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(02/15/18 1:55am)
At the end of J-term, BiHall’s Great Hall was transformed for a day into a gallery housing an art show that brought together science, feminism and art. Co-organizers Mikayla Hyman ’20 and Mika Morton ’19 set up an open square of large display boards and invited students to peruse the art pieces, which ranged from paintings to collages to poetry.
“We’re in BiHall because we wanted to engage with the space where science majors are,” Hyman said. “The point of this is to really engage in conversation and raise awareness about the importance of feminist science.”
One of the most prominent pieces in the exhibit was a painting of a naked female body, designed to appear as if from the perspective of a woman looking down at herself. When the viewer looks at the painting, it was as if he or she was looking down at his or her own breasts and bulging stomach.
“A lot of the guys who have come to the exhibit haven’t recognized what the painting is of” Morton said. “I think they’re just not used to looking at a female body from that perspective.”
Hyman and Morton were inspired to organize the art show by an assignment in their organic chemistry class. The assignment was to pick a chemical compound and present it to the class in some creative way. A classmate created a watercolor painting of a molecule as a female form. Both Hyman and Morton were struck by the beauty of the painting, as well as the blend of disciplines.
By bringing science and feminism together in an art show, Morton and Hyman hoped to start conversations and to show viewers how much either discipline could benefit from the other.
“Feminism is about taking the time to understand, respect and value other points of view, especially underrepresented ones,” Hyman said. “Science is all about learning new information through a rigorous and highly reliable process. I think that when trying to learn new things, more perspectives contributing to an answer can only lead to a more universally correct truth. Feminist science is responsible science.”
“Feminism is important when you’re doing your science and thinking about how you phrase your questions, who your research team is, and whom you are researching,” Morton said.
Gender bias plays a huge role in how we think about and conduct science. It affects the language we use – Morton recalls a freshman year biology textbook that referred to sperm as “stripped down speedsters,” whereas eggs were described as passive support systems. It affects how we approach diseases – considered a disease of men, Coronary Heart Disease has been understudied, underdiagnosed, and undertreated in women even though the mortality rate is greater for women than for men. And it affects how we conduct experiments.
In biomedical research and preclinical trials, researchers use animals for their experiments. These animals, however, are overwhelmingly male. A University of California, Berkeley analysis of published research found gender bias in eight out of ten scientific disciplines.
The biggest offender was neuroscience, which had 5.5 single-sex studies of male animals for every 1 single-sex study of female animals. Traditionally scientists have used male animals over female animals to avoid complications from variability due to reproductive cycles and hormonal fluctuations. There is, however, research indicating that variability is not significantly greater in females as compared to males.
Some scientists believe that findings in males can be generalized to females. Sex differences, however, have real effects. For example, researchers have demonstrated that female rodents process pain through different immune cells than male rodents. This may affect how women versus men respond to pain medication.
Using male animals has meant that when drugs hit the market searchers know much more about the drug’s effect on men than on women.
(01/24/18 10:58pm)
Literatures and cultures librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman Center, the Arabic department, the French department, the Gender Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS Program), the Language Schools, Linguistics and the Spanish & Portuguese departments. These affiliations are reflected in her reading choices. “While I am a very slow reader, I’m a very critical reader,” she says.
Rating: 3/5 cardigans
THE WHAT
Humorist David Sedaris chronicles and shares 25 years of his life in his diaries. His adventures in apple-picking, exploring his sexual identity and drug use in his early 20s are all recorded in his entries and reveal the fodder that has inspired his 10 tomes of stories, encounters, (mis)adventures and the narratives he has shared via National Public Radio’s “This American Life” for years. Entries from his later years cover his experience as an expatriate in France and the challenges of foreign language learning, the mundanity of his tour circuits as a best-selling author and the comfort of his long-term, romantic partnership with Hugh.
THE WHY
I first heard Sedaris sharing his writings on the radio in the late 2000s. They were quirky and wry, both leading factors in their appeal. He talked about the Bible Belt of the South, a world that was foreign to me, and what it was like growing up there sensitive, male and queer. As a member of an oppressed minority group, he was obliged to conceal parts of his identity for his own protection; his story immediately inspired my compassion and I have been keeping loose track of his career ever since. I went to see him read in Columbia, Missouri once and have followed his essays whenever possible, such as “Now We Are Five,” which tells of his sister Tiffany’s 2013 suicide.
“Theft,” readers will see, does some presaging of events to follow. Another of Sedaris’s sisters, Amy Sedaris, has, like her brother, been successful in entertainment, and is featured as a regular on “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and voices the anthropomorphic Princess Carolyn on the animated Netflix series “Bojack Horseman.” The two are a pair of comedic talents and the diaries reveal that the two cut their teeth on public displays of humor together on the New York theater scene before making it big.
While David Sedaris retains my undying admiration, here I wish he would have given us less. At over 500 pages, this is the longest book I’ve ever read and it took me months of visits and revisits to make the necessary progress to write this review. Another edit for length would make the text more potent, but, of course, less thorough. I think this memoir could still span the same length of time in 300 pages. When I laughed, it was genuine, but it wasn’t as frequent as I would have expected. As a lover of language, I especially enjoyed Sedaris’s language-based foibles in French. I also loved the way the author so effortlessly puts U.S. society’s hypocrisies and shortcomings on display while generally eschewing judgment of the flawed characters he encounters. Sedaris realizes quite readily that he, too, is as odd and imperfect as the people he meets and the rest of us in between.
(12/07/17 12:37am)
As the holidays descend on Middlebury, the Werner Christmas Tree Farm has gone into overdrive to prepare for its 26th season. The owners, Cheryl and David Werner, started the farm after David’s father, Fred, who had a passion for planting trees, gave them a batch of Scotch pines.
The family business has since trickled down to Fred’s grandchildren, who now often come back to Middlebury between Thanksgiving and Christmas to serve as the farm’s elves as sales go into high gear. Amanda Werner, a Skidmore College graduate and full-time cheesemaker at Champlain Valley Creamery, is the only one of Cheryl and David’s children who helps year-round.
The farm consists of 25 acres near the couple’s home, with another 10 acres in Lincoln, Vermont. The farm aims to sell around 2,000 trees each year while having 35,000 planted trees in various stages of growth. At the time of Fred Werner’s gift of pines, Christmas tree farms were ubiquitous across the region. An Addison County Christmas Tree Growers Association, which has since disbanded, had a substantial membership base.
“We plant in spring, and we always plant more trees than we end up cutting off,” Amanda said. “In the summer months we’ll shear the trees, using a long knife like a machete. We walk around them and swing the knife, knocking off the tips of the branches to outline the shape we want.”
The undulating nature of the Christmas-tree industry calls for a spike of 10 to 12 workers during peak season, while only the immediate family works during the rest of the year. In the coming month, the family will divide the workload, with Cheryl Werner handling checkout, Amanda Werner making wreaths and David Werner creating garlands.
On a typical December weekend, the farm can anticipate around 200 people searching for Christmas trees. Equipped with measuring sticks and bow saws, some customers like to cut their own, while others choose from the selection of pre-cut trees. The trees are not distinctly organized by height, but workers direct customers to fields that typically have certain height ranges.
“We say that most people have eyes taller than their ceiling,” Amanda Werner said. “They may think a six-foot tree sounds like a good height but then are drawn to trees closer to eight feet in height.”
David Werner, who is a full-time woodworker the rest of the year, runs most of the business operations in his workshop on the property during the holiday season. The decorated barn is stocked with maple syrup and garlands but has wood clamps and tools peeking out behind the garlands on the walls. Cheryl Werner occupies the rest of her time as a teacher in plant, animal and mechanical sciences at the Hannaford Career Center.
Amanda Werner hopes to keep the family business going when her parents retire, possibly in the next few years. She also hopes to add new programs and activities to the farm.
“It’d be really fun if we could have a build-your-own-centerpiece workshop,” she said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever have enough time and people to do this, but we do have a sleigh, and one of the horses knows how to pull it. We would also need snow for that, though.”
Although entirely a retail operation today, the farm used to ship trees wholesale. The appeal of a true Vermont pine tree drew orders from as far as the Caribbean. Amanda fondly remembers packaging trees for Bermuda nearly 15 years ago after a heavy snow. Transported in the bottom of a large ship, the trees were unwrapped hundreds of miles away with the snow still intact on them.
As climate change becomes more apparent each year, the Werners have noticed less snow and later freezes.
“Obviously, we’ll have to deal with warming more and more in the future,” Amanda Werner said. “This year was a little bit easier for us because we had that cold snap early in November and we need three hard freezes before we can do any harvesting. The freezes trigger a sort of hibernation of the trees [that] sets the needles.”
To handle the warming climate, the Werners have shifted most of their brush cutting up to their mountain fields. These areas get colder earlier and allow for the first harvesting of the season. With a warming Vermont climate, the farm may have to move more of its production to a higher elevation. However, the lack of snow has not prevented customers — both local and out-of-state — from flocking to the farm as soon as Thanksgiving leftovers start to diminish.
According to David Werner, the lack of snow has meant a steadier stream of customers during the month of December, rather than a swarm at the first sight of flurries. With snowy days farther apart, people are no longer willing to wait for the increasingly rare snow days.
For more information on the Werner Tree Farm, visit their website at www.wernertreefarm.org.
(11/30/17 12:00am)
MIDDLEBURY — At a press conference on Thursday, Nov. 16, at Middlebury College’s Kirk Alumni Center, the college announced its partnership with Goodrich Family Farms of Salisbury, Vermont, Vanguard Renewables and Vermont Gas. Goodrich Family Farms and Vanguard Renewables will work together to use cow manure and food waste to produce renewable natural gas via an anaerobic digester.
The college will work with the two enterprises to gain a sustainable energy source and to reduce its own food waste, helping it to achieve its sustainability goals.
An anaerobic digester will be built by Vanguard Renewables on Goodrich Family Farms’s property and will turn the cow manure provided by the farm and food waste from the community into an energy source. The digester located at the Goodrich farm is posed to produce the most renewable natural gas of any digester in Vermont.
