WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012

BEHIND THE GRILL Tracing Yale’s food from Glastonbury and beyond to this bowl. // By Jack Linshi, Page 3

SEX HYPOCRISY

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SUCKING UP

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ADRIFT

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A REVIEW OF SEX AND GOD AT YALE

WEEKEND EMAILS ITS PROFESSORS

‘INDEPENDENTS’ AT THE FRINGE

We can do without your chivalry, Mr. Harden.

Look no further for your next seminar application.

The beautiful tale of growing up now in New York.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

ASCHER, MANDEL & PENZER

WEEKEND VIEWS

FROM THE FRONT: WILD AND WOOLY TALES OF SUMMER // BY JORDAN ASCHER, ELI MANDEL AND SIMON PENZER

How 10 (actual) Yalies spent their summer vacations: James Schrumm (TC 2014): “I decided to take advantage of Yale’s wealth by applying for a fellowship, and then by stealing a large sum of money by way of a “clerical error” when my application was denied. I used the money to travel to a country that does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. You’ll never guess where.

Unless you guessed Indonesia.

Oh crap.”

Arthur Ceiling-Fan (SM 2014): “I got a sweet internship at the local ape preserve brushing the apes’ teeth. Now I know what you’re thinking: it’s a bit ironic that an ape punched all my teeth out while I was trying to brush him. But they euthanized that ape, so who’s laughing now? Actually, given my situation it’s far too painful to laugh, but you get the point.”

Daniel Earp (PC 2013): “Great internship with this small but really innovative non-profit.

Would have gotten a lot of hands-on experience if I hadn’t been so afraid to leave the apartment because of my crippling fear of bats.”

Jimmy Jones Spatz (DC 2014): “I forget. My brain was just exploding with knowledge and growing experiences.”

Willomina M. PhillippaTwibbits (ES 2013.7): “In my Summer Experience, I peed on Ezra Stiles seven times. My

AHMED

//MONA CAO

hypothesis wasn’t correct.”

Lorena Vipthor (FC Barcelona) “I worked as a ball-boy at the regional tennis club. Well, ball-girl. I guess ball-person is the correct term. Boy, those shiny green balls can really move.”

Daniel Earp (PC 2013) [cont’d]: “Hold on, bats can nest indoors?”

Mortimer D. Lunt (JE &@#!): “Three and a half months of syphilis … yeeaaaecchchhhhh!”

William Venus Williams (ES 20014): “I got a grant to do an art project, which was to talk about doing an art project and smoke 1,000 cigarettes and see if anyone punched me in the face. Art!” Fra n c i n e P. Lobe (HTTP://2013): “I interned at my father’s hedge fund and made $10,000. What I did was, Dad put little green slips of paper on my desk, and I put them in my wallet. It was pretty fun, once I got the hang of it.”

Erwin Erwin (TC 4 8 15 16 23 42): “I spent the summer collecting frogs. Did you know that some frogs are poisonous? Anyway, I can’t move my right leg.”

Jebediah Crochet (QR 2015): “I liked it. It wasn’t sad.”

Contact JORDAN ASCHER, ELI MANDEL AND SIMON PENZER at jordan.ascher@yale.edu .

In Support of irreverence // BY AKBAR AHMED

As they toil and tweet alongside other interns, some Yalies learn about exotic parts of the world. They might grasp new ideas or engage with different ways of thinking. They’ve even been known to discover the kind of romantic connection that lasts a lifetime or, like, some random collection of nights. What I gleaned from my favorite intern was a simple phrase that, on this campus, is beyond apt.

As she watched the Harvard intern slink in, Sperrys and deep drawl at the ready, my chum turned to me and said, “He’s cute, yeah. But he looks like he thinks his shit don’t stink.”

My innocent little ears perked up.

My brain questioned that collection of words for a length of time that’s far too embarrassing to share. Then it clicked — and a new age dawned.

A lotta people on this campus think their shit don’t stink. This unfortunate trait probably, on some level, helped propel them here. It’s definitely the product of the many laurels they’ve gathered and the praise they’ve reaped from various corners, not least Yale admissions. Whether they’re students or faculty members we’re supposed to absolutely piss ourselves in the presence of, they (and

F R I D AY AUGUST 31

probably yours truly) are fairly certain that their perspective, journey and work ethic leave them leagues ahead of the pack.

But here’s some real talk: their shit stinks.

Looking to hierarchies in organizations and departments, we’re all too prone to feel inadequate and unworthy, desperate to prostrate ourselves before higher beings for a scrap of affection. It can happen during shopping, as we hear peer after peer laud this one incredible professor who’s amazing beyond all human comprehension. It can happen when we look at upperclassmen who just get everything and must lead absolutely charmed lives.

Often, just because we have some pretty fantastic people around, we find a Yalie whose talent and generally fantastic nature make some deference her due. Kudos to her! Here’s hoping she keeps on keeping on, giving us even more to admire.

In the meantime, though, we need to acknowledge that each of these highly accomplished biddies is literally just another person. It’s a weird thing to say, I know. But the head of your organization — as terrifying in

“PALLADIO VIRTUEL”

Paul Rudolph Hall // All day Chillin’ like a villain in some villas. Can you come up with a better way to spend a decade?

his wrath as he is brilliant in his sales pitch — probably slipped on the ice and looked really dumb once. I’m sure the Kagans, Blooms and McChrystals of this campus have too. I’d wager one time they even made a social faux pas (don’t shoot the messenger, guys). So when you next feel compelled to rave about them, remember their humanity. Remember that they are just as awkward as you, and probably sometimes hate how their body looks. So don’t let the pressure of getting into that seminar or proving how committed you are to that organization destroy your sense of self. That’s what you’re left with, hours or days or months down the line, once your deity moves on.

You got admitted here for a bunch of reasons. One of them, yes, was your ability to work within structures and recognize authority and talent.

That’s great! But another one was your determination to go deeper, to question, to think. Now, I’m not saying that you should apply those considerable skills to considering human waste (unless you’re a scientist and stuff). Take them, look at the people around you — and recognize that their egos are constructs you build up

just as much as they do. It’s time to tone them down a tad. Realistically, you know their shit stinks.

Contact AKBAR AHMED at akbar.ahmed@yale.edu .

BUT HERE’S SOME REAL TALK: THEIR SHIT STINKS.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Waking up for your 9:25 a.m. Monday class this Friday.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

TIGHTENING THE FOOD CHAIN // BY JACK LINSHI

I

n a small office on 246 Church St., Rafi Taherian, executive director of Yale Dining, tells me about his first bite of tofu apple

crisp.

“I remember having it, and I didn’t like it,” Taherian says with a telling grin. “Few people like it, and a lot of people hate it.”

But that apple — it was one thousands of apples, carefully plucked from the scenic fields of a sustainable, organic farm in upstate New York. The grain — it’s a high quality durum wheat, strategically delivered to minimize greenhouse gases and production costs. And, of course, the tofu — it’s one of the silkiest, freshest, most natural tofu options a diner can find. Yet it strikes me, while sitting in the largely unknown Dining Administrative Offices, that very few people know about the food that we consume at Yale: those scrupulous touches of artistic finesse and healthy practice on each bite, and the heroically sustainable purchasing methods that bolster the agriculture of New England.

“We’re a stealth health campus,” Taherian proudly announces. “Sometimes when you put on the health stamp, there’s a kiss of death, and people’s number one objective is ‘how can [we] find something wrong with [the food]?’ ” But as a painfully picky, critical and conscious eater, even I cannot. *** Taherian insists that the root of it all, of both his time at Yale and of a reinvented Yale Dining, is a fundamental food revolution that occurred on campus nearly five years ago.

In the winter of 2008, University officials decided not to renew a contract with Aramark, a food services and management company, after 10 years of partnership. Under this contract management configuration, menus, recipes and training programs were under the jurisdiction of the Philadelphia-based contractor.

But now, Yale Dining is entirely self-operated, crafting its own supply-based management that puts it at the forefront of innovative and healthy collegiate dining.

“Now, everyone’s loyalty, value, vision and goals go directly to Yale,” Taherian, who joined Yale after a nationwide search for a new executive director, says.

With power restored to the hands of Yale, dining rapidly evolved to become more interactive and informative. The farm tours series expanded to introduce students to Yale’s growers; the celebrity chef series

brought in renowned culinary masters to mentor staff and serve special dinners; the annual Final Cut competition began to engage students directly with ingredients.

“It was really exciting to work directly with the dining hall chefs on recipes and skills they normally wouldn’t [use] for dinner,” Kevin Adkisson ’12 said, a past winner and judge of the Final Cut competition. “It was fascinating to see how efficient yet flexible the whole system of dining halls is.”

Still, there’s more. This year, we even get a special theme.

“Yale is an incredibly culturally diverse place, so the menu this year is celebrating that,” newly appointed Director of Residential Dining Cathy Van Dyke SOM ’86 tells me. “We’ve had various ethnic food in the past, but one of the keys [to this year’s menu] is that dishes will not only be ethnically themed but will be, for example, real Moroccan recipes.”

Van Dyke, sitting across from Taherian, continues to elaborate, eyes cast in a modest pride as she recalls the grand successes of Yale Dining, which operates more dining halls than those of the average Ivy League school.

“There are only 60 certified master chefs in the whole U.S.,” Van Dyke explains, “and one of them is [Director of Culinary Excellence] Ron DeSantis, who plans the menus and oversees the training of the cooks.”

