SPRING 2025

ESTABLISHED 1871
The Bowdoin Orient is a student-run weekly publication dedicated to providing news and information relevant to the Bowdoin
community. Editorially independent of the College and its administrators, the Orient pursues such content freely and thoroughly,
following professional journalistic standards in writing and reporting. The Orient is committed to serving as an open forum for
thoughtful and diverse discussion and debate on issues of interest to the College community.

bowdoinorient.com [email protected] 6200 College Station Brunswick, ME 04011

Kristen Kinzler Vaughn Vial
Editor in Chief Editor in Chief
Magazine Editor Layout Editor
Talia Traskos-Hart Mary Henthorn
Managing Editor Caitlin Panicker
Miles Berry Head Illustrator
Marc Rosenthal Henry Abbott
Talia Traskos-Hart
Catalina Escobedo Photo Editor
Caitlin Panicker Isa Cruz
Kaya Patel
Contributors
Sr. Associate Editor Michael Gordon
Maile Winterbottom Charlee Lachance
Maya Le
Associate Editor Ava Liversidge
Chayma Charifi Sadie O’Neill
Robeson Amory Alex Washburn
Julia Dickinson
Lily Echeverria
Ella Ferrucci
Copy Editor
Caroline Adams
Chase Lenk
Shihab Moral
Grace Chang
Evan Carr
Campbell Treschuk
The material contained herein is the property of The Bowdoin Orient and appears at the sole discretion
of the editors. The editors reserve the right to edit all material.
Cover by Isa Cruz
ALEX WASHBURN
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Editor’s note Talia Traskos-Hart 1

ORIENT COVERAGE
The highs and lows of off campus housing Marc Rosenthal 2
Tedford confronts the stability of home Lily Echeverria 4

ESSAY
Calling home Ava Liversidge 6

ORIENT COVERAGE
“The world in terms of strict borders” Catalina Escobedo 8

ESSAY
Ode to Bear Mountain Campbell Treschuk 10

ORIENT COVERAGE
Mawita’nej group brings community Maile Winterbottom 12

ESSAY
On shifting ground Isa Cruz 14
Musings on water Kristen Kinzler 17
Chez nous Sadie O’Neill 18
In soundproof bedrooms Talia Traskos-Hart 19
Shaky hands Maya Le 22

ARCHIVES
A look into 19th & 20th-century dorms 26

ESSAY
Road trip Miles Berry 28
Is home concrete? Kaya Patel 33

CROSSWORD
Huff & puff & blow your house down Talia Traskos-Hart 34
 EDITOR’S NOTE

Dearest Reader, Giovanni’s Room, “Perhaps home

is not a place but simply an irre-
Being at Bowdoin means an un- vocable condition.” The contribu-
avoidable reckoning with home. tors whose art and writing fill this
Coming here is venturing away magazine peruse the condition of
from the various places and things home. They find homes in people,
we have learned to call home; it is pastimes and places, both those
building new home in the commu- known quite well and those newly
nity we find; it is questioning what discovered. Contributors to these
our future homes might entail; it pages find home from the Pacific
is living out the Offer of the Col- to the Atlantic, from the waters of
lege’s first line, which promises our Casco Bay to a Los Angeles swept
chance “to be at home in all lands by Santa Ana winds.
and ages.”
Contributors also question whether
In the Offer of the College one the condition of home is truly an
finds the sentiment that home is irrevocable one. Students have
not a discrete place but a series of faced risks of deportation, environ-
familiarities. The study of history mental catastrophe and the loss
or literature or language might pro- of loved ones. If there are condi-
vide one with a home just as warm tions of home which come with
and welcoming as their first-year us wherever we move, tied as they
brick. I selected home as a guiding are to our identities, there are also
theme for this magazine amidst my conditions which we find to be at
completion of an honors project unceasing risk. As Baldwin also
on the application of Marxism to writes in Giovanni’s Room, “you
domestic life. Home, to me, has will go home and then you will
become quite intertwined with find that home is not home any-
notions of work. Yet I have also more.” I hope that readers of this
been thinking extensively, in edit- magazine will find the opportunity
ing these works, about the homes to navigate this tension, letting the
offered to me in playlists shared by doors of their own homes swing
loved ones and favorite books re- open or shut as they do.
read, their memories and lines like
the inviting swing of a well-known Warmly,
house’s front door.
Talia Traskos-Hart
As James Baldwin writes in Magazine Editor
SPRING 2025 1
 The College estimates a $500,000
BOWDOIN ORIENT COVERAGE loss due to the excess of students
living off campus who aren’t pay-
ing Bowdoin for room and board.

2017
The College forms a working
group regarding off-campus
housing following the financial
losses from the unexpected boom
in off-campus housing. The group
announces plans to cap the num-
ber of students living off campus
at 200. The working group recom-
mends capping off-campus hous-
ing to 25 percent of the senior
class and banning juniors from
living off campus.

2018
Based on recommendations from
the working group, the number
of students living off campus is
capped at 185, down from the fig-
ure of 200 from the previous year.

THE HIGHS 2019

Park Row Apartments open,

AND LOWS OF providing a new housing option

for upperclassmen, aimed at
encouraging more students to live

OFF-CAMPUS on campus. These apartments

house an additional 88 students in
single bedrooms. The number of

HOUSING students living off campus is now

capped at 150, down from 185 the
previous year.
A look at renting in town.
2020
BY MARC ROSENTHAL
Photos by Isa Cruz Renovations to Harpswell Apart-
ments are completed, increasing
the number of beds from 48 to
132. The Covid-19 pandemic

I
n 2016, the number of students in the College’s off-campus hous- forces students out of Bowdoin
living in off-campus housing ing culture. housing and shuts down campus
measured 217, making up over housing for the spring semes-
12 percent of the student popula- 2016 ter. In the fall, first years are
tion. This number was one of the welcomed to campus, and only
largest figures in Bowdoin’s history The number of Bowdoin students a select group of non first-year
as a residential college. Seven living in off-campus housing sky- students are allowed back in-per-
years later, in 2023, the College rockets to 217 for the 2016–2017 son. All of these students live in
had only 93 students living off academic year. Bowdoin admin- campus housing, while many of
campus, a 57-percent drop from istrators are alarmed, anticipating the students not allowed to return
its recent peak. What happened? that students living off campus to campus learn remotely from
Below is a look at some important will translate to a less cohesive off-campus housing in the Bruns-
events that brought about a shift community and disrupt neighbors. wick area.
2 SPRING 2025
2021
To accommodate higher-than-ex-
pected enrollment, the College
raises the cap of off-campus
housing to 175 from the previous
cap of 150. Only 136 slots end up
filled in the off-campus housing
lottery with more students choos-
ing to live in Park and Harpswell
Apartments.

2022
A record number (1,814) of
Bowdoin students live in on-cam-
pus housing, in line with the
College’s enrollment projections.
The off-campus housing cap is
restored to 150 and stays there
indefinitely.

2023
Bowdoin posts its lowest off-cam-
pus housing total in decades,
with only 93 students living off
campus. In Brunswick, afford-
able housing is hard to find due
to a housing shortage, and many
properties previously rented for
students are now rented to Bruns-
wick locals unaffiliated with the
College.

2024
The number of students currently
living off campus sits at 110.
Living off campus comes with its
advantages and challenges. Below
are how some students would de-
scribe the highs and lows of their
experiences living off campus.

Student Highs/Lows
from Students Living Michael Gordon ’25 Callie Godfrey ’25
Off Campus Low point: When we got to the Low point: Having to worry a lot
house, the house was disgusting, when people come over (not even
Ella Henry ’25 most of the cabinets had fallen off just at night) about disturbing
their hinges completely, the stove neighbors.
Low point: The melting snow on was broken and everything was High point: I love my room so
the roof caused dirty brown water covered in grime. Lots of cleaning much, and the whole house just
to leak all over a bunch of my and fixing to do! feels super homey. It’s also a really
roommate’s things, ruining some High point: Being able to host cool connection to meet past
of her notebooks. events for the community—and alums who lived in the house and
High point: Hosting big dinner cultivate our own space—totally feels like another special commu-
parties for all my friends after independent from the College. nity.
cooking all day! Also, sitting on the back porch.
SPRING 2025 3
 BOWDOIN ORIENT COVERAGE

TEDFORD CONFRONTS
THE STABILITY OF HOME
Tedford Housing works to provide home to those experiencing homelessness.
BY LILY ECHEVERRIA

