two views on browns need-aware admits

A Friend in Need

2
Editors-in-Chief Sam Knowles Amelia Stanton Managing Editor of Features Charles Pletcher Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Jennie Young Carr Managing Editor of Lifestyle Jane Brendlinger Features Editors Zo Hoffman Emily Spinner Arts & Culture Editors Clayton Aldern Tyler Bourgoise Lifestyle Editors Jen Harlan Alexa Trearchis Pencil Pusher Phil Lai Chief Layout Editor Clara Beyer Aesthetic Mastermind Lucas Huh Copy Chiefs Julia Kantor Justine Palefsky Staff Wrter Berit Goetz Copy Editors Lucas Huh Kristina Petersen Allison Shafir Blake Ceci Nora Trice Chris Anderson

CONTENTS
f*ck h*rvard // post

NAKED PHOTO

3 upfront 4 feature

a friend in need // zo hoffman and stan fern grimm and disney // ben resnik big texas smile // kate nemetz

5 arts & culture

prelude to a sneeze // tyler bourgoise

6 arts & culture

Gross! Indecent! Naked people! In a show! Check out Gross Indecency at Leeds Theatre in Lyman Hall, September 29 through October 9.

veggie tales // jane brendlinger and anna tifft

7 lifestyle

8 lifestyle

sexicon // MM can i have yo numba? // savannah cheyanne

GOT PROBLEMS?
formspring.me/lovecraftdorian formspring.me/emilypostmag
OUR ILLUSTRATORS
cover // caroline washburn

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Oh, youre a transfer? Whered you transfer from? Deep Springs. Its a small, two-year Yeah, no, Ive heard of it. No girls, right? NOT ANYMORE, BITCHES! The editors asked me to write about Deep Springs Colleges recent decision to go coed. Brown probably wont notice anything different until Deep Springers lacking Y-chromosomes start infiltrating the transfer classeseven then, Brown probably wont notice anything differentbut I still think theres reason to celebrate. Raise a glass to coeducation, and dont forget to use protection.

f*ck h*rvard // madeline denman a friend in need // phil lai grimm and disney // anish gonchigar big texas smile // kah yangni prelude to a sneeze // sheila sitaram veggie tales // caleb weinreb brown market shares // adela wu can i have yo numba? // kah yangni

weekend

Post- Magazine is published every Thursday in the Brown Daily Herald. It covers books, theater, music, film, food, art, and University culture around College Hill. Post- editors can be contacted at post.magazine@gmail. com. Letters are always welcome, and can be either e-mailed or sent to Post- Magazine, 195 Angell Street, Providence, RI 02906. We claim the right to edit letters for style, clarity, and length.

charles

five
1

TOM TURNS TWENTY Friday

A BETTER WORLD BY DESIGN Fri - Mon

3 5

STARLA & SONS Salomon 001 Fri 9PM

BROWN VS. URI UNDER THE LIGHTS Brown Football Stadium Sat 7PM

BODY CHEMISTRY AEPi Sat 10PM

TOP TEN Things We Did Instead of Going to the Fall Concer t

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

upfront

1 2 3 4 5

What concer t?

Whos The Fall? Slept off our Final Clubinduced hangover. F*ck Har vard! Combed through Real Estate listings.

6 7 8

Updated our emergency contact information on Banner. We f*cking did cocaine!

Listened to Curren$y and tUnE-YarDs. Waterfire. SIKE. Went mainstream ... saw The Shins in Boston

YouTube!!!

9 10

books is music is tv is
wondering what happened to Amanda Byness face.

telling Jeff Bezos to sit down and shut up. Youre not Steve Jobs, and we dont read ebooks anyway.

F*ck H*rvard
post MAGAZINE editor emeritus
If you search Harvard-Brown football game on Google, the second hit is an article in last Fridays Crimson newspaper, which urged fans to attend the night game. In it are a number of jabs at Bruno. So now that the game against those Massholes (I can say it, Im from Boston) is over, I find it peculiar, this high-class hatin. My first experience with our Ivy League rivalry was at an accepted students luncheon in some schmancy hotel downtown, where I met an unconscionably uncomfortable soon-to-be CS major who had, of course, been accepted to don both Crimson and Brown. As we shared pleasantries (read: raised our eyebrows with painful frequency), I simply blocked out his indecisive faade and pegged him as Cambridge bound. Then came orientation, when I found myself squinting in disbelief across the Main Green at other fresh-faced, tightly-cinched-backpack-toting coeds wearing what looked like Harvard apparel. Ah, no, I was wrongjust one of our clever, overpriced bookstore Ts: Harvard because not everyone can get into Brown. Really? It just seems gratuitous. Im not saying were better or worse, but thats like when the Blue Jays spend bundles of money in the offseason and talk mountains of trash, when we all know its going to be Sox-Yankees come October. On a similarly juvenile note, I dont know which was worse at the football game two years ago in Cambridge: Brown students clamoring over one another to sit in Emma Watsons section, or the hometown crowd doing the same? Lets check the record books, and the tattered pages of our League (and let me remind all you hipsters that the Ivy League began not as an expensive status symbol, but simply as a sports conferenceand it is such to this day. So dont go griping about how the sports department is bad for Brown, la Susannah Kroeber 11). The most contentious clashes on the gridiron, in the rink or on the court have been between you-knowwho and some place in New Haven. You could see the faded H-Y on the 30-yard line. So why does it seem like we have tried to crash the party? This was obviously an important game, not because we are historically rivals, but because our football team of recent memory has been fighting for the Ivy title. It just so happens that the title runs through Harvard.

