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(09/27/18 9:58am)
NETFLIX
On the short list of television shows that can make me laugh and cry within the same episode, “Bojack Horseman” sits at the top. Raphael Bob-Waksber’s animated series “BoJack Horseman” (2018) returns this fall for its fifth season on Netflix, and it picks up right where it left off — a show full of depression, drinking and a host of pop culture references that test even the savviest viewers.
In the ’90s, BoJack Horseman (a lanky, bay-colored horse voiced by Will Arnett) was the lead actor on the wildly successful, Full House-esque TV show “Horsin’ Around.” Now, nearly 30 years later, he has spiraled into a state of depression, turning to drugs and alcohol as substitutes for the admiration he’s lost. Unbeknownst to him, BoJack’s agent, Princess Carolyn (a pragmatic Persian mouse voiced by Amy Sedaris) signs him up in an upcoming detective drama called “Philbert” in an attempt to revive his career.
Much to his chagrin, BoJack finds an ever-growing list of parallels between himself and the titular character he plays: Philbert is a lonely, depressed alcoholic who strives to find any connection with the people around him. Even the set of the show strongly resembles his own home, though when pressed about it, director Flip McVicker (Remi Malek) remarks that he has never seen BoJack’s house, and that the set is “designed to reflect Detective Philbert: despair, loneliness, precariously perched on the hill of his own isolation.”
Contrasting BoJack is his friend and fellow “Hollywoo” actor Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Tompkins), a constantly smiling ray of sunshine who never seems to be affected by much. This season, however, Mr. Peanutbutter must face his toughest battle yet: a divorce with Diane Nguyen (Alison Brie). The season centers around relationships — each character within the show faces their own individual problem with someone close to them. Mr. Peanutbutter deals with the end of his short-lived marriage, BoJack deals with a rocky relationship with his “Philbert” co-star Gina Cazador (Stephanie Beatriz), Todd Chavez (Aaron Paul) grapples with both his newly discovered asexual identity and his first asexual relationship with Yolanda (Natalie Morales), and Princess Carolyn struggles to adopt the baby she so desperately desires. The show, however, is not limited in its scope. Not only does it dive deeply into the lives of its characters, but it greatly parallels the real world and the problems in it.
“BoJack Horseman” refutes the claim that it is anything less than extraordinary by tackling some of the biggest problems facing today’s society with a refreshing perspective. In a show centered around an animated horse actor, enveloped in a world containing a mixture of real people and talking animals, “BoJack Horseman” remains surprisingly grounded. It focuses its many diverse plots on reality, creating a contradiction between the fantastical images it presents and the reality-based narratives it tells, allowing the show’s creators to make bold statements under the guise of simple animated comedy.
As a show about the entertainment industry, “BoJack Horseman” offers its voice on the #MeToo discussion. Throughout the filming of “Philbert,” BoJack and Gina struggle with the gratuitous objectification of women in the show and battle to find a middle ground between character-driven vulnerability and superfluous nudity. In one of the season’s final episodes, on a particularly rough bender where BoJack dissociates between the actions of the character he portrays and those of himself, he harms Gina, creating a viral workplace harassment video that sends “Hollywoo” into a crazed panic. BoJack is forced to reconcile with the damage he’s done while Gina tries to work past the incident, refusing to be defined by the actions of her co-star.
While season four spends much of its on-screen time focusing on the steep descent and tortured relationships of BoJack’s family, season five turns its spotlight onto a broader spectrum of ideas and topics instead. It even mocks the surge of new startup companies by creating one of its own, “WhatTimeIsItNow.com,” a company that does nothing but tell its visitors the time. This seemingly simple humor sets “BoJack Horseman” apart from its peers. On the surface, it presents itself as a show about everything and nothing, that is to say a show that relies on its hilarious, and often ridiculous, animation to keep its viewers’ attention. However, its audience is heavily rewarded for its viewership, with each new episode compounding its past emotional appeal, creating a deeper, richer experience. As the story grows and the complex web of relationships expands, the characters find themselves in increasingly treacherous situations. With each emotional blow, the audience finds itself welling up alongside the characters, wishing that it all could have happened differently. It is in times like this, with the audience standing alongside the characters in a state of vulnerability, that the show reveals its true colors. The show allows itself to be vulnerable and open to the audience. It is in times like this that “BoJack Horseman” becomes an astonishingly real portrayal of the human experience.
In its essence, “BoJack Horseman” is an incredibly intelligent show about the entertainment industry, touching on all aspects of it, from the difficulties associated with being in the public eye, to staying up to date with an ever-evolving millennial audience, to the growing issues surrounding sexual misconduct. With a deeply introspective and depressed character at its core, “BoJack Horseman” is one of the most cleverly written shows on television and remains one of the truly profound works of art in the modern streaming era. It cuts right through the commotion and strikes the hearts of its audience with direct, poignant moments of vulnerability and naked humanity. The show’s latest season builds on its past episodes to create a truly remarkable case study on the essence of the human experience.
(09/20/18 10:00am)
An exhibit featuring over 100 exquisite works of Islamic art is now on display at the Middlebury College Museum of Art, making it the first Islamic art exhibition in a Vermont museum in at least 30 years.
Located on the first floor of Mahaney Center for the Arts, this rich collection embodies the long history and intercontinental reach of Islamic art.
“Wondrous Worlds” features artwork in nearly all media, including ceramics, clothing, glassware, jewelry, metalworks, musical instruments, paintings, photographs, prayer rugs and textiles.
Highlights include 19th-century Indonesian crowns (fashioned from palm leaves, gold wire, animal fibers and wood), prayer-books adorned in leather and gold, Egyptian tent hangings inscribed with calligraphic and geometric patterns (measuring 160 square feet) and much more.
“Wondrous Worlds” officially opened at the Middlebury College Museum of Art on Sept. 14 and will stay through Dec. 2.
Middlebury community members and college students gathered for a first look at the exhibit during an opening reception at 5 p.m.
The diverse media presented in “Wondrous Worlds” reflect principles and practices of Islam across the world and throughout time, including pieces that date back to the ninth century as well as contemporary works. However, the exhibit is organized in a thematic sequence rather than a chronological one.
The show opens with an introduction to the Five Pillars of Islam: declaration of faith, daily prayers, charity, fasting for Ramadan and the Hajj Pilgrimage.
The exhibition then expands upon five themes, ranging from calligraphy and architecture to clothing and food. Each theme provides perspective into the utility, artistry and cultural history of the featured objects.
Because the Islamic faith discourages the creation of images of sentient beings, Islamic art is largely dominated by traditional geometric patterns and calligraphy. Not all Islamic art is strictly religious art, as it also includes the art of the varied cultures of Islamic societies.
Cynthia Packert, a professor of Art History and guest curator of the collection, gave opening remarks while guests snacked on tasty Middle Eastern delicacies last Friday. Packert highlighted the cross-cultural nature of the exhibition.
“In the centuries before amazon.com there were still lots of things moving around the planet in both directions,” she said.
The rapid spread of Islam was accompanied by the development of trade networks for material goods. Objects with imagery of carnations, tulips and birds reflect European influence.
Packert also discussed her role in Middlebury’s acquisition of this exhibit, which had been a three-year process.
“Wondrous Worlds” originally opened in February 2016 at the Newark Museum of Art in Newark, N.J.
A few years ago, Packert spoke with the museum’s Curator of Asian Art, Katie Paul, about obtaining Islamic art for Middlebury’s collection. At the time, the Newark Museum was renovating its Islamic art section and Packert’s request inspired Paul to turn the collection into a moving show. Two recent Middlebury graduates were interns at the Newark Museum and helped put together objects and information for the original opening.
Since its inception, “Wondrous Worlds” has had an active life. After its debut in Newark, it moved to Houston, Texas. After its time at Middlebury, it will travel to Emory University.
Packert emphasized the importance of bringing an exhibit like “Wondrous Worlds” to Middlebury.
“It makes all the difference in teaching and understanding the arts if you actually have real works of art to look at,” she said. “My hope is that after seeing this exhibition [audiences] will emerge with a much richer appreciation for the diversity and complexity of the arts of the Islamic world.”
More information can be found at go.middlebury.edu/museum.
(09/20/18 9:59am)
As the Carolinas reel from the destruction caused by Hurricane Florence, the quiet coast of Maine is experiencing climate change in a much slower, yet still threatening, manner.
Kathryn Olson ’05 discussed the impact of climate change on this area in her talk entitled “Farms, Fish and Forests: An Ethnography of Climate Change in Maine.”
In Maine, temperatures have risen twice as much as those in the rest of the United States, and the Bay of Maine is the fastest-warming body of water in the world. Maine has a highly resource-based economy with industries in fishing and forestry, and for the past several years, Olson has been using ethnographic interviews, demographic surveys, observations and visual data to inform her work.
Olson has focused her recent research on what she calls the “Living Change Project” in which she investigates the subtle changes in identity, work and place in the wake of climate change, especially in her home state of Maine.
Farmers have been adapting to winters with shorter freezes and drought alternating with heavy precipitation in the summers and longer falls. These changes in the seasons have had a harmful impact on harvesting seasons and crop yield.
Foresters, too, are experiencing environmental and economic changes. With unpredictable freezing and thawing patterns, new populations of invasive species of animals and plants are wreaking havoc in Maine. Despite these obvious concerns, Olson found that foresters are more reluctant to admit the negative impacts of climate change, and they tend to view the forests as controlled by man rather than by nature.
Fishermen have faced perhaps the most significant plight. The number of soft shell clams, a specialty from the coast of Maine, are down by as much as 70 percent in some places on the coast due to a recent explosion in the population of green crabs, an invasive species that thrives in warm waters. Development of houses and tourist destinations along the coast has also greatly diminished fishing areas accessible to fishermen.
These challenges have forced the industry to adjust. For example, some have turned to aquaculture, the practice of farming fish, as a way to protect soft shell clams, as well as mussel populations, from the green crabs. Many Maine locals in the culinary industry are beginning to harvest the green crabs and popularize them on the market, with slow but promising success. According to an interview that Olson conducted with a fisherman, the fishery is only able to produce around ten percent of what it once could.
Olson’s talk drew the attention of many students and faculty, as her presentation highlighted the imminent issues facing local communities due to climate change. Here in Vermont, farmers and beneficiaries of resource-based industries are at risk in ways similar as those in Maine.
“Having spent the summer living [on] sailboats along the coast of Maine dodging lobster pots every day, I was particularly interested in the invasive green crabs and in the lobstermen’s pragmatic view of climate change,” Hannah Redmon ’20 said. “I appreciated how [Olson] examined the effects of climate change on Maine’s major industries through the eyes of people working in these industries every day. The way she combined science, sociology, creative writing and photography made her project both useful and engaging, no matter where her readers are coming from.”
