The College Hill Independent — Vol 52 Issue 3

01 LUCHADORA

Kayla Carabes R'26

Finbar

MANAGING EDITORS

Benjamin Flaumenhaft

Nahye Lee

Kendall Ricks

WEEK IN REVIEW

Maria Gomberg

ARTS

Lucas Friedman-Spring

Martina Herman

Gabriella Miranda

EPHEMERA

Heidi Lin

Sara Parulekar

FEATURES

Sebastian Botero

Chloe Costa Baker

Peter Zettl

LITERARY

Liliana Greyf

Ayla Tosun

Georgia Turman

METRO

Jackie Dean

Elena Jiang

Mikayla Kennedy

METABOLICS

Annelie Delgado

Evan Gray-Williams

Evan Li

SCIENCE + TECH

Jolie Barnard

Selim Kutlu

Lila Rosen

SCHEMA

Paulina Gąsiorowska

Cindy Li

WORLD

Emilie Guan

Sabine Jimenez-Williams

Andrea Li

DEAR INDY

Angela Lian

BULLETIN BOARD

Caiden Demundo

Yumna Hussen

Sarya Baran KılıÇ

DESIGN EDITORS

Mary-Elizabeth Boatey

Kay Kim

Seoyeon Kweon

DESIGNERS

Isabella Castro

Hongrui Guan

Rose Holdbrook

Esoo Kim

Jennifer Kim

Jordan Kinley

Selim Kutlu

Jennie Kwon

Hyunjo Lee

Soohyun Lee

Chelsea Liu

Kayla Randolph

Lea Seo

Liz Sepulveda

Anna Wang

Caleb Wu

STAFF WRITERS

Layla Ahmed Tanvi Anand

Cameron Calonzo

Megan Chan

Nan Dickerson

Ray Eggerts

Jacob Hansen

Maxwell Hawkins

Mohamed Amine Jaoudi

Annie Johnson

Nadia Mazonson

Keya Mehra

Naomi Nesmith

Nikolaos

Nikolopouslos

Alya Nimis-Ibrahim

Nora Rowe

Alex Sayette

Samdol Sichoe

Luca Suarez

Santino Suarez

Mahliat Tamrat

Ben Underwood

Ellie Wu

Jodie Yan

ALUMNI COORDINATOR

Peter Zettl

SOCIAL CHAIRS

Raamina Chowdhury

Lila Rosen

Alex Sayette

ILLUSTRATION EDITORS

Selim Kutlu

Benjamin Natan

Serena Yu

ILLUSTRATORS

Abby Berwick

Rosemary Brantley

Rosalia Gonzalez Pousa

Koji Hellman

Jiwon Lim

Ellie Lin

Megha Nambiar

Ruby Nemeroff

Meri Sanders

Angelina So

Luna Tobar

Naomi Zaro

Cora Zeng

Alena Zhang

Faith Zhao

COPY CHIEF

Eric Ma

COPY EDITORS

Jordan Coutts

Mackenzie Ellis

Kainalu Faucher

Lucie Huang

Indy Nijjar

Camilla Rodriguez

Zeke Tesler

Sasha Watson

WEB EDITORS

Casey Gao

Erin Min

WEB DESIGNERS

Maja Mishevska

Amy Pan

Dominic Park

Joy Zou

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITORS

Olivia Falk

Sylvie Foster

Isabel Hahn

Avery Reinhold

Eurie Seo

SENIOR EDITORS

Jolie Barnard

Nan Dickerson

Paulina Gąsiorowska

Sabine Jimenez-Williams

Angela Lian

Demundo, Sarya Baran Kı lıÇ

B: Hey guys. I just. I’ve been thinking about the fact that the thing, for me at least, or, like, the thing that I think is most confusing to me right now is that feeling that you can’t stop having something to say about one, particular person.

K: yes yes yes omg same! like no i was literally just thinking about this. it’s like when you know you’ve beaten the dead horse to glue but like what if we missed something?

B: Yasss. I think the problem, or not problem, but what’s interesting is that the gossipee is constituted by the gossip so, like, it’s the gossip who keeps on moving the line. Does that make sense?

K: recently i’ve been trying to talk less shit. i’m thinking about giving up gossip for lent next year.

B: Thank you. I feel a lot of people wouldn’t do that. I mean don’t you think it’s really hip to be like ooooh gossip is good for us?

K: yeah everyone’s talking about gossip/chisme/shit talk, but no one really talks their shit anymore yk?? like we’re all circling the object

B: Maybe we should pick an object?

K: oooooh who?

B: I’ve been having a lot to say about my friend’s friend who has a handful of frustrating verbal habits. And also my German professor.

K: i’m scared. tell me about your friend’s friend.

B: What am I allowed to tell you? Wait, can we talk shit in the FTE?

K: yeah, honestly, maybe not.

B: Okay, yeah. What should we put in the FTE?

MVP

Mary-Elizabeth Boatey

Anna Wang

DEVELOPMENT

COORDINATORS

Cindy Li

Peter Zettl

FINANCIAL COORDINATORS

Zak Hashi

Simon Yang

*Our Beloved Staff

MISSION STATEMENT

Plum Luard

Nadia Mazonson

Talia Reiss

Luca Suarez

OUTREACH AND INCLUSION

COORDINATORS

Raamina Chowdhury

Naomi Nesmith

The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Our paper is distributed throughout the East Side, Downtown, and online. The Indy also functions as an open, leftist, consciousness-raising workshop for writers and artists, and from this collaborative space we publish 20 pages of politically-engaged and thoughtful content once a week. We want to create work that is generative for and accountable to the Providence community—a commitment that needs consistent and persistent attention.

spanish [mh]

Toda la mismidad es en pura, ya que la veracidad de acterística del ser, de tal forma más verdadera que la de la También se puede llamar verdad que se cree realmente, de dad más verdadera, en esta creencia que es verdadera en na en su verdad, y aun entonces propia y no ajena.

While the Indy is predominantly financed by Brown, we independently fundraise to support a stipend program to compensate staff who need financial support, which the University refuses to provide. Beyond making both the spaces we occupy and the creation process more accessible, we must also work to make our writing legible and relevant to our readers.

The Indy strives to disrupt dominant narratives of power. We reject content that perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism and/ or classism. We aim to produce work that is abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist, and we want to generate spaces for radical thought, care, and futures. Though these lists are not exhaustive, we challenge each other to be intentional and self-critical within and beyond the workshop setting, and to find beauty and sustenance in creating and working together.

spanish [mmm]

Existencia total (Absolutamente verdad)

Existencia-como-Autenticidad

Fe en su existencia (puro, infinito, eternal)

Manera de existencia (Corroboración de la existencia por la capacidad de ser precisamente subjetivo)

visual [mj]

Absolute Being (Unconditionally true)

Mode of existence (proves its being through its specific subjective faculties) Truthful Belief in its existence (honest, infinite, eternal) Being-as-Truth

visual [es]

[mh]

chinese [zy]

因万物之真皆源于其自我，自我本身便为最纯净真理。由 此：世上并无真理更真于自我。

信仰，若其具有至诚内涵，亦可定性为真理。信仰之真故其 在，之其永恒故其真。永恒亦为自我所属而非为它者所有。

si misma una verdad de cada cosa es una carforma que no hay verdad mismidad.

verdad a aquello en lo modo que no hay veresta verdad, que aquella en el ser, y que es eterentonces la eternidad es ↔

visual [sy]

persian [ha]

For this translation, I was thinking a lot about materiality—specifically in the context of paint and its “purpose.” How is paint most authentic? I began with “Absolutamente verdad” (an absolute truth): a dollop of paint. Raw material. Then, a wash of paint: The pigment begins to be used in the way it is “intended.” This is “Existencia-como-Autencidad” (existence-as-authenticity): The material’s use becomes a justification for its existence. Still, this is vague and largely without specificity: The material is manipulated but does not move into representation. Finally, thinking about the “y/o” (and/or) transition, I combined “Manera de existencia” and “Fe en su existencia” into one form. Here, the paint both asserts its material form and material purpose. This is to say, it references its origin by demonstrating its way of existing (Manera de existencia) as a tube of paint, which corroborates its existence by means of being a specific object found outside of the site of the page. Simultaneously, the paint is used in a representational manner—for me a kind of teleological affirmation where the paint is used toward its preordained purpose (manipulation into an image).

TRANSLATIONS OF IBN SINA’S 11TH CENTURY “PROOF OF THE TRUTHFUL”

c A Persian tradition relates that during Alexander the Great’s systematic destruction of the Achaemenid Empire in the fourth century BCE, he had all the great ancient Persian books translated into Greek and then destroyed. In this account, the works of the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (d. 322 BCE) are translations of Persian texts. This story circulated during the Abbasid Caliphate (750 CE to 1258 CE), and translating the Greek texts into Arabic became an act of piety, restoring the original Persian wisdom.

Modern scholarship generally agrees that Classical Greek texts were first transmitted to Arabic- and Persian-speaking communities via networks of translation. For example, Aristotle wrote his canonical texts from within a Greek polytheistic culture. Those texts were then translated into Syriac by Christians between the fifth and eighth centuries CE, then translated into Arabic as part of a state-sponsored translation movement centered in Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate, and then translated into Latin in Muslim-controlled Andalusia during the 12th and 13th centuries. Aristotle’s texts were then transmitted throughout the rest of Western Europe via the Latin translation. I mention the religious backgrounds of the translators in this chain because it is remarkable that the writing of Aristotle, a polytheist, was embraced by thinkers whose philosophy is based fundamentally on the Islamic concept of monotheism, or tawḥīd In 11th century Baghdad, Aristotle became a monotheist—not through the formal act of translation, but because of the cultural and historical context in which he was read.

How is it possible that a philosopher whose belief system appears to contradict tawḥīd might be embraced as “The First Teacher” by Islamic scholars? In fact, I find that their ability to discern in Aristotle’s work a truth compelling enough to transmit across languages and centuries resonates with the concept of tawḥīd. I might translate tawḥīd as Oneness, or the Oneness of

english [tx]

Dao is the necessity underlying all things; Dao is the essence crystallized in the myriad beings.

Therefore, Dao is the utmost reality. Whatever stands in truth and uprightness may rightly be called Dao.

Does such reality not transcend all things?

That which is worthy of trust and true in itself constitutes the true Dao; That which endures and does not pass away constitutes the eternal Dao; And this enduring Dao ultimately, becomes the Dao one lives as one’s own.

Overall, the translation process was quite smooth. This is largely because the text I received (in classical Chinese) aligns closely with its philosophical context. Yet this very alignment also produces a distinctive rhythm and poetic quality shaped by the constraints of the language itself, and I felt reluctant to imitate that style clumsily with my own limited ability. For that reason, I first translated the text to vernacular Chinese before translating it into English.

Personally, the translation presented two main difficulties. First, I tried to introduce a mild sense of estrangement—both structurally and linguistically—in order to disturb the natural smoothness of English. Enjambment, longer-syllable words, and occasional repetition were small attempts in this direction. The aim was to create moments of cognitive hesitation, echoing the text’s introspective and contemplative character and mirroring its slow, deliberate unfolding.

The second difficulty lies in translating the word 信然.” This word possesses a dynamic quality. It seems to shift from a form of socially recognized credibility toward a deeper, internal confirmation. In the final translation, I tried to echo this emphasis and progression by repeating the plosive “t” sound in the sequence “worthy – trust – true – self.”

God, or as a Oneness of Truth, or as the idea that a message, even after its refraction through the lenses of interpretation and translation, might maintain some essential meaning. Some essential truth survives each subsequent subjective manipulation of the text.

In the following pages, we, a group of translators and Indy editors, construct chains of translations of a short section of Al-Nijāt, a philosophical work by the Persian philosopher and physician Ibn Sina (Latinized as Avicenna, d. 1037). The section we have translated is a small piece of Ibn Sina’s “Proof of the Truthful” (burhān al-ṣiddīqīn), a philosophical proof of God’s existence. Ibn Sina was greatly inspired by Aristotle, whom he called “The First Teacher” (al-muʿallim al-awwal). Notably, when reading Aristotle, Ibn Sina would have been removed from the original texts by two degrees of translation. Thus, the original Arabic text of Al-Nijāt is complicated by this history of translation. The Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Latinized as Averroes, d. 1198), argued that Ibn Sina’s reliance on faulty Arabic translations of Aristotle diminished his ability to engage effectively with the latter’s arguments. This tension between fidelity to an original and interpretive transformation forms the conceptual backdrop for our own experiment in translation.

