The Fairgrounds residents fairly grounded

By Yishi Liang & Antonia Androski [email protected] [email protected]

Just across the street from Main residence hall is the clearly labeled and always lively house of Grinnell’s swimming and diving team, also known as the Fairgrounds. The house is the home to swimmers Emmanuel Spooner ’13, Beck Ringdahl-Mayland ’13, Richard “Tricky Dick Bigs” Bigler ’13, Alex Staff ’13 and diver Allison Miller ’13.

For most Grinnellians, their first impression of Fairgrounds is likely to be the dark, sweaty attic, which has become an infamous tradition in the house.

But recently, the members have invested their time and Spooner’s Lion King bedsheets to create a new spot that has quickly become the focus of the entire house: a blanket fort.

The housemates unanimously agree that the fort is now one of their favorite things about the house. It also received rave reviews from honorary house member and fellow swimmer Pun Winichakul ’13.

“I’m just so happy right now,” Winichakul said when he first experienced the euphoric atmosphere of the blanket fort.

A more permanent but lesser known feature of Fairgrounds is the Jacuzzi tub in the second floor bathroom.

“I used it once. Kind of cool. Elegant,” Ringdahl-Mayland said, the only person brave enough to have used the tub.

As if having all of these amenities was not enough, every member also has his or her own room. Four housemates live on the second floor while Spooner lives on the first. And though he is the lone occupant of the floor, his housemates try to ensure that he never feels too left out.

“I always hear them having dance competitions or stomping around or whatever they’re doing,” Spooner said.

Part of the reason that the group is so close is that every house member is a captain. Ringdahl-Mayland, Spooner and Staff are all swimming captains, while Miller is a diving captain. Bigler has been appointed party captain of the house.

But outside of the pool and the fort, their interests diverge and occasionally clash.

Ringdahl-Mayland has been accused by several of his housemates as having questionable taste in television programs, which include “Amish Mafia” and “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.”

“It was once, and I immediately regretted it,” Ringdahl- Mayland claimed.

These television shows are perhaps too mainstream for resident hipster, Miller. Her status as the most hipster of the bunch is unchallenged, but the rankings of the rest are hotly disputed.

“I don’t understand how I’m less hipster than Beck,” Staff protested when being placed last behind Ringdahl-Mayland. “I’m a philosophy major!”

Miller quickly came to Ringdahl-Mayland’s defense, “But he can grow that creepy hipster mustache.”

Despite the great hipster debate, there are some things that the group can unanimously agree on. When asked what their favorite place in the house was prior to the blanket fort, all (except Bigler himself) quickly responded with “Rick’s bed!” The residents of the Fairgrounds, clockwise, Ringdahl-Mayland, Staff, Miller, Bigler and Spooner snuggle up against the winter chills.

No specific reason was given for why the bed was so beloved.

Fairgrounds is not only home to this group of fun-loving swimmers, though. The place also holds a great deal of history and memorabilia. Throughout the years, the house has accumulated many unique items, which have included old swimming banners, authentic street signs, boxing gloves, a light saber and a swimming trophy from the 1940s.

“It’s just a thrift shop here,” Rigler said.

All of items were warmly welcomed. However, something warm but not quite as welcome was found during a routine attic cleanup.

“One fateful day, I went up there and I called Beck over and I said ‘Beck, is this what I think it is? Is this human feces?’” Spooner recalls.

And indeed it was.

Through the ups and downs, the five fairly grounded members of the house have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the tradition of Grinnell’s swimming and diving team. D-Halal’s new venue and ice cream at the Grill

By Lily Jamaludin [email protected]

This spring semester, Dining Services has introduced several new changes to the Marketplace and the Spencer Grill.

The Marketplace—or, D-Hall, as it is more commonly called—added a new halal venue and updated its previous gluten-free venue. The Spencer Grill introduced products from the 2nd Street Creamery, an Iowa-based ice cream company.

The halal section was set up for Grinnell’s Muslim students, motivated by efforts from the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the Center for Religion, Spirituality and Social Justice (CRSSJ) and the Office of the President.

“My MSA group members and I began to make an effort to make changes in the dining hall as early as last year, when we first noticed the surprising number of food items containing pork and alcohol that were not labeled as such. This is problematic for students following both the Muslim and Jewish faith,” said Lana Mahgoub ’14, a member of the MSA.

Halal meat must be prepared according to Islamic dietary guidelines. Grinnell’s halal meat will be supplied by the Midamar Corporation and prepared separately in the Marketplace.

