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 9 Issue 5

The Complete History of Renn Fayre Part V: 2008–2018

The Complete History of Renn Fayre Part V: 2008–2018

Parts I–IV of “The Complete History of Renn Fayre” by Brian Click and Alejandro Chavez were published in the Grail in the spring of 2016. The series recounts Renn Fayre’s fifty-one year history, from its humble beginnings as an actual Renaissance Faire to the infamous property damage disaster of RF2K and everything in between. Now, in the Grail’s latest installment of “Complete History,” Guananí, Lauren, and Claire pick up where Brian and Alejandro left off, diving into how Renn Fayre has changed from 2008 to the present.

What is Renn Fayre, Anyway?

“A lot of weird shit,” a student commented, “happens at Renn Fayre.” It’s a phrase many first-years repeated when asked what they’d heard about Reed’s annual end-of-the-year festival, with a combination of excitement and nervousness evident in their response. There seemed to be an anxious, unsure, yet captivatingly curious attitude in Vollum Lecture Hall, where Renn Fayre Czars had called first-years, transfer students, and other first-time Renn Fayre attendees to congregate and learn, whether for the first time or the hundredth time, what Renn Fayre is all about. It was a Tuesday night, at the point in the school year when time on a school night seems to exponentially increase in value, but even so, an impressively large crowd filed into the auditorium. The Grail asked groups of first-year students about their perceptions of the three day festival before the meeting began.