increasing cases of addiction, violence, depression, and anxiety. The problem, as all reports on the trend note, is that isolation breeds isolation: feelings of alienation make it harder for people to reach out, creating a vicious cycle that tears at the social net. One of the few signs that things can move in the opposite direction, a growing force knitting Americans together in unprecedented numbers, is powerlifting.

Powerlifting is not an Olympic sport.

There’s no dramatic launch of the barbell over your head as in weightlifting, for one thing, and the sport’s ruling bodies have done little to curb muscle-building drug use, for another. But powerlifting has a unique place in the world of strength sports.

Compared to weightlifting, which relies on explosivity, and bodybuilding, which prizes muscle definition over pure strength, powerlifting is about control. The three lifts in each event—squat, bench press, and deadlift—are slow and heavy, demanding a sustained exertion of strength. This is what makes powerlifting special in the eyes of its greatest devotees, but it’s also what makes the sport what it is to the rest of the world—intolerably boring.

Not all lifters are as entertaining as Rodriguez, and meets can easily stretch past 10 hours while each competitor attempts each lift three times. Even for the participants and

TEXT ZACHARY BRANER

Finding community in a burst blood vessel

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too.” At today’s event Malinowsky squatted 451.9 lbs.

Powerlifting got its start in the 1950s and kept a low profile for the rest of the century.

Sociologist Robert Putnam describes this period in his influential study Bowling Alone as one in which Americans were “pulled apart from one another and from our communities.” Nationwide, membership dropped in non-professional sports leagues, unions, churches, book clubs, neighborhood and school associations, and mass political groups. The tight social webs that bound citizens to their local communities frayed as new communications technology—radio, telephones, television, home computers, and now the internet—facilitated staying home, and supplanted direct interpersonal relationships.

The spread of loneliness and the sense of rootlessness common in modern American life are one consequence of this loss.

Against this current of social dissolution, powerlifting is surging upstream. In 2000, the year Putnam’s Bowling Alone was first published, there were 70 recorded powerlifting meets in the US, according to Open Powerlifting. In 2020, there were 891. From 2012 to 2018 the number of participants at USA Powerlifting meets, the leading drug-tested powerlifting federation in the country, rose from less than 500 to over 11,000. Nationwide, exercise and sports participation rates have been growing, but not nearly this fast—the Bureau of Labor recorded a 3.5% increase in average daily activity between 2003 and 2015. At today’s United States Powerlifting Association (USPA) meet, it’s easy to see the appeal.

“This is my first USPA meet—going into this I know [sic] nobody here, and I’ve already had three or four strangers cheering me on, patting me on the back, saying good job,” Malinowsky says. “I mean I look like a serial killer out there, my face is blank, I’m shaking, and they’re still like ‘Hey good job man!’”

No matter how much weight is on the bar or who is under it, when a lifter starts to struggle a universal chant breaks out: “UP! UP! UP!” Applause and cheers come afterwards, regardless of the lifter’s success—it is the visible exertion of extreme effort that is being celebrated.

On the announcer’s mic the contest organizer calls for a round of applause to introduce an upcoming record squat attempt in the Masters division, which is for lifters over 40. The applause is vigorous until the crowd identifies the Master in question—Christopher Cameron, 71 kg and “at least 3 feet tall” according to a snicker behind me. Cameron is jamming his nose in a bottle of ammonia and unleashing gorilla shouts at the 512 lbs in front of him while the spotters lower the rack. The mood almost turns to concern when he gets under it and begins whipping his neck forward repeatedly in a furtive attempt to secure the weight on his back. “He’s not comfortable under the bar,” says the same voice. One of the extra spotters gives the others a look. Cameron’s legs shake, he exhales sharply four times, and then— “Squat!”—takes the plunge.

It’s not pretty. He starts measured, drops half a foot and catches himself with strength originating somewhere other than his wobbling knees. Halfway back up, his right knee shoots forward an inch. He should buckle, but the bar keeps rising. When it is over, a half-decade later, it seems less plausible than before.

The crowd takes a moment to move from relief to admiration, but not the doubter behind me: “That’s a good lift,” he says, before the room erupts.

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+++ It’s tempting to see this as proof of a new alternative for American community life, a counterexample to the prevailing trend towards individualism and isolation. But in truth those trends may underlie powerlifting’s growth. It is, after all, not a team sport. Powerlifting fundamentally centers the individual’s strength and personal achievement. Moreover, it feeds on the same self-image concerns that social media and advertising promote and prey upon: scholars attribute much of powerlifting’s recent growth to its popularity on Instagram (where Rodriguez found the lifting account that motivated him to start training). There’s also the fact that the culture around powerlifting—visible, for instance, in the meet names (Clash of the Iron Barbarians, Only the Strong, The Murder Open, etc)— tends to channel a vision of rugged individualist masculinity that recalls D. H. Lawrence’s vision of the essential American as “hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” In this light, powerlifting looks like a symptom of social alienation, not a spontaneous countertrend.

Moreover, though they are present to a lesser degree, the systemic barriers to joining any organized sport in the United States are embedded in the structure of powerlifting.

Competing in the raw category, where all of the recent growth has been, is cheap compared to other sports because it requires no specialized equipment. Nonetheless a gym membership is probably necessary, contests can charge entry fees upwards of $60, and most of the lifters I spoke to had personal trainers. So powerlifting might still be out of reach for the 51% of Americans with less than $250 to spare at the end of each month. The sport has historically been welcoming to women, who figure prominently in the leadership of various powerlifting organizations, and organizers have worked hard to create space for LGBT powerlifters since the sport’s inclusion in the first Gay Games in 1982.

But for trans women athletes, the field remains highly uneven. The previously mentioned USA Powerlifting is one of the few remaining powerlifting federations in the country (powerlifting in the US has not been consolidated under a single body) that still refuses to adopt the International Olympic Committee and International Powerlifting Organization’s policies on trans inclusion.

After USA Powerlifting banned the powerlifter JayCee Cooper from competing in the Minnesota Women’s State Championship because she is trans, fellow lifters protested, choosing to stand at the podium without attempting a lift until their time elapsed. A lawsuit filed by legal advocacy group Gender Justice on behalf of Cooper against USA Powerlifting will go to trial in November. “We believe that trans women absolutely belong in women’s sport, and we are hoping that this lawsuit will show that discrimination is wrong and it only makes women’s sport stronger to be more inclusive,” says Jess Braverman, one of Cooper’s attorneys and the legal director at Gender

Justice. +++ “It’s a blank honestly. I don’t hear anybody,” Malinowsky says when asked what’s going through his mind when he attempts a lift. “I think about the weight, I think about what I gotta do, but even then it’s very little.”

“The crowd and everything, I’ll blank it out,” says Tommy HoLam, a lifter in the 75 kg class who set a new state record at the RI State Championships with a 584 lb deadlift. Powerlifters describe the moment of attempting a lift as profound in its emptiness. In an article for The Advocate entitled “How Fitness Can Help Us Overcome Collective Trauma,” University of York professor Kinnon MacKinnon, who is also the first trans athlete to win gold in powerlifting at the Gay Games, wrote that it was “even more meditative than when I’m actually meditating, because there’s no room to think about outside stressors when I’m concentrating on not getting crushed by 200 pounds of iron.” All self-awareness is consumed by physical effort, the proof embodied in the celebrated ‘lifting face.’ In Tommy’s case, it’s an instantly tomato-red, dozen-chinned grimace. This shared vulnerability is an emblem of pride for powerlifters, and it embodies the community’s gleeful embrace of its simple and empowering guiding ethos: getting stronger. But it also reflects the paradox at the heart of powerlifting’s strange success—how its intense focus on the individual, their appearance and ability, forms the basis for transcending oneself.

Like other extreme sports, powerlifting tends to inspire monk-like devotion in those who practice it. One Master lifter, asked to explain his lifelong commitment to the sport, told Avi Silverberg, a researcher at the University of Victoria: “I’ve gone through two wives since getting into powerlifting. Powerlifting is still there. The wives are gone.” As powerlifting welcomes thousands of new lifters from an ever-broadening set of backgrounds, the promise of this obsession is more available than ever.

