Concerts lineup released for fall

By Kelly Page [email protected]

Students have been ecstatic about the concerts schedule for this semester. Although some of the more high-profile acts (like Girlpool and Kero Kero Bonito) were leaked via Spotify prior to the official lineup release on Friday, Sept. 7, finally seeing a complete concerts schedule did not fail to be one of the most exciting moments of the new semester.

This year’s concerts coordinator, Cassidy Christiansen ’20, worked hard behind the scenes all summer long to provide the College with some of the best up-and-coming artists of modern times, despite cuts to the student activities budget this year. “Even though I’ve been in concerts for two years, I didn’t really know what [the booking process] would look like,” Christiansen said.

The manager of Girlpool and Porches had worked with Grinnell in the past, making it easier to bring these high-profile bands to the school. Additionally, Kero Kero Bonito showed an interest in the College which was very much reciprocated by a campus obsessed with their music.

“You get a lot of artists reaching out to you to play shows, so the lineup this year is a mix of people who reached out to me and people who I reached out to based on responses to a Google Form that I sent out,” Christiansen said.

Christiansen reached out to accomplished musician Haley Henderickx after receiving several requests to bring her to campus (paired with their own personal love of her music), and also found that she wanted to play Gardner, wedged in between two previously-booked shows in Iowa City and Des Moines.

“I’m happy to be bringing a lot of women of color to campus,” they added.

The semester to come will be packed with outstanding musicians, so make sure to head on down to Gardner and give them your ears when the time is right.

Students Speak: What did you do to stay active over the summer?

As Grinnellians get back into the swing of academics and campus social life, The S&B’s Kelly Page and photographer Mahira Faran went around and asked students what they did to stay active over the summer.

“I walked to work, I went to the gym just below my office and did a standard full-body lifting workout.” — Addi Gould ’19

“The beach! I was living in New Jersey so swimming, running on the sand, being active with your friends. It was like releasing your inner kid, playing in the waves, jumping in them, running through them as they come in.” — Dasaan McCrimmon ’19

“Every day I ran 10k and bench pressed 60 pounds.” — Farah Omer ’19

“I live in Minnesota, and there are a ton of lakes there, so I would go roller- blading around those lakes. I love roller- blading, but I have this super old pair of roller-blades that broke halfway through the summer, so I had to stop.” — Nicolette Musachio ’19

“I swam a lot. At the beach in the lake.” — Rylee Beltran ’22

“I helped my dad build a large staircase outside in Wisconsin on a beach. They’re retiring soon and the backyard of their house leads to the beach but there’s no direct access, so we built a 15-foot staircase.” — Ross Floyd ’19 Squirrel Flower reflects on spring successes and women in music Squirrel Flower is having a big spring, opening for Julien Baker at Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival and for Big Thief in Gardner Lounge. Contributed.

By Kelly Page [email protected]

While Ella Williams ’18 started performing as Squirrel Flower only durin gher first year at Grinnell, she has been surrounded by music all her life. Many members of Williams’ family are involved in music and art, including her father, who is a professional bassist. Williams grew up going to his gigs and singing with his fellow musicians.

“Being able to be on a stage that young emboldened me to be able to pursue music and not be afraid to do it,” Williams said.

Williams started performing in the Boston folk scene at age 14, but found her love for experimental DIY music when she was a senior in high school. After getting involved in the Boston DIY scene, she came to Grinnell and became Squirrel Flower, a name she gave herself as a child. Since performing as Squirrel Flower, Williams’ sound has grown and changed. “I’ve definitely gotten better at guitar and more willing to experiment in that respect, and just experiment with being a little more grungy and playing with distortion. My first EP … I call it dream folk, like a lot of reverb, a lot of loops, is just like single guitar a lot of the time and very ambient. I still love making that kind of music and doing super minimal stuff and stuff with harmonies and my voice, but I’m also breaking out of it into more rock and roll influenced music and bigger band arrangements, heavier drums and just crunchier guitars.”

As a gender, women’s and sexuality studies and studio art double major, Williams applies her knowledge to her musical projects. She focuses on feminist art, reclaiming violence and dealing with the impacts of internalized misogyny and queer- phobia.

“I’m a very sensitive person and also very perceptive and I think my whole life I’ve just felt so strong … and as a kid I had to find a way to channel that ’cause I didn’t know how to deal with it … so that’s definitely where a lot of my music came out of. I’d say now it’s definitely a little more sophisticated than that. I also write when I’m feeling happy. It’s less based on my emotions and more my observations,” Williams said.

In the past couple of years, Williams has played at Grinnell with indie darlings like Frankie Cosmos (whom she had previously opened for as an 18-year-old in Boston), Jay Som, Moses Sumney and, most recently, Big Thief.

On playing with Big Thief Williams said, “It was a dream. They’re my favorite band. I was also nervous because I was like ‘Jesus Christ, it’s Big Thief, I want to impress them,’ but I’ve also just played so many shows in Gardner so it was a little less nerve wracking.”

