THE COLLEGE HILL

INDEPENDENT
VOLUME XXII, ISSUE 7 March Madness // 6
MARCH 24, 2011 Pirates // 11
BROWN/RISD WEEKLY Horoscopes // 17
 FROM THE EDITORS: THE ISSUE:
Bagpipes, car horns, and chants of protest rang out at the intersection of Waterman and Brown News
on Wednesday, as a rally by the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and
Property (TFP) fomented an impromptu counter-protest for marriage equality. The TFP— WEEK IN REVIEW p.2
crew-cut males, a marching drummer, and two bagpipers (when did bagpipes become a symbol by David Adler, Anna Matejcek, and Emma Whitford
of the traditional nuclear family?)—stood stalwartly, straight-faced, their “Marriage is Between
a Man and a Woman” sign standing for all to read. The reaction from Brown and RISD students A CULTURAL FOOTNOTE: THE JAPANESE DISASTER p.3
ran the gamut: many stood in disbelief (“do they know where they are?”), others were enter- by Ben Tucker
tained, but most opted for provocation: same sex couples made out in front of the TFP and
obscenities were launched at the TFP crowd—all before the videocamera of one TFP member
intent on documenting the proceedings. I stood on the corner and wondered exactly what was
Metro
truly the best means of counter-protest. PROVIDENCE BITES p.5
The TFP certainly knew where it was; though its mission is nationwide, its protest at one by Malcolm Burnley and Emily Gogolak
of the nation’s most liberal campuses was clearly calculated. I began to think that perhaps the
best way to humiliate these men was to ignore them entirely, not to give them the satisfaction
of feeling like martyrs, a minority attacked by the liberal mass. Watching as the cameraman Sports
pointed the lens toward one angry protestor cursing him at the top of her lungs, I understood
that the TFP feeds off this feeling of victimization. But then I imagined the intersection of Wa-
THE NEW YORK TIMES: A SPORTS BRACKET p.6
by Eli Schmitt and Dayna Tortorici
terman and Brown devoid of all counter-protest, and this seemed even worse—it would seem as
if we were tolerant of the TFP’s message or unaffected by its presence. Ultimately, I discovered
that the only proper course of action is to fight fire with fire, to show that this message will not Arts
be tolerated—but to make sure that the flames are equal in size. The worst thing we can do is
be complacent in the face of bigotry, but almost as bad is to fuel its flames. It can be difficult to SLEEP NO MORE p.7
control emotion in the face of TFP’s claims about the immorality of same-sex marriage, but the by Mearna Sharma
weight behind our message is lost the minute we fail to demonstrate that maturity and moral
indignation aren’t mutually excusive. —DA Features
HIGH FASHION/BIG BUSINESS p.9
by Belle Cushing

THE INDY IS: RHODE ISLAND PIRATES FOR LIFE

by Malcolm Burnley
p.11
MANAGING EDITORS Gillian Brassil, Erik Font, Emily Martin • NEWS Emily Go-
golak, Ashton Strait, Emma Whitford • METRO Emma Berry, Malcolm Burnley,
Alice Hines, Jonah Wolf • FEATURES Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, Eve Blazo, Kate
Science
Welsh • ARTS Ana Alvarez, Maud Doyle, Olivia Fagon, Alex Spoto • LITERARY YOUR BRAIN ON MEDITATION p.13
Kate Van Brocklin • SCIENCE Maggie Lange • SPORTS/FOOD David Adler, Greg by Nupur Shridhar
Berman • OCCULT Alexandra Corrigan, Natasha Pradhan• LIST Dayna Tortorici •
STAFF WRITER Erica Schwiegershausen • CIPHRESS IN CHIEF Raphaela Lipin- Food
sky • COVER/CREATIVE CONSULTANT Emily Martin • X Fraser Evans • ILLUS-
TRATIONS Annika Finne, Becca Levinson • DESIGN Maija Ekey, Katherine Entis, RENEGADE MUFFINS p.14
Mary-Evelyn Farrior, Emily Fishman, Maddy Jennings, Eli Schmitt, Joanna Zhang by Tarah Knaresboro
• PHOTOGRAPHY John Fisher • STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS Sarah Friedland,
Annie Macdonald • SENIOR EDITORS Katie Jennings, Tarah Knaresboro, Erin Literary
Schikowski, Eli Schmitt, Dayna Tortorici, Alex Verdolini
NICKY PARK MEMORIAL PARK p.15
COVER ART Annika Finne by Deepali Gupta

Contact theindy@gmail.com for advertising information. // theindy.org

Occult
The College Hill Independent receives support from Campus Progress/Center
for American Progress. Campus Progress works to help young people — advo-
cates, activists, journalists, artists — make their voices heard on issues that
WANDERING STARS p.17
by Alessandra Auspicious and Kate Klairvoyant
matter. Learn more at CampusProgress.org.

EPHEMERA:
 MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org NEWS| 2

EW
an d
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Operation Odyssey Dawn-s

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VI
Saturday, March 19 marked the beginning of Operation Odyssey

an Wh
Dawn—an assault led by American forces on the Qaddafi regime

Jo ma
through a series of tomahawk missiles—moving forward with the

by Em
U.N.-approved “no-fly zone” policy to cripple Libya’s air defense

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gn nd
centers. With this next level of violence, however, has come

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backlash from the international and domestic community alike.

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In the course of Libya’s uprising, it has become increasingly

r ce
clear the downfall of Muammar el-Qaddafi will not guarantee a

le ej
bright future for Libya and its people. Libya does not display the
nd at same sense of unity against tyranny as countries like Egypt; Qad-
Sa a M
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dafi aside, internal tension could well produce a civil war. Qaddafi
rt nn

himself recognizes this: in his letter to President Barack Obama,

be A

he is no longer directly concerned with asserting his innocence;

Ro er,

instead, he is pleading with the United States and its allies to bear
in mind the potential consequences of violence against him. “You
by Adl

will regret it if you take a step toward intervening in our internal

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affairs,” he warned. Qaddafi emphasized in his address to Obama

hi id

that he is “confronting Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb”—a radi-

ap av
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cal Islamist militia that he believes could take Libya by force in a

post-Qaddafi weakened state. The hasty use of force by Western
b
WE

nations has thus caused many nations—Italy and Norway among

them—to suspend military operations.
Meanwhile, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has referred to
Obama’s decision to interfere in Libya an “impeachable offense,”
as he acted without the approval of Congress. He repeated a
quote from Obama from 2007 back at him: “The President does
not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize
a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an
actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Others in the U.S. are
concerned that military involvement in Libya sets a bad prec-
edent with respect to similar revolutions in the Middle East—if
Qaddafi’s violence against the rebels won’t be tolerated, it would
be hypocrisy to fail to defend protestors in countries like Bahrain
and Yemen.
Much like the decision-making that led to a military opera-
tion sharing a name with a Yes album, the intentions of the United
States in Operation Odyssey Dawn remain incredibly ill-defined.
Obama claims that the operation is intended to protect Libyan
citizens under attack by pro-Qaddafi forces, but the endpoint of
OOD is murky— reminiscent of other U.S. military engagements
in Afghanistan and Iraq. Looking forward, the actions of the U.S.
will reflect much more than its policy concerning Libya. In an
era where the foreign policy motives of America has been almost
entirely discredited, the role of the U.S. in this string of Middle
Eastern revolutions may be a turning point to send a message to
the international community as well as a domestic populace disil-
She’s the No Woman lusioned with war—to intervene or not intervene, to enforce de-
Hillary Clinton’s take-home message this mocracy or respect autonomy. –DA
week is simple: nothing lasts forever. Last
Wednesday Clinton gave Wolf Blitzer the
same blunt answer to a barrage of questions
about her next political move: 