W
hat does home mean to varies every day depending on efforts weren’t necessarily better
those who have found what the nonprofit needs. in those cities, but because of the
themselves without it? concentration of people, it may be
“It can look like writing a grant easier to get people the resources
Tedford Housing seeks to find an proposal for funding for case they need more seamlessly.
answer in empowering people management for our shelters. It
to “move from homelessness to can look like collecting an im- Her definitions of home have
home.” pact story from a guest who is changed since working this job,
exiting the shelter,” Webster said. she says, along with many of her
The nonprofit organization is “Or putting together a newsletter coworkers.
based in Brunswick and has mul- or an annual report to donors and
tiple core programs that cater to various stakeholders.” “All of us who work here would
this mission. Tedford was found- say that our definitions of home
ed in 1987 and has since expand- When asked why this work is im- have probably changed given
ed to incorporate many more portant, Webster noted how many the population of people that we
programs than it began with. families are verging on homeless- work with,” she said. “My defi-
ness. nition of home is very different
In the Town of Brunswick, Ted- from our guests and some of the ALEX WA
ford has two emergency shelter lo- “We see it every day,” she said. clients that we serve.”
cations as well as a family shelter. “So many households are just
Throughout Maine, the organi- one expense away from a really Working with people who have
zation owns 37 units of supported scary crisis and being completely experienced homelessness showed
housing to help those who have disrupted.… Whether it’s un- Webster how understandings of
previously experienced homeless- expected medical expenses, an home can be shaped by privilege.
ness. It also runs a Homelessness inability to have access to health
Prevention and Outreach program care, we see a wide variety of sit- “To me, I’ve always thought of
through which volunteers step in uations and that number is only home as a support system, a safe
before situations escalate to home- climbing, the number of house- space, but more abstractly, I’ve
lessness. holds that are just struggling to always thought of it as a constant,
make ends meet.” something I’ve always had,” Web-
Today, Tedford has become more ster said. “And that’s not the reali-
than a shelter, also serving as a She emphasized the difficulty of ty for a lot of folks that we serve.”
resource center for people expe- fighting homelessness in Maine
riencing homelessness and at-risk given the rural environment. Webster noted that when she
individuals. speaks with the guests Tedford
“It’s harder to mobilize,” Webster serves, she always asks what home
From July 1, 2023 to June 30, said. “Often, folks who are ex- means to them.
2024 Tedford served 121 people periencing homelessness, those
in emergency shelters, provided barriers are in tandem with lack “I ask what home means to them,
5,840 meals and gave heating of transportation. So even access- how that idea or concept of
assistance to 284 people. It helped ing a preventative space like a home has transformed given their
301 people through the Home- warming center can be tricky in experience,” she said. “The most
lessness Prevention and Outreach rural areas like Maine.” common answers range from hav-
program. ing privacy to it just being a place
Webster grew up in upstate New they get to stay with their kids or
Katrina Webster is the devel- York and had family in New York a pet, … could be something as
opment and communications City and Boston. She noted that simple as a place that is warm
associate with Tedford. Her work the homelessness prevention with food.”
4 SPRING 2025
ASHBURN CHARLEE LACHANCE

CHARLEE LACHANCE

SPRING 2025 5
ESSAY this, a city of signs—of star-studded
backlots and storied concert venues

CALLING HOME and, now, of vlog-worthy grocery

stores—finds its proverb. Los Ange-
les sends a siren call to those after
An Angeleno comes East. notoriety; it lets anything gilded be
gold.
BY AVA LIVERSIDGE
Fame is a fickle thing. The criteri-
on for achieving celebrity is purely
superficial—be recognizable.
The status operates at the level of
signifier and rarely cuts deeper into
what it signifies. Take a face and
make it known. And so we find
ourselves in a world of images, of
stages and of people stuck in the
shallow end. From this, the puta-
tive LA cultural rot gets its stench.

What, then, is this cult of au-

thenticity from which our critics
preach?

Y
ou get the sense that they
think we had it coming; that
people knew we were fly-
ing too close to the sun, the burn
sitting just beyond the horizon;
that someplace between the sea
moss and the surfing and the cyber
trucks, we must have signed off
on a biannual hellfire. By Octavia
Butler, Nathanael West and Joan
ALEX WASHBURN
Didion, apocalypse is scrawled into
our snaking canyons and sprawling
sands.

L
os Angeles is hard to defend. I have learned the city not just by
I get that. When you tell landmarks but by feel—the way a Yeats’ “The Second Coming,”
someone you’re from LA, sharp switchback around Las Vir- after which Didion’s seminal essay
particularly some New Englander, genes whips me into ocean spray or “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”
you’re not supposed to follow up how the perpetually unpaved 110 was named, tells our fortune:
with your plans to move right back on-ramp off Orange Grove sends a “Turning and turning in the widen-
after school, and you’re certainly ripple vibrating through any car’s ing gyre / The falcon cannot hear
not meant to confess your enthusi- floor board. Time spent in the car, the falconer / Things fall apart;
astic love for the city. Sure, you can inching forward at languorous the centre cannot hold.” Such
extol the joys of constant sunlight, speeds, instills a heightened spatial is the fate of a people who have
and even laugh at its stark contrast awareness in the LA driver. chosen signifiers over the signified
to Maine winters, but you must and whose falcon cannot hear the
never forget to lament the traffic. Outcome two proves trickier. falconer. Ours is a brittle construc-
If you do forget, you risk two likely Any kind of unabashed love for tion. Here, I don’t speak for Ange-
outcomes: One, your interlocutor Los Angeles provokes suspicions lenos but for Americans writ large.
mentions the traffic for you, and, of complacency towards artifice
two, you get pinned with an un- in its bearer. It is those who LA Meaning is made by images, not in
conditional love for Los Angeles. attracts—the homegrown’s parents spite of them.
and their fellow transplants—
When confronted with outcome who give LA its name. Southern Being the political creatures we
one, I tend to double down. I love California’s literary shaman Joan are, some complex web of social
to drive. The commute is part of Didion once penned, “We tell our- signaling and implied meaning be-
the Southern Californian lifestyle. selves stories in order to live.” In comes necessary to the formation
6 SPRING 2025
of people groups, shared identities You can feign access to the platon- asked where I call home, I re-
and communities. That is, mean- ic form it symbolizes or embrace sponded with a vague Los Angeles.
ing-making operates at a largely the image at its face. Remember, Now, my hometown of Altadena
superficial level. Person X observes what is honest is what is true. enjoys the notoriety of her fellow
some behavior, feature or attribute Los Angeles neighborhoods. Sweet
of Person Y. Person X identifies As political correctness tightens fame, at long last. I’ve lived 21
their own association with that be- its grip on language beyond the years in that neighborhood; I know
havior, feature or attribute. Person reaches of corporate policy hand- it in my bones. This past January,
X attributes that signification to books, the question “where are you as I drove the well-trod five-minute-
Person Y. Meaning is conferred. from?” has gone out of fashion. route to check on my dearest high
The preferred approach boasts an school friend’s home, I got lost. I
I first braved New England to existential dimension: “Where do searched for the visual cues, the
interview at Bowdoin. Responding you call home?” Gone are the days landmark palms and the guiding
to my mom’s nudges towards any where facts can be relayed inde- mailboxes; I found an ashen hells-
useful reflection, I wondered why pendent of their relayer. The act of cape. Altadena has thus adopted
everything was America themed. calling is a weighty endeavor. To a new series of symbols. By simu-
We seemed to have passed millions call something a name is to attri- lation and signification, Altadena,
of roadside pie stands, trillions bute significance to it that it didn’t like the scores of celebrities that
of white colonial homes and an otherwise have. To this place, I’ve have come before, has been incar-
infinity of flags. The closest com- attributed the status of home. In nated as an image in the American
parison I had was to my fifth grade’s the act of calling, I assume an imagination—a home distilled into
reenactment of the constitutional agential status. Thus, “home” is an aesthetic constellation. Altade-
convention. But the fact that Betsy not just where I’m from or hap- na is: not the Palisades, a mountain
Ross wasn’t inside one of those co- pened to be born. I’ve been given town amidst city sprawl, a taste of
lonial homes perfecting her lattice a choice, and it’s one that I often apocalypse, Los Angeles’s sacrifi-
on an apple pie never bothered me. feel I have to grit my teeth to stand cial lamb. My formerly unknown
In fact, I’ve never heard of anyone behind. home is now an unknown legend.
getting ruddy-faced over this dis- It has been flattened to fit a page,
crepancy. New England is steeped Up until a few weeks ago, when and I am at peace with that.
in our nation’s history. Ties to this
heritage are expressed through sym-
bols, through images. This example
is one amongst many.