Outside of accomplishments on campus, Williams has toured and partnered with Rough Trade Records. Planning her entire career independently, many of the connections she makes in the music world have been helpful to her. One of those connections helped her play at Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City for two years in a row. This year she performed in a sold-out theater as an opener for acclaimed singer and guitarist Julien Baker.

“I’ve performed in theaters that size before with my choir that I was in through middle school and high school … but I’d never done that with my own act, so it was actually one of the first times I’d been really nervous for a show. Backstage about to go on I was super nervous, definitely sweating a lot, definitely had to chug half a beer before I went on, but once I was out there it was amazing,” Williams said.

However, with rising fame comes some problems. Last year, the Russian rapper Face stole her song “Conditions,” rapped over it in Russian and released it as a song called “Lisa.” Williams did not know until someone tweeted at her about it.

After Williams took down the song from Spotify and iTunes, Face sent her a series of emails in which he offered her $100 to use “Conditions,” an offer Williams did not accept. Williams did not hear from Face until his new manager reached out to her to strike a deal that would allow him to use the song. At this point, however, Williams was not interested.

“Throughout history so many women have been plagiarized by men and not given credit and the politics of it are really fucked up, so it’s pretty wild,” she said.

Lawyers told Williams that there is not a lot she can do to stop Face since he operates in another country, but she hopes that after she releases a new video for “Conditions,” she will be able to take him down “in a more social capital way.”

Aside from dealing with a Russian rapper, Williams’s musical career so far shows signs of a bright future. She is working on recording her first full-length album and, after she graduates in December, she is excited to put even more of her energy into her music career.

“Last fall after I released ‘Contact Sports’ I had been getting so many awesome gigs and I don’t think it was actually a shift in people’s perception or what I was doing, but I took a step back and realized all the things that I had been doing, and also realizing that I had been able to do all this shit while in college, full-time. I was like, if I can do this while a full-time student in the middle of Iowa, I can definitely do this as a postgrad with a lot more time and a lot more freedom to travel and tour.”

As she spends her last few months here, Williams wants to see a rise in women feeling comfortable making music at the College.

“I wish we had an environment where women felt freer to jam and try things out and start a band,” Williams said. “The only reason I got into music here was because I met Vera [Kahn] and we started jamming together, but it felt like a pretty hostile environment. The Showvember lineups have always been predominantly cis men and that sucks and there are concrete things we can do to help, [like] just publicly encouraging people who aren’t cis men to play the kind of music they play.” Grinnell Artists: Anne Rogers

Rogers, a third-year from Chicago, IL, has been incorporating clothing and laundry into her art of late. A lover of routine, she recently created clothes out of linen tablecloths and wore them for 65 days straight. Photo by Sarina Lincoln.

By Kelly Page [email protected]

Anne Rogers ’19, a studio art and gender, women’s and sexuality studies double major, has made art all her life. The first artwork she remembers creating, in first grade, was a collage about a chair in which she felt safe. Now, she has exhibited work in BAX (Bachelor’s of Art Exhibition) and Smith Gallery and secured internships in papermaking and weaving, continuing to make art that she feels strongly about.

Even though she has always loved art and known that she wanted to do it, Rogers did not always feel like a life centered on art was possible.

“I went to a magnet high school that was pretty academically rigorous and I think there was this mindset that you couldn’t be successful unless you did well in a traditional academic setting, especially in STEM. I had no idea what it looked like to be an artist. I knew a few people who were artists but it just didn’t seem like it was going to work for me,” Rogers said.

However, when she came to Grinnell and took studio art classes, Rogers saw that being a serious artist was more possible than she thought.

“There was this combination of me figuring out that there were things that I wanted to be making that were actually really important to me, and also meeting and talking to lots of people who are artists, like lots of artists come here for talks and judge BAX and also people who are students,” Rogers said.

Taking a sculpture class at Grinnell also served as an inspirational experience for Rogers. “We used all these huge and dangerous woodworking tools and learned how to weld and we made things that were big and things that were really messy and people were making work that they cared about,” she said. “That was the semester I declared, and after that I took two studio art classes in the spring, I took Chemistry of Art and Drawing, and I feel like that period of time in my second year was just when I realized that this was what I wanted to be doing.”

Recently, Rogers has been making a lot of art that deals with laundry and paper. For 65 days, she wore the same clothes that she made out of linen tablecloths purchased at Second Mile thrift shop. Now she will work to make paper out of them, replicating the pre-industrial revolution process of making paper out of peasants’ linen rags. Any garments that she was not wearing she hung in BAX on hooks, which will eventually display the paper she makes out of the clothing.

Rogers explained her fascination with papermaking: “I’ve always really liked paper. I really like physical versus digital things and things that are handmade and find a lot of joy in making things by hand … and just feel like my interactions with the material world are always more satisfying than most other things.”

After she took Chemistry of Art in her second year at Grinnell, where students explored the process of making paper, Rogers did a summer internship at Cave Paper in Minneapolis, where she learned more about papermaking.

