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Vaasu Taneja, 3 May 2018
Kaitlynd Collins, 3 May 2018
Jenny Moss, 3 May 2018
Nocturne
[gallery ids="38964,38965,38966,38967"] Silvia Cantu Bautista
The Librarian Is In
Library Reserves Coordinator Kellam Ayres is liaison to the Bread Loaf School of English and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences. “Advice from the Lights” by Stephanie Burt, 2017 The What Stephanie Burt, a poet, critic, and soon-to-be Breadloafer, is a Professor of English at Harvard, an author of several works of poetry and criticism, the co-poetry editor of The Nation, and will serve on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference for the first time this summer. Her latest book of poetry, Advice from the Lights, was published in late 2017 and I’ve found it to be a compelling exploration of self, gender, childhood and the search for commonality in the world. The Why I always appreciate a book that starts with a powerful opening line, and Burt (who was previously known as Stephen) does not disappoint, as she begins by stating: “Everybody wants a piece of me.” This first poem, “Ice for the Ice Trade,” is a persona poem (which, if your Latin is a little rusty, just means that it is in the voice of another person or object). The speaker continues by saying “I have been weighed and measured, / tested and standardized, / throughout my young life.” Burt explores the examination of self throughout the book, and takes a thoughtful and often playful look at what surrounds us: the natural world (mole rats, water striders, cicadas), pop culture (there’s a nod to Taylor Swift), adolescent mean girls and 1980s nostalgia. She is able to blend feelings of anguish with a certain spiritedness, as she does in the poem “A Nickel on Top of a Penny,” when she writes about wanting “contradictory things, like security and excitement, / immortality, hang gliders, gumdrops, a home and all / the space in the world—…” The book takes its structure not only through the frequent appearance of persona poems, but also by several powerful poetic sequences: poems centered on specific years in the 1980s, as in “My 1986,” which begins: “I painted all ten of my toenails with Liquid Paper / then followed my father’s injunction and scraped it all off.” The Stephanie poems, a sequence of self-portraits as a (longed-to-be) girl, include “Esprit Stephanie”: The hard work of appearances disappears into the apparent effortlessness, and the loose three-quarter sleeves of trying to become what other people, your friends, your real friends, are convinced that you already are, like trying to follow the pale fleck of a small plane, or a big plane far away. Burt also skillfully uses rhyme throughout the book, and its use feels particularly moving and effective in another persona poem, “Secondhand Flashlight,” in which a flashlight details its moments at a rave, and scaring off skunks, and later: Having resigned myself to my fixed form, I was surprised to escape the cardboard coffin of the charity shop that sold me. Though none of my parts can soften, the humid summer air can still corrode me. Pick me up; test me every so often. Hold me. Burt’s ability to address these questions of longing is so carefully considered and I especially enjoy her fresh and moving take on the classic existential questions: who am I and who am I meant to be? In the last Stephanie poem in the book, “Final Exam Stephanie,” the speaker explores both the rules and conventions of school and schoolwork, but also what happens after the final exam is over, as she seeks a place where she can be herself: What is this air, this space in which nobody rewards me for conformity, or punishes me, or keeps track of my time, what I wear, how I see myself, or tries to tell me what my name should be?