The cooks, along with hundreds of dining hall staffers, consistently accomplish an incredible logistical feat of making up to 15,000 meals a day. The team is aided by a state-of-the-art computer system that monitors student presence and preference, a system that boosted Gatorade supply in Pierson after indicating that the dining hall was a popular destination for the football team, Van Dyke fondly recalls.

“The dining

hall workers and managers care about what students like, and what students look for,” Davenport student dining hall manager Albert Chang ’13 said, who assumes responsibilities that include monitoring inventory and locking up. “They really do care about the well-being of students.

Somehow, some way, hundreds of staffers manage to crack 10,000 eggs per day, grill the necessary 1,200 pounds of chicken for lunch, and sauté the 900 pounds of green beans that were added last-minute to the dinner menu. The secret is, in fact, not quite a secret, one that we are all too familiar with: hard work.

“We do 10,000 hours of training on an annual basis,” Taherian says. “People sometimes don’t know how complicated [preparing 14-15,000 meals a day] is.”

“And having them hot and ready by 11:30!” Van Dyke interjects.

And so it gets done. Freshmen who arrived on campus earlier this month mingled at residential college welcoming dinners and ate sweet potatoes that, once upon a time, were inspected for proper, low-waste cutting methods by a Yale chef who underwent training on the delicate art of knife-wielding. For a college campus, the time, energy and resources invested in that one slice of sweet potato are unprecedented. We may not know it, but we are served on silver plates.

Beyond our scope, though, there must be a catch — there always is. But, as I weigh the information I’ve acquired, I conclude that the good certainly outweighs the bad. With the purchasing power a n d

resources of Yale, what could have been a damaged food-scape and environment is actually a quiet history and practice of harmony. *** Forty minutes outside of New Haven is Glastonbury, Conn., an agricultural town comfortably nestled in a spoon of cool forests and fertile fields. Glastonbury sits on the banks of the skyblue Connecticut River, flowing just two miles from a place called Rose’s Berry Farm, home of Yale’s blueberries.

“The farm is a gorgeous place, and it produces the necessary sustenance for our bodies and for agriculture as an industry,” Li Boynton ’14 explained, who has been berry picking at Rose’s Berry Farm and other Connecticut farms.

The farm, which being its picking season next week, is known for its organic and sustainable fruits, which then are transported by Yale’s regional distributor, FreshPoint, to the dining halls. It’s partially due to the support of Yale’s purchasing power that farm owner Sandra Rose does not succumb to the decline of farming. In fact, real estate developers are eyeing the beautiful plot of emerald-colored land as a construction ground for eight or nine new mansions.

“If Sandy [sells the land],” Taherian warns all Yale blueberry aficionados, “you’re not going to have the best blueberries in Connecticut.”

Likewise, dining officials have crafted and delegated purchases to support a local buying chain from farmers to supermarkets.

SEE FOOD CHAIN PAGE B8

// CREATIVE COMMONS

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“HARDWARE SEDA — HARDWARE SILK”

32 Edgewood Ave. // All day Duchamp’s got nothing on 32 Edgewood. See how far we’ve come since the toilet.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Knowing what you eat, because that is what you are.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ARTS

The Good, The Bad and The Unexplored: ‘Celluloid West’ at the Beinecke // BY JOY SHAN

I have only had one encounter with a Western film, and I can barely recount all 30 seconds of it. While in search of another theater, I had accidentally walked into the middle of a showing of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” As a result, the deepest impression any Western movie ever left me is a closeup of Clint Eastwood’s face as he squints his eyes in the sun.

Imagine my hesitation, then, as I entered Beinecke Library in search of the new “Celluloid West” exhibit, a display of movie scripts, posters and other bits and pieces from American Westerns. According to a blurb, this exhibit “investigates the ways in which screen writers, directors, producers and actors have embraced, challenged and shaped 20th-century American views of the West.”I knew, just from being a devoted follower of popular culture, that the main character within the Western is a sort of classic American hero, but if you were to ask me to define a view of the American West, I’d have nothing to say.

The wide collection of scripts, posters and lobby cards are laid out in glass display cases on the first and second floor of the Beinecke. At first glance, the exhibit lacks cohesion — there does not seem to be a clear place to begin looking, and a cursory walk-through would not let the viewer absorb much besides a few script titles and some scattered images. Upon closer examination (much closer, as many of the display cards contain dense, nameheavy paragraphs), the viewer may realize that the materials are in fact ordered by chronology beginning with the display case on your left-hand side. We see the script and ads for the first silent films, and as we snake our way around the glass case, we see the emergence of talkies and musicals. On the second level, smaller glass cases display relics from movies that would not strike a layperson as a typical Western: movies like “Dirty Harry” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Many of the facts on the explanation cards were interesting but sometimes without enough context to make them feel significant.

This is a shame. The morning after my first attempt to understand the exhibit, George Miles, its curator, walked me around the displays,

effortlessly summarizing movie plots and sharing back stories on the big figures within the film industry.

I saw, in ways that were more than vague and abstract, that the progress of the Western film is closely intertwined with the development of the movie industry, the development of popular taste in America and the development of the roles of movie stars. As we looked at a collection of lobby cards for a musical Western, Miles explained that Western B-movies — though mediocre in quality — were produced so prolifically that they left a permanent imprint on American pop culture.

Without Miles’s guidance, I would have easily skipped over other golden points in the collection, including perhaps the best piece, a proposal for a film that had never been made. The report included a note from a reader at a film company. His opinion on whether the script should be adapted? “Typical western stuff where the tenderfoot blunders in to the bad man’s domain and makes good. A twist at the end that shows the bad man is the long former sweetheart of the tenderfoot’s mother but nothing else out of the ordinary in the story. Draggy and lifeless.”

Miles said he hoped the exhibit might expand traditional notions of the Western beyond saloon keepers and shoot-offs. The exhibit includes posters from the San Francisco-set “Dirty Harry,” for example, because the film draws on themes typical to Westerns, including a heavy reliance on setting. Similarly, a poster for “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” highlights a movie whose exploration of social conformity — another motif of Westerns — has been transplanted to a more modern West: 1950s Los Angeles.

For the viewers who know what to look for, the exhibit is rich, offering insights into the various stages of filmmaking and the way the American film industry took shape. But for those hoping to acquire a cohesive history of Westerns, it is too easy to leave the exhibit feeling that the frontier remains unexplored.

Contact JOY SHAN at joy.shan@yale.edu .

// YDN

A wide collection of scripts, posters and lobby cards at the Beinecke

Sex and God (and pretentiousness) at Yale // BY SCOTT STERN

Let’s get a few things out of the way.

First, I was predisposed to hate “Sex and God at Yale” by Nathan Harden. I did. (More on that later.) Second, it was engaging, funny and, at times, wellwritten. I’ll admit that much. Finally, it amounted to little more than a pretentious argument against pornography and a transparent attempt to exploit Yale’s name to garner its author 15 minutes of fame. Its logic was faulty, its message was preachy and moralistic and many of its core arguments made no sense. In short, do not buy this book.

The title “Sex and God at Yale” is, of course, a rip on William F. Buckley’s classic and overrated “God and Man at Yale.” In that 1951 memoir, Buckley asserted that Yale forced its students to accept liberalism and abandon religious faith. More than 60 years later, Harden goes further. He claims that Yale has lost its sense of purpose — that “Yale seems to no longer know what is or isn’t worth teaching in its classrooms.”

Yale has become a “moral vacuum” in which women are devalued, pornography is taught in its buildings and the Yale administration watches as the fabled “cradle of presidents” becomes “a great institution in decline.”

The bulk of the book is about Sex Week. Harden goes on, vividly, about the

week’s most controversial events — porn stars demonstrating oral sex, student volunteers demonstrating BDSM in the middle of a lecture hall. He makes clear his disgust. He leaves one event when event organizers throw condoms into the crowd. Of another event — a Q&A with a porn executive — Harden wrote, “My head sinks into my hands. And I think the world can get no more absurd. I have to keep reminding myself: I am at Yale. I am at Yale.”

Here’s what Harden seemed not to get: Sex Week is entirely optional. No one forced him to go to any of the events.

And, as recent Yale alums Kathryn Olivarius ’11 and Claire Gordon ’10 noted in The Daily Beast, “most students don’t really attend [Sex Week] because they have other stuff to do. Like go to class.”

Harden must have made a genuine effort to make the time for the “sex-toy pageants” he claims to so revile. I noticed that he made no effort to attend (or at least write about) the less controversial events of Sex Week — like the AIDS awareness benefit.

Harden seemed to miss another crucial factoid about Sex Week: it’s a week.

(Fine, 10 days.) And it’s not even unique to Yale; Wisconsin, Northwestern, Illinois and many other colleges have raunchy sex education events, too. Brown

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“MACBETH” BY ELM SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK

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even has the infamous SexPowerGod party, which is essentially a massive orgy.

Most troubling, Harden fails to note that Sex Week has changed since he was an undergraduate. He repeatedly indicts Yale for letting Sex Week events be corporately sponsored — by companies like Trojan as well as by sex toy and adult film empires. Yet this past Sex Week had no corporate sponsors. Indeed, the whole event was less risqué, partly because the Yale administration enforced more rigid rules and partly because conservative Yale students preemptively protested the event. Contrary to what Harden would have his readers believe, conservative students evidently have a voice at Yale.

The book largely amounts to Harden’s argument against pornography and against public displays or discussions of sex. Condoms in entryways, naked parties, films with lesbian sex scenes, art displays featuring naked pictures, classes about sex — all of these draw Harden’s ire. Harden claims that these things — and Yale’s “hook-up culture” — objectify women and create a culture hostile to them.