To build our web of translations, we reached out to Indy community members, asking them to indicate the languages between which they could translate. We constructed translation chains based on this information. Translators were told only that the text they received was a “philosophical text” and were asked to interpret it as they understood it. We chose to provide minimal context in the hopes that the personal experience and background of each translator would come through in each translation.

Might there be some truth transcendent enough to endure this many interpretations and reinterpretations of the text?

何必然者曰道也

万物精者其道也

故无实实于道也

且所正信称道也

岂则实甚此道也

其信然为正道也

其正常为永道也

其永唯为己道也

( TEXT ALYA SOPHIA NIMIS-IBRAHIM DESIGN MARY-ELIZABETH BOATEY & ANNA WANG )

Yell thudhert yetsillin ilmend guimannis, atsin iwimi nassawall thidhets thaherrith. Alla khattar, oulash thidhets youggaren thinna attghawssa yetsillin illmend bbazzaliss. Annachthagui dhayen yaanan ouk thighawsiwin ghef ayig nats ammen. Ghar thaggara bbawal, adnini belli “thidets” thaheqqanith, tsinna yessaan azzal i levdha. Ouyerna azzal agui inness yetswa khelkked illmend nel kkima ithessaa athghawssa yagui, machi al kkima ized mouddet ath ghawsiwin ized yezzin.

Taqbaylit, an Amazigh language indigenous to the Kabyle people of Algeria, is written above using a Latin script. While the government has made massive strides with integrating Tifinagh—the writing system traditionally employed for Tamazight—into the educational curriculum of Algeria’s youth, Taqbaylit in the Latin script is representative of the diasporic experience: it is a coalescence of tradition and 21st century life. Orality and preserving Taqbaylit remains central to the Kabylie identity, even across oceans.

Harek maujood, apne aap me, suda such he, kyuki harek cheez ka asliat he ohdi banai hoi maujoodgi di khaasiat, isliye “Necessary

Existent” to vadha such koi nai hai । Ate “such” ohnu vi kai sakde jisdi maujoodgi vich sahi tara da vishvaas he, ate jisdi shuddhta sadivi hai, ate jisdi sadivita apne aap caarn hai, kise hor caarn nahi ਹਰੇਕ ਮੌਜੂਦ,

was with God,

( In the beginning was

was God”)

Yo this is actually way harder than I thought it would be. I’m here, sitting down and staring at each word, trying to figure out which word in my limited-to-everyday-words Punjabi vocabulary works best. The method I found most effective was just speaking to myself in Punjabi, but that ended up making words sound unnatural for some reason, like when you say “new” a lot of times. It just doesn’t sound right anymore. Sometimes, there’s not even a direct translation, which makes things a tad challenging... At first, I planned to do Hindi along with Punjabi, but after translating this into Punjabi, I’ve realized I don’t have the lexicon to do the text justice in Hindi. Plus, I can only speak in Hindi, which would lead to a lot of saying words out loud to sound out what the Romanized transliteration would be... I think I’ll pass.

Kaj “vera” bi tio, kies ekziston oni ne ekzistas vero pli vera ol tio, kies ekziston kies ĝusteco estas eterna, co ŝuldiĝas al si mem,

Wow this took forever, and I took a few creative liberties to make it Esperanto-like. Esperanto is a very “productive” language, meaning that it suffixes liberally to change the meaning of root words. For example, “ĝuste” means right, or correct, while the addition of “-ec-” connotes the abstract quality of. So, “ĝusteco” might translate to something like the quality of being correct, or, correctness. This type of productive morphology means that there is a lot of creativity inherent to translating abstract ideas. For example, in the original sentence—“Every existent, necessary in itself, is pure truth”—the adjective existent functions as a noun through “substantivization,” a linguistic

esperanto [jp]

Week In Memoriam

IN REMEMBRANCE OF PROVIDENCE ESTABLISHMENTS BEFORE MY TIME.

c Dearly beloved,

It was only a few weeks ago that we all gathered, at this here weekly comedy column, to wish a peaceful departure to Louis Family Restaurant. May its soul rest in perpetuity, serving overcooked eggs and large hunks of ham to G-d’s most special angels. It was wonderful to see you all there celebrating the hard work and service to the community of a College Hill mainstay. I thank my devoted readership from the bottom of my heart for sharing in remembrance.

Today, however, we are gathered for a slightly different reason. As for the publication of my original obituary, it has been called to my attention that I am a poser. I have only lived in Providence since August of 2022—almost 400 years since its establishment, and in the time of this city’s existence as a midsized, Northeast, up-and-coming hipster quarter, hundreds of local businesses have closed their doors to their devoted customers. I have FAILED to address all of these closures, so I have come to make amends. I thank my devoted readership from the bottom of my heart for sharing in understanding.

In the name of all of these special businesses—bars, coffee shops, household improvement cooperatives, strip malls, restaurants, ‘eateries,’ holes-in-the-wall (figure of speech), and holes-in-the-wall (literal)—I have produced the following StupidListicle™. I thank my devoted readership for LISTening.

+++

1. Ron’s Spaghetti House, George Washington Hwy, Rt 116, Smithfield, 02917. Have you ever been on your way to catch a commuter flight from North Central State Airport and found yourself a little peckish for pasta? Back in the day, it would have been very easy to satisfy that hankering. Smack-dab between the two competing Dunkins on Rt 116, one used to find a no-frills all-business restaurant serving primarily overcooked spaghetti. Proudly attending to the desires of Rhode Island’s pickiest eaters, Ron’s went through buckets of noodles and balls akimbo. An anonymous user on the blog RetroRI remembers RSH nostalgically: “I used to work there in the kitchen and I can remember the owner Ron used to come in smelling like joop cologne lol weird how I can remember that lol miss that place.”

ekzistaĵo estas pura vero, afero estas la specikiu establiĝis por ĝi; pli vera ol la Necesa ankaŭ povas deskrioni ĝuste kredas; tial vera (en ĉi tiu senco) oni ĝuste kredas, kaj eterna, kaj kies eternemem, ne al alia.

I don’t know what a joop is, and I don’t care to find out, but what I do know is that any house full of spaghetti is a house of mine.

2. Bob Pezzullo’s Chalet, 1021 Mineral Spring Ave, North Providence, 02860. Not much is remembered about Bob or his chalet, but it seems to have been fancy enough to serve veal parmigiana and something called a “steak mama.” Today it is a Mexican restaurant, with laminated menus, giant margaritas, “papas locas,” and a big plastic house in the middle of the chalet-shaped dining room.

3. Rocky Point State Park. Today, if you want to ride a rickety rollercoaster, you have to take a 65-mile voyage to Six Flags New England. Back in the day, we had rickety roller coaster at home. Rocky Point had been tossing and jerking riders on substandard coasters since 1847, always to much fanfare and lots of barf. Actually, Barf seems to have been a key feature of the Rocky Point experience. About 80% of the nostalgic New Englanders I could find reminiscing across Facebook comments and blog posts remember an

unfriendly combination of greasy East Coast fair food (prepared using vegetable shortening, rather than oil, no less), and dinky rides with long lines under the scorching summer sun. I’ll let a commenter, who goes by LandlordJerry on Blogger, paint the picture: “Awww I went every year, ate clam cakes and chowder then road [sic] the Tilt a whirl. You can imagine the rest.”

4. Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips, Park Ave, Cranston, 02905. Arthur Treacher’s was a mediocre chain serving fish and chips on the wrong side of various highways across the country. Although there are still a handful of locations nestled inside the food courts of malls taking their last breaths on shopping center hospice, there are none left within driving distance from Providence. This fish and chips company, as is the case with all good enterprises, was started by a vaudeville comedian, which imbued it with a weird, archaic twang. Although at one point, Arthur Treacher’s had nearly 800 locations nationwide, the American public soon discovered that seafood was not exactly compatible with a fast food business model. As one former employee will tell you: “I worked for a Company in Cranston in the 70’s. We used to work late on Wed. nights. One time we sent out for Supper. The next day we were all sick!~We nicknamed it “Arthur Trecherous.””

5. Volare Inn, 73 Warwick Ave, Warwick, 02905. I picked this restaurant not because it is in itself a standout, but because I found a social media post made by a former employee that captures the essence of 1980s Rhode Island so strikingly that I couldn’t let such exquisite worldbuilding go unremarked upon. Reflecting on his 18-month tenure as a busser at Volare Inn’s infamous buffet in what can only be described as the written equivalent of a thick New England accent, the commentator writes, “One of the waitresses had the hots for me and let me know it late one night while I was helping her break down the buffet. Another time I got to work one sat afternoon and one of the waitresses had been fired or quit and she said that the place owed her some pay and they weren’t giving it to her and she was really mad and screamed that her boyfriend was in the mob and something might happen if she didn’t get her money. So of course, the whole shift everyone’s talking about what they’re gonna do or where they’ll run to if someone comes in the place shooting. Was hilarious. ..aah the memories.. Never went to Barry’s disco [the nightclub that came to replace Volare, and has since also become very much so defunct]. I’m sure it was a hopping place.”

6. Davol Square, at Point and Eddy St, Providence. This is the place where the Art of Shopping is Restored In the 1980s, at the site of what used to be a catheter factory, a local property developer with aspirations of bougieness attempted to open a stupidly fancy mall. Mostly populated by women’s clothing stores (for those amongst us ladies who wear pants) and boutiques selling boutique crap, Davol failed to inspire much interest in jaded Rhode Islanders unwilling to drop a bag on Hallmark cards and chunky home decor. Amongst its most ghastly inhabitants was a German restaurant with German decor, German tables, German silverware, and an entirely American staff of line cooks and bussers with little passion. Today, Davol is a desolate ghost town, maybe, maybe not, owned by Brown. Every so often, a restaurant opens and rapidly closes but, for the most part, it just sits empty and dark. I always say, don’t fuck with a catheter factory—they tend to be cursed.

a. City Lights: As a brief aside, I am giving a special

mention to City Lights, a Miami-themed club that opened at Davol Square in 1983, not because I think it was particularly special, but because it gives some credence to Providence Club Rat culture in the 1980s. Those who club-hopped around Rhode Island in that period now keep in touch through a Facebook group called: “Yes, I was part of the circuit @ Club Promenade, City Lights and Barry’s.” For an added piece of trivia, this last club, Barry’s, actually opened at the site of the Volare Inn—the one with the mob story.

7. Luke’s American Chinese Food, 59 Eddy St, Providence. Given the fact that nearly the entire comment section under any post mentioning Luke’s clamors for the recipe for their famous “Dark Wings,” I can only assume that they were delicious. The general consensus is that it wasn’t the quality of the food or the restaurant’s popularity that led it to close, but that city development made it impossible to park in front of the restaurant’s giant neon facade, and that the landlord hiked up the rent way too high. It seems like it dwindled slowly. Even still, the faithful patrons of Luke’s remember it fondly—especially the giant “Orgy Bowls” filled with mystery pink liquid that could get you for real fucked up.

8. Club Baby Head, 73 Richmond St, Providence. My feeling about Providence music venues is that they are too willing to host a variety of events: What do you mean EMO NITE is followed by a poetry reading? I am looking at you, AS220. More like ass220. What happened to giving each subculture its own spot? Well back in the day, Providence freaks would cram into the proudly dark, stinky, and dirty warehouse venue called Club Baby Head, to see all of those bands that your Ivy League–educated parents pass off as having liked back in the day. In 1992, Pavement stopped at Club Baby Head during their Slanted and Enchanted tour, in 1994, Slowdive pulled over for Souvlaki; and the bassist of Pearl Jam hung from the ceiling during a weird tiny set they played there in 1991. All of the memories of that spot involve misbehaving from the audiences and performers alike. As one guy claims proudly, “I got drunk and punched a hole in the dressing room wall.”

Well my devoted readership, I am feeling quite emotional, and I thank you for that too. My dearly beloved, we gather here to say our goodbyes, no one knew her worth… That’s the beginning of “La Vie Bohème,” from the hit Broadway musical RENT, but the sentiment stands. I miss the old Rhode Island, the Rhode Island of other people’s parents’ childhood. The Orgy Bowl–drinking Rhode Island that was run by the mob. I miss punching strangers in the Pit of the “Facial Defecation” show, and I am resentful of the fact that I have only gotten food poisoning a couple of times, and most often by my own hand. I wish we had better, smaller malls, longer pasta noodles, and a commitment to the arts. What happened to community? Bring her back!

