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.’”
Despite the passion of students for various artistic endeavors, the Reed campus lacks space dedicated to displaying student art pieces year-round. This seems to clash with Reed’s “artsy” reputation, the popularity of RAW and the plethora of students puffing on cigarettes outside the Paradox or lounging on the lawn with dried clay and paint on their clothes.
The Reed College Theatre’s production of “Julius Caesar,” now beginning the second week of its two-week run, is many things. It is the final production by Kathleen Worley, the head of the theatre department, after her thirty-year dedication to the performing arts at Reed. Also, it is the sound design thesis of Jenn Lidell ’14, and the final performance of ebullient senator and Reed Relieves administrator, Andrew Watson ’14.
Last Friday, Annelyse Gelman ’13 published her first book of poetry, Everyone I Love is a Stranger to Someone. The book was published by Write Bloody, a small press Gelman describes as “unpretentious and interested in bringing poetry to new audiences.” She had been a fan of the publishing house during her time at Reed, even inviting some of their writers to campus to give readings in the Chapel. “When I heard they were reading submissions during my senior year,” she says, “I read through hundreds and hundreds of my own poems and made the skeleton of a book.”
