Volume 38 - Issue 4

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and New Haven

The magazine about Yale

VolUme 38; Number 4

February 2006

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Yale

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www.sohohalr.com

Publisher Matt Baron Editor-in-Chief Romy Drucker Managing Editors Concha Mendoza, Adriane Quinlan

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Designer Sara Schneider Associate Publisher Natasha Kim Photography Editor Erica Deahl Senior Editors Paige Austin, Sarah Laskow Production Manager Mina Kimes Research Director Helen Eckinger Associate Editor David Zax Assistant Editor Jonny Dach Web Designer

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Nicho~s Jv.ro~l

Circulation and Subscription Manager Anna Altman

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Staff Emily Koh,Julia WaDace, Nicole Ailan, Ivy Wang, Lane Rick, Emily Kopley, Gabriel Diaz, Veronica Nick Handler •

Members and Directors Joshua Civin, Peter B. Cooper, Tom Griggs, Brooks Kelley, Daniel Klutz-Phelan, Jennifer Pitts, Henry Schwab, Elizabeth Sledge, Jim Sleeper, David Slifka, Fred Sttebeigh, Thomas Strong, John Swansburg

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Advisors Richard Bradley, Jay Carney, Richard Conniff, Ruth Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Julia Preston, Laura Rabin, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin

Friends

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Steve Ballou, Emily Bazeloo, Anson M Beard,Jt B1aire Bennett, Edward B. Bennett, Richard Blow, Martha Bran~ Jay Carney, Daphne Chu,Josh Civin,Jonathan M Oark, Constance Oemen~ Elisha Cooper, Peter B. Cooper, Andy Co~ .Masi Denison, Albert J. Fox, Mrs. Howard Fox, David Freeman, Geoffrey Fried, Sherwin Goldman, David Greenberg, Tom Griggs, Stephen HeDman, Jane Kamensky, Brooks Kelley, Roger · Lewis E. Jim Lowe, E. Nobles Lowe, Marrba E. Neil,

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Peter Neil, Howard H. Newman, Sean O'Brien, Julie Peters, Lewis and Joan Platt, Josh Pia~ Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, Fairfax C Randal, Stuart Rohrer Arlo: •• and Arthur Sager, Richard Shields, W Hamptbn Sides, Lisa Silve11nan, Adina and David Sulsn ~an, 'Ihomas SttOf .g Elizabeth Tate, Daniel YCigin and Angda Sttnt Ye1gin

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THE NEW JOURNAL

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Volume 38, Number 4 February 2006

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The magazine about Yale

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Bodies of Art Under the skin

of New HavenJ- tattoo artists.

by Emily Kopley ' )

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Labor of Love Midwives deliver in New HavenJ- baf?y business.

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Virtually Eve

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To digitize a library is a monumental task~ and we're just getting started.

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Points of Departure Shots in the dark The Critical : Country Kitchens by M ina Kimes Essay: The Yale Woman by Romy Drucker Endnote: Get out of Bed by Paige Austin

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THE EW JOURNAL is published five rimes during the academic year by THE NEW JOURNAL at Yale, Inc., P.O . Box 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, C I 065 20. O ffice address: 305 Gown Stteet. Phone: 203.432.0520.

AD contents copyright 2005 THE EW JOURNAL at Yale, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without written P' rmission of the publisher and editor-in-chief is prohibited. While this magazine is published b y Yale College students, Yale niversity is n ot responsible for its co ntents. Seven tho usand five hundred of each issue are disttib, Jic d &ee to m embers of the Yale and ew Haven community.

Subscriptions ate available to those outside the atea.. Rates: One year, $18. Two years, $ 32. THE NEW J OURNAL is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman bookkeeping of ew Haven. THE EW JOURNAL encourages letters to the editor and co mments o n Yale and ew Haven issu& Write to Enitorials, P.O. Box 3432 Yale Station, ew H2ven, CT 06520. All letters for publication must include address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for p ublication .

February 2006

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n the spirit of an issue devoted to the idea of "reproduction" in all its forms, the Editors considered it appropriate to reprint our founding editors' original mission • statement, printed in 1968. Because it confronts the meaning of the new in light of the old, the statement seems as relevant to us today as it was 38 years ago: •

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author of The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost: The Grand Strategy of Charles Hill

MOLLY WORTHEN,

co-editor of Global

BRIAN PALMER,

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Values 101 .

Wednesday, February 22 at 4:00 pm ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA,

author of Love and the Law in Cervantes

with featured poet Deborah ·Agnew, author of the forthcoming collection Black Doves, followed by an OPEN we for audience members to share their.poems.

POETRY NIGHT,

(This .universiry has once again ·reached that stage in history when people are talking about tlie New Yale) presumablY to be distinguished rom t~rt Old Yale) which in its own dqy was presumabjy considered new. · Wishing to share in this modernity) we have chosen The New ournal as the name or our publication. Besides) things seemed slow around here. '' '

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Thuc·sday, March 2 at 6:00 p m author of To a High Court: The Tumult and Choices That lead to United States of America u SCRAP. NEIL PROTO,

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For a Full Schedule of Events Visit WWW:Jalebookstore. com

This year's theme issue shares the concerns of that magazine what is old, what is new, and in this digital age of reproduction, what does· it mean to be new? In this issue, . we explore the replication of ideas, in1ages, and people. The New Journal has traditionally printed a theme issue at this titne of year, so in a sense we are embracing a double-form of reproduction. In adhering to tradition, we make the old new again.

77 Broadway, New Haven (203) 777-8440

-The Editors

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A Long Exposure AT A UTILE PASf NOON, 1HE PHatOGRAPHER unloads his apparatus from a car parked at the foot of Harkness Tower. He lugs a great wooden box and tripod over to the High Street gate, sets up the camera, and trains it at~ th~ ·gate. He made this camera obscura 2'a gorgeous and intricate piece of red woodwork by himself a few years ago, drawing on carp€pttys kills he picked up as a Yale undergrad~~te. ~ the '70s. Only the Voightlander ley~fdtl~ding from the camera and the tri~d it sfts atop are not of his · own making.

Nate Gibbons is a sturdily built man with . ·a thick, redcij:sh moustache. He wears a white wool hat, heavy-duty boots, and a workman's apron. Nato as he prefers to be called is showing me how to make a tintype, an early photographic process that was eclipsed in the late 1800s by paper prints. A few decades ago, finicky Civil War re-enactors were the only ones still practicing the craft (albeit clumsily, Nato suggests). ''They kept it alive when it might've otherwise died out ... " His voice trails off as he opens up the trunk of his car. ''But nothing dies forever," he adds brightly, reaching for a small metal plate.

Becau~e wet-plate photography must be processed within minutes of exposure, Nato has converted the rear of his Chevy into a portable darkroom. It is filled with jugs, vials, plexiglass trays, and wooden boxes. Over the course of the day, I pick up the names of the panoply of chemicals and learn that many are dangerous. Nato wears gloves and goggles; his shirt is stained in many places, and, were he not careful, the same could happen to his skin. ''The irony of this beautiful art form," he ~ays, "is that you deal with stuff that can blind the photographer."

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digital photograpf?y, wf?y make tin!JPes at all?

· He coats a five by seven inch metal plate with gun cotton, an emulsion, then sensitizes the plate in a silver solution for three minutes. For a moment, he peeks out and looks toward the gate. ''The cam-era still there?" he asks, and then g rins at what he sees. He chuckles a bit: Two amorous students are kissing beside his camera. ''Ah, to be young again ... " he says, fitting the ready plate into a plateholder.

Once die lovers have departed, Nato slips the plateholder into his camera, removes the lens cap, and counts to 15. He replaces the lens cap, takes out the plateholder, and heads back to the little darkroom. After strapping a small red headlamp around his forehead, he promises to be ''back in a jiffy" and disappears unden1eath the dark cloth to develop the plate. He emerges a few minutes later to fix the image by pouring cyanide solution over it. This, he

explains, can be the most dangerous part of the process for a careless photographer: "D eveloper is acidic, and acid releases cyanide gas from the solution," he explains.

He's heard o f a few accidental deaths.

A student with a camera slung around her neck approaches p.s and shyly asks Nato if she can take a picture o f the artist at work. She raises the Nikon to her eye and presses a button. Her camera's shutter flits open for a thirtieth of a seco nd, then closes. She thanks us and walks away.

Nato returns to work.

What could drive a man to spend weeks fumbling through 19th century treatises on photochemistry, as Nato did, struggling to figure out what "drams" and "scruples" and "soda pop of ash" refer to? What could make him devote months to constructing cameras from scratch, and then spend over a year experimenting with those cameras •

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before he had anything to show for it? Why modern photographic techniques, Nato would anyone make tin~es at all in the age reveals that he even uses a digital camera on of digital photography? ·Is it simple nostal- occasion. ''People sometimes ask me, 'If gia or maybe masochism? · you could achieve the exact same results It is neither. Nato has little concern for with a digital camera and a computer, would history, and no interest in emulating the you do it?' I'd sure as hell try." In fact, he Civil War re-enactors who preserved the almost pursued digital photography instead craft most had forgotten. He doesn't hesi- of historic processes a decision he felt had tate to use an electronic egg timer or other to make five years ago.

Nato is ready with the fixer. As the 21st century gadgets that seem oddly incongruous with his otherwise historically accu- chemicals do their ·work, the image transirate outfit. He even affixes footwarmer tions from negative to positive; the dark sky heat-packs to the bottle of developer, since fades to a pale grey, ~d the spectral white of he worries that the January weather might the gate thickens into a solid black. Nato impede optimal development. Though he gives me the tintype to hold, and I see the uses a lens from the 1850s, he says he'd be incredibly rich detail that only a polished glad to use a modern one, if he could afford metal surface can register. The image has the it. Voightlander, which he calls the "Nikon ghostly beauty peculiar to historic wet-plate of its day," made heaps of fine lenses that processes. Here, at last, is evidence for why no one uses anymore, and he picked this Nate Gibbons pursues such an antiquated · art form; ''It's all about the image," he says. one up on eBay for sixty bucks.

If it isn't nostalgia driving him, then He finds the work of art that results from might it be a devotion to craft? This could the historic process to be of superior beauty.

As Nato packs up his apparatus, I ask be the answer to the riddle, as suggested when another passerby engages Nato in him what happened five years ago to force conversation. "The problem;' says the man, his decision between digital and historic who works at Yale Media Services, "is that processes. I am expecting a quick and everyone with a camera's a photographer ready answer, like he usually gives probthese days." Nato corrects him politely: ably something about a special develop'~yone can take a picture not everyone's ment in digital technology around 2001.

Instead, Nato is quiet for a while, then a photographer."

But Nato also debunks the notion that answers very carefully. "I got to a point laborious artisanship is necessary to pro- where I saw that, realistically, I only had duce a great photograph: Snapshots, he tells 15 years left of professional life to devote me, can be art too. Far from denigrating to a single craft," he says.

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Nato is 49 now: ''I've got the five-zero ' staring me in the face like a nine r:pill.ip)eter," he says solemnly. Ever since Re .first took Introduction to Photography at Yale,_.,_ art photography has been his passion bpt he never sold a single photograph, not in 25 years. Fortunately, his gamble on historic processes has finally brought him a small measure of success: He has at last attracted some attention to his photography, and last year he sold a few tintypes. But Nato figures that he is only covering his expenses with what he sells. ''I'm not about to quit my day job," he admits. Nato worked for the New Haven Register for a while when he got out of college; now he supports himself as a fire inspector in Westport.

The photographer loads his equipment back into his Chevy. It's a little ·past four; the sun is too low for picture-taking now, and he has several images of the gate already a good day's work With another kind of camera, he might easily have filled an entire memory card in the same four hour span. But a good photograph, Nato knows, takes time.

-David Zax

Goodnight, Room "GooD MORNING, MOUSE. II

Early on a wintry Friday, I am mumbling into a payph?ne receiver, part of an exhibit on the first floor of the Connecticut Children's Museum. One floor up, a black

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rotary phone sits perched on a bunny's bedside table, ready to receive my call. The ring is too quiet, however, to wake the bunny or the quiet old lady whispering "hush" from their imaginary slumbers.

With its windows looking out onto the snowy corner of Wall and Orange Streets, the great, green room from Margaret Wise Brown's beloved children's bedtime classic, Goodnight Moon, is replicated in fullscale. The view of the sidewalk is obscured by sheets of blue plastic with cutaway stars and the moon, a simulation of what the book's characters would see from their drowsy, rocking recline. The green walls are home to the two gray stuffed animal rabbits, two little kittens, a pair of mittens, a marble fireplace, greenand-yellow striped curtains, and all the other objects familiar to generations of small chilqren: " The telephone rings are, alas, too quiet to atttact the -attention of the duster of children I know are ..sittit).g on the room's plush, ' red carpet. ~stead~ 9~ ~the children's piping ' ' voices, I am gre~ted ,.vith a recording that -:- ¥!;r - , announces thak ev6:y11ne, from the pair of ' rabbits to the small white mouse present in each of the book's illustrations, is unable to come to the phone. The recording invites me to leave a message an opportunity which I decline. Later, on my way out of the museum, I try · again, only to be quickly hung up on by a three year-old girl The museum that she and I spend our morning enjoying was born, according to Director Sandra Malmquist, in "a series of Inspiration Meetings, held from February through July 2000." At these sessions, a diverse group of community members,--parents, builders, teachers, legislators, at rists, and naturalists met to craft a theme for each of the building's eight rooms. The museum is based on Harvard psychologist Howard Gamer's Theory of Multiple Intelligences each of the rooms is dedicated to one of the eight intelligences Garner articulated: Musical, Logical-Mathematical, Spatia\, Interpersonal, lntrapersonal, BodilyKinesthetic, · · tic, and Naturalist.

The great, green room is the · nc room, and exists thanks to a perceptive New ..

Havener who noticed the uncanny resemblance between the room's existing fireplace and the one drawn almost sixtf years ago by Oement Hurd, the book's illustrator. After this discovery, Malmquist said, ''It became •

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immediately dear that re-creating the great, green room from Goodnight Moon would be an entirely magical process resulting in a totally magical product." · Several months, a conversation, and a letter to Goodnight Moon's publisher HarperCollins later, the great, green room opened its bedroom door to the public.

The room caters to a large portion of that public. Spanish, French, Korean, Japanese, and Hebrew editions of Goodnight Moon are shelved alongside the original, while the large pieces of plastic and metal type that line the magnetic walls with words from the book are underscored by Braille lettering.

Malmquist describes the "inclusion of children with disabilities" as "a cornerstone of our work and our museum." Many of the children's books have also been Brailled, and an American Sign Language alphabet puzzle sits next to a Perkins Braille typewriter on the bunny's desk.