“I love the repetition, I love just doing something with my body that’s satisfying. It’s also just, like, handmade paper is beautiful and nice to touch and it’s just good as an object,” she said.

Rogers’s interest in laundry carries over to her other piece exhibited at BAX: two stacks of laundry made from hollow ceramics. “They look like clothes and I think that was exciting because I made this thing that totally transformed the material and also that felt important to me,” Rogers said.

Rogers explained her current love for laundry: “I’m really interested in routine, and also I just love clothing, not in a way that it’s like I love wearing it as much as clothing as an object, I just feel like it’s really beautiful and tender and sort of comforting … I feel like routine is often seen as the last thing that you’d want to be doing and this huge chore and this thing that is just bad and annoying. But I feel like thinking about it that way isn’t super productive, because it’s always gonna be there and you’re gonna always have to do it, and if you can find a way to enjoy it and appreciate it, that will make your life a lot easier.”

Rogers’ other recent projects include documenting every object she brings to CERA with dye made from walnuts she found there and onions she ate at home, and a project where she drew her room onto curtains that she then hung in her room, playing with what people could and could not see.

An artist coming into her own, it will be exciting to see how Rogers’ work will evolve. Let’s reflect: Grinnell College 2017-18 Year in Review By Amanda Weber [email protected]

As the 2017-18 school year comes to an end, the College student body has an opportunity for reflection — to think back fondly on crane memes, the chronicle of the Mac Field fence and all of the little moments and fun events that made up this year’s college experience. With this in mind, The S&B created and distributed a survey to the student body and faculty the opportunity to share the things that have made this year great.

Perhaps one of the most notable features of the year would be one a physical one, displayed prominently on the skyline of the campus for almost the entire year. It would not have been 2017-18 without the iconic presence of the McGough Construction crane, catalyst for a plethora of memes and object of the affection of many a Grinnell student.

“I really do feel that crane memes defined the year for me. However, the ontology of the crane as it relates to its student adorers continues to prove ultimately elusive to me,” wrote Aubrey Champlin ’20 in response to the survey.

To the disappointment of many, the fan-favorite crane left campus during the weekend of April 21. However, its departure indicated a good deal of progress made on the construction of the Humanities & Social Studies Complex (HSSC), which was certainly a positive, especially for the professors who hope to be settling into new offices in the fall.

Still, it is hardly surprising that, of the students who responded, it was almost unanimous that the crane was a major icon of the year. Elise Bargman ’21 also made note of the fence around Mac Field, another familiar sight on campus and the source of many more memes.

However, sights on campus were not the only defining factors of the year. A number of students cited this year’s recent Relays as one of their most enjoyable memories from the year.

“I have to be quite honest, Relays 2K18 was absolutely amazing! It was my first time being able to participate and my team (Team ATHLETES) won every event (well, not actually, but we screamed ‘WE WON’ after every single event, and now everyone thinks we actually did) … I imagine that the only person who laughed more at Grinnell’s student body than I did that day was Prof. Wayne Moyer,” wrote Champlin.

This year’s Titular Head film festival was mentioned with a similar degree of excitement.

“Relays and Tithead were just pure fun and made me glad to be here!” wrote Kelly Page ’21.

Other notable events included the White Privilege Conference, the paint fight that took place during New Student Orientation, the Big Thief concert, the Wells Fargo protest, the LeaderShape conference and many more.

Outside of actual events, academics was also a feature of multiple students’ enjoyment of the year.

“As a second year, one of my favorite parts of the school year this year included developing more focused interest in academics and developing better relationships with professors,” wrote Abdi Yusuf ’20.

“My first two semesters were scheduled in a way that I had the ‘bookends’ of the Grinnell academic experience back to back; I was in Tutorial in the fall and French 350 (an advanced seminar) by the spring. While it hasn’t been typical (or easy for that matter), it’s been incredibly refreshing and I’ve learned a lot!” wrote Victoria Park ’21.

Page also cited her Tutorial as her best classroom experience of the year. “Tutorial with Ross Haenfler was fun and interesting and so much better than I thought school could be,” she wrote.

In the vein of academics, one of the respondents was new Associate Professor Anya Vostinar, computer science. According to Vostinar, her best experience this year has been starting her new job, and she has been having a good time on campus so far. She also shared her excitement about getting “Cache the wonder dog” and seeing students interact with the dog.

Another very notable feature of Grinnell, noted by many of the respondents, was the campus community. From attending protests together and playing games at Relays to admiring the crane through shared memes and collaborating to create cinematic masterpieces for Tithead, the College community sticks together, and it comes as no surprise that it is an important part of many students’ experiences. In fact, in response to a question about what her best out-of-class experience entailed, Page wrote, “Feeling like I’m part of a beautiful community.”

And, in true Grinnell College fashion, the last respondent to the survey went by “Kanye,” class of 2024. From the lack of input from Kanye, one may be able to extrapolate that everything about their year was stellar beyond words. Big Thief and Squirrel Flower to come to Gardner

By Kelly Page [email protected]

This Friday, April 26 at 8 p.m., the band Big Thief will play in Gardner Lounge.

Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief has been through a lot in her life, and her music reflects it so unflinchingly that it can be painful to listen to. She was born into a religious cult in Indiana, which her parents left when she was young. Her family lived a kind of nomadic lifestyle after that, driving around in a blue van, and her father taught her chords on the guitar. Lenker never went to high school but she did get a scholarship that allowed her to go to Berklee School of Music after she played guitar for the dean of admissions in his office. It was there that she met Buck Meek, who provides guitar and backup vocals for the band. His last semester at Berklee was her first, so she didn’t really connect with him until a chance encounter in a bodega in New York City. After that, they began making music together.

In an NPR interview, Meek described what drew him to Lenker’s music.

“I guess what struck me as a songwriter then was that her songs all seemed to be really human, and really emotional, and really honest — vulnerable — but at the same time they all somehow had this ineffable quality … like, all of that human content was serving as a medium for something beyond.”

Meek and Lenker played music as a duo everywhere they could, but eventually decided to create a full band. At that point Meek saw Max Oleartchik, with whom he had gone to camp at Berklee, in Brooklyn. Now he is the bassist of the band, and James Krivchenia, who had originally been their sound technician, became the drummer of the band.

Listening to Big Thief, it becomes immediately apparent that their music is very special. NPR wrote, “[Lenker] and her band mates have a sense of her songwriting and music as a living thing — as something that ‘happens’ more than it is crafted.” Their music is visceral and heart-wrenching. It deals with Lenker’s childhood, abuse, love, violence, gender and self- perception. “Mythological Beauty,” a song off of their most recent album “Capacity,” starts off simply enough with Lenker discussing someone’s “mythological beauty,” until the listener hears, “there is a child in you who’s trying to raise a child in me,” and it becomes clear that Lenker is talking about her relationship with her mother. It discusses how Lenker’s mother gave her first child up for adoption (“I have an older brother I don’t know, he could be anywhere”) and a near-death relationship Lenker had as a child which left her mother “praying ‘don’t let my baby die.’”

Similarly, the song “Real Love” off of their album “Masterpiece” seems like it will be a love song but it quickly becomes heart-wrenching, referring to an abusive relationship as the song crescendos over churning guitar into Lenker and Meek singing, “Cry like a bird, fly like a baby. Mama got drunk and daddy went crazy.”

At the same time as Lenker’s songwriting is unflinchingly real, it can sometimes be difficult to know what she is talking about. In the song “Mary,” she uses lilting figurative language to talk about someone named Mary who she once loved. However, according to NPR, “Lenker often feels that she is singing it to herself.” It’s a simple song, mostly just Lenker’s voice and a piano playing chords, but she uses language as its own music, singing “monastery, monocrome, boom balloon machine and oh …” and asking Mary, “will you love me like you loved me in the January rain?” It’s sweet, extremely figurative and somehow also heartbreaking.

For many students, it is incredibly exciting to have Big Thief coming to Grinnell’s own Gardner Lounge. It is one of the most highly anticipated shows of the year, and one not to miss.

Big Thief will perform at Gardner from 9 p.m. this Friday, April 27. Artwork by Steven Duong. Writers@Grinnell: April Dobbins

By Kelly Page [email protected]

On Tuesday, April 24, Grinnell alum and filmmaker April Dobbins ’99 came to campus as part of the Writers@Grinnell series to talk about being an independent filmmaker. She has co-directed the film “Cutter,” which was screened at multiple music festivals, including the Gary International Black Film Festival and the Baltimore International Black Film Festival. She also produced a short film called “Paradise.” The synopsis can be seen on her website: “Joe’s obsession with death heightens when he learns of a strange ritual that repulses his wife.”

She talked about a new project she is working on, titled “Alabamaland,” which chronicles the history of the land that her family lives on, where their ancestors worked as slaves, saying, “documentaries are about walking in the character’s shoes.” Her aim in creating the documentary started with “making a time capsule” of her family, but through the creative process it grew into something more as she began to focus on the women in her life and place herself in the story. She discussed the grueling nature of making documentaries independently, and how many people struggle with the idea that their documentaries may not make money.

She also discussed being a woman on movie sets, saying that many women shy away from being directors because they do not feel comfortable telling other people what to do. She encouraged other women to assert themselves in the role. A student interested in film asked her about whether it was wise to go straight into film school immediately after Grinnell, or if they should try to get life experience first. Dobbins replied by saying that one does not necessarily need to go to film school if they get an entry-level job in the industry and work their way up, but to not to wait too long to go to graduate school, as “life will get in the way … you have the rest of your time to get life experiences.”

For Dobbins, creating movies is difficult, forcing her to spend all of her spare money on her projects and to continue promoting her projects even when it gets hard. However, for her it is a labor of love. April Dobbins talked to students about her works and filmmaking. Photo by Reina Shahi Pride Week prompts reflection on queer experience at Grinnell

Kelly Page [email protected]

Charlie Rosenblum ’18 performed at this year’s Drag Show, part of Pride Week. Photo by Helena Gruensteidl.