Social life may be decaying in the United States, and powerlifting’s sudden growth may not combat that trend—in fact, if Instagram continues to fuel the sport’s rise, its local identity may succumb to the usual problems that money and the mainstream bring to niche sports like MMA. But the environment of a powerlifting meet is a reminder of how local communities can create meaning, even in the absence of anything inherently meaningful. Many of these lifters only see each other at meets less than a dozen times a year. They discuss injuries, new personal records, changes in equipment or training regimen. Not much else matters. They laugh easily, and when they’re under the bar, they disappear.

Alone, again, they burn, hearing nothing at all while their friends cheer recklessly.

ZACHARY BRANER B’23 wants to lift your spirits.

FEATS

TEXT NELL SALZMAN

[MAGIC MUSHROOMS] an introduction to mycology

I come from a long line of mushroom hunters.

My grandparents founded the Telluride Mushroom Festival, a four-day mycology conference in the Rocky Mountains. Guests attend lectures, forage, participate in culinary competitions, and trip.

my older cousin babysitting my brother and me in Telluride while tripping on mushrooms. We were eating pizza and swimming around in the pool at our hotel when she told me she was on them. I asked her if it was making her sad. “No Nell, it’s magical,” she said, laughing.

My grandpa’s interest in psychedelics was scientific, not spiritual. In 1981, he founded the festival with the help of my dad, my grandma Joanne Salzman, Gary Lincoff (a self-taught mycologist and author based out of New York), and Andrew Weil (a doctor known for pioneering integrative and natural medicinal techniques).

The festival began in 1977 as a conference in Aspen, primarily for doctors who wanted to learn more about mushroom poisoning. As this group of credentialed physicians—my grandpa included—delved into mycology, some became interested in psychedelic mushrooms. But about half of the organizers rejected any inquiry into the topic. So the group split after the 1979 conference, and the psychedelic side set up their tents elsewhere, eventually landing in Telluride, then a low-key, hippyish town, in 1981.

In Telluride, the festival became a yearly event where a big group of people could gather to talk openly about psychedelics. Those who were interested in magic mushrooms could come talk to scientists who were promoting their medicinal effects, advocates who favored legalization, artists who wanted to interpret mushrooms, chefs who wanted to enjoy them for dinner, and others who wanted to be mush

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ILLUSTRATION CLAIRE CHASSE

+++

The Telluride Mushroom Festival was, for me, a formative and surreal part of my childhood. The multi-day affair always culminated in a parade, in which everyone would dress up like mushrooms and march down the streets of the sleepy mountain town, chanting and banging on drums. We wore papier-mâché hats painted with dots and tie dye shirts, watching as people around us twirled and shouted, in various states of lucidity. My grandparents especially loved the festival and the parade. They would tape white puffballs to their denim hats and carry signs that advocated for the legalization of psychedelics. A large mushroom float pulled by a red pickup truck, painted like a shroom with white patches, trailed behind the procession, honking.

It felt like a fairytale. After hunting mushrooms all day, we ate our harvested crop with fresh peach pie. Our cohort was an eclectic group of mycologists—Paul Stamets, Art Goodtimes, Linnea Gillman, the Adams family, John Sir Jesse, and others—who were open and accepting. We reflected on our favorite works of art, music, and poetry from the day, and discussed the spots where we’d found the most mushrooms. We flung Latin names around.

Sometimes, we even tried new species that had never before been eaten.

As a young girl at the parade, I wasn’t aware of how many people were tripping. I thought Telluride was one of the most beautiful places in the world, and that it just made everyone really happy. One of my earliest memories is of

DESIGN BRIAANNA CHIU

My grandpa always said that he wanted to eat psychedelics on his deathbed.

I grew up hunting mushrooms with him in Colorado forests, watching him bend down to flip them over, inspect the undersides, dust them off. He showed me how to identify them, to intuit where they were most likely to grow.

He taught me to look for them at the edges of meadows, amidst rocky craters interspersed with strawberry plants. We were always looking for Boletus edulis—a choice edible. Early spring rain promised a good bolete year. But it had to rain later in the summer too, so basically you were hoping for rain all summer.

We would drive to the mountains in search of auburn caps with glossy stems and delicate pores. If we were lucky and other foragers hadn’t gotten there first, we returned home with our baskets full. We would fry them in olive oil and shower generous amounts of them on our pizza or pasta.

My grandpa compared mushroom hunting to not just learning a new language, but to a new awareness of life.

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rooms, literally. The early festival days were run on a tight budget. People camped, hiked, and went to the high school cafeteria for meals.

There was a palpable energy at the festival.

Experts in the field—Rick Doblin, John Cage, Sasha Schulgin, Laura Huxley (wife of Aldous Huxley), Gordon Wassan, Weil, and more—felt they were really onto something.

TEXT NELL SALZMAN

DESIGN BRIAANNA CHIU

ILLUSTRATION CLAIRE CHASSE

FEATS

+++

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Around this time (from 1982–1995), my grandparents led “Mushroom Study Tours,” trips across the world. They met local foragers, and ate and used mushrooms in Russia, Japan, India, Thailand, Burma, Madagascar, Borneo, and Papua New Guinea. With no liability coverage, what happened on these trips was certainly, at times, illegal. In Peru, a participant, tripping on Ayahuasca, fell into an empty swimming pool while on mushrooms and broke his hip. In Burma, a 80-year-old participant broke his pelvis after the carriage they were riding tipped over. But even injured participants kept joining the trips.

One year, the Telluride cohort ate Amanita muscaria, also called the Fly Agaric. I was too young to partake, but my dad said that they sat in a room together and sweated out their inner demons. He explained that they went into it knowing that the worst that could have happened would be temporary sickness. “Still, the side effects are not pleasant,” he said, explaining that he’s concluded that the mushroom is a poison, not a psychedelic, but that the line between the two is not always clear. (Pro Tip: This mushroom can be boiled, sauteed, and eaten as a nutty-tasting food, with the poison going into the water.) +++ My dad’s love of mushrooms extends into our life at home in Denver. He calls himself an “urban mushroom hunter.” He has a green thumb—plots full of eggplants, kale, cucumbers, pumpkins—but he likes to point out the way that mushrooms are just as much a part of his gardening practices as the plants. I remember when I was little, he pulled down a husk of corn that was growing black mold and told me that it was beautiful. There was a plume of soft, velvety truffle peaking through the shucks. “It’s Huitlacoche,” he told me. “Corn smut.”

I first became enamored with mushrooms because the people I loved most—my dad and grandpa—found them so remarkable. I felt like I had a secret, a world of treasures that only I and a few people knew how to identify or find. No one but me realized that the dark fungus that crept onto ears of corn was actually a mild and earthy delicacy sold online and in special Mexican markets. No one realized the white caps that popped up in grass lawns were actually as special as flowers, and could be eaten in pasta or make you have wild dreams.

I became skilled at identifying them, learning both their Latin and common names.

There’s the Phallus impudicus, an aptly named mushroom which attracts flies to the black slime that grows atop its shaft and smells strongly of semen. Agaricus campestris is related to the portobello mushroom you find in the store. Coprinus comatus is great for soups and hors d’oeuvres. Flammulina velutipes, or “Velvet Foot,” is a brown-stemmed white-spored mushroom that grows out of the snow, often called the “Winter Mushroom.”

City mushroom hunting is, as my dad likes to point out, addictive. Once you start noticing mushrooms, it’s impossible to stop. You get distracted. They’re all over the place. Especially after it rains. “Watch out. Your life will become a mushroom hunt. Life is a mushroom hunt,” he’ll often say. +++ He calls people who are scared of mushrooms

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

“mycophobic.” It’s his life mission to convert them. He goes so far as to suggest eating the mushrooms that grow out of the carpet in your bathroom, to prove that they’re harmless. But for all that I appreciate and have learned to love about mushrooms, I’m more understanding of mycophobia. Walking through the woods in Telluride, it would sometimes dawn on me that a small misidentification could make me deathly ill or even kill me.