“The food…would be prepared in a manner that is acceptable for halal foods. We would rinse our ovens before we prepare that food, to make sure that there isn’t cross-contamination,” said Jeanette Moser, Associate Director of Marketplace Operations.

Other than separate preparation in a clean oven, the halal station will generally follow the same menu as other parts of the Marketplace. Dining Services hopes that students who do not follow halal restrictions will choose other options.

“There is quite an expense to the Halal meat program. So if you bring everybody to that venue for halal cooked meats, that would touch our budget fairly significantly,” Moser said.

This week, the Halal venue has served samosas with ground beef and Moroccan vegetable stew.

For Muslim students, the new changes are a great relief.

“I’m very thankful that Grinnell has decided to accommodate us with the halal station. Now when I go to the dining hall, I don’t need to wander around anymore—straight to the halal station,” said Uzma Daraman ’15.

The gluten-free station in the Marketplace was also upgraded. The new changes to the gluten-free station include a sneeze guard and an under-counter mounted heating system.

“We had a gluten-free station that didn’t meet the needs of the health code of Iowa,” Moser said. “[Now] it’s high-tech, it’s safe, and it does a better job of keeping food hot than the system we were [previously] using. We’ve also made it so that the food won’t get so dried out, because we had problems with that also.”

The new heating system uses induction-heating technology. A magnetic contact made through the granite keeps the cooking surface cool, yet heats the serving pans.

Last but not least, the Spencer Grill has introduced ice cream into its menu. The ice cream comes from 2nd St. Creamery, a company based in northwest Iowa. The residents of the Fairgrounds, clockwise, Ringdahl-Mayland, Staff, Miller, Bigler and Spooner snuggle up against the winter chills. The fun flavors include Truck Stop Fudge, Blackhills Strawberry Rhubarb, Copper Kettle Caramel, Cannoli di Nonni, Almond Butter Hazelnut Fudge, and Mint Chocolate Victory.

Each container costs $5.50.

“[If we sold] Ben and Jerry’s, I’d have to sell it for $7.00. This was definitely a better choice for the same quality,” said Mary Kirk, Assistant Director of Retail and Vending.

The prospects for sales look good. According to Kirk, students are already buying, despite the winter cold.

“They are so wonderful, I just want to eat them all myself,” she said with a laugh.

Gardner prepares for punk invasion

By Geo Gomez [email protected]

The Orwells bring a nostalgic, adolescent-angst infused punk to Gardner this Friday, January 25. The five-member, all-male band from Elmhurst, will wail Grinnellians into a classic punk mosh pit euphoria. The Orwells, a five-man band, will be playing Gardner this Friday, January 25 at 9 p.m.

In their song “MallRat (LaLaLa),” the band opens with the quote “I believe with all my heart that rock n’roll is a contributing factor in delinquency,” from a reverend preaching against the sin of rock n’roll. As if responding directly to this lament, the song begins with a drawn out cry from the guitars, quickly followed by a rapid drumroll: at the same time an introduction but also a homage to the bands punk music. The song is carried by a sharp guitar riff, repeating until it drills its way into your head. It is instantly an appealing song, lively and youthful, with a drumbeat that bangs along with guitar. It sounds like it was recorded in a garage, which contributes to its frenetic, packed feel. Adding to this quick pace is the staccato delivery of the lyrics: singer Mario Cuomo wails “she get’s it a-a-a-a-all” and “we’re gonna show them a-a-a-a-all.” The Orwell’s classic approach to punk, especially with the chorus of “la la la”, is meant to get a crowd wailing and jumping. In their music video for “Mallrats,” the band cruises around a mall with skateboards and jean jackets. My first thought was that they looked like they had just robbed a Hot Topic. But as they ate pizza, played arcade games for tickets and exchanged the tickets for a pink stuffed bear which they lit in a bonfire ritual in a backyard, I realized that these kids are just that: kids. Kids that make music just as youthful as they are. This kind of youthful care-free energy can be seen in the video for their song “In My Bed,” where the band lies on the stage as they play their instruments. The song switches between slow-tempo twangs and an apocalyptic jamming where the band really lets it rip. Cuomo’s face turns tomato red as his eyes bulge out while he screams, “I tried, I tried, she lied, she lied, It’s too late, too late, good bye, good bye.” The song has all the characteristic angst of adolescence, but with a nostalgia beyond their years, invoking a classic sound. Cuomo writhes on the floor as if he is reliving the emotions of the song as he is singing it and ends the video dropping the mic with eyes wide open, as if the intensity of the song had drained all energy out of him. Twin Peaks, a band hailing from , Illinois and opening for The Orwells, also follows garage punk tradition. Their song “Fast Eddie” is an upbeat, near-jingly rock song where the vocals are sung in a low and breathy voice, while the chorus is a breakout of the group singing in unison. It is infectious and fun, reminiscent of both pop and rock. On songs like “Out of Commission,” the band gets a little more rough and tumble, giving themselves over to screaming vocals and lightning fast guitar solos. Upon looking up the band Twin Peaks and watching their performance on the all-ages show Chic-A-Go-Go, featuring an adorable mouse puppet who interviews the bands, I saw that I had actually gone to grade school with two of the members. What are the odds! Illinois is turning it out, so be sure to see what these punk rockers have to offer Friday, January 25 at Gardner. Paducah, formerly [gluestick], still noisy