Last week was Pride Week at the College. Every day from Monday, April 9, through Saturday, April 14, the Stonewall Resource Center (SRC) and affiliated groups hosted events for LGBTQ+ students.

Ric Tennenbaum ’18, co-coordinator of the SRC, gave an open call for students to host pride-related events. She highlighted the importance of events that bring together students with various identities, saying, “I think the importance of Pride Week is in parsing out all these different fields of queerness and different little interests people have within queerness and being able to … really get into it.”

For many, Pride Week presented a moment to reflect on what it means to be LGBTQ+ at Grinnell College. There are a multitude of LGBTQ+ identities of Grinnellians, many of which are addressed by student groups that focus on different experiences and concerns.

One such group is Queer People of Color (QPOC), led by James Caruso ’18. According to Caruso, “QPOC’s focus over the past several years has been to provide a space for queer people of color on campus … to come together and talk. … Especially for queer students of color, we have that double identifier of otherness or of difference … and I think being here in Grinnell where this school is predominantly white, predominantly straight and cisgender, and the town itself is predominantly conservative, … here can be very difficult.”

Another student group that addresses a specific LGBTQ+ experience is Out in STEM, co-founded by Allison Bartz ’18 as a place for LGBTQ+ students in STEM to come together.

“We made it because there wasn’t any group that was sort of associated with STEM students in LGBT stuff,” Bartz said. “The idea is that if you don’t know that there are other queer students in your classes, you might feel kind of isolated or nervous ’cause … there’s a lot of straight men in a lot of classes and they like to talk a lot. … It’s good knowing there are people to talk to if you need help.”

Trans Advocacy Group (TAG) is a group on campus that addresses the needs of transgender students. Loyal Ulm ’20, a TAG leader, has helped push for the College to make various changes in the interests of trans students

“A lot of what we do in TAG is looking at a lot of small things that come up for students throughout the school year,” Ulm said. “For example, last year … if students had issues with CAs assigning bathrooms, … we would sort that out, working with Intercultural Affairs to get P-Card names changed, getting dead names off Dean’s List.”

Queer Athletes and Allies (QAA) provides a safe space for those navigating often heteronormative experiences as athletes. A member of the group said that “[QAA is] a space for us to talk, and a space for us to be aware of other queer athletes who are younger and who are trying to figure it out in their typically heteronormative teams.”

The QAA member, who wished to remain anonymous, said that they feel the SRC does not necessarily provide a space for people “for whom being queer is not the most central part of our identity.” They also referred to the relationship between athletes and non-athletes at the College, citing their belief that SRC community members “won’t like sportos and everything that sportos stand for.”

Mental illness and LGBTQ+ issues are also often closely tied at the College.

“There’s a very strong relationship between people who have mental illness and people who are queer on campus,” said Luke Jarzyna ’18, who organized the Freesound and English SEPC Open Mic during the week. “I wish there were more resources, potentially, and I feel like people still experience those things in isolation.”

The draft of the new Diversity and Inclusion Plan, released earlier this month, includes a discussion of the importance of spaces on campus to “promote student healing.” It remains to be seen whether this will apply specifically to LGBTQ+ students.

Although being LGBTQ+ presents difficulties while at Grinnell, the college environment can also provide hope. Jarzyna pointed out many ways that the English Department has supported queer studies within English classes. He noted the importance of the College hosting three recent Writers@Grinnell events that featured queer writers: Ocean Vuong, Marlon James and Roxanne Gay.

“I know for me and a lot of other writers on campus hearing those perspectives on campus really meant the world,” he said. “I feel very supported by hearing these people speak.”

Even with Pride Week now in the past, LGBTQ+ students at Grinnell continue to strive for community, visibility and growth at Grinnell.

Inside golf practice: players and coaches alike improve their game

The men’s golf team prefers a laid back yet focused practice. Even the coaches get in on the action. Photo by Kelly Page.

By Quan Tran [email protected]

The Grinnell men’s golf team doesn’t take a green golf course and beautiful afternoon for granted. In fact, weather has been plaguing their ability to practice all spring. When I visited, though, the sun was shining, the wind was breezy and it actually felt like spring. I came to practice on a Thursday, and it was the first time they had the opportunity to practice outside all week.

Normally, the team has six days of golf a week, including days on which they have tournaments. For practice, they either go to the golf course and spend time working on their short game, putting and hitting a couple of holes to get the feeling, or everyone is driven five miles to the Oakland Acres Golf Course to work on their swing technique.

When weather conditions don’t allow the team to go outdoors, they go inside the fieldhouse, where there are a couple of hitting bays and a small putting green. It’s not the most ideal situation in the world, which is why assistant men’s golf coach David Arseneault Jr. ’09 tries his best to get the men outside.