Chlorophyllum molybdites—nicknamed “The Vomiter”—induces serious gastrointestinal distress, but looks like a harmless Agaricus that sprouts in garden beds and in between cracks in the sidewalk. Allegedly, it tastes delicious, so people are tempted to want more of it. Coprinopsis atramentaria supposedly makes you sick when consumed with alcohol, and the Galerina—a small, brown, nondescript mushroom that grows out of wood—is the most common Colorado mushroom that can actually kill you.

But few have eaten it—and no one’s died from it—mostly because it doesn’t look good.

All of these poisonous mushrooms have identifiers to tell you they aren’t safe for eating.

Still, while members of my family collect mushrooms on bike rides or walks through the city, I understand why it’s also a terrifying prospect.

There is a certain degree of risk involved in putting things from your backyard or on the trail into your frying pan. You really need to know the look-alikes—which edible mushrooms look like poisonous ones. It’s a lot to learn at once.

“Learn one or two a year,” my dad tells hunting newbies. “Don’t overwhelm yourself when you’re first trying.”

The prospect of a bad trip is also terrifying.

Scientists in the early days of the mushroom conference thought a lot about this. Gary Lincoff spoke frequently about his own trips at the event, recommending James Bakalar and Lester Grinspoon’s The Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (1979) to learn more about the safest way to do psychedelics, specifically the chapter on their therapeutic uses.

Though there has been public awareness about the beneficial effects of psychedelic mushrooms since the 1950s, landmark studies performed by NYU and Johns Hopkins in recent years have advanced a lot of this earlier, more fringe advocacy for psychedelics in the medical sphere. There is now readily-available evidence that even one-time doses of psilocybin—a compound found in most psychedelic mushrooms—is associated with improvements in emotional and existential dread after terminal cancer diagnoses. Psilocybin is also proven to significantly reduce immediate and sustained feelings of anxiety and depression. +++ At the festival, Lincoff liked to cite Timothy Leary’s advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Leary was a leading counterculture psychologist who argued that human emotion could be affected for the better by mind-altering substances. Lincoff recommended Ralph Metzner and Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience (1964), based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a highly regarded Buddhist text. Metzner (who spoke at the Telluride Festival) and Leary’s work appropriates Buddhist principles of death and rebirth as a metaphor for the experience of ego death, or depersonalization caused by psychedelics.

It’s a manual of sorts, a way of directing people to understand and use mushrooms. There are blank pages included for people to write down their thoughts and observations. “Honor the experience you’re having,” Lincoff told us. “Give yourself three days. A day of preparation, the event, and then a day to recover and reflect.”

Magic mushrooms—or mushrooms that contain psilocybin—have been used for thousands of years around the world. Like LSD and similar psychedelic drugs, magic mushrooms are neither addictive nor life-threatening. As long as you have the right mushroom, a le-

thal dose is nearly impossible. No matter how much you take or how often you take them, the whole experience is over in 6 hours. They can be life-changing, or just get you into a different mindset. “The safest kind of psychedelic out there,” Lincoff often said to me of mushrooms, grinning.

Nonetheless, for political, not scientific reasons, psilocybin is currently a Schedule I drug, meaning it is not currently accepted for use of any kind in the United States. However, in 2018 researchers at Johns Hopkins did recommend that it be reclassified from Schedule I to Schedule IV for medical use. Several cities in the US have recently decriminalized mushrooms—Denver, Oakland, Santa Cruz, and Ann Arbor. And while the data is meaningful and significant, most mushroom advocates do not argue for overnight legalization. Such a step would almost certainly backfire, as inevitable stories about people having bad trips would spread, misrepresenting the potential for safe consumption of mushrooms. The legalization process should be deliberate and intentional, experts say. +++ As I’ve gotten older and become more interested in the psychedelic and scientific aspects of mushrooms as opposed to their fairy-tale-like qualities, I’ve begun to understand more and more that my grandpa and his cohort were onto something in the 1980s. At the time, mushroom hunting was viewed as a taboo pastime.

Mushroom hunting, however, is a practice that has been undertaken in indigenous communities around the world. The popularization of mushroom hunting has simply made commercial a tradition that has been practiced for more than 10,000 years. In the 1950s, R. Gordon Wasson first found out that many cultures consumed magic mushrooms for religious purposes. He researched these worship ceremonies, traveling to various indigenous villages in Mexico to try them. In 1955, he brought them back to the United States from the village of Huautla de Jiménez, helping to birth the psychedelic counterculture that the Telluride Festival emerged from.

And only in the past 20 years has mushroom hunting shifted from being hippy to hipster.

My grandpa gave the festival to the Telluride Institute a few years ago, which now charges a hefty $400 per person. While I’m excited to see where the new awareness about mushrooms goes in the coming years, this monetization of the experience does feel slightly wrong to me.

Mushroom hunting is marketed as accessible and sustainable, but such a high payment for entry makes it decidedly inaccessible.

Part of what’s so special about mushroom hunting to me is its universality. Mushrooms grow in all different conditions. The same type of mushroom can be found in the mountains of Colorado and in Japan and in Russia. Anyone who wants to learn to trust themselves to identify specific taxonomic features can become a mushroom hunter.

When someone first starts mushroom hunting, they begin to notice the subtleties of ecosystems. Taught by experts around me, I have observed these patterns. I’ve learned about the mutually beneficial relationship between some of the mushrooms and the root ends of many trees—willow, pine, oak, birch. I can identify mushrooms based on their patches, gills, rings, stalks. Although I’ve been doing it my whole life, I still feel like I learn something new each time I go on a mushroom hunt.

Mushroom hunting, though a seemingly trivial pastime, has brought joy to my family across generations. It has allowed us to get into the Colorado mountains, to slow down and enjoy the scenery of our hikes, and to cook, eat and trip together.

NELL SALZMAN B’22 wants to start a mushroom parade in Providence.

X

BRYSON LEE “AFTER HOURS”

Bryson Lee R‘22 “After Hours” 12”x16” digital print on newsprint

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TEXT LOUGHLIN NEUERT

DESIGN ISAAC MCKENNA

ILLUSTRATION SAGE JENNINGS

Intermission: Crossword

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Across

1 When pluralized with a -z, it’s an ice cream treat 4 Got up 9 One who doesn’t just think 13 Red (f) in Spanish 15 Tooth towards the back of the mouth 16 Digging?

17 On the lam 18 Things you might hear from a congregation 19 Green, in Geneva 20 Piece of luggage that generated a historical insult 22 Wise ones 23 Currently airing 24 Term for a Cossack leader 26 Federal org. overseeing a lot of dough?

27 Went 16 across 29 Mixologists?

32 Greek wrap 34 It may be fiercely protected in Suburbia 35 What a Congressperson may what to defend 36 Attendee of Michigan State 39 Where the Warriors used to play 41 Suffix with mim- or gen42 Some six point scores, abbr 44 Machine that may help build a fusion reactor, abbr (this clue sucks sorry) 45 Outcome also called a “dub” 46 An alternative spelling for a popular martial art 48 Collection of gum, or cash 51 Tomorrow: Sp 52 Brother, in Bordeaux 54 Months containing ‘dog days’ 57 Like 5 and 7 down, (or even 54 down too!)

59 with J- or R- , common ending to a name 60 “Please, can I try?”

61 Initialism popularized in the 1990s 62 Small whirlpool in a larger body of water 63 Major French agricultural research institute (this one is a stretch sorry) 64 Branch of Islam with a major pilgrimage site at Najaf 65 School in New Haven 66 Organization founded Feb 1909 in NYC 67 They may grade a paper

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49 Peninsula containing six countries 50 Letters after gammas 51 “Ow, __ ___” Classic refrain on The Simpsons 53 There are usually two per floor, in a first year dorm 54 What a 7 down may carry 55 Federal org. overseeing a lot of land 56 German retailer currently expanding into the USA 58 Leak into 60 Writer/Critic/Essayist Carter

Answer key on Dear Indy

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

ARTS

James is our leader On James Celebrity

Turrell

and

The term ‘slow art’ was first coined in relation to Turrell’s work by the Pomona College literature professor, Arden Reed. In his book, Slow Art: The Experience of Looking, Sacred Images to James Turrell, Reed describes slow art as “what transpires between the beholder and whatever she is looking at… it’s a collection of encounters.” Much like Turrell, Reed thinks of slow art not as the artistic objects at hand, whether they be a glowing pink orbs or an oil painting, but instead “the meeting of object and observer.”