Blitzer: Do you want to serve a second term Saving the Internet

as Secretary of State?  Junior senator Al Franken (D)—formerly of SNL, currently of the state of Min-
Clinton: No. nesota—assigned the techies, creative types, and media entrepreneurs assembled
B: Would you like to serve as Secretary of at this year’s SXSW Interactive festival in Austin a rather daunting task: “Save the
Defense?  internet.” In light of recent internet privacy debates, the Wikileaks scandal, and,
C: No. perhaps most disturbingly, Rebecca Black’s viral video “Friday,” you may have
B: Would you like to be Vice President of found yourself thinking that the internet needs saving. According to Franken, and
the United States?  several other independent media analysts, you’re right.
C: No. In its current form, the internet is characterized by the basic principle of net
B: Would you like to be President of the neutrality—telecom companies providing internet access treat all data sources
United States?  equally, regardless of the creator’s financial means. As Franken warned in his half-
C: No. hour speech, addressed to a crowd of largely liberal, young web creators and en-
trepreneurs, this may soon change.
Even if America is under the impression In a House panel held last week, lawmakers passed a billthat, if approved by
that Clinton is a contender for these posi- Congress and the president, will make it impossible for the Federal Communica-
tions, she’s adamant about bringing her tions Commission to regulate the internet in the interest of maintaining net neu-
public, political life to an end. trality. According to the New York Times, large telecom corporations like Verizon
So what lies ahead for Clinton? There’s have spent the past few years readying themselves to profit from this change.
the possibility of another autobiography, Josh Silver, CEO of the non-profit Free Press, and contributor to the Huffing-
this one focusing on her 2008 primary cam- ton Post, agrees with Franken and argues that passing the bill would “turn the in-
paign, her loss to Obama, and her tenure ternet into something akin to the cable TV tiered system,” where the distribution
as Secretary of State. She has also alluded of information and media is determined by corporate interests, rather than the
to the possibility of teaching, or starting a personal whims of each internet user. Certain internet content would cost more,
foundation focused on promoting interna- while governments, companies, or individuals would be able to pay telecom com-
tional women’s rights.  panies to make their content more easily accessible than that of less financially
And then, just maybe, Chelsea will have blessed competitors.
a baby. Clinton admitted to Blitzer that, due According to Silver, ending the FCC’s regulatory power is liable to create an
to the currently volatile international po- internet industry that self-regulates in the same way the big banks of the recent
litical climate, “There isn’t anything that I global financial crisis did—i.e., not at all. Franken’s prediction that the death of net
can imagine doing after this that would be neutrality will become “the First Amendment issue of our time” sounds ominous
as demanding, as challenging or rewarding enough, but for those of us less concerned with constitutional issues, be warned
[as serving for the Obama administration].” that increased corporate control of the internet may well herald the death of indie
But, at the end of the day, “I love babies.” – music, meaning that we’ll all be “stuck listening to the Black Eyed Peas and remi-
EW niscing about the days before you had to sell out to make it.” Scared now? –AM
3 |NEWS ANALYSIS
by Ben Tucker
1. Though estimates of the dead were
provided – around 270,000 in April,
2010, and around 316,000 in January,
2011 – no one can specifically explain
the origins of these numbers.
2. Even the word “under-developed”
suggests this condescension, and it
becomes difficult to describe these
attitudes of superiority without repro-
ducing them.
3. Certainty in future earthquakes
comes more from scientific investiga-
tion than from historical legacy, but
the two are undeniably related as both
the scientific questions we choose to
ask and the scientific conclusions we
choose to value are informed by our
society’s history.
4. Contemporary Japan is the world’s
third largest national economy, and
among countries with an area of over
250,000 km2, its density is second only
to India.
MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
A CULTURAL FOOTNOTE:
THE JAPANESE DISASTER
How Japan’s modern history conditioned both what happened
in Japan and how we received it
Fifteen months ago, Haiti experienced an
earthquake whose immediate and long-
term human consequences are nearly un-
fathomable. Around three hundred thou-
sand Haitians died during the earthquake
and its aftermath, an estimate rendered
doubly disturbing by its magnitude and
imprecision.1 Any estimate of the casual-
ties is likely to be off by more people than
you or I have ever met. In the blogosphere
and U.S. media, Haiti was described as a
“backwards country,” and this became
general explanation for the extent of the
damage, the obstacles to efficient aid pro-
vision, and the fact that for many Ameri-
cans used to a certain amount of control
over nature, the crisis just didn’t fit into
our rational picture of the modern world.
The same rhetoric became the basis for
public speeches’ hopeful conclusions,
moments of soaring oratory in which the
amount destroyed became the amount we
(the Western world making and hearing
the speech) must efficiently and rationally
rebuild. Though we approached Haiti
with sincere compassion, this approach
was bound up with the typical condescen-
sion of the first world when dealing with
under-developed nations.2
The cultural and material context of the
Japanese earthquake and tsunami is clear-
ly drastically different than that of Haiti.
Japan’s material resources and social in-
stitutions were more prepared to respond
to disaster, a difference evidenced in the
disaster’s consequences. The way we in-
terpret those consequences, though, is
different as well. In Western eyes the de-
struction is not the distant experience of
an under-developed other, but an experi-
ence that we find much more imaginable.
Finally, though, Japan’s economic devel-
opment defined the physical manifesta-
tion of the disaster not only by reducing
its direct effects but also by creating the
possibility that the indirect effects might
become unimaginably cataclysmic. The
history of earthquakes is inseparable from
the history of Japan, and considering the
context of this particular earthquake leads
us to investigate how Japan developed in
the shadow of the earthquake in general.
Though modernization, the process of
gaining control over the natural world,
usually separates the modernizing soci-
ety from its past, Japanese modernization
hasn’t been so forgetful. The memory of
past earthquakes can be found in building
codes, regular readiness exercises, and
the allocation of serious resources to tech-
nologies for minimizing the consequences
of earthquakes, which have come to be
considered eventual certainties rather
than mere possibilities.3 As it became
one of the world’s largest and most dense
economies, Japan had both the need and
the capacity to build up rather than out,
and so implemented modern, capital-
intensive building techniques.4 Because
these techniques didn’t become widely
available (indeed, they didn’t even exist)
until after the September 1, 1923 earth- 5.
quake that destroyed much of Tokyo and
killed over 100,000 people, they have
been applied over the years to prevent a
similar disaster. The memory of that dev-
astating earthquake is ritualized and fixed
as a persistent part of modern Japanese
culture; the anniversary date is used for
earthquake drills throughout the coun-
try. Japanese modern architecture subtly
expresses earthquake consciousness even
while otherwise resembling Western ar-
chitectural modernism. An anecdotal but
poignant case: the Sompo Japan head-
quarters, a mid-70’s Tokyo skyscraper
designed by Uchida Shozo, recalls Mies
van der Rohe’s 1950s American skyscrap-
ers, but altered in such a way as to prevent
window shards from reaching the street in
the event of an earthquake.5 By adapting
to particular geological concerns, the Jap- 6. Though the modern city certainly responds
anese cityscape comes to ensure the irrel- to other needs, my point is that the modern
evance of nature—the definitive task, for city, as such, is distinguished by its unprec-
better or for worse, of the modern city.6 edented conquering of natural space. In this
way, modern life becomes separated from
A second product of this particular cul- its past because it is lived increasingly in built
tural and material context is the immense space rather than natural space.
quantity of deeply personal media objects7
that became available soon after the di- 7. Media objects, such as videos and tweets
saster occurred. As home to much of the are made, sent, reproduced, removed, and
consumer electronics industry, Japan’s viewed.
market and population are thoroughly
saturated with gadgets, many of which
were switched on to record the experi-
ence. Tweets and videos reached Western
spectators, and even though they came
from the other side of the world, they
were highly personal expressions on web-
sites we already had bookmarked, making
the way we encountered these experi-
ences more familiar than foreign. Conse-
quently, these individualized and medi-
ated moments, placed in the context of
the web browser and removed from that
of disaster, communicate and reproduce
authentic emotional experience more ef-
fectively than the all-too-real footage of
dusty death from the inhuman perspective
of the news-copter.
Seeing someone run out into his suburban
street as his things fly off the shelves hits
home for us. These little details of com-
fortable domesticity—the evidence that
our society is a far cry beyond natural
threats—are the parts of the quotidian that 8. YouTube.
assure us of our safety, and yet we see, in
the most familiar and modern of ways,8
that these details can indeed be upturned
by disaster. The Haitian disaster fits into
a tragic logic, and so it is morally mov-
ing without undermining our sense that
it couldn’t happen to us. Japan in ruins
breeds a deep uneasiness.
It was from within that sense of safety 9.
last week that we clicked over and over
and ended up with thirteen tabs of disas-
ter porn. “Pearl Harbor” was a trending
phrase on Twitter, generally appearing
in some variation of a karmic vengeance
narrative.9 This narrative created a new
logic for those Tweeting it: they could ex-
 MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org NEWS ANALYSIS| 4