In its twin goals of bringing to life a fictitious environment and fostering the linguistic intelligence of its visitors, the transformation of the great, green room from two dimensions into three has been an immense success. Creating Readers, a literacy program run out of the museum, builds on children's enchantment by distributing copies of picture books to its visitors, drawn from the community-at-large. Over the last five years, the museum has given away more than 25,000 works in English, Spanish, and Braille.

Barraged by screaming toddlers, I muse on a story of the book's republication. While older editions' back covers sport a photo of the illustrator, Hurd, flicking a cigarette, current HarperCollins editor Kate Jackson obtained permission from his son to-digitally remove·the cig. But the younger Hurd was ultimately unhappy with the final product, saying that the altered photograph of his father's extended, empty hand ''looks slightly absurd to me."

In the same way, the museum's revised edition lacks some necessary element.

Something, I think, resting my hand on the bunny's bedside table, is missing. A certain pat ticular essence... a certain keystone.

Here, beside the comb and the brush, I pick up the red plastic bowl full of mush. But, for obvious practical reasons, the bowl is empty.

So too, at night, after the children have gone, is the room.

-Jom!Y Dach

The Original Copiers

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ONCE UPON A TIME .

WELL, IN 1HE 1960&-

Mike and Ellie Ianuzzi had a dream.

• Determined young New Haveners amidst a swarm of studious, stoned Yale students and scholarly, stoned Yale professors, they funneled their passion into their very own lovechild: a photocopy shop. Groovy.

Birthed in a tiny space on Broadway, TYCO survived adolescence a couple of stores down and is now enjoying a ripe middle-age at its current address on Elm. Despite the buzz about a rapidly approaching "paperless society" a concept which fizzled in proper Y2K fashion TYCO has grown, acquiring a new baby sister along the way: Elm City Fine Stationers, on Chapel Street, was hatched to compliment TYCO's everyday services. The two stores, still lovingly attended to by Mike and Ellie, are prospering.

One of the forces · · TYCO's success is its long-term staff. As Mike Ianuzzi describes it, an employee "either fits or doesn't fit. You can tell early on." Course packet season, the most hectic time of year, weeds out misfits. ''This is the time when everyone here really peaks and steps up to the plateit's a high-pressure environment. It helps that Ellie and I are in the trenches with them and really believe the employee situation is a twoway street," Ianuzzi reflects from his desk on the cluttered third floor of the TYCO warzone. "'Ihjs is a big part of why I think our customer relations are second to none."

Jodie Foster '85 might agree. "She was one of the absolute nicest people ever to walk through our door," Ianuzzi attests. One of the perks of catering to a Yale crowd is interacting with future bigwigs, be they students at the drama school or ambitious EP&E majors. ''I'm sure Bill Clinton came into TYCO sometime during his time at Yale," Ianuzzi muses. ''We might not have known it then, but we probably copied some papers for him."

Since the rapport built with students operates on four-year cycles, TYCO relies primarily on its devoted professor clientele. Each professor selects a store to print their course packets according to the service, value, and,-at least for Dean Jennifer Wood of Ezra Stiles the dog biscuits. ''I use TYCO for my course packets because I love the people (one woman gives treats to my dog) and they're very fast," Wood comments. ''I'm very loyal •

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to TYCO." • "It seems almost incredible," he Reconstruction Other TYCO customers grow attached wrote. "When the world is witnessing a to Mike's earnest and furrowed forehead, ~weeping rebirth of genuine architecthe faded photograph of his baseball- I PA S BENEATH THE GAZE OF ELIHU YALE ture, and when every clear-headed playing son plastered on the back wall, at least five time_s daily. Perched atop designer who is not bound to copies and and the convenient location. the upper tiers of Harkness Tower, formulas is envisioning a new order of In discussing his competitors, Ianuzzi is Yale's namesake resides on High Street. forms and masses and relationships, carefully diplomatic. "There's a niche for While I often frequent this section of then the builders of Yale join the tribe everyone;' he allows. The demands for copy the street, our encounters had, until of potencial irriitators who grind out services amongst academics seem nearly inex- recently, occurred unbeknownst to me. · their lifeless plagiarisms." haustible, supporting upwards of ten differ- Luckily, Eli has plenty of other histori- · Whether or not the style was indeed ent stores within a several-block radius of cally important figures to keep hitp. plagiarized, Yale officials admired the campus. TYCO's two most visible competi- company: . Jonathan Edwards, Eli University's Gothic appearance so much • tors, York Copy and Yale's Reprographic and Whitney, John Calhoun, and Nathan th~t they commissioned Rogers to · g Service (RIS), represent opposite · Hale also adorn the tower's heights. design more buildings in the same ., ends of the entrepreneurial spectrum.

James Gamble Rogers, the architect mimetic style. These buildingsYork, .situated a block away from TYCO, behind much of Yale's gothic genius, Jonathan Edwards College and Sterling also bills· itself as a small, family-run busi- including Harkness Tower, incorporat- Memorial~ Library were built in conness with a reliably loyal clientele. Alberta ed a variety of statues into its construc- formity'·With the style of the "Gothic Colasanto opened York Copy with her hus- tion. Aristotle and Homer are immor- corridor:" Rogers continued this tradiband two years after TYCO's beginnings. talized in the tower's design, as are alle- tion :.'when 'he constructed Davenport The Colasanto's store has a twin, Docuprint gorical representations of Justice, Life, College in 1933. While the interior of and Imaging on Whitney Avenue, which Progress, and Death. Rogers modeled Daveppdrt is deCidedly Georgian in caters to primarily non-Yale patrons. York Harkness after St. Botolph's Priory in style, the College's exterior -fa a~e on Copy, on the other hand, relies so heavily Boston, England. Originally, he looked York Street bears Gothic ar hitecture. on the abundant university business that it for inspiration to the tower of This was not the first time .,that -is forced to significantly shorten its hours Magdalen College, Oxford, but ul!J-- Rogers had engaged in this type of over school holidays. mately decided that its construction was architectural makeover: Two years --earliThis business, occupying a smaller "too heavy," and that a lighter structure, er he had changed the front of the space than TYCO, has rallied its own pro- similar to that of St. Botolph's, would University Theater to reflect a Gothic · fessor fan-club by appealing to an idealis- be more aesthetically pleasing. look. • Goldberger says that Roger's Paul Goldberger '72, one of the unusual stylistic decision "was motivated tic aversion to big business.

Jean-Jacques . . .

Poucel, DUS of the French department, authors of Yale in New Haven: by an awareness that buildings do is of this persuasion: "I like to support the Architecture and Urbanism, explains how not stand alone as islands in the city, one I perceive to be the small guy: York. .. "in this one project, Rogers established that they must establish urbanistic relaand for that reason." a kind of soft, highly picturesque tionships among themselves, and that The antithesis to the "small guy'' in the Gothic as Yale's primary architectural their civic responsibility, so to speak, is Xerox world of New Haven is the Yale- style; he gave the University a physical to the streetscape." owned and -operated RIS. Many professors symbol. .. that has never been supplantRogers faced two challenges while choose this operation due to its association ed." The tower was built two hundred working at Yale. In addition to presentwith the Universicy, as well as its wider pay- years after Yale erected its first building; ing a uniform architectural style, he ment options. One of the biggest complaints Harkness's prominence . established an f~ced pressure to make the buildings of TYCO and York Copy customers is the official style to usher the University into appear rimch older than they actually were. · In his opinion, however, Yale's cash or check-only policy regarding both busi- a new era. nesses' course packets.

Although the tower and the other · attempt.. to associate newly-constructed ''I bought three course packets at York buildings which comprise Memorial buildings with an earlier time period felt Copy," Phil Lang '09 vents. ''I had to pay $120 Quadrangle Branford and Saybrook artificial. · After he decided to apply tile in cash!" RIS, however, allows paymept by Colleges received a great deal of inst~_ad of "historically au~ntic" slate credit card as well as Bursar billing, which praise for creating a central motif for to the roofs of the Quadrangle buildmakes it very appealing to cash-less college the Yale campus, Rogers's buildings ings,' Rogers wrote a letter to Anson drew harsh criticism as well. William Phelps Stokes, a former secretary of students whose parents pay the bills.

What TYCO and York Copy lack in pay- Harlan Hale '31, who commented on the Yale which read: '~s far as traditions go, ment options, however, they make up for in designs in a Yale publication generously I hope that the only traditions governing their friendly, family-run personae. And titled The Harkness Hoot, accused Rogers us will be Yale traditions and our counamong a campus community of idealists, of ignoring the emerging influence of try's tradition... It does ·seem awfully family matters.

Modernism and falling back on anachro- hollow and servilely cringing to use a tradition that means nothing to us."

-Nicole Allan nistic, derivative architecture instead.

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Yale architect James Gamble Rogers modeled Yald· New World designs, right, on Old World precedents.

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Alan Plattus, a professor of architec- been seeking something entirely differture and urbanism at the School of ent: a sense of gravitas."

Architecture, explains that the University's An example of the architect's good desire to associate its buildings with a humor can be found etched into the bygone era harkens back to a theory of . Hall of Graduate Studies. Forgoing the Eric Hobsbawm, a Marxist historian who words of Plato and Shakespeare, Rogers discussed the "invention of tradition." chose to inscribe the first sentence of His theory claims that traditions are not Rafael Sabatini's popular . historical organic creations but rather human inven- novel S caramouche after which~ Senator tions which develop and reproduce over John Kerry would later name his largest time. Hobsbawm's idea applies to Yale yacht into the building's exterior. and its efforts to establish and nurture a The stones read "He was born with a legacy. ''Yale," asserts Plattus, "is an gift for laughter, and a sense that the invented tradition." world was mad."

Plattus believes that the decision to -EmijyKoh model Yale's architecture after older Gothic structures was an attempt to emphasize the University's history. While Live Culture most would consider this an extremely serious task, Goldberger notes that Rogers took quite a playful approach to Machu Picchu exhibit, "Unveiling the his work. "Rogers's architecture," says Mystery of the Incas," you must sit Goldberger, "conferred a lightness on an through a ten-minute video in a dark institution that did not take naturally to it room on stiff, backless, wooden benchand, indeed, might almost be said to have es. Here, you learn that the city of •

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Machu Picchu was built in the 1460s, thrived until the 1532 Spanish conquest of Peru, and was later reduced to ruins as it "faded from memory" that is, until Yale Professor Hiram Bingham III's "scientific discovery" of the site in 1911. The video poses questions such as, "How was such a great archaeological structure revealed after 350 years?"

The narrator invites you to "let your journey of discovery begin." The large screen then rises to reveal a heavy door, which takes the cue to slowly open on a reproduction of a portion of the ancient city mimicking the feeling of "discovery" Bingham must have felt one hundred years ago.

I imagine that his discover was a little more arduous. He wrote in his diaries about the magnificent payoff: the "great snow peaks looming above the clouds more than two miles overhead" and "the foaming, glistening, roaring rapids," that left him awestruck. I, however, am not immediately taken aback by my first visit

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to the exhibit of the royal retreat of the organized," she explains.

Incan _king Sapa Inca Pachacuti. After Some of Salazar's favorite parts of t;he scanning a display of cameras used by exhibit are the artifacts that are made in Bingham, some of the extensive pictures matching male and female pairs. Most he snapped, accurate diaries he scrib- everyday objects were produced in coubled, and maps he drew, I set foot on a ples at Machu Picchu, in accordance with replica of an ancient Incan road, leading a belief in reciprocity that ran throughout to a reproduction of the foyer of the the empire. "It's an Andean concept, but Incan king's residence. The walls, floors, the Incas are the fttst to reflect this symand trail are crafted from actual molds bolism," Salazar explains. "The idea is that taken of Machu Picchu. If you overlook you're not alone," the squeaking "granite" floor, the fiberThis notion of harmony is a far cry glass "stone" walls, and the panoramic from the acrimony stirred by the current photograph of Machu Picchu spanning struggle between Yale and the Peruvian the entire right wall of the second room, government over the ownership of the you can concentrate on the original arti- artifacts. While the United States' exhibifacts Bingham carted away from the site tions of the objects has increased interest in 1912. It is around these authentic in the original Machu Picchu, the objects that curators Lucy Salazar, a Peruvian government is forcing Yale into n~tive of Peru, and her husband, a cultural battle. For Peru, Machu Picchu Anthropology Professor Richard Burger, is a source of national pride: The current have d~signed their exhibit. president, Alejandro Toledo, held his A three-foot-tall ceramic vessel used inauguration at the historic site in 2001. for storing chicha, an Afidean corn beer, is When Salazar left her native Peru in the the large:;,t:_ , artif~ct in the exhibit, housed 1980s to study in the United States, she rA. . in a glass-:C:~se {n :1!Je center ·of the trail. was not on a quest to unlock the mystery Most of ~e1:'o--~j~ts are more delicate, of the lost Incan city. As she and her hus. such as metal tools that boast of the band became the first academics to study Incas' metallurgic prowess and smaller the collection as a whole, her interest was pottery painted with fine, geometric not derived from or connected with her designs. These are displayed in the trape- . heritage, but rather from the challenge of zoidal niches used as storage units in the exhibiting culture in general.

These artifacts have symbolic power stone walls. Although some artifacts are on loan from other universities, the tnajor- beyond Salazar's control. Their public ity are from the Peabody collection. These unveiling in the United States is overshadobjects are the only real artifacts amidst a owed by Peru's current revival of indigegamut of reproductions, including the - nous pride. And while New Haven's recrefake-stone walls, the floor, the panoramic ation would not be as compelling without photo, three life-sized mannequins of the original artifacts, it is also possible that men in traditional dress, and a miniature the artifacts' impact on the public isn't as powerful when plucked from the breathof the entire site.

Salazar sees her work of displaying taking -seu ing and rich history of their these long-neglected artifacts to recreate original home.

-Concha Mendoza a small segment of Machu Picchu in New Haven and several other cities the exhibit has visited as piecing together Printed Matter the highly-organized world of the Incas and allowing the public to interact with it. After eight years of preparation, she LAST MONTH, IN THE S-WEEPING ENTRANCE can now share the immensity of the ha11 to Sterling Memorial Library, sat a Incas' accomplishments at Machu recently departed and often-overlooked Picchu and impart lessons of this histo- exhibit based upon the age-old adage that ry that are invaluable today. Huge stor- oil and water do not mix (dining halJ soup is age houses, for instance, ensured that, in compelling evidence) Ies a beautiful thing, times of drought, everyone had food. really: pure, unadulterated, and easy science "The people didn't have hunger in the for the most ethyl and benzene-phobic empire, because everything was so among us. But this practical knowledge has /

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a much larger context in lithography, a printing process that cheerfully exploits nature's great divide. From the defiant philosophy upon which it is based to the actual printing process, which takes place on a large black press reca11ing a medieval torture device, lithography is a classic process rooted in technique.