MARIA GOMBERG B’26, is citing her sources, and urging those moved by other people’s nostalgia to visit https://retrori.blogspot.com/

( TEXT PAULINA GASIOROWSKA

DESIGN SELIM KUTLU

ILLUSTRATION ALENA ZHANG )

Reopening the Annmary Brown Memorial

ARCHIVES AND MEMORIES FOR COMMUNITY FUTURES

“At ten o’clock, Tuesday morning, July second, the Annmary Brown Memorial, at No. 21 Brown Street, will be open to the public [...] This Memorial has been brought into existence for the purpose of honoring and perpetuating the memory of a beloved wife and woman […] This gift for the use of the people of Providence is free and unincumbered. Care has been taken to construct the memorial building so solidly that it will last for many generations […] And all I ask of its citizens in return is that they will care for it, and safely guard it against any deviation or perversion whatever of the donor’s intention.”

Rush Christopher Hawkins, letter to the editor of The Providence Daily Journal (July 1, 1907)

c In this 119-year-old announcement, Rush C. Hawkins notified the readers of Providence’s foremost daily newspaper of the imminent opening of “the Annmary Brown Memorial,” a site dedicated to his recently departed wife, Annmary Brown Hawkins. The widower conceived of the Memorial as a locus of “care”—not just care for the memory of his beloved, but also for a local community that would, “in return,” take care of the Memorial for generations to come.

At first glance, the “care” that Hawkins put into “solidly” constructing the Memorial seems to endure today. Over a century later, the Memorial has retained its signature rectangular shape and nearly windowless facade. Its pair of bronze doors still figures two women as classical allegories of Art and Literature. The building has also remained in place, despite Brown University razing most of the surrounding historic residences to construct the Wriston Quadrangle in the 1950s. Its granite blocks have survived between the red bricks of Buxton House, a dormitory erected in 1951, and Andrews House, a private home the University purchased in 1922, which has housed the Cogut Institute for the Humanities since July 2024.

Nowadays, if not participating in one of the Providence Ghost Tours, few passersby glance in the Memorial’s direction while walking along Brown Street. Even if its resilient design piqued their interest, they would be unable to enter. The building has been under renovation since 2023, and closed to the public since at least the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though initial university announcements indicated it would reopen in 2025, as of the writing of this article, its bronze doors remain shut. The Memorial’s physical inaccessibility invites a revisiting of its archival histories and living memories as a way of reconnecting Hawkins’ original “intention” with the Providence communities of today.

Initially, the “Annmary Brown Memorial” was only the name of a private charitable organization Hawkins moved to incorporate just two months after his wife’s death from pneumonia on January 4, 1903.

The incorporation act charged him and six other trustees—John Carter Brown and John Carter Brown Woods among them—with “maintaining and preserving a museum collection, for the benefit of the public,” as a way of honoring the memory of his wife, a Brown family heiress. Soon after, Hawkins commissioned Norman Isham to design a building that would be a library, art gallery, and mausoleum in one. Margaret Bingham Stillwell, the Memorial’s inaugural curator, quoted Rush Hawkins’ multilayered intentions for the space in a 1922 essay as such: “It is first of all a memorial to a woman of noble character. It is secondarily a collection of art treasures.” Although such a gesture was not uncommon with grief-stricken art patrons in the early 20th century, it bears noting that Hawkins was not of the millionaire class. As Becky Soules, who spent part of her public humanities master’s degree at Brown researching the Memorial, emphasized in her interview with The College Hill Independent, he was not “necessarily well-educated. He was self-taught, self-improved […] He wasn’t trying to have the best collection; he just wanted to educate others [with] samples of artworks and books.”

Four years after the incorporation, the Annmary Brown Memorial building would officially open its bronze doors to the “people of Providence.” Inside, visitors would have encountered three galleries. The first—the “Book Room”—housed the collection of incunabula (books printed in the first 50 years after the invention of printing in Europe) that Annmary Brown and Rush Hawkins gathered during their travels. The gallery’s specifically designed, slanting, glassed-in cases held as many as five hundred such books. In a 1940 essay, “The Annmary Brown Memorial: A Booklover’s Shrine,” Stillwell described the experience of entering the space as taking a “step literally into a bookroom of the fifteenth century.” This description hints at her own achievements: During her time as the Memorial’s librarian, it became a headquarters of early print studies in the Americas and an internationally renowned institution among medieval and early modern humanities scholars.

The two other galleries contained the couple’s collections of about 150 old and modern master paintings, which Stillwell described in a 1925 essay as the sole “embellishment” of the building’s interior, envisioned as such by Hawkins himself. At the back of the third gallery, visitors would have found another pair of bronze doors, their “soft golden brightness [...] enhanced by contrast with the paintings.” They led to the crypt, where both beloveds had eventually been laid to rest. Hawkins engraved his wife’s tomb with an original tribute: “Like some rare flower entombed in

night, its beauty shedding everlasting light.”

In the same essay, Stillwell noted that, faced with such a curated, contemplative space, visitors “seem[ed] always to enter reverently—no matter whether they are lovers of the beautiful, scholars who come as pilgrims to study the first books printed with movable type, or connoisseurs in art.” Soules described the intended effect of the building’s design as “visceral.” In his July 1907 letter to the editor, Hawkins stated he also sought to reproduce “the aspect of a home,” importing family memorabilia and furniture from his New York apartment. Stillwell was the embodiment of this dual—intellectual and intimate—nature of the space. Her research assistant, Frederick Goff, described his first impression from meeting her in 1935 as “at home in that gallery, for she knew the books as personal friends and properly introduced them to me.”

Founded on “the belief that there are interests worth living for other than those of the materialistic side of existence,” Hawkins insisted in his July 1907 letter that the Memorial remain a “free and unincumbered gift” to the Providence community. Integral to this intent was its status as an independent institution, leading him to add an indenture to the March 1903 incorporation act that the “building and collection shall forever bear the name of the Annmary Brown Memorial, [...] and shall always be kept separate and distinct from any other museum, library or collection whatsoever, and no future additions shall be made there.”

“I am having myself buried here as an anchor. There are many rare and beautiful things here. Some day someone may want to move them. But they will think twice before they move them—and me.”

Margaret Stillwell quoting Rush Hawkins in Librarians are Human: Memories in and out of the Rare Book World, 1907–1970 (1973)

Hawkins died on October 25, 1920, after being struck by an automobile on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Despite dedicating the last 17 years of his life to the Memorial, he made no mention of an endowment in his will. According to Stillwell’s autobiography, Librarians Are Human (1973), the trustees considered this oversight a “betrayal.”

For almost 30 years, Stillwell was left to manage the Memorial on her own, with what remained of the $70,000 (~$2.5 million today) Hawkins had transferred to cover the building’s immediate operating costs. In 1947, Stillwell received a surprise phone call informing her the trustees had filed a cy pres application. This doctrine allowed the Rhode Island Superior Court to redirect the Memorial toward a purpose “as near as possible” (cy pres comme possible) to Hawkins’ original intentions, given the claim they had become impossible to satisfy. The trustees deeded the building and collections to Brown, and the court permitted the university to add a clause allowing it to make use of “said land and building for its corporate purposes [and] keep other collections of books and pictures in said building.” The Memorial’s independence and integrity, so treasured by Hawkins, were, in all senses of the word, delegitimized.

As part of this transfer, Stillwell became the

first woman to hold a full professorship at Brown, as Research Professor of Bibliography. She would later reminisce in her autobiography that her initial reaction was one of “joy”: “At last, all was right with the world […] And under the guidance of the University, the Memorial’s future as a place of productive scholarship would continue and be assured.” However, Brown’s insistence on expanding the Memorial’s focus beyond Hawkins’ bibliographic intent and Stillwell’s field of expertise without providing appropriate funding, alongside the animosity she faced from her exclusively male colleagues, wore her down. Even though, as Soules put it in her interview, “her life was the Memorial,” Stillwell submitted her letter of resignation to President Henry Wriston only five years after the transfer.

Brown’s 1948 acquisition of the Memorial, while instrumental to its financial survival, belongs in a lineage of property acquisitions and demolitions aimed at expanding its campus. Robert Emlen, who retired from his positions as University Curator and Senior Lecturer in American Studies in 2017, shared in an email to the Indy that the building was “one of only four buildings saved from demolition and incorporated into the [Wriston] Quadrangle’s design,” acquired “clearly, only for the land that came with it.” The 51 buildings razed from the site included houses, shops, and the Thayer Street School, deeded to the University by the City in 1949, and whose demolition forced 300 Fox Point children to change schools.

Many great librarians would fill Stillwell’s position—J.R.T. Ettlinger (1967), John Charles (1968), Sam Hough (1970–1980), and Catherine Denning (1980–1993)—but budget constraints, outdated facilities, and University bureaucracy thwarted the Memorial’s growth. The Annmary Brown Memorial Committee published yearly reports bemoaning its unmet intellectual potential while curators worked with no proper heating system in the building (Hawkins believed electricity could damage the artwork). In a particularly difficult 1977 winter, Hough sent a letter to Stillwell stating: “I do not intend to continue as a janitor. I do not intend to preside over the destruction & disintegration of the collection,” and signed it as “future-ex-curator.”

The cy pres clause enabled Brown to stray even further from Hawkins’ intent for the Memorial. Often, the Memorial was used as a temporary exhibition space. Once, Brown students used the paintings to practice their conservation skills. During a 1986 meeting, the Advisory Committee described Brown’s “assum[ed] responsibility” over the Memorial as a “mistake.” In 1989, Brown appealed to the RI Superior Court to permit the removal of any elements of Hawkins’ collection from the building. Citing “current conditions in the building including temperature and relative humidity, excessive natural light, and water damage”—conditions Brown had had a responsibility for over the past 40 years—the University got to transfer the incunabula out of what Stillwell had described in 1925 as their “final home.” Though technically kept separate from the rest of the

holdings, the collection became just another part of the John Hay Library’s offsite storage. Stripped from artifacts it had once been renowned for, the Memorial, as Soules put it, “lost its soul.”

In the 1990s, the position of Curator was abolished, despite Stillwell dedicating part of her estate to sustaining it upon her death in 1984. Present recountings of women’s histories at Brown overlook Stillwell too; her papers, though part of the Brown University Archives at the Hay Library, have never been incorporated into the Pembroke Center Archives’ collection of “Women and Gender at Brown.” After 1990, all that remained in the (still poorly conditioned) space were the less famous paintings (some revealed to be forgeries in 1984), an unrelated sword collection, and the Hawkinses. Still, Brown’s website notes that, with the Memorial’s acquisition, its special collections library became “one of the largest collections of 15th-century printed books owned by an American university.” Once the institution was put in charge of the Memorial, it would seem the safeguarding that Hawkins requested from the people of Providence 119 years ago became a matter of preserving appearances, rather than “care.”

“The whole style of the Annmary Brown Memorial building says: ‘this stuff is important’ and ‘this stuff is interesting.’ On the other hand, it also says: ‘stay out of here,’ ‘this is not for you.’ It’s a very forbidding building.”

Prof. Steven Lubar, interview with the Indy (February 23, 2026)

From 2013 to 2015, Soules got to participate in final project exhibits for museum studies classes at the (then open) Memorial. A social historian of the 20th century interested in “lost museums and underutilized spaces,” she noted she never handled an incunabulum nor ever felt drawn to do so. She never sought to spend time at the Memorial either, “because, frankly, it’s kind of depressing [...] a bunch of bad paintings on the wall in a building that people don’t go to.” Steven Lubar, Professor Emeritus in American Studies and History, oversaw Soules’ master’s classes as Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities at the time. He described the mausoleum in particular as “very moving” and “reflective,” but the overall building as “forbidding,” with artworks that were “not all that interesting.” Lubar added: “It was not ever popular […] Even before the pandemic, it was only open occasionally, and a guard [was] just sitting there all the time for the three people a day who would walk in.”

Soules herself noted that she did not know of the Memorial in her time as a Brown undergraduate. Having intimately studied Hawkins’ community-focused intentions for the Memorial, she described the public’s indifference as “one of the strangest, saddest parts” of its current state, remarking that “the University has not been the best steward of the Memorial.” While researching it during her master’s program, Soules faced issues accessing the 1948 cy pres application. She was told by Brown’s General Counsel: “You’re a student, you can’t look at it.” In her view, the Memorial was never “a space where Brown students felt welcome.”

Suzanne Karr Schmidt and Edward Wouk, who cataloged and digitized the Memorial’s art collection as Brown undergraduates in the early 2000s, offered a different perspective. With the guidance of the building’s administrator Carole Cramer, and the supervision of Professor of History of Art and Architecture Dian Kriz, they applied for an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Assistantship grant and published a website that, due to the ongoing renovation, is now one of the only available sources on the Memorial’s paintings.