10. The end of

World War II may plain the disaster by blaming Japan, and Kurosawa’s last nightmare16 is made real,
16. I refer to a segment from
be the high-water as long as they didn’t accept any guilt for at least in the nightmares of the Japanese his film Dreams, “The Weep-
mark in terms themselves, they would remain invulner- people but the perpetrator is more insidi- ing Demon,” in which the
of our ability to able. Moving from empathy to accusation ous than was dreamt. It’s not the Ameri- Japanese people are mutated
remove diplomacy offered the self-assurance we found in last can bombers but rather the nature of capi- out of their natural form and
from international talism whose engine has brought Japan to suspended in endless agony by
year’s “backwards country” rhetoric.
relations (demand- this moment of stationary agony. What nuclear holocaust.
ing unconditional
Locating these tweets in the American would Mishima17 say were he to come
surrender) and to 17. The celebrated author
move from victim- psyche is probably a misguided effort. face to screen with the news of radioactive committed seppuku in
hood to dominance We all know there’s no unified American vapor filling broken containment vessels? 1970 after failing, in a coup
(from bombed to psyche. Yet Japanese mass destruction Perhaps he would merely mourn a nation performed in ritual dress, to
bomber). and the high-water mark of American meeting its inescapable fate after abandon- persuade the Japanese armed
11. We’re now power10 are fairly close in our cultural ing its spirit and falling from grace with forces to return to the service
concerned with imaginary, and the distance is narrowing the sea. 18 In this same moment, though, of the emperor and save the
the damages of the we can see the manifestation of a new nation’s traditional core from
faster and faster as the disaster’s horizon
aftermath and not spirit in the overwhelming international Westernization.
moves beyond the time and space of the
the direct destruc- disaster itself.11 unity of support for Japan. We’re vulner-
tion. able and unsettled, but we’re more stirred 18. Mishima’s short novel
to action than we are paralyzed, and the The Sailor who Fell from Grace
12. The fact that A final consequence of Japan’s developed with the Sea might be read
Japan relies on context is the fact that despite gener- millions provided in aid are more fairly
as an allegory of Western-
nuclear power was ally safer buildings and more organized seen as camaraderie than imperialism. As ization in which a sailor
not simply early response, Japanese modernization also the world is increasingly participating in exhibiting the Protestant
‘green’ public pol- produced nuclear power.12 Putting the the same modern existence, our moment ethic and at home only
icy, but is a result of human history becomes inclusively uni- in the motion of the sea
disaster in terms of World War II actually
the material facts of fied against the terrors of geological his- is murdered by a gang of
Japan’s geological begins to seem appropriate as the crisis
goes nuclear: after harnessing the Ameri- tory. However, the disaster in Japan also Japanese boys.
history: large stores
of coal and oil are cans’ uniquely destructive force13 and al- points out the limits of our modern mo-
absent. Human and lowing the drive of global capitalism to ment: even if our Internetworked world
geological histories rebuild society on a nuclear foundation, means that it doesn’t matter where you
collide constantly, the essentially destructive nature of that live, we see that in the end the natural
in both incremental foundation emerges again. The prospect space we live in still matters.
human decisions of nuclear meltdown suspends the Japa-
and vast natural BEN TUCKER B’13 wants to write the
nese people between two double-edged
catastrophes. most opaque byline ever
swords: the reliable but unyielding Earth
13. There’s a dif- and the dynamic but cataclysmic nuclear/
ference between a capitalist machine.14
bomb and a power
plant, but it’s the
The Japanese government’s advice to Fu-
same technologi-
cal legacy.
kushima residents within 30 kilometers of
the Daiichi nuclear plant has been simply
14. The only to stay indoors and wait.15 The economic
way to imagine law of modernity, that capitalism must re-
another course of main in motion, is suspended in the state
events is to stop of emergency. Stock markets around the
taking either the
world plunged, and manufacturers scram-
Earth’s geologi-
cal history or the
bled to replace the Japanese elements of
procession of their supply chains. Even the nations most
world capitalism supportive of a nuclear future are forced
as a given. to take a moment to consider the contra-
dictions of progress.
15. I don’t mean
to criticize this
advice unduly;
it seems like the
safest option.
 5 |METRO MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
PROVIDENCE BITES
the news in chunks
by Malcolm Burnley and Emily Gogolak Illusration by Annika Finne
School’s Out
Last week, Providence mayor Angel Taveras announced his newest
plan to pull the city from the dregs of its financial distress: closing more
schools. “This is a difficult day in the city of Providence,” Taveras said at
a press conference last Monday. But it wasn’t just a tough day—the city
has seen a tough year.
A recent independent audit revealed that Providence had a $57 mil-
lion deficit for the fiscal year ending last June. To compensate, the city
had to stretch itself thin, reaching deep into reserves and resorting to
loans. And the situation is hardly looking up. Taveras, who took office in
January, inherited a Gordian knot of financial problems; in early March,
his financial team released “staggering” figures, including a projected
$110 milion structural deficit for the next year. “I thought we were may-
be a category-three hurricane,” Taveras told the Providence Journal. “This
is a category five. This is a lot worse than I thought. I certainly expected
a deficit; I didn’t expect one of this magnitude.”
Taveras wasted little time. After the review, the city announced a
series of immediate budget cuts, including a hiring freeze for non-es-
sential public employees, more payments from tax-exempt institutions,
and even a ten-percent pay cut for the mayor himself. Another key—and
controversial—remedy was large-scale teacher dismissal and the closing
of several schools. But Taveras claims that “there’s no way to meet our
fiscal responsibilities without [these] cuts.”
The School Board plans to hold six community forums in the next
two weeks to review the proposed closures. If passed, the plan would
be in action as early as June and would eliminate up to 70 teaching jobs,
cut the deficit by $12 million, and close four elementary schools. All low-
performing and in poor physical condition, the schools (Flynn Elemen-
tary, Windmill Street Elementary, Messer Elementary, and the Messer
Annex Elementary) were picked for their condition, performance, and
proximity to other public schools. Flynn, for example, is within one mile
of six other elementary schools and needs $15 million in renovations,
Schools Superintendent Thomas Brady told ABC 6 News.
Taveras is not without his share of opponents. Parents and unions
are concerned about the costs of moving students and fear that the clo-
sures would significantly increase class size across the system. Brady,
however, said that the cuts would allow the school department to save
millions of dollars without significantly increasing class sizes; and the
Mayor’s Office claims that no classroom would exceed the 26-student
maximum. Although critics have vocalized concerns over the plan’s con-
sequences, no one has proposed a viable alternative. In the meantime,
families are looking ahead to the next academic year, hoping both Provi-
dence and its schools are headed toward brighter days. –EG
Nowhere to Hide For Nude Survivor
Move over Wesley Snipes: there is a new king of celebrity tax
evasion, and he hails from Rhode Island. On March 14, Rich-
ard Hatch, the Newport resident and inaugural winner of the
reality show “Survivor,” began a second jail term for failing to
file income tax on his $1 million winnings from the 2001 show.
After spending three years in prison from 2007-2009, he was
granted a supervised release under the condition that he re-
file his uncompleted 2001 taxes. While on probation, Hatch
attempted to dodge the IRS again, and was sentenced by the
Providence District court to an additional nine months in jail
for tax evasion.
Ironically, Hatch was the “Survivor” castaway most will-
ing to bare it all. The Season 1 winner was the self-proclaimed
“Big Fat Guy Winning A Million Dollars,” who flaunted his
birthday suit up and down Borneo’s sandy beaches. He en-
joyed scheming in the nude, joined by his unlikely ally Rudy,
the senile former marine who finished third and once said:
“Me and Richard got to be pretty good friends—not in a ho-
mosexual way, that’s for sure.”
Hatch and his lawyer, Mary McElroy, tried to appeal
the newest sentence on several grounds, claiming that Hatch
should be allowed to earn money to pay the IRS instead of go-
ing to jail and calling the violations “unduly severe,” partially
on the account of Hatch’s sexual orientation. Judge William
E. Smith was unconvinced, suggesting Hatch’s second tax
evasion was deliberate fraud. He was quoted in the Providence
Journal as saying: “This isn’t a complicated matter as much as
you tried to complicate it. As far as I can tell, you’ve made no
effort to put any money into the government’s coffers.”
Returning to the slammer is unfortunate for Hatch, who
had just begun to climb back up Rhode Island’s reality-TV hier-
archy. He is a contestant on the season of “Celebrity Appren-
tice” currently airing, and had just finished taping when he got
sent back to lock-up. Hatch arguably wrote the playbook for
reality stars to maintain minor degrees of cultural relevancy:
win $1 million, get entangled in ongoing legal matters, and
milk the publicity to appear on as many C-grade reality spin-
offs as possible. Now, Hatch will watch from behind bars as
Johnston-native and Jersey Shore cast member, Pauly D, con-
tinues to eclipse him as Rhode Island’s favorite reality star.
–MB
Bloody Sock Debacle
On March 18, the Providence Journal reported that federal regulators from the Securi-
ties and Exchange Commission (SEC) are trying to determine whether Rhode Island lied
about the health of its pension fund in order to secure $2.5 billion in bond offerings. The
SEC is investigating whether the State Treasury disguised Rhode Island’s pension crisis—
the worst in the nation, with an estimated $5 billion in unfunded pension liabilities—by
understating the actual levels of deficient funding. Of the most lucrative bonds being in-
vestigated by the SEC are those used to pay for the state’s $75 million investment in 38
Studios, Curt Schilling’s video game company.
Here’s what you need to know about Schilling and Rhode Island’s increasingly
dubious investment in his company: in 1988, Schilling enters the major leagues and be-
comes an All-Star Pitcher with the Diamondbacks. In 2004, Schilling helped end an 86-
year World Series drought for the Red Sox, pitching with an injured right-ankle tendon,
which leaked blood onto his (red) socks during the World Series run. In 2009, Schilling
retired from baseball to pursue 38 Studios, an online multiplayer video game company
based in Massachusetts. In 2010, Rhode Island approved a $75 million loan to lure 38 Stu-
dios to Providence, promising that Schilling’s move to 1 Empire Plaza downtown would
create 450 jobs by 2012.
The SEC investigation adds further scrutiny to an already questionable state invest-
ment in 38 Studios, which has yet to produce a video game. It was only March 12 when
Schilling finally announced the company’s first video game release, “Kingdoms of Am-
alur: Reckoning,” slated to arrive in 2012. Even though Schilling has yet to be spotted in
Rhode Island this year and 1 Empire Plaza remains largely deserted, he claims the compa-
ny is set to arrive in Providence on May 1, the same day he will speak at the New England
Institute of Technology’s graduation ceremony.
So just how much is a bloody sock worth? For some of Rhode Island’s Red Sox faith-
ful, the state’s $75 million loan to steal Schilling away from Massachusetts might seem a
bargain, practical chump change to re-unite with a member of the glorious 2004 cham-
pionship. But what’s not wicked cool for blue-collar BoSox fans is an SEC pension fraud
investigation, which is bound to illuminate the ever dwindling funds that pay for their
retirement and health care. Curt Schilling helped rid us of the Curse of the Bambino, but
his bloody ankle is not worth Rhode Islanders’ medical coverage. –MB
7 |ARTS
L ate last Saturday night, I was in New York
City searching frantically for 530 West 27th
Street, the site of Sleep No More—a Macbeth-inspired,
Hitchcock-infused performance piece. Sleep No More
is a large-scale, exploratory performance installation
set inside an old hotel; audiences absorb the piece by
wandering through the elaborately designed space
at will, nonlinearly. I was anticipating an ornate,
crumbling structure, but instead I found a nonde-
script brick façade and heavy black door staffed by
a bouncer, who simply checked my I.D. and sent me
inside.
Sleep No More arrives in New York City after
a run in a vacant schoolhouse near Boston, where
London-based performance group Punchdrunk col-
laborated with Cambridge’s American Repertory
Theatre (ART). Sleep No More emerges out of Punch-
drunk’s penchant for concocting unconventional,
immersive theatre experiences “in which roaming
audiences experience epic storytelling inside sen-
sory theatrical worlds.” Punchdrunk has developed
groundbreaking “immersive theatre” in England,
creating works in tunnels, warehouses, and facto-
ries, and other abandoned spaces—but Sleep No More
is the company’s first U.S. foray. Though ART was
initially skeptical about how orthodox theater-going
Bostonians accustomed to watching performances
from comfortable seats would respond to a piece
that involved exploring and decision-making, the
performance was met with enormous success. Now,
Sleep No More seduces audiences in the McKittrick
Hotel in West Chelsea, which has been revived and
transformed into a conceptual dreamspace that
melds the world of Shakespeare’s Scottish play with
the decadence of 1930s film noir.
The McKittrick hotel’s story makes it a rich site
for staging a ghostly piece. Constructed in 1939, it
was designed to be the most opulent, luxurious ho-
tel in New York City. But its long-awaited opening
coincided disastrously with World War II. The hotel