Alec Fleischer ’20.5 said that Olson’s talk “clearly showed [that] climate change is already altering Maine’s formerly-stable marine and forestry sectors.
“These highlighted effects only mark the beginning of unprecedented problems that our generation will face in Maine, in Vermont, and across the world,” he said. “We need to rapidly transition [away from] fossil fuels and begin investing vast sums in climate mitigation.”
Maine’s future, according to Olson, lies in economic diversification and developing long-term sustainable industries.
Throughout this project, Olson has spent much of her time engaging with climate change skeptics and deniers, and encouraging tolerance and understanding of other perspectives.
From enacting large-scale policy changes for mitigating climate change to bolstering grassroots participation in the fight against climate change, Olson encourages working beyond academia and using social media and blogs, to spread positive messages. Olson left the audience feeling positive about how experts are addressing climate change, noting that the people she interviewed from all different economic and social backgrounds were working hard to adapt to the changes coming their way.
For more information on Olson and her work, see her blog:
www.livingchange.blog/
(09/20/18 9:58am)
One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a part of the Middlebury College community over the past nearly thirty years has been engaging with students as well as fellow staff and faculty beyond their names, where their family resides and the surface-level questions of majors or job title. These opportunities have most often come as a result of some act of hospitality, ours or that of some other member of the college community.
Over the years, students have joined us at our house boiling maple sap into maple syrup while drinking tea (made from the boiling sap) and sharing favorite poems around the boiling pan. They have hiked the woods around our house identifying trees and watching our honey bees fly laden with pollen back into our hive. Numerous students and colleagues have even traveled with us on weekend-long trips to our favorite lake in Maine. Important conversations happened over a mug of tea, preparing a meal together, or washing dishes after the meal: hopes, dreams, life and death, faith and politics. Connections were made. Longtime friendships have evolved from these interactions.
Currently, we live in the Cook Commons House at the edge of campus and host meals around a table with students and faculty sometimes several times a week. Though only Matthew works officially for the college and Deborah works in town, we both take part in the meals. Matthew appreciates getting to interact with a broader segment of the student body than the smaller number of students or colleagues he might meet in a class taught within his major. Conversations around the dinner table often center around life experiences, current challenges and the important art, places and people who have shaped our lives.
Another significant experience of hospitality for us has been as hosts for the Fresh Air Fund, a program which has matched low income inner city youth from New York City with host families in rural communities since 1877. The program allows urban children the sort of summer experiences common to children from rural or suburban communities: splashing in a lake to cool off on a summer day, catching fireflies and frogs, running barefoot over green grass through a sprinkler, or heading off for a day at Addison County Fair and Field Days seeing farm animals on display or in competition.
On June 28, 2003, Israel Dudley, an 11-year old African-American boy with a shy smile and a slight build stepped off the bus wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “Shoot Hoops, Not Guns.” He was the first of five boys we hosted over the years and he stayed with us for two weeks that summer and then the following three summers. After he aged out of the Fresh Air Fund program, he continued to come for visits when we could arrange it, often for Christmas or other school breaks. And then he came to live with us in Middlebury from May 2014 to May 2018 in order to have some space to think about his future, apply for college, and earn some money for that endeavor. He became even more connected to our family and this community as he shared a room with our son Mark (Midd ’16), worked at 51 Main, played noon hoops at the college gym (with numerous other staff and students), and audited classes in psychology and philosophy with Professors Matt Kimball and Matty Woodruff.
Although we hope that the various guests we have had over the years have benefitted from our hospitality, we know it is also true that we have benefitted at least as much from the giving of hospitality as the recipients have from receiving it. Practicing hospitality, especially to somebody with a different background, or beliefs, or experiences, helps to shape us. It broadens our world, and changes how we think. It is a way of tearing down walls rather than building them. One of the best ways to begin to free oneself from the sorts of prejudices that culture often builds by giving us stereotypes is to replace those stereotypes with personal relationships.
The school year is underway. We encourage you to embark on the adventure of offering hospitality: a mug of tea in your dorm room, an invitation to lunch at Ross Dining, becoming a Community Friend, preparing a meal for Charter House or a Community Dinner. Invite someone to explore the town or the local trails. Middlebury is a great place to step out of our self-imposed bubbles and social media echo chambers, a great place to make connections that last for a lifetime.
Matthew Dickerson is the Cook Commons faculty head and professor of Computer Science.
Deborah Dickerson is a guardian ad litem and is currently writing “Snapshots in Black and White” about the love story between their family and Israel Dudley.
(09/20/18 9:58am)
MIDDLEBURY — The town was overwhelmed with furry paws and barking as dogs and owners alike thronged to the Middlebury Memorial Sports Center on Saturday, September 15. Woofstock, the annual walk aimed to raise funds for Homeward Bound, the humane society of Addison County, drew all number of four-legged friends and many an excited onlooker.
“All of the proceeds from the event go directly to providing the homeless animals of Addison County with food, shelter, veterinary services and compassionate care,” said Hannah Manley, the Director of Development at Homeward Bound. Although the total amount of funds raised has not yet been calculated, it appears Homeward Bound will exceed its $25,000 goal.
Volunteers completed a one mile walk from the Memorial Sports Center into downtown Middlebury and back. 157 people and 90 dogs participated in the walk.
“This is a slow-moving, leisurely walk, with a lot of water for dogs and people,” Manley said.
Several new activities distinguished the walk from previous years. Prior to the walk, dogs could complete an agility course on the hockey rink or have their photo taken by a professional photographer in a setup similar to that of a school photo. Likewise, an “ask a trainer” booth run by Emily Lewis, a trainer who works as a consultant for Homeward Bound, gave pet owners the opportunity to ask any questions they may have had.
As in past years, dogs splashed about at a pool party following the walk. Although the Middlebury community pool closed three weeks prior, Homeward Bound was still able to use the space for the event. Manley described the pool party as her favorite part of the event.
“It’s really awesome,” she said. “You really have to see it to believe it. As an animal lover, it’s just a really cool way to cap out the summer.”
Many of the dogs who participated in the walk were Homeward Bound alumni. Abby, age 10, brought Samantha, the dog she and her family adopted from Homeward Bound last year, to the walk.
“We really like the people and the dogs,” Abby said. “[Samantha] can jump super high.”
Those who attended the walk cited a love for the dogs as their main reason for participation in the event.Britney and Mercedes of Lincoln, VT brought their four dogs, Diesel, Remington, Mosheus and Crosby, to the walk.
“I had a dog [that] I got from the humane society two years ago. So we just like to support the society,” Britney explained.
Christine Blakeney, a professional dog trainer and volunteer for the humane society, who attended the event echoed this sentiment.
“I love dogs and cats and rescuing them, and they all need a good home while they are in transition, which is what Homeward Bound does,” she said.
Homeward Bound is located on 236 Boardman Street in Middlebury. For more information about volunteering, donating or adopting an animal, visit homewardboundanimals.org or email shelter@homewardboundanimals.org.
(09/13/18 9:56am)
Literatures & Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman Center, the Arabic Department, the Comparative Literature Program, the Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS) Program, the Language Schools, the Linguistics Program, and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.
“Fluffy” by Simone Lia, 2007
186 pages
Call Number: Browsing Graphic-Davis Family PN6737.L53 F59 2007
“Fluffy” is the most absurd book I have ever read. It is also one of the most endearing and nakedly vulnerable. It follows a brief window of time in an Italian man’s life. He is ambivalent about his job, his family and definitely his romantic relationship with Suzanna. Through it all, his talking bunny, Fluffy, who thinks he is his son, expresses his unwavering affinity for him. I don’t know what author Simone Lia was going for with this. How did she decide that protagonist Michael would live in London? That he’d be a graphic designer? That he’d own and care for a talking bunny? It seems so random and fantastic. Aside from the talking animal who thinks he’s human, the struggles Michael encounters ring true and real. He settles for a relationship because it’s available. He tolerates his family’s uncomfortable idiosyncrasies because they are his family. And he wonders to what extent he is realizing his potential and worth as a human being.
I would recommend this work to the wistful, the doubtful, the traveler and anyone with a queer sense of humor. For something similar, check out Lucy Knisley’s “French Milk” (Browsing Graphic-Davis Family Library DC707 .K65 2008), another graphic novel that touches on travels in Europe. David Sedaris’ “Theft By Finding” (General Browsing-Davis Family Library PS3569.E314 A6 2017) carries something similar in it as the memoir examines the limits of the writer’s familial relationships and both the doubt and tumult it takes to become who you will be.
(09/13/18 9:50am)
SABINE POUX
Editor’s Note: This is the first installment in a weekly column, Foreign Correspondents, that will chronicle Middlebury students’ experiences studying abroad.
About seven weeks into my study abroad program, I received a WhatsApp message from my tutora, an Argentine girl from my university who had been assigned to help me and another exchange student get adjusted to life in Buenos Aires. Usually she texted in the group to invite us out to eat or to answer our questions about matters lost in translation. Today’s message was more serious.
“Well ladies,” she said. “You are witnessing the fall of Argentina.”
She was referencing the massive economic crisis that has hit Argentina, resulting from the country’s potential inability to pay its IMF debts and causing the Argentine peso to devalue at a staggering rate. Though my tutora’s tone may sound dramatic, the Argentine people are all too aware of what can happen in the face of fiscal disaster. During the 1970s and ’80s, in one of the most horrible periods of Latin American history, dictatorships in Argentina and its neighboring countries repressed, terrorized and assassinated thousands of civilians who opposed their neo-liberal economic policies. More recently, during the 2001 crisis, the entire government quit in one day, the country had five presidents in the span of one week and 36 people died.
Argentina’s history of turmoil remains fresh in the minds of most, and the mistakes and consequences of that past serve as constant warnings of what could transpire in the near future. The country regularly cycles through economic and political crisis and prosperity, and citizens fear a return to the nefarious governments of old. Some believe the current administration is headed in an authoritarian direction, and there are rumors that the president, Mauricio Macri, will resign, in which case the country would hold a special election to find a new head of state.
From a political science standpoint, this is an incredibly exciting time to be here. From any other angle, this is a quilombo of epic proportions. (I can’t tell you what quilombo means here, but a quick Urban-Dictionary search can.)
At Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, where I’m taking classes, it can be easy to forget about the crisis. Di Tella is a private institution, and though its tuition is considerably lower than tuition at any US university – roughly equivalent to about $3,000 a semester – public college here is free (and very reputable). Most students at Di Tella come from higher-than-average income brackets, and the wealth on campus is anything but subtle. Back in July, when I first entered the glossy, modern building that houses the school’s classrooms, three (!) restaurants and panoramic rooftop terrace, I was stunned by the sea of chic black turtlenecks, cool leather boots and iPhone X’s that assembled in the main lobby between classes, chatting over yerba mate and espresso from the French-themed café next door. Many of the students I have talked to live in gated communities in the provincia right outside the city and have traveled to more states than I have, an emblem of wealth considering the steep peso-dollar exchange rate.
Which is not to say that people at Di Tella are not talking about the crisis or that it is not going to affect them, because they are and it will. But everywhere else, it’s all people talk about. It’s all over the newspapers, and it’s the topic of most conversations I overhear on the subway. It’s the subject of every news program at the radio station where I’m interning, a community-based and politically-minded operation located in the back of a bar. Their slogan: “Sin aire no hay fuego.” Without air there is no fire.
My host mom, Sofi, thinks there are more homeless people on the street now than there have been in a long time. We’ve talked a lot about the crisis at home. Sofi is fortunate enough to have her own apartment and the means to get by, but the crisis sends shockwaves through her life just the same. She’s an artist, and in the last week has been working in her workshop day and night while blasting notícias (news) and Luis Miguel songs to create small hand-painted resin figurines that will be presented as awards for the winners of an upcoming film festival. Sofi signed onto the job months ago, and with the devaluation of the peso, the compensation she will receive is now worth almost nothing. It is as though she is working for free, she laments.
Sofi, like most others, is also worried about how the crisis will affect the cost of food and other necessities. She expects that the hefty inflation that menacingly lurks around the corner will cause prices to raise as salaries remain the same. A few days ago she stocked up on months’ worth of cat food, just in case. I did the same with bread and milk.
For now, prices remain relatively low, stirring up a confusing mix of emotions for us exchange students. I feel guilty for feeling any excitement about the relative ascendance of the dollar, but it’s hard not to be at least a little delighted by the new exchange rates – a month ago I converted Argentine prices to their dollar equivalents by dividing by 27, whereas now I divide by nearly 40. A $3 coffee becomes a $2 coffee. An already incredibly-cheap subway ride now costs only a quarter.
But of course, to solely rejoice in the economic turmoil of the country is myopic and apathetic toward the thousands who are suffering and mobilizing, the latter of which Argentinians do exceptionally well. As Sofi would say, there are many temas picantes – loosely translating to “hot topics” – that have the Argentines fired up. One of my first days in Buenos Aires, Sofi – a self-described “anarquista” who preferred the previous, more populist government and openly detests the conservative Macri – attended a march against the current administration’s increasingly militarized presence in the city. About three weeks later, we marched together among thousands of our fellow porteños in favor of a bill that would have legalized abortion, under certain conditions, throughout the country. We stood in front of the capital building in the pouring rain, waving the green pañuelo, symbol of the movement, and chanted with fervor about our hopes for a more feminist Latin America. Though senators voted narrowly to keep abortion illegal in the majority-Catholic country, abortion advocates speculate that the bill will pass next year.
Teachers from Argentina’s public universities are also mobilizing in protest of the low salary hikes the government has promised them in the face of severe inflation. As a result, many students are yet to begin classes at the University of Buenos Aires and other public institutions, though the semester technically began in early August. Teachers have reportedly come to an agreement on the issue, but in this political climate, nothing is certain.
The increasing number of protests and strikes are testament to the country’s great political divide. And with people from each side of the ideological spectrum espousing flagrant things about the other, it can be difficult to orient myself politically. My current strategy has been to listen to anyone who has something to say, and I’ve found no shortage of conversational partners – some of my most animated political chats have been in taxis or with cashiers at street kiosks. The people of Buenos Aires are passionate and open and kind, and they are invigorated rather than dejected by the need for change. The city buzzes with an electrifying energy. It is truly thrilling, and somewhat unnerving.
It is also a lot to digest. On one of the first days I was here, our academic programs coordinator told us that we don’t need to come to any conclusions now. Conclusions come later, he said. For now, just soak everything in.
Sabine Poux is a member of the Middlebury College class of 2020 and is studing in Buenos Aires this semester. She will be a news editor for the Campus in the spring of 2019.
(05/03/18 1:33am)
Data Services Librarian Ryan Clement is liaison to the Economics, Geography, Philosophy and Sociology & Anthropology departments, as well as serving as Middlebury’s Government Documents Coordinator.
“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari, 2015
443 pages
“We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles – but nobody knows where we’re going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.”
- Yuval Noah Harari, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” “Afterword”
The What
“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” attempts a grand and challenging experiment: can the full history of Homo sapiens be properly summarized in fewer than 500 pages? The author, Yuval Noah Harari, certainly thinks so. Despite promising a brief history of “humankind” in the book’s subtitle, he’s smart to focus on one species of humankind (Homo sapiens) and their turbulent 70,000-year history.
“Sapiens” begins when our species began to experience the first of many revolutions that Harari highlights: the “cognitive” revolution. Not to be confused with the cognitive revolution in psychology, which was a reaction against behaviorism, this is the period around 70,000 years ago when humanity developed the capacity for imagination. Our newfound ability to talk about things that don’t exist, and to communicate these ideas with others in our group, led to the “collective fictions,” which, Harari argues, make Homo sapiens uniquely able to cooperate on a grand scale.
Harari then takes us through several other periods of change and revolution, such as the agricultural revolution, the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution, to trace the gradual consolidation of Homo sapiens from separate bands of hunter-gatherers to the increasingly globalized society we inhabit today. Harari’s tracing of humankind’s evolution ends on a cliffhanger, hinted at by the quote above.
He says, of our future, “Indeed, the future masters of the world will probably be more different from us than we are from Neanderthals…[w]hereas we and the Neanderthals are at least human, our inheritors will be godlike.”
This is a fitting ending to a book whose sequel is titled “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.”
The Why
Any book that attempts to summarize such a grand sweep of history in such a tantalizingly bite-sized chunk is bound to be a hit with the intelligentsia, and “Sapiens” was no exception. It was recommended by Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama and Bill Gates, among countless others. I approached this book to determine two things: could this book accomplish its goals, in the way that Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” had, and what baggage and interpretation was Harari bringing to the table when writing about such a fraught subject as the evolution of the Homo sapiens?
As for the first question, I think Harari has mainly accomplished what he set out to do. The grand sweep of humanity’s evolution is conveyed in a narrative and engrossing style that still incorporates historical, biological, anthropological and economic scholarship. While Harari does make some authorial missteps (his repeated misuse of the phrase “exceptions that prove the rule” is particularly grating) his general writing is both digestible and informed by significant scholarship. He does gloss over significant controversies and fails to cite a few extraordinary claims, but such is to be expected in a book that attempts such a feat as this.
As for the second, Harari’s biases sometimes come to the forefront in ways that will cause many readers, as they caused me, to want to scribble diatribes in the margins of their copy (which I could not do in my ebook copy, unfortunately). He rails against the changes that the agricultural revolution brought, painting the pre-agricultural period of humanity as a sort of golden age when everyone was more free, despite horrendous child mortality rates. He is no fan of “modern liberal culture,” but his attacks on it veer toward self-parody. Such clear biases are easy to spot though, and taking a critical stance on these did not hurt my enjoyment of this book. I would recommend this to any reader interested in human evolution and history, and will be ordering the sequel, “Homo Deus,” for the library as well.
(04/25/18 11:43pm)
In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, dairying in New England was in crisis. Small farms were faced with a lack of demand for agricultural labor, according to Vermont Representative Peter Conlon, 53. Conlon, who was born and raised in Vermont, worked as a dairy labor specialist for ten years with Agri-Placement, a company that offers employee placement and support services for dairy farms.
“Americans have, by and large, walked away from doing this kind of job,” Conlon said. This has played out on many farms throughout New England and into the twenty-first century.
“It used to be that there was always somebody knockin’ on the door for a job — always, I mean constantly,” said Marie Audet, who owns Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport with her husband, Eugene. She manages the office side of the business — no small feat for a farm of over 700 mature dairy animals, categorized as a large farm operation in Vermont. Eugene, a “herdsman,” works daily with the cows.
Other members of her family occupy many different roles of the operation. Her nephew is a mechanic and works with tractors, her sister-in-law runs a day care for the children on the farm, and her son works with the baby cows.
“People just don’t stop in like they used to looking for work — it’s not happening,” Ms. Audet said. Her office walls are covered from floor to ceiling in framed photographs from years of cow show competitions. There are 29 employees in total at Blue Spruce Farm — nine of whom are part of the Audet family, although Marie tends to say that “it’s not a big farm; it’s a big family.”
“I think that’s important to know because you probably come here and see a large farm,” Ms. Audet said. “This [operation] was two people — and now there are 20 of us. We’re four generations. We want to continue working together but we need the business to be big enough to support all of our families.”
As domestic demand for farming jobs dwindled, small family farm owners — like the Audets — were left searching for help, says Conlon. Will Lambek, spokesperson and staff member of Migrant Justice (Justicia Migrante), a local human rights and food justice advocacy organization, contends that the dairy industry has been in severe distress for a long time now. U.S. dairy prices are tied to the global commodity market for dairy, which has meant wild fluctuations in prices that are based on world supply and demand. When milk prices drop below production costs, small businesses struggle to stay afloat and are often bought up by larger farms.
Over the past 50 years, this consolidation has caused the number of dairy farms in Vermont to decline significantly, from 11,000 in 1947 to 858 in 2015, according to an article published on Dec. 8 in Vermont’s Seven Days.
“Family farms have closed and larger, neighboring farms have had to buy them up,” Lambek said. “Because these larger farms can no longer sustain their business with just family employees. They need to look elsewhere to hire workers but they don’t have the capital to invest in dignified livable wages.”
According to Lambek, at the same time that global market forces and lack of domestic demand for agricultural labor were putting pressure on dairying in the U.S., forces of neoliberalism opened up the Mexican economy.
“Hundreds of thousands of rural Mexicans have been forced off of their land and then forced to emigrate to the U.S. to look for work,” Lambek said.
Word began to spread informally through the immigrant community, bringing a population of people, largely from Mexico, but also from other Latin American countries, to the Northeast, who were willing to supply labor. Tim Howlett, owner of Champlainside Farm in Bridport, has experienced this sort of network within the migrant community.
“These guys are really good,” Howlett said. “When they go home they usually give two months notice and they sometimes will say, ‘Hey, I know a guy looking for a job.’ If they can vouch for whoever is coming in, we say okay.”
“I’m here por la necesidad — out of necessity,” said Fide, 29, who has worked on a dairy farm in Addison County for seven years. “There are few jobs in my town and you can’t make a lot of money.” At one point, Fide returned home to Oaxaca, México, to work a job that earned him less than 25 cents an hour.