In a limited sense, he’s right: the sexual assault and the objectification of women on today’s college campuses are real and vastly underrated problems. But

the problem is not talking about sex. It’s not encouraging safe sex — or encouraging sex in general. It’s cultural standards and stereotypes that transcend Yale. Harden relishes in examples of Yale men acting churlishly, but does he truly think one week of sex-themed events, or watching pornography, for that matter, made the men this way?

For all of his talk about how porn and Sex Week and the hookup culture objectify and devalue women, Harden’s own views of women are hopelessly paternalistic and antiquated. When discussing the controversial Yale student Aliza Shvarts, Harden laments her transformation from “looking clean-cut and preppy in a pleated skirt” to “wearing frilly white boots, a black leotard, and bulbous leopard-print shorts.” He yearns for the modesty of women from an older era — “You should see what Yale girls wear on Halloween, or, rather, what they don’t wear. I wish I had a dollar for every prostitute outfit I cam across on October 31.” You see, to Harden, some of the blame for misogyny lies with the women themselves — “making one’s body easily available to men probably isn’t the best way to fight oppression by men.”

Harden seems to be nostalgic for the conformist 1950s, the era of Don Draper, housewives and gray flannel.

Contact SCOTT STERN at scott.stern@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Edgerton Park // 8:00 p.m.

Read Caroline McCullough’s review on page 11! What’s better than Shakespeare? Drunk Shakespeare.

He expresses support for women getting married before considering starting a career. Harden would like to return to an older time, a different Yale. He bemoans Yale’s recent turn to academic disciplines that he calls “newer and less white.” He writes, “About forty years ago, a bunch of forward-thinking intellectuals realized that there was a shortcut to overcoming the fact that dead white men dominated all academic disciplines, and that was to create brand-new disciplines that definitionally excluded white men.”

That departments like Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and African American Studies exist at all troubles Harden.

His desire to return to a lily-white, patriarchal past troubles me. In one passage, he even suggests that Yale should formally acknowledge the existence of God. No, “Sex and God at Yale,” is not a serious critique, an actual effort to improve Yale University. In 1951, “God and Man at Yale” helped catapult William F. Buckley to conservative stardom, and perhaps Harden is hoping that his memoir will do the same. If the strength of his arguments is any indicator of the future success of his book, Harden’s notoriety will not last long.

Shopping

No. Actually, shopping.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND MOTTO

NOT JUST YOUR LUX OR MY VERITAS // BY JORDI GASSÓ

H

ow much do you think you know about your alma mater? So you can sing all the lyrics of “Bright College Years.” Check. You found your way around the Science Hill. Four checks for you, Glen Coco. You go, Glen Coco. You have mastered how to respectfully walk out of class during shopping period. CHECK! If you have gathered this much wisdom, then it probably does not escape you that our school motto is “Urim and Thummim,” which is Hebrew for “Lux et Veritas,” which in turn is just Latin for “Light and Truth.”

Emblazoned on the Yale seal, in these two ancient languages, the words convey the most concise and rudimentary expression of the University’s mission: to enlighten the minds of its young students and impart to them truth through knowledge. Even if we consider this to be Yale’s absolute goal, we still cannot claim full possession of this mantra. Here in the Elm City and beyond the Northeastern sycamores, one can find plenty of lux and veritas to go around.

Yale and at least three other universities in the United States share the same motto and each particular “Lux et Veritas” comes with its own nebulous origin.

YALE UNIVERSITY New Haven, Conn.

Yale, a school that began as a training ground for Christian ministers, includes Hebrew characters in its seal, suggesting that its singular open book actually depicts a Hebrew bible. According to Dan Oren’s “Joining The Club: A History of Jews and Yale,” the seal was selected in 1736, a century before Harvard selected its three-booked “Veritas” motto in 1843. As for the Latin juxtaposed with the Hebrew, it still remains a chicken or egg question — it’s unclear which wording originated with the logo, or if both came about together.

INDIANA UNIVERSITY multiple campuses in Indiana Originally adopted in 1841, this seal also features one open book in its center, surrounded by a sun and the motto. The question remains about the religious nature of this book. Perhaps the words of Indiana University President William Daily can give some elucidation, in a 1856 speech where he described the school seal as “a representation of God’s open Bible, pouring forth in every direction the living rays of ‘Light and Truth.’ And the motto which every graduate will carry away with him on his Diploma will be ‘Light and Truth.’ ”

MARIETTA COLLEGE Marietta, Ohio

This school’s board of trustees authorized the use of a seal in 1833. It wasn’t until 1877 when its present version was adopted, according to Arthur Beach’s “A Pioneer College: The Story of Marietta.” Their crest now embellishes the brick sidewalk outside one of their libraries, associated with a legend akin to Yale’s “Branford Seal.” “Students believe that if one accidentally steps on the seal, it adds one year to the length that it takes for him or her to graduate from Marietta,” said Gi Smith, an editor at Marietta’s college relations department.

F R I D AY AUGUST 31

YALE SWING AND BLUES FALL KICKOFF DANCE Pratt Hall // 9:00 p.m.

To see freshmen step on each other’s feet, find swinging times or blues on the dance floor.

CHOWAN UNIVERSITY Murfreesboro, N.C. Hargus Taylor, Chowan’s historian, said the first reference to the school’s motto appeared in the cover of the college yearbook in 1913. “It has been my assumption, and only an assumption, that the motto as it appears on the college seal was probably adopted at the time the name of the institution was changed from ‘Chowan Baptist Female Institute’ to ‘Chowan College’ in 1910,” Taylor explained. While doing research on the history of the university, he added, no other mention of the motto’s genesis has surfaced yet.

Contact JORDI GASSÓ at jordi.gasso@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Visions of the End and Representations of Transcendence

Because we must surpass Death, and transport ourselves to the Light-sea of celestial wonder of Endings.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND SHOPPING

DEAR PROFESSOR, [INSERT ELOQUENT SELF AGGRANDIZEMENT HERE]

My Meta Major

A

pplying to Visions of the End and Representations of Transcendence? Well, you’ve certainly had visions, and now know how it all ends in 2012, so you obviously should be admitted. Applying to Planets and Stars? You were the intern who operated the personified twitter of the “Mars Rover Curiosity,” so you can’t be denied. WEEKEND solicited class applications during this first week of shopping period, some real, some satirical. So, how low have you stooped?

I Die, Therefore I Am // BY TAOTAO HOLMES

// BY AARON GERTLER

Professor Bealer, As a long-time meta-undergraduate, I’d be honored to accept a place in your senior seminar, “Philosophy of Philosophy.” My meta major, in which I’ve maintained a four-point-four-repeating GPA, wouldn’t be complete without it. I wrote stunning papers on Borges, Barth and Balzac for “Literature of Literature”, and John Gaddis marveled when I transitioned from Herodotus to Fukuyama for my final “History of History” paper. I even found my dream girl in “Chemistry of Chemistry.” For fun, you might see me reading memoirs by other Yalies: from “God and Man at Yale” to “Sex and God at Yale” to “Sex and Man At Yale,” or Rumpus, that is.

If you still aren’t convinced, please take a moment to realize you’re reading WEEKEND rather than a formal notification. In other words, this application is not an application. But I’ve applied it well, haven’t I? Best, Aaron Gertler, meta-scholar

Infinite Reflections // BY KALLI ANGEL

Contact AARON GERTLER at aaron.gertler@yale.edu .

Shelly Kagan, Death Petition for acceptance: Dear Professor Kagan, I will die.

Thank you, Connie Cise Contact TAOTAO HOLMES at Taotao.holmes@yale.edu .

I Am Ansel Adams // BY ARIELLE STAMBLER

Dear Professor Bealer, As an applied math major, I have no background in philosophy and yet, due to many late nights pondering the logic of logic and the criticism of criticism, I feel uniquely qualified for your similarly-themed course, “Philosophy of Philosophy.” I won’t even begin to mention my desire for desire and my love of love, but I will assure you that I have lost myself in Mandelbrot sets, zooming in through their scalable repetition.

It’s almost as if I’ve been destined for such a course since childhood when, as a Christmas visitor at my grandmother’s house, I would perch myself on the bathroom counter with one wide mirror in front of me and one behind, and I would tip forward into infinite reflections of reflections of reflections of reflections of reflections …

I think I should be a member of “Philosophy of Philosophy” and therefore, I am. (It was worth a try.)

Best of all best, Needs a HU Credit

Let me cut to the chase. The first and most important reason I should be admitted to “Digital Photography” is that my mom tells me I take the best pictures on family vacations, and like any well-prepared student, I can defend the credibility of my source. My mom was a tastetester for Kellogg’s for years, and although that’s a different sense, I think her experience definitely translates into reliability.

Secondly, I am an art major with no drawing or painting skill. Now you’re a clever professor, and you’re probably wondering why I am an art major if I have no traditional artistic ability. Well, I would like to ask you a question: Do you really need talent to be a successful artist these days?

I’ll leave that open-ended.

Regardless, my lack of other talent means photography is my last shot, and I am hopeful that in December I will walk out of your class a regular Ansel Adams.

And thirdly, I already bought a really, really expensive camera and my father will pursue legal action if you don’t take me.

That’s not a threat, by the way.

Contact KALLI ANGEL at kalli.angel@yale.edu .

Contact ARIELLE STAMBLER at arielle.stambler@yale.edu .