was mysteriously condemned just days before the
outbreak of the war and was never revealed to the
public. Its countless rooms, empty for decades, fit
Sleep No More artistic director Felix Barrett’s vision
perfectly: “Once it’s been empty for a while, ghosts
and echoes start to infect it. You almost feel the rot
starting to set in, and that’s a much more creative
MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
SLEE
P NO
starting point.”
Upon entering, the concierge handed me the
king of spades (my ticket), and directed me down a
staircase that fed into a series of mazelike passage-
ways, barely lit with plenty of shadows hiding imag-
ined lurkers. The maze spit me out into a lively bar,
richly decorated with reds and blacks and washed
with red light. Women in gowns swayed to swingy
jazz and tuxedoed men huddled together, sipping
manhattans. Tucked clandestinely into the bowels
of the hotel, the bar felt illusory, an unfolding cin-
ematic scene. The newly arrived audience members
were glaringly out of place, thrown unexpectedly
into another era.
Just as I felt myself sinking into the noir-ish
world of the bar, a mustached British man swept
about twenty audience members with king or queen
playing card tickets into a darkened hallway. There,
a lady in a sequined ball gown gave us white Vene-
tian masks to wear for the duration of the show. Our
hostess seductively explained that the piece was best
experienced alone, and that we should explore, fol-
low our instincts, and be bold. With that, we were
whisked up an elevator and sent into the world of
Sleep No More.
Almost instantly, the disconnect between con-
temporary audience member and period scene
melted away: as we dispersed among the various
sensorially-rich rooms we became masked wander-
ers, populating and melting into the landscape of the
performance. In many ways we were like ghosts,
barely discernable to the actors and free to walk
through walls and enter and exit unfolding scenes as
we pleased.
The hotel is vast (100,000 sq. feet), and the
piece is as much about exploring intricately crafted
physical spaces as it is about watching live perform-
ers. Many rooms were free of actors but replete
with fascinating objects and set pieces to explore.
I took as much pleasure in nearly falling asleep in
a blue-lit maze of trees as I did chasing around the
very pregnant Lady Macduff. The twenty actors in
the piece did not speak, but rather communicated
entirely through movement and facial expression.
Though the actors would push through the masked
audience members, they appeared to be in a trance,
and unable to see us—it was as if we had fallen into
by Meara Sharma
Illustrations by Robert Sandler
Design by Joanna Zhang
MOR
E
i n s p
b e th
c
Ma e in NY
hous
their dream. The actors moved through the space
with ostensible freedom, though at times they would
miraculously converge, enact a wordless scene, and
then disappear down a hallway, or behind a curtain.
Sleep No More was spread across five floors, each
configured differently: long corridors flanked by
small former hotel rooms, vast lobbies, landings,
low-ceilinged spaces, mezzanines, and large halls.
But the world of the piece was so overwhelming and
immersive that I lost my sense of spatial memory
(and forgot I was even in a hotel in New York City),
finding it impossible to remember what floor I was
on and which rooms I had already visited. At one
point I wanted to return to a bedroom I had visited
earlier in the night, and though I tried to retrace my
steps and search each floor, I couldn’t find it. It was
as if the rooms were as fleeting as the characters that
moved through them.
The story of Macbeth provides raw material
for the piece: a forest of dead trees, sinister music,
blood-covered bedsheets, rotting food, stumbling
bodies. But rather than dictating a plot, Macbeth—as
well as Hitchcock horror films—provided inspiration
for the physical and psychological world of Sleep No
More. Crafted with painstaking detail, each space in
the hotel conjures up moments from the play as well
as atmospheric emotion that brews an overarching
sense of eeriness and unease.
One large room was transformed into a hospital
wing; dimly lit and dotted with crucifixes, its rows
of empty beds and scattered hospital records evoked
a ghostly, palpable absence of life. The hospital bled
into an office filled with hundreds of hair samples
sealed in vials. A bloody tub was raised upon a ped-
estal in the center of Macbeth’s bedroom. A child’s
nursery was grotesquely distorted by an enormous
hanging mobile of decapitated stuffed bears.
As the characters in the piece moved swiftly
through the maze of the hotel, swarms of masked
audience members would gather around an unfurl-
ing scene and then run after an actor as he exited the
room, eager to consume another piece of the story.
The faceless flock allowed for moments of collective
experience within a highly individual journey. As
Lady Macbeth stripped off her clothes, threw herself
against the walls of her bedroom, and dipped into a
bloody tub, we could indulge our impulse toward
 MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
voyeurism together. Our collective gaze made us
complicit in the scene, and the shape-shifting group
of white masks became an equally interesting spec-
tacle.
That being said, Sleep No Mores chilling impact
arises from the intensely individual way in which
the piece is intended to be experienced. Wandering
around alone, my experience was not mediated or
interrupted through conversation, and I could truly
follow my instincts and intuitions about what to ex-
plore next without having to consult with the friends
with whom I was traveling. For three hours I could
fall deeply into the choose-your-own-adventure
world of the piece and allow it to cast a spell over
me, a spell that continues to linger days later.
Because Sleep No More breaks from ordered,
linear logic, there is no correct way of taking in the
piece, and each audience member comes away with
a different experience. After leaving the hotel, my
friends and I compared experiences and realized we
had each “missed” a lot (I missed a candy shop, and
a pagan-esque ritual involving techno music and a
n ted bloody goat). But the idea that the piece looks dif-
a u ferent to each viewer contributes to its magic—it is
i re dh a multilayered, everchanging dream, and what you
p tel
see and experience is a reflection of the self you
h o brought to the space, on that particular evening (it
YC
also brings people back for more).
So much of Sleep No More is about atmosphere—
the audience’s visceral, emotional reaction to what
we are exploring and witnessing. The scenes from
Macbeth are pulled from the text of the play, yet ab-
stracted. The actors choose movement over words
and perform highly athletic, dancelike interpreta-
tions of dinner parties, fights, and conversations.
Narrative is intentionally deconstructed, and a sense
of cohesion is almost impossible to assemble, even if
one moves methodically through each room. Narra-
tive comes not from the way the rooms interlock, but
from the leaps of one’s own mind. I found immense
pleasure in this—allowing my mind to freely associ-
ate and concoct constantly changing stories
as I wandered through the piece. I was
left with a slew of spiraling thoughts,
pulsing in all directions. The effect
is acutely different from the experi-
ence of watching a play that seeks
to bestow upon the audience a par-
ticular narrative. In Sleep No More,
a story does not pull the audience
along; rather, the audience has to
maintain a sense of curiosity and a
desire to make something interesting out of the
sensory barrage.
I did wonder, though, about how these individu-
ally constructed narratives could be better facilitat-
ed—for example, if the audience had been more ac-
tively involved in the world of the piece. Our ghostly
presence was useful—we could wander through the
space without disrupting it—but that might be ex-
ARTS| 8
actly the problem. The audience didn’t radically
affect the outcome of the piece. What would have
happened if an audience member jumped into the
bloody tub with Macbeth, or stopped Lady Macduff
from being poisoned? What if the audience wreaked
havoc during the banquet scene? Of course, no one
told us we couldn’t get more involved, but I couldn’t
shake the sense that I had fallen into someone else’s
dream, and I wasn’t truly an architect of it.
At the same time, too much audience involvement
would have disrupted the effortless physicality of the
actors’ movements, and the eerie stillness of their
tableaus. And though Sleep No More does demand
more of its audience than a conventional piece of
theatre, it is still incredibly satisfying to step back
and watch beautiful and moving things unfold. Au-
diences don’t want to let go of that completely. I
wonder, also, about the longevity of “immersive the-
atre”—whether Sleep No More is drawing huge audi-
ences because the show is an exception to the norm,
or whether theatre-goers are truly craving more op-
portunities to break out of the traditionally passive
audience role.
Towards the end of our time with the piece, the
characters sychronistically united in a cavernous hall
filled with Christmas trees that would periodically
spin and illuminate. The various faceless flocks fol-
lowing the characters converged as well, and for the
first time the whole audience seemed to be together,
looking up at the actors seated at a grand banquet ta-
ble, frozen yet surging with expression. They moved
through a dramatic slow-motion sequence, their re-
strained yet precise actions building vast amounts of
tension as a blood-covered figure was hoisted into
the air, about to be hanged. In this final moment we
became like any other audience: the play had strung
us along, and we awaited catharsis. Sleep No More
gave it to us: the body dropped, the lights went out,
and we were left with the sound of a creaky rope
swinging back and forth and the shadow of a limp
body. Before we slipped back into ourselves, guards,
also masked, emerged from the corners of the room
and ushered us out, back into the red-lit bar where
we began.
MEARA SHARMA B’11 is a queen of spades.
Sleep No More will be running until April 16 at the
McKittrick Hotel, 530 W 27th Street, New York City.
HIGH FASHION
THE LUXURY MARKET IS A GAME O
ate Moss drags on a ciga-
rette in bondage boots
and hot pants. Naomi
Campbell struts out of a gilded elevator
in a bellhop’s hat and leather sweater set.
Marc Jacobs’s fetishistic fall collection for
Louis Vuitton asks why shouldn’t you have
everything you desire—that is, if you have
the money to spend. The show was a pre-
view of the excessive future of luxury con-
glomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis
Vuitton. Bernard Arnault, chairman and
founder of LVMH, sees nothing stopping
him from getting what he wants as the
company extends its influence over the
fashion, retail, and contemporary art in-
dustries with no end to his fantasy in sight.
Italian jeweler Bulgari is the most recent
gem to join the long line of luxury brands
under LVMH. Arnault reigns over an em-
pire that includes within its multibillion
dollar ranks the likes of Louis Vuitton,
Möet & Chandon Champagne, Givenchy,
and Donna Karan, along with majority
shares in Dior and other companies. On
March 7, LVMH bought the family stake
in Bulgari for €4.3 billion (about $6 bil-
lion) and outlined a plan for the eventual
takeover of the entire company in one of
the most expensive deals in fashion his-
tory. The deal was met with favorably by
the Bulgari family: former CEO Trapani
didn’t seem at all displeased about trad-
ing shares of his company to become the
second largest shareholder in LVMH, in
addition to receiving command over the
jewelry and watch division. Sales have
dropped at Bulgari in the past three years,
though the company has still managed to
eek out a profit margin of 3.3 percent.
While Bulgari clearly benefited from the
deal, and the French holding company es-
tablished itself as a leader in jewelry and
watch production, LVMH had its sights
mostly set on street cred. According to
Shawn Kravetz, president of Boston-
ARNAULT IS W
based investment fund Esplanade Capital,
“These companies don’t have to make ac-
quisitions but...the large conglomerates
want these assets like a consumer covets a
new handbag — the arms race continues.”
LVMH is competing in this stockpiling
of names against another luxury mogul:
French company PPR, where François
Pinault reigns over brands such as Gucci
and Yves Saint-Laurent. The fashion in-
dustry, it turns out, though it flaunts in-
dividualism and artistic innovation, is as
subject to corporate conglomeration as
any business.
Not one to be satisfied by a mere dou-
bling of financial presence in the watch
and jewelry market from his deal with Bul-
gari, Arnault has hinted at the prospect of
a similar transaction with Burberry, and is
now making moves on Hermès.
Big Bad Wolf
Unlike the convivial dinner date that re-
sulted in the Bulgari deal, Arnault went
about procuring Hermès in an under-
handed fashion: after gradually buying
up public shares of the leather retailer,
LVMH now owns more than 20 percent
of the company. While Trapani and Ar-
nault were talking figures at a restaurant
in Milan, Pierre Alexis Dumas, creative
director of Hermès, was giving a talk at
Brown University. The ’91 Brown alum
and great-great grandchild of the founder
of Hermès had no qualms about publicly
denouncing the deal, claiming that “some-
thing is threatened” by LVMH’s encroach-
ment on their company, and insisting that
they would do whatever possible to keep
the fashion mogul out. To Dumas, Arnault
is the “bad wolf in the family garden.” In
the case of Hermès, LVMH’s fantasy has
crossed unwanted boundaries.
Despite Hermès’s unwillingness,
LVMH does not plan to sell its shares.
The company maintains that while it is not
seeking a place on the board of directors,
it does want to form purposefully ambigu-
ous “constructive relations with the family.”
Changing the Parisian land-
scape
The fashion sector is not the only area
where LVMH is met with resistance. In
Paris, when not dealing with former Dior
designer John Galliano’s anti-Semitic bar
crawls, Arnault has been facing stalled
construction projects.
The flagship store of La Samaritaine,
another of LVMH’s holdings, has lain va-
cant on the banks of the Seine since 2005
when it was closed for safety concerns. A
landmark of Art Nouveau and Art Deco
architecture from the early 1900s, La Sa-
maritaine is a symbol of the former gran-
deur of the grand magasin, but LVMH has
a 400 million plan to convert the historical
building into a complex of condos, offices,
shops, and a hotel. Again, LVMH is mix-