Slow art, as a concept, could be applied to any art medium you have the patience to spend time with, but the concept lends itself uniquely well to Turrell’s work, as the immersion of his spaces requires time and patience.

Reed claims that slow art is a recent phenomenon, that despite many pieces of art existing for millenium that we may contemporarily consider to be slow art, art only becomes slow art due to the relative speed of the culture in which it was created. In short, slow art didn’t exist in the past because everything was slow.

Reed claims that we now live in “speed culture,” where slow art can exist as a reaction to our rapid consumption of media.

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ILLUSTRATION LUCIA KAN-SPERLING

Kendall Jenner’s Architectural Digest Youtube video begins in her living room. After panning over her carefully curated selection of pillows and impressive lack of a television, the camera zooms back out to reveal Kendall in her foyer. She is wearing an all black matching Gucci set. Placed ten feet away from her couch is her

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While celebrities like Kanye and Kendall likely enjoy Turrell similarly to your run-ofthe-mill MASS MoCA frequenter, the material deprivation of Turrell’s installations—often empty rooms only filled with light—provide celebrities with a new way to engage with his art compared to other pieces in their collections, disengaging them from the material excess they are so used to, and instead indulging in them in a new abundance, one of color, light, and smoothness.

The Kardashians are no strangers to the world of high art. Each member of the family has their own extensive art collections, including Kylie’s Basquiat print, Kim’s Condo Birkin, and Kris’ Yoshitomo Nara canvas, displayed tastefully above her fireplace. Turrell’s art lends itself especially well to a Kardashian collection, and all celebrity collections alike; through their use of a less common medium in light, Turrell’s installations allow celebrities to indulge their collections in art that visually feels shiny and new, despite light art being an established craft.

Turrell’s art provides a unique immersive experience, devoid of the physical, but rich in the sensory. For celebrities, like the Kardashians, Turrell’s artwork is both personally fulfilling and socially beneficial. What is more Kardashian than a tranquil meditation space that can double as an Instagram background! A pink orb to ponder your relationship to space, before standing up and posing for your Architectural Digest cover. Turrell’s work presents celebrities with a way to engage with “high art” spaces, without “burdening” them with more physical luxury, allowing them to momentarily escape from their bohemian-style Beverly Hills hideaway, and enter a world of sensory saturation.

Through Turrell’s work, the Kardashians are able to flex a new kind of sensory abundance,

DESIGN ADDIE CLARK

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James Turrell, casting a pink glow over her and her Spanish-style archways. Installed into the foundation of Jenner’s house, the piece is a part of Turrell’s Elliptical Glass series. Named ‘Scorpius’ (just like her zodiac sign), Jenner’s piece retails for $750,000. Owning one of these pieces is no small feat, with Jenner being one of the few individuals to privately own a Turrell, providing her with the perfect glowing ovoid wall-display next to which she can hang up her driver’s keys and kick off her Zumi Leather Slide Sandals.

“I have always wanted a James Turrell… he actually makes these pieces to meditate in front of,” says Jenner.

While we can certainly revel in the humorous visual of Jenner sitting down by her front door to meditate by the soft glow of her pink cosmic light orb, maybe letting the warm colors of hundreds of thousands of dollars wash over her as she centers her breath, the use of Turrell as a meditative tool brings into question the piece’s intended purpose. Turrell maybe wouldn’t use the verbiage “meditate” to describe the process of consuming his work, as he views the purpose of his art less as the creation of the physical objects and spaces he is making, but rather the practice of its consumption. To quote the artist: “My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing.”

TEXT CHARLIE MEDEIROS

On March 15th, 2022, Kanye West posted an image to his Instagram. The photo was a scanned pencil sketch on white ruled paper, showing three circular disks. Above it, in crudely crossed out dark pencil, the words “SONESTA HOTEL / HILTON DOUBLETREE.” Below were the words “3 O’Clock” blocked off in a square, 267,244 likes, and the caption: “James is our leader.”

The invoked “James” is LA-based light sculptor, James Turrell. Turrell, the most successful protege of Southern California’s 1960’s light-and-space movement, is an installation artist specializing in immersive light pieces that are both visually and spatially disorienting. At the age of 75, Turrell’s “prolific body of work,” as described by his website, spans six decades of experience. His work is displayed internationally around the world and solo exhibits installed in global metropolitan centers including BadenBaden, Germany, Mexico City, Mexico, and North Adams, Massachusetts.

March’s Instagram post was not the first time that West has publicly talked about James Turrell. The two artists’ relationship has been four years in the making, with other highlights including West’s frequent Turrell-praising in interviews, publicized museum visits, and numerous Turrell-Tweets, the earliest of which was from December of 2018, with West tweeting the word “Turrell” followed by a goat emoji.

But West is not the only celebrity with an affinity for light-and-space art, with stars including Beyoncé, Kylie Jenner, and Devin Booker all lining up for some time with Turrell. Famous Canadian rapper, Drake, even used Turrell as the inspiration for his infamous 2015 music video, Hotline Bling. The set of this video, which consisted of colorful fluorescent boxes for Drake to dance inside of, led many to draw comparisons to the light artist’s work. Despite serving as the main creative inspiration for the project, Turrell had no involvement with the production or design of the video. Turrell’s first reaction to Hotline Bling was quite negative, with the LA native considering taking legal action against the former Degrassi star. Turrell eventually cooled his Southern-California temper, later releasing a statement saying that he is glad Drake “fucks with me.” But the Turrell adoration spills out even more locally into West’s life, specifically to his ex-wife’s younger half-sister.

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ARTS ILLUSTRATION LUCIA KAN-SPERLING DESIGN ADDIE CLARK TEXT CHARLIE MEDEIROS 13

one that signifies financial, artistic, and spiritual wellness. Gone are the days where Kim must Twitter-post about her surprising her closest circle with a mid-pandemic private island 40th birthday party to show her exclusive lifestyle; now, she can simply snap a pic in her little sister’s living room. While getaway islands and private jets are easy to critique, Turrell’s pieces, due to their status as art, provide armor from criticism through their association with good aesthetic taste. The Kardashians, by owning Turrell’s work, can continue to flex their exclusive sensibilities, only now through light and space. +++ Springing from Jenner’s Architectural Digest video are a slew of Turrell imitations: bite-sized tutorials on how to create your own floating, pink, living-room orb —maybe you could even name it after your own zodiac! Titles include “HOW TO MAKE KENDALL JENNER’S AMAZING SCULPTURE FOR UNDER $100” and “thrifting + diy-ing for kendall jenner.” The videos follow a similar, self-explanatory vein: how can we make James Turrell sculptures in our bedrooms? The answer seems to lie in LED light strips, Home Depot light fixtures, and extension cords. These online, DIY spaces take Turrell’s visions out of Beverly Hills estates and extinct volcanic craters, instead bringing them into the homes of anyone curious about light and space.

Connecting to the concept of slow art, these DIY videos bring into question the state of James Turrell in the age of social media replicability. Turrell is against the photography of his installations, with video/photo documentation explicitly banned at all of his solo exhibitions.

Despite his aversion to the photography of his work, it is undeniable how well Turrell’s work lends itself to platforms like Instagram: perfect spheres, glossed over in impossibly vibrant colors, practically begging to have a selfie taken in front of.

Turrell relies on an incredible amount of precision to create his work, specifying the dimensions of his installations to 1/64th of an inch to guarantee his signature sublime smoothness. But the end result of Turrell’s process

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

is almost a digitization: a flattening of the 3D into soft, smooth, replicable shapes, a glossy glow mirroring the soft hum of a screen. The same replicability that comes with Turrell’s precision is instantly captured by a camera, a snap into the 2D with a customizable filter or sheen. Through platforms like Instagram, Turrell’s work is both exaggerated visually and diminished spatially. The colors become brighter, the shapes smoother, the ‘how?’ even more mystifying. But without space, how do we get lost in the scale of a Turrell; how do I experience spacial slow art when I’m half-an-inch away from my phone?