The Glory of Chem 114

I Am Writer

// BY PATRICE BOWMAN

// BY ALEC JOYNER Monologue, co-authored by my Inner Cynic and my Inner Neurotic: A writing sample: what I must provide in order to convince someone who Knows About Good Writing that I am a Good Writer, or, at least, a Writer of (Great) Promise. Or at the very least, a writer of the kind she tends to like. In fact, perhaps being her kind of writer, though it seems a distinction less deserving of capitalization, is actually more important than being simply Good or (Greatly) Promising. I shan’t underestimate, this time around, the importance of doing the necessary research and finding out what’s been playing well with this particular focus group of one; instead of following my muse, I’ll follow the charts and hit the hell out of this slimmest of target demographics.

Forget yourself, Alec (even though you’re presumably Good and so presumably have some ideas about what makes for good writing), forget your goddamn muse, and forget males aged 18-49: this is about Anne Fadimans aged How Old She Is-How Old She Is. But why must I convince her that I am one (or more, preferably more) of these wonderful kinds of Good Writer? So she will accept me as a pupil, that’s why, and so that in her pedagogical care, or under her masterly whip, I will become an

Even Better Writer. Why do I want to become a better writer? Because I have decided that a Writer (yes, capital) is what I am, to the essential, ontological core. (For the purposes of this application, though not necessarily for lifelong happiness, fulfillment, and true human flourishing, this decision is surely a good one: if I hadn’t already averred, “I am Writer,” with supreme gravity and in keeping with the French custom of omitting the article when announcing one’s métier — or, minimally, “I am going to make a serious essai at this writing thing” — I wouldn’t really have much of a shot at a spot in the Yale University Department of English LC 107 class, would I? Unless of course I was one of those casual geniuses who write beautifully without any significant effort or interest, and that wouldn’t really help me anyway because the Writers who teach these classes resent those people, horribly.

Right?) *Editor’s note: this is the preface of a successful application to a writing class.

Professor Jonathan Parr, I owned high school chemistry. I balanced equations with circus-like finesse and composed a song — in the rhythmic oomph of Cuban son with French pop — to memorize the periodic table.

Of course, it all worked; during the labs, my contacts didn’t seal themselves to my eyeballs and I proved to my male chauvinist teacher that I COULD be a competent science-y person and not some “nice little secretary.”

Booyah.

You have great reviews and all, but I can give you some creative kerpow. If I could enter “Comprehensive General Chemistry,” your extraordinary class would be the star in an award-winning story written by me: A girl who gives doormats a bad name and is about to die of a Horrible Disease uses the Glory of Chemistry to pay for school.

If I get into CHEM 114, I will be famous. And so will you.

Contact PATRICE BOWMAN at patrice.bowman@yale.edu .

Contact ALEC JOYNER at alec.joyner@yale.edu .

// TAOTAO HOLMES

F R I D AY AUGUST 31

A CAPPELLA JAM AND AUDITION SIGNUP Dwight Hall // 10:00 p.m.

“No, we don’t sing.”

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Lighthouse Point before autumn happens in New Haven.

S AT U R D AY SEPTEMBER 1

ANNUAL FRESHMAN BBQ Old Campus // 1:00 p.m.

Fresh meat. Rare times to relish.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Elementary Bengali

“Course taught through distance learning using videoconferencing technology”?

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND SHOPPING

DEAR PROFESSOR, [INSERT ELOQUENT SELF AGGRANDIZEMENT HERE]

My Meta Major

A

pplying to Visions of the End and Representations of Transcendence? Well, you’ve certainly had visions, and now know how it all ends in 2012, so you obviously should be admitted. Applying to Planets and Stars? You were the intern who operated the personified twitter of the “Mars Rover Curiosity,” so you can’t be denied. WEEKEND solicited class applications during this first week of shopping period, some real, some satirical. So, how low have you stooped?

I Die, Therefore I Am // BY TAOTAO HOLMES

// BY AARON GERTLER

Professor Bealer, As a long-time meta-undergraduate, I’d be honored to accept a place in your senior seminar, “Philosophy of Philosophy.” My meta major, in which I’ve maintained a four-point-four-repeating GPA, wouldn’t be complete without it. I wrote stunning papers on Borges, Barth and Balzac for “Literature of Literature”, and John Gaddis marveled when I transitioned from Herodotus to Fukuyama for my final “History of History” paper. I even found my dream girl in “Chemistry of Chemistry.” For fun, you might see me reading memoirs by other Yalies: from “God and Man at Yale” to “Sex and God at Yale” to “Sex and Man At Yale,” or Rumpus, that is.

If you still aren’t convinced, please take a moment to realize you’re reading WEEKEND rather than a formal notification. In other words, this application is not an application. But I’ve applied it well, haven’t I? Best, Aaron Gertler, meta-scholar

Infinite Reflections // BY KALLI ANGEL

Contact AARON GERTLER at aaron.gertler@yale.edu .

Shelly Kagan, Death Petition for acceptance: Dear Professor Kagan, I will die.

Thank you, Connie Cise Contact TAOTAO HOLMES at Taotao.holmes@yale.edu .

I Am Ansel Adams // BY ARIELLE STAMBLER

Dear Professor Bealer, As an applied math major, I have no background in philosophy and yet, due to many late nights pondering the logic of logic and the criticism of criticism, I feel uniquely qualified for your similarly-themed course, “Philosophy of Philosophy.” I won’t even begin to mention my desire for desire and my love of love, but I will assure you that I have lost myself in Mandelbrot sets, zooming in through their scalable repetition.

It’s almost as if I’ve been destined for such a course since childhood when, as a Christmas visitor at my grandmother’s house, I would perch myself on the bathroom counter with one wide mirror in front of me and one behind, and I would tip forward into infinite reflections of reflections of reflections of reflections of reflections …

I think I should be a member of “Philosophy of Philosophy” and therefore, I am. (It was worth a try.)

Best of all best, Needs a HU Credit

Let me cut to the chase. The first and most important reason I should be admitted to “Digital Photography” is that my mom tells me I take the best pictures on family vacations, and like any well-prepared student, I can defend the credibility of my source. My mom was a tastetester for Kellogg’s for years, and although that’s a different sense, I think her experience definitely translates into reliability.

Secondly, I am an art major with no drawing or painting skill. Now you’re a clever professor, and you’re probably wondering why I am an art major if I have no traditional artistic ability. Well, I would like to ask you a question: Do you really need talent to be a successful artist these days?

I’ll leave that open-ended.

Regardless, my lack of other talent means photography is my last shot, and I am hopeful that in December I will walk out of your class a regular Ansel Adams.

And thirdly, I already bought a really, really expensive camera and my father will pursue legal action if you don’t take me.

That’s not a threat, by the way.

Contact KALLI ANGEL at kalli.angel@yale.edu .

Contact ARIELLE STAMBLER at arielle.stambler@yale.edu .

The Glory of Chem 114

I Am Writer

// BY PATRICE BOWMAN

// BY ALEC JOYNER Monologue, co-authored by my Inner Cynic and my Inner Neurotic: A writing sample: what I must provide in order to convince someone who Knows About Good Writing that I am a Good Writer, or, at least, a Writer of (Great) Promise. Or at the very least, a writer of the kind she tends to like. In fact, perhaps being her kind of writer, though it seems a distinction less deserving of capitalization, is actually more important than being simply Good or (Greatly) Promising. I shan’t underestimate, this time around, the importance of doing the necessary research and finding out what’s been playing well with this particular focus group of one; instead of following my muse, I’ll follow the charts and hit the hell out of this slimmest of target demographics.

Forget yourself, Alec (even though you’re presumably Good and so presumably have some ideas about what makes for good writing), forget your goddamn muse, and forget males aged 18-49: this is about Anne Fadimans aged How Old She Is-How Old She Is. But why must I convince her that I am one (or more, preferably more) of these wonderful kinds of Good Writer? So she will accept me as a pupil, that’s why, and so that in her pedagogical care, or under her masterly whip, I will become an

Even Better Writer. Why do I want to become a better writer? Because I have decided that a Writer (yes, capital) is what I am, to the essential, ontological core. (For the purposes of this application, though not necessarily for lifelong happiness, fulfillment, and true human flourishing, this decision is surely a good one: if I hadn’t already averred, “I am Writer,” with supreme gravity and in keeping with the French custom of omitting the article when announcing one’s métier — or, minimally, “I am going to make a serious essai at this writing thing” — I wouldn’t really have much of a shot at a spot in the Yale University Department of English LC 107 class, would I? Unless of course I was one of those casual geniuses who write beautifully without any significant effort or interest, and that wouldn’t really help me anyway because the Writers who teach these classes resent those people, horribly.

Right?) *Editor’s note: this is the preface of a successful application to a writing class.

Professor Jonathan Parr, I owned high school chemistry. I balanced equations with circus-like finesse and composed a song — in the rhythmic oomph of Cuban son with French pop — to memorize the periodic table.

Of course, it all worked; during the labs, my contacts didn’t seal themselves to my eyeballs and I proved to my male chauvinist teacher that I COULD be a competent science-y person and not some “nice little secretary.”

Booyah.

You have great reviews and all, but I can give you some creative kerpow. If I could enter “Comprehensive General Chemistry,” your extraordinary class would be the star in an award-winning story written by me: A girl who gives doormats a bad name and is about to die of a Horrible Disease uses the Glory of Chemistry to pay for school.

If I get into CHEM 114, I will be famous. And so will you.

Contact PATRICE BOWMAN at patrice.bowman@yale.edu .

Contact ALEC JOYNER at alec.joyner@yale.edu .

// TAOTAO HOLMES

F R I D AY AUGUST 31

A CAPPELLA JAM AND AUDITION SIGNUP Dwight Hall // 10:00 p.m.

“No, we don’t sing.”