I wonder what version of this

would better please the authentici-
ty stalwarts. Do they know a world
inaccessible to the likes of me
where this symbolic smoke screen
dissipates and the light floods
in? Surely they would agree that
that which is honest is true. If the
charge against Los Angeles is its
brazen embrace of the artificial—
that is, the image—then its deni-
zens are radically veridical. They
see that pointing to the real and
calling it illusory (mere symbolism,
superficial, gilded) is willful ego.
The truly foolhardy will think of
themselves as above the symbolic:
They will laugh at the fashion-for-
ward and the organic-conscious
eaters; they will ask where the real
people have gone, the ones with
grit; and they will be lost in a sorry
tangle of contradiction and incon-
sistency as they tacitly depend on
images in crafting their own iden- CHARLEE LACHANCE
tities. It’s the symbol that counts.
SPRING 2025 7
 BOWDOIN ORIENT COVERAGE

THE WORLD IN TERMS OF

STRICT BORDERS
International students reflect on the second Trump administration.
BY CATALINA ESCOBEDO
Photo from Special Collections and Archives

8 SPRING 2025
P
resident Donald Trump’s urging them to avoid any non-es- what the Trump administration
administration has created a sential travel outside of the U.S. will do next makes it hard to
volatile political landscape, over spring break. A similar email determine if the traveling warning
particularly in its targeting of diver- was sent to international students from the College is an excessive
sity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the fall semester, encouraging abundance of caution, according
and construction of increasingly students to arrive on campus prior to Saavedra Cisneros.
vague and punitive immigration to Trump’s inauguration on Janu-
policy enforcement that continues ary 20. “There is no reason why you
to impact institutions of higher ed- should be denied entry if you have
ucation across the country. In the “If you are planning non-essential the proper paperwork. There’s this
first 100 days of the Trump admin- travel outside of the U.S., please other thing called administrative
istration, a constant influx of exec- consider that immigration policy discretion,” Saavedra Cisneros said.
utive orders have left international changes can be announced with “Every member of Customs and
students in states of uncertainty little or no warning. While we do Border Protection has administra-
and caution in how they move for- not know—as of this writing—of tive discretion because, as a mem-
ward during their time at Bowdoin changes that would impact Bowdo- ber of the federal executive, you
and beyond, specifically in regards in’s F-1 international students, we have administrative discretion.”
to traveling outside of the U.S., encourage you to exercise cau-
changing visa applications and tion,” Hussey wrote in the email. International student Moana
navigating the ability to politically Gregori ’26 shared concerns over
engage as an international student. Obtaining a F-1 visa and I-20, the traveling outside of the U.S., but
documents needed to be in the the new administration has also left
Concerns surrounding traveling U.S. legally as an international her to grapple with what political
outside of the U.S. have become student, can be an intensive un- engagement on campus looks like
increasingly prevalent during the dertaking regardless of who sits in for international students.
second Trump administration, the Oval Office, but Chris Zhang
with an influx of anti-immigration ’25 worries that this process could “For example, we just had that
executive orders and increased become even more difficult under encampment on campus, [so]
nativist sentiment. According to the Trump administration. engaging in things that are politi-
Assistant Professor of Government cal is something that I think more
Ángel Saavedra Cisneros, during “[There is] sort of this foreboding about,” Gregori said. “I know a
the first Trump administration that it’s going to be a rough four lot of international students think
there was a 50 percent increase in years in the geopolitical sense, es- more about that too,… because
the time it took to process asylum pecially that I’m from China, that you don’t really know how political
applications. The administration the conflict between the U.S. and situations will change.”
determines whether to backlog China is not going to get any better
applications from specific coun- in the next four years and the visa Ultimately, the new Trump ad-
tries. Saavedra Cisneros explained application or the visa process will ministration has caused Gregori
that the backlog of paperwork for get harder and harder no matter to reexamine the role of national
visa or asylum applications is often what,” Zhang said. “It just doesn’t borders, and the political systems
based on a mix of “racism and look like there’s going to be a favor- in place that reinforce them.
political, economic pressures.” able, optimistic outlook.”
“[I was thinking about] the no-
“The first Trump administration Some students feel that the Col- tion of being at home in differ-
… one thing they were doing was, lege’s suggestion that they avoid ent places at the same time. Yes,
I’m gonna try to find the right unnecessary traveling isn’t sustain- Austria will always [be] home, but
words for this, being very hostile to able in practice. both Bowdoin and the community
immigrants, especially immigrants members have been like home,
that were not European. That was “[The College says] new immigra- [and] so have a lot of other places
the focus. Now it’s just widespread tion policy can be announced in throughout the world,” Gregori
hostility,” Saavedra Cisneros said. an instant, but then, I think, I’m said. “I have never thought about
“There’s no way of knowing if here legally. I have legal documen- the world in terms of strict borders
[the administration] is doing it on tation and visas. Why should I be that I belong or don’t belong to….
purpose or if it’s just the stack of concerned about that?… It doesn’t I think that the administration was
applications that those four years make sense. I’ll be here for four just a reminder that, yes, there
landed on.” years, and that doesn’t mean I’m shouldn’t be any borders that actu-
trapped in the U.S. for four years,” ally separate you from places you
Associate Class Dean Danielle I-Pon Kasean ’26 said. call home, but there’s still systems
Hussey sent an email to F-1 in- in place right now that really en-
ternational students on March 1 Ultimately, the uncertainty on force these borders.”
SPRING 2025 9
ESSAY This awed view of New Mexico
and Colorado’s western landscape

AN ODE TO BEAR held when I returned to the East

Coast. In fact, the views had been
so incredible that I came to view

MOUNTAIN the landscapes of Connecticut as

lackluster in comparison. Con-
necticut’s mountains? Anthills
Exploring the aesthetic idealism of the West. in comparison to the peaks I had
seen. The hilly and rolling Eastern
BY CAMPBELL TRESCHUK Seaboard? Shortsighted and unin-
spiring compared to the vast plains

T
he Appalachian Trail, been out west in a while then, so that had transfixed me in New
spanning the eastern Unit- I was amazed by the entire experi- Mexico.
ed States from northern ence—particularly the landscapes,
Georgia to Maine’s own Katahdin, which were anything but pictur- I was obsessed with western natural
extends over 2,917 miles. Just esque. Sure, they were picturesque aesthetics, to the detriment of the
about 52.2 of these miles lie within in the strictest sense of the word, environment around me at home.
Connecticut, winding through Li- but not quaint or homely or any of “I need to get out West again,” I
tchfield County, the state’s north- the words I had come to associate would say to my friends, reminisc-
west corner. Connecticut’s section with the hills of Connecticut. The ing back on those sights, particu-
of the trail, like many other miles drive south from Denver along a larly the feeling of everything just
throughout the Northeast, is hilly two-lane highway with not another being so open and free. Unknow-
and rocky, graced by the occasion- living thing in sight, the searing ingly, I was subscribing to a larger
al outlook. One of these points is orange sunrises emerging out of tradition, that of Jack Kerouac
near the Massachusetts border, the gray fog, the peaks balding yet and his predecessors, of yearning
where the trail crosses Bear Moun- still splashed with green, the faces for those wide open spaces out
tain, the highest peak in Connecti- of sheer rock cutting against a deep West. They had captivated people
cut, sitting at around 2,316 feet. blue sky, the grasslands rolling off before me, and certainly still will
In classic New England fashion, it into the distance in waves of tan after me. But for all I cared, I was
looks out on a landscape of rolling and gold—these sights weren’t pic- the only one who recognized that
tree-covered hills—brown and turesque. They were awe-inspiring. the landscapes of the East were
desolate in the winter, green in the
spring and summer and exploding
with color in the fall.

I’ve hiked Connecticut’s Appala-

chian Trail, and I’ve looked out
from Bear Mountain and other
similar places across the state,
seeing rolling hills, winding rivers,
white saltbox houses and occasion-
al patchworks of farmland. These
sights are quaint and picturesque,
like something off a postcard in a
wire cage spinning at some back-
road visitor center and waiting
to feel a tourist’s touch. These
landscapes, like the rest of New
England, are also beautiful. But
I didn’t always see the beauty in
these views.

During one summer of high

school, I participated in an eight-
day backpacking trek among the
slopes of the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains in northeastern New
Mexico—one of the most memora- CAMPBELL TRESCHUK
ble experiences of my life. I hadn’t
10 SPRING 2025
 point, I realized the error of my
previous ways. I eventually real-
ized that, while there is incredible
beauty out West, simply going
there wouldn’t make my life per-
fect. I had to start at home, so to
speak, in order to fix my problems.
There’s also something to be said
for the beauty of the familiar. I’ve
spent over half of my life in New
England, and its landscapes are
filled with memories for me—Bear
Mountain, Hamden’s Sleeping
Giant, trails and preserves where
I have hiked, sweated and shared
experiences with my closest friends
and family. This personal connec-
tion is important, along with the
fact that staying on the East Coast
for college made it easier for me
to stay connected to many of these
people who are important. It’s not
all about pure natural beauty.