In addition to purchasing the bulk of the power generated by the digester, the college will provide some of its food waste for the digester to use as fuel.
“We are constantly looking at new ways to make our energy sources more sustainable and diverse, and the digester project is a great opportunity to do that,” said college treasurer David Provost.
Goodrich Family Farms is a dairy farm and member of the Agri-Mark Cabot Creamery Cooperative in Salisbury, Vermont. The farm has been family-operated for four generations. Chase Goodrich, the fourth generation to operate the farm, has been a driving force behind the project.
“We want to diversify our income sources and find new ways to be environmentally friendly. Here in the Champlain Valley, we’re particularly aware of efforts to reduce phosphorus runoff into Lake Champlain,” Goodrich said in a press conference.
Vanguard Renewables, a firm based in Wellesley, Massachusetts, works with farmers to help them reduce their energy costs through the firm’s anaerobic digester program. Non-farm waste, like the college’s food waste, is delivered to the farms in sealed trucks and is then combined with the farm’s waste, namely animal manure, and put into a biodigester tank at the farm. Vanguard currently operates three other generators in Massachusetts.
Vanguard Renewables works directly with farms in order to help them reduce their energy costs by utilizing the waste they produce, including cow manure and food waste. The biodigester tank reportedly reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent, according to the Vanguard Renewables website.
“The Vanguard Renewables Farm Powered Organics to Energy Anaerobic Digester program offers farmers relief from rising energy costs and manure disposal challenges,” Vanguard Renewables’ website states.
“We’re especially excited about this project because it’s our first partnership with a college and our first digester in Vermont,” said executive chairman of Vanguard Renewables John Hanselman in a press conference.
Vermont Gas is a company that aims to provide clean energy to those in Addison, Chittenden and Franklin counties. It frequently conducts efficiency programs that aim to help its customers save money and reduce their energy consumption.
“Vermont Gas is proud to be the first local distribution company in the country to offer the choice of renewable natural gas service to our customers. A local source, hosted by a Vermont family farm, serving a world-renowned Vermont college, is a big step forward in advancing Vermont’s clean energy future,” president and CEO of Vermont Gas Dan Rendall said in a press conference.
While the project is still in the permitting phase, all parties remain hopeful that it will soon be underway. After the permits are obtained, Vanguard will begin construction on the Goodrich Family Farm and Vermont Gaswill begin constructing a five-mile pipeline along Shard Villa Road in order to connect the farm with the company’s pipeline network in Addison County, as reported by the Middlebury College Newsroom.
(11/08/17 5:44pm)
In Middlebury, Vermont, two men, a team of horses and a carriage are reversing the trend of globalization currently overtaking the country.
The Draft Trash Company was founded in 1997 by Patrick Palmer of Bristol, Vermont. Operating like any other private trash removal company, Draft Trash is individually contracted by its customers to remove trash from the ends of their driveways. The trash is carried away in a long, low trailer pulled by a team of gray-and-white Percheron horses. In Bristol, the idea gained popularity, and nearly 20 years later, Palmer and his horses now service more than 200 customers.
“He got the idea 20 years ago from a magazine article about a guy who used horses for a trash route in Washington,” said Nick Hammond, Palmer’s partner in Draft Trash’s Middlebury operations, which began in 2015.
About three years ago, changes in Vermont recycling codes prompted Middlebury to drop its contract with Casella, a local trash hauler who had been hired to service residents of the town. “I saw this as an opportunity,” Palmer said. This was his chance to expand business into Middlebury’s larger and busier market. After going door-to-door for several Saturdays to publicize the business, Palmer felt confident that there would be sufficient demand from the Middlebury area, and he made the decision to officially begin operations. He partnered up with Hammond, a carpenter and farmer from a few miles outside of town, and together they started Draft Trash Middlebury, which now services nearly 200 customers in the Middlebury area.
The company has each customer pay $6 for a sticker sold at the Otter Creek Bakery or Martin’s Hardware & Building Supply and put the sticker on a trash bag at the end of their driveway. The horse and carriage pick up the trash on Monday or Tuesday, depending on where one lives in town.
“We divide the town in half by Route 7 ... [and] do a Monday and a Tuesday morning every other week in Middlebury. [The] first day we picked up like 20 bags of trash. Now we’re up to ... about, oh, 75 or 80 bags of trash a day. ... It works out to be about 1800 pounds of trash a day,” Hammond said.
The growth and success of Draft Trash Middlebury in the last three years is due in large part to the popularity of the animals. The substitution of a couple of Percheron horses for garbage trucks, which are often noisy, often draws appreciation from locals and visitors alike. “We always stop for all the kids to come out and pet the horses,” Palmer said. “We’ve never done [a route] without somebody taking a picture someplace.”
The business also represents an environmentally friendly approach to an often environmentally costly business. Compared to a garbage truck’s average 2.8 miles per gallon, the horse-drawn operations have considerably less impact on the environment over their 25-mile route.
Given the environmental advantages of the business, Palmer also approached the college as a potential customer.
“When I first started in Middlebury I tried to get into Middlebury College because I thought that because they’re really environmentally conscious, they’d be willing to do it, ... [but] they felt that their way was efficient, and they didn’t want to [make] any changes,” he said.
Although the economic and environmental gains of the business are valuable, Hammond explained that his enthusiasm for his job is based on his love for the animals as much as anything else.
“I think it’s great because it is an environmental thing and it kind of saves fuel and is cool, but also it allows me to use the horses because I love them. ... I try to find as many ways as possible to use them,” he said.
The consistent work and engagement is beneficial for the horses. “[The horses] weigh close to 2,000 pounds, and they’re designed to be using their muscles for a long time. … If they don’t, they start to break down,” he said. “The trash wagon, when it’s full, weighs close to 8,000 pounds, and the two horses pull like it’s nothing. We’re some of the very few who use them on a consistent basis to do what they’re designed to do.”
Palmer, now 70, plans to leave Draft Trash Middlebury’s operations fully in the hands of Hammond as soon as he can find a full-time replacement for himself. Palmer will then continue on for another five years, focusing on Bristol, before retiring from the business after 25 years.
In and around Middlebury, Hammond hopes to continue operations as long as he can. “I think it adds to the town,” he said. “It’s a good reminder to people not how things used to be, but of a different pace of life.”
(10/18/17 11:28pm)
For the crowd of Middlebury students, faculty and guests who gathered in Axinn Center 232 last Tuesday afternoon, the world of animated film came to life through a film series called “Remember When: A Collection of Animated Shorts Capturing the Intersections of Girlhood,” curated by filmmaker Lindsey Martin.
“Girlhood” presented a series of narratives that boldly and intelligently challenges the notion that young people exist unaware or unaffected by larger power structures. The stories featured girls in roles that many would argue we don’t see enough of in films both today and historically. Every narrative featured girls in roles beyond young caretakers, trophies and sidekicks.
When the lights turned off, and the mournfully optimistic, intelligently lighthearted, and unequivocally young voices of these girls filled the room, we were instantly catapulted into the world of the imaginary. The scenery was subject to every whim of the speakers’ consciousnesses, that were distinctly youthful and unrestrained despite the troubling realities that they reflected, arguably an effect that could only have been achieved via this sort of animation.
The series explored the use of animation as a way of processing traumatic histories and memories as well as a way to play with our realities and reimagine power dynamics, according to the event organizers. Each film uses animation in a different way, some in combination with live action, but all use the form to evoke nostalgia and reflection.
“I, Destini,” a film by 14-year old Destini Riley from Durham, North Carolina, explores the poignant and imaginative illustration of a youth’s perspective on the effects of having an incarcerated brother. “The FBI Blew up My Ice Skates” is a story born in the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1980 told from the perspective of Haleh, an eight-year old who just wants to enjoy her ice skates. “Love Letter,” directed by Lindsey Martin, features a 13-year old girl grappling with the hardships and emotional complexities of her parents’ divorce.
Through the complicated and artful animated medium, she tells the story of her imaginary friend who hibernates in a jar on her windowsill as she copes with her anxieties. In “My Doodle Diary,” a young girl named Maya writes about everything that rocks her teenage world. This daily narrative perspective into a young girl’s life offered viewers a chance to experience a delightful exploration of youthful expression. “A Place in the Middle,” about an 11-year old girl named Ho’Onani in Honolulu, tells the compelling and beautiful story about her hopes and struggles to become a leader of her hula group. Touching on important ideas of the Hawaiian spirit and femininity, the film celebrates the notion that what truly matters is what’s in your heart.
“It made me think a lot about being a kid that age and using my imagination and reality to understand things and cope with things and all of these submissions did such a good job of bringing the viewer into that world and I so appreciated how accurate that is,” said Emma Hampsten ’18.5.
At Middlebury, we are often afforded the opportunity to study power structures and their impacts through a somewhat distant academic lens, whether in classes such as Race and Ethnicity in the U.S. or The Sociology of Gender. Rarely are we granted the chance to sit down in a theater and experience the artistic manifestations of the thoughts and experiences of those whose lives these power structures so intimately affect.
(10/18/17 11:12pm)
The word “veganism” has the power to elicit eye-rolls, approving nods, or looks of utter confusion. Some view the vegan lifestyle as a pretentious fad, an overly ambitious and misguided attempt to save the world. Others admire the morality of it all, but consider the elimination of animal products from one’s diet to be an impossible undertaking, particularly in light of the college’s limited dining hall options.
Those who identify as vegan on this campus, however, show that this lifestyle endeavor is perhaps not as difficult, irrelevant or inaccessible as one might think.
People arrive at veganism from a variety of entry points. Some are motivated largely by ethical reasons, citing the mistreatment of animals and humans in the creation of non-vegan products. Others are driven primarily by environmental or personal health concerns. Most, if not all, vegans recognize the multiplicity of factors that underlie the significance of their dietary choices.
“The mistreatment of animals is not something I want to be part of at all,” said Finne Murphy ’19, who became vegan five years ago with the encouragement of her mother. “And the meat industry as a whole is really damaging in a lot of different ways. And then it’s just not very good for you health-wise.”
In the context of human and animal rights, veganism can be understood as a form of social justice.
