Gracies Dinnertime Theatre Volume 15, Issue 1 Page 1 Just the Facts, Ma'am: a Antidote for Poisons Hastily Written Editorial Circa 1912 First
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Gracies 12.05.54 AT Dinnertime Theatre Super All-Fact Issue Member of Please Recycle Hell’s Kitchen IPA Gracies Dinnertime Theatre Volume 15, Issue 1 Page 1 Just the facts, ma'am: a Antidote for Poisons hastily written editorial Circa 1912 First. -- Send for a physician. by Sean Hammond, guest editor Second. -- Induce vomiting by tickling acts are funny things: given throat with feather or finger; drinking Fenough time, they change. hot water or strong mustard with Rather than dwell on the tired example of Columbus' water. Swallow sweet oil or whites of contemporaries thinking the world was flat (which they eggs. didn’t), reflect back on your own life. What did you once Acids are antidotes for alkalies, and vice accept as fact that now you look back on with amuse- versa. ment? What do you believe now, and how long do you Acids: Muriatic, oxalic, acetic, sulphuric have to wait until that belief falls to the wayside? (oil of vitriol), nitric (aqua fortis). -- If there is any Truth, in the Platonic sense, then we Use soapsuds, magnesia, lime-water. will never know it. A human or any sentient being has to Prussic Acid. -- Use ammonia in water; remain in flux for its entire life; to stop changing is to die. dash water in face. Imagine, then, a constantly changing being trying to understand an unchanging Truth. Einstein is gyroscoping Carbolic Acid. -- Use flour and water, in his grave, but the image fits. As long as we continue to mucilaginous drinks. learn and experience the world, our perceptions change. Alkalies: Potash, lye, hartshorn, ammo- An unchanging, eternal Truth, as seen through the nia. -- Use vinegar or lemon juice in eyes of a human, will appear to change. We simply won't water. ever see the elephant, despite the lack of a fence to peek Arsenic (rat poison, paris green). -- Use through. milk, raw eggs, sweet oil, lime-water, To make matters worse, some facts are important; flour and water. others aren’t. The relevance of a given fact changes over Bug poison, Lead, Saltpeter, Corrosive time. Schizophrenics, for example, see patterns in the Sublimate, Sugar of Lead, Blue world that most don’t; that doesn’t mean the facts they Vitriol. -- Use whites of eggs, or milk connect aren’t important or that the connections they are in large doses. making are incorrect. Toward that end, GDT is proud to Chloroform, Chloral, Ether. -- Dash cold bring you this tribute to facts. Read into it however you water on head and chest; artificial res- want, but remember: piration. This, too, shall pass. Carbonate of Soda, Copperas, Cobolt. -- Use soap-suds and mucilaginous Fun with Death: Horace Wells drinks. Horace Wells became addicted to chloroform while Iodine, Antimony. -- Use tartar emetic, experimenting with various gases during his anesthesia starch and water, astringent infusions, research. In 1848 he was arrested for spraying two strong tea. women with sulfuric acid. In a letter he wrote from jail, Mercury and Its Salts. -- Use whites of he blamed chloroform for his problems, claiming that eggs, milk, mucilaginous drinks. he'd gotten high before the attack. Four days later he was Opium, Morphine, Laudanum, Pare- found dead in his cell. He'd anaesthetized himself with goric, Soothing Powders or Syrups. -- chloroform and slashed open his thigh with a razor. Use strong coffee; hot bath. Keep awake and moving at any cost. Gracies Dinnertime Theatre Volume 15, Issue 1 Page 2 The Politics of High Tech Damnation (reprinted from GDT, 04.01.51 AT) by A. S. Zaidi where the art schools fit into his vision of RIT's “ IT should stand“ for 'really in touch' with the Rreal world,” said Carl Kohrt, executive vice future, Simone replied that while RIT was primarily president of Kodak, in his keynote address during the known for its engineering and computer science, Nov. 14, 1996 installation of the cornerstone for the there was a danger that graduates could be too “nar- 157,000 square foot Center for Integrated Manufac- rowly focused.” turing Studies (CIMS). The building was financed at What the schools of American crafts, photogra- a cost of $21 million, $11.25 million of which was phy, interior and graphic design did for engineers, provided by the federal government and $9.25 mil- said Simone, was to provide them with “breadth of lion by the state of New York. experience.” “As they walk on campus they see, uh... The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has somebody... there are not too many engineers with, also earned the appreciation of the Central Intelli- uh... long hair, for example,” he said, pointing to Kurt gence Agency, which has designated the institution as Perschke, a grad student in ceramics. a “strategic national resource worthy of explicit There was a moment of stupefied silence. Kelly development and support.” In a 1985 Memorandum Gunter, a writer for GDT at the time, described what of Agreement between RIT and the CIA, the school followed: agreed that its curriculum would be “responsive to “I think I heard a cricket at this point. The silence certain defined specialties of the CIA.” in the room was actually tangible as everyone had to RIT's responsiveness to those specialties may well stop and take a mental step back. I know that I was explain its attempts to cut art programs and the ensu- whispering inside my skull, “Please dear lord, let this ing student unrest there. In late April '96, four weeks be a metaphor for something. Please don't let him before the end of the final academic quarter, RIT pro- mean what I know he's saying.” Of course, he had to fessors leaked word to students that several art pro- keep talking. I, and everyone else in the room who grams, including painting, printmaking, glass, tex- had been repeating that silent plea, could no longer tiles, ceramics, art education, medical illustration and block it out: he was indeed saying what we thought interior design, were about to be discontinued or he was saying. In the wake of that aftershock, the placed on “probationary continuation.” room's ambient animosity level grew ten fold and The cuts would have devastated RIT's prestigious threatened to precipitate out of solution. Simone School of Art and Design (SAD) and the School for eventually realized his folly and made a feeble American Crafts (SAC). A couple of days after learn- attempt to save his floundering position by saying, ing about the cuts, students gathered at RIT's Bevier 'Well I guess there are a lot of people here with short Art Gallery on a Monday to organize. When they hair.' All was lost.” heard that the college's trustees were meeting at that The next day, students rallied in a breezeway, very moment on campus in Building 1, they moved packed tightly together. A new activist group, Save to its lobby to get their attention. Our School (SOS), had been born of panic and anger. Soon President Simone and Provost Stanley McKenzie came down from Random Fact: the trustee meeting to hear the con- In 1964, a freighter carrying a cargo of sheep sank in the cerns of the students. Simone might harbor of Kuwait. Afraid that the dead sheep would contami- have calmed the students, right there nate drinking water, people feverishly tried to devise ways of and then, with some vague words of raising the ship. Luckily someone remembered a Disney reassurance. Instead, one of his gaffes, comic book in which Donald Duck used ping pong balls to caught on videotape by a film student, raise a sunken ship. So the ship was filled with 27 billion plas- propelled the students into action. tic balls and was soon afloat. When a student asked Simone Gracies Dinnertime Theatre Volume 15, Issue 1 Page 3 “The art programs are world-renowned,” said and marketing. engineering student Jesse Lenney to the crowd. “Who In a memo to RIT administrators, written during runs this place? Who are they trying to please by the first week of student protests, Thomas Lightfoot, booting the art students?” an associate professor in CIAS, said: Later, at an RIT community meeting, students “Numerous proposals have been put forth... which expressed their concerns to Margaret Lucas, then have not been seriously considered or even responded dean of the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences to. Is the faculty the driver of the curriculum or the (CIAS). On Thursday, students formed committees administration? Is the faculty even a partner in the for speakers, alumni and parent contacts, rally orga- process? Or are we just employees, to do what were nizers, research, as well as media and community told, as the President has suggested?... I must add that outreach. the faculty, of at least the SAD/SAC component of At a mass rally at Webb auditorium attended by the college, also pointed out its judgment that the hundreds, students viewed the videotape in which review instrument was seriously flawed... It is also Simone made his infamous notable that the reasons for hair remark. “That's what Fun with Death: Attila the Hun discontinuance keep we're here for, to run changing. The President around so the engineering In 453 AD, Attila married a young girl named wanted to identify a pot of students can have some Ildico. Despite his reputation for ferocity on the money that could be saved diversity,” said Kurt Per- battlefield, he tended to eat and drink lightly, through this process. He schke, unappeased by and was sensitive to alcohol. On his wedding was convinced that there Simone's apology to him a night, however, he really cut loose, gorging was lot of waste and couple of days earlier.