what rivalry?

listening to the new Blink-182 album. Yep, that happened.

theatre is
gross, indecent, and too impor tant to be taken seriously.
As an athlete whose team has gone toe-to-toe with Harvard over the past decade for the title, I completely understand this fierce competition. I think its healthy to have embittered athletes vying against one another, but I cannot wrap my head around a school feeling the need to augment itself by discrediting a perfectly legitimate and respected university in the form of trite paraphernalia. It comes off as insecure. Last years football game was a fantastic showing of school spiritI was proud to rock the chest paint, as were many othersbut there could be so much more here. Why not embrace the tradition of the Ivy League and simply show our fellow students support in the things they do best? Its no different than attending a play, a concert, or a debate. Let our institutions and individuals challenge one another in academic prowess, in order to collaborate in the future and make the best of the education we are afforded, while still unclenching our collective anus every once in a while. Were young, occasionally stupid, and sometimes theres nothing better than going wild after Bruno scores the winning goal. We dont need to be rivalsjust competitors, passionate about our schools. But hang on. That Crimson article mocked S/NC and Ms. Watson. Shit just got real. We may not have won on Friday, but f*ck Harvard.

food is

vomiting up pumpkin beer, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin spiced latts. Ah, the toosweet taste of fall.

booze is
debating the pros and cons of 18+ bar nights. Pro: everyone gets in. Con: everyone gets in.

feature
POST-

A Friend in Need
two views on browns need-aware admits
stan FERN contributing writer

zo HOFFMAN features editor

In 2002, Brown took a step that put the University more in line with both its peer institutions and the liberal-leaning image the school enjoys: They adopted a need-blind admissions policy. This decision wasnt particularly novelother Ivy League schools had gone need-blind in previous yearsbut it marked a significant push by the University to make a Brown education accessible to anyone admitted, with two caveats: Transfer and international students were left out. You would think this issue would be of immense concern to me, as a transfer student, but I have largely left my applications behind me. My essays are buried in a folder somewhere on my computer; transcripts from my previous institution are stuffed in the back of my desk drawer. However, there is one action I distinctly remember from filling out my transfer applicationI made the conscious choice to check No when asked if I needed financial aid. At first, Browns policy seems overwhelmingly unfair. In fact, it seems as though it could reinforce a kind of class-system with regards to admissions: The well-off, financially stable transfer and international students get in while those who might need some assistance are left out. Even though only 10 percent of applicants were admitted to my transfer class, this policy can call into question the very validity of admission. Did I get a leg-up because I dont need financial aid? Am I simply a $200,000 check Brown gets to add to its revenue stream? These anxiety-ridden questions dont necessarily get to the meat of the issue, though. We have to recognize that Brown is, no matter how much we may try to deny it, a business. When we think of Brown as a non-profit organization, we tend to think theres no bottom line, no reason they would want to remain in the black. Like any other firm in a competitive market, Brown strives to attract students based on image, services, and resources available, hoping to cash in tuition checks to improve upon their offerings. Given the discrepancy between Browns message of inclusivity and accessibility and its relatively small pool of funds, it is easy to see a central dilemma facing the administration. Who should benefit more, those students who are already here or those transfers and international students whom wed like to see attend in the future? The added revenue from admitted students with less need surely allows Brown to diversify its offerings to current students, adding the improved programs, facilities, and faculty that

make our school unique. It is these resources, these perks we Brown students enjoy, that create a problem in regards to need-blind admission. While we may look at Brown as a prestigious institution with a constant cash flow of sky-high tuition bills, it is a pauper relative to some of our so-called peer institutions. In 2010, Browns endowment was $2.155 billion, an amount most of us would see as more than sufficient for the upkeep of 8,600 students, graduate and undergraduate. Comparatively, in that same year Yale raked in $16.652 billion, and Harvard broke the bank with an astonishing $27.557 billion. Both schools are able to offer their transfer and international applicants a needblind admission process, though their transfer classes are much smaller than ours. For me, the system is working. I get to enjoy a strong and sizeable transfer community, a phenomenon that might not exist if the administration had to limit those admissions in order to offer need-blind admission. And as I integrate myself into the community, I lose that feeling that Im just a check cashed by Brown, and I begin to appreciate that my tuition serves to improve my intellectual home.