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Lighthouse Point before autumn happens in New Haven.

S AT U R D AY SEPTEMBER 1

ANNUAL FRESHMAN BBQ Old Campus // 1:00 p.m.

Fresh meat. Rare times to relish.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Elementary Bengali

“Course taught through distance learning using videoconferencing technology”?

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

THE GREAT SALAD CONTROVERSY OF 2009, AND OTHER STORIES FOOD CHAIN FROM PAGE B3 From a farmer’s perspective, the selling of hundreds of pounds of one product to Yale — plus a profitable bill for labor and transportation — is less appetizing than bringing products to tens of farmer’s markets, staying hours at a time and selling pound by painstaking pound.

But if Yale buys its produce in bulk, then where do the markets buy their produce?

“We could wipe out some of these beautiful artisan distributions,” Taherian says hypothetically, noting the scale of Yale’s purchasing power. “But then, is that the right thing to do for us?”

It’s not, and Yale does not. Surprisingly, the catch here is also good.

Through the awareness raised by Yale Dining regarding what truly “good” food is — homegrown, organic and sus-

house gases and fuel consumption.

Van Dyke provides an example of how this system is streamlined.

“We wanted [our regional distributor’s trucks] to load chicken [at our chicken supplier in upstate New York] on its way back so the total cost is lower,” Van Dyke explains, motioning her hands back and forth to explain a simple yet underutilized cost-cutting tactic.

“Under the hood, there are a lot of things that need to happen to create sus-

DEEP DOWN, BELOW THE COMPLAINTS AND THE CRITICISM, UNDER ALL THE FIERCE RELUCTANCE TO CHANGE, WE LEARNED WE ARE SPOILED. tainable, among other qualities — there is increased demand for these farmer’s markets and supermarkets. The supply chain responds accordingly, and there is an increase in production capability on the farms. Everyone, in essence, wins. In the most local of markets, there is no dissatisfaction.

“We’re having farmers bring their foods to the market themselves,” said Nicole Berube, executive director of the New Haven-based City Seed.

Produce department manager Neil Pandora of Elm City Market also felt positively about the dearth of local produce. “We’re very able to buy from small farms. Most of it’s local, from Connecticut or connecting states,” he said.

Yale Dining tries to purchase regionally, so that roughly 80 percent of purchasing money will be circulated

tainable food systems,” Taherian picks up. “These are the romantic messages that people don’t talk or write about.” *** Instead, the glory of Yale’s impressive sustainability statistics float around campus by word of mouth and by print, with an unmatched humility and a quiet confidence. The scrambled e g g s

// CREATIVE COMMONS

back into the region to support the area’s agriculture; national spending, however, is more likely to be lost in other states. Similarly, Yale Dining’s commitment to supporting the tri-state area continues in a sleek system of back delivery, in which trucks are stocked for both delivery and return to minimize green-

served at brunch are made from cage free eggs and organic Connecticut milk — a combination more healthful than the average scrambled eggs. With 90 percent of dining hall meat antibiotic-free and humanely raised, almost all the protein is sustainable and organic. All of the bakery products are made from scratch using all-natural ingredients, including natural

S AT U R D AY

TEETH SLAM POETS PRESENTS …

GUERRILLA POETRY

SEPTEMBER 1

Old Campus // 7:00 p.m.

Occupy your speech. / Poetry bites. / Your opportunity to hurl invectives at/ about freshmen on their turf with impunity.

sweeteners and whole fruits.

Years ago, only 5 to 9 percent of the total dollars of food purchases came from sustainable sources. During Yale Dining’s contract management, there was only a small and simplistic sustainable food initiative: one day per week in one dining hall, sustainable food was served.

Over at the Yale Sustainable Food Project (YSFP), Program Coordinator Zan Romanoff ’09 knows Yale has come a long way since then. She was a Lazarus Fellow in Food and Agriculture from 2010 to 2012 and interned at the Yale Farm in 2007, approximately a year before Yale’s sustainability took off. And while the YSFP works separately from dining halls, it nonetheless actively promotes food sustainability for universities.

“Our goal is to create a generation of food-literate leaders: people who, no matter their field, have a sense of respect for issues of food and sustainability,” Romanoff explained. “We’re looking to integrate ourselves more deeply into the classrooms across campus, to expand internship opportunities for students and to partner with organizations on all levels when we bring speakers to Yale.”

In other p r o m i nent campus organizations, leaders are impressed. “ Y a l e has been a trendsetter in several respects,” said Kelly Brownell, director and cofounder of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. “[Taherian] is highIy imaginative and has made important and ingenious changes in the Yale dining environment, and the YSFP is known nationally for being innovative and effective.”

With the Yale Farm providing a portion of sustainable dining hall produce, and with the YSFP and Office of Sustainability managing sustainability on a university-wide level, Yale Dining is now spending a whopping 40 percent of its total dollars on sustainable sources.

“With these kinds of [sustainability] standards, we are the industry leader in college and university food services,” DeSantis, Yale’s own master chef, said.

Soon, he is planning to serve a freshly, sustainably and organically sourced pescado à la veracruzana dish using slowbaked fish slathered in tomato and garlic over a bed of cilantro. But DeSantis, who used to teach nutrition in the 1990s, isn’t trying to fool anyone — he knows that not everything is, or can be, the perfect picture of health.

Curious, I ask him if he thinks Yale food, despite the popularity of relatively caloric and fatty dishes, is healthful.

“I like the word ‘healthful,’” DeSantis notes, after my repeated switching between the words ‘healthy’ and

‘ h e a l t h f u l .’

“I sat with a lot of student focus groups, and I heard things like ‘comfort foods’ — obviously, we still are going to keep those foods, like Berkel ey M a c and Cheese.”

Back in the Dining Hall Administrative Offices, Taherian’s voice deepens as he recounts a battle between students and dining officials when one popular dish was rejected for its low nutritional value.

“There was a huge fight over chicken tenders,” he remembers. “We used to serve chicken tenders that were pumped up [with chemicals] and had lots of salt, and so we decided not to serve that product and to terminate our agreement with that manufacturer.”

Outrage ensued. Students fought against the loss and protested with emails, phone calls and Facebook, and even parents and senior Yale administrators had complaints. It took almost four months to reformulate a chicken tenders recipe that met Yale’s criteria for healthfulness and sustainability. The new and improved dish is nonetheless one of students’ favorites. Van Dyke, who was not around during the era of early tenders, is at once impressed and stunned by students’ attachment to the breaded dish — she’s heard rumors about a “chicken tenders alert network.”

“And then,” Taherian continues, sighing and looking down, “there was the Great Salad Controversy of 2009.”

Students suspected that changes were made to the salad bar as a result of budget, and Yale Dining did little to communicate the precise reasons for switching out self-serve ingredients with premade salads. The reasoning behind the change was that pre-made salads would encourage students to eat more plantbased food by offering well-combined salads. University officials invested in training chefs to prepare salads that matched regional, seasonal flavors.

The addition of sautéed mushrooms to salad bars meant a tenfold increase in mushroom purchases — along with other increases in ingredients, Yale Dining’s produce consumption went up by 35 percent. Dressings became entirely made from scratch, many with a base of Arbequina olive oil from California, which retails for $75 per gallon. During trial phases, some salad bars were filled entirely with pre-made salads, frustrating students who wanted the liberty to mix and match ingredients to their stomachs’ content.

“I had really enjoyed making my own salads,” Juliana Biondo ’13 said, who, along with other students, was limited by the new pre-made options. “Having variety really mattered!”

The Great Salad Controversy was perhaps the single greatest moment of dissatisfaction among those with special dietary needs, practices or preferences.

Although it blew over, some students still feel that there’s room for improvement.

“I mostly eat salads. I never felt like I was going hungry,” said Martina Crouch ’14, a vegetarian since high school. “But

it would be cool if some of the dining halls had more variety in terms of toppings.”

In the administrative office, the 500-plus team of Yale Dining does its best to ensure that special dietary needs, such as Crouch’s vegetarianism, are met.

“The best kept secret in Yale Dining is that we customize food for a large number of students, and we don’t usually talk about it — students with allergies, dietary issues and special needs,” Taherian says to me, leaning closer, strangely confessing this act of magnanimous flexibility.

Taherian and Van Dyke hand me flyers that ask students with food allergies to self-identify, a nascent food allergy awareness campaign officially announced by Dean of Student Affairs Marichal Gentry on Wednesday. Behind the scenes, dining hall staff cook individual meals for those who can’t eat most of what’s served. When a student’s allergies are so severe that entering a dining hall poses a health risk, dining hall workers do delivery, coordinating a specially cooked meal and meeting the student at the door.

“The JE dining hall made me glutenfree quesadillas with avocado slices,” recalled Sofie Tucker ’14, who is allergic to the wheat and corn in tortillas. “In general, the dining hall manager of each college does his or her best to accommodate the students by creating special sections in the back of the kitchen.” *** At some point in their collegiate careers, a few students get a chance to go behind the grill: student managers, students with allergies, students on farm tours, students who work in sustainability and now, even me. We are more arbitrary than chosen, following some small curiosity or dragged by some serendipity to the growers, purchasers and benefactors of our nourishment. Deep down, below the complaints and the criticism, under all the fierce reluctance to changes in food at Yale, we learn we are spoiled.

Still, Yale Dining plays it cool and casual.

“We have the commitment,” Taherian says, offering insight on the concentric circles of good food around a center of sustainability and healthfulness. “When our community is a strong one, these circles become bigger.”

