Volume 16 Issue 2
Erik Beserra
Lockdowniversary

A year ago I stared at the numbers rising on the New York Times website. Every day I found myself feeling more inept as 10,000 became 20,000 became 40,000 became 80,000. I stared at the numbers like a moth at lights. Inept and discouraged. I still feel inept. I now have a tab with the New York Times vaccine distribution map. It is weird staring at this good news. Some part of me doesn’t feel hopeful since this is just what needs to be done. We failed and are now picking up the pieces.

Lockdowniversary
Volume 15 Issue 3
Lauren Mondroski
Dying to Get Outside? A Grave History of Hiking ...

This was before the establishment of large public parks, meaning that if you were a Victorian-era urban American, you most likely spent your time outdoors strolling and picnicking with family, friends, and lovers, all amidst the dead.

Dying to Get Outside? A Grave History of Hiking and Cemeteries
Volume 15 Issue 2
Allison Wallace
A list of good: a good list to make

· Arriving
· The first song you listen to through headphones
· When a good bakery has good tea (the complete experience)
· The crisp, blue outlines of the hills here in Western Oregon

A list of good: a good list to make
Volume 15 Issue 2
Nerissa Wright
Seek Discomfort

Portland is a peculiar white haven, and I come from a melting pot that smells like urine year-round. Both are good, but very different.

Seek Discomfort
Volume 14 Issue 1
Lauren Mondroski
Spoiler Alert: There Is No Coming of Age

Released on August 25, 2020, Haley Blais’ Below the Salt is an album I wish I had during my first year of college. Coincidentally, that’s when I first started listening to Blais, a Vancouver-based singer-songwriter and vlogger whose wacky sense of humor and DIY bedroom-pop bangers resonated with me, a freshman living on her own for the very first time and trying to make sense of the world and herself. That unsure first-year is a senior now, but no less unsure, and I think that’s the point of Blais’ debut album: her label writes, “Below the Salt is a coming of age story that recognizes that there is no real ‘coming of age.’”

Spoiler Alert: There Is No Coming of Age

Volume 1 Issue 7

Reed Doesn't Hear the Mellodi

Reed Doesn't Hear the Mellodi

This semester, Branden Sanders, an Enterprise Fellow at Vanderbilt University, has been working towards adding Reed to his music website Mellodi.com. The design of the site is similar to iTunes, but instead of finding Bruno Mars or Ke$ha in the Top Songs one will come across some of the most promising college artists in the country—or at least those who have decided to upload their tracks. 

Over a dozen students from Tufts, Skidmore, and Wesleyan have seized upon Mellodi as a good venue for presenting their music and expanding their audiences. Joining Mellodi makes their work accessible through a curated page that shows their songs alongside those of other artists from their school. Sanders optimistically wrote in an email at the beginning of the semester: “Once we get about 12 artists we’ll give Reed its own school page and people will be able to browse and listen to all the music made by Reed students.” To date, only five Reed artists have signed up while others have refused or failed to respond to Sanders’ requests. 

Ben There

Ben There

Tufts offered me 35k and Reed couldn’t give me a dime. “We’re sorry,” they’d said. “You seem like a great fit. But our deadlines are really that strict.” My senior year of high school had been a period of dissociation. Circumstances involving the hospitalization of a loved one and my own arrogance had lead to me turning in the non-custodial parent profile for the Financial Aid CSS profile a week late. “You know, if you take a year off, you can reapply for aid,” someone at Reed told me, “I can’t make any promises, but our aid is better than Tufts’.” 

Tufts was solid and straight-laced. It foretold a future in a suit. Reed had a different allure. The first recording of Howl took place at Reed, and in my estimation that made Reed worth taking a year off for. I worked landscaping until all of the fall leaves were cleared away. It was good money and my savings stacked enough to let me travel through winter. I had an ambitious plan. My friends were homesick college freshman scattered around the country, more than willing to put me up for a night, so I charted a U around America, planning to go down the East Coast and up the West. A buddy gave me the last of the weed he’d harvested that fall. I’d never smoked much, but the bud was soothing and I’d freed myself of obligations. Landscaping had also left me sore, and smoking helped with the headaches that I had begun having. 

Small Presses and Artist Books: a look into Reed's Special Collections

Small Presses and Artist Books: a look into Reed's Special Collections

I tumbled straight out of my first year at Reed and into the San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB), a nonprofit in the heart of San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood whose mission is to foster love of the printed word. They offer classes in bookmaking, calligraphy, and letterpress. This last is accomplished with the help of four beautiful old Vandercook cylinder presses and two even older pedal-cranked flatbed presses, all kept in pristine condition by a small handful of dedicated artists. In addition, half of their floor space is an exhibition area with cases and bookshelves full of beautiful small press and artists’ books. Similar to the current exhibit of small press books on display in the Hauser Library, these exhibitions presented books as more than a medium for information. Rather, they confronted spectators with the idea that to collect and exhibit books as art is to appreciate the work and love that goes into making these quotidian objects, and to realize that, perhaps, they are not as quotidian as they may seem. 

CSO's Search Directives

With Renn Fayre coming up, The Grail took a look at Community Safety’s Departmental Directives. We found some interesting things within — but you should also take a look at the whole documents since they guide the CSOs in protecting the community. Despite rumors that the directives have been changed, they are only updated once a year — over the summer. These excerpts are from the latest (2013) revisions of these directives.