“I kind of felt like I was a hypocrite by saying that I don’t support institutionalized racism and poor treatment of minorities if I continue to support industries that systematically do that, especially with dairy farms,” said Eva Bod ’20, who became vegan this past summer. “If I draw a line at human rights, what about animal rights? If I don’t believe one human life is worth more or less than another human life, how can I do that about species?”
Lee Garcia Jimenez ’19 echoed this sentiment.
“For me, veganism is about fighting oppression,” Garcia Jimenez said. “When people typically fight against oppression, they fight on behalf of themselves. If you’re queer, you express to people to stop homophobia, and I recognize that allies exist, but you don’t find as many straight people actively engaging in rhetoric about why ending homophobia is important, just like you don’t get as many men talking about the importance of ending the patriarchy. But with veganism, people are advocating explicitly for victims that are not them and that are not people they are talking to.”
Simon Willig ’18 sees veganism as a means of acting on his knowledge as Environmental Policy major.
“A vegan diet is a manifestation of me knowing that 99 percent, or 99.999 percent, of the animal products out there, I really don’t agree with how they’re raised and how they’re impacting the environment,” Willig said. “Your ideas and your practices should evolve over time with what you learn. I don’t know that I’m going to be vegan for the rest of my life. It’s just the best manifestation of my current ideas and how I understand these issues, so I would consider myself always trying to be open-minded about these things.”
The continuous and persistent inquiry that guides veganism lends itself to a range of interpretations of what, exactly, a vegan lifestyle looks like. Students expressed that there is not a right or wrong way to be vegan; rather, one’s ability to make this decision for themselves is contingent on their life context and the resources available to them.
For instance, Ami Furgang ’20, who became vegan two years after discovering that they were allergic to dairy, calls themselves a “free-gan.”
“My personal interpretation of what that means for me is I’ll eat anything as long as I personally judge that it’ll go to waste if I don’t eat it,” they explained, adding that, unlike some vegans, they do consume honey and gelatin.
Others also acknowledged the difficulty of abiding by a “perfect” vegan lifestyle.
“I feel like I’ve been vegan in my ethics the whole time. It’s just my efforts have gone off and on,” said Garcia Jimenez, who began practicing veganism five years ago.
“I am not a perfect vegan,” Bod added. “First of all, it takes a lot of privilege to make that decision. You have to have resources to be educated about it. You have to have the privilege to afford decent eating and a decent diet in the first place. I think implementing it is not just about a diet, it’s a lifestyle. Which sounds awful because that’s one of those cheesy one-liners, but do I think it’s ethical to buy from stores that use child labor to make clothes? Of course not, no. But also I can’t afford handmade fine Italian clothing in my entire wardrobe. So to that extent, when it comes to practicing that lifestyle it has to do with choices and lines, and it just depends on where you draw those lines.”
Willig echoed this idea, pointing out the inapplicability of veganism in certain cultural contexts.
“I think people get confused about what exactly I mean by veganism,” he said. “People think I think everyone in the world should be vegan. I obviously understand that people in developing countries who rely on animal agriculture for their livelihood need that. But I think that anybody who can should reduce their consumption of conventionally raised animal products.”
For many, the ability to practice veganism is hindered by social stigma and a lack of structural support for this lifestyle choice. Many struggle with the sparse number of vegan-friendly options at the dining halls, a problem that could be remedied by offering cheese and butter as sides to pasta and vegetable dishes, rather than making dairy products an inherent part of the meal.
“For lunch and dinner, it can really be a hit or miss. Because you can go and there can be three vegan sides and they’re tasty, or the vegetables don’t have butter, and that’s a great day,” Garcia Jimenez said. “But then you can go and there’s one vegan option and it’s something that I happen to not like, and I have to make my own food, and sometimes you just get tired of eating sandwiches.”
“I find every day I each pretty much the same thing, which is pasta and rice, apples and peanut butter, and whatever vegetables they have,” Murphy said. She expressed enthusiasm for the newly introduced lemon sorbet and coconut milk ice cream in the dining halls, adding, “For the past two years I’ve never had any dessert, but this year has been better.”
Despite systemic challenges to following a nutritious and varied vegan diet, people expressed gratitude toward the dining hall staff for their willingness and ability to accommodate for vegan dietary needs when requested. For instance, students can ask for eggplant parm (a vegan dish with a dairy-free cheese substitute) when chicken parm is offered on certain evenings.
“I never felt like I was inconveniencing the dining hall staff by asking for vegan alternatives,” Bod said. “Within the limited choices that the dining hall offers, I still feel welcomed as a vegan.”
As the ethical, environmental, and health-related implications of veganism have become more widely understood and adopted by the student body, demand for vegan options has increased. As a result, dairy-free fridges, which offer a variety of vegan-friendly milks, cheeses, yogurts, butter, ice cream, and cheesecakes, became an installment in the dining halls this year.
Dan Detora, director of food services, notes that the dining services budget, combined with the limited size and layout of the college’s dining halls, presents challenges in serving the entire student body.
“When it comes down to it, we still need to accommodate the needs of all students within our budgetary requirements,” Detora said. “Some vegan items can certainly be pricey. However, so can the grass-fed and grass-finished beef we serve. So in the end it balances out fairly well.”
If the impassioned spirit and well-informed arguments of those who identify as vegan have anything to show, it is that the choice to avoid animal products is far more than just a trend. Veganism is a lifestyle, an often challenging and misunderstood one whose relevance spans across the realms of morality, environmentalism, and personal health. To engage in this practice is to recognize the ways in which our capitalist food systems have fundamentally failed us and our planet.
“I’m by no means a perfect vegan. I think no one is, and I struggled immensely in the past with maintaining a vegan lifestyle,” Garcia Jimenez said. “But it’s because we’re all socialized into being accepting of the cruelty that we pay for. And me trying to get other people to go vegan isn’t about calling them a bad person. It’s about sharing information that, if we all were raised with, we would live our lives very differently. But because we’ve become indoctrinated to carnism, we want to maintain that. And I wish people could view vegan activism as re-socializing as opposed to name-calling.”
(10/11/17 10:06pm)
There is nothing more celebrated at Middlebury College than a student-led business venture. Middlebury dedicates an enormous amount of its financial and human resources to entrepreneurship. This meticulously animated video perfectly demonstrates the way our school tries to attract prospective students with its focus on business. About two years ago, Middlebury lauded the emergence of another one of these student-led entrepreneurship projects: Fiasco (then, Late Night Fiasco).
It’s hard to miss the blatant cultural appropriation that characterized this project. In “J-term Gourmet,” another well produced video on Middlebury College’s official Vimeo account, the business’ founder discusses the inspiration and history of Late Night Fiasco — “an after-hours kitchen” serving “globally-influenced street foods”— as he and a friend (also a cis white man) roll up to the Middlebury Food Co-Op in a Subaru SUV where they source their ingredients for an array of dishes “inspired” by cultures from around the world. Since its inception, Fiasco’s menu has included items such as butternut squash pupusas, kimchi pork fried rice burritos, steamed pork buns, grilled avocado tacos, sweet potato tacos and cochinita pibil tacos.
To cite a very relevant article written by Rachel Kuo at Everyday Feminism, “One of the questions that both chefs and diners should ask themselves is, who is laboring and profiting? Where are these recipes from? Who is this cuisine profiting off, but not supporting – a group that is historically and currently oppressed?”
I should not and cannot claim that all students who identify with Salvadoran culture, for example, were similarly outraged at seeing pupusas on Fiasco’s menu (corrected from initial spelling: “papusas”), or that folks who identify with Mexican and/or Korean culture viewed Fiasco’s “kimchi pork fried rice burritos” with similar disdain. What I can attest to, however, is that Fiasco’s culinary colonialism is not at all exceptional. It represents a widespread phenomenon that is particularly visible in many gentrifying cities across the U.S. Monied white people, and particularly white men, have been emerging as pioneers in an increasingly inaccessible industry of gourmet eateries which liberally take culinary traditions from cultures around the world, the territories of which have been colonized or at least occupied by European and/or U.S. powers over the course of history. Similar to the process of colonialism that extracted labor and raw materials from occupied territories, culinary colonialism is largely driven by men. It seems important to emphasize how this problem is gendered because cooking has been consistently devalued over the course of human history when women have been relegated to domestic work. (Of course most domestic work today is still undervalued and made invisible). I would argue that this fusion food is also being grossly overvalued, in part because cis white men are in the kitchen, which, to a white supremacist patriarchal society, seems really exceptional.
Again, I want to return to Rachel Kuo: “Enjoying food from another culture is perfectly fine. But, food is appropriated when people from the dominant culture — in the case of the U.S., white folks — start to fetishize or commercialize it, and when they hoard access to that particular food. When a dominant culture reduces another community to its cuisine, subsumes histories and stories into menu items — when people think culture can seemingly be understood with a bite of food, that’s where it gets problematic.”
The issue of culinary colonialism takes on even more meaning in the context of Middlebury College, an institution which has largely served the interests of white people and of capitalism since its foundation. Most of Middlebury’s student body is white and wealthy. Maybe Fiasco and its success on our campus foreshadows the ways we (particularly white people with class privilege) go out into the “real world” to become gentrifiers. Throughout my time here, I have seen friends and peers leave this campus to settle in cities across the country, which have become sites of displacement on a massive scale for working class people of color.
I think we, particularly people like me who will be leaving this institution with white privilege and class privilege in addition to a powerful diploma, need to be asking ourselves some critical and difficult questions about life after Midd: Is my presence and my money contributing to the displacement of city residents? How can I see myself as an agent in a process that seems much bigger than myself and the decisions I make? Does my comfort come at the expense of other people’s safety? How can I support working POC’s struggle to resist gentrification without stepping on the toes of those most directly impacted?
This article originally appeared on Beyond the Green.
(09/27/17 11:09pm)
WILMINGTON — Jim Burke has long been a friend of bears. Upon deciding to move to North Carolina, though, he is determined to ensure that his 62-acre property can still act as a “safe haven” for bears even after it is handed off to new owners. His proposition first received attention last week, after he pitched his idea for a wildlife refuge to the Wilmington Development Review Board.