ing necessary financial aid for struggling
businesses with presumptuous plans for
the future: La Samaritaine was rescued
from debt by LVMH’s buy-out, but the
founding family is nonetheless enraged
by the renovation plans. The Cognacq-Jay
Foundation, a charitable fund set up by the
founding family of the department store
and minority shareholder, walked out of
by Belle
Page by T
talks for renovation, and expressed its
disgust in a statement: “This resignation
reflects our deep and fundamental dis-
agreement with the majority shareholder
[LVMH] … on the future of Samaritaine.
We are letting the majority shareholder
take sole responsibility for its decisions,
which have in any case always been made
despite our opposition.”
In 2009, LVMH launched plans for
a contemporary art museum in the Bois
de Boulogne, a large park on the western
 / BIG BUSINESS
OF MONOPOLY—AND BERNARD
WINNING
edge of the city. The Fondation LVMH
de l’Art Contemporain would feature
Arnault’s personal permanent collection,
as well as temporary exhibitions. While
planning for the destruction of one artistic
landmark in the form of La Samaritaine,
Arnault promotes the creation of another.
Construction had already started on the
museum, a cloudlike structure designed
by Franck Gehry, architect of the Gug-
genheim Bilboa, but progress was brought
to a halt in January. The administrative tri-
bunal of Paris, a part of the national judi-
ciary system, pulled the center’s building
permit, citing that the proposed structure
encroached on a park for children next to
the building site. An appeal was filed by
the City of Paris, spearheaded by Deputy
Mayor in charge of culture, Christophe
Girard, who, coincidentally, is also direc-
tor of Marketing Strategy for the fashion
sector of LVMH.
France is divided city vs. state on this
issue, which has been taken personally by
city officials and residents alike. The City
had stated that the area next to the park
“has neither the status nor the function
of a public space.” Both sides, in typical
French fashion, are concerned with the
aesthetic effects: proponents of the proj-
ect cite that the building will elevate Paris’
status as an engaged actor on the global
e Cushing stage of contemporary art and architec-
ture, while others are holding on to the
The Emilys
prospect of an uninterrupted Monet land-
scape during their walk in the woods.
Arts (/self-) Promotion
The debate calls up a similar controversy
from 2001, when François Pinault pro-
posed the construction of a contemporary
art collection of his own on an abandoned
island about three miles down the Seine
from the Eiffel Tower. After a series of
similar administrative snags, Pinault was
forced to bring his multi-million dollar
collection to Venice, where he was wel-
comed in his establishment of Palazzo
Grassi in 2005, and in 2009, the Punta del-
la Dogana, two contemporary art galleries
to house his extensive collection.
Not to be outdone, Arnault is at-
tempting to succeed where Pinault failed
ten years ago. The city of Paris decided
against the opportunity for a significant
contemporary art center once, though
its refusal brought Pinault eventual suc-
cess: The Fondation Pinault has become
a major tourist destination in Venice, at-
tracting around 375,000 visitors a year.
In centers established by corporate mo-
guls, however, promotion for the arts is
overshadowed by the wealthy backer’s
unabashed self-promotion. Rather than
a space for progress in art, such galleries
become cultural artifacts in themselves,
a testament to the fiscal side of the art
world. As collecting businesses is more
often paired with collecting art, in an in-
dustry already dominated by millionaires
and auction houses, the political economy
of an art gallery is rarely as simple as the
display of art for art’s sake.
La Samaritaine houses only squatters,
the Fondation LVMH lies silent, and the
fourth richest man in the world shows no
signs of slowing in his global takeover.
Still, for all the drama these deals cre-
ate within the realm of luxury corpora-
tions, the casual follower of fashion week
is left to wonder if companies changing
hands actually changes anything. Hermès
is a family business that seeks to remain
true to a tradition of high quality pro-
duction. At the same time, it remains a
company with an operating income of up-
wards of 600 million. If Hermès became
a part of a multibillion-euro conglomer-
ate, as opposed to a multimillion-euro in-
dependent house, it would still produce
expensive scarves and leather goods. The
question is one of nostalgia for family-
owned businesses in the face of the ubiq-
uitous corporation. It is easier to believe
in the existence of art in the frivolous
fashion market when it is centered in his-
torical houses of fashion as opposed to a
conglomerate not unlike PepsiCo. In the
world of high-end transactions, whether
Hermès or Buglari is owned by LVMH,
PPR, or stands alone probably will not
have a great effect on the everyday. How-
ever, when such conglomerates extend
their influence beyond the insular luxury
sphere we must question if such interven-
tion is progress, or self-glorification. The
extension of luxury beyond department
stores and into parks and museums is per-
haps no different from sponsors’ advertis-
ing at a stadium or a benefactor’s name on
a building, and it is undeniable that artists
benefit from wealthy sponsorship. But
when new art is presented under a corpo-
rate name, the focus is transferred from
the art to the power of the Louis Vuitton
name. Changes brought upon La Samari-
taine, a city landmark and residence for
artist squatters, and Bois du Boulogne, a
family oriented park, will affect Parisians
far more than would changes in handbag
manufacturing. As luxury business contin-
ues to assert itself into the public sphere,
the average consumer is no longer an on-
looker or occasional splurger, but a direct
recipient of wealthy whims.
BELLE CUSHING B’13 is not to be out-
done.
11 |FEATURES
RHODE ISLAND
T en years ago, Casey Dorman left the
world of high fashion to pursue life
on the high seas, giving the heave-
ho to an international modeling career. In
place of designer suits and leather jackets,
he turned to tricorn hats and breeches; he
now accessorizes with rapiers and blun-
derbusses. “There are friends of mine
who I’ve known for years who have never
seen me outside of pirate gear. And I try
to keep it that way,” he says.
From February through November,
pirate re-enacting season, Dorman lives
the life of a non-profit pillager. For 250
consecutive days he dresses as John At-
wood, Captain of the Rhode Island Pirate
Players (RIPP). As president of the group,
he heads Providence’s only re-enacting
community dedicated to 17th and 18th-
century New England piracy, command-
ing north of twenty crew members, al-
though the captain lacks a ship.
The Pirate Players dress in traditional
garb and brandish replica weaponry in
mid-18th century style, making paid ap-
pearances at public schools, local libraries,
and parades, “walking, waving at people,
firing guns, and laughing maniacally,” in
the words of the captain.
Dorman, 34, hoards his extensive pi-
rate inventory down in the hull – his base-
ment. There are ship’s lanterns, home-
made grenados—“a hollowed out piece
of wood with some twine and a bunch of
gunpowder”—and a personal armory that
includes one carbine (a bulky style of rifle)
one blunderbuss (a wide-barreled hand-
gun), five pistols, two hangar swords, six
rapiers, two broadswords, and numerous
axes.
His alter ego, John Atwood, is a his-
torically-based creation taken from his
mother’s maiden name. Atwood is a na-
tive Rhode Islander (Dorman was born in
Connecticut, but moved to Rhode Island
in 1986 at age ten), merchant, and pirate
during the era of King Philip’s War. The
captain says he was “raised to attack peo-
ple and take their stuff,” cackling at his
adopted life story.
In truth, Dorman distances himself
from the modern-day pirates who violent-
ly patrol the East African and East Asian
coastlines, but understands the motive
behind their livelihood—“get rich or die
trying,” he says. “I like to think of myself
as an educator more than someone who
is going to beat people up and take their
MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
Rhode Island’s Authentic Pirate Re-enactor
stuff,” he says, “although on occasion I’ve
been tempted.”
Instead, Dorman keeps things legal,
moonlighting as a part-time constable for
the District Court of Rhode Island, “just
serving writs for the court,” he says. “I
try to keep it as part-time as possible.”
The worst part of the job is the button-up
uniform, which feels more suffocating
than the chic wardrobe Dorman wore on
European runways. “My pirate garb is my
second skin.”
THE SHIP’S CABIN
The captain’s corridors are at 927 Smith
Street, a two-bedroom apartment in the
LaSalle neighborhood of Providence.
From the entryway, only hints of piracy
are visible: an un-cocked replica carbine
rests on the kitchen table and a neck-high
pirate flag leans against the mantle. Dor-
man spreads out the black flag, which
bears the group’s tri-part symbol: an
hourglass, three drops of blood, and the
“deathman’s head” (skull and crossbones)
all in a line—a bit of “pirate brand recogni-
tion,” he says.
Dorman sits down at the kitchen ta-
ble with a Ziploc bag of loose tobacco and
begins to pack a foot-long wooden pipe,
which is sitting alongside the carbine and
a 16 oz. Narragansett beer. He resembles
a young Benjamin Franklin with his thick
black–rimmed glasses and long brown
hair curled over his ears. He looks the
colonial era, puffing his pipe, except for
three tattoos: an anchor on his right fore-
arm, a ship’s wheel on his left, and RIPP’s
symbol on his upper right arm. Besides pi-
racy, Dorman can only think of one other
hobby: “I like coffee,” he admits.
Dorman moved into his current place
in November, but says that “the décor is
mainly my roommate’s.” Ten military cer-
tificates are framed on the wall, along with
a Providence Journal front page article from
September 12, 2001, showing an image of
the burning Twin Towers and the head-
line: “US Attacked.” The decorations be-
long to his roommate, Dan Auxier, who
served four tours in Iraq, and now stands
beside a seated Dorman, sharing a Narra-
gansett.
Auxier was stationed in the Middle
East when Dorman dreamed up RIPP.
“We all thought he was kind of crazy, but
he eats, drinks, and sleeps it… there is
something respectable about that,” Aux-
ier says. A pirate’s diet, which Dorman
follows during some encampments, con-
sists of salt beef, salt pork, and hardtack.
Drinking like a pirate is never a problem
for the captain. Besides brewing his own
beer, he enjoys Thomas Tew rum, a brand
named after an infamous Rhode Island pi-
rate.
Though Auxier is not an official mem-
ber of the crew, he functions as the cap-
tain’s chief critic and cheerleader. Lean-
ing against the kitchen wall underneath
his Army certificates, he fires light-heart-
ed jabs at Dorman: “You’re not really a
pirate, are you?” he asks mockingly, be-
fore trying to get Dorman to confess a se-
cret love for Jack Sparrow from Pirates of
the Caribbean, a fictional character whom
Dorman despises. He also describes Dor-
man as a swashbuckling savant with tire-
less enthusiasm for RIPP.
“This guy’s got his shtick down pat.
He is going to libraries, he’s pushing it in
every angle he can push it. The light will
be on at two or three in the morning…
making his game plan work… there is
something remarkably admirable about
that.” Auxier makes sure Dorman notes
his nautical pun. “You are such a dork,”
Dorman retorts.
HOISTING THE GROUP
RIPP, established by Dorman in 2006,
evolved from his life-long interests in
history and sword fighting. Throughout
childhood, he was infatuated with Hol-
lywood chivalry and knights in shining
armor; he remembers running through
the woods at a young age with a baseball
bat, pretending it was a sword. When he
was sixteen, he picked up amateur sword
fighting as a hobby, practicing with rudi-
mentary equipment—“sword and board,”
he calls it.
Dorman attended Hope High School
in Providence, where he first met Auxier,
then navigated his way to Rhode Island
College. In 1998, he graduated with a de-
gree in Medieval History and Anthropol-
ogy, then remained in Providence until
he received an unexpected offer from a
friend who owned a photography studio
on Thayer Street. Bob Calderon, of B.C.
photography, asked Casey if he would like
to do some publicity work. “I said yes,
and boom, boom, boom, I was signed to
Ford.”
From 1998 through 2001, Dorman
shuttled among London, Paris, and Man-
hattan, working for modeling agencies
like Ford NY, Top Models London, and
Ford Milan. He did print work for Dolce
& Gabbana and Calvin Klein, and walked
runways for Yves Saint Laurent. While it
made for a handsome living, the nonstop,
cross-continental travel was not his life’s
calling.
“These were pre-pirate days, and I
was irked I had to forego any tattoos or
body modifications for the work,” Dor-
man says. He eventually retired from
modeling to help his ex-girlfriend raise
her son in the States, returning to Rhode
Island after three years abroad.
In 2001, he and some friends started a
Rapier Dueling Academy—“more or less a
social drinking club with swords,” he says.
They fenced in public space on Doyle Av-
enue behind Hope High School, with the
police nervously watching them, unable
to interfere: the law categorizes sword
fighting no differently than Tai-Chi or a
martial art, Dorman explains.
For three years, they performed at
Waterfire before Dorman had a revela-
tion for a larger act: “It was this eureka
moment. At the time I didn’t know there
was any pirate history of Rhode Island. I
uncovered so much, and thought this is an
untold story of my adopted state’s past.
There is so much history here and very
few people know about.”
RHODE ISLAND PIRACY
Captain Atwood comes from a deep-root-
ed pirate tradition in the Ocean State. Ac-
cording to RIPP’s website, Atwood’s ré-
sumé includes capturing thirteen French
vessels off the coast of Africa in 1707. His
brief biography resembles the stories of
Golden Age pirates such as Bartholomew
“Black Bart” Roberts—“a badass,” Dor-
man says—who captured 400 ships in three
years; Charles Vane—“a badass and defi-
nitely a rebel”—who was sent adrift and
eventually hanged by the British Navy;
and Thomas Tew— “a local boy who did
really well for himself”—and a personal
hero of Dorman’s, whose notorious ca-
reer was emblematic of “that nice skirting
of legal and illegal that Rhode Islanders
are very good at.”
Atwood has been known to display
some cunning piracy from time to time
himself. Several times a year, RIPP joins
other re-enactment groups from various