When reminiscing about the Memorial in an email to the Indy, Wouk wrote: “It’s such a lovely if sombre quiet space, great for contemplation.” Karr Schmidt recalled “it was kind of a dark space [...] The

paintings didn’t seem to have a very particular order [...] It was fascinating because you didn’t really know what to expect. It was a mix, but in a good way. I think anyone could find something interesting in there.” She also said it was a “fairly accessible” building, and mentioned that seminars would sometimes visit. The noting “cross-campus efforts” Cramer worked to implement, Karr Schmidt found the Memorial “extremely welcoming as a location.” Though admitting that not “many students were finding their way into it,” she believed its lesser popularity “made it more special.” She and Wouk also noted they both wished to engage their fellow students with the Memorial, and Wouk in particular hoped to draw their attention to its “bad state of repair.”

Although the interviewees diverged on the capacities and effects of the space, there was a general consensus that the Memorial is an “unusual” structure and an “underused” resource. Within the context of the university—an institution that demands bureaucratic categorization—these two aspects have turned out to be intrinsically related. As Emlen put it, the Memorial was an “awkward fit from the outset.” Its intentional design as neither purely commemorative, nor academic, nor artistic has rendered its historical identity and present belonging ambiguous.

Lubar and Soules both raised this ambiguity as a concern; however, they also took it as an opportunity to talk through potential reimaginings of the space. Lubar noted that, since Brown is the only Ivy League university without a proper art museum, the Memorial could become one under the supervision of the Brown Arts Institute. Given the recent relocation of the Cogut Institute right next door, he also suggested its Center for the Study of the Early Modern World could benefit from a connection beyond mere geography, especially since Soules mentioned that the Center’s equivalent during her time at Brown claimed the Memorial as its headquarters. Soules noted the possibilities of turning the galleries into study spaces, or reforming the basement storage facilities into classrooms. After all, courses on collection histories and museum practices offered by departments across the humanities reveal a continued investment in the field. Prof. Ron Potvin’s “Museum Collecting and Collections”—a class Lubar used to teach—attracted 30 students in Fall 2025. Prof. Neil Safier’s “Curators, Hoarders, and Looters: The Long and Curious History of Collecting” has an enrollment of almost 70 students in Spring 2026. Last semester, Prof. Holly Shaffer’s “Museum of Possibilities” was for graduates only. This semester, Dr. Catherine Nuckols is teaching “Museums and the Management of Mesoamerican Art” as a first-year seminar. Across archeology, history, American studies, art history, and the public humanities, these classes signal that the Memorial’s ambiguous status holds interdisciplinary potential.

“It’d be great to have it reopened. It’s this idiosyncratic, slightly odd jewel on campus for people to discover on their own.”

Dr. Suzanne Karr Schmidt, interview with the Indy (February 23, 2026)

In an email to the Indy on February 23, 2026, Michelle Venditelli, Director of the Memorial, stated that she and Dr. Tiffini Bowers, Assistant Director of the Memorial, “are very hopeful to reopen the Memorial later this year.”

In a follow-up message on February 27, Venditelli detailed: “We are deeply committed to the careful preservation and restoration of the Memorial […] so that community members can once again enjoy this treasure on the Brown campus and its unique collections. She added that they want to “ensure the Memorial remains a vibrant part of campus for generations to come,” and concluded: “This is a complex, high-priority project being managed with great care.” The significance of carefully renovating and surely reopening the building resonated throughout the interviews. Lubar, Karr Schmidt, and Wouk all described the building as a “jewel” or “jewelbox.” This suggests the Memorial’s value derives from its architecture and holdings operating together to construct

a memory of another era, so as to elicit a treasurable aesthetic experience. In Lubar’s words, it could be a “time capsule” for the “eccentric” long histories of educational institutions such as Brown.

Venditelli’s follow-up email also “clarif[ied] a point of terminology: we are not ‘repurposing’ the Annmary Brown Memorial. The terms of the original gift are specific, and we are deeply committed to honoring those terms. Our focus remains entirely on renovating and reopening the Memorial as intended while making important and essential upgrades to the 119-year-old structure.” Given the Memorial’s historical loss of its independence, the fading of its international and local recognition, as well as the dispersal of its holdings under Brown’s stewardship, it is unclear which “original” intents the Memorial’s caretakers are prioritizing, and what sorts of changes are considered “essential.” For instance, though Brown still classifies the Memorial as a library, and both Venditelli and Bowers are under the supervision of Deputy University Librarian Nora Dimmock, it is unlikely the books will be returning to the building—especially since, as Wouk noted, the advantage of integrating the incunabula with the rest of Brown’s special collections is that they can be considered in community with other holdings at the Hay Library. Architectural reimaginings of the space posited by Lubar—“turning one wall into glass, cutting away a corner of the building, opening it up, doing some work to say: ‘yes, this is a jewel box, yes, these are treasures, but suddenly they’re available to you’”—seem unlikely too. After all, “cutting” and “opening up” the Memorial would require the appealing of Hawkins’ original will, again.

It is up to Venditelli and Bowers’ curatorial direction to reopen the Memorial as a “vibrant” jewel that welcomes the Providence public rather than, in Soules’ words, as “a lost relic of a bygone age” that people are too intimidated to enter. The elements of Hawkins’ original intent most applicable to the Providence communities of today are his vision of the building as a freely accessible monument to his love for Annmary Brown, and his dedication of its collections to the intellectual curiosity and humanistic contemplation of any eager passerby. As the Memorial’s 1910 incunabula catalog and its 1913 painting catalog both stated, the artifacts were meant to be “representative” of the diverse histories of the arts— to serve as visual ambassadors for the excitements of the medieval and early modern humanities.

Lubar described the Memorial as “the most interesting museum on campus.” He did not do so because

of the renown of its previous collections, but because of its persistent pedagogical value: It is “a wonderful space to practice on museums, to let students play with it,” and to interrogate “what [its caretakers] have done right and what they’ve done wrong.” In a similar vein, Karr Schmidt recalled being particularly interested in thinking through “the value of a collection that has a range of quality.” She concluded her interview with the reflection: “One of the most important things that can be done is making everyone on campus feel like this cultural object can be for them […] That was something that, I think, the Annmary Brown [Memorial] with the right caretaker was very good at—making people think that the humanities can matter for them.”

To return to the July 1907 letter, if gifted the “free and unincumbered” opportunity to do so, people will always find new ways to “care” for the Memorial. However, to stay accountable to the Providence communities of today and to Hawkins’ original intention, this care must go both ways.

“Do you think the Memorial and its holdings were put to good use when you were at Brown?”

“No, not to good use. But the space was open, and I think that anyone who went in couldn’t help but be moved by it—and led to want to know more.”

Prof. Edward Wouk, email to the Indy (March 1, 2026)

I first encountered the Annmary Brown Memorial as an undigitized collection in the Brown Library Catalog. Spurred by my newfound love for old illustrated books, I applied for a 2025 John Hay Library Undergraduate Fellowship. For a summer, I got to be the “Annmary Brown Fellow”—a position that had not been listed on the program’s website, but I later learnt was created specifically to accommodate my sprouting research interests. In the two months I spent buried in these once–world-famous pages at the Gildor Family Special Collections Reading Room, studying the Memorial’s history, and devouring Stillwell’s bibliographic and feminist writings, I never got the chance to enter the building. Nonetheless, my

desire to one day do so has sustained my “care” for this bittersweet site of knowledge, grief, and remembrance—a care that has long transcended purely intellectual curiosity.

Lubar described the final exhibit for the 2007 class “Methods in Public Humanities,” which involved putting up “a giant blow-up of Charles Wilson Peale welcoming” passersby into the Memorial, as one of his favorite projects from his 20 years at Brown. Karr Schmidt and Wouk both reminisced on curiously wandering into the Memorial during their freshman year. Now, Karr Schmidt is Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Newberry Library in Chicago and Wouk is Professor of Art History at the University of Manchester. Both related their current professional pursuits—and their sustained friendship—to that cataloging project from 25 years ago. Karr Schmidt and Soules also both noted the significance of Stillwell in their respective career paths, recognizing her as “a revolutionary figure in bibliography,” a “fascinating woman,” and an “inspiring character.”

Currently a Collections and Education Director at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Soules remembered her “really enjoyable afternoons” rummaging through the Annmary Brown Memorial Papers in the newly opened reading room at the Hay Library as an experience that pushed her into becoming a “grown-up researcher.” Soules called Lubar and Emlen her “sounding boards” during her work toward her master’s degree. Without her careful research, this article would not have been written. In his email, Emlen shared that “Lubar and his students, including especially Becky, did a terrific job in reimagining and reinvigorating [the Memorial] albeit on a temporary basis [...] But they’re gone now and it’s going to require a solid commitment from the university going forward to create both an imaginative and responsible adaptive reuse.”

A few days after deciding to write this article, PAULINA GASIOROWSKA B’27 was walking along Brown Street, glanced at the doors of the Annmary Brown Memorial, and saw that they were ajar.

( TEXT SELIM KUTLU

DESIGN LIZ SEPULVEDA )

c The kanun, its name derived from the Ancient Greek κανών (kanōn originating in the Middle East, a staple in Turkish classical music and other musical traditions of the region. Nimrod — 1 spring of 2025 (Nimrod to the kanun—both trapezoidal zithers around three feet in length and one foot wide. Along its height, it has 26 courses (sets of three strings placed closer to one another), originating at the bottom of the front panel and leading to a set of pegs running down diagonally. The body of the instrument has a set of ornamental sound holes that formulate the signature timbres and overtones of the Nimrod, in no sense, conforms to the traditional expectations one might have of the kanun have the same sound holes as the kanun, nor does it have the 26 courses and the total of 84 strings, as is standard with Turkish-made kanuns. Instead, strings, a mix of metal guitar and bass, running along its panel, as well as four plastic strings inside the body of the instrument. The 21 strings, when plucked, resonate and produce sound, vibrating four strings inside Nimrod’s body to produce overtones. The layering of tones produced and absorbed by Nimrod into a series of contact microphones, facilitating amplification. Through the amplification process, tone can be built on and layered from the solely acoustic through the electronic. These layered tones are reminiscent of the Turkish makams, a set of melodic modes and systems consisting of specific pitch sets, microtones, and melodic progressions. In this sense, the musical systems of the Turkish classical music operate on different melodic intervals than most Western classical music.

Alongside the modes, I’m fascinated by shifts in the electronic age from discrete to continuous tonal approaches—canons, if you will—in the time of electronic music-making. How do musicians and artists break out of the (tonal) systems they are constrained within? Thinking about the shift from discrete tonality to continuous tonality in the context of Nimrod’s layered tonality, the theremin comes to mind. The theremin is an instrument that allows for continuous ranges of tones played through the hands’ changing proximity. Electronic developments in musical instruments were often practical (for example, the theremin came out of Soviet government-sponsored research into proximity sensors), but sometimes developments were Platonic, where artists historically “imagined how electronic music might sound before the actual technology was in place to realize it,” as composer Daniel Warner describes in his book History of Electronic Music adds that Edgard Varèse, a French avant-garde composer and pioneer of electronic music, “famously described electronic instruments in his lectures and writing well before they were actually developed.”

Working with the my interpretation—complicating the sound of this canonical tool through its layering of tone and the electronics of amplification. This idealism of instrument-making, and its possibilities for new modes of composition and

BOREALIS WAS A TECHNO LIGHT SHOW PLANNED FOR EARLY FEBRUARY BY THE AUDIO-VISUAL COLLECTIVE AFTER.PVD. ALTHOUGH THE CANCELLATION WAS DISAPPOINTING FOR THE COMMUNITY AND THE COLLECTIVE, AFTER. PVD INTENDS TO MOVE FORWARD BY DOCUMENTING THE WORK THE TEAM POURED INTO BOREALIS, RECOVERING THE LOST EXPERIENCE THROUGH ITS FRAGMENTS.

TEXT IS COMPOSED OF WRITTEN AND VERBAL STATEMENTS, EDITED FOR CLARITY.

“We learned the day of the event that [the venue] was not safe by law enforcement. We couldn’t risk having more than 400 people in a space that is not safe, so we decided to do the hard thing and cancel.”

† MAHDI BOULILA, RESIDENT DJ AND CURATOR †

“After.PVD was something that Mahdi, Max, and I started last year, and it was very ragtag, super DIY. The underground is a way forward when the overground isn’t working. The collective is a reaction to the death of club and bottle culture happening worldwide, especially apparent in Providence. The emphasis on dancing has been kind of lost, and we wanted to bring it back.”