In the week since the board meeting, Burke has quickly gained national press coverage on what has become known as a “wildlife refuge for bears.” First reported in the Brattleboro Reformer, the story was picked up by news organizations like CBS News and The Washington Post as Burke’s mission was incorrectly interpreted as a bear rehabilitation site, rather than a more general wildlife refuge. The attention increased as headlines labeled the property a “bear sanctuary.”
The selectboard is currently in the process of reviewing Burke’s proposition. According to the chair of the Development Review Board, Wendy Manners-Seaman, the board is assessing the ability of Burke’s proposed land use to meet zoning ordinance standards.
“I just want to ensure that my 62 acres remain a safe place for all animals that come onto my property,” Burke said. “That was my intent. It got a little twisted, you know; it’s the old telephone game.”
While Burke does not intend for the new owner of his land to continue the relationship he has cultivated with nearly a dozen bears that move through his property each year, he does at least want to prevent future hunting and trapping. He has kept “no hunting” signs around the private land since 2008. Upon moving, he wants to be assured that the trust he has formed with the bears will not be severed by new owners with an alternate agenda.
“I enjoy nature coming through,” Burke said. “But probably a little more than most people.”
Burke and his wife have counted as many as ten bears sitting out around their backyard on a cool summer night, and during peak seasons around 18 bears circulate through the property.
“This is a highly populated area for bears,” Mr. Burke said. “But I’ve decided that I could live with them.”
The first bear that Burke forged a relationship with is one he calls Mama Bear.
“I’ve had a relationship with her for 12 years now,” he said. “She’s brought cubs here every other year.”
Burke claims that when Mama Bear brings her cubs to his house, they have become so accustomed to him that he is able to scratch their noses and feed them out of his palm. Although he has become close to several bears, including ones he has named Nick, Ringo, George and Jill, his most infamous bond is that with Cocoa Bear.
“Everyone knew about Cocoa Bear around here,” Burke said. “People take bets on when I’m going to get mauled.”
Cocoa Bear was an orphan cub when Burke and his wife, Patty, first took him into their home in Wilmington. They started mixing formula for him, along with feeding him sunflower kernels and flaxseed for extra nutrients. Eventually Cocoa graduated to a diet of apples and granola. Burke said that the cub became so accustomed to him that he would sit in his lap.
“My wife and I just raised him as if we were his family,” Burke said.
Cocoa Bear left the residence after five weeks, but still returns to the area for around a month each year. Although it was a lot of work, Burke said it was an incredible experience that he would happily repeat.
When Burke first started having these close encounters in 2005, there were no laws issued in Wilmington to stop him from feeding the bears. In 2013, Vermont’s laws changed, and he then ran the risk of violating the law by intentionally feeding bears on his property.
Nearly one year ago, on Sept. 29, a search warrant was executed on Burke’s residence by two Vermont game wardens, Richard Watkin and Lt. Greg Eckhardt. The wardens had previously seen bears feeding from plates of food left in Burke’s yard. He claims that the game wardens illegally trespassed onto his private property to see this interaction.
A press release issued by the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department in December 2016 explicitly blamed Burke for vehicles hitting bears near his property, which partially borders Route 9. He said that these claims are inaccurate and roadkill should be attributed to the fact that there are no wildlife corridors near his house for animals to safely cross intersections.
“I’ve been blamed for a lot of things,” he added. “Every time there’s an article about bears, I’m mentioned. The truth is I live with the bears.”
Environmental organizations have also noticed the conflict between major roadways and large animal migration. Although the Nature Conservancy is primarily concerned with the protection of land and waterways, it has recently become part of the Staying Connected Initiative.
“The project looks at corridors connecting wildlife activity,” said Lynn McNamara, director of Critical Lands for the Vermont chapter of the Nature Conservancy. “We’ve done a lot of mapping work that involve critical pathways.”
The state has worked with several organizations to protect land on both sides of the road to avoid these collisions with wildlife.
“We like to protect the land, but we recognize that owning one little island of nature preserve is not going to protect everything that exists around it,” McNamara added.
According to bear biologist Forrest Hammond, though, there’s a stark difference between protecting the bears, and humanizing them. “A bear that has been fed no longer behaves like a wild bear,” he said in the same press release issued last September. “These bears often go from house to house foraging for food and they gradually lose their fear of people. They can present a danger not just to the person feeding the bear, but also to their neighbors for many miles around.”
As the Review Board deliberates, Burke says that he’s stopped feeding the bears as frequently to prepare for selling the house. “They’re gentle creatures,” he said. “They might chase each other down into the woods, but I don’t fear them. They’re not aggressive.”
Although his life is closely linked to the animals now, Burke says he could not have imagined having this unique relationship when he first moved to Wilmington in 2002. Last week, the Burke property was officially put on the market and he will be leaving his community of bears for a home near Asheville, North Carolina, this coming week.
(09/21/17 12:19am)
On Friday, Sept. 15, WRMC and Middlebury College Activities Board hosted Middlebury’s annual S.O.S. (“Start of School”) Fest on the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts front lawn. The free concert featured Middlebury singer-songwriter Rubby ’18 and Chicago-based poet-rapper Noname.
(09/20/17 10:00pm)
NEW YORK (SI) — If anyone deserves his spot on the Wheaties box, it’s the Olympic champion Michael Phelps. He’s the most decorated Olympian ever, having set world records in four consecutive Games. Though his specialty is the butterfly, he took to the front crawl for his race with a great white shark, which was televised July 24 on the Discovery Channel.
But the ubiquitous stroke known as freestyle wasn’t used professionally until another American champion perfected it: Charles Meldrum Daniels of New York, born 100 years and three months before the Baltimore Bullet. Daniels developed the stroke from the old-school “trudgen,” an unwieldy combination of a one-sided overhead stroke and a scissor kick. He replaced it with a six-beat flutter kick and a continuous stroke pattern.
English gentlemen, who had dominated the sport since the 1800s, considered the front crawl to be barbaric and “un-European,” and continued to swim only the breaststroke in competition. That is, until Daniels started beating everyone in the pool. He went abroad to England in 1905, a year after his Olympic debut in St. Louis, to swim against the best British swimmers in their home waters. He came home undefeated.
“In five years Daniels has lifted American swimming from the rut in which it lay and placed it on par with other nations,” wrote Daniels’s trainer in the Pittsburgh Press after he won the 100-meter freestyle in the 1908 London Games. But Daniels did more than put the U.S. on par—he made it a powerhouse. He is the reason why swimmers now use the American crawl during freestyle events.
Daniels was born in 1885 in Dayton, Ohio, and moved to New York City as a young child. He learned how to swim at age 12. He joined the New York Athletic Club and was introduced to competitive swimming. At 19, Daniels became the first American to win an Olympic medal in swimming, which he did in St. Louis on Sept. 5, 1904. It was a silver medal in the men’s 100-yard freestyle, held in a man-made lake in the heart of the city.
Over his career, he won eight Olympic medals: three golds, a silver and a bronze in St. Louis, a gold in Athens in 1906, and a gold and a bronze in London in 1908. This eight-medal total was an Olympic record that stood until the 1972 Games in Munich, when American swimmer Mark Spitz broke it. Spitz also won seven gold medals in that Olympics, another record that stood until Phelps won eight in the 2008 Beijing Games.
At one point in 1911, Daniels held world freestyle records at every distance from 25 yards to one mile. He posted 14 world records within a period of four days in 1905.
“I am going to stop racing after this spring,” he told the San Francisco Call in 1911, reflecting on his career. “Understand, after I retire—if there are life preservers enough to go around, I shall simply crawl into one and float until some kind-hearted soul picks me up. No, siree; I won’t even swim ashore.”
Daniels became a squash and bridge champion at the New York Athletic Club. The year after his retirement, he purchased 5,000 acres of land in the Adirondacks, New York, with his wife, Florence Goodyear, an heiress to a vast timber fortune. Daniels built a 9-hole golf course on his estate called Sabattis Park. The course entertained some noted players, who spent their summers on the property.
(Phelps is also an amateur golfer. He holed a 159-foot putt at the Dunhill Links in 2012 in what is thought to be the longest televised putt ever.)
Despite his pledge not to race again, Daniels continued to swim on the lake beside his golf course. He was an early riser and made a ritual out of his morning workouts. He would swim two miles across Bear Pond and have a servant meet him with hot coffee and that day’s New York Tribune.
When he retired, Daniels wanted to be remembered for something other than his swimming. Along with his wife, Daniels founded Tarnedge Foxes, the oldest silver fox ranch in the U.S. Daniels was also an avid hunter, finding game in Mexico and on African safaris. He filled an entire trophy room in his mansion with huge animal heads, including rhinoceros and water buffalo.
To this day, several original buildings remain on the property, which is now a wilderness camp for the Boy Scouts. The mansion was torn down in 1973. The animal heads still hang in a big red barn.
Daniels moved to California in 1943, where he made headlines working as a swim instructor for the Army during World War II. He disappeared from the swimming world for a number of years. When he was inducted into the first class of the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965, no one knew where he was. Daniels resurfaced in 1972, but had gone nearly blind. He died the next year in Carmel Valley Village, California.
“There seem to be rhythm and music and poetry in his swimming,” wrote the San Francisco Call in 1911. The quote was describing Daniels, but anyone who remembers Phelps barreling down his lane in Beijing or London or Rio de Janiero could say the same. Perhaps in Phelps, we see that a part of Daniels still lives on. That, through the beat of his flutter kick, he simply became music.
(09/14/17 4:01am)
Jonathan Kemp, telescope and scientific computing specialist at the Middlebury College Mittelman Observatory, was thrilled and surprised by the immense national popularity of the August eclipse.
“I expected a lot of interest, but I think it was even more than I expected,” Kemp said. “The amount of interest and enthusiasm across the general public was quite impressive. From my perspective, it seems like for an entire day the national dialogue was changed, just a little bit, for the better to think about science, astronomy, STEM, the sun, the moon, the solar system, and our place in the universe.”
