TOE TAGS

PS is a misnomer: when PS finishes something, he doesn’t linger, or overstretch a good thing, or ruin a moment with an addendum: when PS is done, he claps his hands together and gets a move on: he says to cut your darlings and to scrap your adverbs, and before you can argue there’s a PS-shaped hole in the door and a cloud of dust behind him. But, also, well—does the Indy issue corrections? Because (and this is a secret), I’ve seen him linger on a quiet, frozen pond, and I’ve seen him return again and again to ideas and buffalo grasses and songs and fallacies now well-worn and threadbare, and I’ve seen him back in the same place, for better or for worse (Providence after DC; Wall Drug after the Badlands), with the same hat, the same notepad, and a pen behind the same ear. PS comes at you quick, and he leaves quick too, but, when things are right in the world, he returns with another pitch, another few edits, another plan to scale a continent. PS, RG (long-gone), and I once opened a metro article with two paragraphs on the fall of Rome; SVH (longer-gone) cut it. The tone was wrong, the stakes misplaced, the Vitruvius quote tangential. (The Indy isn’t one for empire.) But, now, as PS leaves the paper for good, are we sure that something colossal isn’t crumbling? If we throw him a few more ledes, or offer him a few more stories, or sew on a few more of his buttons, can’t we keep him in Providence for just awhile longer? For when Providence falls, so does the world; and when the world falls, so too will the Indy. (PS., we’ll miss you dearly.) cold calls on cold walks, breakfast, early riser, teacups with barely born seedlings, dinner at the park, drinks in the dark, the flower farm, braiding grass, visiting Home, strange shopping trips in West coast mini marts, ink in skin, pick me up coffee over the bridge, silly - catch all, roof wallet, Sheldon, big trees, calm fog, gray beach, buck meek, cherry pits, warmed hands on a burrito, snowed in out West, meandering home at 3am, city of warm waters, handwritten notes, Wall Drug five cent brew, snake fears, tingling toes need a rapid repair, inside jokes, weirdo dog, stray cats, heading West, campfire proposition, school, Bang, two jackets and a backpack, school, a loss and a note, lots of “bits”, crosswords, learning to be a person, school, Woolf, communal “studying”, game night, lead in the water, green thumb, cigs in the casino, RIPTA, school, that calendar, the Unit, Indy, Deb

-DM

The first time I had heard DE’s name it appeared in abundance. Opening the announcement of winners of a series of Literary Arts departmental prizes, I was struck by the numerous times she appeared on the list, her name a prophecy of the literary prowess I would come to know and love. DE’s words speak the same in casual conversation as they do when premeditated and printed on the page: tempered, rhythmic, and quietly eager, with an intentionality toward its subject. She is faithful to her roots and has a goal from which she anchors her creative spirit to a social integrity, telling stories of Indigenous families, inquisitive women, young writers like her, immersed in the relentless pursuit of a voice. She is unwavering, in the words she shares with the public and in her personal resolve to deliver her commentary, her narratives, to those of us grateful to have met her.

-MC

Meeting AC is like discovering a new constellation. If you’re lucky enough to find yourself with them, whether it’s a prized seat in their semi-disintegrating car (held together by sheer force of will) or ringed by multicolored scraps of handmade paper with fables to tell, you fall, rapt, into a galaxy traced onto what was before a blank expanse of sky. AC’s ring-clad hands direct my gaze, whether via pen or pointing finger, towards the sprites squirming within pale bones and the surreal geometry of levitating limbs—a divine astronomy of twirling rattails orbiting space-grey bangs and cats with the souls of (dwarf) planets. I can only dream of seeing the world they do, veiled by a pair of impossibly cool sunglasses, embraced by friends like the earth hugs our feet, and attuned to the muddy mires and creaking cabinets that too often lie at the very edges of our vision. Spelunking through dank basements, swan-diving into mountains of used clothes that howl for nothing less than to fall upon the blade of their crafting scissors, and watching theses emerge from them like butterfly from cocoon, every day with AC feels like it happens on an impossi -ble whim, where miracles are quotid -ian and the foremost one is that they let you play a part in their fairytale. Have you found yourself part of AC’s cos -mos, count your lucky stars. -KS

Before there were four boys in a shack, there was two boys in a tower. With his characteristic wit and tote in tow, NRS em-bodies all that is chic about this paper. Good writing, they say, is all style. I could pick out a NRS sentence from a line-up. Whether speaking in couplets or riddles, he never fails to make us giggle. A man of many talents, NRS routinely surprises friends and enemies alike with the arcane fact or skill precisely necessary for any occasion— an advanced knitting pattern or the European mountain ranges. As a result, clubs and newspapers have to guard him jealously. How this paper maintains its sense of discernment without him is beyond me. It has been the ultimate pleasure to watch NRS mature from the eager, wide-eyed kid (who when asked what it was like to be one of two freshmen on staff replied, ‘I kinda like the attention’) to the graduate of our cohort most likely to have his name in lights. Whatever the future holds for him, NRS will always be the Indy for me.

-BM Once the baby-faced toast of Conmag, BM’s grown into a dinosaur of this institution, outlasting his peers as the powerhouse writer he is. He employs an unrivaled command of language as he distills evolving narratives around labor strikes, histories of RI silver and religion, or what became his bread and butter: antitrust law. His drafts are some of the tightest we’ve seen—written seamlessly in one fell swoop after days of contempla-tion. I remember his second piece, perhaps his most frivolous, an exploration of the personal uniform. He’s had many uniforms himself; one might remember his months of black sweaters and jeans, his signature peach Kurta worn to every indy potluck, or the semester he opted for blindness rather than wear his one-armed glasses. BM’s piece glorifies simple clear inten-tions set through wardrobe for success. Whatever disguise he may don—his writing’s as clear-eyed as ever. -NRS DESIGN SAM STEWART