“[Indoors] is a little more challenging because you can’t see the balls’ flights. That’s why when you’re outdoors you can read other factors like the wind, the temperature and where to land the ball. So, even if the weather is only halfway reasonable, we try to go outdoors,” Arseneault said.

Sometimes it’s easy for people to forget how much of an individual game golf is. I was reminded by the sense of autonomy upon arrival at the course. Everybody was doing something different. Evan Bunis ’18 — a Division III All- American Scholar — was working on putting by himself, while Connor Headrick ’21 and Dan Jaques ’21 — the newest additions to the team — were sharpening their short game. Even the coaches were having a 9-hole scrimmage.

Although there wasn’t much organization, the work ethic was outstanding.

“As I’ve learned from [head men’s golf coach Brian] Jaworski, being a Division III athlete, you have to be very self- motivated. A lot of these guys, not only are they coming out here in practice time, but they’ll be hitting practice balls all the time, whether it’s indoors or outdoors,” Arseneault said.

“I think D-III athletes are some of the most self-motivated people you can find. If you’re willing to come out and play as hard as you can, you’re going to get a lot better,” Jaworski agreed.

Eventually, the team split up into groups of four or fewer so they could start hitting at different holes. I decided to tag along with Arseneault and Jaworski’s group, which included their athletes Owen Craven ’20 and John Zbaracki ’20 as they traversed the course.

Throughout the game, everybody was having fun and talking to each other, but they were very focused when the time came to hit balls. Although the coaches got in on the action, they didn’t forget their roles as mentors, giving tips and encouragements to the players along the way. There was no procrastination either, because each group had to finish their shots at one hole quickly enough to make room for the next groups.

Swing technique is perhaps the most vital skill a golfer needs. That’s why the team dedicates many of their sessions at the local Oakland range to work on it. It’s a great place because they can hit virtually unlimited golf balls and correct their stances in the process, which is a very important part of the game.

“You’d want to get the feel, to get comfortable with the club in your hand, to make sure your tempo is right, and to align everything perfectly,” Arseneault said.

After a while, it came down to the very last hole between the two coaches. Fortunately for Arseneault, Jaworski missed the game-tying putt by a hair. “I want the guys to come out and have fun,” Jaworski said. “Four years of college can go by so fast, so you never want to take many days off.”

The S&B shares its reaction to The Periodic Table The menu, walls and decor of The Periodic Table are all chemistry-themed. Photo by Andrew Tucker.

By Ben Mikek & Kelly Page [email protected] [email protected]

As late April snow showers continued to decrease the likelihood of May flowers, The S&B’s staff members Ben Mikek and Kelly Page, both ’21, walked the three blocks to The Periodic Table at Hotel Grinnell with one question in mind: is it worth it to make the short trek in order to use the coupons handed out to all Grinnell students earlier this spring?

The beginning of our experience set a relatively low bar. Upon our arrival, it was somewhat unclear where to sit. No staff came onto the scene until five minutes had passed. Nevertheless, we made the best of the time by observing the surroundings.

The Periodic Table, a restaurant situated inside Hotel Grinnell, is one of the newest restaurants in Grinnell. Its big theme is, for obvious reasons, chemistry, with chemical symbols painted on the walls and chemical diagrams on the drinks menu, which did eventually arrive. The decor, though, was a bit eclectic, including cow-themed chairs, a variety of board games nestled in a corner, and a scoreboard from the gym of the middle school that once occupied the same building.

We tentatively selected a metal table near the bar and listened to ’80s music playing on the speaker. Eventually, a very attentive server arrived and, being the only patrons in the restaurant, we were caught up in a whirlwind of almost immediate service for the remainder of our meal.

Though not extensive, the menu contained a tasteful selection of appetizers, salads and main courses, including extensive vegetarian and vegan options.

To begin, each of us ordered a salad, all of which cost $3 in the smallest size. The zoodle salad was centered around the modern innovation of zoodles: zucchinis sliced thin enough that a middle-aged mom could say, “it’s just like pasta but without the carbs!” The salad tasted fresh, and peanuts and basil added nice dimensions to it. The red onion, which can be scary in its uncooked form, was a nice touch. The spinach salad likewise did a good job of balancing sweet (strawberries and dressing) and savory (spinach, walnut and onion) flavors.

For entrees, The Periodic Table offers options in two major categories: bowls and flats, all priced equally at $10. Again seeking diversity in our selections, we selected the green curry bowl and the chicken bruschetta flat. In the curry, to our surprise, the zoodles were back, stirred into the curry as the “seasonal vegetables” the menu promised, along with cauliflower. The zoodles were fun the first time, but placing them twice in a single meal seemed a bit much. The curry itself smelled a lot like coconuts and was just spicy enough to be invigorating without being painful. The chicken bruschetta, by contrast, offered a possibly better experience. As with the salads, the balance between the clashing flavors of chicken, cheese and balsamic vinegar was nearly perfect, and the mozarella was neither too heavy nor too sparse. Combined with the puffy but not overly-thick crust, these positive attributes far outweighed a somewhat odd choice of plate.