PIRATES FOR LIFE
historical eras for overnight encampment
events. “Usually, we are just excited to
see each other’s toys,” Dorman says, but
sometimes conflicts occur. At the 2010
Colonial Harvest Festival at Wickford
Harbor, Dorman’s pirates clashed with
the Pawtuxet Rangers, a Revolutionary
War militia that Dorman lists as a “friend-
ly rival.”
It began like any other fall afternoon,
with the pi-
rates mock-
ing the red- “We took him
coats behind
their backs,
but quickly
as hostage, ran-
somed him off,
escalated
into armed
conflict,
and donated the
as tourists
gathered to
watch the
spectacle of
a firefight.
Dug in on
ransom to RI
one side of
the harbor, Food Bank.”
RIPP blasted
bullet-less gunfire from carbines and dra-
goon pistols, shouting insults at the Rang-
ers the whole time. “They harass us about
being pirates and we mock them about be-
ing lapdogs for the king.”
Once the gunpowder cleared from
the phony firefight, Dorman found Major
Ken Gilbert of the Rangers—“Mr. Fancy
Britches”—all alone. “We took him as hos-
tage, ransomed him off, and donated the
ransom to RI Food Bank.”
When asked about the capture, Ma-
jor Gilbert says he does “not recall the in-
cident,” but insists he is still in search of
the elusive Atwood: “I am out to pursue
him and arrest him, but he is always just
out of my grasp.” In a phone conversation,
Gilbert breaks character for a moment to
speak glowingly of Dorman’s profession-
alism in their showmen’s hobby. “It is
refreshing to see younger people coming
into the hobby. They are the future of re-
enacting.”
THE “AUTHENTIC” PIRATE
No matter how factual the library lectures
get, no matter how much historically-
accurate garb he flaunts, there is still one
thing Dorman truly dislikes about being
Captain John Atwood: “You really start
MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
by Malcolm Burnley // photos by the author
hating how many people say ‘ARRrrr!’
at you,’” he says, before taking a seri-
ous tone: “We don’t want to be another
cheesy Pirates of the Caribbean rip-off.”
In 1950, Disney released a film of
Treasure Island, adapted from the Robert
Louis Stevenson novel. Robert Newton,
a British actor from Cornwall, starred
as Long John Silver, and his gruff accent
became immortalized as the stereotypi-
cal pirate dialect—
loaded with the now-
infamous “ARRRR”
grunts. “In America,
we romanticize this
as the ‘true pirate,’”
Dorman says, blaming
Disney for perpetrat-
ing an inauthentic,
corrupted portrayal
of piracy: “Pirates
are from all over the
world, and not just
from Cornwall. Why
would I as a Rhode
Islander speak like a
Cornish sailor?”
Last year, Dor-
man endured forty “ARRrrr”’s a day, sev-
en days a week while giving walking tours
for Newport’s Deadman’s Tales. For
three straight months he hauled 20 pounds
of gear through the hot summer sun, nar-
rating Rhode Island’s record of piracy to
tourists, telling them “just how unique and
interesting our state is.”
“It’s really breathtaking. They were
able to circumnavigate the globe on leaky
wooden ships with what we now think of
as really basic forms of navigational equip-
ment,” Dorman says of early pirates’ sail-
ing expertise. He tells the story of the
largest mass execution in state history, a
pirate matter: in 1723, Captain Charles
Harris and his crew of 25 pirates were
hanged in Newport and buried on Goat
Island.
He also tells of the Rhode Island mer-
chant, John Brown, who committed the
state’s last great piratical act in 1772 with
the burning of the Gaspee, an English tax
ship. When the boat harbored on Rhode
Island’s shore, Brown ordered his men to
shoot the English captain, loot the inven-
tory, and set the boat ablaze. Each year,
Pawtuxet commemorates the event with
its Gaspee Days Celebration, in which
RIPP plays a part.
HANDS ON DECK
Douglas Frongillo is Captain Atwood’s
45-year old first mate, ranking ahead of
the bombadier, diplomat, and carpenter.
A short, bald man employed by the UPS
Store, he is fiercely loyal to Casey, whom
he considers his best friend in the world.
“He acts like the commander of a small
military, the way many captains of the
time did to be successful. His enthusiasm
spreads to everyone, including me,” Fron-
gillo says.
Frongillo met his captain in 2007,
when Dorman worked at a deli across
the street from Frongillo’s job, and the
two would talk during breakfast hours.
It wasn’t long before Frongillo joined
the crew and bought his first set of garb—
swaps, a shirt, and a hat—for $300. He re-
members his first impressions of Captain
Atwood: “Here is a very honorable man,
born 300 years too late.”
Since joining the group, Frongillo
treats RIPP like a job, updating the group’s
Facebook page, notifying members of up-
coming dues ($5 a month), and serving as
Dorman’s lead enforcer, responsible for
sniffing out mutiny attempts.
“People who don’t want to be part of
the organization aren’t going to be part of
the organization. We have very specific
guidelines for how we expect our mem-
bers to carry themselves, and if that’s vio-
lated, they’ll be asked to leave. A mutiny,
per se? I don’t think so.”
“Every so often I wish there’d be a
mutiny though,” Dorman says laughing.
“But nobody wants this job.” He never
planned on being captain permanently,
but in five years, he has only missed one
meeting. That meeting, Frongillo called
for a vote to make Dorman “Captain for
Life.” The vote was unanimous.
ON THE HORIZON
In the kitchen, Auxier looks toward Dor-
man as he imagines what the captain might
have in store for RIPP in the future: “I
think the end-game for you is like a boat
museum, right?” Dorman takes a second
to respond, his mouth full of beer, but
then shakes his head. “It is to avoid work
at all costs,” he says.
The group has grown from a hobby
to a calling: “This is what I want to be do-
ing full-time, year-round,” Dorman says.
When RIPP began, as little more than “a
self-proclaimed drinking group with a pi-
FEATURES| 12
rate problem,” meetings were held at the
Wild Colonial.
For each of the past five years, RIPP
has expanded its membership: Atwood’s
crew now totals some twenty-five men
and women, ranging in age from 16 to
60, but “we are always looking for new
members,” he says. RIPP’s show-and-tell
lectures typically cost between $250 and
$500, but all fees and expenses are re-in-
vested into the group.
Dorman dreams of partnering with a
museum, and has held preliminary discus-
sions with both the RI Economic Develop-
ment Corporation and Urban Ventures,
but has found grants difficult to come by
in this economy. But there is one item he is
missing before he can be considered a true
captain—a ship. “I’d like to see us with sev-
eral historically accurate vessels. At least
as historically accurate as the Coast Guard
will allow us to be.” Dorman has little ex-
perience on tall ships, but figures it will be
easy to train his crew how to operate one.
He is also working with the Rhode
Island Department of Education to launch
a “Keep History Alive Program” to bring
re-enactors to Providence public schools.
“History is no longer a focus in public edu-
cation, and as one of my favorite historians
said, ‘those who do not learn from history
are doomed to repeat the tenth grade.’”
Back in the 1670s, Rhode Island’s
Deputy Governor, John Cranston, regu-
larly hired pirates as government priva-
teers, giving them permission to rob and
pillage as long as half their spoils went to
the state. Dorman hopes for a similar,
less-criminal bond with the state, and has
approached Governor Chafee’s office to
ask for an honorary mark of distinction as
Rhode Island’s official pirate group.
Although Dorman says the state was
“intrigued by the idea,” there has been no
official verdict on the ceremonial commis-
sion. While he waits, Casey settles for val-
idation from his family: “As I’ve become
more successful with it, it was really grati-
fying for my grandmother to say ‘So, how
is piracy going?’”
MALCOLM BURNLEY B’12 is tired of
swabbing the poop deck.
 13 |SCIENCE MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
B R A IN ON MED
R UP
UR SH R
IDHAR ILLUSTRATIO
NB
Y
AN
YO U
N NI
BY
R
esearchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have
finally found scientific evidence for Buddhists’ peace of
mind: meditation objectively improves neural plasticity and leads to
the thickening of brain regions associated with empathy, awareness,
and stress management. The team of scientists, led by Dr. Sara Lazar,
conducted brain scans of sixteen subjects two weeks before and two
weeks after they participated in an eight-week guided meditation re-
treat. Their results, published in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry
Research: Neuroimaging, show that, when compared to the control
group of non-meditators, individuals who meditated for an average
of 27 minutes a day experienced an increase in grey-matter density
in both the hippocampus, which is crucial for learning and memory,
and in structures responsible for human self-awareness, compassion,
and introspection.
WHAT IS MEDITATION?
There are three men in front of you: on the left, a good friend; in the middle,
a stranger; on the right, an enemy: someone whose presence provokes un-
desirable emotions. Concentrate first on the friend, then on the stranger,
and finally on the enemy. Examine your feelings towards each, then realize
that the stranger can easily become your friend, or your enemy; realize that
a friend can become an enemy when he wounds you; realize that an enemy
becomes a friend when you show each other compassion. Look at your friend
and feel the love and appreciation he gives you. Now look at your enemy: is
he really that different? Doesn’t he, too, come from a mother? Doesn’t he,
too, posses a human desire to affirm, and be affirmed? A body that feels as
you feel? The greatest truth is that friend, stranger, and enemy are all one,
just as you and I are one.
Furthermore, participants who reported feeling less stressed after
the retreat showed a decrease in grey-matter density in the amyg-
dala, the region of the brain that allows complex vertebrates to form
and store memories, especially those associated with emotional
events. Essentially, the amygdala is responsible for processing per-
sonal space and violations to the body—basically, it’s for fear condi-
tioning. As it turns out, our brain cells are highly sensitive to emo-
tional imprinting: suffer a dog bite as a child and the amygdala will
remember the trauma, and trigger stress-related survival responses
around dogs well into adulthood. The stronger the emotional event,
the larger the biochemical footprint it leaves behind and the greater
the chances of that emotion being triggered again. Unsurprisingly,
individuals who sustain damage to their amygdala lose the ability to
fear or to respect others’ boundaries.
I
TA
KA
F
TIO
IN
NE
HOW TO CONCEIVE OF THE NEURAL LANDSCAPE
When we are born, our minds are smooth, unpracticed, ready for the first
emotions that fall like raindrops on top of a hill: which way will the water
run? Joy flows one way, jealousy another, each rainfall cutting deeper and
deeper into our neural circuits until our brains have fallen into familiar bio-
chemical pathways. Meditation seeks to disrupt this mindless surging: what
if we could better understand and channel our desires? What if we could be
at peace in all climates? This is why some psychologists are considering pre-
scribing MDMA to patients who are severely depressed or fearful: though the
pleasure and confidence the drug induces are artificial and arguably unnatu-
ral, its biochemical flow breaks through neural dams, unclogging blocked
pathways and re-teaching the brain how to feel happy. This is also why we
are the stories we tell ourselves.
As Dr. Amishi Jha, a neuroscientist at the University of Miami, point-
ed out in a press release from MGH, Lazar’s finding “opens doors
to many possibilities for future research on MBSR’s (Mindfulness-
Based Stress Reduction) potential to protect against stress-related
disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.” Lazar’s website,
which features links to yoga centers and quotes from several wise
meditators (“The mind precedes all things, the mind dominates all
things, the mind creates all things” – Buddha), indicatse that she be-
lieves in meditation’s ability to help everyone, even the psychologi-
cally “healthy.” Lazar’s results seem to imply that mind-over-matter
is physical law, and that the human brain has the ability to learn and
relearn itself, to shape itself into seeing and believing whatever it
would like. For this reason, meditation is part medicine and part
magic. Certainly, meditation itself can become addictive, and the
power it affords individuals can be both exaggerated and abused.
At the end of the day, though, regardless of whether the contempo-
rary scientific community will accept the statistical significance of
ancient Buddhist practices, thinking clearly through one’s thoughts
will always be a valuable talent.
THE MIND, THE EYE, OR THE MIND’S EYE?
All human emotion is mediated by the increase or absence of a handful of
neurotransmitters. For this reason, my mother believes it’s possible to be-
come addicted to anything: the brain stops producing internally what there
is an external source for; start taking steroids and your balls shrink. This is
why World of Warcraft players experience withdrawal. This is why break-
ups hurt: we become addicted to the idea of a person, embodied. My mother
has a highly disciplined mind. She believes in herself. She doesn’t care when
her colleagues poke at her teetotalism, or her cheap sweats, or her arranged
marriage. Her happiness is only bound up in her food, her loved ones, and
her job-well-done. For this reason, she will never die. Instead, when her body
ceases to exist, when the molecules that make up her being un-make them-
selves, like light she will propagate: E = mc2.
NUPUR SHRIDHAR B’11 is opening her eyes.
 MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org FOOD| 14