This raises the question, how do we, as the non-Kardashian/Jenner/West/Drakes of the world, engage with Turrell, and with slow art generally? Most people do not live in BadenBaden or Mexico City or Western Massachusetts, and can only dream of one day having a million dollar light fixture installed into their walls. While it may not be realistic to have a Turrell in any of our beach-side foyers any time soon, in our attempt at DIY replication, we may unlock a form of artistic consumption even slower than slow art: perhaps super slow art. Through the process of craft, we are able to engage with art slowly and methodically, taking more time than any amount a museum would ever allot us. Maybe those most engaged with slow art are the DIY Youtubers who have labored over these videos for hours, providing me with helpful hacks on how to save $749,900 on my ongoing journey towards the Turrellification of my home. To quote Youtuber ‘wearlucinda’ in her video, steal Kendall’s decor: DIY neon light sculpture (James Turrell inspired), “Beautiful objects are not just for the rich and famous. We can make them ourselves too.”

CHARLIE MEDEIROS B’24 thinks YouTube is the answer.

LIT

Chamber of Reflection, no Glass, no Mirror Questions for writers who read, see, and expose themselves in their vulnerable language.

1. How would you describe your voice?

To visualize your voice: pin it down on a page. Let it scrub the surface. Let it leave black marks as charcoal does.

Let it leave wistful dots, unfinished circles, nostalgic oblongs. a) Her shape and her color 2:20 AM. The grass slope. Green. Green polluted by the idle black. She rolls down from the top of the slope. Like an ignorant, untimely baby paving her way to reality. Fractured umbilical cord.

Amniotic fluid. Damp air. In that dull membrane, she’s growing larger and older: her clenches are like two blind women’s handshakes. Void.

The membrane of night envelops her again.

There’s no destination––the stop sign is muted.

She screams: a fresh stream of dews and stones is pounding in her throat. b) Her speed and texture

c) What she left behind when she’s gone Static hope: I think we are infinitely close to the final punctuation 2. Tell me about the reciprocal gazes that take the place of words.

See the oily rainbow in that gutter? I tiptoed beside it. I cast a glance at it and shifted my gaze quickly. I even blushed: that filthy colorful world was forming and deforming by itself. My ungodly gaze was not a part of it. I should lower my head and write, lower my head and write, I chanted.

4. Tell me about punctuation: what’s between your words?

Jenny. 珍妮. Jen-ny. Zihan. 子涵. Zi-han. The precious one. The water soothes arid land in a motherly way.1 The insecure syllables peeling off from each other. Between them: undefined swirl of dust above the rug. White hair from my cat randomly ends up in my mouth. Hard to locate.

Flawless oblongs of the airports. Heavy tongue of another language. My mother tongue is a ghetto for motherless poets.

Sometimes I’m confused by this furious form of water. Sometimes I’m confused by this gap in between: raindrops strike the sky into scattered mirrors on the ground. I gasp for air in the dense mist, while the deformed sky reflects my face’s hidden unreality. Between my face and the scattered sky, there’s this unfathomable distance being interpreted and yearned for—forever— 5. In what language do you dream?

7. Who would you write to if you could?

As a writer I feel ashamed to tell an incomplete story or write a malfunctioning letter—I don’t know how to arrange a fragmented narrative.

Fragment: you are breathing in the stale air in that empty church. Fragment: we are kissing.

The remnants of the stale air are passed on to me. Now I’m someone from the past. Fragment: I shiver because of that clumsy knock against my teeth. Fragment: immeasurable snowflakes.

Now what? The distance between us: skinlike, compressed air. Easily overlooked gap between the mattress and the white wall, full of tide-like pain and light-like wistfulness. I tell you I’m scared of commitment. I tell you I’m scared of outlining my emotions. I wake up in the middle of nothingness: a damp morning unintentionally left blank. Yet in that night’s dream the snow almost blocked my sight.

You stood in the middle of a slurred one-way traffic.

8. How do you finish a poem?

I say it is a very writerly thing to visualize your voice: listen to the water. The torrent pounding her throat is bottomless. The dam. Her throat is scraped and tinted. Do not misread this rhythm as unending dullness. Do not rush to the final punctuation ZIHAN ZHANG B’25 wants a pet frog.

Jenny=珍妮，珍(sounds like “Jen”) in Chinese means precious, 妮(sounds like “ny”) means girl. 子(Zi)涵(Han)=Zihan. “氵” in 涵 represents water.

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VOLUME 44 ISSUE 09

ILLUSTRATION MICHELLE DING

Barefoot on arid land.

3:00 PM: A time always left unimportant and uninterpreted. Dust blocking my sight.

3:40 PM: sunset striking my black pupils directly, turning them into brown.

4:00 PM: a sound. 你知道裸露的土壤会使时间变 慢吗? Do you know bare soil slows the time?

I always sit at the table beside the window to eat.

I eat grilled chicken breasts and green beans.

I drink iced lemonade. I read books that have bronze mirrors on the pages. I respond to the fragmented voices in one of them: And the point is, to live everything. I’m fragile enough to melt in the glimmer of any overgeneralization like this. Live the questions now. Now. I will do it now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Thank you for telling me this.

I see the reflection of my face on the bronze mirror on the last page. My hair.

The birthmark on the outer corner of my left eye. My mouth, slightly open, as if trying to say something. I overhear the conversations of the dying leaves outside: that blasphemous blossom in November.

DESIGN AMY LIM

The countless deaths of raindrops made the man almost desperate: these pieces of glass had already broken involuntarily. He was drunk and cast his gaze—unsober and prolonged—to the other side of the road. His hair pinned to his coarse forehead, his back curved, his feet bare: like a fetus, holding its primitive pride and anxiety. Enveloped by his immobility, he was secretly burnt and reborn. I hunch in that unfamiliar belly with my feet wet. Or shall I call this place a home?

On the other side of the road, the girl squatted

3. What do you feel when you are running out of words?

6. Describe your fear of/obsession with words.

TEXT ZIHAN ZHANG

She moves like large mammals but she knows nothing about history. She wants to live like: the rhythmic stitches created by that pretentious sewing machine. What she actually is: a tied knot. Young enough to leave itself clueless.

under an eave, gazing: the lens in her eyes was so close to her pupils. Her furtive keenness was trying to break free. There, the man threw himself on the ground, imitating incessant deaths around him. Unlike the raindrops screaming in unconsciousness, he descended and fell apart as his brief gorgeousness still pounded, lively. The slight lines of raindrops between them were vibrating. How I wish to be sober, how I wish to narrate every steadfast falling of the raindrops to you someday.

Being characters of this insurmountable story, they were both suspicious about the perspectives that the world endowed them.

I can’t tell. I dream in Google Translate: be hind every sentence there’s a scraped robotic subtitle. Orphaned lexicons and twinned semantics.

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WASTE LIFE

TEXT KATHERINE XIONG

DESIGN RI CHOI

ILLUSTRATION ANNA WANG

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The COVID-19 Pandemic, as told in eight million tons of plastic

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In November 2021, a joint Nanjing University/ UC San Diego study estimated that the global COVID pandemic had generated over eight million tons of plastic waste, more than 25,000 tons of which had entered the world’s oceans.

How should we understand these numbers?

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), “we”—the united peoples of Earth, presumably—now produce 300 million tons of plastic waste per year. Between 1950 and 2017, “we” produced about 7,000 million tons of plastic waste. Global production of primary plastics is estimated to reach 34 billion tons by 2050.

Cynical readers might hone in on the fact that eight million tons represents only a 2.7% increase from the 300 million tons produced per year. I’m more astounded by the fact that 300 million tons is our baseline, that an ‘acceptable’ amount of plastic waste exists, such that eight million tons of anything might seem like nothing. Such plastic now lives forever as a measurable part of our geological strata and presence in our oceans. Reading through the framework of the Anthropocene, the idea that human activity now plays an outsize role in the production of the earth as we know it, we might say that plastic has become the human calling card, the palimpsest of our existence on earth.