⌖ FINBAR WHITE, CREATIVE DIRECTOR ⌖

“The collective’s goal is to create a platform for cultivating an immersive way of experiencing electronic music, physical arts, and dance. Borealis marked a new environment: we reshaped the architecture into a world of our own.”

† MAHDI †

“Over the course of a month, Finbar, Charles, and I lugged projectors and boxes of cables into the back of Charles’ car. We spent late nights swaddled in complete darkness. We attempted to rig equipment anywhere that manifested as a ledge: speaker heads, window lattices. During those nights cabling together plasticky DMX party lights, my senses were deprived of everything but the light beaming off my laptop.

After Finbar led a second round of visual tests back in late January, the whole space started to flood with a luminescent jade river. The night before Borealis, we did a full audiovisual run. The combination of blooming lights, a barren dance floor, and DJ-mixed techno tracks was one of the closest things to heaven I have ever felt.”

HEIDI LIN, DMX LIGHTING DESIGNER

( VISUALS FINBAR WHITE, CHARLES MATADIN, HEIDI LIN DOCUMENTATION DAN MATEUS, AFTER.PVD

DESIGN EPHE.ZIP )

“After the run-through, I was sore for a week from dancing. Grief thundered through everyone who worked on Borealis. All I had was the throbbing in my legs to affirm that I was there. The work we are doing really only comes to life when witnessed in person by the community. The biggest losses were not being able to witness the light sparkle off excited partygoers and the mass of individual experiences entangling with sound.

HEIDI

“As someone who has lived in Rhode Island my whole life, After.PVD is unlike any other experience here. Cosmic, ethereal visuals with rhythmic bass and trancelike frequencies; an all-encompassing, euphoric experience; witnessing Borealis was exactly that. More than anything, the cancellation excited me for the future of After.PVD.”

⚚ ALEXA ALMONTE, VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR ⚚

“At a time when the creative world seems consumed by a corporate culture that demands so much while providing so little, this space truly feels like one that rewards you for the work you are doing. Watching the hands of everyone around you build something bigger than any individual feels surreal.”

♤ MYCALA MCKAY, RESIDENT ARTIST ♤

“Immersion is the main thing that I’m working for. With Borealis, we achieved a space where every single wall was covered in light. The videos just cannot do it justice because it’s 360 degrees around you, and everywhere you look, there’s just light.

I love when my art functions like a campfire. I invited some friends for the audiovisual run and loved seeing them in awe, craning their necks. Otherwise, I’d feel crazy, because for a month Borealis was all I talked about.

The techno scene has been picking up recently. When you look at Boston, all the rave and techno groups are doing really well. Given the political state of our country right now, people need community and dancing. Techno has always been about escapism. I’m not saying we should all take drugs and forget, but we’re human and need release.” ⌖

FINBAR ⌖

AFTER.PVD IS AN AUDIOVISUAL TECHNO COLLECTIVE COMPRISED OF ARTISTS, DJS AND EVENT PLANNERS/ CURATORS. THEIR NEXT EVENT, VOID, WILL BE HELD AT THE CRIB ON MARCH 13.

NO NUT NOVEMBER

Asceticism for the extremely online

c Every November, the internet stages a month-long experiment in masculine self-governance. Strangers litigate the metaphysics of the orgasm. On Reddit, r/ nonutnovember moderators maintain an ‘official’ rulebook with annual revisions about the propriety of wet dreams. By Day 10, most are “deep in enemy trenches.”

For the uninitiated, No Nut November (NNN), is an annual challenge in which participants voluntarily abstain from all masturbation and orgasm for the month of November. Though it began as a satirical meme around 2011, by 2017, it had spread across the internet as a widely practiced, semi-serious ritual. Over the last few years, NNN has become an annual social media phenomenon, even inspiring parody challenges like Destroy Dick December that flip the premise on its head. People’s approaches span from Puritan to loophole-lawyer: porn may or may not be allowed, ‘procreative’ sex is sometimes exempt, edging is considered either clever jurisprudence or outright heresy.

Underlying all the white-knuckling is a mythic logic with a long history. Across cultures and eras, semen has often been imbued with special significance, its retention credited with a laundry list of benefits. In the Judeo-Christian world, the story of Onan (Genesis 38) was long read as a ban on “wasting seed” and early modern moralists extended this into blanket prohibitions on masturbation. In the 18th century, anti-masturbation literature made a minor industry out of catastrophizing ‘self-pollution’; pamphlets like Onania claimed that masturbation would lead to epilepsy, hysteria, impotence, feeble legs, and weak jaws. If one had foolishly indulged in such a “heinous sin,” the only cure was a “Strengthening Tincture” or a “Prolific Powder” for enhanced libido, available only from the publisher (click link in bio!).

NNN, in other words, inherits this long tradition of treating semen as both peril and resource: Emissions must be guarded if men are to be kept intact. Because it centers on masculinity and sexual control, NNN has attracted a diverse, and sometimes extreme, following. Parts of the scene have been co-opted, or perhaps created, by far-right and openly misogynistic figures. Similarly, incel communities have eagerly adopted the annual practice, with semen retention and anti-masturbation talk folded into narratives of grievance, degenerate modernity, and restored manhood. The Proud Boys managed to bureaucratize the premise: Their initiation materials notoriously (and rather ironically) included a “No Wanks” rule.

On the face of it, NNN is only a ‘silly’ internet ritual about ‘self-control.’ But its elaborate rules, vitriolic edge, and repeated return each November suggest that something more is at stake. Why does a disavowal of desire cause such intensified and contradictory effects? Why does a ritual designed to dam up libido lead to such an obsessive tallying of days?

To understand the psychological underpinnings

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DESIGN CALEB WU ILLUSTRATION ROSEMARY BRANTLEY )

of the ritual, we can turn to Sigmund Freud (and, regrettably, his mother). For Freud, early sexual life is “independent of the reproductive function”; instead, it is organized around diffuse, “auto-erotic” pleasures. He treats childhood masturbation as part of normal infantile sexuality. Babies suck their thumbs, play with their bodies, and enjoy sensations long before they care about another person as a sexual object. He calls the energy of these drive-demands “libido”: a mobile charge that can regress, shift from one bodily zone to another, and be diverted into substitutes. Growing up, in his account, means reorganizing these drives under pressure from the external world into a ‘normal’ adult sexuality centered on genital contact with another person—ideally aligned with reproduction and social norms.

At first pass then, NNN can be read simply as a crude, voluntary sublimation: a month-long solitary renunciation that renegotiates infantile pleasures in view of an ‘adult’ law. Per the participants’ own account, we can trace how libidinal energy is transformed into more ‘appropriate’ aims—self-control, The Grindset, and 5 a.m. ice baths. But, in Freud’s terms, a prohibition is never merely subtractive. If you block one route of discharge, the libido does not disappear; it relocates: “When the bed of a stream is divided into two channels,” and the current in one meets an obstacle, “the other will at once be overfilled.”

So where does all this pent-up frustration go? In the incel-adjacent corner of the NNN ecosystem, for example, one of the easiest spillways is blame: The whole predicament is, of course, the woman’s fault. Projection and displacement externalize conflict. What is intolerable as “my desire overruns me” reappears, per Reddit, as “their corruption makes men fall.” Tension is transferred onto an attackable, feminized ‘enemy.’ The object of desire is flipped into repudiation. The very figures that arouse become objects of moral contempt: sluts, ‘temptresses,’ your brother’s ‘foid’ girlfriend. This allows the ego to claim detachment while still remaining tightly organized around the forbidden object. The more energy flows into denouncing temptation, the more saturated the scene becomes with images and fantasies of the very things being denounced. The ‘corrupt’ women, the porn platforms, the ‘degenerate’ clips all have to be described, linked, imagined. Hatred is the permitted form in which attachment survives.

Aside from women-hating, another spillway in which libidinous connection remains intact is an erotic attachment to the rule itself. As multiple searches of “NNN” reveal, YouTube and TikTok are full of “No Nut November fail” content where a woman addresses the viewer directly: “You didn’t make it, did you?” “You’re too weak to control yourself,” typically while simultaneously offering a sexualised display. Here, the law takes on a sensuous voice and face. The subject paradoxically both resents and desires his regulation. He seeks transgression precisely so that he may be “put in his place,” and

the scolding woman embodies the juridical figure through which this ambivalent desire is erotically staged. Because the ritual’s rules dictate where libido is allowed to go, prohibition itself becomes one of its targets. When this prohibition generates conflict, erotic fantasy is recruited as a means of working through these contradictory effects without directly lifting the ‘law’ of the ritual. Failure is sexualized. The subject unconsciously arranges to be scolded so that guilt can be discharged and libido can attach to the act of chastisement itself.

These sharply varied responses imply that participants are unsure not only where the source of their masturbatory problem lies, but also how they ought to act in light of that uncertainty. The discourse toggles between externalizing fault (porn platforms, performers, algorithmic ‘seduction’) and internalizing it (male weakness, failed self-mastery). When they’re not blaming women they’re blaming themselves: “I am sorry, brothers. I have failed. I don’t know how to restrain myself.” The same libido that was previously imagined as the fault of the other is now recorded as a personal defect. Underneath the roaring rhetoric of abstinence, ongoing questions churn: Who actually owns this desire? Who do I blame? Is it ‘mine,’ or has it been hijacked by women, by biology, by some faceless algorithm? And if we don’t own desire, does that mean it owns us instead?

Freud’s account of castration anxiety clarifies why the idea of sovereign desire, an uncontrollable libido, might feel so threatening. He states that such fears first emerge when the boy recognises anatomical difference and interprets the girl’s ‘lack’ as the result of punishment. He comes to fear that his own penis may be taken from him by his father as retribution for forbidden and uncontrollable wishes toward the mother. As one moves out of the Oedipal unit (the mother, father, and child triad), castration anxiety stops manifesting as a literal dread of mutilation. Instead, it is the fear that indulgence in sexuality will entail a loss of “phallic standing”—the position of power and privilege felt to depend on possessing an unimpaired organ. Desire appears as a foreign power that can seize the body, siphon off its substance, and topple its status.

Interestingly, in NNN, that uncontrollable desire is often described in the form of a personified, agentic penis. In NNN memes and confession posts, the phallus is often narrated as a rogue agent: “my dick took over,” “I woke up and it was over for me,” “he betrayed me, lads.” This helps to protect the ego: If “he” betrayed me, then “I” can remain committed to the cause. It provides an object for discipline. In many traditional societies, male initiation rituals entail a literal cutting—circumcision, scarification— as a cutting down to size, a way of inscribing social law onto the genitals and marking a passage into adult status by controlling the libido. In NNN, the cutter is internalized: a self-imposed rightsizing of an unruly appetite fed on internet pornography. At the fringe, this self-cut also functions defensively. By

pre-emptively rightsizing oneself, one forestalls being cut by the other: the temptress, pornstar woman.

Abstinence thus becomes an attempt at mastery over an ownerless, agentic desire. It is a ritual containment of male essence against looming threats: the woman, the weak-willed self, and the naughty penis. But NNN’s distinctive move is not just this keeping-in. It converts all that anxious material— conflicting desires, shame, resentment—into something that can be counted, displayed, and exchanged. It converts a volatile, anxiety-provoking substance into a symbolic, mobile, and controllable token: a number on a calendar, a post to the subreddit, a status on a leaderboard. Instead of asking “Who really governs my libido?” the subject can ask a smaller, apparently answerable question: “What day am I on?” As pressure builds, the number of “days clean” becomes a little talisman, and repetitive counting becomes a new obsessional ritual contained within NNN.

Subreddits and Discord servers build an entire bureaucratic scaffolding around this conversion. Daily roll calls, progress charts, and little icons under usernames show how far you’ve made it. Subreddits supply the infrastructure so that discipline can be experienced not as an unverifiable private state but as a comfortingly legible public metric. If the old monastery kept vows in silence, the new one keeps them in a Discord channel. A “Day 27” streak is functionally a coin that can be flashed to others. It has

exchange value: it buys you praise, envy, advice, and entry into smaller, more elite groups (“hard mode,” “no sexual thoughts,” “365-day monks”).

Importantly, those tokens only matter because they can be lost. A streak is only a streak when it can reset to zero. The numbers must move; a frozen ledger with no breaches, no resets every November, would stall the very circulation that gives the token value. Public proofs of mastery have to be continually reiterated—daily check-ins, yearly challenges— because the underlying conflict can never be solved.