F ew specimens have achieved the

adoration and ubiquity of the
breakfast muffin. They’re univer-
Additional suggestions:
Cereal (even slightly stale cereal) tastes
great in muffins. Leftover pasta (even
Choco-cado Muffins
Okay, now it’s tim e to pu t so me avocado in your muffins
. It really is. This on
d have it be yo ur cre
e is
am y
sally understood and beloved: “Oh, what’s without sauce) and leftover brown rice do
n ble nd up th e av ocado really well an ne wo nd er wh y
that you’re having for breakfast? Cool, a not. I have tried all three. fun because you ca it a litt le chunky and make
everyo
u ca n lea ve
muffin, nice.” Better yet, making muffins little secret, or yo st.
things in your breakfa
from scratch takes minimal effort and re- Vanilla extract and cinnamon tend to there are bitty green
ally makes you look like you’ve got your make everything taste awesome. - ¾1 c white flour
shit together. Muffins are delicious, muf- In gr ed ien ts : - ¼1 c cocoa powder
fins are ridiculously easy. But we’ve got- Vegetable oil is in most muffin recipes, - 1/ 3 c ma rg ar ine - 2t baking powder
ten into a rut. but it’s actually unnecessary. A crutch for - 1 T va nil la - 1t baking soda
Here’s the secret. You can really put muffins of a lesser caliber. Only warning: -½ 1 c su ga r - ½ t salt
anything you want into muffins. It’s easy. As excluding oil can sometimes make it hard - 1 c br ow n su ga r - dark chocolate chips
- 3T egg replacer you want
long as you throw it in a tin with flour and to peel muffins away from their liners, but
o - some pine nuts, if
av oc ad inning
sugar and give it that characteristic shape, muffin liners are pretty unnecessary too. - 1 ½ mashed-up - almond milk, for th
no one will think twice about your wacky - 1 c wheat flour
breakfast choices. Chocolate for breakfast If you need inspiration, watch that “Put
Instructions: en to 350.
is now commendable. Vegetables are first- it in the Pizza” video with Mary Kate and
e av oc ad oe s and preheat the ov and egg
rate. So are pretzels, or copious amounts Ashley Olsen. Stop worrying ab ou t th
la, an d su ga r tog ether. Add avocados
, vanil
of sugar. With muffins, anything goes, Cream the margarine
ev er yth ing else. e for it yet.
and you can sneak whatever you want in Be brave and be bold, but let your cour- replacer. Then pu t in
e jig gle me th od if you don’t have an ey
ing th ling like a boss.
there. Which is why we all need to get age be inversely correlated with the size of Cook until cooked, us mu ffins. You better be fee
oc ad oe s in yo ur
much more creative. Let’s stop thinking your batches. There are av
about muffins as flour, sugar, and some
cutesy fruit (blueberries! boysenberries!) Upon her passing, TARAH KNARESBORO
and start thinking about them as oppor- B’11 requests to be made into muffins.

RENEGADE
tunities to get crazy and do whatever the
hell we want. It’s time to make your first
renegade muffin.

Disclaimer: Yes, all of my muffins are

vegan. You can handle it. But if you re-
ally, really can’t, obviously milk = almond
How to put just about anything into muffins—and like it
milk, 1 egg = 1 T egg replacer, and butter =
margarine. And throw in chicken nuggets
wherever it says to use chocolate chips, or
just whenever you feel like it. Now stop
asking me how I get my protein and get in
the kitchen.

Muffin magic
The bottom line is that you can basically
muffin-ize any random thing you have
in your cupboard by adding flour (for
shape), sugar (for moisture), egg replacer
(for fluffiness), some sort of liquid (for
consistency), baking powder and baking
soda (for leavening), and a pinch of salt
to bring out the sweetness. The muffin is
your oyster (unless you put an oyster in
your muffin, in which case your creative
privileges have been revoked).
But seriously, as long as the batter
tastes good at the end, you win.

by Tarah Knaresboro
Illustration by Becca Levinso
n Design Joanna Zhang
Squashed Chocolate Muffins
This recipe was inspired by a butternut squash pie recipe I invented, which
was in turn inspired
by a pumpkin pie recipe I saw. It tastes like bravery and two degrees of separat
ion. You are ready
for it.

Ingredients: - 1t baking soda DOUBLE BREAKFAST Muffins

- 3 shots of tequila - ½ t allspice be-
- 2 c butternut squash, peeled and boiled - 1t cinnamon This is a little ditty I thought up for people who can’t decide
muffin s for break fast. Or for people who
- 2/3 c almond milk - ½ t ginger tween eating oatmeal or
a time
- 1T vanilla extract - ½ t nutmeg feel that waiting forty minutes to cook steel cut oats is such
makin g about sixtee n servin gs at once
- 2T egg replacer - 1 ½ c whole wheat flour commitment, it mandates
in your kitche n than is permi ssible under
- ½ t salt - 1 c sugar and having more oatmeal
- 2t baking powder - ¾ c dark chocolate chips Rhode Island fire codes.
- 1 T cinnamon
Instructions: Ingredients: - t salt
Preheat the oven to 350, then pound down the three tequila shots. You - 2 c cooked steel cut oats - 2 t baking powder
want to decrease your - 1 t baking soda
inhibition significantly, but not so much so that you burn the house down. - 1 c sugar
Mash the cooked squash or put it in a food processor. If your food process - 1 c maple syrup - 1 c crunched up walnuts
or sucks, add - almond milk, for thinning
some of the almond milk to whet its whistle. - 1 c golden raisins
Mix everything together. Some people separate wet and dry ingredients
(the point is to mini- - 1 c whole wheat flour
mize over-mixing and keep the muffins fluffy), but some people are too
lazy to wash two bowls.
Sample the batter (there are no raw eggs, so cool your jets), and adjust
texture/sweetness. Instructions:
flour,
Too runny or too sweet? Add more flour. Too thick? Add almond milk
or more pureed squash. Just calm down and mix everything together like before. Add
docto r it up if it looks or tastes weird .
Not sweet enough? More sugar, or maybe some agave nectar if you keep
stuff like that around. sugar, or almond milk to
es—re memb er to utilize the aforem en-
Spray the muffin tin, fill with batter mostly to the top (it won’t rise all that
much). No need for Cook at 350 degre
Don’t cook it ’til it’s overco oked becau se
muffin liners. Cook until they look cooked, probably between 10 and 15
minutes. A good trick is tioned “tin jiggle” trick.
to lightly shake the tin (with your oven mitt on)—if they jiggle, they’re too they taste nice when they’r e sort of squish y.
goopy, so hold on.
DOUBLE BREAKFAST.
Fun tip: Almost every recipe with chocolate chips makes you “fold them
in” at the end and I have
no idea why. Adding chocolate chips to the freshly boiled-and-pureed squash
mixture made the
chips melty and nice, and my muffins ended up looking sort of marbly
and cool.
Other fun tip: This recipe also works well with pureed so-ripe-they’re-almost- Are you wringing your hands because you have a bunch of random ingredients lying around?
black plantains, or Email muffinrecipemaker@gmail.com describing the ingredients you’d like to rid
bananas if you’re a wimp. But plantains are weirdly cheap, so go ahead
and capitalize. yourself of, and a muffin recipe will promptly be mailed back to you!
15 |LITERARY MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

There are vans and sedans and women in suits today. 

1996. Before AOL 4.0, before Titanic came out.  Their hair shines and I think maybe the sun is brighter today but it’s just reflect-
It’s my first day of soccer practice.  ing off the hairspray. 
We’re in a line, going one by one, trying to kick the ball into the goal.  There is a buzz, and I think maybe I’m humming and I don’t know it, but it’s
There’s a girl playing goalie. We’re also taking turns playing goalie.  just the sound of the voices of the women in their suits, mature voices, grown
up women with breasts and wrinkles talking because they know what they’re
It’s my turn to kick.  talking about, they know so much about their breasts and their wrinkles and
what’s happening at school today?

a play for mostly one person but also another person

No one’s ever taught me how to kick. 
And I see my teacher and she takes me inside and most of my class is sitting on
Or rather, I realize that I’ve never kicked a ball before. the story rug and I sit next to Gaby, because Gaby knows more about breasts
I have given it a little tap, I have rolled it a few feet with my foot, simply, and wrinkles and catastrophe than I do and she is my best friend. 
slowly. 
But what I realize, calmly, clearly, is that I’ve never just kicked a ball as hard as A shift.
I can, as far as I can. 
Everyone is trading pencils and playing games with each other’s shoelaces
Maybe, when I kick the ball, it will fly, and it will never stop flying. and I want to tell them to shut up
Maybe, when I kick the ball, nothing will happen. so we can feel the husky drone of the notebooks in our bones, the sidewalk
tattoos from the camera stands and grown up women shoes, the glow in the air
Kick. Blood comes out of her mouth. from yards of perfect, shining static hair, so we can find out—

And the goalie is screaming And Miss Wren walks in the room and everybody shuts up and Gaby turns to
The coach mutters, Jesus me and says, 
Her lip is so bloody  It’s the anniversary of something bad 
split in all its creases  because she knew I needed to know. 
peeled open into pieces Gaby often knows so much that she knows all about what she’s going to know
before she knows it. 
I kicked the ball square in her MOUTH. 
An example:
As we exit, I notice a small sign, a placard, that says IN MEMORIAM OF
NICKY PARK.  She becomes Gaby.
And I think, hmm, that’s weird phrasing. 
Or rather, I think that the sign would sound better if it said What’s the worst word that starts with S?
“THIS PARK IS IN MEMORIAM OF NICKY”
Or rather, I don’t wonder who Nicky is.  No, it’s not stupid, stupid.

Mornings hurt sometimes. My mom makes me drink prune juice and then she Shut up is two words. 
eats a grapefruit, and I know that if it got in her eyes, she’d start crying too. 
It’s three letters. It’s only three letters. And none of you know it? It’s only three
This is the scariest story I have ever told. It is the scariest feeling I have ever letters.
known. It began ten years ago, but it starts here, before AOL 4.0, before Ti-
tanic came out, when we were all virgins on playgrounds. SEX. S-E-X. It’s sex, okay? Stupid dimbulbs.

And that morning was supposed to be just like any other morning.
But as soon as you think, this is how something is supposed to be,
All of a sudden it’s not.
There are reporters at school today.  And then we know.
There are notebooks and cameras and microphones and stands for the cameras
and stands for the microphones today. 
A shift. 
Gaby always knows all about what she’s going to know before she knows it.
Most of the time, she tells us, too. 
And then there’s no going back.
Afternoons hurt sometimes. I come home from school and my mom wants to
know all about every single thing that happened at school today and I don’t
want to tell her any of it, and she gives me baby carrots and I don’t want to eat
any of them.

Afternoons hurt sometimes because I come home from school and go up to my

room and think about the future and plan so hard that when I get up and go to
the bathroom or eat dinner, I feel like a robot controlling myself from a satel-
lite or a blimp. 

And in the mornings is when I get scared of the afternoons. 

She becomes Ms. Wren.

Everyone. You may have noticed that there are a lot of people here this morn-
ing. They’re journalists. And what is a journalist?

A journalist is a writer who finds out about things and then writes them down.
A nonfiction writer. Sometimes the most interesting stories are true. Some-
times the scariest ones, too. Where the freeze in your nerves lasts longer
because you know that you live in the same world that allowed this story to
unfold, the same world that propelled it forward, and you are so—
But. Children. 
Graphics by Annika Finne

Today is a special day. Which is why all the journalists are here today. Because
today, but not today, ten years ago, today, a very bad thing happened, and I
have to tell you about it. 

Ten years ago, one woman came in and shot ten children, and one of them
died. 