To call this waste ours, of course, is to posit that every human produces, consumes, and then wastes the same amount and kind of plastic and in the exact same ways, and thus that all of us are equally responsible. In the case of the plastic palimpsest of the pandemic, the study’s researchers posit that we know exactly where the plastic is coming from: 87.4% of the excess waste came from hospitals (72% of which the authors attribute to hospitals in the Asia/ Pacific), 7.6% from individual use of personal protective equipment (PPE), 4.7% from plastic packaging from a surge in online shopping, and 0.3% from testing kits. The researchers then suggest that this level of global discharge necessitates better waste management from developing countries in Asia in particular.

And yet, as the authors themselves acknowledge, plastics’ strength-to-weight ratio, durability, and relative cheapness, have made plastic materials critical in mitigating the spread of disease. In the case of public health, the benefits of plastics’ disposability—the sense that contaminated plastic is made to be thrown away—suggests that their worth as materials emerges from their existence as future waste.

Much has been said about the so-called ‘human cost’ of the pandemic, itself differentially distributed across countries and communities over time. How might we read the material cost of the pandemic in conversation? If we follow the material traces of the pandemic through plastics—particularly plastic waste—what is the story we see? +++

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

What does eight million tons of waste matter look like? Where does it come from, and where does it go? The truth is, I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine how plastic waste materializes, beyond anonymized photos of landfills and colorful plastic matter floating through unidentifiable patches of standard blue ocean. Many of us have never even seen a landfill up close.

Waste accumulation in the West is already a highly class-dependent problem: In Providence, for example, the most visible waste collection areas are located in Lower South Providence and out of most Brown and RISD students’ way.

Providence has had a long history of displacing its toxic byproducts onto communities with the least class privilege. Its textile and metalworking industries, which began during the Industrial Revolution, fed industrial toxins into Narragansett Bay, the Blackstone River, and the Woonasquatucket River. The later emergence of its jewelry-making industry in Downtown and South Providence has left the region marked by soil contaminants, many of which are known carcinogens. And the redirection of Providence’s infamous stretch of I-95 through Downtown and I-195 through Fox Point now displaces the highway’s toxic fumes across Federal Hill, the South Side, and Fox Point. But even the waste products of Providence pale in comparison with those offloaded by Western countries—particularly the U.S.—into areas of the Asia Pacific, a process that started long before the pandemic began.

Anthropologist Mary Douglas famously posited that what we call dirt is no more than “matter out of place.” In other words, there is no such thing as dirt until we decide what doesn’t belong and treat it as dirt. All this dirt must go somewhere—doesn’t matter where, as long as it’s elsewhere. With the plastic matter we use—before, during, and after the pandemic—perhaps it’s more accurate to say that matter loses its place, or is displaced from useful status.

At first, we frame plastic as useful, critical even, to containing the pandemic. When we’ve used it up, however, we rebrand it waste, then offload it onto other places and communities.

For a long time, after all, American consumers’ used-up plastics and supposedly recyclable waste was bought by or simply displaced onto Asian countries for waste processing, a transnational flow that stuttered, but didn’t stop, when China announced in 2018 that it would no longer accept the world’s waste. Today, despite the 2019 Basel Convention’s attempt to stem the flow of plastic waste from the U.S. and other wealthy, big polluters to more heavily production-based, developing countries particularly in the Asia Pacific and Africa, the U.S. has simply shifted its sights to countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, and Kenya. And for clear reasons: to date, the U.S. has almost no infrastructure of its own for handling plastic recycling, let alone for sorting through and cleaning the tons of contaminated or badly sorted plastic waste Americans

discard under the guise of ‘recycling,’ placing their ‘dirt’ out of sight, out of mind.

On the face of things, the 2021 study makes a politically neutral suggestion: that medical providers in developing countries should reduce waste. Yet in this, too, blame for these plastics’ existence and use is displaced onto the other, an other whose use of life-saving equipment is framed as wasteful, unmanaged, and inefficient under the guise of scientific neutrality. In this respect, the positionality of the plastic user— particularly their position within a global network of waste-makers—can change the meaning assigned to the plastic waste: ‘Peripheral’ people’s plastic waste is excessive, while ‘central’ people’s plastic waste (which far exceeds the amount per household generated by those on the periphery) is normalized as acceptable. In that sense, the moral degradation assigned to the periphery in contrast with the center infuses plastic as well, making their plastics—made to be cheap and accessible—lesser, wasteful materials. But the inverse is true as well: The moral condemnations associated with plastics located in different parts of the world—their associations with wastefulness, fungibility, standardization vs. individuality—reflect back onto the people who use them. People on the periphery become ‘waste life,’ while those in the center, producing significantly more waste per household, remain human, dignified, individual, and valued.

And still this picture would not be complete without confronting how plastic producers have themselves done a magic act of displacing responsibility for the waste their products become onto consumers. This, too, was a narrative peddled long before the pandemic. +++ That the center of plastic production remains in China, according to 2020 estimates by PlasticsEurope, with other countries in the Asia Pacific coming in third after the U.S. and Canada, also makes a difference. On one hand, the supply chain interruptions and shipping interruptions that characterize the pandemic’s material movements have been out of individuals’ control. On the other, this focus on flows has historically worked to hide slow violences against the people that make the goods: For example, the ways in which factory workers— most visibly garment workers in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam—were afforded little job protection when the pandemic started and apparel chains began refusing to pay for the goods produced in their name, yet were expected to return to their jobs when American demand came back on the upswing. The capitalist shock at the fact that human lives are not infinitely malleable and disposable and cannot bend their needs to the whims of the market has always been a feature of the system, but it takes a disruption—like the pandemic—for peo-

S+T

ple to pay attention. Even then, the headlines center on that disruption and not the fact that workers in these factories have always sustained a ‘baseline’ level of abuse. This narrative aligns with how the emphasis on the excess plastic generated by the pandemic suggests the existence of an ‘acceptable’ amount of waste.

If we were to construct a material record of factory labor, we’d be stymied by the fact that the products go so far around the world, divorced from their origins except by the innocuous “Made in Bangladesh” on the tags. But maybe the material record of this century isn’t meant to be read through final resting places, but through motion. In particular, we might read for the records of the time it takes for a good to be made and reach its intended destination. During the pandemic, these records may manifest not just as material movements, but in stoppages as well. We might consider the empty vessels of production—the factories that have shut down, the shipping containers that await being collected and filled, the medical waste that piles up and, eventually, flows out to the sea. We might consider the material traces of ‘acceptable’ production, consumption, and waste processes, but also the material traces of how these have ground to a halt. +++ How might we locate these problems in plastic? Consider the most visible plastic remnant of the pandemic—disposable protective masks.

The protective layers of surgical masks, KN94s, KN95s, and N95s are made from non-woven fabrics, typically thermoplastics like polypropylene. Even though these forms of PPE comprise far from the majority of the 26 million tons of plastic waste attributable to the pandemic, the proliferation of these standardized masks—and the debates over how and when to wear them, who should make them and how, what is safe and what is not, not to mention the question of how to get them—have been localized as an easy site for pandemic discourse overall.

In the beginning, masks had no social value in the U.S. Before March 2020, in a misguided attempt to deter people from buying up scarce PPE needed in hospitals, the CDC had declared masks effectively useless against the pandemic, something about which no shortage of friends reminded me when I finally started wearing them at my mother’s urging. Wearing them made me look like I was buying into an anti-scientific hysteria—a Chinese hysteria—a feeling exacerbated by the fact that the only other peo-

ple I saw wearing masks around campus were Chinese international students.

Yet masks were also a precious commodity.

At the start of the pandemic, when Wuhan remained in lockdown, my mother mailed shipment after shipment of masks back to family in China who couldn’t buy them, hoping at least one would make it through shipping snarls and quarantine restrictions. The pandemic became a site of weird double consciousness: On one hand I had my mother, my extended family, the anecdotes of terrified Chinese people in lockdown, recounting the horrors of the filled ICU beds, tearfully enumerating the unknowns that plagued them. And on the other I had “American” science, and an ‘American’ refusal to buy into ‘conspiracy’ thinking—the conspiracy thinking of a transnational panic a white friend once offhandedly commented that “my” country had caused.