But most importantly, to get over

my romanticization of western
aesthetics, I also had to realize the
beauty on this side of the country.
Connecticut, and Maine for that
matter, may not have the soaring
peaks of the Sangre de Cristos or
the golden expanses of the New
CAMPBELL TRESCHUK
Mexico prairies. Their trees may
bare and turn the slopes brown in
claustrophobic and drab and that I would find what I was searching the winter, and their hills may close
needed to escape. for among the mountains and off the open expanse that transfixed
valleys—meaning, connection and me in the West. But I’d be lying if
When it came time to apply to fulfillment. I said the East Coast isn’t beauti-
college, I partially acted on this ful in its own way—the feeling of
idealism, applying, among other I can’t point to a specific time age in the lichen-coated rocks, the
schools closer to home, to a school when I was disabused of these rolling hills, the changing colors of
in Colorado. It may have been ideas. I didn’t end up going to the leaves. I still cherish the beauty
nearly two thousand miles away, college in Colorado, replacing west of the West, and I still tell people
but I believed it could be right for with north and making the much I would like to head in that direc-
me—in large part just because the shorter journey up the East Coast tion again. If you know me, you’ve
mountains were pretty. Looking to Brunswick. However, when I probably heard it. But alongside
back on it now, it seems so silly. ended up choosing Bowdoin, I the wilds of New Mexico in my
But the memories of those peaks remember one of my last reserva- heart, I hold the winding roads of
and rolling plains made me be- tions was how similar it was to my rural Connecticut, the wilderness
lieve. part of New England, how I was of northern Maine, the snow-lad-
worried the nature wouldn’t be en ground visible from my dorm
My aesthetic idealism of the West pretty enough—like the last gasp of window, even the views from I-95
also seeped into other areas of my aesthetic idealism coming back crisscrossing New England—my
my life. Any problem I had, any to try to take the steering wheel. home—from one end to another,
loneliness or negative feeling, I be- More than any particular moment for there is beauty in nature every-
lieved would be solved by heading that I could write about changing where if you have the eyes to see it.
west—a panacea for all my ills, just my viewpoint, I think it was much And the next time I return home
found by heading across the coun- more of a gradual process. and scale the peak of Bear Moun-
try in the direction of the setting tain, I know that deep down in my
sun. I was Sal Paradise, except I But for whatever reason, at some heart, I’ll appreciate the view.
SPRING 2025 11
 BOWDOIN ORIENT COVERAGE

MAWITA’NEJ GROUP
BRINGS COMMUNITY
A Brunswick-based community organization grapples with finding space to grow.
BY MAILE WINTERBOTTOM

I
n 1998, former Brunswick Finding a voice keeps it safer for Indigenous folks
resident Heather Augustine to not have that saviorism turned

S
was walking down the streets horthand to members as toward them.”
of San Francisco when someone “Mawita’nej” or “the Group,”
asked her a question. The Mawita’nej First Nation Since its inaugural meeting at the
Youth Group was founded in Durham Friends Meeting House
“‘Hey, are you an Indian?’” Au- 2018 as a local space where Na- in 2018, where members ate
gustine recalled the man asking. tive perspectives could flourish. spaghetti and braided sweetgrass,
“He said, ‘If you are, you should The Group welcomes Wabanaki Mawita’nej has gathered once a
go to the Intertribal Friendship of all ages, currently claiming a month in churches, members’
House in Oakland. They’ll membership of 21 families and five houses, outdoor spaces and, most
serve you a big meal and they Wabanaki elders. recently, Bowdoin’s Schwartz
do dancing and drumming, and Outdoor Leadership Center. As
there’s a big community out Mawita’nej was born partly out of Augustine works to achieve a
there.” Augustine’s frustration with work- permanent space for the Group,
ing in predominantly white spaces members reflected on the signifi-
Augustine, a member of the to achieve progress. cance of Mawita’nej for facing the
Mi’kmaq tribe, had just moved legacy of settler colonialism in the
from Maine to the West Coast “I feel this protectiveness, be- region.
and had never experienced the cause I don’t want my people to
type of community building the be tokenized in these spaces. I’ve Rebuilding identity
man was describing. She was ex- been tokenized for years. I was

W
cited by the chance to connect brought along and told, ‘Oh, yeah, hile settler colonialist in-
with other Indigenous people in you have a seat at the table. You stitutions such as residen-
a new city, having left her New have a voice.’ When none of that tial schools have histori-
Brunswick reservation years was true. And so they would invite cally aimed to sanitize Indigenous
earlier to pursue an education me in and I would be given that communities from their cultural
in the U.S. seat, but I really had no voice, no heritage, Mawita’nej offers a space
power, and I was just extracted to rebuild and reclaim Native
“I was like, this is absolutely from it,” Augustine said. identity. Group member Ruth
amazing,” Augustine said. “I Daniels, whose forced adoption
hadn’t really been a part of my Lee Cataldo, a Brunswick resident into a white family was informed
community in a really long time and non-Native volunteer for Maw- by colonialist systems, reflected on
in that way.” ita’nej, echoed Heather’s sentiment the loss of her Mi’kmaq identity,
while describing the challenges which predated her attendance at
More than 25 years later, Augus- Indigenous community members Mawita’nej.
tine continues to carry the im- can face in claiming a voice.
portance of community building “I was so assimilated that when I
for Native people—this time in “In the white community that we looked in a mirror, I saw a white
Brunswick. As the founder and live in, folks decide they want to girl with a tan. I didn’t see a Na-
leader of the Mawita’nej First help, but then they stop listen- tive girl,” Daniels said.
Nation Youth Group, she has ing, and they forget who should
spearheaded an effort to foster be holding the power and who After spending the majority of her
cultural connection, self-de- needs to benefit from what’s going life pushing aside her heritage,
termination and togetherness on,” Cataldo said. “And so we’ve Daniels, 72, began her attempt to
among Wabanaki people in been really reluctant to share rediscover her Indigenous roots
midcoast Maine. what Mawita’nej is with the wider in 2008.This process, however,
community, just because it kind of proved challenging for her off-res-
12 SPRING 2025
ervation family, Daniels remarked. community in the Brunswick area makeshift community spaces such
is so far away from vital resourc- as Bowdoin’s Schwartz Outdoor
“I couldn’t believe that I’d missed es, whether that’s reservations in Leadership Center.
so much, and that I’d denied my Maine or reserve land in Canada.
family their heritage and culture So if they need Wabanaki public Group members gathered in the
by not being aware of all this,” health services or crisis services or Schwartz in late March to craft
Daniels said. mental health services, all of those drums, eat traditional foods and
services are hours away from us. give children the chance to play
For members of Mawita’nej, And so we really would like to be in the Center’s outdoor space.
everything from eating customary able to have a space for those ser- Bowdoin Outing Club Director
foods to making Indigenous art vices, whether it’s even just once a Michael Woodruff reflected on
to speaking with Wabanaki elders month, or it’s on a regular basis.” his collaboration with Augustine
helps with exploring their cul- which resulted in the meeting.
tures. Most recently, the Group An owned space would permit
gathered to make medallions out members to gather more frequent- “[Augustine] obviously has really
of porcupine quills, birch bark ly, Augustine explained, allowing invested in her community and
and other natural resources. Mawita’nej to pursue its cultural is trying to do work to strengthen
and community-based work at a it, and I think that’s really awe-
“I’m just a drop in this big ocean higher level. some…. For us to allow them to
made of culture and heritage, and use space is very simple—it’s not
I just want to just drink all of it “With having that space together, hard. It’s not like we’re doing this
up as much as I can. And [Maw- I think there would just be more amazing thing. It’s just a simple
ita’nej] is helping me do that,” opportunities to have a lot of the thing that, if it can help her, is
Daniels said. kids learn emergent outdoor skills, great,” Woodruff said.
to be on the land, to learn canoe-
Angie Durgin, who prepares ing, to reclaim our language,” With another meeting at the
traditional foods like moose meat Augustine said. Schwartz potentially in the works,
for the group at each meeting, Mawita’nej’s continued presence
summed up the importance of With limited sponsors and com- on campus would allow it to pur-
sharing cultural knowledge in munity resources, the path to sue its community-building work
Indigenous communities. achieving an owned space has not until it finds a permanent space.
come without roadblocks. Augus- Woodruff discussed the signifi-
“[Traditional food] is a part of our tine discussed the challenging cance of the College’s support of
life and part of our culture, and landscape that Mawita’nej has Mawita’nej.
without it our culture will die. We faced in realizing its vision.
have to carry it on,” Durgin said. “It’s really serving the common
“There’s a lot of Natives in Maine, “I wish I could say that when we good … in a targeted way towards
sure, but we’re so scattered, and have reached out to town leader- an Indigenous population that
this group brings us together so ship, asking them to support us in really is wildly under-resourced,”
we can talk about things that are finding a space, I really wish that Woodruff said. “We have a land
important to us.” they had made it a priority over acknowledgement over on that
other projects around Wabanaki little pillar around the Arctic Mu-
Seeking space people. But it seems like the town seum, and I think that unless we
of Brunswick has really wanted to actually try to do things beyond

W
ith a sprawling member- focus on Wabanaki people in the that, it’s a performative gesture.”
ship and a developing past … and doing this work around
group of staff members, history,” Augustine said. “But there Augustine summarized the spir-
Mawita’nej is working to achieve are Wabanaki people here right it of Mawita’nej’s place in the
a building of its own to further now asking for help, and it’s so far Brunswick community.
the Group’s various missions. fallen upon deaf ears.”
Cataldo, currently working under “The same reason why we meet
Augustine to pursue this project, The common good in Brunswick now is the same
explained the significance that reason we met in Brunswick 300