Lithography's roots go back to 1798, before the era of "photosensitive emulsions" and other modern-day technological toys. To create a lithograph, artists draw an image onto a stone block which they cover with acid. The acid reacts with the oil-based image in a way that creates "walls" around the design. After a quick water wash, the artist applies a coating of ink that is retained within the walls. A run through a press applies only the oily sections to the page · while the water-based sections remain blank.

The highly sought-after images are created without the hassles or splinters of woodcuts, or the burden of finding a middle man to do the etching for you. Painless this process is not, but, as any burgeoning artist could tell you, artistic independence is well _ worth the price.

The final products, as I saw on a recent visit to the exhibit, are well worth the trouble. Though modern, user-friendly, ink-jet printing has largely replaced lithography, lithographic images are like every person's ideal mate: complex, unique, and well. defined in all of the right areas.

Sterling's exhibit, entitled "Production, Not Reproduction," housed an eclectic group of lithographs, running · the gamut from ''The Bread Book" whose black and white pages are filled with close-ups of, well, slices of bread to a fold-out lithograph of a disjointed accordion surrounding magnified blades of grass.

Burdened with a desperate need to procrastinate? Track Chatles Henri Ford's lithographically produced "Silver Flower Coo" (1968). Part art, part visual poetry, it's a book of photographs of random words. ''Now where's the FIG?" "Like chick inake A slick." Or, "Sweetie PIT isn't your label."

A different showcase housed a powerful book about sexual assault a red sticker bearing the word ''RAPE" attached two stark-white flaps across the book's cover, patiendy waiting for a reader to come along and tear it in hal£ Nearby, another book was sprawled ope~ proudly displaying a black-and-white photograph of a man's 11

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hairy, buttocks. The book, "Impressions: A Pocket Manual for Aesthetic Wear," is a collection of tasteful nudes, with swatches of actual fabric covering the images. The book manifests its cheekiness with painfully serious commentary inscribed alongside the naked rumps.

But the irreverence of the images should come as no surprise, given the history and culture of the process.

Lithography is, in a way, a process of contradictions, trying to make one point while inadvertently making another. It's the technique of "democratic multiples" taking the power away from snooty gallery-owners and allowing artists to see through every detail of their work, from its creation to its distribution.

Yet Norman Paris, Professor of Printing at the Yale School of Art says this isn't entirely so: In spite of an underlying "damn the establishment" mentality, he points out, "Lithography is a fine art, so it's just as much of a business~' As Paris argues, "Lith6 g.t:.!lphy is a culture that tries to speak about rpass culture without being mass cultur~, per. se. "But this is what makes lithographs paradoxical: The exhibit's Pop Art era collection seems to poke fun at mass culture, yet its images are produced on the same machines as newspapers, business materials, and ads, making them a distinct part of the very mass consumer culture that they satirize. And although lithographers harp on "conceptual underpinnings" and other lofty ideals, the medium's popularity stems largely from the fact that lithography is relatively cheap, and easy, too at least compared to its predecessors, carved wood and stone.

Now that the Sterling's exhibit is over, the lithographs of buttocks and accordions are safely tucked away in Sterling's stacks. But in spite of the rise of ink-jet printing, the process of lithography lingers. Just as ~ are suckers for scandal, it seems that there is something irresistible about the vaguely contradictory and irreverent process of lithography. A chance to "screw the establishment," too good to pass up?

The results of the process, such as a flip-book of a housewife morphing into Wonder Woman, are just farcical enough to catch our eyes. So is lithography a

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reproduction of an image, or a brand new production? Is it a critique of mass culture or a part of it? A printing process or a fine art? It is hard to say.

But when it comes to the results of lithography, one thing is certain: This art is fine, indeed.

-Lauren Harrison

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Out of Print AT YALE , STUDENTS. HIT EACH OTHER .

with foam swords in a role-play of a medieval war battle and are not judged negatively. The University fosters a fascination with reliving the past; everyone should have a chance to time travel at ' least once in a while. In the basements of many .es~oential colleges, next to squash courts, _cinemas, and computer clusters, there are ornate___..printing press rooms In the basement press, a California Job Case set looks toward stacks rf leading, awaiting a student printer.' . . . . featunng, ~edjqology from the 15th century wher:e: stil4e~s use the past to make are also-of course the printing presses "Journeymen Course" in printing, the · themselves. Though all somewhat differ- instructor and Pierson Fellow, David Rose things perniaiferif"' · , • Half of Yale's residential colleges- ent, each machine resembles an awkward '80 printed an announcement leaflet for Berkeley, Branford, Jonathan Edwards, loom. The presses consist of impression the unveiling of a portrait of Pierson Pierson/Davenport, Silliman, and cylinders to roll the paper, inking plates, College's Master Goldblatt. The final doc' levers, and several wheels. ument was simple: an 8 Vz by 11 inch piece Timothy Dwight have printing press Yale's college printing presses are not of paper folded in half that read, "Pierson facilities. Lining their walls are hundreds of trays of type, each piece made of lead far removed from their 15th century College, A Por_ttait of the Master." and a uniform 0.918 inches high. ancestors. The key difference between Pressed for time, Rose was not working Despite its deceptively miniature size, a these presses is the reason for their with his usual meticulousness, but it still Five took him two hours to assemble the type single piece of type is comprised of usage the printer's motivation. many parts. The most obvious is the _ hundred years ago, printing presses were of only seven words and then additional face the letter or character cast in relief the only publishing technique available; in time to print. One can only imagine how at the top. Type is mosdy sorted on a 2006, letterpress stems from a quirky long it must have taken him to produce one of the crowning achiements of his tray known as the "California Job Case," interest. It takes a certain personality to a user-friendly apparatus developed to spend hours upon hours in a printing printing career at Yale, Benjamin Franklin's move type across the country during the press room, pouring sweat, tears, and '~dvice on the Choice of a MistreSs." Gold Rush and separated into various sometimes blood into a creation that When he first began, Rose had to teach compartments, the size and order of could be seemingly replicated on a com- himself how to print: so he started collectwhich are based on how frequendy each puter. Printers are committed to the cre- ing printer manuals. Today, he has over character appears in the Bible. Upper ation of a certain aesthetic and enjoy a five thousand manuals more than anycases are on one side, lower cases on satisfaction that working with a mouse one in the country. another; numbers are in another area; and a screen cannot match. Joseph Luna By day, Rose runs a technology comcommonly used letters have a larger '06, a chief printer of Jonathan Edwards pany. While his job and his printing compartment than lesser-used letters; College, says that there is a "printer's hobby seem to be in opposition, printers letters that are often used next to each breed" of people possessing "infinite are often well versed in the computer other are placed side by side. The ca's, for patience" who are wming to "stt ive for world, and many feel that their printing example, are next to the cr's. Though printer perfection." This "breed" appreci- ability informs their digital graphic design this setup is at first difficult to memo- ates the subtle difference between a grain- skills. In the 21st century, printing is, after rize, like the layout of a- keyboard, it less, flat laser printout, and a thick, hand- all, about turning the new into the old.

-Karla Chien becomes easy to sort and replace type pressed paper.

The tedium of the process cannot be with practice.

In addition to the walls of type, there overstated. During the Pierson/Davenport .r

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was walking down Chapel Street one day two years ago," Steve Maler explains to me at The Edge Tattoo Parlor, which bo!ders the New Haven Green.

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Steve is 26, white, and remarkably tall and thin. When he walks, he floats, leaning forward a bit and striding slowly. The Adam's apple on his skinny neck

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bobs as he speaks. The star on the neck symbolizes nothing; Steve simply thought •

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it would look cool. Indeed it does, while announcing both whimsy and daring: One's neck, unless it's very muscled, is a particularly painful place to get tattooed.

When Jeffrey noticed that Steve was always drawing and doodling, he •

taught hitn how to tattoo at home. Later, The Edge offered Steve a job, so he happily quit his post at an aluminum factory to become a professional tattoo artist.

He's been at The Edge since last February, and is delighted with his life now: "I

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he interior of the large shop is tidy and tastefully decorated, even elegant.

Imitation Tiffany lamps hover on various counters, joined by stone gargoyles that recall Yale's gothic architecture. To the right of the lobby, a corner nook is full of '

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daily, is a well-run establishment, due in no small part to Tyrone's management. He's worked here · for almost the full decade the shop has been around. The company owns three other branches in Connecticut and Rhode Island. On Chapel Street, sometimes an artist will •

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Heart." Steve has to enlighten me: "That's a Delight song.

It just works, because I think music is one of the most important things. I like dancing, too." His taste in music is eclectic: Beatles, The Cure, Biggie Smalls, Wu Tang Clan, Beastie Boys, Massive Attack, and other electron-

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books that offer inspiration for tattoos. The library 'includes several coloring books featuring pictures of "prehistoric mammals" or "medicinal plants," the full series of' Disney Beginning Readers, Ranger Rick 1 Best Friends, The Fami!J Life of Birds, A Handbook of . Greek Art, and Lettering and Lettering Display. The lobby and the anterior tattoo area are divided by a counter where I sit and chat with waiting customers.

About half the clientele are walkins, the other half appointments.

Often customers come in with their own image in mind, or have an idea of what they want and work with an artist to design it. Others choose from the "flash," the posters of commercial tattoo designs that hang all over the shop. Behind the counter, the tattoo area itself .consists of four stations stocked with the necessary needles, inks, and miscellaneous jars and bottles. All surfaces are gray or black, and look sterile and new. This being the week before Halloween, occasional plastic skulls accompany the vats of vaseline at some of the station.

The Edge, open from 1 to 8 p.m.

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ic and trance music. On 'Steye's right calf, a red-headed girl lifts u:P:§:·h er shirt to reveal her midriff. This is Steve's own work: "Eventually I'll make it really extra-special. .. It's gonna take a while 'til I get my own style. What I _really want to do is pointillism, shading." He'd like to take figure drawing classes so that he's "not just copying cartoons and ike the red star on his neck, Maxim and other shit like that."

Steve's other tattoos or He'd also like to study photography, "tats" recall details of his learn to use Photoshop, practice life. He shows me the green flames piano, take up snowboarding, and on his thumb, done by Jeffrey when draw more . the two had just become friends .

The first time I met Steve, he His right arm boasts a bright sun gave me his trademark handshake, a held by a darkly-colored Chernabog, four-step maneuver he picked up a the villain from Fantasia. The sun decade ago from a friend. He says was done on Steve's 18th birthday; he uses it "with almost everyone, only recently did Jeffrey give even old people." Steve's girlfriend, Chernabog some color. "I'm really Alyssa, confinns: "He acts goofy into the old Disney scene," Steve even with people he doesn't know." tells me. ''And late '80s, early '90s He makes no pretense of politesse or TV cartoons. Have you seen the machismo. He eagerly shows me new image of Strawberry designs he's working on for upcoming appointments: a horizontal rose Shortcake? It sucks!"

Around Steve's neck hangs a red rippling the water it lies. on; a nautitat of a chain and dog-tag, not an cal star for Alyssa; the elaborately uncommon design. In bubble let- lettered word "MOTIVATION," ters, the tag reads, "Groove is in the surrounded by stacks of cash and barter for a tattoo .in exchange for another service. -Tyrone explains, "You give me your used car, I give you a $600 sleeve." (A "sleeve" is a tattoo that covers one's whole arm.)

He continues, "We say we're pirates you know, 'cuz all they did was barter. A . little Chapel Street joking thing.. " •

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tered the art among Polynesian marijuana leaves.

While we talk, Jess, th,e only islanders. Later, tattooing was female artist at The Edge comes practiced mainly by marginalized over. She is short and tough-look- groups, such as circus performing, often glowering. ''Whatcha ers, criminals, and French revodoin'? ," she asks Steve. .· . lutionaries. The first mention of • "Eating dinner." the word "tattoo" in English lies Jess gives him the finger. She in the journals of the British later tells me, "Steve and I Captain James Cook, who sailed understand each other. He's around the Pacific and spent unique. He wears women's sun- time with the Tahitians. In 1769, • glasses yellow tinted, pink, or he wrote, "Both sexes paint their sparkly." Steve loves to sail fris- Bodys, Tattow, as it is called in bees across Chapel Street. their Language. This is done by He rides down steep hills in a inlaying the Colour of Black roily chair. under their skins, in such a manWhen asked to describe ner as to be indelible." In the S'teve, his close friend Farleigh Tahitian language, Tattow means recitt;S _the nonsense sounds "the results of tapping or strik"Mao mao mao," like. an incantaing."

Cook's recording of the . word coincided with the rising tion, the~ .. explains, "This ·-, "' describ~cs , ·, Stev€'s sense of trend among European sailors, humor. - H~'lJ; )tfs~ say this whep. so it stuck. he has nQ'tliifl.gelse ' to say. And In the East, like in Polynesia, when he picks up the phone, the custom has traditionally been he'll say random words or stut- associated with spirituality; in ter, 'Hey, hi, hello, hey, hi, hi.' ... the West, with subversion. The He's a good guy." Tyrone, early Jewish, Christian, and the manager of The Edge, says, Muslim traditions all prohibited ·" He's such a calm individual, tattoos, and both the ancient he's a pleasure to work with. Judea-Christian and GrecoAn old-school tattoo artist Roman cultures associated tatwould say to me, 'Who · the hell tooing with barbarians, slaves, are you?"' and the poor. To be tattooed Tyrone, a fit, short 35 year- indicated that one was under old black man with several facial someone else's power. piercings and arm tattoos, offers Supposedly, the Roman emperor this recent history of the busi- Caligula once commanded all of ness: "Ten years ago, tattooing his citizens to get tattooed, purewasn't something to do. Now, I ly for his entertainment. Two get doctors, lawyers, judges. If thousand years later and halfway you don't have one, it's like around the world, the Patau not having a vehicle. It's like"- Islanders in 1832 forced the capand then he assumes a high, tured American sailor Horace incredulous voice "'You ain't Holden to endure full-body tatgot a car?l' 'You ain't got a tat- tooing. While Caligula's citizen too?! Why not?"' had no recourse but to oblige "Old school" tattoo artists their sadistic ruler, back home in come from a lineage - of to1;1gh New Hampshire, Holden wrote a guys and troublemakers. bestseller about his experience.