For dessert, we shared a raspberry cobbler. The confection seemed to consist of three layers: hot raspberry jam, a pastry which tasted pleasantly like sugar cookies and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Again, the balance of flavors was spot-on. It was a delicious way to end the meal, but at $8 might not have been worth the price.

Overall, The Periodic Table’s strengths include a balance of flavors and a strong dynamic equilibrium (pun intended) between culinary innovation and traditional flavors. On the downside, not all of the menu options are created equal, and particularly given the limited selection, prices are rather high. While it might be a place to visit once or twice with family, The Periodic Table is likely not the ideal restaurant for regular student outings. Res life approves ‘Farm House’

Kelly Page [email protected]

Residential Life approved a new project house called Farm House (not affiliated with the international fraternity FarmHouse) for the 2018-19 academic year. On April 4, students Tommy Hexter, Maya Dru and Seth Bartusek, all ’21, presented the idea for Farm House to a group of residence life staff and student community advisors. They proposed the creation of a chicken coop, organic garden, compost and floral garden, as well as plans to host open houses and monthly dinners with local farmers as guests, and put out a monthly newsletter. Less than an hour later, they received confirmation that Farm House would exist next year, moving into 1023 Park Street and causing Art House, the current project house residing there, to relocate.

The College is allocating a new house, already owned by the College, to student housing because of a need for additional residential space. Farm House was the only new group that applied to have a project house, filling a highly convenient opening. Leah Reuber, assistant director of residence life, explained the decision to grant the applicants their house, saying that “their enthusiasm was palpable and they were very excited about introducing Farm House. One of the things I think was interesting this year is that Farm House, Eco House and Food House all have this area of similarity,” Reuber said.

But what set Farm House apart, according to Reuber, was “how they wanted to tie in community, … so really looking at how this college is uniquely placed in a really middle-of-nowhere rural area and how it is kind of disassociated with the ruralness.”

Some of those living in Food House are unsure if the proposed uniqueness of Farm House is enough to necessitate the creation of a new organization.

“In the beginning I had mixed feelings about Farm House,” wrote Bella Kugel ’20, a Food House resident who has spent the past year working on its already-existing garden, in an email to The S&B. “Because I thought it may have been more useful for the people who proposed Farm House to help us (the garden) improve, expand, before creating a whole new entity on campus. The garden has a lot of amazing goals, projects and plans and we’ve been working hard on all of it for the last year and a half with many people involved, and this iteration of the garden has been a long time coming after years of restriction. I hope that going forward the garden and Farm House will have a lot of beneficial overlap though, there’s so much opportunity for support and collaboration.”

On the relationship he envisions between the two project houses, Hexter said,“I’m not too familiar with what they do [at Food House] but I think that our hope is to basically expand and be more productive than [them]. Not that it’s a competition at all. We want to work together with them but we have more room than they do, so more of a farm than a garden feel I would say.” Farm House plans to construct a greenhouse from PVC tubes and clear tarp, which they hope would allow them to grow plants throughout the year. According to Kugel, growing plants in Grinnell is not simple, and Farm House has a formidable challenge ahead.

“Gardening simply takes a lot of work and technical knowledge,” Kugel wrote. “It’s not usually a space restriction because you can be ultra productive on a small plot of land if you know what to do, but the growing season not lining up with the school year is big. … I also love their enthusiasm, but am a bit worried they are too overeager or trying to do too much all at once.”

Each of the founders of the house have links to farming which could help them as they create the garden: Bartusek has a garden, greenhouse and compost at his home in Chicago, Dru has worked on two farms for several summers and will spend two weeks this summer working on a farm in Minnesota and Hexter’s family owns a farm which he has worked on throughout his life.

It is unclear where funding for the garden will come from, and according to Kugel, their farm will be productive if they are able to acquire a substantial budget and a lot of time.

“Partial funding does come from residence life, so they get six dollars for every resident who lives there,” Rueber said. “Their consideration is to work with local farmers and talk to them about getting seeds, or talk to them about getting equipment that maybe they don’t use anymore.” Bartusek and Hexter, however, say that they will try to work with the College on funding, ask local farmers for help getting started and try to apply for local grants.

Aside from the garden, another initial goal of Farm House was to have chickens on their land.

“A very important part of building a sustainable house itself is that chickens eat some of the vegetables that we don’t and their eggs are a really good source of protein,” Bartusek said.

However, according to Residence Life, Farm House cannot have chickens due to school year breaks and the year-to-year status of project houses.

“One of the stipulations of them being allowed to have the space is that they would not have chickens … but we’re open to talking about other possible kind of routes for them to fulfill that role, whether it’s partnering with a farmer and purchasing a coop on their property, or having chickens that they’re responsible for at home that isn’t on Grinnell College campus.”

Another goal of Farm House is to expand agricultural study at Grinnell. There are already Grinnell students conducting independent majors in agriculture and related fields. For example, Kugel is an agronomy and ethnobotany major. Additionally, Wren Frueh ’21 is currently planning a major in agriculture, which will involve global development and environmental studies and rely on independent study options.