M
an owned space would bring the awita’nej staff members years ago, and 500 years ago and
Group. are currently working 1,000 years ago,” Augustine said.
with the Group’s fiscal “All these rivers and these water-
“There are a lot of services that we sponsor, the Brunswick-Topsham ways all merged together right
could be offering but [we cannot], Land Trust, to explore achieving here in Brunswick. It’s got to be
because we don’t have a space,” an owned space. In the meantime, Brunswick—we’re not meeting
Cataldo said. “The Indigenous the Group continues to meet in anywhere else.”
SPRING 2025 13
 ESSAY

ON SHIFTING GROUND
Precarity and homemaking in climate change.
BY ISA CRUZ

“My hands were slick with the At the water’s edge or enveloped ~ Assistant Professor of English
water I was born next to, and there in its swirling, mysterious body, I Samia Rahimtoola (b. East Los
was a whole day that I felt lived in, am overtaken by a simultaneity of Angeles, Calif.), scholar, writer
like a room.” trepidation and awe that conspires and teacher of ecopoetics.
- Ada Limón, “Sometimes I Think to wash away my mundane anxi- ~ Lillian Frank ’25 (b. Ellsworth,
My Body Leaves a Shape in the eties. I am suffused with a healthy Maine), Earth and Oceanograph-
Air” fear of nature, its power to con- ic Science major, badass white-
sume and swallow whole. water kayaker, my good friend,

S
urrounded by water, I am a steady rock in the fast-moving
overcome with profound Coastal environments like river of our lives and a Mainer if
peace. The expanse, as Maine’s are spaces of constant I’ve ever known one.
compelling as an unpolluted flux, lessons in relentless imper-
night sky, unfolds: the horizon manence and the catharsis of The obvious point of departure, or
not a boundary but the promise rebirth. What does it mean to arrival, was the question “Where’s
of more water, still. Growing find home within them? How are home for you?” I received traces
up landlocked, I didn’t realize place and home-making compli- of nonlinear migrations stitched
how the mere knowledge that cated by climate change? together in some coherent story
I was approximately four miles that justifies or at least explains
from the ocean at all times, a To dig into these questions, I our present being in this place.
distance I could bridge in the spoke with friends and colleagues, Yes, this place, to invoke deixis:
other home that is the body and sought out poetry and, naturally, here and there, and their contex-
its freewheeling movement on a went to the ocean, culminating tual contingencies. I realized my
bicycle, could be so existentially in this essay. The following voices southerness in Maine (and un-
grounding. My mother muses are intertwined throughout. deniable Brownness: color being
that perhaps it was the first two relational, as I’ve learned in my
years of my life lived by the ~ Samuel S. Butcher Professor in art classes). How do we account
shores of Lake Michigan which the Natural Sciences Barry Lo- for our beings-here, together?
brought me this sensation, for I gan (b. Newton, Mass.) who has
was myself an amorphous body of worked extensively on Monhegan Sheltered in her off-campus
water and unformed bone. Island. home, sharing pastelitos and
14 SPRING 2025
warm rooibos, Lilli Frank said: “I regard, caught between soothing Poignantly, Frank writes: “I am
come from the waters of Maine. geologic-time narratives of human watching coastal homes of my
You know those babies that can adaptability and the easily terri- youth float away with the tide.”
swim before they can walk? That fying prospect of imminent suf- This grief-laced consciousness of
was me.” fering and a landscape rendered environmental precarity perme-
unrecognizable. ated our conversation together.
From my aunt’s apartment in She spoke of increasingly mild
Queens, N.Y., Zooming with “I’m the parent of four teenagers, winters and smaller snowfalls.
Professor Logan, from his office and so I think a lot about how to She expressed her desire to take
on campus: “I consider Brunswick prepare them … for the world her future children skiing, hiking
my home. I’ve lived here now lon- they will face. And I do worry and kayaking—to raise them with
ger than I’ve lived anywhere else about the level of human suffering meaningful connections to the en-
and that’s like 26 years in different that might be engendered by cli- vironment—and saw that possible
places in the area.” mate change.… But I do not wor- future imperiled.
ry about the end of humankind or
Having a meal in Thorne among some sort of global-scale apoca- Hearing these narratives of
the raucous lunch rush, Profes- lypse,” he clarified. “Humankind watching one’s intimately known
sor Rahimtoola: “Of course, it’s is adaptive, and we will shift as climate be altered, I felt deep
complicated. I grew up in East the boundaries of continents shift resonances with “solastalgia,” a
Los Angeles, which is a really big with the rising ocean.” term Professor Rahimtoola in-
immigrant community.… I had troduced to me. Coined by Aus-
this really interesting—now, I re- “We’ve already survived an apoc- tralian environmental scientist
alize, quite special—experience of alypse.” - Indigenous novelist Re- Glenn Albrecht, solastalgia seeks
home, that a place could be home becca Roanhorse in an interview to describe “the distress caused by
without it belonging to you.… with the New York Times. environmental change.”
What is home? Even if you’re

R
from the same city, the same state apid environmental destruc- “Solastalgia is not about looking
as someone else, home is never tion is not new, especially back to some golden past, nor is
gonna be quite alike. Home is a for the marginalized. Mass it about seeking another place as
process of making this place. And extinction mimics genocide, ‘home.’ It is the ‘lived experience’
so their home is going to be vastly forced relocation and extraction of the loss of the present as manifest
different from their neighbors and from the land, all characteristic in a feeling of dislocation.” - Glenn
the people across the street, right? of colonial violence past and Albrecht, “‘Solastalgia’: A New
They’re making this place in present. Concept in Health and Identity”
conversation with the other places

I
and people and streets and vege- “There’s many of us who are really think it’s really troubling
tables that have been part of their worried over what is coming—we that more of us don’t feel
lives before.” will not have the forms of security it,” Rahimtoola reflected of
we have long had,” Logan said. solastalgia. “And I think that one
“To see a ficus as the memory of “But hang on a sec, not everybody of the reasons so many people
an ocean.” has experienced those forms of don’t register this as a deeply
- Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, “Losing security, even in the present. And upsetting and tragic experience,
Miami” so this is a bigger shift for some is actually because … there is a
than it is for others.” certain class of people who have

I
t is news to no one that our power, who are insulated, who
present reality is marked by “The places I go are never there.” financially have the capacity to
unprecedented change. But - Sam Phillips, “Taking Pictures” move. And by the nature of the
as Logan reminds us, we have trajectory of their lives, they are
lived through catastrophe and “There is no there there.” expected to.”
quasi-apocalyptic uncertainty - Tommy Orange, “There There”
before. He recalls growing up in We don’t consider what we lose

I
the tension of the Cold War: “I n the artist statement for in our constant voluntary uproot-
laid my head down as a kid, and Frank’s photography installa- ings: the intimacy of knowing and
I wondered if I’m going to have tion, “Hope in Liminal Space” being known by the human and
an adult life and so on. And I feel (Fall 2024), an exploration of “the nonhuman presences that co-cre-
like climate change is the existen- liminal space between present ate place. In Nashville, I find
tial worry that prevails now.” time and climate-altered future” myself trellised by summer tomato
and how we inhabit it, she medi- harvests from my backyard, Sat-
Raising children has made Lo- tates on the environmental de- urday morning farmer’s markets,
gan especially reflective in this struction she has witnessed. spring’s unrelenting storms. (Is it
SPRING 2025 15
 A
daptation, as science teaches
us and marginalized peoples
have long known, is how we
survive. In her research, Rahim-
toola asks, “How do people on the
margins of property make place?”

“What I found in the poets I

read and in the communities I’m
interested in is that they don’t
always do it by trying to assimilate
to those models of property. They
make place in different, more
ephemeral ways, more commu-
nity-oriented ways that have to
do with relationships to each
other and to the land, rather than
a stable title deed that you can
produce and say, ‘This is mine,’”
Rahimtoola answered.

Remarking on the untenability of

our current lifeways, Logan urged,
“We are not going to be able to
retain this way of life in a future
world. But, is the way that human-
kind lives right now so special that
we should be doing everything
we can to hang on to this way of
living? I don’t think so.”