Just as being forced to get a Tattooing came to Europe after , mid-16th century. sailors encoun- tattoo indicates subservience

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Community and Mutilating the Bot!J: Identity in Blood and Ink. There are several country-specific histories of tattooing, and several accounts of the connection between tattooing and the sea-trade. And although tattooing has vaulted into the specialized world of academia, it is a rare Yalie who moves beyond the anthropologic study of a tattoo and actually gets one. Most of the customers at this New Haven parlor, one block from campus, are from outside the University system. had feared tough-guy posturing when I first ventured to The Edge, but I do not find much. The second time I come into Steve traces a tattoo design wi'th attention. Thi's first step i'n the process allows tattoo artists the most freedom. the shop, Tyrone tells Coniah, one of his main artists, "Be nice to getting one voluntarily indicates it does rebellion. In the days after Emily, here." Coniah, ~s-tuoent at dominance and power. Tattooing, 9/ 11, Tyrone and his crew gave Paire Arts School, seems suspicjous like prostitution, concerns control free · tattoos memorializing the but soon warms up. When a cus-: of one's body and, by extension, of event. They were overwhelmed the tomer asks if I am there to get tatabundance of people, many of tooed, Coniah jokes, "We'll strap one's identity.

In America, the popularity of whom were first-time tattooees, her to a chair soon enough." And tattooing has been on the rise since wanting flags, eagles, the Twin Sebastian, a 32 year-old, unusually the mid-19th centuiy. N ev.ertheless, Towers, and even the planes crash- talented, handsome, and wisecrackinto the towers.

HUs ing artist with whom I had originalit has been subject to its fair share ing of scorn. During World War I, the Americans," says Tyrone, '·' We ly met some resistance, adds, "She's Navy banned tattoos, with the don't want to be left out of some- from Yale they're sending their desired result of a healthier crew, thing, and we want to show our spies down here!" and the unintended result of new heritage. So we get tats."

One Wednesday, as I watch recruits wearing corsets and What accounts for this main- Ralph, another artist, tattoo a dragcamisoles to cover their chest streaming? Perhaps in such an onfly onto the left wrist of a 55 tats. In the 1920s, the conservative, unsettled political ·climate, people year-old woman, he asks me why I law-obsessed impulse that bred get tats because they offer some- wanted to write about The Edge.

Prohibition prompted many thing permanent in a world in flux. Many customers and other artists American cities and states, includ- Perhaps Americans love to catego- here have asked me this, and have ing New York, to outlaw tattooing rize themselves. Or perhaps people been intrigued when I've told them, get tats to invite conversation. At "I wanted to explore the tattoo altogether.

Since the 1980s, American tat- least, these are some of the theories world because it's totally foreign to too culture has been shedding its academics propose. In the last ten me." I have been flattered when exclusive associations with rebels years, as much ink has been spilled customers have assumed I am there and bikers. People with tattoos are writing about tattooing as has been to get a tattoo myself. Real(y, me? now as likely to drive a Volvo as a used in tattoos themselves. Not Thank goodness, I don't look like a total only are there a dozen tattoo magaHarley, and artists are as likely to square!

But I should not be so flat• be MFA candidates in need of a job zines, but scholars have pounced on tered: A?ryone might get a tattoo • as ex-cons in need of a pay stub. the subject, writing books such as these days, even a 55 year-old social Today, a tattoo indicates an Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural worker with big glasses and a grandaspect of one's identity more than History of the Modern Tattoo motherly haircut. Ralph is not •

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intrigued by my answer; he is indignant: "You think this is the tattoo world?! It used to be guys on Barleys. This is the way the industry is going · it's Starbucks, it's mainstream."

As the industry has grown, there

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just becomes horrible. You don't are joined by a skeleton and demonrealize there is another way." Steve . ic jester, both of which dangle from helped overcome his addictions by Ralph's lamp. Bio-hazard stickers going to AA meetings, at which stipple- everything. A book titled Jeffrey joined him. He considered Dogs: How to Draw Them sits near his becoming a nurse, but is happy to Tupperware jars. 'Ralph' is a fake have fallen into the right business. name, because after ·n umerous •

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have been more and more tattoo conventions across America, at which renowned artists give custom tattoo~ ~p.d compete for prizes that recognize their work. Ralph regularly werit to conventions until, at one organized,··;..-by Hell's Angel's, a 1 woman ~w0!( "'ajprize for cosmetic tattooing J.f "~y<;,liner~ ~alph's disillusionment' grew when HarleyDavidson, Warner Brothers, and Walt Disney sued tattoo parlors for using copyrighted logos: "Come on, people have been getting tats of Mickey Mouse since he was invented. And now yuppie ass wants Mickey Mouse."

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et Steve still feels at_home, · despite being opposite of the stereotypically surly "old-school tattoo artist" to which Tyrone referred. He grew up in a middle-class, three-child family in North Branford. The Malers have always been involved with arts and crafts, and they approve of Steve's career path. Steve has loved to draw since childhood, and took art as his only honors class in high school.

Between high school and The Edge, he went through some rough titnes.

He explains, "I was just a real bad kid for years drinking and drugs ...

I don't think there's a chernical out there that I didn't use in extreme amounts. I had my fun. But then it

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He says, "The only thing that keeps me sober is helping others." Steve currently lives with his parents and their relationship is better than ever.

Since July, he has been casually dating Alyssa, a pretty, petite 18 yearold bartender whom he met when she came in for her first tattoo, a moon on her foot.

Ralph is a kinder version of what Tyrone calls "an old-school tattoo artist." While skulls litter the Edge to honor Halloween, at Ralph's station they sit year-round. There they

scrapes with the law he is a bit paranoid. As we talk he looks away from me, loudly clinking needles into jars.

He is a white, middle-aged, former biker with a square torso and a tremendous belly. A thick lip-barbell and triangular silver studs between his eyebrows, combined with his . many and macho tattoos King Neptune, tombstones, eagles, knives, daggers, wizards, a guy in quicksand holding up his middle finger make him look more threatening than the rest of the artists at •

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The Edge. But he acts gentler than he looks .

Like many middle-aged tattooed men, Ralph got his first tattoos at home when he "started messin' around real young with India in~."

He has been giving tats all over Connecticut since 1987. Right now he is on probation (he won't tell me why) and is working at The Edge because it is the only parlor in New Haven that gives a pay stub, which the probation officer requires .

Unlike Steve and Coniah, Ralph never studied art before learning to · tattoo. "I didn't get into the business to tattoo," he explains, "I got into the business for the money."

And the money is good: A tattoo artist can .take home up to $1500 a week. The artist~ split their profits with the' tore, bqt at $150/tattoo, each of w~ich takes around an hour, the net ..profit accumulates. Despite Ralph's intimidating facade, the fact that he makes a good living from tattooing reveals that in addition to being a skilled artist, he is agreeable with customers.

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t The Edge, I don't see much of the "yuppie ass" to which Ralph referred, but I do see a diverse crowd. I meet Keri, a sensitive 1 7 year-old waiting for her fiancee to finish getting the Biohazard symbols tattooed on his wrists. She has a black tribal decal on her lower back, as do many tattooed young women. I meet Jim, an 18 year-old getting the logo fot:. the straight-edge lifestyle (a vertical "X X X") tattooed on his right calf. He explains to me that he doesn't smoke, drink, or do drugs, but he's not as conservative as straight-edge kids who abstain from tattoos .

Neither Keri nor Jim, nor any other • teenager I meet, gets grief about tats from their parents. Some parents are even inspired to follow •

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their kids' lead.

All the artists at The Ec:lge Christina, a statuesque, glowing, except Steve and Ralph believe 48 year-old blonde with an MBA, strongly that tats should be meanquit her job as a CEO of the ingful. Steve has no clear ideology Wadsworth Atheneum to become a on the issue his philosophy is: massage therapist a year ago. She Get whatever makes you happy. received her first, subtle . tattoo (a Ralph snorts at the idea that tats butterfly) at 35, but now says, "I'm · "should" have meaning. But then braver. I wanted to do what I want- he tells me that each of his tattoos, ed to do. I'm more comfortable let- · while not having symbolic value, is ting people know who I am." a happy reminder of the friend

know about it." And so he walks me through the tattooing process as we sit at his station. It is sparsely decorated~ On his counter sit two framed photos, one of the singer Prince (Steve's "higher_ power," notes a friend of his), the other a still from the film of The Outsiders (when I say I knew 9nly of the novel, Steve ·jokes, "You would"). Steve's sketchbook lies '

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Coniah is tattooing the Chinese words "healing woman," as well as a peacock, which symbolizes "goddess" in tantric philosophy on her left leg. Coniah designed the image just for her. Two real peacock feathers are draped Coniah's station.

Christina, sprawled out on a stretcher like a reclining deity, keeps _ looking down her leg with pleasure at the evolving tat. She murmurs, "Isn't it beautiful?"

Though abundantly-tattooed women occasionally feel disrespected, most women receive compliments on their tats frotn coworkers and friends, if they have visible tats, or from lovers and gynecologists, if they have more hidden ones.

Men are more likely to have multiple, visible tattoos, and so are more likely to feel judged by the non-tattooed. Sebastian, an artist who is pretty much covered in black tats, reports, "I go to the doctor's and they look at me like I'm halfway dead already. Old male doctors especially are like that."

February 2006

who gave him that particular tattoo, even if the friendship faded long ago.

If the artist doesn't like a customer's idea for a tat, he or she will try to tactfully talk the customer out of it. Steve once refused to do a tattoo of the yellow brick road, "because the perspective was all wrong and too difficult." Tyrone forces his customers to think seriously about their whimsical ideas: "Don't just get a heart or a rose because 'it's feminine.' Do you like hearts? Do you like roses?"

Sebastian was once asked to tattoo argyle socks onto an old man's feet.

He told the guy, ''You're an idiot."

open revealing anime drawings, cartoon faces that Steve calls "crazy head pictures," and many sketches for tatto·o designs.

Steve places the materials necessary for a tat · on the counter. He smears Vitamin A and D ointment onto a large popsicle stick so that it will hold tiny plastic pots of glycerin ink. He shows me the two kinds of needle-tools used for every tat job one for outlining, the other for coloring. Both resemble little guns with long needles instead of a bullet-shaft. In the ftrst kind, five needles pack closely together; in the second, the five are spaced more widely apart. The needles are actually very thin tubes t is a privilege to see how a that take up ink if touched into a tattoo is made. Many artists pot. Out of the guns' handles twist believe that the art must cords that connect to a foot pedal pass only from artist to artist, not on the floor. Ste e taps the pedal, from a book. Coniah explains, demonstrating how the needles "Only when [knowledge of a craft] (currently empty) would spin to becomes popular does an art form release ink. Then we move to the die." But Steve believes that "if back room, where he prepares the somebody's interested, they should skin-transferable print of a con-

'

21

I

The Whitney Lectures in the Humanities Wednesdays at 7 p.m .

Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street Free and open to the public "The Aesthetics of O c cupation: Arts and Politics of Everyday Life in Fascist Occupied Europe" February 15 PETER DE.METZ, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Yale University "Prague Movies: The Years of Occupation" (lecture with film clips)

Febru ary 22 MALIN WAHLBERG, Research Fellow, Department of Film Studies, Stockholm University; Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale Film Studies Program "Everyday Life in the Shadow of War: Peter Forgacs and the Alternative Archive of Amateur Film" {Lecture with film clips, followed by a video screening of The Maelstrom: A Family Chronicle (Peter Forgacs, Netherlands, 1997, 60 min.)

Marc h 1 MILLICENT MARCUS, Professor of Italian and Film Studies, Yale University "When Life Was Not So Beautiful: I taly, 1938 in the Films of Ettore Scola"

March 22 RICHARD MAXWELL, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature and English, Yale University ' "Every Man a Murderer: Detection, Murder, and Occupation Noir"

AprilS JULIA HELL, Associate Professor of German Studies, University of Michigan "Peter Weiss's The Aesthetic of Resistance: Art Against Politics"

For more information contact Manana Sikic at 432-0673 or e-mail manana.sikic@yale.edu 22

I

join ed sun and moon for an imminent appointment. He puts his drawing of the design between two sheets of chemically-coated paper, then runs the three sheets through a machine tha t makes transparencies. Out comes a purple print between the ch emical-sheets. Steve will press this against the skin of the client.

She arrives: Cindy, a cute blon de in her late twenties. She is ch eerful, giggly, and dressed for a Gap ad. She is here for a cover-up of a moon on her belly, a tat she got in 1994. Cover-ups, along with tats that circumscribe the upper arm, are the bane of every tattoo artist. The latter requires an extremely calm, still patiet; a cover-up dem ands that the artist have great skill and humility. One needs skill to transform the original design, and humility to face altering another artist's vision.

Steve has designed a half-moon to fit over Cin dy's faded crescent.

H e takes a "before" photo of the crescent, then attempts to line up his print over the tat. He cleans Cindy's faded moon with rubbing alcohol, then swipes clear deodorant over the skin so the print will stick. The print lines up only after three tries. Steve makes a new print and re-cleans the skin for each attempt. After the successful fourth try, Steve takes up the outlining needle and traces the purple print. Cindy does not flinch, reporting to me that "it doesn't really hurt, just feels a little irritating, like an ongoing bee-sting."

After outlining, Steve switches to the coloring needle. Every trickle of color is dabbed and wiped with a paper towel. Soon Cindy's stomach looks like a finger-painting project. Steve wipes another towel over the chaos, to clean away excess ink. Color stays only where the needle has actually touched the

skin. When the tat is finished, Steve disinfects the needles in a hot sterilizing solution and throws them out.

"In the old days, we used needles over and over," Ralph once tOld me with nostalgia. But Tyrone is proud of the cleanliness and safety of his parlor, which forbids pets, food, and smoking.

Any impurity in the air might taint the ink, which in turn infects the bloodstream. Steve takes Cindy outside to look at her tattoo in sunlight, and Sebastian comes along to approve the job.

Once back indoors, Steve takes an "after" photo of that tat to add to his album of work. He then covers the sun and moon with Vitamin A and D ointment and tapes gauze over the ta>t with band-aids. He hands Cindy packets of the ointment to apply to the area for three to four days after. Cindy is clearly pleased with Steve's work. She thanks him and says goodbye. ello," announces a customer to Steve one day.

He is a middle-aged black man with bulging, tat-covered arms. He is at once solemn and frustrated. "I had an appointment for right now with Sebastian, and he's not here. I need this tat. I just got back from my mother's funeral." He is here for the day from Florida, and Sebastian is the only tat artist he works with anywhere.

But Sebastian apparently forgQt the appointment. The man wants the image of praying hands (modeled after Durer's sculpture) entwined with a rosary tattooed on his upper arm. All the artists at The Edge know ho~ to do this popular image, but Steve is reluctant to take Sebastian's client. The fellow is desperate:

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THE NEW JOURNAL

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"Please, man. Make it special for me. Dude, I don't move." Steve considers a bit, and agrees to design the tat. He retreats to his

don't feel uncomfortable, just so_rt of baffled by the situation that this is where the man has come right after his mother's funeral,

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L • I hesitantly smile. He speaks first. "I take a lot of pride in this ..,. place. §tev~,. . 'fo~ example, that's good that. h~'~ . . 4?irig my tat. I don't like to s~fo~tli[sc_,_ 'p lace slipping I ' mean, where's Sebastian?" I nod. I ~,.

