THE BELFIELD BANTER - BACK TO SCHOOL EDDITION AUGUST 20TH | BANTER PUBLICATIONS | ISSUE I
Lost in Rebecca Solnit By Kate Cheng ‘26
If you’re new to St. Anne’s and are unacquainted with Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, rest assured you’ll soon find it popping up everywhere. Chapel quotes and sermons are full of its influence, and it serves as the unofficial textbook of senior year, proudly occupying the most prominent place on the summer reading list. Throughout my days as an underclassman, I anxiously anticipated the day when it would finally be my turn to read this reportedly sagacious work. That day has come and passed. I made my way through the 200 or so pages of Solnit’s prose in early June, eager to see what it had to offer. Accompanied by a pen for annotating, I finished the book in six days. Looking back through my copy now, I found one spot where I paused about midway through the book to note my thoughts about it. I wrote: “...too many commas and distracted sentences it’s so hard for me to read. Maybe it’s just me but the style is rather annoying and confusing.” A little harsh, perhaps, but true. I would understand if this writing style was intentional—it does a fantastic job of mimicking the human mind lost in its own thoughts. Solnit is able to cram so many thoughts and words into each sentence, but the flipside is that the text becomes easily tangled and bogged down by the very words intended to lift it up. There are moments where Solnit’s mastery of language shines through. Her vibrant descriptions of shades of blue, the darkness of the desert, or the thrilling rush of a thunderstorm create a melting pot of wonderful nouns, verbs, and adjectives. However, while
Women are the Kind of People that People Come Out Of By Grace Browne ‘28
“All of Christ for All of Life” is the motto of The Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s caption on his recent X repost. The repost is a 7-minute video, originally aired by CNN and then reposted by Canon Press, a media press in Moscow, Idaho associated with CREC. The video interviews Doug Wilson, the senior pastor of Christ Church in Idaho and the founder of the CREC, along with other pastors and members of the church. In the interview, members shared their opinions that the US government should cease to be secular, sodomy (non-reproductive sex, often referring to homosexual intimacy) should be illegalized, and that women should lose the right to vote. Throughout the nation, there are around 150 churches associated with the CREC, with 18,000 congregants. Recently, a church opened in Washington D.C. meant specifically to serve members of the Trump Administration, including Hegseth. On the church’s first Sunday service, the Defense Secretary was in attendance. To members of the CREC, Hegseth is hailed as an inspiration. In Christianity Today, it was reported that “children in the pews whispered excitedly when Hegseth entered, and the defense secretary was mobbed by supporters as he left