It was at this intersection of pressure and stress on dairying that the Audets began using Agri-Placement as an intermediary to find and vet workers. Supported and contracted through employment services, migrant laborers are crucial to the success of the entire dairy industry in Vermont.
“I want to say that in Vermont, the average person probably does understand how important immigrant workers are to dairy,” Howlett said. “I think that in the greater world where people can go weeks without even seeing a cow, they might not think twice about it. The milk is just in the store and that’s the way it works.”
Supply and demand for Vermont’s labor force still exists globally. The flow of migrant workers to the state does not seem to be slowing despite national xenophobia towards immigrants. But with increasing immigration enforcement at the federal level, the arrangement is being increasingly stressed.
“At the moment there is still a workforce, but that’s really being put at risk and there’s no substitute right now. There’s no clear alternative,” Lambek said.
Following the death of 18-year-old José Obeth Santiz Cruz, from Chiapas, México, on a farm in Franklin County in 2009, immigrant farmworkers organized to create Migrant Justice/Justicia Migrante.
“His death was an unnecessary death that could have been prevented by proper training and acted as a catalyst for immigrant farmworkers to come together,” Lambek said.
Surveys of more than 200 dairy workers across the state found systemic and abusive violations of human rights. Workers were almost entirely left out of the picture of Vermont’s dairy industry.
“They wouldn’t leave their farms for months at a time because housing was on site,” Lambek said. Immigrants were working seven days a week with no days off, no sufficient breaks for meals or sleep, averaging 60 to 80 hours a week, and returning to unlivable, isolated and overcrowded housing.
According to Fide, Migrant Justice has helped friends and coworkers get access to driver’s licenses, better pay, and housing despite their immigration status. “Here in this state, I know that there are organizations like Migrant Justice that can help many people,” Fide said.
He wants people to know that there are ways to get help and improved working conditions.
Although Ernesto and Jesús, two migrant farmworkers, may have the option to take occasional breaks during the workday or a full day off, they generally choose not to. And what would be the point? They are both here to earn money to support their families at home, not to build a permanent life in the U.S.
“I can speak for every immigrant here,” Jesús said. “No one is here on vacation. No one is here for any reason other than to work.”
And, Jesús reminds me, glancing down at his tall, mud-encrusted rubber boots, “Somebody has to do the dirty work so that milk cartons end up on grocery store shelves.”
Will Lambek believes that an incident in Franklin County last August between local police, ICE, and the two Mexican farmworkers was a clear instance of discrimination and in violation of the Fair and Impartial Policing (FIP) policy in place at the time. Despite this violation, the policy as a whole was very strong. According to Lambek, new changes to the FIP proposed by the Trump administration may create new loopholes that will make it easier for local law enforcement to justify collaborating with federal law enforcement.
In 2014, President Barack Obama ended the “Secure Communities” program, which upheld the random deportation of taxpaying, contributing community members who came to the U.S. illegally. Under the program, simple traffic violations were often catalysts for deportations. That same year, following the termination of “Secure Communities,” the Department of Homeland Security set guidelines intended to prioritize the deportation of people who are “threats to national security and public safety.”
In Vermont, the FIP was put into place to prevent police discrimination and profiling. Proposed changes would remove many protections for undocumented immigrants from the 2016 policy. They would allow local police to inform federal immigration authority — particularly active in Vermont because it is a border state — if they discover that victims or witnesses of a crime do not have legal documentation. Additionally, the new policy would allow police officers operating near the Canadian border to contact federal immigration authorities if they suspect someone has crossed into the U.S. illegally.
But Lambek and other activists returned from a hearing held on Jan. 24 feeling hopeful. The Committee on Governmental Operations said that it would consider legislation to push back the implementation date of the proposed changes to the FIP, saying that they would rather get it done right than get it done on time.
The isolation of undocumented workers is only furthered by fear and worry about the possibility of detention or deportation.
“I do get nervous when I go out, if I’m in a store or something and I see an ICE agent or something, I’ll try to leave pretty quickly and just come back here,” Fide said. “When I hear about people getting deported or arrested, I just hope it doesn’t happen to me. I think to myself, okay one more year and I’ll be able to finally go back home.”
For Ernesto, though, these worries have not increased noticeably under the new administration. Life in Addison County is “igúal.”
“It’s the same as it was before the new president,” he said. “I didn’t leave [the house] then and nothing has changed. Maybe it’s different for people who live in the cities. But not for me.”
“It does feel different now,” Jesús said, disagreeing with his coworker. “Maybe Americans haven’t felt much of a difference or had a change of heart, but immigrants have.”
Jesús continued: “There is more fear now. There has always been fear. We are illegals. We were illegals before and we still are. Whether we have a racist president or not, the fear was always present. But now we are more scared.”
In this state, losses of protection for undocumented immigrants, increased ICE activity, and collaboration with local law enforcement are changes that pose concrete threats to migrant workers, farm owners and Vermonters alike.
“The threat to their workforce is causing farm owners stress. When you look at organizations like the Vermont Farm Bureau and other lobbies, immigration is something that people are paying close attention to,” Lambek said.
But he qualifies that there are many different responses inside that framework. “Many farm owners voted for Trump,” he said. “They believe that undocumented immigrants should be sent out of the U.S. but they also want to protect their workforce. Political schizophrenia exists widely. People hold these contradictory opinions at the same time.”
Though some farmer owners align with Migrant Justice’s stance that a pathway to citizenship is needed, there are others who, according to Lambek, are hoping for an expansion of the H-2A visa program — a temporary form of documentation for seasonal workers. But dairying is a year-round industry.
“Temporary workers statuses tie people’s immigration status to them, which opens the door for abuse and exploitation. Migrant justice opposes any immigration bill that ties people’s specific employment to their immigration status,” Lambek said.
“One thing I want to say is there are a lot of people who come here to work,” Fide said. “There aren’t many opportunities to work where I come from and the jobs that exist don’t pay enough. We come here to work but we respect the law. This is not our country, so we know to respect the law. I think that it is really important for people to be able to get permits or visas to be able to come here and work. It is so important. Those who come here to stay are few. We come here to work and make money to support our families and then we go home.”
As turbulent as the situation for dairying and migrant workers appears to be, farmers and workers continue to wake up in the early hours of the morning to make the whole operation run.
“The day we take a break is the day the cow stops making milk,” Jesús said.
But early in the morning of Jan. 18, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement conducted a raid at a Days Inn Motel in Colchester, Vermont. This raid was the first of its kind in the state. Fourteen workers were detained and could be deported. The raid took place without any additions to immigration enforcement budgets. With an increase in funds and agents, such as what the Trump administration is proposing, ICE would have the power to undertake many more similar sweeps across the state.
(04/19/18 1:10am)
MIDDLEBURY — Located fifteen minutes north of Middlebury’s campus is a small farm called Treleven, where many Middlebury students have spent long nights. Why? For a process called lambing.
Annually, each night during a multi-week-long stretch, students leave the College and make their way to the farm, returning early the next morning in dirty shoes, fatigued, smelling and exhilarated. They spend the hours in the Treleven barn, keeping the farm’s flock of sheep company, watching the pregnant ewes—female sheep—and assisting when one goes into labor.
However, the story begins much earlier. Just over five decades ago, two Swarthmore College students headed West, stopping only when they reached the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco. It was 1967 and Cheryl and Don Mitchell were chasing the Summer of Love. They were avid readers of the Whole Earth Catalog, a counterculture magazine preaching what Cheryl describes bluntly as, “that ultra purity” lifestyle. While at Swarthmore, Don was set on becoming a writer, Cheryl a high school English teacher, and they were growing up in a place where people experienced nature by “riding around and mowing the lawn and having a small yard.”
Despite this, and against all odds, hippies on the West Coast swept them up with the Back-to-the-Land Movement—a campaign to reinvigorate appreciation of nature and rejection of rampant consumerism—inspiring them to move back to the opposite coast and buy a farm. That farm is known today as Treleven.
Recruiting students to assist with lambing was Don’s idea, or as Cheryl described it, “Don’s wonderful gift to all of us.” When the couple moved to Vermont, they were young and without any farming experience. “We [were] not your prototypical family farm,” Cheryl said. “We had to work off the farm.”
Participating in the dairy industry is how many Vermont farms profit, but the Mitchells explained, “We knew we would never have the capital or wisdom to be dairy farmers.” They bought two sheep instead. The following year they expanded their flock to ten. They would shear the animals, drive the wool to Maine and have it spun into yarn for sale. However, this was not enough. “It’s very, very difficult to make a living with just the farm,” the Mitchells said.
So in 1984, Don got a job. He became a Middlebury professor and taught the class now known as “Contested Grounds”. Don found that discussion in this class always circled back to grappling with the construct of the idyllic family farm lifestyle, so eventually he decided to add a component to the syllabus: a night at Treleven during lambing season. He hoped the hands on experience would allow his students to complicate this myth themselves.
Though Don retired as a professor in 2009, the Mitchells have continued the annual lambing process with Middlebury students for the past nine years. Since Don first conceived of the idea, nearly a thousand students have spent a night in the barn. It was ironic; the mantra of the Back-to-the-Land Movement that led him to Vermont in the first place was something he was now, in a way, a tempting to deconstruct for new generations.
Indeed, the couple brought a young lamb to the lambing orientation they hold in Weybridge House, and over oohs and ahs of on-looking students, Cheryl provided a disclaimer: “It may happen. A lamb might die while you’re there. And that’s okay.”
Life at Treleven isn’t perfect, they insist, but it’s natural. Some of the young are even sold for meat. That doesn’t mean the farmers don’t connect with the animals. “I still don’t do it very well,” Cheryl admitted of her ability to cope with the death of a newborn. She explains that other aspects of her life, the non-farm related parts, have helped her along in this—and vice-versa.
Cheryl was a founder of the local Addison County Parent-Child Center, an organization dedicated to providing support for families. While there, she focused on a program that worked with children with serious disabilities of all sorts. Gradually, her two professions began seeping together.
“We would do everything we could to keep a lamb alive, that the mother knew wouldn’t make it,” she explained. Later, her parents moved onto the farm, and she was there as they passed away. It was after this loss that she began to see the lambing process—even when the lamb didn’t make it—as part of a larger process of life and nature, “something that’s bigger.”
Whether it was this revelation, Treleven’s roots in the wider Back-to-Land Movement or something else, the Mitchells approach their life and work through a holistic lens. On their fridge is a flyer titled: “Actions for the Earth.” Next to their front door is a white board with musings and deliberations. The farm is not merely a place for cultivation of all sorts. The Mitchells host camps for young children to learn about the environment, they welcome artists for retreats and residencies and they hire a summer intern through Middlebury College.