And even if we never understand the existence of tofu apple crisp, or forgive Yale Dining for months without chicken tenders, at the very least, a farmer gives a tour to enthralled visitors, a bustling market sells organic produce to families, a chicken bobs its head outside a cage and our bodies thrive with the nutrition of a thousand carefully selected ingredients — made possible only when there is a bit of attention to what food truly means.

Contact JACK LINSHI at jack.linshi@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: For an evening off the meal plan, try the New Haven Meatball House or the salaciously-named Naked Oyster Cocktail Bar, newly opened this summer.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND EXPRESSION

THE PEOPLE ART COLLECTIVE OF NEW HAVEN: A COMPANY OF ARTISTS // BY DEVIKA MITTAL

Down a narrow hallway, in a small, dark room lit by fairy lights, Diana Ofosu ’12, Kenneth Reveiz ’12 and Gabriel Deleon ’13 of the People’s Art Collective are splayed on the two sofas.

Below them, on an Indian-style cane mat is a jumbo guitar, a scarf and an extra pair of brown suede shoes. Reveiz is sitting next to Deleon — who is intermittently playing with the drums — and twirling a rain stick (or the “rainmaker” as he calls it). These sounds, mixed with a synthesiser and some bells, together form the score of their “Ingiegogo” promotional campaign video. “Indiegogo is like the ‘Kickstarter’ — our opening party — but better,” said Deleon.

Ofosu, Reveiz and Deleon are the founders and leaders of 212 College Street, a plot known as the People’s Art Collective (PAC) of New Haven. The three friends came together around the idea of a “collaborative” art space for New Haven, which would act as a platform for social change through art. Together, they pay the rent and sustain the People’s Art Collective.

PAC was created for the promotion of art with environmental or social justice values, most prominently the work of women, queer identifying people and people of color. “We were just friends who identified with different groups and were passionate about art. It just made sense to start this collective,” Reveiz said.

Ofosu disagrees.

“Women, those of color and those who are queer need to stop being underrepresented, Ofosu said. “For me, it was a direct

response against the existing domination in the art world by people who are not them!” she said.

In the last three months since the PAC was conceptualized and in the two weeks since its opening, the collective has seen a flurry of activity and footfall. Many people have already knocked and asked about the initiative. “People are curious and want to know how we are different,” Ofosu said.

With its relatively new beginning, it has no success story and no project to boast of quite yet.

However, there is reason to be optimistic. “We are starting campaigns to draw people to the collective and spread the word. Last week, we held a “party-cipation” event as an introduction to the Collective,” Ofosu said.

The founders hope to host more events and to start projects that invite collaboration between a variety of people. Their ultimate goal: a stronger sense of community among the residents of New Haven. The walls of the Collective currently reflect these attempts — a collage of cloth scraps, newspaper cuttings, motivational quotes (“there is no “u” in wonderful”) was created by guests of the “party-cipation,” and a map of New Haven (in which Yale has been cut out) hangs to the side.

“A homeless guy and a nine year old were working together.

Other people were making music together. There was no pressure and people could articulate their thoughts anyway they wished,” Reveiz said.

The Collective is also a storehouse of the strange and the fas-

cinating, a thrift store enthusiast’s dream. Donated sofas mix with a piano, some tapestries, fairy lights and Keith Haring posters.

“People from New Haven have helped us at every step! We even have a “free pile” of donated clothes and books that people can take as they wish,” Ofosu said.

Ofosu added that the space is not only a place to exchange goods, but skills as well.

“An interesting homeless man, Joe Comfort — who has lifelong health insurance and a Wikipedia page — came and cleaned our windows for us. Michael, the

traveler from Madison, helped us set up the lights,” Reveiz said.

It is clear by looking around the room that the collective is not just a result of the work of Reveiz, Ofosu and Deleon, but also a large part of the New Haven community.

For Ofosu and the other founders, the collective is a way to reimagine the creation and distribution of art. For the future, they are planning to launch activistartistic interventions that will be art based and used to draw attention to the city’s local issues.

“Artists and activists both have skills that the other could benefit from. While activists can organize, artists have the creativity that is often lacking in activism. In this way, they will be able to find solutions to the structural and institutional problems (such as sexism) that are present in New Haven,” Ofosu said.

Deleon believes that this sort of collaboration will help New Haven residents use the instruments that are available to them to find common ground and common solutions.

The Collective hopes to help create a more cohesive community and give opportunities to artists that are underrepresented in the New Haven art community. “One way we will do this is by having critiques for visual and literary artists, who can come here to talk to each other about their work. Unlike other places, here it will be for free,” Reveiz said.

However, the Collective is not

an art gallery — at least not in the traditional sense. Unlike art houses and art galleries, the Collective will not be a venue for any buying or selling of products. Of this, the founders are insistent.

“We don’t want to commodify people’s creations by selling them. The purpose of the Collective is to make compelling pieces together for the sake of cooperation and using resources creatively,” Ofosu said.

The conviction of the founders to change the social landscape of the city is clear, as Reveiz states with conviction: “There is a difference between making things happen and making things. We want to make things happen.”

This desire to shake things up extends to theory as well, for the PAC of New Haven aims to move away from individual artists and the idea of individual identity in art, in general. In their space, they wish to promote harmony and the ideals of working together to bring about change in the New Haven community as a whole. This in itself is laudable and perhaps interesting, especially due to its close proximity to Yale — the land of individual overachievers and as well as the alma mater of the founders.

“A bartender down the street is a great painter as well, but she did not have a venue to show her art,” Ofosu said. “For instances such as these, the empty space next to the Collective has a lot of potential. We would be happy to collaborate to help showcase art and create presentations.”

// DEVIKA MITTAL

The PAC used the skills of New Haven residents and travelers to decorate their storefront.

The bathroom sink is stained with paint, and a heap of colorful clothes lies on the floor as the sunlight draws attention to quotes about “Yale Disorientation,” and to piles of chalk and Crayola crayons. Posters and patchwork quilts decorate the walls. Smiling, the two alums and the Yale undergraduate go back to making music together.

“We didn’t just create the Collective by having a shared interest in art, or due to coincidence or timing. We created it by laughing,” Deleon said.

The People’s Art Collective is having a “Funraiser” on Saturday, September 1 at 9 p.m. They’re promising “DJs, dancing, cuties, prancing” and many chances to help them fundraise for the Collective’s coming year.

Contact DEVIKA MITTAL at devika.mittal@yale.edu .

ARTISTS AND ACTIVISTS BOTH HAVE SKILLS THAT THE OTHER CAN BENEFIT FROM. Events at the PAC will be free to avoid “commodifying” the art.

S AT U R D AY SEPTEMBER 1

“OCTOBER BABY” SCREENING

Linsley Chittenden Hall // 8:30 p.m.

For those whose parents got it on on Valentine’s Day.

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Creating your own motto.

Sky’s the limit. Dream big. Think outside the box. We are the 99 percent.

PAGE B10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

LESSONS FROM T‘L’C

The Learning Channel, originally the Appalachian Community Service Network, was founded in 1972 and has since aired documentary-style educational programs that breach the often formidable barrier between informational broadcasting and pop culture. TLC’s shows take little-known subjects, like glitz pageants, and lure viewers by promising to mock the absurd while also educating people about obscure subcultures and fostering empathy by reminding us all that no matter how strange the circumstances, we are all human and have similar hopes, dreams, desires, needs, etc. Or something like that.

Although I feel TLC shows are mostly educational, I occasionally have reservations about exploiting people’s ludicrousness for entertainment.

A prime example of a TLC show that is informative and thought-provoking but still a bit mean spirited is “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.” The show uses weddings to explore Romani Gypsy and Irish Traveller culture in Great Britain. (There is also an American equivalent.) The couples are usually in their teens, and the wedding is portrayed as the biggest and best day of the bride’s life. The weddings feature horse-drawn carriages and wedding dresses with five thousand “diamonds” that weigh over half

MILA HURSEY (TELE)VISION the girl’s body weight. And then there are the chartreuse-colored tulle bridesmaids’ dresses …

I started watching the show because of the fantastical weddings, but I got a lot more than a punch line. I learned about the systematic legislative changes that are destroying the Gypsy way of life, which has survived in Great Britain for over five hundred years. I learned about their exhaustive code of honor and respect and their deep love of tradition. I felt enriched, just like an educational television show is meant to make you feel. But I also felt guilty for laughing at their weddings.

Still, “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” is one of the less exploitative shows on TLC. In the most recent season finale of “19 Kids and Counting,” Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar go to the obstetrician to find out the sex of their 20th child, only to find out that the four-month-old fetus no longer had a heartbeat. What followed was the worst kind of emotional exploitation. I watched it, but I hated myself for it. I felt similarly when watching the season premiere, when the Duggars attended a wedding in which the groom was flamboyantly gay.

Although I find many aspects of TLC’s programming problematic, there is something to be said about the need to educate people about subcultures in American society. The new TLC show, “Breaking Amish,” which documents five young Amish and Mennonite Americans who move to New York, leaving their lifestyle behind forever, could not come at a more opportune time.

The Amish, although typically reclusive, were recently in the

A Brief Defense of ‘Wasting’ Your Time Watching Old Movies

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 months ago I decided, on a whim, to print out the American Film Institute’s 1998 list of Top 100 films. The original intention was simple: cross out those I’d already seen and get about watching, more or less in linear order from top to bottom, all those I hadn’t. So I went after it, checking off picture by picture, each of them stretching the spectrum from blackand-white silent masterpieces to relatively recent blood-andguts horrors. Every few movies I’d write up a short commentary, declaring in so many words what I thought about the specific film and whether or not I’d recommend it to anyone else.