Kemp and a handful of students and faculty gathered on the McCardell Bicentennial Hall rooftop on August 21 to watch the phenomenon, which reached its maximum at 2:41 p.m. when the moon covered 60 percent of the sun. The eclipse was North America’s first transcontinental eclipse since 1918, and garnered significant media coverage and enthusiasm from around the country.
Kemp was careful to keep the eclipse-viewing event small, so that he could offer one-to-one guidance with each observer. He and science data librarian Wendy Shook, who helped Kemp prior to and during the event, answered questions and ensured that each viewer handled all equipment and eye protection correctly. Spectators utilized eclipse glasses, an indirect solar projection method, and a small telescope outfitted with a solar filter to securely view the sun. Some viewers brought their homemade pinhole cameras to the event as well.
Luckily, the group enjoyed a relatively unobstructed view of the eclipse, unbothered by the cloud coverage that plagued spectators’ views elsewhere. They even saw sunspots on the sun’s surface through the telescopes, which appeared dark in contrast with the brightness of the sun.
Shook, who has a background in physics and astronomy, was amazed by the eclipse and its power to bring people together.
“It sounds trite, but reading about eclipses and experiencing them are very different, and there is a thrill when the science you learned as a child becomes real,” she said. “It becomes a shared experience that brings people together in a good way, and I think the world sorely needs experiences like these.”
Despite the limited size of the event, Kemp managed to engage with members of the community through the observatory email list and the observatory website, which he updated with detailed safety protocols and other links about optimizing the eclipse-viewing experience.
Kemp also took photographs of the eclipse for the College communications department using a solar telescope mounted onto the 24-inch telescope in the observatory’s dome. The solar telescope was mounted with a Hydrogen-Alpha filter, which, like all solar filters, let little enough light into the field of view so that spectators could carefully view the sun.
Kemp’s photos were picked up by the College’s social media feeds and various local news outlets. Interestingly, the photographs show the presence of a solar prominence, caused by a flare of gas on the sun’s surface. Like the sunspots viewed through the rooftop telescopes, these prominences offered an exciting new look at the sun for the average viewer.
Kemp was excited to share his love for astronomy with the Middlebury community through the viewing event and his other outreach efforts, and believes that celestial phenomena such as solar eclipses can open people’s eyes to the wonders of astronomy. Many organizations used the eclipse as an opportunity to educate, taking advantage of its enrapturing effect to pique people’s interest in science.
“I think a lot of the outreach that was done by scientific organizations was centered around not just the eclipse itself but in engaging the public and schoolchildren in things like STEM activities, things that perhaps have a pedagogical aspect, to allow appreciation of the eclipse specifically and the universe more generally in a way that could stoke people’s interest and enthusiasm in astronomy and in science more generally,” Kemp said.
Though Vermonters witnessed a partial eclipse, viewers from several towns and cities throughout the nation saw the moon completely cover the sun. This obstruction was accompanied by a host of eerie effects, including darkening of the sky, cooling of the atmosphere, and changes in animal behavior.
Spectators often describe witnessing totality as a transformative experience.
“The astronomer at Columbia who was my mentor for many years and also my advisor in college would proudly say that he became an astronomer on the day in March, 1970, when a total solar eclipse went across the Eastern seaboard,” Kemp said. “It was such a seminal event in his budding career as a scientist that it perhaps solidified his path in astronomy on the day that he experienced that total solar eclipse.”
In addition to looking marvelous, total eclipses give scientists unique opportunities to study and learn things about the sun that they may otherwise not be able to witness. Scientists use total eclipses to study the sun’s outer atmosphere, or solar corona, for example, which can only be seen when the brightness of the sun is completely blocked from vision by the moon.
While total solar eclipses in themselves are not rare — they take place, on average, every year and a half — they may only occur once every 400 years or so in a given location. Middlebury will be fortunate enough to witness a total solar eclipse in 2024, when a path of totality approximately 175 miles wide will make its way across the eastern half of the U.S. It will experience another — though partial — eclipse in 2045, when North America is again treated to a trans-continental eclipse.
Until then, Kemp invites students to the observatory to enjoy the countless other celestial sights our solar system has to offer. Because the night sky changes continually throughout the year, spectators are always in for something new, whether they are observing the stars, the moon in its many phases, or even the International Space Station as it flies overhead. Kemp and his student assistants at the observatory are eager to help science majors and non-science majors alike use the large telescope at the top of the observatory, the smaller telescopes on the rooftops, and the naked eye to view the incredible sights above. They also want to provide students and members of the community with the resources they need to see the stars anytime, anywhere.
“We’re pretty fortunate that here in Middlebury, despite the sometimes cloudy weather, we have fantastically dark skies,” Kemp said. “We’re hoping that people realize that they can go home or go back to their dorm and still enjoy the night sky. They don’t have to be at the observatory.”
The College additionally offers courses for students who want to extend their education about space to the classroom. Although Middlebury does not have an official astronomy department, it does offer astronomy-based courses through the physics department. Many of these courses, such as An Introduction to the Universe and Ancient Astronomy, are designed for non-majors and require use of the telescope.
Curricular use of the telescope, Observatory Open House Nights and the eclipse viewing event in August are just some of the many ways in which Kemp and the Mittelman Observatory team have connected the community to the resources necessary to appreciate and understand astronomy. Visit go/observatory to see what events are on the observatory calendar for the fall.
(05/10/17 11:18pm)
EatReal distributed a survey to garner support for a proposal to reduce meat in the dining halls by 30 percent by the pound over the next three years. The majority of students approved the plan. It will likely pass through SGA next week.
I support the goals of this proposal with enthusiasm. The methods, however, are all wrong.
To justify the proposed changes, EatReal claims that “animal agriculture contributes more greenhouse gases worldwide than the entire transportation sector and is a leading cause of deforestation.”
This sentence is cut straight from “Cowspiracy,” a dramatic documentary that deserves credit for its boldness and intentions (sort of) but, at the end of the day, is sensationalist, oversimplified propaganda that warrants critical examination and perspective.
Why is it obvious they’re drawing from “Cowspiracy” to back this up?
First of all, the use of the term “animal agriculture” is a huge giveaway, because it’s a term popularized by “Cowspiracy” that refers to production of any animal products, including dairy and eggs.
The film’s message is veganist, and if EatReal wasn’t borrowing it, they would say “meat production,” an accurate phrase they use later in their list.
So if we take out the milk and eggs that make up almost 30 percent of livestock sector emissions, meat production’s contribution to climate change is significantly less than “animal agriculture” as a whole. The environmental ramifications of a meat-based diet are indisputably significant. But if we’re going to talk about meat, let’s talk about meat.
Second, the survey’s comparison of animal agriculture’s climate change impacts to the transportation sector is a clear reference to a 2006 FAO report that is a main rally cry of “Conspiracy.” Take the first fact from the documentary’s fact page: “Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust from all transportation.”
In 2013 this report was thoroughly updated and estimates livestock production to be responsible for 14.5 percent of human emissions, and makes no claims comparing sectors.
“Cowspiracy” was released in 2014.
Ignoring the corrections on an outdated, questionable report is not just poor journalism, it’s compromising the truth to make a point, and that is when integrity flies out the window. We can do better research than this.
Not only is this livestock–transportation comparison illegitimate, it’s out of context. “Cowspiracy” uses global estimates from a global organization. These patterns do not hold universally. In the U.S., the EPA reports that transportation is responsible for almost three times the emissions of the entire agricultural sector itself (not even just livestock).
So when it comes to domestic environmental policy, transportation is a much more urgent problem than agriculture itself, much less “animal agriculture,” much less meat production.
Whatever your opinions on “Cowspiracy” are, it should bother you very much that EatReal is quoting it verbatim in this proposal. This group is responsible for advocating with a sophisticated understanding of these issues.
I say again, I am thrilled that Middlebury College is going to buy less industrial meat in favor of smaller producers closer to Addison County. It makes our environment, economy, humans and animals healthier. It’s a slam dunk.
But we need to be clear about why that is, and we need to do better than intimidation and sensationalism — even if it is being used to advance progressive ends.
Supporting an important and perfectly justifiable campaign with false and deceptive information damages the credibility of an entire movement. Let’s continue this work, but let’s be clear, informed and accurate. Otherwise, it inhibits the movement’s progress.
This movement is strong and growing. EatReal is Middlebury’s chapter of Real Food Challenge, a vast network of campuses creating a more just and sustainable food system. This stuff matters: for advancing agendas of social justice, human rights and environmentalism, which are all connected.
Let’s talk about why these issues are connected, and how. Let’s inform ourselves about our food system with sources that respect our dignity. Civil Eats is a great place to start.
(04/27/17 1:45am)
Donald Trump has proclaimed April as “National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month,” affirming his commitment to reducing and ultimately ending sexual violence in our Nation. Kind of ironic coming from the man who’s been accused of sexually assaulting more than fifteen women and caught on tape bragging about his right to “grab ‘em by the pussy.” While I do not support our country’s president, I am committed to raising awareness about sexual abuse and fighting against it. So in keeping with this month’s theme, let me tell you about some of the predatory pack behavior that I was privy to at Middlebury College.
(03/23/17 2:09am)
John Bertolini first discovered the work of Terence Rattigan as a young boy at the movies, where he developed a taste for Rattigan’s “great theatrical skill.” It is his view that Rattigan is the preeminent British dramatist of the twentieth century, second only to George Bernard Shaw, who belongs as much to the nineteenth century as he does the twentieth.
A self-described devotee, Bertolini published his first book on Shaw, “The Playwriting Self of Bernard Shaw,” in 1991. At the college, Bertolini, who is Ellis Professor of English and the Liberal Arts, teaches courses that explore the works of Shaw and Rattigan and their relationship to one another.
His latest book, “The Case for Terence Rattigan, Playwright,” is a study of Rattigan that seeks, as he writes in the book’s preface, “to illustrate Peter O’Toole’s assertion that Rattigan is the best playwright of the twentieth century.”
The book is part of a series of scholarly works aimed to deepen the academic study of Shaw through the exploration of his contemporaries.