Cheryl and Don are uncertain whether they will continue lambing next year. While they do not want to end the tradition, they are aware that continuing to run it on such a scale could become too taxing. In the barn, alongside sheep and hay, is a shelf with a stack of journals dating back to before 1998. Each is filled with entries written by students, late at night or early in the morning, some before, and others after, ewes had given birth. Even if the Mitchells decide to move on from the job, it certainly won’t be forgotten.
(04/18/18 11:20pm)
As the semester draws to a close, so do the three temporary exhibits at the Middlebury College Museum of Art. One of these three, titled “Ten Years: The Cameron Print Project,” chronicles a decade of collaboration in different forms of printmaking between Middlebury students and contemporary artists, including Mark Dion, Tomas Vu, Kati Heck and Rona Yefman.
The Cameron Print Project is overseen by professor Hedya Klein, who teaches silkscreen and intaglio printing in the Studio Arts Program. The format of the program stems from an ancient pedagogical system that trained artists from the Greek Bronze Age to 1648. Each year, Professor Klein makes regular trips to New York and Vienna to view galleries, museums and art fairs to the work of contemporary artists.
“The first thing I look at is the artists’ work,” she said, when explaining her process of inviting artists to Middlebury. “During my last leave when I attended a residency near Paris, I had an opportunity to visit Christy Gast during the installation of her exhibition at the Kadist Foundation. Her work had always interested me but her silkscreened soft sculptures at Locust Projects in Miami and the cyanotypes she made in Paris piqued my interest and prompted me to invite her to Middlebury.”
The exhibit carries a remarkable array of different artistic styles, mediums and themes. Artists such as Michael Jordan and Kati Heck employ styles that drew upon graphic novels, Nicola López displays a permanently constructing and deconstructing urban landscape in multi-layered architectural drawings, Tomas Vu uses abstract combinations of fantastical cityscapes to explore the post-industrial advances of humankind.
“Invited artists work in various media.” Professor Klein said. “Often these artists [who have not used prints as their primary medium] bring a fresh perspective to the print project. Some artists, such as Tomas Vu, exemplify the collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to art-making more directly. Tomas brought a plethora of laser cut elements that students hand glued onto his edition.”
Other artistic media at the exhibit include video animations with original music and laser engraved wood block prints.
For Mark Dion, this year’s visiting artist, the studio chose to make photo transfer intaglio print editions, which would make them look as close to pencil drawings as possible. Dion’s work questions the way in which dominant ideologies and public institutions such as museums shape our understanding of the world around us.
In a lecture on April 12 in Twilight Hall, Dion described himself as someone who has “one foot in science, one foot in magic.”
Much of his work is inspired by the tradition of the Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, which he said is the “infancy of science and magical thinking.” Past projects have included “The Amateur Ornithologist Clubhouse” equipped with field guides and extensive equipment for birdwatchers in Essen, Germany, “Den,” a massive sculpture of a sleeping bear hibernating on top of a hill of human material relics from ancient times to the present, and “Oceanomania: Souvenirs of Mysterious Seas,” an exhibit for the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco, of which drawings for the Cameron Print Project are based.
“The lines of a silkscreen print are flat whereas photo transfer intaglio retains the crumbly nature of his pencil line,” Professor Klein said of the intaglio print technique. “This printmaking technique reveals moments where the line is fully visible and moments where it’s not – just like the line of a pencil pressed with a certain amount of pressure on a piece of paper. One may think he or she is looking at an original drawing if it weren’t for the embossed edge and the penciled-in edition size on the bottom right hand corner.”
The process of intaglio printmaking can be difficult and unforgiving for a beginner. Designs are etched onto a copper plate, which are then processed through a printing press that inks the design onto a piece of acid-free paper. Scattered throughout this relatively straightforward-sounding process are various highly specialized steps that prepare the paper, plate and ink to allow for optimal printing conditions. The studio produced an estimated 200-300 test prints and dozens of test plates this year.
At times, said Jay Silverstein ’19, who worked on the Project this spring, the studio has held more than twenty people working together on different elements of the printing process.
“The shop is really alive,” he said. Depending on the number of people in the studio, the environment can be “hyper-calm or wildly active.”
“Using Intaglio as a means of creating one’s work is no different than any other tool available to artists. Drawing, painting, and sculpture have also been around for a long time,” Klein said. “What matters is how one uses the material. What is the final outcome?”
The time-consuming process of printing an edition of the artists’ work occurs over a period of approximately four weeks, during which students may voluntarily spend up to 12 hours per week in the studio, helping with preparation and final printing, an informal presentation and open studio demo, and the packing and shipping of the finished portfolio.
“Each print is different,” said Silverstein. “As you become more involved in the [printing] process, your eyes become more keen to when things go awry. This is perfect for people who get obsessed over process…. [The project] takes your drafting and drawing levels to the peak.”
“You fall into it,” he said of learning to print, which he said is similar to the process of learning to ride a bicycle. “You wake up one day and you’re like: I know how to make a print.”
“Students’ focus and ambition triple after these projects,” Klein said. “Because students work closely with a master printer and professional artists they learn the ins and outs of how to create a professional print portfolio. They have the chance to speak directly with these artists in an intimate classroom environment. They work on a team which creates an artistic community, an important part of being an artist.”
“We talked about his work while doing the work,” Silverstein, who is double majoring in biology and studio art, said of his interaction with visiting artist Mark Dion. “He approaches art from a scientific lens, which I appreciate a lot.”
According to Klein, some past student participants in this project have gone on to graduate programs or careers as professional printmakers and artists.
“That’s the dream,” said Silverstein. “What I make, that’s small potatoes compared to the other work that I see come out of Johnson.”
For young artists, the importance of exposure to contemporary work cannot be neglected.
“I want to show our students what the scope of the art world looks like,” Klein said on the website of previous visiting artist Christy Gast, “and to introduce them to artists they may not have read about in an art history book.”
An exhibit of works by students in Klein’s intaglio class is on view in the Mezzanine of Johnson Memorial Building until April 24.
(04/11/18 11:32pm)
On Thursday April 5, the Howard E. Woodin Environmental Studies Colloquium Series hosted a lecture by Kara Lavender Law, PhD, titled “Open Plastics Pollution from Sources to Solution.” Over the course of the lecture, Law presented findings from her decades-long career as a research professor of oceanography with SEA Semester and her expertise on ocean circulation and marine debris, addressing common misconceptions about ocean plastics pollution and providing her own insights into the causes of marine debris and the steps we can take to reduce it.
Law was quick to acknowledge that marine debris pollution is frequently characterized by the looming presence of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of intense marine debris concentration that is said to be larger than the state of Texas. While subtropical ocean zones do have higher concentrations of marine debris due to the convergence and stagnation of currents from the equator and poles, Law asserts that the view of garbage patches as the predominant sources of marine pollution is misleading. She instead points out that human-made debris permeates every part of the world’s ocean, having been found across every latitude and depth of the ocean.
Unsurprisingly, plastics, and more specifically, microplastics, are the most commonly found form of marine debris. The term “microplastics” is used to denote smaller pieces of plastic that are frequently found to be the remnants of larger plastic debris that has been degraded by sun and weathering. Unlike the floating debris commonly seen in garbage patches, microplastics inhabit practically an unlimited range of marine environments, according to Law, and are not particularly visible or easily spotted from the air. Since 1972, microplastics have been detected in increasing numbers and found even in locations that are incredibly remote from human populations, such as the deepest levels of the ocean and in frozen arctic sea ice. Although microplastics may in some ways seem preferable to larger and more blatantly disruptive debris, recent research has indicated that both types come with their own environmental impacts, despite much still remaining unknown.
According to Law, encounters between marine animals and plastic debris are well documented. At least 50 percent of all seabirds and mammals have been recorded interacting with plastic debris, and there have been documented encounters of every species of sea turtle with marine plastic debris. Law says, however, that the effects of these encounters are myriad. Old fishing gear is a common cause of injury and death among larger sea mammals that get irreversibly trapped in the abandoned equipment.
Floating plastic can also become colonized by fish species and barnacles that will follow or attach to the debris as it drifts long distances, which likely increases the spread of invasive species. Recent research has shown that even microplastics frequently contain a biofilm of microorganisms that are significantly different from the community of microorganisms in the water surrounding the plastic.
Additionally, ingestion has become a common problem among sea birds and large sea mammals, such as whales and sea turtles that ingest plastic resembling prey. This behavior can lead to accumulation within the stomachs of animals, sometimes leading to starvation and malnourishment. Law warns that the ingestion of plastic debris by fish is particularly concerning for humans who eat seafood, because the chemical behavior of plastic additives is poorly understood.
The root of the problem, says Law, is a recent one, as “production of plastics started around the 1950s and 90% of the plastic produced since then is still in existence.” The statistics of modern plastic usage are truly staggering in contrast with the relatively short history of the material. Although our grandparents may have known a world completely free of plastic when they were young, a recent study published in Science magazine by Law and her colleagues estimates that eight million tons of it, the weight equivalent of how much tuna is extracted from the oceans each year, annually enters the ocean from land.
This study also showed that China and some other countries in southeast Asia are the largest producers of plastic that enters the ocean from land. Law made sure to stipulate that the position of these countries as leading producers of marine plastic debris is not a result of higher plastic usage, but a result of improper waste management. While many regions of these countries are still in the process of developing suitable infrastructures for their growing economies and waste streams, the United States remains a noticeably large contributor to marine plastic pollution despite its reputation as a country with well-developed infrastructure.
Law points out that most ocean plastic is a direct result of mass consumption of plastic goods that turn to waste almost immediately. While proper waste management is an important step that needs to be taken towards limiting the entry of plastic into the ocean from land, much of the responsibility for reducing plastic pollution must be placed on consumers. Unfortunately, “there is no silver bullet,” Law said. Consumers have few options outside of the three R’s: reduce, reuse and recycle. She also recommends participating in “The Last Chance Capture,” or taking any opportunity possible to properly dispose of waste before it enters the ocean and trying to raise awareness of the issue when possible. Law makes the point that plastic production relies on consumers, and we have the ability to impact behavior just by using responsibly and purchasing from producers that take end-of-life responsibility for their products.
There is still much that remains unknown about the future of the oceans in relation to plastic. Law’s research suggests that the amount of plastic debris entering the ocean each year will only increase, but the implications for the future of marine species and the health of coastal communities are extremely uncertain.
“We’re just doing a grand, global experiment, and we don’t know what is going to happen,” Law said.
(04/04/18 11:07pm)
User Experience & Digital Scholarship Librarian Leanne Galletly is liaison to Classics, English & American Literatures, French, Italian, Studio Art, and Russian.