I finished the list a month ago and just recently released my short review of film number 100, the George M. Cohan biopic “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” earlier this week. But the deed remains.

I just finished devoting a noticeable chunk of my time these last 10 or so months to watching a lot of old movies and writing about many of them. While I have no regrets about the writing itself, I still have to wonder what the hell was the point of it all. What was the lesson to be learned?

Not necessarily about myself but about the actual movies I’d been watching.

Film is a medium that has, for all intents and purposes, recently caught fire — sparked as recently as the turn of the century. Painting, sculpture,

MICHAEL LOMAX CINEMA TO THE MAX writing, even photography have all had more time to develop than the toddler that is cinema, which didn’t even utter its first words until 1927. For comparison, Homer’s “Iliad” was published almost 3,000 years ago.

It’s no contest. Film is miles away from the respectability of our race’s other mediums. And this is coming from a film major.

But there’s a reason child studies is a thing. So much goes on around babies as they grow: they are small and entirely helpless creations, so ignorantly baffled by their surroundings that their environment shapes them unknowingly while they babble and drool away. In a roundabout manner, that’s my defense of watching and appreciating classic films. I mean, isn’t it fascinating that your grandparents were alive as the medium’s most defining works were made?

Meanwhile, not a single nursing home on the planet can produce Cervantes’ contemporary. Even the James Joyce crowd is starting to thin out.

Basically, and quite obviously, it’s like this: old movies, like old books, point us directly to the foundations of the art. But what I took away from AFI’s Top 100 was something other than just empty and hollow gratitude. Putting out that final piece

S AT U R D AY SEPTEMBER 1

on James Cagney’s patriotic turn in the George M. Cohan biopic imbued me, at the end, with a definite sense of excitement. I’m genuinely thrilled.

Again, just think about it. The “Paradise Lost” of cinema was directed only 70 years ago. (For the record, I believe it’s “Citizen Kane.”)

Between “The Birth of a Nation” and “Fargo” (the oldest and youngest films on the list) you can visibly see the exponential explosion of the medium, with a thoroughly racist D.W. Griffith silent feature on the one hand and a gruesome, completely-in-color crime drama on the other. But the best part of this evolution is all the potential it screams. If film can progress to such a point in just 100 years, what does its future hold?

I’m just glad I made the trip to our recent cinematic past, and am sticking around for the ride: if AFI’s glorified list of old movies is any indication, I have to think it’s going to be enjoyable. Maybe not quite smooth or straightforward, but it’ll be a hell of a ride nonetheless. So get yourself to a film center or movie theater or Netflix or whatever, and try checking out some of the classics. I ran the gauntlet and had a great time: I believe it’ll be the same for most of you as well.

Contact MICHAEL LOMAX at michael.lomax@yale.edu .

FLOATING DANCE PARTY Women’s Table // 11:00 p.m.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes. com/2012/07/09/a-global-partyshimmies-and-twirls-through-manhattan/

national spotlight when an Amish bishop in Ohio was charged with a hate crime for forcibly cutting the bears of Amish men who disagreed with him. “Breaking Amish” can provide muchneeded context for the court case, teaching viewers how symbolic and important beards are to Amish masculinity.

The Learning Channel may retain some of the truth of its title, but to catch people’s attention, many of their shows have

resorted to modeling themselves after 19th-century freak shows.

I can not speak for the people in the programs, and I am sure they have their reasons for participating in reality television, but I feel like many of these shows appeal too much to my truly sick and twisted sense of humor. Maybe I should stick to “Say Yes to the Dress.”

// TLC

My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

Contact MILA HURSEY at mila.hursey@yale.edu .

A Letter of Sympathy

To: the freshman who showed up to the senior and grad philosophy seminar on Derek Parfit, taught by professors Shelly Kagan and Stephen Darwall From: Cora Lewis Hey, it was worth a shot.

I’ll admit I didn’t catch your name, or even a real good look at you, sitting as I was with my body bent into its most space-efficient contortion on the carpeted floor of Loria seminar room 360, my back against the wall, intimately close to a pair of perspiring law students. But there was a moment there, right after you stated your class year, before the laughing and the exchanged looks and the under-the-breath “not-on-your-life”s, when I thought maybe, just maybe, these heavyweight profs would reward your shootthe-moon attitude with a spot in “Recent Ethical Theory.” No such luck.

For what’s it’s worth, when senior philosophy majors were asked to raise their hands at the end of class, Professor Kagan, whose online lecture “Death” has been seen by about a zillion people in China*, squinted over at me and asked, skeptically, “You’re a philosophy major?” (To be fair, I was abroad in Oxford all last year, and I never sent in a headshot for the friendly bulletin board of philosophy majors in Connecticut Hall, so there was no reason he should have recognized me. I’m an unknown in New Haven, let alone China.)

But this isn’t about me, or the variety of embarrassments to be found in the first day of class. My aim in this letter is mainly to reiterate that tired but true claim: 90 percent of success is showing up — except, that is, when it comes to shopping period, in which case it’s probably best to wise up and figure out which classes you have a reasonable probability of getting into.

Still, this was the adage I tried to follow when I sent a shot-in-the-dark email to the reclusive Derek Parfit, the philosopher the Kagan-Darwall seminar focuses on.

Some context: Parfit’s most recent works, two tomes on ethics sweepingly titled “On What Matters,” published in 2011, clock out at a manageable 1,440 pages. They comprise a light read that claims to have created a triplethreat principle that solves some of the major conflicts between different schools of ethical

CORA LEWIS QUORA 1.0 thought. And Parfit is a fellow at All Souls, a graduate school at Oxford that once boasted an entrance exam with a single-word prompt – students would sit down and write an essay riffing on a single concept, like “Justice” or “Reality.” “Pretension.” “Exclusivity.”

Mr. Parfit graciously wrote back to me in May, though he said he preferred not to meet in person, and we exchanged a short set of emails, in which I mainly flailed about attempting to ask reasonably informed questions about his life’s work. He politely corrected my sometimes-bungled readings. But his most frequent strategy was to refer me back to quotations from his works, such as this one — a few of his concluding lines, and some wisdom to tide you over until you make it into those senior seminars: “Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine.

In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea … What now matters most is that we avoid ending human history. If there are no rational beings elsewhere, it may depend on us and our successors whether it will all be worth it, because the existence of the Universe will have been on the whole good.”

To put it another way, nameless, faceless freshman: It’s all on you. Keep showing up. *I don’t actually know how many people have seen this course, but, according to Chinese National Radio: “Kagan lectures the students while sitting on the podium with legs crossed and wearing jeans and sneakers. His image, resembling that of an ‘immortal’ in Chinese mythology, has made him a ‘star’ closely followed by the youth in China.”

Contact CORA LEWIS at cora.lewis@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: These sentences, by Derek Parfit:

“Even an infinite series of events cannot explain itself... No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing.”

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

‘We Don’t Fade’: ‘Independents’ at the Fringe // BY YANAN WANG

When I went to see “Independents” last December, I found it sweet and sad. It was a poignant coming-of-age story in the guise of a nonsensical tale. Even though I could relate to neither historical re-enactment nor drug smuggling, I was pulled along by the sentiments that the characters conveyed — of the fear, uncertainty and near-reckless ambition that lie at the center of growing up.

Before seeing the musical for a second time at its Aug. 25 performance for the New York City Fringe Festival, I worried that it would be much changed. I knew that it had been cut short by 45 minutes to fit the festival, and of course, it was unclear what a sec-

ond version of the production would look like without the guidance of the talented and astute Marina Keegan ’12, whose tragic death this May meant that the rest of the creative team — lyricist Mark Sonnenblick ’12, composer Stephen Feigenbaum ’12 MUS ’13 and director Charlie Polinger ’13 — have had to go it alone.

But they say that the greatness of any work of art lies not in specifics, but rather in the inexplicable ways it makes you think and feel. In this regard, “Independents” doesn’t miss a beat.

Although certain relationships between characters have been altered and certain story arcs removed, the overall impression given by the musical remains the

same. It speaks to the beauty and fragility of youth.

“Independents” takes place in the present, on an 18th-century schooner where a group of young people undertakes an historical re-enactment business in order to pay off the mortgage for the ship, a former drug boat that transported marijuana from Nova Scotia. Among the vibrant cast of characters are an androgynous former Navy officer named Johnson, a quirky but vulnerable white “slave” named JT and a mysterious rogue named Chris whose sudden return to the ship unravels their entire operation. We see ourselves in the faces of these people — in their fear of commitment, in their penchant for

dreaming, in their nostalgia for childhood.

The musical owes its great success to the way in which it expresses the shared anxieties of youth within a storyline that strays far from the conventional tale of someone who leaves home to discover himself in the big city. The metaphor of the ship conveys a sense of drifting, a transition period in which you are not quite young

enough to be carefree but not quite old enough to know what to do with your freedom. In wild spurts of energy, the cast sings of the invincibility that you feel when you’re young.

“We’re not everybody,” they cry out, “we don’t fade!”

The story hinges on the choice facing the play’s central character, Liam. He must decide whether to sell the boat that he inherited from his deceased parents in order to finally amass enough money to forge a life back on shore. In Liam’s romantic life, too, we see the push and pull of freedom versus stability. While his longtime girlfriend Isabel urges him to give up the seafaring life, Liam is taken by the everambivalent Grace, whose own indecision around her feelings for Chris throws her adrift.

For the group on the boat, making choices is daunting.

With all the anxiety and fear of college students, the characters voice how it feels to stand on the edge of both the past and the future.

Chris asks Liam, “Hey Lee, when are you going to wake up?”

