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

The Transformation of Community Safety

The Transformation of Community Safety

When current Director of Community Safety, Gary Granger, came to Reed, he had a difficult task ahead of him. Reed was lurching in the wake of the deaths of two students due to heroin doses and was being forced to reevaluate how its drug and alcohol policy provided for the safety of the students. 

“After the second death, which happened just before I got here,” says Granger, “Colin Diver and Mike Brody were summoned downtown to talk to U.S. District Attorney and the Portland Police Chief. The attorney said, ‘we can help you out with that drug problem at Reed.’” Diver responded that he believed Reed had the problem under control and could continue to be semi-autonomous while remaining inside the law and providing for the safety of its students. Many of the changes Community Safety has made over the years have been to demonstrate that Reed takes the law seriously and is committed to providing students with a safe environment where they can succeed. 

Reed Union

On Thursday, April 10th, a group of faculty and students gathered in Vollum Lecture Hall to discuss changing the Reed curriculum. At this semester’s Reed Union, Questioning the Curriculum: Gender Studies, and Ethnic and Race Studies at Reed, a panel consisting of two students and three staff members presented their opinions on this matter and took queries and comments from impassioned community members. The question remains, though: has this event had a serious impact on Reed, and will it lead to changes in the curriculum in the future?

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. 

Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

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.

Reed's Newest Poet

Reed's Newest Poet

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.”

Sifting Through the Wreckage of Olde Reed

Sifting Through the Wreckage of Olde Reed

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. 

No Train, No Gain

No Train, No Gain

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.

Songs of Olde Reed

Songs of Olde Reed

The first thing you’ll notice about Paul Anderson’s album Loligo Vulgaris is that many of the songs he wrote about Reed College between 1988 and 1992 could have been composed in the quad today. His sharp caricatures and parodies of life on campus, such as “Rich White Kid”, “Sensitive Guy”, and “On the Night Bus” haven’t aged a day.

Listen to the album here.

Medea Goes to Grail

At first Paradox manager Anna Baker seems to be an anomaly. Her calm elegance, finesse, and warmth belie her acute insight into female fury. 

Or do they? 

We meet at the Admission Office, where she works as an intern. Anna beams cheerily from behind the desk. I pour myself some coffee, which, by the way, you really need to stop stealing if you are not employed by this place of business. 

The Crash Heard Around the World

The Crash Heard Around the World

It’s safe to say that the giant snowball story is old news by now. But for those of you who have been living under a rock—or, more likely, under a pile of books—something happened during the Snowpoclaypse that has smashed its way into Reed’s history: two students accidentally rolled a nearly thousand pound snowball into the Reed College Apartments and caused a whopping $2000 to $3000 worth of damage on the 8th of February.