Millie Von Platen, 9 May 2018
Kaitlynd Collins, 9 May 2018
Jenny Moss, 9 May 2018
EJ Nicolls, 9 May 2018
Alexis Clay, 9 May 2018
The Librarian Is In
Data Services Librarian Ryan Clement is liaison to the Economics, Geography, Philosophy and Sociology & Anthropology departments, as well as serving as Middlebury’s Government Documents Coordinator. “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari, 2015 443 pages “We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles – but nobody knows where we’re going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.” - Yuval Noah Harari, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” “Afterword” The What “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” attempts a grand and challenging experiment: can the full history of Homo sapiens be properly summarized in fewer than 500 pages? The author, Yuval Noah Harari, certainly thinks so. Despite promising a brief history of “humankind” in the book’s subtitle, he’s smart to focus on one species of humankind (Homo sapiens) and their turbulent 70,000-year history. “Sapiens” begins when our species began to experience the first of many revolutions that Harari highlights: the “cognitive” revolution. Not to be confused with the cognitive revolution in psychology, which was a reaction against behaviorism, this is the period around 70,000 years ago when humanity developed the capacity for imagination. Our newfound ability to talk about things that don’t exist, and to communicate these ideas with others in our group, led to the “collective fictions,” which, Harari argues, make Homo sapiens uniquely able to cooperate on a grand scale. Harari then takes us through several other periods of change and revolution, such as the agricultural revolution, the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution, to trace the gradual consolidation of Homo sapiens from separate bands of hunter-gatherers to the increasingly globalized society we inhabit today. Harari’s tracing of humankind’s evolution ends on a cliffhanger, hinted at by the quote above. He says, of our future, “Indeed, the future masters of the world will probably be more different from us than we are from Neanderthals…[w]hereas we and the Neanderthals are at least human, our inheritors will be godlike.” This is a fitting ending to a book whose sequel is titled “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.” The Why Any book that attempts to summarize such a grand sweep of history in such a tantalizingly bite-sized chunk is bound to be a hit with the intelligentsia, and “Sapiens” was no exception. It was recommended by Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama and Bill Gates, among countless others. I approached this book to determine two things: could this book accomplish its goals, in the way that Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” had, and what baggage and interpretation was Harari bringing to the table when writing about such a fraught subject as the evolution of the Homo sapiens? As for the first question, I think Harari has mainly accomplished what he set out to do. The grand sweep of humanity’s evolution is conveyed in a narrative and engrossing style that still incorporates historical, biological, anthropological and economic scholarship. While Harari does make some authorial missteps (his repeated misuse of the phrase “exceptions that prove the rule” is particularly grating) his general writing is both digestible and informed by significant scholarship. He does gloss over significant controversies and fails to cite a few extraordinary claims, but such is to be expected in a book that attempts such a feat as this. As for the second, Harari’s biases sometimes come to the forefront in ways that will cause many readers, as they caused me, to want to scribble diatribes in the margins of their copy (which I could not do in my ebook copy, unfortunately). He rails against the changes that the agricultural revolution brought, painting the pre-agricultural period of humanity as a sort of golden age when everyone was more free, despite horrendous child mortality rates. He is no fan of “modern liberal culture,” but his attacks on it veer toward self-parody. Such clear biases are easy to spot though, and taking a critical stance on these did not hurt my enjoyment of this book. I would recommend this to any reader interested in human evolution and history, and will be ordering the sequel, “Homo Deus,” for the library as well.
The Librarian Is In
Research & Instruction Librarian Brenda Ellis is liaison to History, Political Science, International Politics & Economics (IPE), International & Global Studies (IGS), MiddCore and co-liaison to Environmental Studies. “It Looked Different on the Model” and “Housebroken: Admissions of an Untidy Life” by Laurie Notaro, 2011 and 2016 218 and 270 pages The What New York Times best-selling author Laurie Notaro is a humorist whose books consist of a hilarious series of vignettes, written in the first person, about life’s daily events, encounters, humiliations or seemingly mundane matters like a trip to the Waffle House with her nephew. She pokes fun at everything and everyone, including family, friends and neighbors, but mainly she is the butt of most of her jokes (and oh, she’d have fun with that noun). How does her husband’s discovery of a jar of peanut butter nine years beyond the expiration date lead to musings on the apocalypse and who will be on her survival team? Her advice: “…do not allow vegans onto your Survival Team unless it is for the specific purpose of possibly consuming them later on if things turn super shitty.” What happens when her father joins Facebook, thinks her photos of meals she had already eaten were disgusting, then suddenly unfriends her? ”’Those were ironic’, I said almost shouting. ‘I’m an anti-foodie. It’s supposed to be gross…’” And sometimes