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.
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.
· 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
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.
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.’”
An unassuming three-story building blends into the skyline on the corner of SW 11th and Jefferson. The first floor corner room is mostly glass, scrawled over with writing in paint from Portland State University students. The room was used for several years as a classroom for the PSU field work program. The next two storeys are hardly more impressive: some brickwork covered in a drab beige. This building, unimpressive as it seems, is Olde Reed, in the most literal sense.
Over spring break, Isabel Meigs ’16, Mike Frazel ’17, Zoe Rosenfeld ’16, Vikram Chan-Herur ’17 and Stoddard Meigs (Isabel’s twin brother, a sophomore at Vassar College), all took the train from Portland to Emeryville, California. They brought with them a bag of provisions from Trader Joe’s and their school readings. Two among them, Mike and Isabel, had never been to California. The train notes we have offered here are a touching story of friendship and childlike discovery.