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I ask the man the same question I've been asking everyone at The Edge: Can you tell me about your tattoos? He extends his right arm near me, holding it so I can see a large cross on his biceps with names on each limb. "You see this?

you put that on your arm, that's total devotion." Then he starts weeping, pauses, and keeps talking.

His eyes dry as he talks.

His name is Chet McGill. He shows me his right arm, on which sprawls one of Sebastian's designs, an eagle killing a snake. "See, Sebastian thinks of me as a warrior an eagle because that represents strength." And there is precedent for his getting a tattoo in memory of a loved one: When Chet's Cherokee grandmother died, Sebastian designed a tattoo of an Indian on a horse for Chet's upper back, the Indian's head down • • 1n mourn1ng.

Steve finishes Chet's design in about twenty minutes. Chet has invited me to watch him get the tat, so I perch on Steve's counter to watch him work. His job right now seems enormously important.

This would-be nurse and dedicated artist with a natural bedside manner is far from the old-school bully-tattooer. He rolls up Chet's sleeve and begins to tattoo the praying hands.

Emify Koplry, a Senior in Branford College, is on the staff of TN].

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February 2006

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birth. Instead of disconnected P.A. announcements, the only background noise was the low murmur of the midwives' voices. Instead •

of neutral beige walls and tackily upholstered chairs, the mother-to-be, Arianna Stein, was surrounded by the familiar comforts of her own kitchen .

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And, instead of lying on a sterile, mechanical bed, she relaxed in the warm water of a birthing pool.

The woman and her husband, Josh, remained in the pool for her entire 12-hour labor. "She gave birth to Gracie in the tub," Stone-Godena said. ''And then she pulled Gracie up

Gracie didn't remain floating underwater-

she pulled Gracie up to her chest and we wrapped them all in a nice warm towel that we'd heated in the microwave."

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his story could be misconstrued to support the notions most people have about midwives: unconventional, placenta-eating relics of a time when medical knowledge was · · at best and flat out dangerous at worst And while Stone-Godena cheekily combated the stereotype by posting a sign reading ''No, You May Not Bring Your Dog in To Eat the Placenta" on the wall of a birth center where she once worked, today's midwives serve a larger and . more varied group of patients than the general population assumes. Arianna Stein is not a nec>-hippie; she is .a midwife herself, who wanted to give birth among her own. Her husband . is not an uninformed follower of alternative medicine; he is a doctor. And Stone-Godena herself remembered Gracie's birth from her office at the Yale School of Nursing, where she is a lecturer, blocks away from Yale-New Haven hospital, where she practices the majority of her midwifery.

In the United States, one out of every ten babies is delivered by a midwife. In New Haven, the percentage is much higher one out of every three babies at Yale-New Haven Hospital is delivered by a midwife. The Yale School of Nursing is largely responsible for this number. It is one of a handful of institutions in the country that offers a nurse-midwife program, and many of its. graduates choose to remain in New Haven.

Although New Haven is an extreme example, midwifery is a common phenomenon in •

the United States. Today's midwives have little in common with those mentioned in high school history lessons; they are not grizzled old women who attend childbirths armed only with knowledge accumulated through trial and (often fatal) error. Modern midwifery is an extension of conventional medicine; almost all midwives graduate from an institutional program like the one at Yale's School of Nursing, which trains students as midwives and nurses. · Most go on to either work at hospitals or join · private obstetrics and gynecology practice.

But in spite of their pervasiveness and qualifications, midwives often find' themselves struggling to prove their legitimacy to patients. "It always comes back to that concept of people who don't know about midwives saying 'Why would you see a midwife? You have private insurance, you have enough money to see a doctor,"' said Debbie Cibelli, who, along with her business partner I jnda Lisk, operates one of the few midwife-owned ·practices in Connecticut. But while she may be skeptical at first, once a woman begins to see a midwife, whether she actively seeks one out or, more likely, stumbles across one in a physician practice, statistics show that she is unlikely to return to physician care for future childbirths or regular gynecologist appointments. Such women value the unique kind of care that midwives offer, where basic medical techniques used by •

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physicians are complemented by a degree of empathy and personal attention rarely found in modern medicine. ight years ago, Alycia Clune experienced what she had believed to be impossible: She became pregnant. Clune and her husband, Tim, had been plagued by severe fertility problems and had resigned themselves to not having children. When she discovered that she was carrying their son, Clune knew that she wanted to take every measure to ensure her pregnancy's success. Having spent years as a nurse in the obstetrics department at Bridgeport Hospital, Clune was aware of the risks associated with childbirth. But, unlike many women in her position, she did not want her pregnancy micromanaged by physicians, reduced to blood counts, ultrasound images, and amniocentesis results.

She wanted a midwife.

"I never wanted the people I worked with to take care of me," Clune said. She -turned instead to Dr. Marshall Holley, ~ the New ""' Haven obstetrician ap.d gynecologist w ho first diagnosed the Clune's fertility "prob-' lems. In choosing Holley, Clune was not simply seeking a doctor outside of her workplace. Holley's practice employed two midwives, Cibelli and Lisk, who worked with him for over twenty years before establishing their own practice upon his retirement. After observing thousands of babies delivered by physicians, Clune had decided that she wanted a midwife to be the primary attendant at her son's birth. Having seen midwives in action, she knew that she would be receiving excellent medical care.

Moreover, she knew that she would be more comfortable in their hands.

"Everyone tells you that childbirth is normal, but I saw a lot of women in fear," Clune said. "I just saw that there was something that midwives gave that inspired trust." The current trend in obstetrics.towards large practices with a multitude of physicians makes it difficult for patients to forge personal connections. So, when a woman enters the hospital in labor, as Clune had observed time after time, she is often ten ified. In contrast, every time Clune had an appointtnent at Dr. Holley's office, she saw either Cibelli or Lisk And during her labor, which was overseen by Cibelli, she knew exactly whose hands she was in.

When Clune fina11y went into labor, it last•

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Midwives Linda !Jsk, right, and Debbie Gbelli own their practice on Prince Street.

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An artistic depiction

o/ midwifery illustrates the bond between mother and the sisterhood of midwives.

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ed for 11,h~urs. She had been admitted i:o the worked I relaxed. It turns out it was just an old midwife trick that she'd learned. I'm hospital ~~veral days earlier, when doctors became concerned that her pregnancy had a nurse, and I don't ever remember seeing that in my twenty years of nursing." extended r;a~.t 41:~eeks: Four days before she gave birth,· f!reir; <;9'f1¢ern was heightened by idwives perform the same her son's lacli-,~f'~6 - emer:t, .and eventua11y -bloodwork, risk assessments, he was hom With his umbilical cord 'Wrapped prenatal exams, and ulttasounds around his neck Though he was completely as physicians; but their draw lies in what they healthy, Clune's labor can hardly be characterized as easy. Nonetheless, when she remem- provide in addition. ''Physicians are really bers it, her first words are in praise of Cibelli, educated in the abnormal, and midwives, their education focuses on the normal," who oversaw the birth.

"She ran the whole room, but without · Cibelli said. ''We spend much more time talkseeming like she had an ego;' Clune said ing about nutrition and the psychological "She wasn't about another patient aspects of the pregnancy, how it may or may she had, it was just us." · not affect the household or the family or the ''My husband and I were terrified," she other siblings at home, if that's relevant" added. ''We'd gone through so much. But she Midwives are taught to view pregnancy as a guided me, and she guided Tim, and kept him natural condition, not an illness. Thus, they are able to view their patients as individuals, even keel" Two years later and against all odds, the not cases.

One of midwives' primary aims is to eduClunes found themselves expecting another son. Once again, they chose to have a midcate their patients. The fear that Alycia Clune wife attend the birth this time, Ijoda Lisk observed in women while assisting deliveries was on call And once again, complications is caused by a patients' lack of understanding ensued Although Clune was ultimately in what happens in labor and ignorance of their labor for only two hours and gave birth to options. For example, many women view epidurals, an injection that numbs the body a healthy so~ his heart .rate began decelerfrom the waist down, as harmless and a necating, and an emergency Caesarian section became a possibility. Afraid for het; child, essary relief from the pains of childbearing.

Clune panicked.

But epidurals come with risks of their own.

"I came as close as you can come to They achieve their grand effect because anesthetic is injected into the fluid surrounding freaking out without completely losing it," Clune said. ''I knew too much. At one the spinal cord, and the procedure c~rries a and a larger risk of point, Linda took her thumb and put it small risk of between my eyes on the bridge of my infections, sore backs, and headaches. nose ... Wha~ver she did with that• touch, it Sometimes, epidurals do not work, leaving a •

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February 2006

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certain area or even an entire side of the body in pain. And most often, the epidural fails to produce the desired numbness that the mother-to-be had expected. This is where midwives' role as instructors is key. ''We do a huge amount of education before they get there," Stone-Godena said. ''When the women we take care of ask for epidurals, they know what they're asking for.

They don't just think it's something they've read about in a magazine, the be-ali, end-all" Thus, if the epidural, or any part of the labor, fails to occur as the mother-to-be envisioned, she at least understands why, and is spared the fear that ignorance can inspire.

Midwives also include their patients' partners in the process of birth. This is most clear in the delivery room itsel£ where midwives take care to include partners in the process and often find themselves, as Gbelli did with Tim Clune, soothing the partner as well as the mother-to-be. Cibelli remetnbers one patient whose husband was not pleased that his wife was seeing a midwife rather than a doctor.

"He was very uncomfortable with the whole thing," she said. But after th.e birth, the patient's husband had a radically different opinion of midwifery. ''He said to me, "Ibis is the first time when I've been at th.e birth of one of my children where I didn't feel like I was an outsider, that I was encouraged to participate, that I felt like the person really knew my wife and cared about her."

Midwives' attention to their patients' partners does not end at birth. Like obstetricians, midwives carefully screen their patients to see •

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if they are at risk for post-partum depression and keep close tabs on thdr physical and mental health after the baby is hom. And while doing so, they extend an eye to their patients' partners as well "Partners get post-partum depression too, so we have to take care of the whole family," said Stone-Godena. "I think we sometimes forget, because the woman is bearing the physical burden and the hormonal burden, that sometimes the partner has to be strong. And they get fatigued, and they have a meltdown, and they aren't able to provide what they need for support · either. So we have to be prepared to take care of all of them, or set them up with someone to take care of all of them."

On some occasions, midwifes simply go above and beyond what could reasonably be expected of any doctor. After the birth of her first child, Alycia Clune developed severe mastitis, an in tion of the breast that renders breast feeding extremely painful. But, after giving birth to a child the odds, she was to relinquish any aspect of motherhood. Her family did not understand.

Cibelli did. Rather than refer her to a nurse or lactation specialist, Cibelli drove to Clune's house to personally assist her with her breastfeeding. Twice. ''What physician would do that?" Clune asked. n New Haven, midwives are a ubiquitous part of OB/GYN practices.

And some doctors do recognize that midwives provide patients with a type of care that, for practical reasons, they cannot. Soon after she began working alongside Dr. Holley, Debbie Cibelli asked him why he chose to include midwives in his practice rather than hire additional physicians.

"He said, 'I thought my patients were going to get better care if they had that personaHzed approach and if they actua11y had someone that they knew with them when they were in labor,' she remembered. "He said, 'I'm a physician. I'm not going to sit at someone's bedside and rub their back and hold the bucket when they throw up. But midwives do that, and I think my patients get better care because of it."'

Cibelli characte• izes Dr. Holley as a "unique" physician, one who genuinely believed that · care would benefit his patients. And while it is ttne that some doctors are confident in the level of care •

midwives provide, others are more motivated by economic incentives. Instead of seeing a midwives as a critical source of comfortstroking a patient's hair and murmuring · soothing words as she vomits they view them as people who will be spending time with their patient so they can be elsewhere, be it in the finanda1ly lucrative operating room or on the golf course. A midwife, who can perform routine examinations and assist in all .

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but the most complicated of births, is a far less expensive employee than another physician. Years ago, a small number of physicians caught wind of this idea, which spread in a domino effect. Now midwives are fixtures in many New Haven OB/GYN practices. ''Whether it's fortunately or unfortunately, I think that a lot of the time when mid.:. wives are hired into physician practices, it's because physicians see them as an economic advantage, not necessarily because they buy into the philosophy of midwifery;' Cibelli said.

By and large, midwives in the greater United States operate within the same confines as their peers in New Haven: in partnership with a physician. Those striving to operate in less conventional environments often work in alternative birth centers, like those in Danbury and Waterbury, which promise a less intimidating attnosphere than a hospital's.

A select few also participate in home-births.

But midwives are limited by their status as nurses, not doctors. They are not qualified to perform procedures necessitated by complicated pregnancies, such as Caesarian sections.

Thus, centers and midwives who

30

perform home-births limit their work to lowrisk pregnancies, while their counterparts, working in hospitals, always have a physician in the building who they can turn to if a more complex procedure becomes necessary. s midwifery has become more popular in the United States, the number of midwives has naturally blossomed. But, in the past few years, growth has halted. ''There's a crisis now;' Teri Stone-Godena said. ''Midwifery, not unlike nursing as a whole, has become less attractive to people who want to have a life, who do want to make a good income, and don't necessarily want to be under the threat of a lawsuit for twenty or thirty years after taking care of someone."

Midwifery has been unable to escape the malpractice maelstrom that has afflicted medicine as a whole over the past decade.

Because they participate in childbirths, midwives and obstetricians are at risk.for being sued years after the actual €oXent. If a heart bypass is botched, the effects are immediately evident. But damage inflicte& by a ' poorly handled childbirth may not manifest itself for years. ''There may be a birth that seems to have gone okay, but when the child gets to first grade, he or she is not doing very well;' Stone-Godena said. "The parents say 'Well, you remember it took a little bit longer for him to come out than we thought,' or 'You knew there was all this excitement in the room' and they go back and try to pin down the issue that's happening with th~r child." ''I don't want to make it sound like I think that's a commonplace scenario;' she added. ''I think there's a fear that that's a commonplace scenario."

In actuality, midwives get sued far less frequently than their physician colleagues, because they tend to care for lower-risk women, and because of the bond they share with their patients. Those midwives who do get sued for malpractice are generally those who operate closely with physicians and, in the event of a suit, get sued along with the physician, the hospital, and every other entity involved in the birth.

In spite of this, it is a logistical nightmare for midwives who are not affiliated with a physician or hospit:al to obtain malpractice insurance. Debbie Cibelli became aware · of this when, after Dr. Holley's retirement, she and Jjnda Iisk started

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their own practice and attempted to become insured in their own right, without being directly linked to a physician.