she simply writes about tragedies, such as the Great Twinkie Famine of 2012, when the original Hostess Twinkie went extinct. When her husband comes home and discovers she had left the oven on, leaving “the aroma of a chicken that I had not only broiled but also cremated in my oven,” he asks “‘What’s all of this white stuff? Please tell me it’s house dandruff and that you weren’t trying to make crystal meth.’” And what is it like when she returns to stay with her parents for a week? When her conservative father asks her over breakfast about “‘that President of yours [who] doesn’t seem to be able to cough up his birth certificate,’” she replies, “‘Dad’”, I said, my eyes still half closed, being that I had been awake for eight minutes. “‘I don’t even have a bra on yet. Maybe we should save the birther debate for Mid-Morning Snack Time.’” About those X-ray scanners TSA uses that can see through your clothes “…get an eyeful. Drink it in, my friend. No, that’s no loincloth, those are the panties I save for Midol days, with the torn waistband and an aggressive stubbornness that OxiClean couldn’t conquer.” If this isn’t your kind of humor, or you are easily offended, maybe this isn’t the writer for you. The Why Everyone needs a good laugh and her self-deprecating wit, sarcasm, irreverence and sometimes politically incorrect or gross humor is a good distraction from the more serious side of life, or at least a good way to procrastinate when you really should be reading Plato, cleaning your room or doing other more important things. Don’t have time to read a whole novel or memoir? Each chapter stands alone, so dive in anywhere and enjoy. And if this leaves you wanting more of her books, just use go/request/ and let us know which of her other books you’d like to see in the library, such as I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies), We Thought You Would Be Prettier: True Tales of the Dorkiest Girl Alive, and many other of her books we do not yet own.
Joey Bada$$ Concert
MCAB’s Spring Concert attracts large crowds in Kenyon Arena. [gallery columns="2" size="large" ids="38711,38710"]
Midd Masti Spring Show
Final performance of the year pays tribute to graduating seniors. [gallery link="file" size="large" ids="38695,38696,38697,38698,38699,38700"]
Alexis Clay: April 25, 2018
Jenny Moss: April 25, 2018
Kaitlynd Collins: April 25, 2018
The Librarian Is In
Director of Research & Instruction Carrie Macfarlane is the librarian for Chinese, Japanese, Neuroscience, Psychology and the Writing Program. “I’m The One That I Want” by Margaret Cho, 2002 213 pages RATING 4/5 cardigans The What Those who have seen the comedian Margaret Cho perform probably would not describe her as anxious, afraid or uncertain. I’ve never done stand-up comedy, but it seems like it requires a lot of courage. On stage, Margaret Cho is fearless. I’m the One That I Want is her memoir, and it’s funny. But it also reveals her vulnerabilities. For those who don’t know Margaret Cho, she is a Korean American who grew up in San Francisco in the 1970s. She is the daughter of immigrants, and she describes her early years as amusing, uncomfortable, and at times, utterly distressing. It takes Cho a while to find her way in life. After she fails out of high school, a performing arts program captures her attention. Falling in with a new group of friends doesn’t end Cho’s troubles, but it does set her on a (winding) path toward her career as a successful stand-up comedian with numerous film and television credits. The Why I actually hadn’t seen many (any?) of Margaret Cho’s comedy routines when I requested I’m the One That I Want via Interlibrary Loan. (After I read the book, I had the library purchase a copy -- you can find it in MIDCAT.) I learned about I’m the One That I Want when I was compiling a bibliography of diversity and inclusion readings on behalf of the Alliance for an Inclusive Middlebury (AIM). Many schools have bibliographies like the one I was asked to put together, but I decided to expand the scope of ours to include books that I’d enjoy reading in my free time. Meaning, I wanted memoirs and novels. Stories help me imagine different life experiences. Cho’s life experiences are very different from mine. She grew up in a big city on the West Coast, and I’m from a small town on the East Coast. Her parents came to the U.S. from another country, and mine were born here. She excelled in the theatre, and the only part I ever got in a play was as a narrator who introduced a show then quickly got off the stage. As I read the book, I noted many differences, but I found many similarities too. Cho and I both know why kids do dumb things, but even with the distance and wisdom of age, we still don’t completely forgive them. Cho makes it okay to laugh at her contradictions and struggles, and in doing so, she invites readers to find humor in their own. And Cho does struggle. Throughout her childhood and her adult years, she works with a backdrop of negative self-talk, poor body image, sexual harassment, racism, and drug abuse. Cho writes with honesty in a voice that is familiar, yet sharp and illuminating. As I gobbled up chapter after chapter, I felt like I was having a conversation with a smart friend. Cho is a comedian though, so she periodically crosses the line between easy and difficult topics. Her readers should know that sometimes, her comedic observations will sting. What I like about I’m the One That I Want is that it shines a light on the space between Margaret Cho’s on-stage success and her off-stage challenges. And it makes me laugh. Read it, and if you enjoy it, go to MIDCAT to find Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me? and Gabourey Sidibe’s This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare. By the way, all of these books are recommended in the forthcoming AlM bibliography, available online sometime soon.