On its admissions website, Brown trumpets its needblind admissions policy next to a link to its financial aid website. Clicking the link brings up a number of generous financial aid initiatives: Parents whose combined income is less than $60,000 per year are not required to contribute to their students education expenses. Families earning less than $100,000 per year have no loans as part of their financial aid awards. But an asterisk next to needblind admissions policy reveals the catch: Funding for transfer and international students is limited, so they are admitted under a need-aware policy. Basically, the financial aid office passes along its determination of an applicants need to the admissions office, and admissions reserves the right to reject an applicant on the basis of his or her need. According to the most recent figures, 44 percent of Browns student body receives some form of financial aid. Try finding that same figure for transfer and international students. Ive spent hours trawling through brown.edu to no avail. One could argue that transfer and international students comprise too small a portion of each class to merit such a statistic, but then why does the ad-

ministration brag about the proportion of internationals in the student body? How is it justifiable to set up an implicit plutocracy without revealing its true extent? I dont mean to suggest that transfer students who do not apply for financial aid would otherwise be unqualified for admissionwe have to have more faith in the process than that. But I do want to question Browns commitment to a fair admissions process. If nothing else, Brown must be a model institution and one worthy of emulating. The conflation of money and merit to any degree is shaky grounds for emulation. Countless students have opined on the Universitys equivocations regarding its status as a business and an institution for higher learning. The two functions are not simply opposed, of course, and one can benefit the other. I want to make the case that Brown is not striking the correct balance. Our school has come a long way in a decade, but it strikes me that turning away an applicant, any applicant, because he or she cannot pay Browns sticker price is profoundly unjust. Students on financial aid arent blind to the Universitys generosity and could prove prolific donors in the future. I understand that my opinion is not entirely economically sound, but the Universitys concerns should not be primarily concentrated on the bottom line. Rather, Brown must focus on the development of the best and brightest students it can possibly attract in an environment based on meritocratic principles and not monetary contributions. Diversity of experience begets a richer (get it?) student body, and a Brown education can do much to correct for past inequalities. In short, the University needs to evaluate all of its applicants on the same terms. We know from past articles (Stigmatriculation, for example) that the University is at liberty to cast any of an applicants attributes in positive light, be it the applicants status as a legacy or his or her lack of financial need. We could just throw in the towel, admit that the process isnt fair, and call it a day. And thats okay, I guess, but then we might as well throw in the towel on the athletic cuts, too. We should find even the possibility that one student could be passed up for another based purely on socioeconomic means reprehensible and in direct violation of Browns commitment to a spirit of free inquiry. As Brown students, we must demand much of our peers, and it only makes sense to demand the best.

Grimm and Disney

ben RESNIK contributing writer
into the avant-garde, at once emulating and transcending her sources to create something gripping and bizarre and really, really cool. You wouldnt gather any of that from her interviews. Raised in Dallas, Texas, Clarks first foray into the world of music came as a teenager, managing her uncles jazz band. After dropping out of the Berklee College of music, her career blossomed; she joined the Dallas-based Polyphonic Spree and then Sufjan Stevens touring ensemble before starting her solo career, releasing Marry Me in 2007 and Actor in 2009. Both albums were critically acclaimed, and the latter became a fair commercial success. Clark claims that the sound of her most recent release, Strange Mercy (2011), was inspired in part by old Disney movies like Snow White. These disarmingly innocent musical roots, not to mention her angeliclooking face and bubbly demeanor, paint a picture of the musician thats much more Kimya Dawson than The Click Five. But then you listen to her lyrics. And then you watch her perform. While her uncles jazzy influence is certainly to be found in her instrumentation, St. Vincents onstage riffing is, she has admitted, more a child of prog Finding new music is difficult. In a world where bands are discovered, groomed into producing a radio-ready single, and then dropped, coming across a genuine sound can be a real time commitment. Many devote their free time to this task, combing local and national music blogs, stalwartly searching for something they can be proud of finding. Some come by their music a little less heroically. For instance, they may have first encountered the notable musician Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent, at home, watching So You Think You Can Dance? with their dad and stepmother. Hypothetically. The SYTYCD? performance opened with choreography set to Paris is Burning from Clarks debut solo album, Marry Me. An array of surprisingly flexible twenty-somethings jerked around the stage in bizarre pseudoVictorian attire. It was like the cast of A Clockwork Orange was having a rave: truly strange, but darkly funny too. This atmosphere surrounds not just that dance but St. Vincents music in general. Two albums and a respectable amount of success later, Clark has become a master of these strange juxtapositions. She is both delicate and surreal, morphing very old school concepts

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

arts & culture

st. vincents creepy, captivating parts

rock. Clark is in the habit of switching from dreamy flute and piano scores to jerky, near-epileptic guitar solos and back with an ease and grace that is as jolting as her lyric shifts. In the final song of Actor, the vocals change from the unassuming Oh honey, I was there in the dark where you lay to the closing line Bodies like wrecking balls, f*ck, f*ck with dynamite without losing a moment of their airy, ethereal quality. Whats more, every piece of her style seems completely organic. Strange Mercy, an album replete with languorous Disney-era strings and harsh guitar lines alike, is less Frankenstein and more Prius. As with her persona, St. Vincents style manages to evoke very different ideas without having them clash. She has managed to refine this style more with every release. Granted, Strange Mercy isnt perfect. The opening song in particular, Chloe in the Afternoon, seems to have too much happening at once, and halfway through the track list youll pick up on a pattern: evanescent, Disneycum-LSD intro, atonal, mechanical yet still gripping body, outro comprised of the previous two, with the whole thing overlaid by Clarks ever-disconcerting harmonies.