“What appeals to me in Shaw is his heroic optimism. He is the embodiment of the comic spirit of life,” Bertolini said. “But, I know there’s another side to life. And Rattigan seemed to me among modern British playwrights to be the one whose representation of the tragic side of life appealed to me the most.”
In his lifetime, Rattigan established himself as a kind of foil to Shaw, as a playwright of character and situation, rather than one of ideas.”The contrasting approaches to drama make Rattigan and Shaw, in a way, complementary playwrights. The reader gets more out of one by reading the other.
“[Reading Shaw and Rattigan together] highlights what is characteristic of each one. It enables you to see better what is unique to Rattigan and what is unique to Shaw,” he said. “[One can see] how much the ‘play of ideas’ really differs from the play of ‘character and situation.’”
However, as Bertolini points out, there are certainly elements of “character and situation” in Shaw, and “ideas” in Rattigan. And that while they are complementary, there are also many ways in which they resemble one another.
The greatest similarity is, simply, their great theatrical skill, the way in which they set up their effects and follow through with them. Rattigan maintained a high level of dramatic art from his first play to his last play, due in part to his natural flare for drama and his willingness to challenge the form. An example of this comes in “The Winslow Boy,” a courtroom drama that centers around the trial of a young boy but never actually has a scene in the courtroom.
“That reminds me of Shakespeare’s experimentation with dramatic form,” Bertolini said. “That is the sign of a real artist. The challenge of the form."
For Bertolini, the hallmarks of Rattigan’s style are his use of understatement and implication.
“A good playwright has to know what not to have his characters say and when to have them not say it,” Bertolini said. “It is drama achieved through something you expect the character to say, you’re waiting for them to say it, but they don’t say it. Or they say it when you least expect it, they hold off saying it. And that catches your attention. ‘Why isn’t she telling him that she loves him?’ And then you see why she isn’t, because it’s too painful to confront the rejection.”
What makes Rattigan a truly great playwright, says Bertolini, is the way in which he used understatement, implication, character and situation to deliver tragedies that illustrated his unique view of life: the sadness of it, the inevitability of defeat, how victory often feels like defeat. In the later years of his life, Rattigan abandoned comedy and focused solely on delivering this tragic vision.
“I think he stopped writing comedies because he no longer believed in the comic sense of life that animated Shaw all of his life, for example. It became impossible for him to write comedies. He just no longer had that as part of his vision of life,” Bertolini said.
In the more than forty years he has been teaching drama at the College, Bertolini says he has found that Rattigan’s plays and tragic vision tend to resonate particularly well with students.
“[Students] are carried along by his skill. By his ability to write one scene after another that keep their interest and stir up questions in the audience’s mind,” he said. “I think the overall vision of defeated humanity is pretty compelling. How many people realize all their dreams? How many people are completely happy in life? Very few. And he writes about that.”
He says that teaching and engaging with students at the College has greatly contributed to his study of Rattigan.
“I always write about what I teach, and I always teach what I write about. They have a symbiotic relationship for me. I get all sorts of stimulation from the ideas of students in class,” Bertolini said.
“Sometimes I’ll even use them as springboards to finding, extending and embellishing other ideas. It’s always a challenge to keep up with students in the classroom. They keep me on my toes. I love hearing their reactions to the plays, their ideas about them, where they see Rattigan doing this, that and the other thing and how that affects what he creates.”
Bertolini says that he hopes his teaching and scholarship will help ensure that the legacy of Rattigan will live on.
“I like to think of the future,” he said. “To think that when my students have children they will say, ‘Oh, here’s a great play that you should read.’ or ‘Here, I want you to look at a film of “The Winslow Boy.”’ I’m consoled by that, because I feel like then the work will never die.”
(03/02/17 9:18pm)
At 4:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, Proctor Lounge is not exactly a raucous venue. I was sitting in my usual manner — quiet repose and decided neutrality — as I waited to speak with Shannon Gibbs ’18. When she arrived, joined by Greg Swartz ’17.5, the atmosphere of the room shifted. A few minutes later, Peter Lindholm ’17.5 hurried in, and soon their animated and eager voices filled the lounge as they told me about Middlebury Discount Comedy’s (MDC) upcoming show — ZooDystopia — which ran with free admission in the Hepburn Zoo from Feb. 23-24.
I began, after admitting my near-ignorance of the show, by asking them how MDC got started.
“I started [MDC] because I saw a need,” Gibbs, the founder and current president of the troupe, said. “There were only improv groups on campus. [The nature of sketch comedy] brings a lot of intentionality to the work. We know what we’re saying when we say it, rather than improv groups who come up with it on the spot.”
“Every member of the group serves as a writer, actor, director, collaborator,” Gibbs went on, alluding to the fact that everyone in the fifteen-person troupe dabbles in at least one or two areas of the production.
“One thing we pride ourselves on,” Gibbs said, “is shedding a light on … and projecting the Middlebury community back at itself so that we can all laugh at it. We also have political sketches, feminist sketches, lots of social commentary [and] religious satire.”
Having heard and read a little bit about the troupe (I said I was near-ignorant), I knew MDC often toyed with in the audiences’ comfort-levels during their shows — both in their visual and verbal statements.
“We like to make people feel uncomfortable sometimes,” Gibbs told me.
“Very much,” Swartz jumped in.
“On some level, the whole goal of a comedy show is to get laughs,” Lindholm added. “But the method by which you go about getting laughs is not always the same. Laughter can be an expression of discomfort as well as [an expression of] finding something funny.”
“We like to push boundaries,” Swartz said. “But it can be tough. There are different crowds on campus. People have very different ideas of what is okay and what’s not. People have very different boundaries. You have more [politically correct] culture, and you have people who are against that.”
“One thing we’re trying to do is fuse those two cultures,” Gibbs said, “by talking about big issues in a way that is accessible to the masses … I think this need to feel safe when you want to feel safe is an important new development, but there is a lot to be gained by not feeling comfortable and not feeling safe every once in a while.”
She was probably referring to last spring’s show, “Much Love in this Air,” which was met with some confusion and displeasure due to a number of violent and offensive sketches.
“One thing that we’ve really committed ourselves to [since the Mar. 2016 show] is making sure that it is the best writing that it can be, making sure that the ending of the sketch isn’t unnecessary, isn’t coming from left field, isn’t cheap or easy. [We are] continuing to push the envelope but in ways that exhibit good writing.”
“We’ve found our comedic voice much more in [ZooDystopia],” Lindholm said.
I posed the question of how — or if — MDC knows when their message has successfully been received by their audiences.
“People are laughing,” Lindholm said simply.
“People talk about the shows for a long time after,” Gibbs replied. “That’s something I really like and I think it’s something specific to sketch comedy. I’ve heard football players … discussing the orgasm gap [after our shows].”
“It’s going to hit people in different ways,” Swartz said. “If people are laughing, having a good time, it’s a good environment — then we feel that we’ve done a good job. We’re comfortable with the show so if people like it, talk about it, engage with the material, then that’s positive for us.”
The conversation left me keen to see what they had in store, and I worked to keep an open mind going into the Feb. 24 show in the Hepburn Zoo.
However, many others were also eager to see the show. By the time I got there well before the doors closed, more than a handful of people were already being turned away because the Zoo was at capacity.
After waiting in much anticipation, the audience was greeted by Gibbs herself. She gave a series of trigger warnings for sexual content, nudity, references to male sexual underperformance and “turtle dick” — something I and probably most audience members did not think warranted a trigger warning until we were finally forced to see it.
Shortly after, Roger Dai ’20 performed a short stand-up segment on growing up in China “without any talents” and finally realizing his penchant for comedy and joining MDC.
Then began the sketches — 24 bits lasting as long as five minutes or as briefly as a few seconds and covering topics from binge drinking to sexual frustration, from party culture to academic culture.
Last year, MDC garnered attention for their risqué, violent and — to some — unnecessarily disturbing or offensive content. ZooDystopia — while remaining unquestionably out there — took on a goofier tone.
A sketch titled “Up” introduced the audience to one of the most prevalent themes of the show: female sexual dissatisfaction. While Gibbs’s character clearly portrayed her frustration with her partner’s lack of knowledge of female anatomy (at one point she pulls out a large diagram), the show went on to cover the same idea again and again.
In “Les Midds, Part 2: ‘On My Own,’” Liana Barron ’18 sings a parody of a song from “Les Misérables.” After her apparent hook-up leaves for more partying, Barron’s character sings about her vibrator.
By the third sketch covering the theme, “BYOV,” the joke felt overdone, but its bizarreness still drew laughs and looks of demure shock from the audience.
Most of the sketches lampooned Middlebury and its students. “Spring Break in Iraq” cleverly commented on the way Middlebury students tend to spend breaks in hot, sandy locales — only this time, four friends find themselves in a war zone. “Discount Daily,” poked fun at students in the form of a news broadcast, covering topics such as academic stress, the milieu of socio-economic disparity, “biddy” culture and more.
A great deal of the jokes relied on shock-value — something for which MDC is known. In “Les Midds, Part 1: ‘Who Am I,’” Sebastian LaPointe’s ’18 character wakes up and vomits. The unsuspecting audience members sitting in the front, however, were shortly met with a spray of puke when he slapped his hand into the puddle.
“Naked Club” similarly utilized the cast members’ willingness to push the envelope (if only for the sake of pushing the envelope) when they took the stage fully nude — yes, fully.
The final sketch of the night proved to be the most mystifying. While discussing the ‘team’ dynamic of a recently finished threesome, the characters suddenly change tone and subject. The scene darkens and becomes a parody of the Netflix show Stranger Things.
It, and pretty much every other sketch of the night, left audiences laughing and shifting uncomfortably — but mostly it left us wondering if stranger things had happened on the stage of the Hepburn Zoo.
(11/02/16 11:30pm)
Anyone who has ever taken a sociology class is all too familiar with the idea of social constructs. Conversely, anyone enrolled in a science class has likely encountered their fair share of “objective truths” -- facts so ingrained in the public consciousness that they do not even warrant questioning. These competing frameworks of knowledge collide in discourses on drug policy, forcing us to reexamine the ways in which we define “drugs” and “addiction.”