"One of the most challenging aspects of starting this practice a year ago was educating insurance companies," she said. Few insurance companies had ever insured a midwife who wasn't employed by a hospital or physician, and though clients had been seeing Cibelli and Lisk for twenty years in Dr. Holley's office, some companies were hesitant to insure in their new practice. Others flat out refused.

Rather than give up, Cibelli took on the role of advocate, both for her own practice and for midwifery as a whole. "I had to take each insurance company on individua11y and educate them that indeed I did not have to be a physician employee to see patients in the state of Connecticut," she said. Sometimes a conversaj.o;;r-wasn't enough. In those cases, Cibelli q~etly opened a book of legal statutes, photocopiectrelevant pages revealing that she-r/_, wa84Cring within the confines of ,/ Connecticui~'StaJe,: :raw, and mailed them in nearly addres&e-<!:'i~v~opes . to the insurance companies. ffir perseverance· paid of£: and she and Lisk are now healthcare providers under almost every insurance company their patients use. Except one: Aetna.

Lisk and Cibelli have inarguably won a victory for midwives by establishing a precedent for midwives seeking insurance coverage. But the specter of Aetna, the one hold-out insurance company remains. In her initial struggle ·to win recognition from insurance companies, Cibelli did not vehemently pursue Aetna, regarding it as somewhat marginal. That changed as of January 1; Aetna is now the only alternative to the Yale Health Plan for Yale employees. Aetna's refusal to insure midwives had previously inflicted a financial burden on Cibelli and Lisk's patients; since the two have been operating their practice, their patients who are insured by Aetna have been forced to pay out of pocket for their care. But now it is a question of principle: Employees of the Yale School of Nursing, where many of New · · Haven's midwives received their training, will not be able to rely on their insurance to cover visits to Cibelli and Lisk.

Thanks to Aetna, midwives can no longer rely on their insurance to cover visits to other midwives. ~

Alycia Clune, who currendy works at the School of Nursing, is one of Cibefu. and Iisk's patients who has been affected by Aetna's refusal to recognize them as valid healthcare providers. She has joined many of the pair's patients in writing letters to the company championing Cibelli and Lisk's cause, and ·plans to continue seeing them, paying out of pocket, if Aet:rui continues to refuse to back the two. In the years that they have cared for her, they have become far more than just medical support ''I believe, for me, having a midwife in your life is a gift you give yourself:' she wrote in an e-mail. ''Linda and Debbie are my practitioners, but they are so much more. They take the role as mom, sister, counselor, whatever is ' needed at the moment According to Cibelli, Aetna has made a verbal agreement to enroll midwives as providers, but has yet to come through on its promise. ''They're ~orking on it,"' she said, with a hint of skepticism in her voice. In spite of the efforts of Clune and other Aetnainsured patients, the company seems to be oblivious to the bond that these women have formed with Lisk and Cibelli.

"One of our patients called Aetna and said 'I've been seeing these women for years.they delivered my babies!"' Cibelli said. ''The person on the other end said, 'If you're done having babies, why do you care who you see?

It's just a yearly appointment"' .

In a country where doctors have become so distanced from their patients that, according to a recent New York Times article, by 2011 all new medical residents will be r~quired to demonstrate "empathy'' in a role-playing exercise, patient centered-midwifery care is needed more than ever. But in spite of the well-defined niche they fill, midwives still struggle to gain recognition from patients, doctors, and insurance companies. And while it is doubtful that medical school-administered "etnpathy tests" will make much of a difference in the· way doctors interact with their patients, the fact remains that the highest-paid midwife earns less than the lowestpaid obstetrician.

Helen Eckinger, ajunior in TrumbuU College, is the Research Director of TN].

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DAVENPORT COIJ..EGE MASTER'S TEA

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February16,2006 4:00p.m.

Davenpott College Master's House 271 Park Street

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Generation Debt: Why Now is a Terrible Titne to be Young Rit,erhead Book.s (2006) Anya Kamenetz received her B.A. from Yale in 2002 and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post. New >f>rk Magazine, Sahm, The Nation, and The Village Voice, where she earned a 2004 Pulitzer Prize nomination for her contributions to the eries · Debt: The New Economics of Being Young." In her first book Generation Debt, she talks to expens in economics labor markets. the health-care industry, and education, and amasses a startling array of evidence that building a secure life. let alone surviving is harder for young people today than it was thirty years ago.

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them. A single professor idly raises a slide up to the light, squints, then snaps

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the drawer shut. "Most people these days would rather look at these images on the computer," says Katherine Haskins, the plum-haired Library Director currently embroiled in a battle to scan the collection's 380,000 slides and pho-

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space a second library that isn't comprised of varnished beechwood drawers, but of ones and zeros.

Digitization is a gradual, painstaking process currently unfolding in the backrooms and basements of each of Yale's disparate libraries. There is no central digitization headquarters, as it would be a nightmare to move and track all these objects. Instead, each library sc~ns or photographs its own collection and uploads it on-line into a separate search engine. Yale's digital library site lists twenty different searchable databasesfrom the Law School's "Curiae Project," which provides Supreme Court briefs in fuJl text, to Beinecke's, Yale's largest digital collection boasting over one-hundred thousand images. Although separate teams toil in separate libraries, the library system plans to coordinate these databases so that in the not-too-distant future, a grand database that might integrate Haskins' ambitious slide digitization project into Yale's . larger colleche slide library is just one branch tions. The final product would be a of the Yale library system that is search engine like Google, and a grand currently transitioning from object in itself that would stand as a hard copy videocassettes, magazines, monument to the breadth of knowledge books, specimens, oil paintings, Nobel available at Yale.

This is the next step in a digitization prizes, papyri, death masks t.o . a digital, on-line database. While traditional on-line project that is just over a decade old. In library searches yield only book titles and 1994, Yale's Project Open Book was journal dates, over the past ten years lauded for its ambitious aim to convert librarians have sought to digitize complete ten-thousand texts into digital formats.

tographs. Essentially, Haskins is in the process of taking pictures of these pictures of pictures. The digitization of this entire library is a quest so vast that an end date cannot be projected. ''We're in a bit of a protean state," Haskins admits, "I may have long retired by the time this has come to fruition."

On this day in January, the staff here is silently celebrating. Today they reached the fifty thou~and image mark, or 50,117 to be exact, according to the tracker on the online database that stores the scans.

"Quid Tum," Haskins shrugs, quoting Alberti, and the department's motto. (franslation: ''What next?")

Of all the Yale libraries to undertake digitization, Visual Resources' Slide Library has the least choice in the matter.

This past October, I<odak manufactured its last 35mm slide projector. The clicking, dusty eyes holding vigil in the back of Yale classrooms will l::;>e gradually phased out, to be replaced with digital projectors.

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like an ever-idealistic Sisyphus as she clicks through the slides in a drawer.

"We acquire more images per year than we currently digitize," she said. o translate a slide from a tiny plastic window into the language of pixels, Haskins sends orders downstairs where, amid the old stone of Street Hall's 1870s basernent, a bank of Eames chairs float around a coffee table stacked with issues of Wired magazine. This is Yale's Media Services division, which hired Photographic Services Manager Joseph Szaszfai as a photographic assistant in 1964 to shoot Museum exhibitions for print catalogues and posters. Szaszfai has spent the past thirty years shooting the slides that comprise the Slide Library's upstairs collection, and his new role almost seems like a renunciation of his old work. This past academic year, his team at Media Services .was responsible for creating "J9 ,000 digital images for use by faculty in class or p~_bli­ cation, many of which were digital copies of slides he shot himself.

"This team has basically gone from silver to pixels," says Media Services Director Peggy McReady with visible enthusiasm. ''We still produce images, but five percent are requested on traditional film base, and 95 percent are requested as digital. That's the opposite of what it was four or five years ago."

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holdings, so that what is on-line is a simulacrum of the entire collection in digital images. For example although a scanned Edith Wharton manuscript certainly does not retain the tactile value of the original, the digital form of the manuscript would still be very valuable to a scholar in New Mexico who is unable to travel to Beinecke Library. The slide library is creating a· digital copy of itself in cyber-

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Today, the Beinecke library holds onehundred thousand digital imagesincluding of 12,000 papyri scrolls and 660 exlorers' maps. The Manuscripts & Archives collection, in comparison, works on a smaller budget to expand its current stock of ten thousand images. It has taken Haskins and her team eight years to scan the fifty-thousand slides, and with 270,000 to go, she often feels

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some reason," Szaszfai agrees, "It's all happening this year." This summer, Media Services sent out a pamphlet to Yale Faculty encouraging more sentimental professors to "go digital," to request digital im~es for class and laptops to play them on. ''There are folks that have been here for years and years and years, but they may have to change," Szaszfai said. 'These projectors are going

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to break, and there won't be another way to do things."

With changing technology, the layout of Media Services is also changing. The computer lab Szaszfai careens through was once a screening room for 16mm projectors. A darkroom down the hall is shuttered and empty. ''Just today a guy came by and turned off the water." By July 1, 2006, the division, which for the past forty years has printed photographs chemically, will be run entirely through a networked system of computers and printers. The basement's pride and joy is Kodak scanner that can scan an entire carousel at a rate of 85 slides per hour.

On a Wednesday in January the entire basement is empty but for two technicians hud<;iled in a windowless nook the size of a bathroorp., gathered around a large computer scrtren~--They watch as the machine whizzes thr-ough a carousel of .images of Italian architec~e. ;"" .

Once ~~e' sfu:l~~ ~are digitized, they'll -- ,.. , " first be handed , <iV~ to the professor, ... ,. either via e-QiftY:-· ot on ' a data disc. ' Secondly, they'll be sent upstairs to Haskins. Her team will upload the images into one of several databases and will enter alongside what librarians call."metadata," a string of information about the image such as its artist and ditnensions that allows the image to be searchable in a larger database.

But few undergrads, unless strongarmed by an art history course, know that the resource even exists. "Currently, to find what they're looking for, students are forced to wend their way by human beings," says Katie Bauer, a former New Haven math teacher who was hired by SML under the daunting title of "Integrated Interface Systems Librarian."

Her job was to procure and coordinate electronic databases like LexisN e:xis from vendors. Today, Bauer, along with Jennifer Weintraub, a classically-trained librarian who fondly recalls learning Netscape 1.0 in Library School, is working on a project called "DPIP." "I was trying this whole time we were siu iog here to think of what it stood for," Bauer admits. "Digital Production Integration Program?" The program aims to integrate the images that Haskins' team uploads with all of Yale's digital collections. Currently, digital holdings in the '

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This camera was once the standardfor taking photographs rif slides, todqy they're taken with a digital scanback.

Beinecke division of Sterling Memorial must be searched through a separate database from Manuscripts & Archives' holdings. Though Yale's libraries will always be a "decentralized system, no matter what," Bauer says, "clearly we need to build something to coordinate groups."

As far as librarians go, Bauer and Weintraub are particularly progressive.

"Librarians are critical that students will only use what's available digitally," Bauer says, "They say it's a bad thing that Google is so easy, and that people are getring spoiled." Most librarians would agree that students should "wend their way" through the system that's been in place for years mastering card catalogues, toying with Orbis. ''But when a student asks 'Why don't we just have something like Google, that searches all the information systems, or something like Amazon that

recommends other books or sources,' it's hard to give an explanation. The answer is, we should be using these techniques. We have a lot to learn from what students already know." _D PIP hopes to integrate all digital holdings into one search engine. ''You'll type 'GertrUde Stein"' Weintraub explains, "and you'll get images and text from all libraries."

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ibrarians are also wary of how simplifying the process may affect scholarship. 'There's a fear that if some images are on-line, those will be the only images students u e," Weintraub explains. ''They'll never go looking further." Currently, Yale doesn't have the capability to digitize every library holding, so libraries must prioritize what gets translated into a new format, instead of pursuing a wholesale conversion. They •

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an 1890s photograph of an Inuit, she couldn't upload very much "metadata" because she didn't know very much about the image. Months later, she received an email from a Juneau, Alaska man who could barely restrain his glee at finding an image of his relative online: (The image is of Rudolph and Dai.ry Walton and famify, ca. 1890... This is the on!J known photograph of the .Walton fomi!J and its discovery was met with much excitement among the Walton fami!J in Sitka, who had never seen a photo of their grandmother, aunt and uncles (all of whom diedyoung). " This is one of the scholarly outcomes that exemplify why Irwin and her collaborators at the Beinecke laud the new digital database. "Correspondences like these are very rewarding," Irwin wrote in an e-mail.

"In this case, the digital reproduction of a rare photograph transcended the four walls at the library and as a result, we now .

Where once, the Media Services slide viewer would have been stocked with images, tod'!Y it stands empty. have a deeper understanding... based on the shared insight of a far-;flung user of first digitize items· requested by scholars, ment of Sterling Memorial Library. "What our collection. Researchers often ,.help then scan items that receive the most use we need to deal with is wholescale digiti- interpret items in our collection:" she (freeing up librarians who would other- zation, which· requires a wholesale opera- added, "that is not new. What is neW, howwise spend time pulling those items); their tion we're not equipped to handle. But ever, is the eliminiation of the space and next order of business is to scan items currently, this is a skewed picture of a col- time constraints of traditional libraries." that are monetarily valuable apd thus lection." A search for Eero Saarinen, the By widening access to these materials more likely to be stolen like. the jewel- architect of Morse and Ezra Stiles without causing damage to the originals, encrusted fraternity pins currently being College, brings up 179 hits. "It's just total- the Beinecke digitization team is fulfllling digitized at M&A. Finally, they scan items ly skewed," he stresses, ''We probably a two-fold goal of deepening scholarship that are so perishable, digiti.zation serves have ten thousand." about the materials within the collections as a mode of preservation.

"Our collection is enormous," says while simultaneously broadening the Because of the extent to which digiti- Matt Shirley, the Digital Imaging Project viewing audience for that collection. zation depends on demand, librarians Manager for Beinecke, "but when you worry that it will negatively affect scholar- think of someone's archives in a box as nlike Haskins, who is chiefly conship by creating what Weintraub describes hundreds of separate images, this is a very cerned with digitizing an analog as "a self-perpetuating cycle": The images small portion of our collection." Shirley's resource convertiflg slides.that get more use will become the easiest team photographs abou.t fifty items per Szary is building a digital collection from to access and thus will get even more use~ day, though he explains that "3D is much analog and other media with digital origiJust as an art historian fears for the slower. Busts, swords, medallions, death nals. ''What do you do," he asks, "when a integrity of copied images, so too librari- masks, and Nobel prize medals take a lot writer's correspondences that they donate ans fear that a digital database will provide of time." Translating the image of a three- to the library aren't on a piece of paper a false picture. "The worry is that this will dimensional object onto a two-dimen- anymore, but they donate a collection of ebecome a 'greatest hits' collection," says sional on-line database is its own chal- mails? How do you preserve,She order they Richard Szary, the Director of lenge, and is the most obvious example of were sent in? Where do you put the e-mails, Manuscripts & Archives, who last year what is lost when students and scholars how do you ensure that they aren't tamwas recognized by the Society of neglect the original object for the facility pered with, how many copies do you make and do you save them on a CD or on a American Archivists as one of the "quiet of a digital image.