“I’m not an optimist about what

comes, but I at least allow for the
ISA CRUZ possibility of different ways of
living with some forms of precarity
strange to miss hunkering down “All of that is completely different that some of us don’t necessarily
in the bathtub with my parents, now. When I go back, the rocks experience in the present … that
little brothers, two guinea pigs and that I laid on for years hanging out could lead to forms of joy that we
dog to the tune of tornado sirens?) with friends, sitting there, chat- don’t experience,” Logan contin-
and the cast of familiar strangers ting, they’re gone,” Rahimtoola ued.
known in coffee shops, climbing said. “Those markers in the land-
gyms and libraries. scape of a life you had, and the In closing, as the pastor of my
relationships you had, both with childhood church would say,
“You have to have a deep, sus- the landscape, but also the people “Consider that an invitation.”
tained experience in a place to you were there with—they’re not
experience [solastalgia],” Rahim- as present.” (Honestly, I don’t remember the
toola noted. pastor’s sermons that well, but the
Bodies, like land, hold memory, stained glass windows still rico-
“I used to go to the same beach and bear the marks of time and chet rivers of light in my mind.
every day, called Pill Box—it’s hurt and tenderness. Perhaps Maybe you can see them too, now
shaped like a pill box—and it has among ourselves we can stitch that I’ve opened up this can of
these very steep sandstone cliffs back together the rifts that have memory for you. Thanks for going
that you get in Orange County, formed in our past worlds. to the water with me. I hope you
San Diego,” Rahimtoola said of find peace here, on the banks of
one ritual place.“I could have told “These things are existing simul- this wild stream. Try to catch a
you every single rock and every taneously. Joy is okay. Hope is tadpole, laugh in the amphibious
crack in the rock face. There were okay. Everything is very much not slipperiness of our lives, our pre-
so many times I took naps on the okay. But don’t forget to live.” - carious existences and ever-mov-
rocks that were a little flatter, closer Lillian Frank, “Hope in Liminal ing sense of place, caught up in
to the water.” Space” the current.)
16 SPRING 2025
ESSAY Maine and Bowdoin have brought
me over the years—that’s what

MUSINGS ON makes the loss not sting as much

anymore.

WATER I’ve whispered more words to my

dad at Simpson’s Point than any-
where else. I whisper to him on
Water, everywhere, on all sides. the first warm day in the spring,
while polar plunging with friends,
BY KRISTEN KINZLER sitting on the rocks on a perfectly
sunny day, seeing the Northern

O
ne of the first things any Midcoast Maine is all water, Lights for the first time. I feel
chemist learns is that wa- everywhere, on all sides. There’s some kind of a reply when I jump
ter, on a molecular level, an openness about living at sea off the dock at Schiller, feel the
is special. Hydrogen bonding level—or at Brunswick’s elevation piercing cold and immediately
interactions between water mol- of 80-something feet—and seeing want to get out and go in again.
ecules make them stick together. water in all directions. There’s I don’t need to lace my fingers
The partially negative charge on something that I think happens together and look to the sky; I just
the oxygen atom is attracted to the to our skin, our breaths, in the allow myself to float to the top of
positive hydrogens on the neigh- presence of this beautifully unique the salty water.
boring molecules, creating one molecule, all clumped together,
of the strongest intermolecular mixed with some salt and mud and And there have been and will be
interactions in the world. It’s why millions of other organisms, rock- plenty of times when the water
water takes so long to boil, why ing back and forth with the tides. feels uniquely mine: when I go
drops clump together and contrib- swimming in October and go
utes to why it makes up our lakes Water was sacred to my dad, too. home and drink blueberry wine,
and oceans. Other interactions, And while everything else about when I jump into Casco Bay at
like hydrophilic and hydrophobic Bowdoin and Brunswick felt midnight on a hot summer night,
forces between water and lipids in so foreign to me because it was that first Saturday in May when
our body, make the bilayers in our unknown to him, the water was seemingly the entire campus goes
cells. They sustain life. recognizable. My dad raised me to Popham, when I see biolumi-
in the same fresh, murky waters nescence and remember seeing
I start with this science not be- of Lake Erie that he grew up it for the first time, a day after
cause I am a chemistry major, swimming in. Although the ocean moving into college, when I go
though I am, but mostly because here is so different, the water has swimming with my roommates at
I don’t have much proof for all of the same effect. It envelops me in sunset. Sometimes water just is,
the other ways water makes me familiarity. and I am thankful for that, too.
feel.
Almost four years later, I have You could argue that grief and
I arrived at Bowdoin a year and made a home here—one built water are pretty similar, beyond
eight months after my dad died, by my friends and roommates, by that metaphor about how they
and on top of all of the usual dinners at Thorne and walks on both come in waves. Grief is often
things that occupy a first year’s the quad, by evenings at H-L and as precious a resource as water: I
mind—‘Who do I get dinner with? late nights at the Orient House— wouldn’t want to live in a world
Which College House is throw- but also one that centers around where this love I have doesn’t
ing? How am I supposed to write what it means to live near water; manifest itself in this way, just as
that long of an essay?’—I didn’t to not allow the grief to swallow I wouldn’t want to be on a planet
know how to make a place he had me up but to jump in the ocean without the Great Lakes. Grief
never been to my home, how to and face it and defy it all at onceis scary; crashing waves and rip
live in a state he had always want- instead. tides are, too. And while I have
ed to visit, how to sleep in a dorm felt both since coming to Maine,
he didn’t help move me into. While I’m not sure exactly what looking up at a sky my dad may
It didn’t feel right, or remotely home means in any tangible terms never see and feeling the ocean’s
possible. (It still doesn’t feel com- or where it’s going to be, I have undercurrent push me towards
pletely right, especially on Family proven that it’s possible to build the protruding rocks, somehow
Weekends and move-in days and, a good one, even in the midst of the grief is less palpable here. It’s
I’m sure, soon, at graduation.) grief. And I know that a home of usually just the water, lapping up
your own making, one complete against the rugged coast, there to
But then, there was the water. with all of the joys that midcoast welcome me home.
SPRING 2025 17
ESSAY while it can sometimes be hard to

CHEZ NOUS
share the city with people who don’t
understand or respect locals, there
would be no city without the money
brought in by outsiders. So, while
Our place in New Orleans. there’s still an aspect of recognizing
that tourists are “other” in some
BY SADIE O’NEILL way, there is a need to be welcom-
ing because these businesses rely on

S
ticky bar floors, trash and bus bedded between our warm homes. tourists to stay in business.
exhaust. These are the most If you walk a block off Magazine
pungent smells on Magazine Street, you’re standing in front of There’s one business in particular
Street. While the scents aren’t people’s houses. While this is a that addresses the local-tourist rela-
the most inviting, the sights are so beautiful aspect of our city—that tionship in a beautiful way. On the
uniquely New Orleans: the Big everything is so intertwined—it can corner of Magazine and Bordeaux
Red Bus, street names tiled into also cause a lot of problems. Street sits Chez Nous, a sort of up-
the cement and Mardi Gras beads scale grocery. The shop stands out
hanging from trees on the uptown A less talked about aspect of the because of the sign that hangs over
end. On top of its beauty, this street local-tourist friction are Tulane stu- Magazine Street, reading: “Chez
is notorious for its endless string dents, who are not technically tour- Nous,” meaning “our place.” It’s a
of pedestrian-accessible shops and ists but are definitely outsiders. One marker that this street is for every-
restaurants—mostly local with a of the more controversial Tulane one, an especially important mes-
sprinkling of chains. events is Mardi Gras, during which sage for the city of New Orleans.
students dress like they’re attending
Over the summer, I worked at one a rave and do an absurd amount of Magazine Street is “our place.”
of these stores, Alice and Amelia, whippets. They stick out from the “Ours” in the sense that it is fueled
a New Orleans-themed gift shop. locals, who are dressed in fami- by artistic, talented caring locals,
Although we had our fair share of ly-friendly purple, green and gold and “ours” in a way that is said
locals, the majority of customers garb. Yet, they aren’t quite tourists. by locals to tourists. We share our
were tourists stopping in, partial- Although there can often be tension home with them. That’s what New
ly for New Orleans goodies and between locals and tourists, New Orleans is: a place to share our
partially to escape the burning Orleans relies on tourism. And culture and lives.
Louisiana heat. This is the demo-
graphic of most places on Maga-
zine: stores like The Bead Shop, a
small business where customers can
make their own jewelry and where
the owner contributes to beading
for Mardi Gras Indians, and Funky
Monkey, a second-hand clothing
and costume store. The beauty of
Magazine Street is that there are
shops for any kind of person and
any kind of visitor New Orleans
hosts.

However, even with this mixed bag

of shoppers, the city’s local-tourist
tension is notable. On the one
hand, there’s a sense of disrespect
from tourists in New Orleans. It
makes sense; most of them are
drunk from an adventure on Bour-
bon Street by the time they reach
Magazine. Locals have expressed
problems with people sitting on
their front porches or loudly walk-
ing through neighborhoods. The
thing about New Orleans is that the ALEX WASHBURN
most bustling tourist sites are em-
18 SPRING 2025
ESSAY dom. Still, on some weeks, I met
him behind the glass, for he had

IN SOUNDPROOF just come out of solitary confine-

ment and had not regained the
right to sit across the table from a

BEDROOMS visitor. Even when that visitor is

a case assistant employed for the
summer by a state office working
A study of the policing of noise. on his appeal.