By Alex Claxton [email protected]

Clint Williamson ’13, Vadim Fainberg ’13 and Concerts Chair Pooj Padmaraj ’13 got together to form Gluestick in the beginning of their first year on campus. Looking back on it, the three emphasized how natural the process felt and how quickly it happened. “Clint and I lived on the same floor our first year, so the first day … I knew he played guitar and he knew I played the drums. Vadim started hanging out with us pretty soon and he was like, ‘I play guitar too!’ So we just started playing,” Padmaraj said. The bandmates were in such a rush to start making music that the first time they played, they realized they had forgotten drumsticks. “We went outside and got huge sticks off of a tree branch,” Williamson said. These days, they play under the name Paducah and their music has become more sophisticated, especially with the addition of bassist Garin Kessler ’14. When asked to describe the type of music they play, Fainberg qualified his answer by noting how much the band’s sound has changed since their first year: “We started off playing … really drawn out psychedelic rock, to punk where our longest song was a minute and forty five seconds long.” Today, the band describes their sound as “pretty driving, heavy stuff: really, really noisy.” This new post- punk/hardcore identity fits well with the shows that Paducah is playing this semester. The band will open for Iceage/Wet Hair on April 6 and METZ on May 9. Both shows will be at Gardner. In addition to performing in Grinnell, the band hopes to play a few house shows in Iowa City and once again be a part of the Mission Creek Festival, also in Iowa City. Paducah is perhaps most widely known around campus for their raucous, absurd video for the song Kidnappings. Filmed in the basement of the off-campus house known last year as The Zoo, the video features several people in the nude, except for animal masks, taking sledgehammers to various pieces of electronic equipment. When prompted to speak about the video, Williamson, Padmaraj and Fainberg burst into laughter and exchanged knowing looks. “It was fun. It fits Gluestick. I’m not sure if we’d do that again,” Fainberg said. “I think we destroyed a microwave, a chair, and an amp.” Despite the ridiculous nature of the video, the members seemed to agree that it fit their aesthetic at the time. On the subject of Grinnell’s music scene, none of the members were particularly positive about its current state. Williamson said, “Since we were first years here, there’s been a pretty steady decline in the music scene. It seems like fewer people are willing to take chances.” He blames the lack of community in the music scene and deterioration of a do-it-yourself mindset. Padmaraj added that there used to be “a lot more experimental stuff happening.”

To tackle this perceived decline, Williamson suggested that people “form more bands … and not be afraid to experiment and not be afraid if people don’t show up to your shows the first few times.” They stressed the importance of showing up to other people’s shows even if you don’t know them in order to promote a positive community built around making music. Paducah released a 7” record entitled The Shakes in 2011 and the full length A Dollar Makes Me Say Yeah in 2012. If students are at all interested in energetic punk music made by people who respect their music and the creative process but don’t take themselves too seriously, or simply want to support local music, check Paducah out.

Faulconer Gallery shelters broken spaces

By Christopher Squier [email protected]

Robert Polidori has been photographing architecture and interiors for the better part of three decades, turning structures into visible records of lived history and human narrative. As a staff photographer for The New Yorker, the French Canadian has done his fair share of country-hopping, traveling the globe in his search to document the undocumented and record the deteriorating remains of disaster.

The residents of the Fairgrounds, clockwise, Ringdahl-Mayland, Staff, Miller, Bigler and Spooner snuggle up against the winter chills.

This Friday, Grinnell’s Faulconer Gallery will open the first full-career survey of Polidori’s work to be shown in the , exhibiting pieces on Hurricane Katrina, Havana, Beirut, Chernobyl and the opulent French palace of Versailles.