Associate Professor of Sociology Rebecca Tiger, the final speaker at the 2016 International Politics and Economics Symposium on The Global Illicit Drug Trade, explored these ideas in her speech “(Re) Imagining Drugs and Addiction: The Past, Present and Possible Future of Drug Policy” on Friday, Oct. 28.
Tiger, whose research centers on punishment, social control and critical addiction studies, began by asking, “What ideas animate drug policy?”
She challenged the audience to rethink hegemonic concepts of drugs and addiction -- that is, to unpack the human-made concepts that we have come to accept as scientific truths.
“There’s no such thing as drug in nature,” Tiger stated. “Drug is created.”
Likewise, the scientific “discovery” of addiction can be more accurately described as the invention of the idea of addiction. After all, it is no coincidence that the emergence of addiction theories coincided with growing public concerns over people’s problematic relationship with alcohol in the mid 1700s to late 1800s. The constructed definition of a “chronic relapsing brain disease” was repeated over and over again until it was simply accepted as fact. Physicians and psychiatrists adopted the addict as their newest subject, determining the standards for a “healthy” and “unhealthy” mind.
Challenging the “scientific” claims that undergird modern theories of addiction, Tiger pushed the audience to consider how “harm” is constructed. She highlighted the historical shift of the “dangers” of marijuana -- a drug once portrayed as lethal and now widely accepted as harmless -- to exemplify the social and temporal subjectivity of harm.
“An idea that we think of as natural is actually negotiated,” Tiger pointed out.
Through the pathologization of human behavior, she reasoned, the concept of the “addict” became a justification for state control. Policymakers decided that a regulatory regime was needed to reform these “fundamentally flawed” members of society. This demonization of drugs was codified into law by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration.
Yet, as Tiger emphasized, these regulatory measures did not stem entirely from a genuine concern over individuals’ well-being. Rather, the criminalization of drug use served to disproportionately target communities of color, as public narratives linked drugs to the socially ostracized “other.” African-Americans became the face of the national crack epidemic, in much the same way that Chinese laborers in the U.S. were associated with opium in the late 19th century. The “junkie” -- a word that conjures up the same, stereotyped image in most of our minds -- spread through skewed media coverage, creating the foundation for the disastrous, deeply racialized War on Drugs.
Bringing nuance to an issue that is often conceptualized in black-and-white terms, Tiger offered a critical analysis of the bifurcated model of addiction, a framework that dominates current public discourse on drug use. She pointed out the perceived distinction between “good” and “bad” junkies: those who become dependent through no fault of their own (such as Adderall users) versus those seen as “irredeemably deviant” and “dysfunctional to the core.”
This unfair and entirely constructed binary is perhaps best exemplified by Tiger’s humorous observation that “good” junkies “get to write New York Times articles, articulate their subjectivity.” Meanwhile, “bad” junkies fall victim to the criminal justice system.
“Jail has become a treatment tool to remind addict of commitment to sobriety,” Tiger said. “Coercion is framed as enticement.”
Having broken down the ways in which the media, policymakers and the medical field create and capitulate ideas of drugs, addiction and appropriate treatment, Tiger switched to a more hopeful tone. In search of “promising avenues of disruption” to the status quo, she proposed a more expansive definition of the title “expert” to include individuals with lived experience on the topic. The Urban Survivor’s Union -- a coalition of drug users who advocate for respect, dignity and social justice for themselves and their peers -- is one such group. Noting the absence of this unique expertise on Friday’s panel, Tiger recognized the limitations of the symposium itself.
Furthermore, she suggested a reconceptualization of drug usage as a new kind of consciousness rather than as a mental degradation. This call for radical open-mindedness resonated with some audience members and perhaps disquieted others. But the purpose of Tiger’s talk was likely not to indoctrinate everyone into a new worldview; it was to spark discourse on a topic riddled with misconceptions and stigma. This dilemma is best encapsulated by a poignant analysis that Tiger offered in the heart of her speech.
“Drug is the effect, not the cause, of a regulatory regime,” she stated. “The problem of drugs is actually the failure of drug policy.”
(05/12/16 9:50pm)
What does it mean to combine laughter and healing? To be the “perfect” survivor? And what do clowns and “panda puppies” have anything to do with it? Trying to explain the Post Traumatic Super Delightful (PTSD) play to those who did not watch the show was challenging at best. Performed in Hepburn Zoo on Thursday, May 5, Post Traumatic Super Delightful is most simply described as a one-woman show about a community trying to heal after a sexual assault. In practice, it is a heartbreaking, hilarious and nuanced tale of survivors, perpetrators and bystanders – and the impacts of a system that has not done anyone any favors.
Post Traumatic Super Delightful is written and performed by Antonia Lassar, directed by Angela Dumlao, stage-managed by Olivia Hull and further supported by a large team of women with varying backgrounds and skill sets. The fictionalized content stems from interviews with survivors, perpetrators, administrators, faculty and staff within the judicial system, and contains only two moments from Lassar’s real life. Director of Health and Wellness Education Barbara McCall, Molly McShane ’16 and Rebecca Coates-Finke ’16.5 worked to bring the play to campus through the Department of Justice Grant.
First, we meet the clown – a woman dressed in typical clothing who dons a red nose and performs ridiculous antics against the backdrop of voiceovers and music. Each interlude featuring this nameless, smiling character is infused with humor and stark realizations. At one point, the clown walks out with a pile of placards and begins to dance to the pulsing beat of “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child. One by one, she shows the front side of each placard: “I’m pretty.” “I’m white.” “I’m a girl.” “I’m the perfect survivor.” (She pauses after “I’m white” to show off her most awkward and invigorating dance move yet, before pointing to the sign again in a hilarious, self-deprecating recognition of her own whiteness.) Flipping the cards to the opposite side, she continues: “I’m not like the angry ones.” “I cry but I’m not a mess.” “I hate my rapist.” “None of you know him so none of you doubt me.” “I’m also perfect.” “At rolling my tongue.”
The clown proceeds to roll her tongue repeatedly with impressive dexterity, causing the audience to laugh in bewilderment. The contrast between this hysterical demonstration and the difficult truths conveyed by the placards is strategic and intentional. Society has constructed the narrative of the “perfect survivor” of sexual assault – white, female, pretty and not too teary-eyed, among other characteristics – to the detriment of anyone who does not fit this elusive mold. The clown highlights these identity politics by presenting the situation in the most straightforward manner possible.
“The play takes the trauma and pain that may be associated with being a survivor and doesn’t try to define it, which is the purpose of the clown,” Coates-Finke explained. “It’s responding to the myth of the perfect survivor, the narrative of what one should do and how one should be. The clown takes away identity in some ways, and just gives space.”
Lassar, who drew on her own training as a clown to create Post Traumatic Super Delightful, sees great potential in healing through laughter.
“Clowning has been used in sacred rituals in some cultural contexts. The sacred clown can be a presence that reflects back the truth of the community to the community, and mimics what you are doing,” she said. “The laughter is a recognition that we do act like that, people do talk that way. Getting a group of people to laugh about anything is to acknowledge that it exists. This is very powerful in a society that often invalidates survivors’ experiences.”
Though Post Traumatic Super Delightful was written largely for and by survivors, “Julia” – the fictional college student who was sexually assaulted by “Bryan” – never makes an appearance. Instead, her name comes up only in heated conversations featuring Lina, the school’s Title IX Coordinator, faculty member Dr. Margaret Roach and Bryan himself. Because it is a one-woman show, however, these conversations are enacted in a one-sided manner by the ever-evolving actress Lassar. Responses are implied rather than uttered aloud – and due to prominent changes in vocal and physical expressions, there is never a doubt as to which character is speaking at any given moment.
Lina uses brash language cloaked in a thick Russian accent, with inflammatory statements such as, “But I push her [Julia]! You know, I can file complaint myself, but if she won’t let me use her name, it won’t go anywhere. I’m not upset. I am upset. I shouldn’t be upset, but this is my first case. I want justice!” In contrast, Margaret speaks with a stiff, high-strung formality, while Bryan’s light Texan drawl marks all of his confused, frustrated and painfully honest musings.
In featuring a variety of voices, Post Traumatic Super Delightful is a reflection of how sexual assault is perceived by – and therefore affects – an entire community.
“Instead of hearing a story from a very singular perspective – which is a really important perspective of a survivor, but which can be limiting in terms of a full understanding of sexual assault and the ripple effect – we get a context and a way to process the pain,” Coates-Finke said.
“It allows us to think bigger about what the possibilities for awareness and activism are – the way that sexual assault affects people beyond the two or more people involved in one encounter,” McShane added. “It’s exciting both for people who are new to this conversation and for people who have been having this conversation for a long time.”
Through the dialogue, the audience becomes aware of the ways in which harmful narratives are reproduced.
“Bryan is not capable of rape. He is not a monster,” Margaret, his faculty advisor, says at one point.
“Julia does not look like a rape victim, okay? I had her in class. I know her.”
In response to the question “Do you think she was making it up?” Margaret states, “When you’re a drinker, there’s always the possibility you misremembered.”
Bryan’s pain and misconceptions also come to light through his interactions with Lina, the Title IX Coordinator who is adamantly advocating for Julia.
“I’m a freaking 21-year-old-boy! I’m going to have sex!” Bryan exclaims. “Rape is about power, it’s not about sex. What if this was just about sex?”
“I knew a guy in high school who got raped, real raped. And it’s really different. It’s like, I mean, he was bleeding. It was like on a walk home from a bar, and someone just appeared on the street. That’s rape. When you have to fight.”
Faced with these faulty assumptions – that drunk sex does not ever count as rape, that only monsters are capable of rape and that rape victims must look and act a certain way – it becomes clear why sexual assault has become such a blurry and complicated issue, particularly on college campuses. Post Traumatic Super Delightful addresses this complexity partly by stating these misconceptions aloud in the first place, and partly by emphasizing the humanness inherent in everyone involved.
For instance, though Lina demonstrates care and compassion, she is not always great at her job. She pressures Julia to file a Title IX complaint in the name of “justice,” but then realizes, “What is point of justice, if survivor will still be hurt?”