But the albums triumphs are revealing. Her roots are clear. Cruel is her best strange-pop creation yet, managing to be both catchy and bizarre without falling under the moniker of psychedelia, and Surgeon absolutely drips with jazz. Clark may say that she owes some of Strange Mercy to Disneys Snow White, but she owes her personality more to Grimms Fairy Tales; theres a bite and a darkness to her lyrics and her presentation that a lilting flute belies. Her music is at times both surreal and comic; Champagne Year is filled with sardonic irony that is direct enough to be unsettling. She ties pop, jazz, and rock together into something captivating and new, and its power lies in the juxtaposition of those elements. Maybe that twisted dance number had the right idea.

Big Texas Smile

kate NEMETZ contributing writer
stars to plaid-clad hipsters, meld together under a shared passion for music to form one happy collective. As at any big music festival, lifealtering decisions inevitably present themselves. On the first night, Hilary and I forgo seeing Santigold and Pretty Lights in order to get a prime spot for Kanye West, who is playing opposite Coldplay as one of the final two acts of the evening. We inch our way to about 30 feet from the stage and stand for an hour, immovable, glued with sweat to the strangers around us. This is all forgotten as soon as Wests now iconic ballerinas ferociously hound the stage, and Yeezy himself appears on a a lift, high above the masses. As H.A.M segues into Dark Fantasy, a dancing craze erupts and only intensifies as the hit-filled show continues. Touch the Sky, Gold Digger, All of the Lightsits the Good Life indeed. Thankfully, on Sunday, the final night, there is no decision to be made. Arcade Fire is the only choice. ACL is one of the few, if not the only major U.S. music festival to have the primary headlining act play completely unopposed. I see this as not only a sign of respect for the artists, but also as an opportunity for the entire festival crowd to come together as a whole for one last hurrah. Even before lead singer Win Butler and the rest of the Its 3:30 a.m. I zip up my cutoff denim shorts, put on my widebrimmed brown leather hat and skip down the Grad Center ramp into the idling taxi. I havent slept in 18 hours and wont for another 24, but sleep is the last thing on my mind. I have the driver pick up my friend and travel companion, Hilary, and then instruct him to T.F. Green airport. Wasnt expecting to see such a big Texas smile this early in the morning! says the security agent as I proudly hand him my ID and boarding pass. Im headed home, I say. I cant help but be excited! It doesnt hurt that a Mr. West, Mr. Wonder, and Mr. Win Butler are also scheduled to appear in my near future, as well as over a hundred other musical acts. Im on my way to attend my sixth consecutive Austin City Limits Music Festival, ACL, as it is affectionately known, in (where else?) Austin, Texas. Austin, the Live Music Capital of the World, is like no other place I know, and everything I love about it (the music, the food, its vivacious spirit), is concentrated over ACL weekend on the 350 acres of Zilker Park, the Festivals home. The citys diversity is evident at ACL, where for three days, everybody from the tiniest babies to aging hippies, University of Texas frat

tearing it up at acl

octet take the stage, there is a palpable intensity pulsating through the crowd of tens of thousands. When the band opens with the fitting Ready to Start, their energy seems to mirror that of the crowd. It gradually gains speed throughout the first few songs, thrusts itself forward during Intervention, and explodes with Wake Up. Win, Rgine, Jeremy, and the others become completely maniacal, propelling the crowd over the edge and into their vivacious, dance-filled realm. The rest of the set continues as such, with both the performers and the audience entranced in another world. Its by far the best show of the weekend. When the band rounds out their encore with Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), I try to cling to that joyous place, but as the music ends and the band says their goodbyes, I can feel it slipping away, and the real world encroaching. Back at Brown, that night seems like another world indeed though its force still lingers within me and is ignited every time

I turn on my iPod and blast a song through my speakers. Whether its an Arcade Fire tune or not, Im reminded of the intensity and passion that music fosters. I remember its ability to bring together all types of people and export them simultaneously as a collective and as individuals to a completely unique place, where anything seems possible.