Greeted at the entrance by an eerie cavalcade of destruction and abandonment, the show runs the gamut from natural to nuclear disaster. Uncannily empty photographs echo, one after another, the deserted places. Left in limbo by their abandonment, the sites of Katrina and Chernobyl encapsulate their respective times of disaster and panic. They are shown as if frozen in Polidori’s snapshots.

“Not much has been done to the [Chernobyl] facilities, other than the fact that they have been deteriorating over time,” said Daniel Strong, Faulconer Gallery Curator. “This is the way they were left when people evacuated.” The exhibition places the two events in parallel; opposite one another in a face-off, the ten photographs per wall create an aisle of unexpected intensity. The large-scale photographs exude a holding power, fastening the eyes to their scenes of devastation and deterioration.

On one wall, a Ukrainian classroom from Kindergarten #7 in Pripyat—within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, also known as the zone of alienation—is shown in complete disarray. Desk drawers and school chairs are broken and thrown about the room. Green paint peels off the far wall, crumbling around the edges of a chalkboard bearing a final message and the date 28 April 1986. Diagonally opposite this piece is 6328 North Miro Street of New Orleans. The four-post, wooden bed, still decorated with stylized pineapple ornamentation, is the same crumbling ash- gray as the curtains behind the headboard, while a torn poster clings to the far wall and a pair of still-lacey curtains screen the light streaming in through the window. Apart from the remnants, the room is trashed, mud and detritus making the space unnavigable.

Despite the often-catastrophic subject matter, Polidori’s pieces are beautifully photographed. Vibrant colors and complicated composition present the grittiness and texture of places so recently inhabited.

In another series of photos featuring the Lebanese Civil War and the resulting bombed structures, Beirut’s walls become gaping windows, serving as compositional portals to outside spaces. In one of these photographs, focusing on the Samir Geagea Headquarters, a concentric series of doors lead into the distance, while a vividly oxidizing yellow wall foregrounds the majority of the space in the photograph.

“The people of Beirut actually don’t want these buildings torn down, because for them, it’s part of their history,” Strong said. “There are buildings like this that are occasionally being lived in, but also being left as is, because this is part of the story of Beirut.”

Almost all of Polidori’s pieces have a stillness to them, both as a result of their subject matter and their expert artistic creation. These pieces provide a space for contemplation, portraying the ruins of derelict structures to an audience physically removed from them, either by distance or, more often, by the forces of nature and of politics.

“What [Polidori] is interested in is these places as habitats at one point, now left with all the traces of the people who used to live there,” Strong said.

Since 1983, Polidori has additionally been photographing the backrooms, storage areas, and moments of conservation of the palace of Versailles. As a major tourist attraction, the image of Versailles is presented as the palace was 200 years ago, stuck in a time capsule-like illusion.

“This ancient palace is being presented as timeless and untouched, but actually you can see [otherwise],” Strong said, “This, to me, is a curatorial insider’s view. This is the other side of how we deal with art…you see them devoid of all of the value and glamour that is attached to them in a gallery.”

From this series, the poster child photograph of the exhibition—and the piece that Grinnell College actually owns—shows Callet’s portrait of King Louis XVI sitting sideways on an easel, presumably for conservation purposes. The famous monarch is staring skyward. Another photograph shows Jacques-Louis David’s famous Death of Marat down off the wall, propped up with wooden wedges.

Here again, Polidori’s concept of space and composition is hard to ignore. Echoing Old Master paintings, from Vermeer’s The Music Lesson or The Art of Painting to Goya’s Las Meninas, emphasized by Versailles’ opulent curtains, floor tiling and wall paneling.

“It’s visually stunning, it’s moving, it’s beautiful,” said Tilly Woodward, Faulconer Outreach Curator. “The way that he uses the structure of architecture to think through the structure of memory or how that captures memory of human experience—I think he’s brilliant in how he uses ideas and his medium together.”

Overall, Polidori’s retrospective provides an excellent opportunity for a visual understanding of disaster, exposing often unlooked at locations in exquisite detail.

“What I like about them is the fact that they are portraits of spaces,” Strong said. “He considers them portraits that allude to the people that live in them or use them or reuse them. Going into these spaces…essentially, as he says, he’s posing a question and the answer that you get is a photograph.”

In addition to the show itself, Faulconer will be hosting a series of accompanying programs, including an improvisational and dynamic concert responding to the exhibition, a community day involving cake-eating and extravagant wig-making, and a talk by the 2012 Grinnell Prize-winners Jacob Wood and William McNulty of Team Rubicon.