Seen this way, No Nut November is less an attempt to bring sexuality under control than an attempt to give shape to a desire whose source remains stubbornly ambiguous. By converting libido and its conflicts into tokens and streaks, the ritual invents a format in which the questions and contradictions around desire can be endlessly re-worked, rehearsed, and tracked. The very unfixability of desire is what keeps NNN alive, and guarantees its return each year. The ritual’s paradoxes remain exquisitely unresolved so that they can be suffered, sexualised, turned into numbers, and offered back to the boys next November with a salute: See you all next year, soldiers o7.

KEYA MEHRA B’29 is saving herself for better metaphors!

CONFESSION IS CONTENT

TRAUMA

PLOTS, FIRST-PERSON ESSAYS, AND THE GOVERNANCE OF THE SELF

c This essay is a critique of confession; it will, unfortunately, begin with a confession

I put the first person everywhere. It is a reflex I am not proud of; I can’t make a point without packaging it into an anecdote-shaped unit. If you ask me about politics, I will tell you about an encounter I had on a bus, my childhood fantasies, my six-month-long situationship (ENTJ, avoidant attachment style).

If there’s no anecdote available, I go digging. If I can’t find one, I invent a mildly humiliating detail to masquerade as voice. The irony here is almost too neat. I want to write about the modern obsession with the personal essay, and my first instinct is to do exactly what I’m critiquing: step forward, clear my throat, and provide a (hopefully charming) little self-portrait to grab your attention.

This essay will not offer a campaign to abolish the first person. It will, however, try to name the costs of a culture obsessed with narrating, selling, and perhaps even governing ‘the self.’ What I’m trying to understand is not why we tell these stories but what happens when this becomes the default way to speak. What does this do to us?

We live inside a strange contradiction. New media and the internet have expanded the range, speed, and reach of artistic dissemination. But they also flood the field (and feed!) with an unprecedented quantity of material. The artist seems to acquire new methods of gaining influence at the very moment distinction becomes harder and harder to secure. It is

no longer enough to produce. One must cut through! Provocation and sentimentality can help slice through the never-ending stream of content—and I, for one, am easily titillated. “My Gynecologist Found a Ball of Cat Hair in My Vagina” is bound to stop me mid-doomscroll. I read as blogger Michelle Barrow attends a routine check-up, only for her gynecologist to fish out a small, gray fuzz-ball wound around the IUD strings. I am exquisitely scandalized as she concludes—on account of living with shedding cats and having unprotected sex with her boyfriend—that it must be cat hair lodged in her cervix. A few clicks later, “I Thought a Baby at 16 Would End My Future. Then I Had Two,” takes me through teenage abortion, twin pregnancy, and eventual religious redemption in a brisk three-minute read.

I seem to run into these kinds of articles everywhere. They go by many names: confessional, personal essay, creative nonfiction. Women’s sites, campus Substacks, Twitter threads, newsletter ‘micro-essays’—they all circle the same drain. Slate’s Laura Bennett has described this as “the first-person industrial complex,” a system in which “solo acts of sensational disclosure,” like our gynecological excursions, become the cheapest way to jolt a jaded internet awake.

I have also noticed that this writing has evolved a fairly stable toolkit. In addition to their traumatic or revealing content, these essays are almost always in the first person, keeping up an aggressively narrow

( TEXT KEYA MEHRA

DESIGN ISABELLA CASTRO

ILLUSTRATION LUNA TOBAR )

focus: the lived experience of a single individual. A retrospective voice narrates apparently unmediated insight into ‘what it was really like.’ However catastrophic the content, these pieces often end in a recognizable key: The last paragraphs deliver some combination of glib lesson and tempered optimism. It is undeniable that, especially in the internet era, this form enjoys a measurable edge. A coolly impersonal argument about occupational labor precarity will circulate in its niche; “This Is What Happened When I Drove My Mercedes to Pick Up Food Stamps” offers risk, spectacle, and intimacy.

The aforementioned essay is, indeed, an exemplar of the genre. It begins with an extraordinarily cinematic scene: Darlena Cunha, the author, is “idling at a light,” music pouring through the surroundsound speakers of her husband’s “2003 Mercedes Kompressor.” A former television producer, she is driving to a church to pick up food stamps—pushed there by the aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis, layoffs, and the premature birth of her twins. The description is detailed enough that we feel almost like a passenger in her fancy car.

And then she gives us a slightly problematic admission: “This wasn’t supposed to happen to people like me.” The hook is categorical—people like me. The main stage is identity: the constitutive shame she feels having to rely on food stamps. The essay tells you, immediately, what it is really about. Not food assistance. Not the mortgage crisis. Not even poverty, exactly. She is not only writing about what happened to her life; she is writing about what happened to her self.

The self is, of course, incredibly marketable. This should not be surprising: Whole industries already treat personhood as something you can refine (selfhelp), optimize (productivity culture), and serialize (newsletters, podcasts). My most important assets are no longer material. Instead, I have—ready-made for exploitation—a semi-unique configuration of childhood, race, gendered experiences, heartbreaks, mental health diagnoses, and minor compulsions. These details become most valuable when they can be formatted into a legible story and attached to a recognizable voice. As with any commodity, branding is half the work. Tone is carefully calibrated for maximum reach—distinctive enough to justify attention but relatable enough to feel familiar. I’m just like you but way cooler!

The imperative to write yourself extends into college applications, fellowship and grant statements, resumes, artist bios. I am continually asked: “What is your story?” “How has your background shaped you?” “Describe a time you failed.” Even seemingly objective evaluations, such as performance reviews and recommendation letters, smuggle in judgements of likeability and story: Am I the kind of person who would belong here? Does my mini-narrative harmonize with the institutional one? I have to become a sort of product specification, existing as a stable set of traits and arcs that must remain recognizable and visible across outputs. The self here is not only narrated but also platform-optimized. Identity becomes a reproducible unit and the same ‘Key Backstory + Voice + Lesson’ can be repackaged across domains.

What sticks out to me the most is how often the personal essay runs on a heavy dose of misery. The form is marketed as endlessly flexible, but the engine is usually the same. Trauma offers up a bundle of guarantees. It gives the piece depth, because suffering reads like interiority. The pain reads as earned moral standing, conferring authority onto the author. Formally, it gives the narrative motivation and propulsion—something happened and must be overcome. This trope has been dubbed the “trauma plot”: a narrative structure where a narrator’s traumatic past is treated as the central explanatory key to their personality and actions. If the trauma plot has an aesthetic, it is the aesthetic of explanation. This trope’s popularity may in large part be due to its efficiency in making a life legible to strangers. It takes the mess of lived experience and compresses it into a causally neat story.

But what happens if this trauma is fabricated?

I first heard about James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces through Oprah’s Book Club. The memoir presents itself as the full-body crash of a life: An addict wakes up on a plane with his face smashed in, checks into rehab, and spends the next few hundred pages enduring maximal suffering. From all the despair and rage, he slowly assembles a new self. After it was revealed that his anecdotes were largely fabricated, Frey was dragged back onto The Oprah Winfrey Show. In a now-famous segment, he was confronted on air for having lied to “millions of readers.”

Perhaps the reason this feels like such a violation is because confession is considered to be more than just storytelling. It is a kind of contract. The reader offers belief in exchange for truth. When that truth is revealed as strategically manufactured, one feels not merely misled but exploited.

The outrage at Frey seems to hinge on the belief that narrative fabrication is avoidable. But life does not present itself as a story ready for consumption; in order for me to write my wry introductory anecdotes, I must manufacture something, to some degree. Experience contains an overabundance of moments, most of them unthematic, repetitive, or contradictory. The instant I write, I have to reduce that excess into form. I must choose a starting point, decide what counts as relevant, identify causes, arrange sequences, assign emphasis. The fictionalization is inevitable.

Is writing something that expresses a preexisting subjectivity or is the self something that only becomes thinkable once it is put into words? We tend to instinctively think of autobiography as a narrative container or envelope of some kind in which we express our identities, as though identity and narrative are somehow separable. Yet, when an author writes about themself, they are not merely documenting their life; they are crafting a version of their identity within the text.

If the self is not simply expressed in autobiography but produced through the act of narration, then the political dimensions of the personal essay become harder to ignore. Who benefits from this pressure to speak relentlessly about ourselves? And what kinds of selves does it train us to become? Here, I turn to

Michel Foucault. When people invoke Foucault, it’s often in the tone of a priest sprinkling holy water: power! discipline! panopticon! Still, he might help us in our search for understanding…

“Western man has become a confessing animal,” Foucault wrote in his book The History of Sexuality. He traces how a religious practice of avowal mutates and expands until it becomes a general cultural form: “The obligation to confess is now relayed through so many different points, is so deeply ingrained in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effect of a power that constrains us; on the contrary, it seems to us that truth, lodged in our most secret nature, ‘demands’ only to surface.”

This helps explain why confession culture so often presents itself as moral progress: ‘speak your truth,’ ‘own your story,’ ‘break the silence.’ We experience disclosure as something our inner truth wants. We imagine that if we aren’t speaking, something is

In a culture of confessing animals, the question isn’t just what we’re telling. It’s what telling is doing to us.

repressing us. Foucault’s point is that the feeling of the truth “demanding” to surface is itself historically produced. Confession becomes a habit of selfhood. We learn to believe the self is a secret that must be spoken. And confession is a truth-practice that creates. It produces a person who can be known, assessed, corrected.

Foucault’s term governmentality is often glossed as the “conduct of conduct”: the way power works by shaping how people guide themselves. This is the same basic intuition behind his famous panopticon example. A prisoner never knows when they’re being watched, so the safest option is to behave as if they are always being watched. The brilliance is that surveillance becomes internal. A similar mechanism is at play in so many of these personal essays: What looks like self-expression is also self-surveillance. Indeed, what is striking about Cunha’s essay isn’t her sudden fluency in the mechanics of the 2008 collapse—no late-blooming hobby in subprime lending, no lyrical aside about adjustable-rate mortgages. It’s the quiet pivot inward: “The most embarrassing part was how I felt about myself. How I had so internalized the message of what poor people should or should not have.” No cop, no censor, no official condemnation is required. The narrator has become her own warden; she must manage her own conduct. Foucault expands on the idea of self-improvement in his lecture “Technologies of the Self.” He defines such self-making technologies as “reflected and voluntary practices by which men not only fix rules of conduct for themselves but seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their particular being, and to make their life an oeuvre.” These are practices or techniques that are both initiated by

the self and aimed at self-transformation. They often involve a purposeful and structured externalization of the self.

In order for me to write a personal essay, I become both the person doing the analysis and the object being analyzed. I must pull private material outward and arrange it into something legible. This standardizes the acceptable ways in which pain may appear in public: coherent, instructive, and ideally moralizing. Platforms and publications don’t just want trauma; they want trauma that resolves and transforms. This is why endings matter so much. They function like risk management: If an essay ends in despair, it leaves the reader with no clean exit. If it ends in rage, it points outward and starts naming systems. But if it ends in redemption, it returns the problem to the narrator’s interior life. The ‘solution’ is personal transformation.

And here, finally, is my bleak little conclusion: The disclosure economy teaches us to locate the source of suffering in personality and backstory rather than in material arrangements and institutional design. Cunha’s essay doesn’t end with rage at the systems that forced her to go bankrupt in order to feed her babies. It ends with a moral insight that lands back in the self: “Poverty is a circumstance, not a value judgment […] I was my harshest critic.” She blames her suburban upbringing and her lack of empathy. The political world is acknowledged (Obama’s programs get a nod), but the catharsis is privately located.

The dominant forms of circulation reward stories that route experience back into the self as a personal project. The self becomes the primary site of intervention because it is the most narratable one: feasibly cogent, lucrative, and presumably capable of radical change. So the story ends, again and again, with governance in miniature. Not the state issuing orders, but the subject learning to supervise herself. So yes, confession is content. But content is also conduct. In a culture where we have, apparently, become “confessing animals,” the question isn’t just what we’re telling. It’s what telling is doing to us.

I cannot end here, of course—it is too despondent. Despite the reckonings of her essay, in her closing line Cunha must reassure us that she “still [has] that Mercedes.” So, in keeping with the tradition of a confessional essay, I should probably end with growth. Something clean and responsible. I am now aware of my narrativizing tendencies and their effects, and I will strive to resist them in the future.

Consider this my redemption arc.

KEYA

MEHRA B’29 is constructed solely for your viewing pleasure!

Infinity and the Dishes in the Sink

our eyes wide open. We were little together here and we thought about the things that stay. Or might.