Still, librarians are already noticing server? Nothing lasts forever," he says, giants of the profession." ''What's on-line is just such a small por- that resources are getting used by a "But it's hard to know what will last at least tion of the actual collection, and is com- broader audience. When Rebekah Irwin, a long time. We don't want any 8-tracks or pletely unrepresentative," he says modest- the catalog librarian for the Digital Word 4.0 flles, because nothing we have ly from a low-ceilinged back office of the Projects division, entered data to can access them." gothic Manuscripts & Archives depart- describe "Unknown Man from Alaska," Just last week in Manuscripts & Archives, •

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a miniature robot named S (System up a plate of glass as if gently lifting a library, the wall is frequented more by for Automated Migration of Media strand of pearls. Flicking the sideswitch ghosts than by grade-hounds, but it is Archives) finished the tough 18-month job of an illuminated viewer with the other maintained out of a sort of sentimental of re-recording 2,000 hours of testimoni- hand, she sets the glass pane upon the interest in the preservation of an older als from Holocaust victims that had been lighted square, revealing the ruins of a world . of scholarship. When the Cross Campus Library below Sterling is renoin the library's collection. Each night, a 19th century Italian palace in fragile technician would load the robot with hours miniature. The crisp, black-and-white vated this May, the enormous card cataof blank footage, and each morning he pane is a magic lantern slide, the precur- logues in the first floor will be moved. would wake to remove hundreds of hours sor to the celluloid 35mm Kodak slide Rarely used, they will be preserved as art of exposed tape from S 's hungry objects, saved out of interest in their stabelly. 'When we applied for the grant, digtus as artifacts. Removed ftom the buritization was not even an option;' said projdens of function, they can be appreciatect director Joanne Rudof at a recent coned more wholly for their form, for the ference, "because there was no acceptable human effort it took to create them.

• • digital format for video." Now, the library Art history is a history of the artihas hundreds of copies of small DV fact, and any slide or image memorized tapes a format that is ostensibly outdatin a class serves; Haskins explains, as a ed. "In .the case of converted materials," "simulacrum with a sense of the value Szary says, "I look at it as a manager proof the original, the 'ding an sich, ' or 'the tecting an invest:tnent. We put a lot of thing itself.' There are so many ways to money into i!? and if this gets lost, that's a understand the physicality of these lot of wofk and a lot of hours that are lost, objects." Analog formats like the lantern case the loss of let alone in-a preservation slide are kept less for art history schol. the document itsylf.'_' .ars interested in the artifact, but for r • Such failures ' have occurred since the scholars interested in the history of art . . . ., library's 1994· in,au~_ital _digitization project, history what Haskins describes as the . / rl"' - ... ,..

ProJect Open ~oo"k, whose· 1992 proposal "historiography of art history at Yale," • outlined a "vision of the research library of as she returns the lantern slide to its the future as an institution whose mission is drawer with a sentimental smile. to generate, preserve and improve for its Though the lantern slide serves as a clients' ready access both intellectual and simulacrum of its image, it is also its physical to recorded knowledge. The own historical object, its own 'ding an place of electronic tools in the library of sich' worthy of study. The artifact the future will depend on how well they that cycles through today's art history presently being created by Yale's hardmeasure up against this mission." classrooms. "These were outrnoded in working librarians is a digital database, Unfortunately, these books were recorded the 19 50s or 1960s," Haskins explains, and in one sense is just another simuon a system that has since become obsolete. pointing toward the image with a pinky. lacrum a sprawling two-dimensional "No one can look at anything they did," "But color wasn't always spot on with image of the sprawling library itself. laments librarian Katie Bauer, "Cornell's the 35mm slides, so in most cases they Sentimental professors might be squirming in their tweed, but Haskins similar program had the same proble~ stuck with lantern slides for a few years.

They recorded eve · g on these giant In some ways," she reflects, "this 1s how couldn't care less. "Someone once exp1ained it to me as 'You go where the silver laser disks, which of course nothing we think of digital media." can read."

Digital media teeters in the same pur- stuff is,"' she says, adding with a smirk a The prevailing plan for keeping pace gatory, straddling a brink of technologi- quote from a book she recently read by with constant improvements in media cal progress where most scholars are W. J. T. Mitchell, who saw digitization as technology is to save digital objects to a unwilling to part with the old system, but an eternal battle: "The shock of new server, and then back this server up period- would be hesitant to argue against the media is as old as the hills." ''New media" ically, on different forms of media. Any efficiency of a digital database, where is the chief interest of art history, and changes made in the conversion from one slides can be rifled through by keywords society's gradual progress is evident in medium to another will be tracked using instead of drawer knobs. Librarians every object we create and in every slide describe the website as a kind of "elec- .stocking these thousands of drawers, programs developed by the library. tronic wailing wall," referring to-the data- awaiting Q:te new processes that will fight n a skinny black turtleneck, base's analog format: a long, studded to presetve them for the next generation.

Katherine Haskins stalks the white wall, showcasing the images stuhedgerows of slide cabinets with dents must memorize for exams that Adriane Q11inlan, a ]11nior in Calho11n College, grim purpose, wrenches open a drawer stretches the length of Street Hall's sec- is a Managing Editor uj 1NJ. and, between two careful fingers, pulls ond floor. Today, like the deserted slide

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omfort food, the bites . of Unique, indigenous ingredients can ditional rice dish, perhaps the most Americana typically associat- be difficult to import, and satisfying widely known item on the Spanish ed with home, wield tremen- the tastes . of a foreign audience is a menu, is notably .absent on Ibiza's carte dous nostalgic power; the desire to complex art. Moreover, in the con- du jour and its omission is no accident. return to the figurative womb of one's temporary gastronomic climate where "It's true," he says, fokijng his arms childhood kitchen is so . potent, there fusion has made easy bedfellows of as if preparing to defend his culit?-ary '• are programs on the Food Network ingredients like goat cheese and ideology. His thick Spanish accent extolling the virtue of grits and chic wasabi, the literalization of the "melt- softens the "z" in the restaurant's New York eateries soliciting twenty- ing pot" poses a new . challenge to name to a "thh" sound. "We're doing maintaining one's culinary identity. something different here our food dollar meatloaf.

But here in New Haven, a small These days, can a French restaurant represents a new Spain." but diverse comm11oruty, mashed pota- really be French· if it employs influBallo's desire to reconceptualize toes, macaroni and cheese, apple pie, ences from Southeast Asia? the native Spanish diet is the product and burgers fail to represent the diverIn the face of these questions, a of a transnational existence. Born in sity of the population. While a native group of New .Haven restaurants has San Sebastian, in Spain's northern New Englander salivates at the mem- taken different approaches towards Basque territory, he attended culinary ory of Mom's clam chowder, a Korean the process of recreation. A renowned school there as a teenager before movimmigrant reminisces about the kimchi Spanish chef, trained b y the greatest ing to Mexico City. In 1992, Bolio (a spicy cabbage dish) that his omma cooks in the world, focuses on self- immigrated to America, then returned fermented from scratch. Over the last expression and creativity. An Eritrean to Europe to fine-tune his art. Later, two decades, the flowering of a dense- refugee and businessman seeks to in a partnership with Ignacio Blanco, ly packed multicultural restaurant spread the gospel of sharing. Two he converted Pike Tapas, a modest corrununity in the Elm City has come Taiwanese brothers hope to expose restaurant nestled between a barbertheir · new homeland to authentic shop and a fraternity on High Street, to reflect this plurality.

For a chef or restaurateur hailing Chinese cooking. Ultirnately, all three into Ibiza. from a distant locale, reproducing famil- aspire to redefine the notion of "comThe staples of a Spanish diet.iar food in a foreign environment is not fort food" and of American cuisine. ham; cheese, fine wines, olive oil can unlike the process of assimilation itself: all be found in the restaurant's Ethnicities intermingle, the new world The Innovator kitchen. Bolio, readily analyzing his meets the old, and a certainje ne sais quoi country's gastronomy, points to the Luis Bollo, the gastronomic mas- significance of its lengthy border on is inevitably lost and gained in translation. To create this sort of comfort termind behind Ibiza, one of the most the Mediterranean Sea. "Because of food, cooks must replicate their native esteemed Spanish restaurants in the their shared coastline," he notes, cuisine from a vast spatial~ and often world (it was hailed by The New York "Spanish food is not ·that different temporal, distance a far cry from a Times as the best of its kind in the from, . say, the provincial food of bowl of Easy Mac. US), refuses to serve paella. The tra- France. Like Italians, we use toma•

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but in a different way."

This difference is magnified at Ibiza, where a glance at the restaurant's menu may simultaneously elicit awed delight from the epicurean and trepidation from the inexperiehced diner. Ballo ·and · his staff infuse regional delicacies, like squid cooked in its own ink and roasted suckling pig (a Castilian dish), with accoutrements and flavors extracted from a wealth of intercontinental sources. The result is Iberian cuisine infused with a whiff of outside influence.

"I borrow aspects from every part of Spain," states Bolio. "Towns in Andalusia, G ·a licia ... but I also look to other countries for inspiration.

I've taken walks on the streets of • my home country with a French chef.. ·. 2'1'v.e expanded my knowledge of food- through my .. travels.

For ' example, cevic..he. 1s· on our menu, and ' ' I learned:twnat"'it. was when I was in -.,r . c·lty. ''~ · r;r ., ' /;;,;'' , M eXlCO '/ ' r-Y ' .

Bolla's ~xp~es~ion of : his Spanish heritage is innovative, both in his willingness to incorporate multicultural influences and in the execution of his dishes. For example, a steamed octopus appetizer is accompanied by a "potato foamy emulsion." The textural conversion of starch into foam an impressive effect achieved rather ingloriously by filling a whipped cream cartridge with a liquefied material is a method that Bolio attributes to Fernan Adria, a worldrenowned Barcelonan chef famous for his new wave practices. Bolio insists, however, on avoiding novelty for novelty's sake. "I like to play with new techniques," he affirms, "but only if they enhance the dish."

The greatest of Ibiza's challenges lies not in its adhering to tradition or achieving innovation, but in satisfying cross-Arlantic audiences. According to Bolio, the development of one of the . restaurant's most renowned offerings exemplifies this problern. "I knew that I wanted to serve baccalao, which is a white fish that is dehydrated with salt to produce a unique flavor and dry texture. I believed that Americans could '

enjoy the flavor, but not the texture, so I experimented with the dish in Spam, salting my own fish overnight. I wanted to create something that works for everyone, to compromise."

Despite such concessions, Bolio maintains that he always intends for his food to express his own experience and background. "My wife says that her country can be found in her language and the food of her people. My personal history is with Spain, and I do not want to lose touch with those roots."

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The Entrepeneur If Luis Bolio is the T.S. Eliot of the New Haven dining scene,. then Gideon Ghebreyesus, the co-owner of Caffe Adulis, is its Shel Silverstein.

Ghebreyesus is a warm, broad-shouldered man with a genial grin and an eloquent manner. At age 18, he fled his native Eritrea when the East African nation fought a brutal war of separation with Ethiopia. His affability belies an astute business sense sharpened by years in the restaurant world. '~fter immigrating to the States," he recalls, "I studied at Southern Connecticut State, then quickly began working in restaurants." These restaurants all of which served Western cuisine included 368 Steak House on Audubon, Gentree's on York Street, Bruxelies, and Scoozi on Chapel. The demise of three out of four of these establishments (only Scooz1 still exists) reflects the precariousness of the industry; it also sheds light on the rarity of a success like Adulis, which continues to thrive over a decade into • • 1ts eXIstence. '~s I was moving up from kitchen manager to floor man~ger and so on, it became clear that New Haven needed something different. My brother [Ficre Ghebreyesus, Adulis's head chef] and I came up with the idea of opening up an Eritrean restaurant, which, of course, was a natural thing to do. I think it filled a gap, because the food is interesting and not something that many can reproduce in their •

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sources the cuisines of neighboring countries, as well as American influences. ''We were once a colony of Italy, so there are influences from there in our food. . . we blend culinary styles and offerings from different African countries, like plantains," says Ghebreyesus. "We also serve Middle Eastern food the region is close to Eritrea. I grew up eating fava beans, and we serve shah (ani Ful, which is an appetizer made of them."

According to Ghebreysus, this amalgam of influences is what it takes to manage a successful restaurant in an environment where the cuisine is often totally foreign to diners. "For example, we came up with an "Injerrito," he says, pointing to the menu description: a '~burrito" made of if!jera, lentils, sour cream, and vegetables. «What it really comes down to is a cross-utilization of culture~" he adds. "Food has no boundaries."

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''We serve our food communally, on kitchens at home." .

Even in a well-equipped commer- a big platter of ir!}era. ·That is how I ate cial kitchen, Eritrean food can be dif- growing up, and I think that eating and -ficult to reproduce because it utilizes sharing this type of food is a wonderful The Traditionalist · -·a unique set of ingredients. In addi- experience. · Communal eating is a big For mo·s t Americans, Eritrean and tion to the basics spinach, green part of Eritrean culture my brother Spanish cuisines are like strangers or beans, squash, lentils Caffe Adulis learned to cook at family gatherings."

The familial nature of Adulis' envi- distant relatives; but Chinese food is must import many of its staples directly from Eritrea.

"There are ronment is present in the Ghebreyesus an old, reliable friend. In a country many ·components, like berbere and brothers' willingness to embrace as where the average citizen can rattle off cayenne, that simply cannot be acquired here," Gheybreyesus says, dangling a pouch of a blood-red powder wrapped in tin foil.

«This is berbere ... When you cook with it, you need to let it simmer fust."

The true staple of an Eritrean diet, however, is injera, a spongy pancakelike bread made of a special type of flour that has been fermented in water and fried. Ghebreyesus proudly notes that Adulis makes its own injera every day; the flat bread is used as an accompaniment to a variety of stews, vegetables, and meat entrees.

Forgoing the need for silverware, the food can be sopped and scooped with the bread itself, which is ripped apart throughout the meal.

The process is decidedly unpretentious and, set in a white tablecloth atmosphere, elicits a sense of childish mischief and fun.

Traditional wovm Eritrean baskets hang 011 exposed brick walls at Cciffo Adulis. '

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The Chins' 87 year-old mother makes dumplingfrom scratch.

Tony picks up a copy of the Royal . results into doughy conch shells.