Umami
by Laia Jufresa, 2014,
translated by Sophie Hughes in 2016
“Nobody warns you about this, but the dead, or at least some of them, take customs, decades, whole neighborhoods with them. Things you thought you shared but which turn out to be theirs. When death does you part, it’s also the end of what’s mine is yours.”
― “Umami,” p. 34
The What
“Umami” is largely the characterization of life after loss; acknowledging that the world goes on after you lose someone, but is forever changed. Author, Laia Jufresa animates the lives of five neighbors whose homes are connected by a courtyard in Mexico City. Twelve-year-old best friends, Ana and Pina are the central characters to the story and frequently pop in and out of the other narrators accounts. Ana’s younger sister Luz unexpectedly died while on a family vacation a few years earlier, while Pina’s mother left her family without saying goodbye; the girls frequently reflect on and grapple with their missing loved ones.
The other narrators include: six-year-old Luz, Ana’s sister, who narrates her part almost up to the time of her death; the neighborhood landlord, Alfonso who is perpetually grieving the loss of his wife to cancer; then there is Marina, a 20-something who struggles with loneliness, lack of support and unstable mental health. Each character handles survival differently and every one of them is relatable, whether you have experienced the loss of a loved one or dropped your ice cream on the sidewalk. Jufresa utilizes an unusual pacing, where each chapter is associated with a year in the lives of the characters, the chapters do not align chronologically, which can be a little confusing for the reader.
“Umami” is the first novel from Laia Jufresa, who grew up in the Veracruz Cloud Forest, Paris, and now lives in Edinburgh. The book won the English Pen Award, which honors outstanding books in translation. After reading Umami, I learned that Jufresa first wrote the book in English, then upon finishing, she translated the book back into Spanish!
There is also a lot of wordplay and word creation in Umami, which reads very well in English. An impressive process coming from my monolingual brain. I thought this was particularly interesting given that the English version of the novel, which we have at Davis Family Library, was not translated by Jufresa. (I have now ordered the Spanish version!)
The Why
I found the book from the “Indie Next” reading list which I obsessively steal from every bookstore I visit. I am also very interested in visiting Mexico City, so I was excited to read some fiction that is set there. For future travelers to Mexico City, this book is not by any means a travel guide, through reading you will learn the lives of five individuals who live in the same community, as well as some insight into ancient Mexican food production through the expertise and curiosity of some of the narrators.
This book is an engaging read, but not for reasons related to the plot, which I have been struggling to remember and had a lot of trouble following due to the chronological disruptions. What I really loved about the book was Jufresa’s ability to reflect on and put words to the existence of losing a loved one.
The characterization of Ana and Pina was also expertly crafted, never feels childish, but also not too grown-up. Reading about these girls at the start adolescence while, coping with their respective loss is truly engaging. Not lost me is the intentional umami-ness of the book itself, inherently hard to describe, the rich and savory flavors of umami aptly describe this book. If you like character-driven, deep, poignant stories this book is for you; this book is not for those who need action, adventure or plot resolution.
(03/22/18 1:33am)
BURLINGTON—Customers clamber to see the menu, kids are raised on to parents’ shoulders to get a superior view and the sweet smell of crêpes wafts through the building.
Vermonters who have been to The Skinny Pancake in Burlington, VT can vouch for the popularity of the restaurant. Garnering over 470 reviews and a hefty four stars on Yelp, The Skinny Pancake on the Burlington Waterfront attracts both locals and out-of-towners. Its versatile breakfast, lunch and dinner options also offer choices for vegan, gluten-free and other diet-restricted diners.
Perhaps one of The Skinny Pancake’s biggest staples is its Sweet Menu. Known for items such as “The Heartbreaker,” a banana, strawberry and Nutella-filled crêpe, this restaurant is described on Yelp as a “heavenly” and “life-changing” experience. Why, then, have owners and founders Benjy and Jonny Adler chosen to remove Nutella, an integral crêpe ingredient, from the menu?
The answer rests in The Skinny Pancake’s roots. Founded on being an ecologically sustainable business venture, the restaurant seeks out the creation of an environmentally safe “food shed” while maintaining a tasty menu. This overarching mission was the impetus to ditch Nutella and confront the product’s number two ingredient—modified palm oil, which is infamous for its detrimental environmental impact. In a statement on The Skinny Pancake website, Benjy Adler explains that the creation of modified palm oil plantations is responsible for the equivalent of 300 football fields worth of rainforest being torn down every hour. With oil palms replacing trees for production of this sugary hazelnut spread, environmentalists have grown concerned about the impact Nutella and similar products are having on the environment.
Even France’s ecology minister, Ségolène Royal, shared in a 2015 interview with Canal+ that, “We have to plant a lot of trees because there is massive deforestation that also leads to [climate change]. We should stop eating Nutella, for example, because it’s made with palm oil.”
Although Ferrero, Nutella’s parent company, has attempted to diminish its ecological footprint, its priority remains catering to the consumer rather than maintaining rainforest biodiversity. With the demand for palm oil plantations expected to triple by the year 2050, The Skinny Pancake has decided to make an impact where it can. Both Benjy and Jonny Adler see it as their collective mission to avoid contributing to this deforestation and to reduce the environmental impact of their business venture.
The importance of rainforests for global environmental health cannot be overstated— rainforests produce over one-fifth of our oxygen, house diverse populations of both plants and animals and help maintain the climate. Although Benjy and Jonny recognize this, they did struggle with reconciling their environmental mission and satisfying their customers.
Concerned about reduced customer satisfaction as a result of their ecological quest, The Skinny Pancake founders reached out to Alan Newman, co-founder of Magic Hat Brewery, Seventh Generation and Gardener’s Supply Company, for advice. After speaking with Newman, Benjy Adler wrote in a blog post that he realized, “Our Nutella conundrum need not be a binary choice between our values or our guests. We can pursue our mission and improve the tastes our guests have come to love.” With this adjusted mindset and the affirmation of The Skinny Pancake’s mission, the Adlers entered into the search for an ecologically-viable (and delicious) substitute for Nutella.
They finally settled on a delectable alternative, which is listed as “Choco Nutty Budder” on the revamped menu. As this palm-oil-free chocolate hazelnut spread made its way onto the menu, the eco-friendly owners added 15 new menu items, abandoned 10, and changed 12. Their desire to rid The Skinny Pancake of Nutella created structural menu changes that gave the restaurant a facelift and encouraged other sustainable practices.
In a Burlington Free Press interview, Benjy Adler reported that, “In keeping with our mission, we dug deeper into sourcing locally. We will be featuring Vermont blueberries on our menu year-round now, and we’re finally joining the movement to celebrate organic Vermont kale in all its glory.” It seems that The Skinny Pancake’s anti-palm-oil kick motivated the owners/founders to embrace the Green Mountain State’s food riches and implement changes that create an enhanced local image for their business venture.
While the implementation of Choco Nutty Budder will soon be appearing on the menus of other Skinny Pancake branches (including the Montpelier, VT and Hanover, NH branches), it seems that there has also been a fairly recent reframing of The Skinny Pancake’s business model. After a company-wide customer survey, the higher-ups of Skinny Pancake discovered that patrons of the Hanover branch desired an expanded non-crêpe menu, a bigger selection of alcohol, and the implementation of wait staff instead of the semi-service model in which customers order at the register after waiting in line.
While the creation of a more formal dining experience has not been as explicitly pursued in the Vermont branches, the changes in the New Hampshire branch signify the versatility of The Skinny Pancake and the owners’ willingness to evolve to satisfy customers while simultaneously maintaining ecological values.
Although Benjy and Jonny were initially concerned with customer satisfaction after the abandonment of Nutella, University of Vermont freshman Sam Brady, who considers herself a Skinny Pancake regular, affirms the general scope of their decisions. In an interview with The Campus, she divulged, “I know a lot of people really love Nutella on their crêpes… but it’s not good for the environment. Skinny Pancake’s environmental choices are very important to me because it helps reduce environmental waste.”
The “waste” that Brady refers to can be categorized as the ecological destruction that results in restaurants ignoring the implications of the ingredients they choose and the way in which they prepare their food. With over 7,200 pounds of Nutella spread used in 2017 alone at The Skinny Pancake, environmentally-conscious customers like Brady see the benefit, and even the draw, of small changes that are intended to transcend the Vermont community and discourage the current production method of modified palm oil.
While some organizations such as Greenpeace claim a boycott will not necessarily affect the problematic mode of production, it is clear that more sustainable food practices will develop if local restaurants cultivate changes such as The Skinny Pancake has.
According to Dan Detora, the director of food services, the SGA has allotted $20,000 for Nutella alone this year in Middlebury’ dining halls. The deliberate choice of local food chains like Skinny Pancake to eliminate the palm oil product provides an example of sustainable food practices that could lead students and the college to follow in similar sustainable food activism.
(03/21/18 10:34pm)
We kids, the youth of America, those of us still figuring out who we are and what we want to do and whether or not we really do know anything after all, have more power than we could ever know. This is a realization I arrived at on the Cross Street Bridge, as I looked into the eyes of adults — many of them professors at the college — and saw fear and humility and pride, but certainly not a single answer.
No, it was we kids — planned by a few articulate and courageous 16- and 17-year-olds from Middlebury Union High — who had organized and led the Walkout Against Gun Violence, not because we were more Facebook adept or knew how to make better signs than the adults, but rather because we are burdened by the weight of innocence.
It is not we kids who have compromised our integrity by bending our will to NRA campaign donations, nor is it we who have stood aside complacently as these shootings have grown more frequent and more destructive. Yet when anyone sees their defenseless classmate shot, their body brutalized and their memory violated through systemic inaction and hollow, meaningless offers of thoughts and prayers, it is us. We have grown up in an America where toddlers are trained for active shooter drills, where kids halfway through puberty hear a loud sound in first period English and instinctively text their parents that they love them, where students have to stream out of their schools by the thousands, wiping the sleep from their eyes, to plead with the adults who make the decisions to change something so that they don’t have to worry about getting shot while they’re trying to figure out who to ask to prom. The urgent voices of David Hogg and Emma González and Theo Spackman-Wells cannot be silenced because they are loud and they are innocent and they are right. We are innocent because no one else is.
At 10 years old, I was a fifth grader who cared only about his dog and convincing his parents that he was responsible enough to scooter to school alone. It was also then that I got suspended from school for getting into a fight. A friend of mine — or someone I thought was a friend — had come up to me at recess and pushed me, hard. A few minutes later, he came back and did it again. When I saw him circling back a third time, I walked up to him and told him in no uncertain terms that if he pushed me again, I would punch him in the face.