Frueh, who will live in Eco House, agrees with Farm House that Grinnell should have more classes in agriculture, however, she still sees a liberal arts approach as important.

“I think it’s important to have a strong background in biology and environmental studies when planning a career in agriculture,” Frueh said. “It’s not gonna be like an Iowa State program where you’re gonna have classes in, like, dairy and corn farming and things like that but I think, yeah, Grinnell should probably have classes in ag, especially with the region we’re in.”

Grinnell Artists: Sooji Son ’18

By Kelly Page [email protected]

One of the biggest advantages of attending a liberal arts school is the ability to take classes across multiple curriculums. This has been an important part of Sooji Son ’18’s education as a computer science and theater and dance double major.

Before interacting with the theater and dance department at Grinnell, Son never thought she would major in that discipline. She viewed it more as an extracurricular activity that supplemented her focus on computer science.

“I started doing backstage stuff in high school,” Son said, adding with a laugh that the highlight of her high school theater career was working the spotlights that follow actors across the stage. “When I came to college I was interested in doing theater work, but not actually majoring in theater. But I met Professor Justin Thomas, [theater and dance], who convinced me to major in theater.”

Thomas’s strategy in convincing Son to major was persistence.

“He was always saying ‘it’s never too late to be a theater major!’” Son recalled.

Her experience crewing for the play “Anna Christie” her first year led her to try taking classes in theater, eventually choosing to major in it.

Of her experience pushing herself to try new things in the theater and dance program, Son said, “Everyone should take advantage of Grinnell’s liberal arts and take different classes, because I took a dance class that I never thought I would take and then that actually helped me broaden my perspectives a lot.”

Son is drawn to theater by the opportunity it provides to to work with others to create art.

“The reason why I got into theater is because it was a collaborative process, working with so many different people like actors, directors, choreographers and crew members, so at the end of each show I felt like it’s something we created together. So that’s what drew me into theater, because I like making art with many people,” she said.

Son has stage managed many shows throughout her time at Grinnell, from “The Boy Who Fell From the Roof” in 2015, to “The Laramie Project” in 2016, to the inventive and largely student-created production “The First Time I Walked On The Moon” in 2017.

Son also directed a one-act play this past fall called “The Universal Language” by David Ives. The play shows the interactions between a con artist, who teaches a fake language called Unamunda, and a woman with a stutter, who seeks to learn the language and then falls in love with him.

Additionally, Son has helped create many performance art pieces at Grinnell. Last semester she and Anh Thu Pham ’19, a fellow computer science major, created the interactive performance, “We’re All Vulnerable: Who Killed Tammy Zywicki ’92?” which explored the kidnapping and murder of Grinnell student Tammy Zywicki in 1992 as she drove back to campus on I-80.

“I made a performance about her disappearance and what it must have felt for her, so it was for a smaller audience, maybe like of two, three people,” Son said. “I try to — because I’m also a computer science major — connect technology with art, so I made a phone app to guide the audience through the performance because they have to be at multiple places, so that was interesting and fun.”

The performance guided the audience through a series of clues that led them to new locations, where they would experience different installations.

“We had it set from the basement of Bucksbaum, where all the storage is for the theater department, and then going around outside, in front of the box office and then to the loading docks. The audience was constantly on their feet moving around, trying to find the clues, but also they were just misled and led into these creepy corners. We had installations going on at each stop they had to go, and then hints they had to enter on their phone to get the next clue and whatnot, so it was a very interactive and audience-driven performance,” Son said.

Learning about computer science has helped Son beyond just giving her the skill to create apps to aid in performances. It taught her a way to solve problems that allowed her to be inventive in the way she uses technology in performance.

“Computer science is more, you kind of dig deeper into this problem, so they always talk about problem-solving skills, so I think I use that to do digital work. … [The class] Problem Solving Inquiries really helped me learn things on my own and then use that skill to do performances,” she said.

Son used the problem-solving skills that she gained in computer science to create a recent performance using projections.

“I recently had another installation performance thing where, it’s hard to explain, but there was a webcam for the performer and the audience, it was for an audience of one, and then the projections and video images got looped around so it was as if the audience was interacting with the performer even though they were in separate rooms. It was like exploring intimacy while being in a different room. I wanted to play with that mirage but also, like, what is the real you,” she said.

Immediately after graduation, Son will work in Silicon Valley, making a career in computers. However, she still wants theater to be a big part of her life.

“People say ‘oh, you’ll be making a lot of money in Silicon Valley,’ and that’s actually what I’ll be doing immediately after grad, but I always joke that’s, like, means of production. Just like, make money, stock up and do theater stuff on the side. I’m interested in looking for grad school or maybe other theater opportunities,” she said.

Sooji Son ’18, theatre and dance and copmuter science double major, has stage managed for multiple productions during her time at Grinnell. Photo by Helena Gruensteidl