And all the journalists are here today, because when something like that hap-
pens we remember it especially on special days like this one, and sometimes at
night.

A shift.

I walked so slowly back home that day. I soaked in the grease and shine, waded
through all the microphones speaking at each other. I imagined myself in the
 MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org LITERARY| 16
NICKY PARK MEMORIAL PARK
background of every picture, walking so gracefully, soundlessly through the
frames of every camera.

I came home and told my mother every little thing that happened. And she
inhaled, and went to go see if the dog was outside, and if not, where was he?
And I was left by the kitchen counter expecting baby carrots, or closure, both
of which had clearly been forgotten about. 

She sits.

This bench is where my friends and I sit during recess. One day we looked at
the tire swing and the jungle gym and the seesaw and we decided that we’d re-
ally just like to sit on this bench. 
So we do. And we look at everyone, and they sometimes look at us.
And when they look at us, they realize that we are looking at them.
That we are looking at each other. 
We don’t look at the bench. 
Or we didn’t, at any rate.

She swipes her hand lightly across the underside of the bench. Blood. 

In Memoriam of Nicky Park, 1975-1986. 

Of course, it all made sense, then, after five minutes or so.

The park, the bench—we dedicated ourselves to Nicky, that day.
We resolved to always sit on that bench, for Nicky.
As if we weren’t going to sit on it anyway.

A ghost is the boy in your class with a hearing aid wearing a white sheet over
his head.
A ghost is the inexplicable creak in the dark. 
A ghost is the thing you once were. 

One day, we’re sitting on the bench, and I notice that Gaby has this look in her
eye. She’s scanning what’s in front of her like my father does, before he makes
a left turn onto a busy road. Her little black eyes moving from the seesaw past
the jungle gym past the skinned knees and back to us, all of us. So I know, right
away, Gaby’s about to make a left turn. Gaby’s about to do something crazy. 

I feel funny, she says.

She becomes Gaby.

I feel really strange. time.

You guys, I think something is happening to me. Gaby always wanted to be Monica Lewinsky. So I would have to be Bill Clin-
I don’t know what—oh! ton. I didn’t really enjoy being either of them. I felt more like the woman who
Oh my God turned in the tapes, shadowed and ashamed,
It’s Nicky. Nicky’s here, Nicky is trying to—he’s speaking to me. Nicky? hateful and aroused.

He says...hi. 2002. Everything’s changing and nothing’s surprising, because I’ve read all the
Judy Blume books and the Babysitter’s Club, and I’ve been hiding my used
Hi Nicky. Hi from all of us— pads in a plastic bag underneath my bed and throwing them away in the school
We all say hi, don’t we? Don’t we, guys? dumpster so my mom never knows that I know what she knows, what we all
Hi. know, what I knew that I’d know someday and researched so heavily until I
found out all about it. Years seep on and I wonder if the amount I’ve bled so far
He says, he’s glad to be talking to somebody. would fill my kitchen, or a concert hall.
He says, he really needed somebody to talk to.
He says, he’s glad I’m here. A shift.

He’s glad to be talking to somebody. He visits when I am walking.

He really needed somebody to talk to. I see his small hands stretching out from the shoots in between the sidewalk.
He’s glad I’m here. He rises from the warmth of meadows
from the groove of concrete benches
He’s glad to be talking to somebody. from the space between the letters in all my magazines.
He really needed—every DAY, she says it, for 
And any time somebody else, anybody else wanted to talk to him Don’t you?

I’m the only one who understands him. Nicky appears.

Aren’t I, Nicky?
I’m the only one who understands you.  I love what I imagine to be the smell of your skin.
I wish you were my son.
For months.
I forgot how to operate a seesaw.  They stare at each other.

1999. Before honor became so important, before, or, during, Y2K, before a I keep things charming by telling people that I know somebody who knows
Burmese python got to feel Britney Spears’ sticky, sweet skin against his own somebody who knows a man who caught his wife fucking Bill Clinton
scaly belly.
We laugh about how funny it is that Bill Clinton is still fucking somebody
by Deepali Gupta

After we stole Gaby’s dad’s Newsweek one afternoon and read everything we We laugh about how funny it is that Bill Clinton just doesn’t give a fuck
could about, you know, President Clinton, and Monica Lewinsky, oral sex, We laugh about how funny it is that we give a fuck about Bill Clinton
podiums, we started impeaching each other. 
Sometimes one of us would be Monica Lewinsky impeaching Bill Clinton Nicky: Nobody even has any pictures of me. My mother keeps them in a box inside an-
Sometimes Bill Clinton impeaching Monica Lewinsky.  other box and had to have another son because her breasts became depressed about the
Sometimes it would just crescendo  things her wrinkles told them and I can’t blame her because I know what it’s like to swal-
and crescendo  low a watermelon seed and worry for the rest of your life that it’s growing inside you.
until 
sweaty and bug-eyed You never hurt any of us, Nicky.
Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky would impeach each other at the exact same
Nicky: I never got the chance.
 17 |OCCULT MARCH 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

I n Western Astrology, twelve constellation

signs name the rough position of the stars
at the time of one’s birth. While dismissed
in popular culture as, well, popular culture, they
were originally mapped as scientific rationales
for the earth, space, and concepts of the self.
Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, and Per-
sians all differently weighted the conception of
self as a relationship to the greater universe—
but they all left room for general relativity not
seen again in accepted science until Einstein’s
theory. Unfortunately, texts regarding astrol-
ogy remain irreversibly skewed by their popular
translations from Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit,
many of them garbled carelessly due to colo-
nialists’ disdain and sloppy translations. For the
most part, what we understand about the field
is that it investigated the causal effects of gravi-
tational pull of planets—due to their rotations,
moons, and nearby stars—on humans’ earthly
understanding of time and location. Even in the
modern world, movements of entire planets
and stars don’t seem so insignificant.
Mapping fourth dimensions and attempt-
ing to stretch our existence into other planets
seems a lot less trivial when it’s not featured in
the pages of a fashion magazine. But that doesn’t
evacuate the personal—and the playful—side
of astrology. After all, there’s no universe we
want to believe in that doesn’t take into account
something beyond our understanding. There’s
no way humans have understood all causes in
the universe; towards that, we look above and
around us for some forces with some un-under-
standable tendencies. But perhaps that’s just our
Aquarian (idealists!) nature.
We invite you to investigate your own
experience, and see if it maps onto another
conception of truth in the below charts and
predictions. While each planet’s position in the
universe relates to your birth time and place,
the simplest understanding comes from the
monthly change in position from the sun. Your
sun sign, therefore, governs the most part of
your rational personality. This, of course, has its
limits—one’s moon sign, for example, governs
emotions and other planets’ forces can greatly
change one’s unknown mind.
The underlain chart was made by Brn,
who referenced Ptolemy’s standard Eastern ar-
rangement of features (in order from inside to
outside): signs, house rulers, exaltations (most
influential), limits, and triplicities (combination
of planets resulting in a more-influential force
element). Further, our horoscopes take into
account planetary movements around the Sun
sign, with help from Vedic astrologers.

Adaptable, witty, two-sided. Superficial and

Flaky. Hola sassy Gemini! You will enter-
tain voyages, business ventures, and fancy Outgoing, friendly, faithful. Pomp-
cars this spring during March, April and ous, dogmatic. Leo, the loud lion—your
May. Is your moon in Capricorn, Aquarius gregarious persona isn’t always so sweet.
or Pisces? (Find out your birth time and You’re known to always win an argument,
place and look it up online!) If so, go out even when you know you’re wrong. Some
and buy yourself the biggest Ray-bans legal problems before May inspire you to
they make, sister, because you’re gonna follow these talents all the way to get your
be famous. Start leaving the little people J.D. Better to post pone your application
behind--you’re superficial, anyway. to the fall, when your legal and profession-
al matters look up—perhaps daddy could
send a big check, apologizing for your late
application?
Sensitive, protective, emotional. Jealous,
moody. You will be busy working hard this
spring. The results? Eh… modest. Further,
things only get weirder, especially due to
Venus’s. You will be proposed marriage
to. You will be tempted to compromise
your values, take the offer from someone
from a cult-y religion. Prepare to deny sin
Stable, hard-working, loyal. Money- accordingly! Or else, the stars read, your
obsessed and stubborn. You Tauruses parents will have some kind of set back.
never have trouble putting your nose to Sorry, Cancer–for being the most sensitive
the grindstone. Come June, we see ma- and moody sign, you’re seas don’t look so
jor career change. It is then that Jupiter clear until Fall.
comes into your House of Endings for
the first time since 2000. Fret not, stable
Taurus! It will come with a financial
windfall to offset your fear of change…

WANDERING
Virgos are undoubtably our least
favorite sign up here in the cosmos. But
Spontaneous, frank, open. Self- though it pains me to say, I have to ad-
centered, willful. Spring is your season! mit your Mahadasa of Saturn or Mecury
Don’t let it go to waste, because this bears much fruit this spring. You get
seer sees you in a leadership position this promoted (BUDS manager!!), and you

STARS
month. In order to avoid a breakdown, meet lots of new and interesting people.
remember to take some time to yourself A couple of you Virgos really see some
in mid April--everyone can’t always give professional development in fashion.
you the attention you want. Beware You go on an unexpected journey in
those who envy you. Avoid crowds September. Hopefully far away from us,
outside of Shark. my dears.

Imaginative, intuitive, social. Escap-
ist, secretive. People born with sun
in Pisces do not remain tension free
during 2011. You may lose focus
from your prime objectives. Health
can deteriorate. Avoid journeys.
by Auspicious Alessandra
and Klairvoyant Kate Energetic, charming, graceful. Vain,
bossy. Avoid procrastination! Your work
may require several trips in order to be
completed. Make sure not to assume that
Illustrations by Alexandra your newest love interest is guaranteed to
stick around--they may see through your

Corrigan
Those looking for entering into a vanity.
relationship should exercise caution.
After May, you finally stop feeling
the effects of Nate Dogg’s death.
Fall may give suitable relief in overall
matters.
Funny, sexual, intuitive. Controlling,
defensive, cruel. Life has been stressful
for you. Be prepared to still be busy
in the next few weeks, but reamain
focused despite the health problems that
may plague you or your family. Next
Ambitious, economic, assertive. Inflex- month you may find yourself entangled
ible, dictatorial. My readings reveal that with a member of the opposite sex,
you have been very active lately! Be agonizingly. Don’t let your tendencies
prepared for your phone to ring more to self-destruct get the best of you.
often--Mercury is traveling through your
house of communication for the first
nine days of April. An attractive Gemini
will play an interesting role in your social
life and--if you are not careful--affect
your drinking habits negatively. Things
may seem too easy. Remain vigilant.

Joyful, idiosyncratic, accepting. Cool, Optimistic, free-spirited, honest. Judgmen-

shallow, unpredictable. Lucky Aquarius! tal, flaky. Things may seem slow, and this
Venus entered your sign this March, which psychic knows how much you Sagittarius’
portends that you might unintentionally love movement and travel. Never fear,
attract a mate. If you were thinking about however: a week after the equinox you
investing in a hair cut, facial scrub, or have travel plans. Soon, you should com-
gym class, now would be the time. You municate with your relatives, but don’t be
may soon be confronted with a stressful overly harsh. Venus enters your house of
financial situation. Make sure to remain communication this March, which will help
calm and objective. Your tendency to fly you sweet-talk people to win them to your
off the handle or simply disappear will not side (get 2am free slice at Nice Slice).
serve you well.