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 8 Issue 4

Reed in the Nude

Reed in the Nude

Nudity has played a major role in Reed community events, protests, and traditions of all sorts. The Grail went spelunking in the Archives to ask, how has nudity manifested itself at Reed over time, and how has its meaning changed? The events and traditions profiled here are but a few: there are mysterious unlabeled pictures of naked Reedies on the front lawn and reading on SU couches, acting independently from any Reed tradition, suggesting that nudity at Reed has meant everything from casual personal freedom to political statement to a symbol of community bonding to potential threat.

Life at Reed: Embracing Failure

“You’re a failure.” “You just can’t do it.” “Give up.”

Though I was bullied until I began to lift weights in high school, and though I’ve been called many names, and been yelled at, laughed at, punched, kicked, ostracized, hungry for days, excluded, friendless, kicked out of a hundred spots when I lived in my car, dumped repeatedly, screwed over, stolen from, severely injured, and completely alone, I’m pretty sure that nothing has hurt me as deeply as the feeling of being a failure. I believe that much of the pain I listed above would fall under this sweeping characteristic, that of being a failure. Yet today, I will argue that failure, as you know it, is not a negative thing, and failure can be seen as success.