Dear Reader,
We hope you enjoyed your trip behind the scenes of RAW with us in last week’s issue of The Grail! It was our most popular issue yet.
Spring is in the air, and so is the sound of music, especially the sound of Reedie Paul Anderson’s ’88-’92 collection of songs about his time on campus (1). Ruben de la Huerga suggests the perfect album for finishing midterms (3).
Do you feel like running away sometimes? Then read James Curry IV’s flash fiction piece “The Track Star” (2). Or, you could ask our advice specialist and check what fashion is popping on campus (5).
And if none of that appeals to you, hopefully something else in this issue will. Or you can always blame it on the stars (4). We wish you a peaceful and relaxing break — maybe you’ll have a spare moment to watch our beautiful campus burst into bloom.
And, as always, we invite you to our weekly open meetings, Mondays at 8 in PAB 105.
Love,
Ben, Brendan, Clara, Jordan, Lauren, and Vikram
News & Features
The first thing you’ll notice about Paul Anderson’s album Loligo Vulgaris is that many of the songs he wrote about Reed College between 1988 and 1992 could have been composed in the quad today. His sharp caricatures and parodies of life on campus, such as “Rich White Kid”, “Sensitive Guy”, and “On the Night Bus” haven’t aged a day.
Listen to the album here.
Fiction
A track star, he, running along the brown-orange and the green-white in shiny blue windswept shorts and great white sneakers with intricate designs. He’s bronzed and heaving, a furnace of movement, perfectly suffering in the golden sun, an immaculately sculpted seventeen-year-old machine of tremendous output. Cheered on by girls in the bleachers, all hair-obscured foreheads and colored tights enamored with his athleticism, his deliberately-cut blonde hair, his gigantic blue eyes, this boy bouncing rapidly along the track, a dorky Adonis, a goofball Aryan blur. When they say his name he smiles, straight teeth, glowing droopy cartoon eyes, mind in the world with the girls and with God shining benevolently above him, happy for all he’s done and all he will do, a future happy family man, this well-liked boy, not too serious, wearer of funny t-shirts from funny movies and avid listener of high-energy rock music, friend to surfer dude and hipster creep alike, safe in His warmth, powerful in His consciousness.
Music Reviews
This album got me through final exams; it doesn’t get more magical than that. The melodic house music of Amygdala was a surprise hit for me. Despite my initial hatred of the album art, this is possibly the only album I fell for this year. I even warmed to the art once I had more of a grasp of DJ Koze’s personality. That this is near-perfect music for studying is not the main reason I’m so head over heels for this album. Its power lies in the youthful feelings of wonderment it stirs up. Each track has a moment that takes the listener further down the rabbit hole.
Burn After Reading
I’ll be honest: Skagboys by the Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh (most famous, I think, for his 1993 book Trainspotting — the one that got made into a movie with Ewan McGregor and — Welsh himself as Mikey Forrester) is the only book I’ve read for pleasure since the school year started. This is for a few reasons, the first and foremost being the mountain of work that we all know and love. Even as the bookstore cashier was ringing Skagboys up I was thinking: pleasure reading? really? when are you going to have time for that? Answer: I didn’t.
Science
Emerging research has made an exciting step toward the prevention and cure of HIV/AIDS. At least 36 million people have died from HIV/AIDS since its first report in 1981. One in six HIV-positive individuals is unaware of his or her status. The virus infects and disables immune cells — the T helper cells which orchestrate immune responses — and makes the individual highly susceptible to a range of other infections. A regimen of antiretroviral drugs is used to fight the infection, but this therapy is extremely expensive, sometimes ineffective, and can cause severe side effects.
Astral Projections
Venus moved into Aquarius last week. Don’t get too excited my sex-deprived Reedies, this transit is more about crowds and friends than romance. Of course these are not mutually exclusive. Eccentric Aquarius loves to break down old rules and work towards a higher social ideal. If an orgy is what you seek, now is the time to arrange it. For the less sexually adventurous, now is a time of social euphoria. Expect to make lots of new friends or, at the very least, leave the library and see all the friends you’ve been avoiding for that scholarly lifestyle. Those already involved in a romantic relationship will breathe a breath of fresh air thanks to the cool freedom that follows Aquarius. When Venus moves into Aquarius weirdos and eccentrics become even more lovable than before.
Poetry
Untitled by August Wissmath