Dear Reader,
Thank you for picking up a copy of The Grail. We value your readership and encourage you to take a look at our past issues which can be found on this site. Our meetings are open to everyone and are in PAB 105, Mondays at 8pm.
This week our issue is devoted to your creative endeavors during Reed Arts Week. Next week marks the 25th annual RAW, which began as a faculty-run weekend-long affair (1). The festival has grown to a week long event involving dozens of student artists.
We have exclusive interviews with the coordinators (2–3) and discussions with some of the artists (4-5) whose visions gave this year’s theme its form. Lurking in the in forest are daemons of a different sort; so check out Moira Hicks’ flash fiction piece, “The Woods” (7).
Though its 15 minutes of fame has melted away, the runaway snowball has shown just how far the media can carry a fun story (6). Reaching as far as Japan, the ice-ball has been immortalized online by the likes of NPR, ABC, and Buzzfeed.
Love,
Brendan, Clara, Jordan, Lauren, and Vikram
News & Features
At first Paradox manager Anna Baker seems to be an anomaly. Her calm elegance, finesse, and warmth belie her acute insight into female fury.
Or do they?
We meet at the Admission Office, where she works as an intern. Anna beams cheerily from behind the desk. I pour myself some coffee, which, by the way, you really need to stop stealing if you are not employed by this place of business.
Lina Neidhardt, Nita McDaniel and Kathleen Deems asked me to meet them in the Paradox to discuss their RAW Project. Lina was on shift. I walked in with a group of people looking for their late-afternoon caffeine or nicotine fix, and Nita, who also works there, went behind the counter to help within the sudden rush of students.
I met with Max Smith-Holmes inside the Student Union building last Friday to talk to him about his Reed Arts Week set of vaudeville-style performances. However, he almost immediately asked if we could move outside, which we did, and we proceeded to sit on the bench by the BPR and discuss what the RAW schedule describes as a “neoliberal wet dream.”
It’s safe to say that the giant snowball story is old news by now. But for those of you who have been living under a rock—or, more likely, under a pile of books—something happened during the Snowpoclaypse that has smashed its way into Reed’s history: two students accidentally rolled a nearly thousand pound snowball into the Reed College Apartments and caused a whopping $2000 to $3000 worth of damage on the 8th of February.
Fiction
It was hard to tell how big she got when it happened, but judging by the height of the bramble tunnel all around her, she got pretty big.
The sun was weak where it filtered overhead, through the low mist of the morning, making the light grey. Cool and damp against her skin, against her body.
Irene inhaled sharply, deeply, suddenly. Her heart shuddered inside of her, pounding. She fought for her breath, the cold air painful and hollow against her throat. She felt like she had not as much awoken as risen from the dead.
The ground was cold and hard under her face and hands and hips and legs. It pressed into her, the moss seeping water where her body weight pressed it like a sponge.
She was naked, she was wet, she was hyperventilating.
Film Review
“The LEGO Movie,” in theaters now, is a hilarious 100-minute avalanche of virtual action scenes, pop-culture references, and successful satire that pours out of the screen and onto the audience. While the movie is aimed at children, the comedy is rife with subtle and subversive in-jokes that only older viewers will understand.
Graceful Grousings
Miss Lonely Hearts
De Sastre
With applications to the language houses due this Friday, we decided to help promote interest by broadcasting the language scholars’ fashion. Whether you have a conversation class or have merely passed them in Commons, here are Matías Oviedo and Anna Amelyanchik. Matías is the Spanish House Scholar from Córdoba, Argentina and Anna is the Russian House Scholar from outside of St. Petersburg, Russia. Both in collared pale blue buttoned downs beneath either a colorful scarf or a puppy sweater, Mathías and Anna have clean and seemingly effortless style. To see the outfits’ details and more of the scholars, visit our website dosdesastres. blogspot.com.