He pushed me, I punched him, and 10 minutes later — recess a distant memory — all I could think about was how urgently my principal needed to invest in more comfortable chairs. I cried as I was lectured about the principles of verbal de-escalation and pacifism. I sobbed even more when I was taken home, ashamed of my actions and embarrassed that I had disappointed my parents. But we didn’t go home — instead, my Mom took me to my favorite restaurant, where she bought me a burger and a massive slab of chocolate cake. She told me that I had acted exactly as I should have. “When someone is mistreating you,” a mother explained to a boy whose tears had turned his cake molten, “you have no choice but to stand up for yourself, even if that means placing yourself in a precarious, vulnerable situation. Otherwise, nothing will ever change.”
It was that brilliant lesson, that there is good trouble and there is bad trouble and, boy, good trouble is sometimes just absolutely necessary. This guided me last Wednesday morning as I helped lead a contingent of hundreds of Middlebury students, faculty, high schoolers and townspeople to the Cross Street Bridge. As we stood there in silence for 17 minutes, many among us intentionally derelict from class or work, the snow-enveloped quiet punctured only by the honking of supportive cars driving by. I was young when my mother had delivered her chocolate-coated wisdom that day and I was still young on that bridge, but for the first time, my youth did feel like an obstacle but rather a platform of immense power. This was good trouble.
Kids don’t typically get involved in the political process. Maybe it’s because a lot of us can’t vote (or don’t know how to), maybe it’s because video games and first kisses are more appealing than tort reform, but whatever the case, it’s contributed to a perception of American youth as apathetic and uninvolved. This criticism is certainly well-founded; we definitely should vote more (it is in our interest, after all). I’m beginning to wonder, however, if the adults of America truly understood the sleeping animal they were prodding as they beseeched America’s youth to get more invested. This is not a small group — the census places the number of Americans between the ages of five and 24 at roughly 83 million — and it’s a group that is as exceptionally talented at harnessing crucial online mediums of communication as it is willing to bravely and boldly contest authority.
After all, if Parkland and the ensuing mass walkouts have proven anything, it’s that the young voices of America have as much of a capacity to resonate loudly and fiercely as they have an unparalleled ability to identify corruption and cowardice in our public servants (just look at Marco Rubio’s humiliation at the hands of Cameron Kasky). We’re fixed in our convictions as well, impossible to placate through phony gestures and empty promises. We certainly have our shortcomings — look no further than the typos in our tweets or the enthusiasm that can verge on aggression as we challenge our elected officials — but those shortcomings are strengths, for they serve as the clearest evidence of our undiluted passion and our inexperienced innocence.
There is little moderation in our policy demands — we have no re-election campaigns to run, no constituents to appease — and the result has been legislators and governors throughout the country, prodded by the thought of the extreme, willing to begin considering change. Since Parkland, there has been a surge of legislative debates over raising the minimum age to buy guns, the expansions of background checks, the banning of automatic weapons, and the closing of loopholes open to domestic abusers. What we lack in refinement, we make up for in resolve.
The push for gun control reform started long ago, led by principled adults and a select few kids often devastated by personal loss. Yet for a very long time, even after the horror of Newtown, nothing changed, with death and fear accepted as the norm. At Parkland, however, something shifted. For the first time, the kids who were forced to huddle in silent closets and locked classrooms for hours, wondering if the last thing they’d ever see was a dark muzzle emerging around a corner, refused to maintain that silence when they emerged into the light.
Something changed in the kids who survived, and as they spoke out, their stubborn activism refusing to evaporate, something clicked in thousands of other kids around the country. I am one of those kids. All of the students who walked out are those kids. For a long time, we’ve been quiet, hoping the adults would do their jobs and keep us safe while we learned how to ride our bikes and ask our crushes out. We aren’t naïve anymore. We know the impact our protests carry and the change our mobilization can effect. Not only can you count on us to stay involved, you can count on us to make our voices heard.
The kids are not all right. But we’re changing that.
(03/15/18 1:39am)
Professor Tom Root in the biology department spoke on Friday, March 2, to pods of students and professors from a plethora of scientific disciplines, including biology, neuroscience and psychology, about his lab’s prolific work on the California Two-Spot Octopus (Octopus bimaculoide), a species considered to be the white mouse of cephalopod research.
The title of the talk was “Strange Beauty,” a reference to a line in a poem by Arthur Clement Hilton. Titled “Octopus,” the poem intentionally caricatures the “eight-limbed and eight-handed” creature into a cunning marine monster, an entertaining but somewhat anthropomorphic characterization that has limited scientific accuracy.
From a neurobiological perspective, octopuses are of particular interest because the lobes and regions of their brain are remarkably similar to those in mammals, so any insights gleaned from research on octopuses could potentially allow for better understanding of the mammalian and human nervous system.
Research on cephalopod intelligence boomed after an influential 1992 study published in Science Magazine by researchers Fiorito and Scotto on observational learning in Octopus vulgaris, which focused on whether octopuses could learn by observing the actions and corresponding consequences of other octopuses.
Using positive and negative reinforcement associated with white and red balls, respectively, the researchers reported that the octopus learned from the example of an octopus on the other side of the glass to choose the correct ball, despite having been exposed to neither positive nor negative reinforcement associated with either ball.
Unfortunately, though this paper initially inspired much excitement in the field, subsequent follow-up attempts by other researchers, including that of the Root lab in 2008, to reproduce Fiorito and Scotto’s results were found unsuccessful, and the octopuses used in the original study were found to have been raised in unusually competitive and forced social environments, rendering the results unreproducible and flawed.
The Root lab then switched gears to the feeding behavior of Octopus bimaculoide, focusing on their association of preferred conditions or food with visual, auditory and chemical stimuli. The work of alumna Alexa Warburton ’10 expounded upon the ability of octopuses to learn to associate a visual sign such as “x” or “o” to preferred or non-preferred conditions in a variety of paradigms. In just one summer, the accuracy rate of octopuses finding their preferred dark chamber in a T-maze increased from 50 percent to over 80 percent.
Other paradigms such as the round maze and the Y-maze were also used to test how quickly and accurately the octopuses associated different images, sounds, motion and chemicals with their preferred conditions or source of food.
Later researchers in the Root lab tested the same visual stimuli in the tank that the octopuses inhabited to reduce the impact of other variables such as the observer effect. Throughout the past decade, the work of various students in the Root lab showed that octopuses preferred dimly lighted areas and tended to attack prey more often in the presence of red colors, contrasting colors, polarized light and a chemical called proline that is often used in the fishing industry.
Cece Wheeler ’19 started working in the octopus lab this spring.
“Twice a week I go into the lab and tie a fiddler crab to a piece of fishing wire, and then lower that into the octopus tank to see if I can get one of the octopuses to come out overtop different types of substrates that I’ve laid down,” she said. “As [the octopuses] move onto the substrate, they camouflage themselves to it, typically in a uniform, mottled or disturbance pattern in response to the different patterns of substrate.”
A future area of research for the Root lab lies in the development of camouflage in baby octopuses, which often begins immediately after birth.
“The lab has done some past work with learning, but I think the consensus now is that it’s hard to judge how an animal is making decisions without understanding the basics of how they are receiving and interpreting information from the world around them,” Wheeler said. “Right now I’m starting work with camouflage behaviors. I want to know more about what environmental cues initiate different camouflage patterns. There are a lot of different aspects to an octopus’ surroundings, and I’m curious as to which ones it is responding to when it camouflages itself.”
Instead of rationalizing octopus behavior through a human lens, such an approach attempts to understand the decision-making process of octopuses through examining their perception of the world.
“All of the our animals are juveniles right now, so they aren’t full grown, and some are slightly bigger than others,” Wheeler said. “They also like to hide in flower pots, behind bricks, or under pieces of coral, so it’s kind of tricky figuring out how to lure them out effectively. I also record everything on a video camera so I can go back and look at the footage later. Hopefully I will be able to categorize camouflage responses to different substrate patterns, and come up with an analysis of that data this spring.”
(03/14/18 11:53pm)
MIDDLEBURY — Deceptively beautiful, the Yellow iris (Iris pseudacorus), a vibrant yellow flower that looks like it could belong in a cheerful garden, is actually a dangerous invasive species that is classified by the Vermont Agency of Agriculture as a Class B Noxious Weed. According to the Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group, the yellow iris is “a perennial that grows to a height of 1 to 3 feet, with grassy or sword-like leaves and showy, lemon-yellow flowers from May to July.” The yellow iris is a native plant of Europe, and can be found growing along the edges of lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams, and immersed in water up to 25 cm (10 in.) deep.
So why is this beautiful flower a danger to wildlife, especially in Lake Champlain’s wetland area and flood plains forest areas in Vermont? The yellow iris grows at an accelerated pace that threatens to out-compete surrounding native species. This plant reproduces through rhizomes and seeds, which are carried down waterways, and spread rapidly. According to the Lewis Creek Association, here in Vermont, the “Lower Thorp Brook is a diverse beaver-influenced corridor, and serves as the primary iris seed source for the wetlands at its confluence with Lake Champlain.” The yellow iris’ rhizomes create a thick mat that prevents other wildlife’s seeds from germinating. This dense growth of the iris can clog irritation systems and streams and, by trapping sediment in the roots, can narrow waterways.
One plant — the native green arrow arum (Peltandra virginica) — is in direct competition with the Yellow iris. The arrow arum is an important source of food for the wood duck. The Yellow iris also crowds out other vital aquatic plants, such as cattails and other native irises. This causes a lack of space, nesting areas and accessible food sources for many native wildlife and fish.
In Vermont, the Yellow iris is becoming increasingly more present in various wetlands and bodies of water in the Lake Champlain watershed that are considered “priority natural communities.” According to the Lewis Creek Association, “these wetlands are considered state waters, comprising a fifty-three acre matrix of wetland natural communities, whose value has been acknowledged by VT DEC, VT FWD Natural Heritage Program and TNC experts. The lake-influenced lower reaches of Lewis Creek contain important floodplain forests, buttonbush swamps and a range of state significant emergent communities.”
The yellow iris not only grows quickly, it is also adaptable to grow in many different ecosystems. Vtinvasives.org warns, “It grows well in freshwater wetlands and can tolerate high acidity. In its native habitat, Iris pseudacorus can tolerate living in the upper zones of salt marshes, where it may be surrounded by saline water.” Due to this flexibility, the yellow iris has been able to thrive and continues to spread in many areas across the United States. In addition, the yellow iris is toxic to all livestock and grazing animals, and contains toxins that cause minor skin irritation to humans.