arts & culture

POST-

Prelude to a Sneeze

hollywood just went contagious

tyler BOURGOISE arts & culture editor

There are certain mothers who go to the computer when their kids are sick with the common cold. They linger over the CDC website, doubling back over lists of symptoms. They ask themselves, Am I sure this cold isnt something unusual, something worse? That worse is the fear Contagion makes explicit and palpable. It only takes half an hour for this film to fill someone with that mothers hypochondria, at which point, one can notice no one in the theater is touching their faces. From its start, Contagion hews tightly to a structure that wastes no time or action. This tight packaging requires implicit patterns to help tell a story. Lighting is usually realistic, reflecting the minutiae of any given scenescape. When a person is visibly sick, the lighting subtly drops into dark, cavernous tones of green, blue, or harrowing white. In the first scene, an airplane bar is rendered plainly. Already the second day of the disease epidemic, middleaged Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) takes a salacious phone call minutes before her flight home. Its not her husband. Something is going on, but that is not immediately clarified. Instead we are given tight, dialogue-free clips of ill people from across the continents. Emhoff and these people die, but the scope of Contagions cataclysm is born. Emhoff is Contagions patient zero. Emhoffs network of infected people links a cast of characters fit for Greek tragedy or Marina Abramovic performance art. The most memorable performance is easily that of Matt Damon as Emhoffs widower, Mitch. Halfway between his wifes and sons deaths (and just 15 minutes into the movie), he doesnt even flinch as the ER doctor tells him his wife is dead: Ok, yeahso can I talk to her now? Where is she? True to life, and difficult to show in a shorter film, death and disbelief are in harmony. Laurence Fishburne plays Dr. Ellis Cheever, the officiating head of the Center for Disease Control, who leads a collaborative effort against disease and widespread panic. His mantra is cleverly slipped into his first dialogue with a janitor from his office, DoctorYou gotta think with your head, not your heart. Elements of Hollywood fantasy still creep into some other character profiles. The unnamed head of the Department of Homeland Security, played by Enrico Colantoni, is one of the other, less interesting kind of character in Contagion. He is not only flat, but he projects stereotypes of the military as slick and calculating godhead over human affairs. Slightly naive, given Contagions acuity in dealing with other aspects of real life. This is not the only clich in 106 minutes of film; because no time is wasted in transition from clich to originality, they are never overly bothersome. Government and NGO distinctions prove difficult to keepthose who are trying to save humanity become sick, become victims of crimes; national and

international reputations become jeopardized with every strategic advance against illness, as masses continue to weaken and die. Contagion depicts an international community that cannot simply eradicate a disease. The collective interests that form a federalist government provide nightmarish answers to ethical questions. Who is the first one to get the vaccine once its patented, after all? The easy retort is to ask: is Hollywood qualified to give a faithful answer? No, probably not. But it is surprising how well the writers of Contagion are able to intuit the frailty inherent in governmental systems. The specialized territory of government agencies become an obvious problem added onto the epidemic of disease. And, remarkably, Fishburne makes us feel like hes practically commandeered to work under the Department of Homeland Security. Its rare that a movie affects us with the implications of bureaucracy. It seems that only elite experts and masses are the focus of Contagion then the subplots multiply. They vary in qualityone even fails to resolve itself. But they all are intricate. Perhaps this intricacy is meant to serve as a supplement of plot substance for a narrative that is too fast and onedimensional otherwise. But as they try to fit into a speedy arch-narrative, the subplots become confusing. Too much compounds too quickly, and the structure of the movie begins to feel weak at around 45 minutes. One should know: a scene showing an autopsied woman having her scalp folded over her face, which occurs less than 20 minutes in, is a good metaphor for the rest of the movie. So dont think the viewer is at risk of inattention, regardless of slipping plot. Contagion is overwhelmingly rich with themes, some edifying and real, others self-disarmingly fictional. If the entire movie had to be summed into one applicable term, that term would be breakdown. Breakdown at all levels governmental, social, cultural, familial, dialogicalcharacterizes Contagions world, everywhere from the earliest caricatures of biomedicine to the emptied hallways and offices that give rise to severe existential questioning. We believe no one is safe. No one is safe in the thin constructs of comfort Contagion proves are easy to cancel. But such commentary on American life came from Hollywood perhaps from a source audiences were not ex-

pecting. Steven Soderbergh is known for directing Erin Brockovich, Traffic and Oceans Eleven, all of which enjoyed critical and box office success. Fourtime Academy Award winner, Traffic, is probably the most relevant comparison for Contagion. Traffic shook American audiences with gritty imagery and drama that jeopardized the presumed security of family valuesjust like Contagion. What separates Contagion from Traffic, however, is that Contagion gets things right. Unlike in Traffic, few of the characters appear to be faking their occupations, or contrived at all (save for Alan Krumwiede, who is a dishonestly or uncarefullyrendered pantomime of 2011 name-drop Julian Assange). Traffics subject, drugs, is morally complicated. Because drug-dealers and drugusers are both people, its a little easier to blame their misfortunes on their bad actions. Contagions subject is dominating, non-human. It is morally rich, because a disease is not a person, and still we dont know how to fight one when it threatens us. Frightening diseases are a forerunning post-millennium problem. Bioterrorism in 2001 taught us that Anthraxand by extension, illnessis an attack we are unequipped to fight without fear. The media confirmed this by leaving no paranoia unused. SARS followed in 2002, and if anyone was skeptical that Anthrax indicated a problem, they slept less after SARS. Then a hiatus. For about seven years after SARS, America thought it had laughed off its obsession with fearful diseases. Not the caseH1N1 Flu emerged in human populations in 2010, and we reacted hysterically. Because of its recent occurrence, livestock vector, and Chinese origin, Contagions germ seems modeled after H1N1. With this basis in reality, Contagion becomes an effective means to elaborate on American insecurities. Contagion uses fear to address its audience, but nobly. We feel fear in response to the characters initial reactions to adversity. They jump in and out of self-interest and good nature. Ultimately, most are forced to act so virtuously that, as catharsis sets in, one questions the existence of cynicism. This is where art and media divide in their use of fear: Contagion not only challenges humanity, but also uplifts it and recognizes its collective power to fail and revivein almost the same instance.