BY TALIA TRASKOS-HART My weekly visits to Buena Vis-

ta—which made up a fraction of
“Collectively the prisoners had Even criminals must exercise my time spent in jails and prisons
grown weary of gratuitous vio- and eat, though, says the state. As around the state of Colorado that
lence and being punished for such, inmates are given access to summer—were interactions with
trifles, so they sought retribution a concrete pit around which they the carceral system from a state of
in noise and destruction.… The can walk ten grandiose steps in a relative freedom. I drove home to
refrains were redolent with all straight line before pacing back. a room with no locks at the end
the lovely plans about what they Food is hand delivered to inmates of every day. Based on an inher-
would do once they were free.” through a sliding opening in the ited statistical likelihood, I am
- Saidiya Hartman, “The Anarchy door. The average sentence is 22 around 16 times less likely to face
of Colored Girls Assembled in a years, but many inmates will die incarceration at any point in my
Riotous Manner.” in Supermax, uttering their last life than a man of color will be.
words in cells in which they can- Locks might surround me, but it is

I
grew up in a home with no not be heard. unlikely that I will ever be defined
locks besides those to the out- by them entirely. My client was in
side world. The house was built I have never been to Supermax. his early twenties and serving the
in the 1910s, when Denver held a It is the stuff of middle school front end of a 16-year sentence.
third of its current population and rumors that glorified brutality; it
Colorado’s claims to fame were is a figment of the imaginations of While employed as a summer
the Unsinkable Molly Brown and children a few towns away; it is a case assistant for appellate crimi-
an unobstructed view of the Rocky site far from imaginary in its vio- nal defense cases, my work in-
Mountains. At that point, home- lence; it is home to the notorious volved conducting research and
owners didn’t seek locks on every El Chapo who in 2022 sued the presenting it to clients. The young
powder room, shower or bedroom state for causing his foot fungus; it man I visited at Buena Vista was
door. My house retained this is a roadside attraction en route to pursuing an appeal for ineffective
openness, and for all that I lost in the New Mexico; it is 640 acres of assistance of counsel. His trial
privacy, I gained in a floor plan shrouded torture; it is but one site counsel had not presented to him
that might aptly be described, for of sanitized Hell among thousands much of the evidence the jury had
the purposes of this essay, as free. of United States prisons. heard. Now, there were thousands
of pages to be read aloud.
One hundred eleven miles from If, instead of taking I-25 from
the singular lock on my home’s Denver toward the Supermax, one Some weeks, my visits were can-
front door sit the 400 padlocked veers west to Highway 285 and celed, often at the last minute. He
cells at the Supermax facility in continues for a winding two hours was in solitary confinement and
Florence, Colo. The isolation of over plains and through national could not see me, I was told by
these cells is a point of pride for se- forests, she will arrive at the Bue- the warden. On the visits which
curity companies, federal prosecu- na Vista Correctional Complex. I followed, we returned to our task.
tors and politicians. Inmates spend know this drive well. I can mea- I read aloud text messages he had
23 hours per day in cells with a sure the route there in songs or shared with siblings, romantic
four-inch-wide window designed to audiobook chapters or gas station partners and friends; I shared
be so narrow that prisoners cannot stops for cups of heavily sugared surveillance images taken at traffic
discern any sense of their sur- coffee. I can measure the route lights. It was a legal requirement
roundings—and so cannot escape. home only in silence. that he understand the nature of
The cells at Supermax are sound- this evidence. He sat constrained
proofed with concrete such that Buena Vista is a medium security in handcuffs as we spoke through
even screams are rendered silent. prison. Still, the client with whom paneled glass, though mere feet
The policing of noise in prisons I worked was confined to a small apart, and I projected my voice as
has always been of the utmost im- cell with limits on recreation, I laid bare the demolition of his
portance to the carceral state. sustenance, socialization and free- privacy.
SPRING 2025 19
Graphic representations of the prior criminal records in the human is wrongful. In my sleep,
incarcerated population over the hopes that these individuals would I scream as I frantically try to es-
past century depict a sharp up- not be prosecuted. The harshest of cape from a prison recreated in a
ward tick in the mid-1970s and a charges in this community court room without a lock on its door.
skyrocketing of the population in were low-level felonies. Screaming is perhaps the most
the decades since—especially in natural response I can imagine.
Colorado, and especially among I spent many days in a courtroom
communities of color. In these where I was never more than ten Hartman’s history recounts the
curves, I see echoes of my own feet away from a police officer. noise strikes of prisoners at Bed-
growth charts, my height and These settings were not entirely ford Hills Correctional Facility
weight rising between annual new to me, for prison and jail in 1979. Prisoners sang, chanted
measurements at the pediatrician’s visits from summers before had and shouted. Their screams were
office. There are 483 individu- made it such that stiff uniforms, protests. “And at the heart of riot,
als currently serving life without handcuffs, tasers and guns were was the anarchy of colored girls,”
parole sentences in the United not unexpected company in Hartman writes. “Treason en
States for crimes they committed professional settings. Such is the masse, tumult, gathering together,
as children. These individuals are nature of criminal defense work. the mutual collaboration required
data points in the growth charts of to confront the prison authorities
mass incarceration. Captives since What was more striking was my and the police, the willingness to
adolescence, their own charts walk into the subway station lose oneself and become some-
were never freely completed. I each morning as I went to work, thing greater…. How else were
have grown one inch since I was where I felt acutely the presence they to express the longing to be
19; in the same time, the prison of a dozen or so officers standing free?”
population has grown by nine per- against the walls surrounding the
cent. I just turned 22 and am the turnstiles. In the spring of 2024, Eight years prior to the Bedford
same age now that my client at 1,000 officers were dispatched to Hills noise strikes, prisoners at
Buena Vista was then; my entire add to the force policing the New the Attica Correctional Facility in
life to this point equals the aver- York City subways. My station was New York took control of the pris-
age Supermax sentence. filled with National Guard offi- on’s operations, issuing demands
cers, who donned military gear. for fair treatment. The protests
I cannot extract myself from the Their camouflage did not blend at Attica started, unlike those
navigation of freedom in the in. Instead, it screamed to the at Bedford Hills, with silence.
presence of incarceration. I can- commuters the presence of war. Seven hundred individuals began
not extract myself even though a hunger strike in silence. They
this is not an experience with In “The Anarchy of Colored Girls entered the mess hall donning
which I will personally have to Assembled in a Riotous Matter,” black armbands, and then, with-
reckon. I have no answers ex- Saidiya Hartman recounts anoth- out uttering a word or lifting a
cept for the resolve that my own er war on freedom, constructing spoon, they left. If the Bedford
response must be the rejection the speculative history of a young Hills women screamed their
of my socialized desensitization Black girl who rebelled against the longing to be free, men at Attica
and an attempt to conjure some carceral state on Harlem’s streets expressed their longing through
sense of what it most essentially and from within state prisons. the absence of noise.
means to be free. Hartman’s is a history of crime
and carcerality told through a sto- The next month, Attica’s inmates

T
he brutality of punish- ry about those for whom freedom seized control of the prison. They
ment is often so overt as is considered excessive. faced violent retaliation. Officers
to scream out its presence, crushed the uprising and forced
even when I rush past it with “Freedom in her hands, if not a incarcerated men to strip naked
headphones in. crime, was a threat to public order and crawl through sewage and
and moral decency,” Hartman shattered glass. The New York
In the hot New York City summer writes. And so to be free, she had State Police website on Attica’s
I took the D train from the Grand to be loud. history is silent on the matter of
Street Station in the southeast this violent response; the courts
blocks of Chinatown to work at I began, at one point about three were silent, too, as the perpetra-
a community court in Midtown years ago, to have recurring tors faced no criminal prosecu-
West where young adults and dreams of terror in which I am tion. In the distribution of pun-
individuals with mental health wrongfully imprisoned. I am im- ishment, those in power possess
challenges were summoned for prisoned wrongfully not because I an immense and unrestricted
court appearances. I organized am innocent in these dreams, but freedom to the scope of which no
memos detailing case facts and because the imprisonment of any prison yard, silent or screaming, is
20 SPRING 2025
permitted to compare. consists of reading carefully-writ- Quakers were the original inven-
ten pleas for legal help sent to tors of solitary confinement. They
When I step into the prisons of my the organization for which I am thought such a model could be
nightmares for afternoon-long vis- employed. a more just form of punishment
itations, I am not sure whether to and so established the first prison
scream or to remain silent. I have I note the details of each inmate’s with such a model: the Eastern
seen handcuffs gripping wrists. case. On what charge were they State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.
I have sat in a locked room and convicted? Were there trial irreg- Solitary confinement would make
watched a video, dozens of times ularities? Is the district attorney in of the prisoner a monk, free from
over, of a killing which came out their county especially conserva- forced labor, whippings or hang-
of self-defense, practicing with tive? Were they imprisoned during ing. This Quaker experiment was
the defendant his recollection adolescence? Is their innocence in a certain failure, Friends recog-
of the events. Recurring in my question? nized shortly after. They began
dreams is his statement that his fighting the practice. “It does not
remorse was dragged beside him There are other questions I am reform, it kills,” Alexis de Toque-
constantly like a third arm—an unable to answer, so I must si- ville wrote. But their remorse was
ineradicable burden. My own arm lence them. too late. The model of solitary
was positioned beside a required confinement has been emulated
panic button, which would trigger I draft responses to nearly every widely. What began as a source of
a loud alarm, summoning the offi- letter denying help. We are sim- nonviolent potential has become
cers waiting outside. I felt uneasy ply too busy, I must say, in an one of the most dehumanizing
as I watched a man dying on video embarrassed whisper. In certain, practices to exist, a contradiction
hundreds of times, but not be- rare cases, I respond to incarcer- which calls into question the po-
cause I felt unsafe beside the man ated individuals with the news tential for moral reform in a space
who wielded the gun. Instead, I that we can attempt to help them so unfree as the prison.
felt incapable of understanding receive clemency—a word for the
how I could leave that room and governor’s pardon which most For residents of Florence, Colo.,
still believe in freedom. My defi- literally means “mildness” or solitary confinement occupies
nition of it—which encompasses “gentleness”—as if their release is their backyards. Town leaders
not just freedom of movement, soft and benevolent, as if it offers advocated for the Supermax to be
but the right to be forgiven, from anything less than the recognition placed in Florence to boost the
which stems the freedom to have of their humanity, the moral sine local economy. In certain ways, it
a future and to feel joy, compas- qua non for believers in freedom. has: A new industry has emerged
sion and understanding—melted When I go to sleep, I place these in which homebuyers seek proper-
before my eyes. I am certain as letters back in their envelopes and ty directly overlooking the facility.
I write that the most immense slide them into a binder in the Residents of these homes boast
violence I have ever witnessed is space beneath my dresser. If left about their notorious neighbors.
that which the state enacts against in the open, their cries will be too It’s “sort of a novelty conversation-
its prisoners. loud and keep me from a restful al thing,” said one realtor. What
night. these homeowners are really brag-