To tackle this pressing issue, the Lewis Creek Association (LCA) began a long-term project in 2015 to identify high concentrations of yellow iris and remove iris when possible. According to www.lewiscreek.org, “LCA received a grant from LCBP [Lake Champlain Basin Program] to continue this work in 2017, which will: 1. Fund the preparation of a management plan and treatment of yellow iris in the lower Thorp Brook areas, with a targeted 90 percent reduction of iris. 2. Meet with professional experts and landowners in Lower Lewis Creek (a priority Natural Heritage area with increasing high yellow iris infestation levels) to discuss and identify mutually agreeable yellow iris control options.”
In order to remove the yellow iris from its location, and prevent it from spreading, it must be manually dug out, or, in certain cases, an herbicide treatment has been proven successful. Through the grant given to LCA by the LCBP, the Lewis Creek Association has been able to “quantify current levels of infestation, characterize the rate of spread and behavior of the exotic species at both a landscape level and within priority natural communities and identify best control methods by evaluating available control options including manual and herbicide-based control.”
Moving forward, “This year’s control work builds upon two seasons of studying and mapping iris infestation, threat and spread; and validating control methods in the lower reaches of Thorp Brook,” according to Krista Hoffsis, Program Coordinator of LCA.
The LCA is avidly working towards the removal of the Yellow iris, due to its devastating effects upon priority natural communities in the Lake Champlain wetlands and flood plain forests of Champlain direct drainage stream. Through access to grants and hard work from volunteers and employees, the LCA is in the process of mapping survey areas impacted by the yellow iris, tracking growth patterns and occurrences, completing site assessments and utilizing GPS points and flagging (LCA Iris Final Report).
The battle over the yellow iris and other invasive species rages on, but through dedication and commitment, hopefully the Lake Champlain area will soon be free of the iris’ threat to the gorgeous local wildlife that is vital to Vermont’s natural splendor.
(03/08/18 1:03am)
MONTPELIER — On Wednesday, Feb. 21, the ban on holding or participating in coyote-killing tournaments passed the Vermont House on a vote of 79–45. It now sits in the Senate Natural Resources Committee for further action. The ban was included as an amendment in a major bill on fish and wildlife that passed the House.
Under the amendment, penalties for violation of the ban will include a fine up to $1,000 and 60 days in jail for first-time offenders and a fine of $4,000 for second-time offenders. In deciding whether to support or remove the ban, the House’s debate moved beyond concerns about protecting the coyote population. It also touched upon the social interactions of wild animals with Vermont citizens in general and the significance of hunting culture in the state.
Republican Representative Brian Smith, who has resided and advocated in the small town of Derby in Orleans County, has firsthand concerns about the growing population of coyotes in Vermont and the potential danger brought by the close proximity of coyotes to human beings in rural areas. Smith said that he recently shot a coyote only 400 yards behind a deer at the back of his house.
“There are many more [coyotes] than there used to be ten years ago,” said Rep. Smith. “I can hear them within 500 yards of my house, and it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.”
Known to be one of the smartest and most cunning creatures in Vermont, coyotes “eat everything,” “live everywhere” and often howl at night, leaving people with a mystical yet haunting sound.
“Once in a while, one starts screaming and the other will get into fights with its brothers. And the parents get in and they all start howling at each other,” Rep. Smith said. “Or they will get a baby rabbit or a dead raccoon. And they will fight over it. You never know what they are doing.”
Smith believes there are too many coyotes right now and that they do not contribute to the overall ecosystem in any ways other than devouring animals and getting into the garbage.
“There are only a few, very very few, groups that hunt these coyotes and create contests,” Rep. Smith noted. “I don’t see any harm in 25 or 30 coyotes going out or having a fun day or fun weekend of hunting. It’s not affecting anybody.”
With two or three courses during the winter, these coyote-killing competitions are not constant and usually last for one day or one weekend. In comparison to “real hunts,” Smith regards the coyote tournaments as more of a social event or an occasion for people to gather together.
“I don’t believe the non-hunting community understands what these hunts are all about: a bunch of real good people that are very conscientious sportsmen,” Smith said. “They are hunting an animal that is a lot smarter than they are. So the chances of succeeding are very, very slim. It makes for a pretty good gathering of a good bunch of people.”
In contrast, Rep. David Deen, the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife, supports the ban. “This type of contest violates the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation that has guided our actions in wildlife conservation since the mid 1800s,” said Rep. Deen.
The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation that Deen mentioned was set in the 1800s by hunters and anglers to set certain limits in order to manage wild habitats and protect wildlife.
“The particular principal violated would be: ‘wanton waste of killing an animal must have a purpose and the animal should be used.’ A dead coyote stacked to see whose pile is the highest is not appropriate use of the animal,” Deen said.
According to the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department website, eastern coyotes are not only “incredibly adaptable” as relative newcomers to Vermont, but have also become “successful predators” among the established fauna of Vermont.
“They have become one of the top predators and that means they have a vital role in a healthy ecosystem,” Rep. Deen said.
While the original penalty section of the bill includes a maximum 60 days in jail, it was later removed in the final approved version on Thursday afternoon. Although Deen acknowledged the shortage of time in preparing for the jail-time penalty, he also stressed the seriousness of the crime behind coyote-killing competitions.
However, some House members disagree with the proposed degree of punishment. In an article in Valley News, supporter of the ban Rep. Susan Buckholz expressed her disapproval at the tough penalty of the bill. “This is not something that the judiciary and corrections should have to deal with,” Rep. Buckholz said in an interview. “This is something new, and an animal that you can take out any time during the year. To send somebody to jail for this is beyond me.”
Vermont Public Radio estimated that there are 6,000 to 9,000 coyotes in Vermont. Prior to the ban, there were no time restrictions for hunting them within the state. While some argue that there is a potential danger imposed by the growing population of coyotes and that there is a social pleasure in gathering during these competitions, others aim for an ecosystem that is protected more greatly by wildlife conservation and a paradigm shift of the hunting culture in Vermont.
(02/22/18 2:35am)
On Friday Feb. 16, 25-year-old Grace Kelly enchanted the campus with the passion of an old soul mixed with the dynamism and energetic movement of youth. She dressed in patterned leggings, a crop-top and her signature highlighted hair to matches her electric personality. She was joined by her quartet of pianist David Linard, bassist Julia Pederson and drummer Connor Kent.
As the lights dimmed and a full house applauded her greetings, she picked up her saxophone and began to dance in sync to her notes and the keys of her fellow performers.
Kelly started with an upbeat jazz rendition that paired well with the exuberance with which she welcomed the audience, shared her feeling of connection with the Robinson Concert Hall, and noted how grateful she was that her parents drove from Massachusetts to watch her perform.
She sang the lyrics of her songs, “Count on Me” and the title track of her new album, “Trying to Figure It Out”, with the passion and honesty of an individual who wants internal and worldly peace in a world filled with doubts, heartbreak and terror. Her magnetic delivery of the songs kept the audience swaying silently, clicking their fingers along with her and smiling at her lyrics.
Kelly said that her songs are about “people coming together and strangers becoming friends.”
As she moved into another personal song with music from the comedian Charlie Chaplin, I began to empathize with her. This song was of a lighter quality and softly carried her the performance forward. The sensitivity of her voice as she talked to individuals who “needed more light today” was joined only by the chords of Linard’s piano.
“Her ability to connect with the audience, irrespective of their life experiences and age makes her special,” a community member said.
Without a doubt, Kelly’s influences are as extensive as her musical repertoire. From the zesty tunes of “Lemons Make Lemonade” to the smoothness of a ballad dedicated to her father, the audience was absorbed in her delivery, spirit and vitality. To send her audience home dancing, she played high strung notes. She came back by popular demand to close with a tune familiar to all, “You Are My Sunshine.”
A resident Bostonian, Kelly grew up in a family of classical musicians and attended Berklee College of Music. After touring Europe extensively over the past year, she asked that the audience stay tuned for her 11th album on PledgeMusic that she will be broadcasting online. The music she hopes to write is about the people who inspire her and all her supporters.
In an effort to bring jazz to a younger audience, Kelly launched a new weekly video series called “Grace Kelly PopUp” on social media in February 2017, which has already racked up over one million views.
After the many standing ovations Kelly received on Friday, she held a jazz workshop for the budding jazz musicians of the college the following day.
“Follow your passion and chase your dreams relentlessly,” Kelly told the Middlebury students on attendance.” It was a sentiment her parents often told her and it continues to animate her artistic life.
(02/22/18 2:27am)
Pamela Sands, a long-time postal clerk at the college, died last Tuesday at her home after a brief illness. Sands worked at the college for over 34 years and was well known throughout the Middlebury community for her position at the student mail center. She was 54.
Sands was born in Germany in 1963 to Thomas Francis Sands Sr. and Angela Bonita (Vieland) Sands. She began working at Middlebury in 1983 as a temporary postal clerk and was promoted to full-time postal clerk five years later. In 2010 Sands was inducted into the college’s 25-Year Club, which celebrates members of the college’s staff and faculty that have worked at the college for 25 years.
Throughout her tenure at the college, Sands forged close relationships with her co-workers, many of whom were Middlebury students.
“When we learned of her passing, Nicole [Duquette] and I gathered with our student workers to share stories, memories, funny moments and tears. We are family. She was family,” said Jacki Galenkamp, mail center supervisor, in an email to faculty and staff. Nicole Duquette is also a clerk in the mail center. “She would never go to graduation because it was too hard for her to say goodbye. So, from the many students and coworkers whose lives you touched, we say ‘see you later Pam!’”
Student postal clerk Lily Wilson ’18, who worked with Sands for three years, added that she always took a genuine interest in hers and other student workers’ lives.
“Pam ended up being one of the sweetest and kindest people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing at Middlebury,” Wilson said. “It’s hard to explain Pam to people who didn’t know her: why it’s funny how often she used hand sanitizer, how absurd it is that she came up to us searching the shelves to tickle us, her hilarious one-liners to chirp us, her love of playing matchmaker for all the mailroom employees. She was one of those people with such a unique personality that she can’t be summed up in just a few sentences.”
Sands is predeceased by her parents and her son, Christopher Ryan. She is survived by her significant other Michael Ryan and her sisters, lead mail service technician at the college Patty Murray and her husband Mark, and Johanna Freihofer and her husband Ed of Florida.
Friends and family of Sands celebrated her life at the Middlebury American Legion on Monday. Duqette, Galenkamp and 20 past and present student mailroom employees attended the service, where they met Sands’s family and shared stories and memories.
Sands was very fond of animals and her family requests that contributions be made in her honor to the Homeward Bound Addison County Humane Society at 236 Boardman Street, Middlebury, VT 05753.
“Her dream was to own a big house and provide a home for all cats in need,” Galenkamp said.
Donations can be made online at https://www.homewardboundanimals.org/donate/.