News in Brief
SGA RECOMMENDS AWARDING CREDIT FOR SUMMER INTERNSHIPS The Student Government Association (SGA) unanimously passed a bill asking faculty to award academic credit for summer internships in their most recent meeting on Sunday. Junior senator Kailash Raj Pandey ’19 sponsored the bill. Visit go/internshipsforcredit to view the full bill. The language remains to be finalized. — Catherine Pollack SPRING SYMPOSIUM There will be no class on Friday to allow students to attend the twelfth annual Spring Symposium, where over 350 students will present their academic work in a wide array of academic disciplines. Presenters represent all four classes, though the majority of presenters are seniors. Oral and poster presentations will be held in Bicentennial Hall, while art projects will be displayed in Johnson. The day will begin with a welcome address by President Laurie L. Patton at 9 a.m. and conclude with a closing reception at 4:45 p.m. — Elaine Velie SGA EARTH DAY EVENT The SGA Environmental Affairs Committee will host a “Cancel the Apocalypse” fair on Earth Day this Sunday from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m in Wilson Hall in McCullough. Student organizations from the college and local organizations from the Middlebury community will be stationed at tables to share the ways in which they are working to combat climate change. The Sunday Night Environmental Group, Otter Creek Audubon Society, Middlebury Energy Committee, and Middlebury Area Climate Economy Initiative are some of the groups that will be in attendance. Several individual students will present the actions they’ve taken to protect the environment, including Leif Taranta ’20.5, who spearheaded the switch to reusable to-go containers. Attendants will also be able to snack on Midd Cakes’ new granola bars. — Elizabeth Sawyer TEN O’CLOCK ROSS BACK 10 o’clock Ross reopened on Monday, April 16 after being suspended mid-March due to issues regarding cleanliness. It will run Monday through Thursday from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m for the rest of the semester. When 10 o’clock Ross was initially suspended, the SGA called on students to treat both the dining hall and the staff tasked with cleaning it with greater respect. SGA president Jin Sohn wrote, “the Ross Dining Hall Staff trusts the student body by allowing us to enjoy late-night snacks in the dining hall after hours and we have failed to step up to the task.” In an email announcing 10 o’clock Ross’ return, Sohn again asked students to clean up after themselves, to notify monitors of liquid spills, not to tamper with the frozen yogurt machine, and to help the monitors and staff ensure it runs smoothly. The Campus published an editorial on March 21 citing the suspension of 10 o’clock Ross as just one example of students mistreatment of the college staff. The March suspension was not the first time 10 o’clock Ross had been suspended, as alcohol consumption during 10 o’clock Ross last winter led to similar consequences. But it will hopefully be the last as students act with greater consideration and respect. — Catherine Pollack TWO RUNNING FOR COMMUNITY COUNCIL CO-CHAIR Two candidates are running to fill the position of co-chair of Community Council for the 2018-2019 academic year. Lynn Claire Travnikova ’20 has served as a commons resident assistant and as the social chair of The Middlebury Bobolinks, an a cappella group. Her campaign website can be accessed at go.middlebury.edu/lynn4cc. John Gosselin ’20 has served as Atwater senator in the SGA for the past year. He is currently a member of Community Council. His campaign website can be accessed at go.middlebury.edu/jgforcc. Voting will take place from noon on Thursday, April 19 to noon on Friday, April 20 at go.middlebury.edu/vote.