We liked to see how tall and stinky we could get the stack of dishes in the sink. Our bowls and cups, balanced delicately, made our own house, one just for us, one that no one could touch, or wanted to. We left out clumps of food for the fairies and the flies. And they came. And they spent the night. We knew because they snacked on our toast ends. And left smears of berry juices from the fruit nuggets they took up as soccer balls when they would not sleep. And we kept adding more rooms, hoping they might get some rest. The jam hardened to carpet their cozy lairs—elaborate patterns of seedy red on the floors and glazing their walls.

wooden bowl full of raw walnuts. We ran our fingers through the mound. The rustle mimicked our rain or our shower. They had their hard shells still intact, and we sat on the floor and went at them with the nut-cracker.

We lay there, our heads hot, and a bit dizzy. The vines dug deep into our ankles and just barely made their way up our calves (they were doing a lousy job of bringing blood back up to the heart). We nibbled on the petals stuck straight into our gums. The centipedes traversed our spines with their hundred little legs. We had forgotten about that business of ours in

They stayed there chatting late into the night and we wanted them to bask in warm light as they shared buttery pillows (we left the stove lights beaming all night long). The bathrooms in the house in the sink were slick and sudsy with bacon grease (they could bathe comfortably and sing all out of tune and help wash each other’s hair). The attic had enough mysterious webs of wilting spinach to keep us all entertained. Enough strange shadows to twist up the imagination in little knots we dared not touch. With scone crumbs and popover bottoms, we left them a rock wall for swinging and a sewing room for swaddling (and we promised to sew a dress for this dance we dreamed up).

These were the things we ate and shared with each other over breakfasts that were silent or not, and with eggs, too, often, which slithered their way neatly down the drain and drew a slimy trail to follow. These were the things we left behind. We walked on our toes in the kitchen now and held our noses and waited up for ghosts (we thought they might want in on our sink house too).

When we were little and together, we liked our fragile balancing act. We liked our open rooms with open doors and enough air to breathe and we liked the way it felt on our feet to tip-toe around it all and we liked the world we had built together. We did not take care of all the delicate things—our dishes, our skin, our teeth or eyes. We liked the precarity of it all, that was where the majesty was. In the fork teetering on one twine that puffed the chimney smoke from the fires that burned holes in our socks.

With our dishes left in the sink, we sat on the couch. We had ripped out the upholstery ourselves and stuffed the cushions full of crackly leaves. The couch and its stench were red and old and tired. There, we sang out strange stories. Dancers in pink hats and pink lights sliding across the stage. Large bonfires put out by our pee. Waves that were hard to hide under. We were telling stories about these things: slipping, extinguishing, crashing. Not about that house of ours in the sink and what might happen.

On sunny days, we sat on the porch in our underwear and ate ice cream balls the size of small watermelons. We got all sticky on our lips and our chins and we kept it there. Our hair climbed down our spines, freckles popped up on our arms, and our skin peeled, blistered, bulged—all the things the hours in the sun will do to you. We divined from the shapes left on our skin. We made guesses about who would fall in love first and what it would look like. We crafted up feeble and fragmented tales of people leaving and making

Each made a little splitting sound and their walnut hearts tumbled to the floor. We chomped on the treasure with our mouths open wide and smiled. We cracked more nuts and tried to make it an even split down the spine, though they usually crumbled entirely and only occasionally could we get it just right. Often, and if we got a good enough look, there was a little gaping hole at the base where we used the leverage to pry them open. The shells were delicate, though. They would fall apart in our palms if clung onto for too long.

If split precisely, the walnuts would yield two opposite oblong halves that stared back at us from the floor. We took a knife and poked holes down the midline ridge to guide the break. And we fashioned our own eyes from the walnuts. We stretched out our lids down as far as we could and slid them into place for each other. And we did not blink for fear they may move out of place. We hoped the shells would not crumble in our eye sockets, though they soon began to take on the water and the salt of our eyes and got all soft. So they roamed around our irises looking for a snug fit. We let them be.

When our eyes and the dew dried up, the walnut shells snapped slightly and let in just a little bit of light. So we made our way to the road and lay down. We grabbed the ivy from the bushes that liked to swal low up our keys. We wrapped the stems tightly around our ankles, right in the place of our artery with the beating pulse, audible if we put our ears to our ankles real close. We pulled tightly. And took turns breath ing through the stems with a steady rhythm to mimic the pulse of pumping blood that we had usurped. The vines would inflate just barely around the ankles that held onto the feet that were growing limp.

We plucked up centipedes and watched them curl up into little coins on our fingertips. We fixed them to the napes of our necks to take the place of old moles. Some would chomp just slightly. We let them meander and burrow and create new blemishes for us.

We yanked at our rotting incisors and filled the gaps with pearly white dandelion petals. We bunched them up so that they would be just the right size. They were sweet and made our mouths all dry. We bared our teeth like bears to one another. And giggled to reveal our gnashing dental work.

When we were little and together, we were making anything out of anything. This was our endless twist of infinite possibility, like that silver strip statue we had discovered one night. We climbed up it and slid down. It let out a muffled yelp as our skin skidded

We piled up large stones on our chests to create a pointy, grey third mound sticking straight out of the sternum. It was all crushing on our ribs and our heartbeats became so loud that we braced. It was our own strange symphony, as if created in the dark. A racket with a neat coda as the crowning stones fell to the gravel. We tried to slow our breathing all together to keep the stack stable. It nearly worked.

There is a physical space in which everything is contained. It exists nowhere, and it is believed to be of “inestimable value.” It is absolutely true.

The space is made of itself. Because it is made of itself it is superfluous and therefore wholly necessary. If it is wholly necessary then it must be true. If it must be true then it must be itself. If it is itself, then it must be everything.

Everything: So, the mountain. So the gasket. So the infinite book. So the better gesture. So the snowflake. So the outstretched refusing palm. So the tail. So the head. So the whirling. So the deep-sea fish. So one. So one and one. So one and two. So one and three. So one and four. So on. So return. So one. So return. So the snake. So return. So to call it “true.” So to speak. So starlings. So to see. So an eye, eyeing.

Ekti bhoto esthan ache, jar modhe shob kichu’i thake. Sheti kotha’o nai, ebong beeshash kora hoy je eita mullo hin. Eiti ekdom shotti.

Ei jaiga nijei ke nijeri toire. Jeito eita nijer’i toire, eita mullohin, ebong she join’noi, khube proyojonio. \Eita proyojonio jei, tahole eita nishcho’i shotti. Eita shotti jei, tahole eita nishcho’i nijei. Eita nijei jei, tahole eita nishcho’i shobkichu.

Shobkichu: Orthoat, pahar. Orthoat, gasket. Orthoat, ononto boi. Orthoat, aro bhalo ishara. Orthoat, tushorkona. Orthoat, samne barano kintu ashikar-karer hater talu. Orthoat, les. Orthoat, matha. Orthoat, ghurano. Orthoat, gobhir shomudrer maache. Orthoat, ek. Orthoat, ek ebong ek. Orthoat, ek ebong du’i. Orthoat, ek ebong teen. Orthoat, ek ebong char. Orthoat, cholte thake. Orthoat, fiyre’i ashe. Orthoat, shap. Orthoat, fiyre’i ashe. Orthoat, shotti bola hoi. Orthoat, bole daka. Orthoat, shaliker jhak. Orthoat, dekha. Orthoat, ekti chokh, je dekhte takhe.

Every existent, necessary in itself, is pure truth, for the essence of each thing is the particularity of its existence that is established for it, therefore there is no truth more true than the Necessary Existent. And “true” may also be said of that whose existence is correctly believed in, so there is no truth more true in this sense than that whose existence is correctly believed in, and whose correctness is perpetual, and whose perpetuity is due to itself, not to another.

ekzista o estas pura vero, afero estas la specikiu establiĝis por ĝi; pli vera ol la Necesa anka povas deskrioni uste kredas; tial vera (en i tiu senco) oni uste kredas, kaj eterna, kaj kies eternemem, ne al alia.

It’s tricky to translate a text that’s so concerned with the ideal—with what’s reflexive, or infinite, or self-containing, or immaterial—into a poetic image. What does it mean to take a syllogism to its end?

The main structural change I made was breaking up the long, comma-linked English sentences into shorter units, since Tibetan doesn’t use commas to link clauses the way English does. Each Tibetan line represents a single logical unit, using the shad ( ) as a clause boundary marker.

Existuje materialistický prostor, ve kterém je obsaženo vše. Není nalezený v žadném městě a jeho hodnota je k nezaplacaní. Vše, že řečeny o něm, je pravdiný. Ten prostor je kompozicí sebe sama. Jeho význam je hodnota nedostatku a to je samo o sobě. Jestli je význam, musí to být pravda. Jestli je pravda, musí to být sama sebou. Jestli samí sebou, musí být vším.

Vše. Proto hora. Proto štred. Proto kniha bez koncové stránky. Proto gesto přednost před druhým. Proto sněhová vločka. Proto ruka natažená v odmítnutí. Proto ocas. Proto hlava. Proto obíhání. Proto ryba z hloubku moře. Proto jedna. Proto jedna a dva. Proto jedna a tři. Proto jedna a čtyři. Proto tímto způsobem. Proto loutna. Proto jedna. Proto loutna. Proto zmije. Proto loutna. Proto říci, že je to pravda. Proto je výraz přípustný. Proto hvězdnice/špaček. Proto vidění. Proto oko, viděný.

Arabic script runs from the right to the left. While most new Arabic learners read Arabic text with short vowels, native/fluent readers find their presence redundant and as such I have mostly not included them in the text. I have only included some important short vowels since the short vowels at the end of each word are highly dependent on the placement of the word in the sentence (this is a very complex branch of Arabic known as وحن). I did take some creative liberties with some of the sentences given how clunky they would sound in Arabic if translated literally. Here is a short but not full list of the phrases that I modified to fit an Arabic text: • “Because it is made of itself it is superfluous and therefore wholly necessary” →

The main tool I used here is inversion, along with a slight redefinition of the sentence. My Arabic translation roughly means: “Its importance is defined by its lack [of importance] and that’s because it is made of itself.” I find it to flow more naturally that way.

• The word “

,” roughly used for “So” in the second paragraph of the text, uses a short vowel known as

fatih, which is repeated in every use of the word “so” except for the “so” in “so to speak.” This is intentional and is due to the Arabic phrase for “so to speak” actually containing the same word,“

”, but without the “

”. • Initially, I found no direct translation for “starlings” because I assumed it was a diminutive

text, posed challenges in my initial understanding of the source material and in thinking about how I wanted to translate it. While I spend a lot of time on the language in any translation project, this was especially true with this project, since Arabic and Czech are not languages that I grew up speaking fluently. At times, I caught myself slipping into English as a mediating language, a habit I try to avoid when translating to minimize distance between the source material and the new text. My main tactic to prevent this issue is quickly skimming the text and jotting down any immediate translations before circling back for multiple re-reads, focusing on the more difficult words and phrases. Although unpacking nuance between synonyms sometimes poses a challenge in my work, it is also what I love the most about translation. I am constantly learning and relearning each language as I am pushed to consider the implications of my choices and imagine the author’s own intentions.

greek [em]

arabic [mj]

english [al]

chinese [zy]

每一事物所蕴含的真实感，正是该物存在的特征。 自存，意味着自身之中存在着纯正的真实。在自存之上，并无更加真 实的真实。

凡是被相信的，皆可被称为“真实”。

正因如此，并不存在一种比“被相信为存在的事物”更为真实的真实。 事物因真实而获得永恒性，而这种永恒，仍然停留在自我之内。

All aseity is pure truth in itself, for the truthfulness of every thing is the inherent characteristic of existence; thus, there is no truth truer than aseity. That whose belief can be verified can also be called truth, therefore there is no truth truer, in this truthfulness, than the one whose belief in its existence is truthful, and which, with its truth, is eternal, and yet its eternity is its own and not that of another. 其 々 の 物 事 の 真 実 味 が そ の 物 事 の 存 在 の 特 徴 だ か ら 、 自 存 は 純 正 な 真 実 が 内 存 し て い る こ と で 、 自 存 よ り も 、 真 実 な 真 実 は な い 。 信 じ ら れ て い る も の も 「 真 実 」 と 呼 べ る 。 だ か ら そ の 真 実 味 ゆ え に 、 存 在 す る と 信 じ ら れ て い る も の よ り も 、 真 実 な 真 実 は な い 。 真 実 に よ っ て 永 遠 に な っ て 、 し か し こ の 永 遠 は ま だ 自 家 だ 。

japanese [ccb]

The sentence “だからその真実味のせいで、存在すると信じられているものよ りも、真実な真実はない” was the most difficult for me to translate and ultimately underwent the greatest structural revision. The expressions “〜のせい で” and “よりも” introduce a slightly negative, sharp tone, as well as a concrete sense of comparison. After considering the overall philosophical intent and atmosphere of the passage, I felt that this implication was not entirely appropriate, and therefore chose to adjust the structure in translation. Most of the remaining sentences closely follow the original phrasing, with minor additions made to improve fluency in Chinese. I also made small adjustments to sentence breaks: When the term “自存” (a concept with philosophical weight and not a part of everyday language) appears for the first time, I inserted a comma to clarify its semantic role; additionally, as the word “真实” recurs frequently throughout the text, each sentence is set on a separate line to enhance readability.