lifestyle
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

Me Jane, You Food

jane BRENDLINGER managing editor of lifestyle
Like a mother picking up her newly adopted child from the hospital, I bounded to Hillel in giddy excitement to get my farm share. A huge bag of vegetables once a week to call my own, local and seasonal. Not only was I supporting the Rhode Island farmer, but I was living the dream. Im here to pick up my farm share, I pronounced to the desk worker. I thought my idealist actions merited applause, but all I got was an Uh huh, and my name checked off. No matter. I gave myself a pat on the back. Collecting my share was a simple game with a guaranteed win: two sweet potatoes or an eggplant, three apples and three stone fruit, bok choy or Chinese broccoli. (Chinese broccoli, by the way, is nothing like broccoli. Its more like bok choy, a leafy green that wilts when cooked.) I handled all the eggplant, unsure of what criteria I should use to appraise them. But I found one that spoke to me, in the end. Choosing my loaf of bread was difficultmultigrain, Italian durum? On recommendation I took a raisinwalnut loaf, which makes wicked toast. I walked the blocks home clutching my newborn veggie baby, swaddled in brown paper. Fifteen pounds, eight ounces. Parenthood, however, is no picnic, and as it turned out, I didnt have the time or energy for such a child. Days dragged on, cooking time escaped me. Between half-eaten cans of salsa and an unclaimed supply of Canada Dry, I had no space in my refrigerator for produce. I squeezed in the necessities, but the rest just sat there in a bowl on my dining room table. Peppers softened and the carrots turned flaccid. And every time I walked past those ears of corn Id wonder: What the hell am I going to do with this? The next Thursday drew near, and I couldnt bear the thought of another load coming in, another screaming infant demanding my attention. So I called my friends, got chopping, and fired up the wok. Everything had to go. In a last ditch effort to eat my veggies, we threw the lot together with some soy sauce and peanut butter. Not the most refined meal, to be certain, but it turned out pretty damn tasty. Thats the thing with fresh, local produce: its pretty hard to f*ck up. And so today, Farm Share Day, Im older, wiser, and ready to impart my newly-gained sagacity. Pick up early to get the good stuff, like olive breadit goes fast. Eat leafy green stuff first. Refrigerate. And when youre at a loss for time or culinary inspiration, wok it out.

veggie tales
Chinese Broccoli (stems and leaves separated) I threw in some extra veggies that were about past their peak. The stir fry is your dumping ground: An onion (I highly recommend an onion), diced Asparagus Green Cabbage Peanut Sauce: Peanut butter Soy sauce A pinch of cayenne Sake Rice vinegar Brown sugar

Equipment: A wok. Really, the ideal kitchen tool. Handles big dishes like a champ, fries like a mo fo.

Farm Share Stir Fry with Peanut Sauce

Ingredients: 2 tablespoons of sesame oil 4 cloves of garlic A tablespoon of chopped ginger The contents of your Farm Share (subtracting the three apples and the three stone fruits) Mine included: An Eggplant Three ears of corn, shucked Carrots, small and stubby 2 Green peppers

First, slice the eggplant and toss with salt in a colander. Leave to drain for at least 20 minutes. Heat the sesame oil in your wok. Saut the garlic and ginger for a few minutes, and then add the onioncook until translucent. Throw in the eggplant and a splash of sake, and cover to steam for a bit. Once the eggplant has softened, chuck in the rest: peppers, carrot, the stems of the Chinese broccoli, and anything else youve got. While you let this mess fry (stirring all the way of course), mix together the sauce. As proportions go, trust your taste buds. Finger-lick, add sugar. Finger-lick, add peanut butter. Repeat as necessary. When all the veggies are tender, stir in the Chinese broccoli leaves to wilt. Pour on your peanut sauce. Serve with some brown rice, and a glass of Narragansett. Its local.