As Tony animatedly bounds Palace menu, and several inserts fall out. These additional menus, he around the rest~urant, pointing to explains, list the traditional dishes the different aspe.cts of the decor the restaurant serves regional dishes space is airy and bathed in a warm ranging from the spicy Hunan and wash of light one of the waitresses Szchezuan cuisine to the lighter prepares a traditional oolong tea cerCantonese style.

"We used emony for two. She lays the authento give out a single, hand-written ver- tic stoneware on the table, carefully sion to Chinese families, but then steeps the leaves in a tiny pot, and other people wanted to see it, too!" then empties it into a pair of shotHe pauses to direct a group of gig- glass sized cups. gling young waitresses clad in tradiThe quiet, beautiful process tional scarlet garb, then continues. encapsulates the essence of Royal "No two dishes are sauced alike. And Palace. Unlike the culinary architects we serve authentic options thal: you behind Ibiza and Caffe Adulis, the wouldn't expect, like honey and wal- Chins are wholly devoted to an nut shrimp.

But, with traditional unadulterated presentation of their food, our meat is leaner, our vegeta- heritage; as Tony avows, "We serve bles are of greater variety, and our and cook what we know, and it's traditional." dumplings ar.e lighter."

With dumplings on his mind, he Still, he admits that his adherence to proceeds to the back rQom, where his authenticity isn't unbendable. ccone of 87 year-old mother is seated in a bulky our best dishes, the spicy chicken, is fur vest, making them from scratch at actually called "saliva chicken" in a table laden with heaps of flour, Taiwan." He laughs, then adds, 'We bowls of ground pork and vegetables, probably can't call it that here." and stacks of paper-thin skins. In her creased, speckled hands, the task Mina Kime~ a junior in Davenport College~ is appears effortless; she rolls the vari- Production Manager tifTNJ. ous components between her fingers T~.l in milliseconds, then pinches the

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en was a handsome exe.c u- surveys via e-mail to compile a tive-type. He drove a red ·controversial statistic stating that Corvette and took care of 85 out of a random sample of 138 Barbie, who arranged playdates for females at Yale, or 62°/o, responded Skipper and Stacey, adored her that "when they had children, they baby, Polly Pocket,· and fussed with planned to cut back on work or her jumpers and updos at least stop working entirely." The result three times daily. As a little girl, I was billed as · a glimpse into the modeled my dolls' family after my future of smart young women: At a real one. My dad is a handsome certain point, a majority will probexecutive-type, arid my mother's a ably want to . be mothers, not gem like Barbie, who is fun, help- moguls. The ensuing media frenzy ful, and employed exclusively as a on campus and off saw the article mother; You might call her a as a setback for women. But for "homemaker," but I prefer "home the questions it raised about engineer."

Few of my friends' whether a Yale education entails a mothers worked, and those who professional imperative that stay-at did were only gone during school home-moms fail to meet, I thought hours. My world did not demand it was a lead. traditional gender roles, but For me, this article touched on they were the norm.

When I a particular anxiety · that may be played house, I identified with personal to my generation an Mommy and Barbie. It was what I anxiety prompted by cultural issues knew best. that spanned our childhoods in the It's been years since I've played 1990s. Between Diane Keaton's fitwith Barbie, but I have .rarely ful exit from corporate America in paused to reexamine the gender Ba~ Boom (1987), the frequent conventions I established as a little news hour segments that profiled girl. Then, last September, The New the quickening tick-tock of a York Times published Louise Story's woman's biological clock, and now notorious article, "Many interviews of so and so, a female Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Fortune 500 powerhouse who still Path to Motherhood." Story, a felt unfulfilled, from a young age journalist and student at the Yale we were exposed to worrisome School of Management, conducted press about women in the work42 •

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force.

It stirred my fears about the correlation between the privilege and investment of a Yale-education .and an obligation to ~c_iety that motherhood alone fell shor . of.

-What I was searching for 'Was a Yale-approved paradigm: a model of the modern woman I may want to be.

Yet the University's generally laudable blindness to its students sexual orientation and gender leaves it largely unable to address issues like maternity relevant to only a subset of the population.

As Yale has constructed valuable genderless stereotypes for mescholar, leader, citizen I have to wonder how neatly a woman who wants to have children can fit into Kingman Brewster's vision of a Yale class as a "thousand leaders of their generation." I have a feeling a mother can be what Brewster would agree is a leader. I just wish the option was a more visible.

At Yale, discussions about Story's article were primarily theoretical and frustrating. The points related to junctures the students had not yet confronte~, choices we had not yet been faced with.

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reproduced the sentiments on campus, tempering surprise with reflection. But alumnae discussed these issues based on decisions they already made.

Instead of turning to current students to gauge the cultural meaning of motherhood in an Ivy Lea·g ue setting as Story had, I turned to women among Yale;s alumni who had already made the choices that female students interviewed in the article could only imagine.

to picture myself transcending the limitations of her mold.

In a November 2001 article· for Yale Alumni Magazine, Cara Worthington Fe kula Hyson '77 questioned whether a liberal arts curriculum should be responsible for giving" women a crash-course in life: "Who was going to prepare them for what was ahead? Did they know it wasn't a clear shot to the •

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• · t took me a while to realize that the story I was pursutng wa~ my own. I have not planned the ne~! thir- · • ty years in ..,the··-way the article ~{Jigges-~_ed_· some .,. ,...., v Yale studet}.t_ j~.a~e-m~st of us proo~bly haven't-·but we have all envisaged glimmers of our future, if only the Barbie-doll dreams of white-decked wedding days. It is easy, however, to imagine ourselves in the contexts we're accustomed to, reproducing the choices our parents made to get us here.

Unlike me, some girls I spoke to said they could not fathom not being working moms; their moms (and Barbies) had worked every day of their lives. In the article's aftermath, I tried to assess how I would have answered Story's survey. As vivid, forthcoming, and certain as my professional aspirations are, I would have answered in the only way I can envision.

Finding other molds, I knew, would require finding other women to look to as models.· women related to me not by blood, but by the shared experience of four years at Yale. My mom is my best friend and biggest role model, but I feel trapped by my inability •

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Larned Professor of History, has interacted with generati ns of Yale women sirice 1967. She told me Yale did have · a gendered stereotype. He just didn't have ovaries.

"Once upon a time," .Russett recalled, "certainly the Yale Man connoted someone who had much more of a fashion sense, wh.o was ·elegant rather than scholarly looking, a fellow who might wear a camel-hair coat, who looked as if he might enjoy sports, and certainly not the kind of person to sit in a library." Even if it is a stereotype, and a phony one at that, she • thinks the Yale Man is an identifiable persona with a particular mystique .

Russett's image of the Yale man can be updated to loosely apply to my male peers, who I do · not think would object too gravely to its • connotations.

But even Russett, a scholar with a learned intuition of the situation of women past and present, could not conjure a comparable vision of the Yale Woman, the paradigm I was still searching for.

When Yale's first women matriculated in 1969, they weren't concerned with the idea of creating a

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top? Did they realize that life is full of heartaches? Did they have any idea of what would bring the greatest joys? Did they realize how many personal decisions and compromises would influence that career they were preparing for? Were they prepared to face the personal .and professional challenges?"

With thirty years between us, Hyson and I

question whether Yale has a responsibility to create a particular and practical model for female graduates like myself, for whom professionalism is not innate. Cynthia Russett, the

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obligation. "Gloria Steinem came here to · speak and l heard that she was criticized by some people because she was wearing lipstick ... you didn't· care about your appearance, you had points to make, and things to do."

I wear .lipstick (and mascara, and .. ' blush), but I definitely have points to make and things to do. ' Contacting women from past eras at Yale he,lped me understand how my own experience, reproduced and contrasted with the experiences of others.

I began using the Yale Alumni dires;tory as my own personal rolode:X:: "Hi Ms. McGinnis, I would· like to talk to you about your experience at Yale in the ear!J 80s and how it impacted the choices you · made and the places you are going in your life. Perhaps you also have opinions · about these recent NYT af!'lic/es as well.

Essential!J, I am trying to . . trace the evolution (or not) of the Yale Woman ...

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Hen Gibson McGinnis was a success story that I was relieved to en~ounter.

A graduate of the class of 1982, she is a partner in the law firm Haynes and Boone, LLP, who from her Baltimore home telecommutes to its DC office four days a week. She had her first child at 3 7; then she Her husband, a had a second. physician, is also a Yale graduate.

He does the cooking.

"We - all think we can control everything. We're Yalies right?!" she intoned sarcastically. that the leadership numbers might "If we think ... students at Yale fall if women were admitted," said are n1isguided at the very least, Russett. "Because they weren't like- then I think we owe it to them to ly to be the leaders, they had this talk ... We had an [AYA] women's sense of much to prove."

The conference two years ago where simultaneity of coeducation and there was so much three hundred feminism was an electric combina- Yale alumnae energy.

I think tion at Yale, imbuing some female your . generation is teachable. students with a greater sense of College students are teachable. We •

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Yale Woman they were concerned with making a mark at all. "When the women first came, they felt they had to prove themselves, and if they were being admitted, they well remembered that Kingman Brewster had talked about graduating a certain number of leaders per year, and so some alumni feared

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can serve as a resource." Ellen makes traditional roles seem less obvious by having it all. But more importantly, she is the embodiment of what I have been unable to imagine after so many years. · It was not ignorance, but the inaccessibility of a variety of realworld role models that made me so reluctant to imagine a life successfully combining motherhood and professionalism.

The alumnae with whom I interacted were lively, engaged, and enthusiastic about discussing an issue that everyone has something to say about. They talked at length about chapters, choices, and • complications.

My inbox, and . more im.p.ortantly my brain, was clogged --with their responses. A clear exampl~ ,,o{ -'fhe - Yale Woman ' ' may not~/yet;. : be. ~J.n our popular imaginatioh,.1 .j?~t _::!here are plenty of Yale alumnae who ·could serve as models to establish this paradigm. · I'm not ready yet to give up playing house in exchange for actually having one of my own, but when I do, it may be just like I always imagined it. What all of the alumnae overwhelmingly expressed was that there is nothing "unsuccessful" about being a homemaker, or as I'd prefer, "home engineer."

Ultimately, the Yale Woman finds fulfillment by forging her own path. I'm content with not knowing what lies ahead. It would ruin the fun. Maybe I'll be like my Barbie, or maybe I won't. Either way, I plan to utilize my education and my experiences to delineate my own boundaries, rather than subscribing to a plastic ideal.

Through March at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library ..

Yale University 121 Wall Street, New_Haven

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100 YEARS

MOZART: FROM PRODIGY TO LEGEND

T:\.1 February 2006

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S WRITE FOR YOUNG HEAI>ERS •

The exhibition area is open to the public Monday through Thursday 8:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m.

Friday 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Saturday 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

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· Romy Drucker, a Junior in Davenport College, is Editor-in-Chief of TN].

ERICAN POETRY OF .B ROADSIDES

www.library. yale.edu/beinecke •

The Franke Lectures in the Humanities Spring 2006 Tuesdays at 5 p.m.

Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street Free and open to the public

"The

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of Biography" March 21

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MOLLY WORTHEN, Yale University The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost: The Grand Strategy of Charles Hill •

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April18 JACK MILES , ]. Paul Getty Trust God: A Biography

The Franke Lectures are made possible by the generosity of Richard and Barbara Franke, and are intended to present important topics in the Humanities to a wide and general audience. The 2006 series wi1l celebrate biography as a literary genre and method of history.

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For information contact Mqnana Sikicphone 203 432-0673 or e-mail manana.sikic@Jale.edu

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t boarding schoo~ the laws of one arena where laziness prevails: . .... •· •.• · it turns ou~' -at'~ just · · · ·- ····-· - . •· · comfortable. ··• · " ·!f"i. '_:··· · •nature had little bearing on the rules governing cross-gender What's happened to us? To boafcjng school veterans; room visits. For freshmen and sophomores lem is obvious: Faced with the Unl,v~ts!tis failure to '-'# . at mine, Andover, these "parietals" were a little horizontal polka and its three-footed prccursonst we _ - ·· · ·. · · - -. like legal consultations on Griantinamo: restricted, g otten lazy. and very rare. On approximately two and a half Back in the day, things were diffetent t my high school;.the Thursdays a month, the genders could intermingte prigold medal went to my friend Proiniscucia, who gained ·wide vately for up to two hours, provided an adult was nearby repute for having sex on the lawn behind the Head of School's lust,l. and the bedroom door had been carefully removed from its Victorian home. Once at Yale~ I learned from a fellow Andoverhinges. By junior year, students were allowed a functioning door turned-Yalie that my friend had actually lo t her crown the - ~fPtt~­ that was me:rely half-open, s · · · the sun's slow descent on our year, when two classmates managed the same feat in the Head of innocence. After half-open came the much-anticipated "shoe-inSchool's kitchen. And already, Promiscucia had shared ~e spotlight the-door" phase, when a boy's visit to his lady friend's room was with classmates known for hooking up on d'le altar of one school signified by the presence of a shoe, a slipper, socks, or pair of toechape~ behind the organ in another, on the desk of a particularly nail clippers wedged between the door and its frame. At Exeter, reviled history teacher, and in a math professor's car.

Of course, these amorous teenager ro e to stardom thanks to Andover's northern rival, administrators also mandated that three of four feet be on the ground. And as at most schools, authority · boarding schools' smaller size: Like the students, news got around. figures could enter the room at will, to note the location of all but Everyone at Lawrenceville knew about the boy who would break the permissibly whorish fourth foot into his dormmates' rooms and tty on their underwear, just like The result, for sexually adventurous adolescents, was a lot most kids at Exeter krtew about the "Harkne s Club;' founded bv• of creativity. students who liked to pur the schoofs famed eminar tables to after ''Remember th.at Yale Herald article where some kid talked about hours use. ''There were a lot of members" one alum now at Yale hooking up in a chair in his room and how it was so much fun?" a assures me. "Recruiunent wa not a problem." fellow boarding school alum recently asked. ''Well, people in my In comparison, Yalies eem like old-timers, forced back into the high school used to hook up in chairs that moved back and forth bedroom b the mundanity of near-adulthood. But th n., not all of like that except it - . : a , like, in the school auditorium." my boarding school friends are eager to turn back the clock.

Yale, alas, is a different story. Here, in the fi;eedom of co-ed entry''Didn't you have way more crazy sex at Andm.·er than at ale?, I ways, adventure in the sexual are:na is a matter of taste, not necessiasked one the other day, waxing nostalgic about the good old da_-s ty. Trysts unfold as far afield as Sudler Hall and the Trumbull dining of cramped copUlation. hall, but ther are the exception.. And as for the library, another friend c~ctnally" he replied, ''I didn't really have sex in hlgh school. .. reports derisively: "Sex in the stacks has become a total cliche."

But thanks for me feel bad abOut mv life."

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