A single word can represent both that which is true and that which is: real. So a single concept can represent both 真理 (‘truth’) and τὸ ὄν (‘being’): reality.

french [ka]

Toute aséité est pure vérité en soi, car la véracité de chaque chose est la caractéristique inhérente à l’existence ; par conséquent, il n’y a pas de vérité plus vraie que l’aséité. Ce dont la croyance est vérifiable peut aussi être appelé vérité, donc il n’y a pas de vérité plus vraie, dans cette véracité, que celle dont la croyance en son existence est vérace, et qui, avec sa vérité, est éternelle, et pourtant son éternité lui est propre et non celle d’un autre.

spanish [ha]

Toda la aseidad por sí mismo es verdad pura porque la veracidad de cada cosa es la característica del existir que le es propia, entonces no hay verdad más veraz de la aseidad. También puede llamarse verdad aquello cuya creencia es verídica, entonces no hay verdad más veraz, en esta veracidad, que aquello cuya creencia en su existencia es verídica, y con su verdad es eterna, y sin embargo su eternidad es propia y no de otro.

japanese [kh]

全ての自存(アセイティ)は、それ自体が純粋 な真実なのです。なぜなら、各個体の真実性 こそが、その事物が存在しているという特徴 になるからです。つまり、自存(アセイティ)で ある以上に、真の真理は存在しないのです。 その確認できる信念であるも真実と呼ばれ るので、この確認できるにおいて、真実の存 在を信じることが確認できるな真実よりも真 実なものはない、その真実は永遠であるな がら、その永遠は自身のものであり、他のも のではありません。

english [sw]

All selfhood is in itself a pure truth, since the truthfulness of everything is the self’s characteristic of existence, and thus there is no truer truth than the selfhood.

One can also call that the truth, which is truly believed, so that there is no truer truth, in this truthfulness, than that, which is truly believed in its being and is eternal with its truth, and even then eternity is its own and not that of another.

“Aseity” doesn’t have a direct, one-to-one translation in Japanese, so both “自存” (self-existence, the closest translation of the concept) and “アセイティ” (literally “aseity” written in Japanese syllabaries) are used. Translated with help from Tomoko H. (Tomoko is my mother!!!)

The text is quite technical and philosophical, with weird syntax, and so some of it carries through in the translation. “Aseidad” is the technical theological translation for the Arabic term “

,” but it can also be translated as “el Existente Necesario” depending on if we are dealing with the original Arabic phrase as an entity or a characteristic of said entity. I will admit to taking some liberties in preferentially utilizing terms derived from Latin “verus,” when the linguistic roots for the various “truths” in the Arabic original are a bit more varied (although the root “ق ق ح” and its associated derivations abound, with the sentence

” being the most flagrant example). Besides that flourish I tried to be as faithful to the original text as possible.

german [pz]

All die Selbstheit ist an sich eine reine Wahrheit, da die Wahrhaftigkeit jedes Dinges das ihm eigene Merkmal des Seins ist, somit gibt es keine wahrhaftigere Wahrheit als die Selbstheit. Man kann auch das als Wahrheit benennen, dessen Glaube wahrhaftig ist, sodass es keine wahrhaftigere Wahrheit gibt, in dieser Wahrhaftigkeit, als das, dessen Glaube an sein Sein wahrhaftig ist, und mit seiner Wahrheit ewig ist, und selbst dann die Ewigkeit eigen ist und nicht die eines anderen.

spanish [mh]

Toda la mismidad es en pura, ya que la veracidad de acterística del ser, de tal forma más verdadera que la de la También se puede llamar verdad que se cree realmente, de dad más verdadera, en esta creencia que es verdadera en na en su verdad, y aun entonces propia y no ajena.

This translation is unmediated, raw, and barely edited. Given the density of this text and its repetitive use of words, this translation adds certain words in Arabic to facilitate the reading, which readers may otherwise get lost in through the repetitive use of “truth” and “being.” I tried to find synonyms of different words to make the text more legible.

WHATEVER I DON’T EVEN CARE.

INDIETERMINATE FUTURES

c God has abandoned Providence. In the many long days since the Great Blizzard of 2026, Indie has been trapped in Conmag. Woodland creatures have been feeding me news from the outside world. That’s the only reason I know about Punch the monkey. Poor guy. Indie has had a lot of time to reflect. Down the dark dark spiral. There is nothing to look at

but the insides of my eyelids. Outside, the ground is but a white sheet, as is the sky. The monotony burns. In here, it smells like stale champagne-ofbeer and must. I am tracking time by notching tick marks into one of the tables here. I guess I could have used pencil and paper, but it’s too late now. Dearest readers, my marbles have rolled under the minifridge in the corner and I’m too

MASH

afraid to find out what else is under there. I am starting to go insane. What is it all for? What does it all mean? Why do Bad things happen to Good Girls? Once, I was concerned about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. But none of it even matters. Let the stars (this game, but also me, sort of, and also you) decide your future. If you even have one. If we ever get out of here.

How to play: Player 1 begins by drawing a spiral, continuing until Player 2 says “Stop.” Then, Player 1 counts the rings drawn to get your number, X. Starting with the first category, count X items down and cross out the item you land on. Continue until there is only one item left in each category—this remaining item determines Player 1’s fate. Switch positions and do it again for Player 2. Or do it by yourself, if you’re into that.

(spiral space)

1. Apartment

2. Apartment with doorman but also a ghost

Co-op

House

1. Bushwick Bed-Stuy and annoying about it

2. Hometown :/

3. Mildly uncomfortable linger in Providence

4. Abroad and annoying about it

1. Your ex, again (surprise!)

2. Campus crush

3. D-tier celebrity and you’re both using each other a little bit

4. Weird polycule where you’re kind of the odd one out but everyone’s too polite to acknowledge it

1. No, DJ

2. No, not DJ

3. Yes, thanks to mommy/daddy 4. Yes, and you’re doing whatever Richard Gere did in Pretty Woman (1990) but worse

1. Nuclear (normal)

2. Nuclear (gay son, thot daughter, third thing)

3. DINKs thank fucking god

4. Really complicated step-parent situation brought on by three divorces (all yours)

1. Aww! They were right in front of you all along!

2. Mutual friend thought you would just be Perfect together and they were mostly right

3. You graduate from the same university, and they are dating your friend. You carpool to New York City. You don’t see each other for five years, and then you’re on the same flight, both in relationships with other people. You don’t see each other for another five years, during which both relationships end, then you run into each other at a bookstore. You decide to become friends. At a New Year’s Eve party, you realize you’re attracted to each other, but you ignore it. You start to become more like best friends. You set each other up on a double date, but it fails miserably as your dates instantly fall for each other. Later, you end up having sex and it gets weird again. You don’t really hang out much, and later, you have a big fight, effectively ending the friendship. You miss each other. You don’t admit it. At the next year’s New Year’s Eve party, as you’re about to leave, they show up, you lock eyes across the dance floor, and they declare their love for you. You don’t believe them. You try to walk away. They say: “I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” You believe them. You love them, despite their hairline. You get married.

4. Dating app

1. Getting really into Stoicism

2. Starting a podcast :/ and also it’s about Stoicism :/

3. Developing a really complicated relationship with alcohol and doing so semipublicly

4. Your hair. You did something to your hair. Why did you do that 1. Industrious little beetle

Moth 3. Dragonfly (complimentary)

Earwig and they know it

Uncertain but willing to investigate further

2. Wants to abandon their owner for you; their owner silently resents you for it

3. Used to like you until The Incident

4. Will not make eye contact (also possibly related to The Incident)

Licking envelopes

Fcuking FAB Geek Bars

League of Legends

Mayo

And remember, the answers you get Are in fact a direct reflection of your character, and they will in fact come true.

*MASH is called MASH because the residences are usually Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House. However, I did not find this to be a sufficient reflection of the options available to the Indy readership.

The Bulletin

EVENTS

c Open Mic

March 6, 7 p.m.

Riffraff Bookstore + Bar, 60 Valley St #107A Free

c Thank You, PVD: Benefit Concert

March 6, doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 The Strand, 79 Washington St GA Floor Tickets: $15

c Live Underground Comedy

March 6 & 7, 8–10 p.m.

Hide Speakeasy

Under The George Restaurant 121 Washington St $20

c Paper Moon Jazz Band

March 6, 8–11 p.m.

Myrtle, 134 Waterman Ave East Providence, RI 02914 Free

c Hands Off Our Books: Writing & Reading in an Era of Censorship

March 7, 1–3 p.m.

LitArts RI, 400 Harris Ave, Unit E Free

c Cohibernation Fest: Benefit Show

March 7 & 8, 8–11 p.m.

Red Ink Community Library, 130 Cypress St $20 suggested donation

c Our Own, My Own—Experiences with Art: Gallery Conversations

March 8, 3–4:30 p.m.

RISD Museum, 20 N Main St Free, registration requested

c Jazz: Dan Drohan Trio

March 9, 7–10 p.m. The Red Door, 49 Peck St Free

c A Reading From TheComplex: Book Launch

March 10, 7 p.m.

Riffraff Bookstore + Bar, 60 Valley St #107A Free

c Maximum Horror Video RI Screening of Leprechaun

March 10, 8–11 p.m.

Myrtle, 134 Waterman Ave, East Providence, RI 02914 Free

c Clambake: Creative Conversations

March 11, 6–8 p.m.

Moniker Brewery, 432 W Fountain St Free

c Literary Trivia March 11, 7 p.m.

Riffraff Bookstore + Bar, 60 Valley St #107A Free

c Hide-N-Speak: Poetry Night

March 12, 7–11 p.m.

Hide Speakeasy, under The George Restaurant, 121 Washington St $10

c A Reading From MegaMilk: Author Event

March 13, 6 p.m.

Riffraff Bookstore + Bar, 60 Valley St #107A Free

c A Petting Zoo

March 13, 6–9 p.m.

Public Shop & Gallery 50 Agnes St $10

New Moon Dance Party

March 13, 10 p.m.–2 a.m.

The Red Door, 49 Peck St Free

MUTUAL AID

Help Amiri’s Family in Afghanistan During His ICE Detention

[From the AMOR GoFundMe: Amiri was detained by ICE in July and is currently imprisoned in the Wyatt Detention Facility. Amiri’s two sisters live in Kabul, Afghanistan and rely on his financial support, but ICE detention has prevented Amiri from sending funds to his family. Amiri’s mother died in August, and his family is suffering during his detention and struggling to make ends meet. AMOR is collecting funds which will go directly to Amiri’s sister, to support living costs during her brother’s detention in Rhode Island.]

CROSSWORD

ACROSS

1. One of the only open places on Thayer during the first days of the storm

3. Pay, wages workers missed while sleeping in dining halls during the storm

5. The measuring devices whose delay and/or cancellation brought joy to the majority of the campus community

8. Little houses that appeared on the Main Green

( TEXT CAIDEN DEMUNDO & SARYA BARAN KıLıÇ DESIGN HONGRUI GUAN )

Support a Haitian Family Facing ICE Detention & Eviction

[From the AMOR GoFundMe: The Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR) is fundraising for M, whose son has been detained by ICE since 2023 and is currently detained at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, RI. We are seeking to raise $10,000 for M so that she can continue to support her family of four, to help cover the cost of housing, utilities, food, and legal costs for her son while he is detained by ICE at the Wyatt.]

Bulletin Submission Form

Do you have an event or mutual aid fund you’d like to promote? Or perhaps you have a burning (but short!) opinion bite you’re dying to share? Well, now you can submit it to Bulletin!

DOWN

2. A severe, long-lasting winter storm defined by high winds and heavy falling or blowing snow

4. What the grad staircases turned into because of ice 6. One of the main forms of transportation across campus at the moment

7. The platform that we had to use during the cancellation of classes that reminded us all too well of 2020–2021