By April 2020, when the CDC had reversed its messaging on masking, a continued shortage of plastic masks—and a sense that plastic masks should be conserved for use in hospitals and that using plastic masks would encourage waste—led to widespread production of homemade cloth masks. Unlike the standardized plastic surgical masks seen in news photos on the faces of unidentifiable Asian people, cloth masks could be significantly more individualized, to the point that they could have personalities. A person in a cloth mask could signal their belief in the severity of the pandemic and their care for other people’s lives without seeming suspiciously less individual, and potentially more dangerous. And this emphasis on individuality filtered into these masks’ production as well: Even when they weren’t, cloth masks carried the association of being made at home, with love, by individual artists and designers— unlike the faceless mass of Southeast Asian factory workers enlisted to make plastic masks by the same garment factories that laid them off just months earlier.

Plastic masks have since been rehabilitated for a liberal audience—educated people, believers in science. Their ability to filter contagion far exceeds that of cloth masks; the waste they generate is a small price to pay for the safety they provide; their standardization now reflects connotations of good science and good health.

At a wealthy, elite, liberal, and enlightened institution, we’ve supposedly risen above such material and discursive concerns. Now, despite the continuation of shipping delays and rising costs, Brown’s testing site always carries trash bin sized boxes of KN95s. Caseloads (at a school that no longer requires asymptomatic testing, mind you) are down, even as national case numbers tick upward under the BA.2 Omicron variant. But this privileged separation from the plastic world belies the massive global network that makes sustaining our lives in the pandemic ecosystem possible.

would leave an indelible mark on the world, down to the geological record itself. Which is not to say it hasn’t: Recent revised estimates by the World Health Organization have found that a total of 15 million people had died from COVID-19 by the end of 2021, far more than the previous estimate of six million aggregated from individual countries’ own reporting.

Whether or not COVID becomes an endemic disease, our lifeways—particularly our remote work practices, attitudes toward controlling the spread of illness—may never go “back to normal.” As for the eight million tons (and counting) of excess plastic waste generated, however, who’s to say that we’ll be able to distinguish it from the other 300 million tons of plastic we produce every year, once it degrades out of its recognizable forms?

The pandemic is now only in its third year.

On a geological scale, three years is indistinguishable from an era. With the material dating technology we have now, we may never be able to pinpoint the exact two-year time stratum from which a plastic emerged. Nor would we be able to tell where in the world such plastic was produced without any labels. Synthetic molecules are designed to be infinitely replicable, devoid of geological traces, such that material tracing becomes impossible without access to specific chemical formulas carefully guarded by producers.

And maybe this, too, makes sense. In plastic terms, the pandemic is not, in fact, a separate era of history. In terms of waste products, waste processes, and the connotations of waste we assign to the communities onto whom we in America offload plastic production and waste, the pandemic has only been more of the same, slow violence. We’ve even replicated the narratives of plastic in the narratives of the pandemic, offloading blame for a “Chinese” virus onto an Asia-Pacific positioned as anti-scientific, anti-health, and anti-sustainability while simultaneously reaping the benefits of the invisible labor network located there.

The difference is that now, just for this moment, the disruptions of COVID have made it impossible not to see this process of waste-making at work. How we will keep seeing, remembering, living with that process even after the geological and oceanic record swallows our plastic history whole—this, I think, will be the ultimate test of this time period we call the pandemic.

KATHERINE XIONG B’23 is trying to live with the past three years.

+++ With a global disruption so extreme as the pandemic, I’ve always imagined that the fallout

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 09

16

EPHEMERA JUSTIN LI “HIDE AND SEEK

Justin Li B+RISD’25 “Hide and Seek” Paper, 18 x 12”

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THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

DEAR INDY

die,

Dear In

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath in, and exhale through your mouth. Imagine you’re in a meadow, a bright green meadow, with daffodils and butterflies. A barn stands in the distance, but otherwise you’re alone. It’s warm, comfortable, and unrealistically peaceful. Off to the left, over a little hill, you see a flock of sheep approaching. Count them: 1, and then 2, maybe 3, are there 4? 5? Now we’re at 6, 7, 8…

Congrats! You’ve entered your dream state. As the questions this week show, we often feel at the whims of our own dreams: they’re the master, and we’re the limp puppet. But fear not! With enough practice, you can wrest back the control your unconscious has stolen. I mean, you can control your thoughts in the daytime, what’s the real difference? You dreamed of the sheep, you counted them until you fell asleep, and you could shear them and make jackets out of their wool if you so pleased.

’t say I’m I wouldn d, but I be e crazy in have som ly g definite in e e s . I’m s ie s a t n I fa guy, and this new t, but he’s a lo like him al as antastic y I f s a t o n wa ere any me. Is th p our relagu can brin ted sex life mu tively… n’t that wo a in a w y eelings? f hurt his

Love, antasies Failed F

Dear Failed Fantasies,

Dear Indie,

Canceling My

Love, Own Conscious ne

ss

Dear Canceling My Own Consciousness,

Dear Indie,

rcings, cigarettes, eam girl: tattoos, pie dr my of ion vis fic ry speci sses, and I fell in I’ve always had a ve l from one of my cla gir a g tin da d rte sta o, I ink about is how etc. A few months ag love you,” all I can th “I id sa e I’v ce sin t y, bu rcings, an aversion love. I should be happ tattoos, only ear pie No of. d me ea dr I l e gir bad? she’s nothing like th this is bad, but how to all nicotine. I know Love, Hot Girl Heretic

Dear Hot Girl Heretic, I don’t know that this is that bad, but surely you know it’s lame. It’s obvious you’re chasing a childhood fantasy from watching Meghan Fox in Transformers. It seems to me that you just as easily could have obsessed over Twilight and, rather than your dream girl being some physical manifestation of the word “badass,” you’d be chasing someone like Bella/Kristen Stewart: pale, quiet, and hopelessly moody. (I, for example, fell in love with James Marsden from 27 Dresses, but I have enough self-awareness to not reject everyone who isn’t a sheepish reporter with a dazzling smile.)

I hate to break it to you, but you’re probably not this girl’s dream, either. I doubt—no offense—that her dream boy resembled anything like you. Except for the few rare, Machine Gun Kelly-like individuals lucky enough to score the Meghan Foxes of the world, most of us end up with something a lot different than what we imagined. This isn’t settling, though, and I think if you read it that way, perhaps you should spare your girlfriend the trouble and call things off. Then, you can try to find that dream girl with cigarettes coming out of her ears and piercings covering her arms. I wonder if she’ll be interested in you. I wonder if you’re everything she ever imagined. No offense.

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 09

DESIGN SAM STEWART

When I was younger, I had a recurring dream where I would get invited to a party and show up only to find that the whole thing had been an elaborate prank. I would start panicking because I was stuck at a trampoline park/escape room/laser tag arena alone with no way to get home. I would wake up once my heart was pounding fast enough that it interrupted my sleep.

Your dream sounds different—certainly more erotic. But, like my more socially pathetic dream, it is a dream you don’t want to be having. Recurring dreams have a way of infecting your conscious life—I once didn’t speak to my mom for five days because I was convinced, based on my dreams, that she was pregnant and wasn’t telling me. It’s important to cut unwanted dreams off at the root before they stake their claim to your waking hours. And, considering your dreams could end up not only hurting you but everyone involved, it’s especially important we erase this dream altogether.

First, we must delete your crush. This doesn’t have to be violent, but it must be final. Before you fall asleep, try to imagine a scenario where this person leaves your life once and for all. Maybe they move across the country. Maybe they get married, have kids, and settle down in a mega-suburb. Maybe, in this suburb, they make a good living but lose it all after being charged with wire fraud. Or maybe they become a famous actor only to have their fame ripped away after a drunken rant that bars them from any respectable role. Or, if you really want to be done with them, maybe they die in a suspicious scuba diving accident off the coast of Providence. These are all viable dream-starters as you begin the process of canceling this person from your unconscious.

Once they’re gone, though, we’ll need something to take their place.