anna TIFFT

contributing writer

an interview with brown market shares

You trust your farmer and have a faceto-face relationship with him. Brown Market Shares works a bit differently. Their shares are sourced from multiple farms with which Brown Market Shares maintains a relationship. AT: Can you tell me a little bit about the farms that contribute to the shares? What about the Brown Market Shares appeals to them? MAR: We source from Hill Orchards, Barden Orchards, Chang Farm, Mellos Farm, and others around the area. Originally, Market Shares was run at the farmers market and all the produce came from there. Farmers that came onto Browns campus were guaranteed the income from the Market Shares in addition to sales at the weekly market. AT: You say originally. How has the program changed? MAR: At the moment we try to have a wider variety of shares offered each week, and sometimes that means ordering from farms that arent at the farmers market. Thats mostly where we source our dairy and egg products, but we also source some produce from outside farms if we need it in a higher volume than the farms can provide. Its not surprising that the program needs to look for produce elsewhere. The fall season, September 15th through December 8th, supplies 320 shares. Each share feeds two or three people, around one thousand people in total each week. Out of those 320 shares, the program subsidizes 75 itself. set wholesale prices, we pay them for the produce, and then we internally redistribute the money to fund our subsidized program. This provides low-cost shares to those who express financial need, including Brown staff, faculty, graduate students, and administrators. AT: Is Market Shares open to people outside of the Brown community? MAR: At the moment its not. Weve discussed ways to make it accessible to the larger Providence community, but that would require a lot more arm-work and collaboration with other organizations. AT: What does the average market share contain? MAR: This past week we had an assortment of fruit, say six apples or four apples and two peachesyou can choose. We had heads of lettuce and bok choy, a box of cherry tomatoes, a couple eggplants, and a pound of potatoes. Each share also comes with a loaf of bread from Seven Stars Bakery. Shareholders can also opt into buying local dairy and egg products. For almost a week, that share provided us with better meals than the Ratty, or even the VDub, from eggplant parmesan to apple tarts to vegetable curry. It was cheaper and healthier than going to the supermarket. If youre interested in joining Market Shares next semester, look for posts in Brown Morning Mail or visit their website at www.brownmarketshares.com, where you can also find information about volunteering for the program.

Im roommates with Mary Alice Reilly, one of the coordinators of the Brown Market Shares. Perks include a share each week (which we come by honestly, of course) as well as someone to cook with who really knows her way around food. As the coordinator of market day logistics, Mary Alice is in charge of organizing the programs numerous volunteers, establishing a home for share distribution, and communicating with Browns administration to make sure everything runs smoothly. Mary Alice is passionate about sustainable food and farming, so much so that she was willing to spend a large chunk of her summer at a farm in Rehoboth, MA, cleaning chicken poop off eggs and birthing goats (the description is far too graphic to be repeated here, but it convinced me against breeding any farm animals). The farm ran a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, the model for Brown Market Shares. Mary Alice explained to me how CSA works. MAR: CSA is basically a commitment to a farmer in your local area. A farmer recruits shareholders who pay him before the season begins. That money is used to buy seed, compost, tools, and machinery. Once the farmer starts to produce food, he distributes it to his shareholders, who pick up their share at the farm every week. Shareholders also commit to supporting the farmer regardless of what comes. For example, if a farmer has a really bad year in strawberries but a really good year in potatoes, the shareholder gets potatoes instead of strawberries.

AT: The number of people that the Market Shares feeds is pretty impressive, particularly considering that almost one quarter of the shares are subsidized. How do you determine the cost of the shares? MAR: The farmers

lifestyle
POST-

Penius
MM sexpert
rendition of an under-the-radar Mozart ditty from 1782, Leck Mich Im Arsch, or in English, Lick me in the ass. My first reaction: okay, ICP, youve shit on electromagnetism and Mendelian inheritance, but do not fuck with Amadeus. That guy was tickling the clavier at an age when Justin Bieber and Willow Smith were still learning bowel control. Theres even a popular theory that listening to Mozart actually makes you smarter, popularized by author and musician Don Campbell. Never did there live a purer, more upright example of bourgeois sophistication. Wrong. No sooner had I typed Mozart into the search bar than Google autocompleted with the word scatology. Maybe youre already familiar with Mozarts love of shit, but I wasnt. Just like the kinky inclinations of Rousseau and Einstein, Mozarts fecal fetish has been covered up by the forces of institutionalized rectitude. Until ICP covered it, the masters original scatological canon, Lick my ass, was known to English speakers as, Let us be joyful. Another canon, Lick my ass right well and clean, was translated, Nothing pleases me more than wine. Its like if 2 Girls 1 Cup was renamed I Love

n. a historically important horn-dog. See also prodorgy.

Kittens In Pashminas. In addition to Wanking All-theday-us Mozart (sorry, I had to), James Joyce was also an undercover perv. The guy had a thing for flatulence. Sure, Ulysses epitomized the Modernist movement in literature, but the letters Joyce exchanged with his wife really characterized his contribution to the Avant-Fart (sorry Im not sorry). In all seriousness, he wrote at length about the big fat fellows, long windy ones, and little naughty farties his wife produced during sex. He claimed he could find his wife in a room of farting women based on sound alone. If you read his letters (the rest of which arent fit to print), it becomes increasingly clear that his passion for sex was comparable to his love of writing. Its a similar story with the father of modern physics. Einstein had a love child and married a woman who was not only his first cousin, but was also related to his family on the other side. He told his first wife to expect neither intimacy nor fidelity. And the size of his stiffy was always directly related to the mass, energy, and momentum of whatever black hole he was exploring at the time. Legendary British folk composer Percy Grainger was so into S&M that he used to photograph the bloody bed after his wife flayed him. He covered the bedroom in mirrors so he could watch the flogging take place. The biography of Lawrence of Arabia includes a totally gratuitous description of the time he was captured and raped by Turks, which most historians think never actually happened (though in cases like these, doubting the victims story is generally damaging, destructive, and uncompassionate). He did, however, pay his friends to whip him sometimes so he could get off and record it in his diary. The takeaway? Theres a strong correlation between genius and horniness, as there is between genius and depression, genius and synesthesia, genius and social ineptitude. If youre not a huge fetishist, it doesnt preclude you from being a savant, and if you love getting farted on, it doesnt mean youll grow up to write a contemporary Portrait of the Artist. Its interesting, though, to deconstruct societal romanticism surrounding our historical figures. After all, theyre people just like us. People who desire love, intimacy, and, in Mozarts case, poop.