And Isabel tells him, “Every day is a decision.”

A few revisions have been made to place the musical more explicitly into the modern day.

Whereas there was no mention of technology in the December production, in the Fringe version Liam often makes reference to Wikipedia as a source of information. Carl, the aspiring actor who comes to work on the ship thinking that it is a legitimate business, mentions that he

is an intern looking to enhance his performance portfolio. Once he finds out that the ship’s crew is not comprised of real acting professionals, he agrees to stay and train them under the condition that he can cite his role as “anything I want on my resumé.”

With thoughts of Keegan’s death lingering in the hearts of so many in the audience, sections of the musical that highlight the fleeting nature of youth and life strike a particular chord.

There is an urgency to the characters’ actions, to the words they speak when they are pondering the unknown. And in many cases, there is a sadness, too. It is a sadness linked to both nostalgia and a growing resignation to the end of childhood.

“I miss a lot of stuff,” Grace says. “If you miss it, that means it’s gone.”

In the musical’s beginning and ending refrain, “Plymouth Harbour,” there is a line that sings, “And we’ve mourned the ones have died.” Sonnenblick told the News that while he worked on the production, his “tremendous feelings of loss and sadness were coupled with this idea that something was still being created.” It is a rare kind of mourning that creates a work as entertaining, touching and resonant as “Independents.” Like the ship’s crew, we are made to look for something greater beyond the shoreline.

Contact YANAN WANG at yanan.wang@yale.edu .

// YDN

“Independents” played Aug. 25 at the Fringe Festival in NYC.

Summer in the Park with Macbeth // BY CAROLINE MCCULLOUGH Each summer, the Elm Shakespeare Company presents a play al fresco. Now in its 17th season, the company has chosen “Macbeth.” On Wednesday night, a crowd gathered in front of a substantial stage in Edgerton Park.

They brought their blankets and their picnics and their babies, enjoying the last bit of sunshine on a summer evening.

With a sudden clap of thunder, the play began. Just as shadows crept across the park, the play’s plot twisted towards its darker themes. The audience watched as Macbeth, a Scottish lord, wrestled with his political ambitions and psychological burdens.

The elements of the play amplified the slightly spooky

aspects of a city park at night.

Spotlights illuminated the rocky outline of a castle, leaving the surrounding area obscured. Perhaps purposeful, the park’s giant trees became battlements and the Big Dipper, directly behind the stage, seemed a faint and far off banner. Most likely coincidental, a flock of crows swept overhead as the voices of the three witches carried across the sky, “Fair is foul and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

The actors ranged from professional to amateur. James Andreassi, the founder of the Elm Shakespeare Company, plays the leading role, as well as serving as the show’s artistic director. He is also an associate fellow

of Calhoun College. Marianna Bassham, who stars as Lady Macbeth, recently played Becky in the Wes Anderson’s latest film, “Moonrise Kingdom.” On the other hand, local high school students, the show’s “Elm Scholars,” acted in a few minor roles.

Although this performance was mainly a traditional interpretation of the play, many of the characters gave Shakespeare’s words a modern inflection. When an owl’s shriek scares Lady Macbeth after her husband’s crime, Bassham let out an audible “phew!”

Bassham shined in her monologues, times in which she displayed the full depth of Lady Macbeth’s character. However,

MOST LIKELY COINCIDENTAL, A FLOCK OF CROWS SWEPT OVERHEAD AS THE VOICES OF THE THREE WITCHES CARRIED ACROSS THE SKY. when Macbeth entered the stage, she melted into giddy and perhaps oversimplifying kisses.

For Andreassi’s Macbeth was a physically and sexually powerful loner, often walking near the peripheries of the stage in a tank top and kilt. At one point he takes out his guilty frustration on an ax.

One of the play’s best moments was comic relief in the form of the Porter. Alvin Epstien, who also played the Doctor, is an associate director at the Yale Repertory Theatre. He commanded the stage, pulling significant laughs from the audience with his character’s observations on the effects

D AY MONTH ##

of liquor. These lighter moments helped pick up what threatened to be the show’s lagging middle.

Just as “Macbeth” begins and ends with a clap of thunder, the strongest points of this production were its beginning and end.

As soon as the booms finished resonating through the park trees, the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrows of Macbeth’s famous soliloquy still echoed — a reminder of complex repercussions of guilt on which so much of the play meditates.

“Macbeth” will be performed until Sept. 2. Admission is free, with suggested donations.

Contact CAROLINE MCCULLOUGH at caroline.mccullough@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: The Tacocopter

We will personally hug whoever manages to start up a real Tacocopter taco delivery service in New Haven.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

VERLYN KLINKENBORG

//CREATIVE COMMONS

Writer, farming buff, master of sentences // BY JORDI GASSÓ

W

Q. Why the name, “The Genre of the Sentence”? What benefits arise from focusing on the most microscopic and possibly most daunting unit of writing?

A. The reason is quite simple: everything you should perceive in writing, whether it’s an argument or an emotion, is constructed by putting sentences together. People are usually taught to focus only on the larger picture. The goal of this class is to hone in as closely as we can to the concrete elements of the sentence, such as rhythm and clarity. It may look like a microscopic unit of writing, but what is there in writing apart from sentences?

Q. How deliberate are you when you want to write something, about anything?

A. I think it’s a question about thinking. People like to talk about how steadily Anthony Trollope sat down and wrote in the mornings. But no one really talks about how much thinking, how much rumination must have gone on in his head before he sat down to write. There is a lot of deliberation when I sit down to write, thinking of elements that I know will fit in. On the one hand, it is deliberation, on the other, it’s all invention.

Q. Do you have a similar “process” when you have to write, particularly under deadline?

A. It’s the same pattern but on a shorter time frame. The thing is people try to sit down, they poise themselves to write and wait for the sentences to come. I don’t do that. I could be working outside in the farm, or driving, and I take time to think, let my thoughts go where they need to go. It’s in that process of rumination where I find where I want to start. Then it goes from there, not because it’s necessarily easy, but because I’ve found what I want to explore, and the first sentence will lead me to the next one and so on.

Q. You mentioned in class last Wednesday that you prefer to eschew genres and the moniker of “journalist.” Is this a frame of mind you establish in order to unbind your writing and protect it from its own limitations? Or is your aversion to labels and titles a bit more deep-rooted?

A. I find your first description about unbinding myself from limitations a really good one.

People tend to believe that most genres have rules, and they try hard to live by them. Some of the books we love all end up breaking the rules. Writers run the risk of being trapped by genre — whether it’s in academia or in journalism, I’ve seen people get stuck in their writing, boxed in and trapped.

Q. Have you ever felt “boxed in”?

A. I’ve written around 1,500 editorials over 15 years now,

and there have been a couple of times in that span of time when I’ve looked back at those editorials and realized I gave myself more freedom earlier on.

Nobody else is giving you these rules, but you still end up constraining yourself in the form of writing. That’s something you have to work against constantly, no matter the genre.

Q. What inspired you to write a book as atypical as “Several Short Sentences about Writing”? With its unique formatting, it certainly reads sometimes like a poem about prose.

A. The task wasn’t just to sit down and write a book about writing. The task was to write a book that interested me as I was writing it. I had to find a shape that would keep my attention and allow me to see what I needed to be saying. This book is the result.

Q. Can you tell me just a little bit about your upcoming books?

A. My next book is a new collection of rural life essays I’ve written for the Times, called “More Scenes From A Rural Life.” I’m steadily working on two others.

One is a book about the time I spent in the 1990’s working with horse-trainers in Wyoming and Montana. The other, called “The Mermaids of Lapland,” is about the 19th-century agricultural reformer William Cobbett — a

“

master of prose and a wonderful, if often overblown witness of his times.

Q. This might sound contrived, but what would a perfect sentence look like?

A. No sentence really exists out of relation. Every single sentence gets its value from all the others sentences around it and where it is. To speak generally, there has to be a rhythm to the sentence and you must also pay attention to the velocity in which it reads. I think the real perfect sentence acquires its virtue only in their context. It’s an ever-shifting problem.

Q. Best advice you have ever received about writing.

A. It came from Robert Gottlieb, former editor of The New Yorker. Looking at my book “The Last Fine Time,” he called me up and asked me to “detumesce” my writing. That meant writing a new, 20,000 word version of a 90,000 word book I’d just published. It wasn’t a piece of writing advice, but an instruction in refinement. What I learned about my own excesses and what’s necessary for narrative — it was just a fabulous exercise, to force me to go back and reexamine a book I’d just written.

Q. What are you thinking about right now? If you were constructing a sentence at this

THERE HAS TO BE A RHYTHM TO THE SENTENCE AND YOU MUST ALSO PAY ATTENTION TO THE VELOCITY IN WHICH IT READS.

“

hat are you thinking about? Ruminate; write about anything. Such is the bold directive steering of Verlyn Klinkerborg’s unique course this semester, “The Genre of the Sentence.” A member of the New York Times Editorial Board, he invites his students to express themselves unbound by any expected convention.

As Klinkenborg (call him Verlyn) mentioned during his first class meeting, he wants to “catch [us] in the act of composition.” Before undertaking this challenge, I caught him in the act of driving back to his farm in New York, and we chatted on the phone about his new writing seminar, his forthcoming work and the myth of the perfect sentence.

very moment, what would it say?

A. Impossible to tell, but I wouldn’t be constructing a sentence. I’d be imagining a sentence, ready to let it go if it didn’t seem to work. Much more freedom in imagining than in constructing.

Contact JORDI GASSÓ at jordi.gasso@yale.edu .