It’s important to reorient here.

Don’t fill your imagination’s hole with another person who could end up disappointing you.

Dream about something apart from love: a trip, a job, a house.

To get over my dream about being left at a Skyzone, I dreamed the classic middle-schooler dream: fame. I would fall asleep each night imagining myself as a model on a runway or with a late night talk show. It cured me. Perhaps it could cure you, too.

TEXT CECILIA BARRON

I keep dreamin g about this pe rson I have a crush on . This would be fun— and even arou sing!—if they di dn have a girlfrie ’t nd morning disapp . I wake up every ointed becaus e I know it will only ev er be a relation ship in my imaginatio n. Any tips on ca nceling someone from your dreamland ?

Sex carries a lot of ego, so you’ll have to go about this carefully. For example, don’t do it during the act. Or right before, and definitely not right after. Pick a nice, neutral, sex-less location. Someplace where all ego is abandoned—a democratic utopia where everyone is on the same playing field.

Like, say, a cafeteria. You want somewhere loud, and vaguely smelly.

Try to sit on the same side of the table so you don’t have to look each other in the eyes. You might have seen each other naked, but direct eye contact during a confrontation is more freaky than anything you could do in the bedroom (and it sounds like such freakiness makes him a bit uncomfortable). Then, raise the problem politely, maybe over a plate of porridge or stew or whatever the dining hall is serving. All you have to do is ask, with some humility, whether he might be interested in doing [redacted] in the [redacted] with a [redacted]. While he might seem less fantastical than you, it could be just because he’s never really thought about it.

If he remains uninterested and you’re now awkwardly sitting over two bowls of cold porridge in a loud and overwhelmed cafeteria, then you might just have to reconsider. There are plenty of people who would be happy to [redacted] your [redacted] in a [redacted]. It’s his loss.

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BULLETIN items to folks in need.

BULLETIN

Upcoming Actions & Community Events Tuesday 4/26 @ 2:30 PM: Protest to End Homelessness in RI Now! Join the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project (RIHAP), HOPE and other direct-service organizations at the State House to advocate for every Rhode Islander’s right to be housed! We must END HOMELESSNESS today. SHOW UP for yourself and your community. If there is someone sleeping on the streets in our city, it is everyone’s responsibility!

Location: Rhode Island State House Saturday 4/23 @ 3 PM - 5 PM: Adult Ally Open House - Spring Break Edition The Providence Student Union will be hosting an Adult Ally Open House—come tour the office, meet and greet their youth leaders + staff, learn about ongoing campaigns, enjoy food from Small Format, and more! RSVP at: https://tinyurl.com/psuadultally Location: Providence Student Union Office, 769 Westminster Street, Providence Saturday 4/30 @ 8 - 2AM: Ocean State A$$ Birthday Fundraiser Celebrate O$A’s 2nd birthday and spend some cash on your local sex worker organizing group. Featuring local DJs, a dance party, and hot merch. Studio 54 theme - dress to impress!

Location: The Salon, 57 Eddy St, Providence Tuesday 5/3 @ 6 PM: The Fundamentals of Political Economy Reading Group This is an opportunity for free education, networking with fellow leftists in the area, and acquiring the intellectual tools needed to build a better world. Every first and third Tuesday from May 3rd to August 2nd, hosted by the RI CPUSA and Red Ink. Please RSVP if you plan on attending, and let them know if you need help finding copies of the books. The first meeting (May 3) will be introductions. RSVP at: https://www.eventcreate.com/e/fundamentals-of-political-e Location: Red Ink Community Library, 130 Cypress St., Providence Sundays in April @ 3-5PM: Queer Knitting Circle at Small Format Queer knitting circle is back! Want to learn how to knit or refresh your knowledge? Looking for more queer community? Bring needles and yarn for a lesson! The group will meet every Sunday through April.

Location: Small Format, 335 Wickenden St., Providence

DESIGN SAM STEWART

ILLUSTRATION SOFIA BERGER

Mutual aid* & community fundraisers

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*Mutual aid is “survival pending on revolution,” as described by the Black Panthers. Join in redistributing wealth to create an ecosystem of care in response to a system of institutions that have failed or harmed our communities. +

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Community Support Needed Donate at https://givebutter.com/amor4sol AMOR is fundraising for Sulayman, “Sol”, a Gambian father to an 8-year old boy from Providence. Sol was detained by ICE in late 2018, and ultimately deported to Gambia in March of 2019. Now, his family are beginning the process of getting Sol back to the US to reunite with his wife and son. Any help would be appreciated.

Support a Black mom who is grieving Donate at tinyurl.com/Black-mom-grieving This fundraiser is intended to raise money for a Providence community member who has faced several trials this past year: assaults on her family at the hands of police, traumatizing DCYF raids, and the passing of close family members and friends, including her father. While battling cancer, she is also the primary caretaker of several grandchildren, and needs the funds to provide for them and pay for her father’s service.

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Queer and Trans Mutual Aid PVD Venmo @qtmapvd, PayPal.me/qtmapvd Support mutual aid for LGBTQIA people in Rhode Island! There are currently 16 outstanding requests for aid, equal to $1600. Help QTMA fill this need!

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Kennedy Plaza Survival Drive (by Wide Awake Collective) Venmo WideAwakes-PVD, Cashapp: $MutualAidMondays Support weekly survival drives on Saturdays at Kennedy Plaza! This drive distributes food, water, hygiene materials, warm clothing and other important

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

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Railroad Fund PVD Venmo: theorytakespraxis The railroad fund provides sustainable support to people currently incarcerated in Rhode Island. Please donate and help Railroad support a friend who is in need of continued survival and support this winter.

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Ocean State A$$ Mutual Aid Fund 2022 Venmo: OSA-funds Support local sex workers by donating to the venmo above and consider buying an Ocean State A$$ calendar, on sale at Fortnight Wine Bar, Hungry Ghost Press, Symposium Books, Mister Sister Erotica, and RiffRaff.

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COYOTE RI Closet (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics RI) Now accepting donations of hygiene products and new or used clothing at the Love and Compassion Day Health Center; 92 East Avenue, Pawtucket RI, 02904. Contact Sheila Brown (401) 548-3756 to donate or collect items.

A message from the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project: We are calling on Rhode Island’s state and municipal governments to end homelessness in Providence and Rhode Island. Funding is now expiring for 525 hotel and emergency winter shelter beds created due to the Covid-19 crisis. Those who have occupied those beds are now being evicted. At least 255 people have been reported as living outside in the last two weeks alone—these numbers are an underestimate, and will only increase as people are forced to leave winter shelter.

People being evicted from these winter shelter beds have nowhere to go: there are already 932 individuals on waiting lists for shelter.

Despite knowing of this issue since May 2021, our state government has not adequately addressed this crisis. This is a failure of leadership on part of both the Governor and the General Assembly.

The governor must immediately order temporary emergency shelters with 500 beds and find sites for them. This cannot wait until next fall. The governor and General Assembly must also find creative ways to begin the process of generating 500 new permanent supportive housing units.

As outreach workers and others working directly with people forced to stay outside, we are beyond frustrated by the lack of urgency within municipal and state government to address the homelessness crisis, which has grown exponentially in recent years. These are not just horrifying statistics: we see and hear from these people every day. We ask that by hearing from us – and from those directly impacted – together we can make real progress toward ending homelessness in Rhode Island.

Please take the following actions: 1. Join RIHAP, HOPE, and other direct-service organizations at the State House on Tuesday, April 26 at 2:30 to demand that the Governor responds to the needs of our community.

2. Sign this petition (https://chng.it/JTLn45TX) and share it with your networks and community.

3. Attend a RIHAP / Homeless Bill of Rights meeting—a peer-run advocacy groups that meets on Fridays at 11 am at DARE. 4. Contact your elected officials and community leaders.

While the state has expanded its shelter capacity, an unprecedented need remains: we need significantly more permanent affordable housing for very low income people, and we need significant resources now to keep people safe until that housing comes. We need to end homelessness in Rhode Island now and for good

Do you have an event, action, or other information for the Providence community that you’d like to see shared on this page?

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