Sometime this week when I should have been studying, I embarked on a YouTube excursion that led me, by way of Jack White, Insane Clown Posse, and early-1900s British folk revival, to realize a profoundly positive correlation between genius and perversion. By now, sex-scandal is a tired phrase, an invocation of newsanchors feigned surprise that stales with every Weiner pic and reference to Tiger Woods most recent score. I was not scandalized when I read about Berlusconis latest prostitute, nor when I saw pics of a Puerto Rican Senators spread buttcheeks on Gawker. Oregon Congressman David Wu (D) announced his resignation last month after word got out that he was both an alleged sex offender and a straight-up furry (tiger being his alter ego of choice). Even that didnt really shock me. I mean, I have infinitely more affection for wildcats than for, say, bodybuilders-cum-actors-cumgovernors with secret children. But recently, I found myself scandalized by far less offensive information regarding a celebrity that died a good two hundred years ago. I was bopping around the intertron when suddenly I stumbled on a Jack White-produced Insane Clown Posse

Can I Have Yo Numbah?

can i have it?
savannah CHEYENNE sex columnist
Although we barely remember it, there was a time before cell phones. I didnt get a cell phone until my second year of high school (my parents were less than cool), so freshman year was fraught with awkward miscommunication. The worst example was when my mom forgot it was a half day. I didnt realize she had forgotten until it became clear, long after all my friends had left campus, and my creepy, middle-aged drama teacher insisted he could give me a ride home. Although I managed to somehow talk my way out of that one, I think that incident was the reason Mom finally caved and bought me a phone. Remember the days when you actually needed to know someones number to call him or her? I can still recite the number of my first best friend by heart. These days, however, I couldnt guess the first three digits of the numbers I call every day. I dont even know my dads number. The advent of cell phones has allowed us to swap numbers like trading cards, and, much like those Pokmon cards youve probably buried in the back of your closet in the hopes theyll sell on eBay someday, we allow them to accumulate. Id go so far as to say that we call fewer than 20 percent of the numbers we have in our phones. Of course, thats part of the fun. As a college senior, looking through my contact list is as much a trip down memory lane as perusing old Facebook albumsif not more so, because my contact list manages to capture the truly random moments that make college the phenomenal experience it is. I still have the numbers of people like my ENGN 9 TA, who graduated two years ago and brought beer to every section. The kid my roommate sexiled me with for a month. Girls I stayed up with until four in the morning studying in the Sci Li for one exam in one class one time. Random people I met at parties or hooked up with once (entries like Ethan Hockey and Kevin DTau). Friends of friends who proclaimed me their soul mates after a lot of tequila and drunken heart to hearts. Some kid who randomly sat down next to me in the Blue Room but I never saw again. And one poor, unsuspecting young man who had slighted a friend of mine and hence received my delightfully vengeful prank call late one Saturday night, listed forever in my phone as Jake ANSWER AS TRACY. Why do we hold onto these numbers, often knowing well never call them? Is it for the laugh we get when we happen to glance through and recall those bizarre exchanges? Is it for the surge of pride and self-importance that comes with a long contact list? Or is it something deeper than thatare we holding on to them in the hopes that, like our Pokemon cards, theyll prove valuable once again? Maybe one of the contacts you forged long ago might be the key to networking your way to a fabulous job interview, or turn out to be the love of your life. Maybe were holding on to these numbers just in case the story isnt over. Still, there comes a time when you have to cut the cord. After a few rough nights at the start of the semester, I went through and deleted all those numbers I know I shouldnt call againrelationships that went sour, crushes Ive drunk texted, creepers I dont need to see again. Yet even when deleting these lessthan-ideal contacts, it hurts to give up on their story lines. Deleting numbers from your phone is a concrete recognition of just how evanescent our relationships can be. Especially in college, people constantly flit in and out of your life, and its difficult to admit that how close you feel to someone one dayor one nighthas no bearing on how important they will be to you tomorrow.

Even so, I do think its important to shake the dust out of your phone from time to time. Save the memories, but clear out the numbers that you dont need anymore to make way for new ones. After all, there are always new people to meet at Brown, always new exchanges to be made. And who knows? The next time someone asks you Can I have your number? could be the start of a great new plot twist you never expected.