Meanwhile, Bryan is an accused perpetrator – yet his goofy demeanor and adoration for baby animal videos defy the common expectation that rapists cannot possibly be human. According to an anonymous feedback form submitted by an audience member, “It was tough to watch/hear from the perpetrator, because he was so nice… Ugh. I guess it’s easier to think of perpetrators as horrible evil people.”
Amid the stress of the judicial process, Bryan explains that all he can handle at this point is watching videos of “panda puppies” – a confession that drew huge, perhaps empathetic laughs from the crowd. Combined with his genuine, pleading questions – “I don’t know what I did! How could you not know if you raped someone? What’s non-consensual? What’s consensual?” – Bryan’s confusion becomes obvious. And in some ways, his actions become understandable. Like everyone else, Bryan is the product of a system, his thoughts shaped by a flawed education and harmful media messaging. All of these factors have led him to misunderstand what it takes to hurt another individual, or what it means to be a “good” or a “bad” person.
If certain lines from the play resonated with you in a strange or uncomfortable way, it may help to remember that we are all products of a system. Through our words, actions and willingness to listen to those around us, however, we can all play a part in dismantling rape culture.
“Even if you think you don’t know a survivor and you think you don’t know a perpetrator, everyone is so connected and complicit and responsible and in a positon to do something about sexual violence,” Coates-Finke said, “because you definitely know a survivor and you definitely know a perpetrator on this campus. Especially on one as small as ours.”
The multifaceted characterization within Post Traumatic Super Delightful proves that nothing and no one exists in black-and-white terms. Through its nuanced telling, the story becomes more real, and thus more relatable. Above all, it shows that laughter can, indeed, serve as an unexpected catalyst for healing.
Perhaps the anonymous feedback from the audience phrased it best: “I am feeling heavy and light simultaneously,” a 21-year-old female stated. “Trauma and sexual assault is not an easy topic to face, but I feel the load is always a bit lighter with the aid of the community and new tools.”
“As a survivor, I thought it was healing to see this performed in a serious and comedic way,” a 19-year-old male wrote. “I feel hopeful.”
(03/23/16 11:52pm)
The first Japanese Art Deco exhibit to ever be held outside of Tokyo is open in the Middlebury Museum. Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945 uses an incredible breadth of mediums – including metalwork, ceramics, lacquer, glass, furniture, jewelry, sculpture and graphic design on paper, painting and woodblock prints – to convey the complex social and cultural tensions in Japan during that period. Beyond displaying spectacular craftsmanship and sophisticated design, the exhibit also represents Japan’s cosmopolitan evolution.
The Art Deco style grew into prominence between WWI and WWII, when rapid industrialization was transforming cultures around the world. In Japan, as in Europe, the era constituted dramatic social and technological change combined with political and cultural turmoil. Japanese society was caught between imported western liberalism and traditional isolationist ideologies. The Deco era was marked by growing totalitarianism as Japan’s invasion of Asia gained pace, but also by giddy fantasies of luxury and internationalism fed by the burgeoning advertising and film industries. The compelling contradictions of the age are best seen in the Art Deco style, where a facade of elegance parallels a totalitarian gravity and themes of luxury run alongside faith in social progress.
To more fully tell the narrative of this art, the exhibition has been divided into five sections, each building upon the last to convey the interconnection of the cultural, social and formal aspects of each piece: Cultural Appropriations, Formal Manipulations, Over and Under Sea, Social Expressions and The Cultured Home. While the broad ranges of style represented in the gallery certainly offer a fascinating blend of the fundamental Deco characteristics – rich color, bold geometry, elegant ornamentation and the Japanese modifications on themes such as Art Noveau and Cubism – the social and cultural implications tell the complex story of Japan’s development.
The pertinence of this exhibit is immediately apparent from the first section. Deco’s eclectic nature draws strongly from both ancient and contemporary cultures across the globe, creating a fascinating web of connection and meaning. The opening pieces explore cultural diversity by evoking Euro-American modernity and capitals like Paris, New York and Hollywood via representations of fountains, skyscrapers and the film industry.
The spectacle of modern western culture is further expressed in the theme of competitive sports and the Olympic games. In contrast is the historic classicism of pharaonic Egypt, reflecting the Tut craze of early Deco. In an Asian parallel to the “Nile style,” the great 1920s tomb discoveries of ancient China were transformed into Shang dynasty-inspired designs in ceramics and bronzes. Japan’s own classical past is referenced in objects that adapt familiar bird and animal motifs.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this exhibit and of Japanese Deco as a whole is the way in which the style depicts Japanese social and political themes of the time, from militant nationalism to personal liberation. Within the historical context, familiar motifs take on vibrant meaning. For instance, one lacquered box displaying a heron catching a fish in its beak can be seen as symbolizing hope for victory in decisive battles. It is equally interesting to consider the different meanings of otherwise common motifs, such as the sunburst, between European and Japanese Deco periods. In the first, it suggests progress, but in the second, it is an emblem of imperial power and military expansion.
This exceptional collection is also notable for its secondary focus on the theme of the “modern girl.” Depictions combine traditional Japanese norms with those burgeoning in the West to show the emerging jazz-age style icon of pleasure and consumption, complete with progressive behavior like drinking and smoking – symbols of the emerging personal and social freedom.
All the pieces are part of the Levenson Collection, the world’s premier private collection of Japanese art in the Deco and Modern styles. It is open in the museum until April 24. Stop by and take advantage of the full-color catalogue and featured essays to learn about each work and major themes of the movement.
(03/23/16 10:45pm)
The Middlebury and Wesleyan women’s tennis teams may have only been separated by one spot in the ITA national rankings when they met in the Nelson Recreational Center on Saturday, March 19, but no. 7 Middlebury dominated no. 8 Wesleyan on the courts 7-2 to move to 3-0 in the NESCAC and overall.
Lauren Amos ’16 and Alexandra Fields ’17 won the first match of the day when they defeated Helen Klass-Warch and Dasha Dubinsky 8-4 in third doubles. Wesleyan’s doubles pairing of Eudice Chong, the top-ranked singles player in the nation, and Aashli Budhiraja tied the match at one by beating Ria Gerger ’16 and Kaysee Orozco ’17 8-4 in the first slot.
In the final doubles match, Lily Bondy ’17 and Sadie Shackelford ’16 prevailed over Victoria Yu and Nicole McCann 9-7.
First-ranked Chong won the first singles match 7-5, 6-2 over Gerger to tie the match at 2, but the Cardinals did not win after that.
Christina Puccinelli ’19 overcame Budhiraja 6-3, 7-5 in the fourth slot to put Middlebury ahead for good. Fields triumphed over Yu, who is ranked ninth nationally, in three sets 6-4, 2-6, 6-2 in the second slot.
“I was abroad in the fall so winning such a big match in the beginning of the season has been a huge confidence boost for me,” Fields said. “Although we both played great tennis, I think that I won the match because I wanted to win more than she did.”
In the third slot, Bondy came back after the surrendering the first set to defeat Klass-Warch 4-6, 6-3, 6-1. Molly Paradies ’19 and Amos overwhelmed their opponents in the fifth and sixth slots, winning 6-3, 6-2 and 6-0, 6-4, respectively.
The Panthers will return to the court on Friday, March 25, when the travel to play no. 28 Babson, before embarking on their spring break trip to California. Out west, the Panthers will play four times in five days, including matches against no. 3 Pomona-Pitzer and no. 5 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.
The men’s tennis team, ranked third nationally, came from behind to defeat no. 9 Wesleyan in the Nelson Recreational Center on Saturday, March 19 and improve its record to 3-0 in the NESCAC and overall this spring. With their team down 4-3, Hamid Derbani ’17 and Timo van der Geest ’18 won the last two matches to secure a 5-4 victory for the Panthers.
The Panthers jumped ahead in doubles when Noah Farrell ’18 and Ari Smolyar ’16 defeated Zachary Brint and Greg Lyon 8-5 in first singles. However, Farrell and Smolyar did not face Wesleyan’s top two singles players, Steven Chen and Michael Liu. Chen and Liu narrowly beat Palmer Campbell ’16 and Derbani 8-6 in the second slot. Joachim Sampson and Sam Rudovsky also won 8-6, defeating van der Geest and William de Quant ’18, and the Cardinals led the match 2-1 entering singles play.
Campbell tied the match at 2 by making quick work of Tiago Eusebio 6-1, 6-2 in third singles. Farrell put Middlebury ahead 3-2 with a straight set victory of his own (6-4, 6-1) over Liu. The top-ranked singles player in the country had some trouble with Liu in first singles, who played with him early on, but took the match over at the end of the first set. Farrell played better as the match went on and wore Liu down, who grew frustrated with Farrell’s doggedness and ability to get to and return almost everything.
Samson answered right back for the Cardinals, handling de Quant 6-0, 7-5 in the fifth slot, and Chen, ranked no. 14 nationally but playing in the second slot, beat Smolyar after losing the first set 4-6, 6-4, 6-1. Smolyar was animated all match, at one point grasping at his face in anguish, as he struggled with his serve.
With his team’s back against the wall, Derbani overpowered Jake Roberts 6-2, 6-2 in the fourth slot, leaving the fate of the match in van der Geest’s hands. Van der Geest welcomed the challenge, overcoming a couple questionable calls by his opponent Dhruv Yadav to win the decisive match 6-2, 7-5 and seal the match for Middlebury. Van der Geest took a couple of games to get his feet under him in the first set, but once he did, he started to assert himself with consistent ground strokes and several impressive winners. Yadav regrouped in the second set, but van der Geest promptly denied any chance of a comeback and won the second set and the match.
“It was very exciting that I was able to clinch the match,” van der Geest said. “I was obviously nervous but felt like I dealt with it well. I learned that I need to improve moving up into the court so I will work on that this week.”
The Panthers will take the courts next in California, where they will play six matches in eight days over spring break. They will face multiple tests out west when they play no. 2 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, who beat them in the national championship last year, no. 8 Pomona-Pitzer and multiple Division I and II opponents.