I
n my bedroom with no locks, ging about is the loudness of their

I
I spent hours in silence, sitting try to channel my dreams in own freedom in stark contrast.
on the soft carpeted floor—my the daytime, lest they run wild.
wicker chair broken, my corner I do poorly with empty space, My silences are nervous, marked
desk too full to leave space for the and I let my mind run free. I by lip biting and jittery hands. On
many letters I was reviewing. started going to Quaker meetings the Sundays when I go to Quaker
the same summer I first visited a meetings, I seek to quell my jitters
The purchase of postage, paper, prison. Quakers advocate empa- and search for the divine. At one
soap and other necessities in U.S. thy and community; they tend to meeting, a visitor described the
prisons is an out-of-pocket mat- the individualism of spirituality divine he found in the drip, drip,
ter. Medical co-pays are, too. In without disregard for the good of dripping of his leaky faucet. The
Colorado, individuals must have the collective. Through calling noise drove him crazy—he knew
in their possession less than $5 Friends to sit in silence, the Quak- noise was powerful. And he knew
to be labeled indigent. And even er meeting hopes to encourage that the same water drips upon the
for those who are determined connection with the Spirit. If one flowers, which decorate our gar-
indigent, money for necessities is feels such a connection, they are dens and the plants which come
loaned rather than given outright. to stand and speak, carrying the to nourish us. It flows also through
And so the ink, envelopes and Spirit’s voice on to others. Minds the pipes in the prisons which
stamps that I hold in my hands with wild potential are tamed in are filled with screams and with
are even more precious. My work the direction of the divine. silences which beg to be free.
SPRING 2025 21
 commemorated something else in
Fountain Valley, Calif.

It was our New Year’s celebration,

and my aunts, uncles and cousins
all gathered together at my grand-
parents’ home. My cousin, Emily,
had baked, I’m not exaggerating,
hundreds of cookies for our small
gathering of maybe thirty people,
so we guzzled down cookie after
cookie as we drank lychee sodas
and listened to my Uncle Peter’s
bizarre stories. In the middle of
all of this, my grandmother, Xuan
Anh, got up to make a toast.

“This year, 2025, marks 50 years

since we left Vietnam,” she said.
“50 years in America.” Her eyes
ESSAY teared up as she spoke. It was
clear that she counted every year.

SHAKY HANDS My dad’s side of the family fled

Vietnam because of the war. But
they came to America, specifical-
Was this my deepest image of Los Angeles? ly, because of a metaphor.
BY MAYA LE During the war, there were two
Photo by Charlee Lachance common destinations for Viet-
namese refugees: France and
America. Of the two, my family
wanted to go to France. Because
of the French colonial presence in
Vietnam, my family spoke French,

O
ne of the first memories No, his hand was steady in the attended French schools. It made
that I have in our house manner of something that could more sense to go to France. Every-
on Meadowbrook Road is never be unsteady, something for one agreed except for my grandfa-
of my family sitting around the which unsteadiness was not only ther, Le Van Lac.
kitchen table, all of us hovering unthinkable, but irrelevant—
our hands flat in front of us, palms steady like a thousand-pound My grandmother remembers
down. boulder just sat at the bottom of how my grandfather changed her
the Pacific Ocean. That thing isn’t mind: He said, “I want to stay here
“The trick is to not look at your going anywhere. because this is the Pacific Ocean,
hands,” my dad said. “They shake and the Pacific Ocean also touch-
less when you’re not looking.” My dad’s steady hands must be a es Vietnam, where my parents are.
So the three of us—my mom, relief to his patients; he is an eye So we are with the Pacific Ocean,
my brother and me—all averted surgeon, an ophthalmologist. I with my parents. I feel close to my
our gazes, trying to sense if our have profoundly unsteady hands. parents.”
hands had steadied magically. I I could never be a surgeon or a
stole a glance, peeking at my hand nail tech or even a puppeteer at While California is literally closer
outstretched before me. It still children’s birthday parties—my to Vietnam than France is, I don’t
trembled, my fingers quivering, hands shake too much for these think this is what my grandfather
buzzing with motion. professions. was talking about. I think he
viewed the ocean more metaphor-

T
Of course, to rub this in my face, his past January, when the ically, as a bridge, an outstretched
my dad’s hand beside mine was ball dropped in Times hand, that connected him to the
completely steady. Not steady Square and couples kissed family he was leaving behind. I
like a ship or like the rain—those on screen in Las Vegas, Nashville think sometimes these figurative
common metaphors of steadiness. and New Orleans, my family meanings are even more felt,
22 SPRING 2025
more tactile, touchable, than the According to Wikipedia, the film see what the commotion was, and
physical ones. is a “1997 American epic roman- when he returned, he looked like
tic disaster film.” I watched Titan- he was waking from a nightmare.
So my family came to America. ic for the first time with my mom His face was pale. “There’s a fire.”
My grandmother remembers leav- in our house on Meadowbrook That was all he said. I looked out
ing Saigon in a cargo plane—a Road. Sitting on our deep blue the window. The sky was red.
plane meant to carry military couch, I cried during the door
tanks. She told me, “When the scene—not because Jack died, I had consumed so many disaster
huge door closed, that’s when though Leo does have a pretty narratives, but I had no clue how
everybody started crying. That’s face. to act in one. I just started grab-
when we realized, okay, no more bing the most random shit. My
Vietnam. No more Vietnam.” No, I was more struck by Rose’s lavender deodorant. My spearmint
resolve to live—to jump into toothpaste. My Maybelline Sky
The plane took them to Camp freezing water, to whistle loud High mascara. All things I could
Pendleton, a refugee site in San enough. I wondered if, in that pick up at my nearest Rite-Aid—
Diego. The Lincolns, a couple situation, I could save myself. I replaceable things. I acted like
from Santa Monica, sponsored wondered if I could be my own I was packing for a sleepover, scur-
my family out of the camp, and hero. I didn’t think I could. This rying around in my t-shirt, which
gave them new names. My aunt made me cry. read, “I just got charmed at the
was renamed Monica, after Santa Clairo concert.”

O
Monica. They renamed my dad n January 7, 2025, the day
Phillip because, they thought, the San Gabriel Moun- Mostly, I remember thinking,
Phuc was too close to fuck. Even- tains caught fire, I remem- “Oh, I am going to die tonight.”
tually, my family moved to a sin- ber, most of all, feeling, deep in It was the first time I had thought
gle-family home, where they lived my body, that someone was going that, the first time I really believed
with many other families from to save me. it.
Vietnam.
I blame this on the movies. I had But something inside of me—
This is how my family ended up never seen a movie with a Viet- something terrified, something
in Southern California. namese American girl as the pro- shaking—decided to scream. “We
tagonist, let alone a movie where have to go!” I screamed. I kept

I
recently learned that much of she was the hero, where she saved screaming this at my parents—an-
the movie Titanic was filmed the neighborhood from burning. noyingly, loudly. And eventually,
in Los Angeles. Specifically, I hadn’t prepared for the part; I we left. By that time, we had not
the famous door scene, which didn’t know the lines. Instead, I received an evacuation order.
has ignited so much strife from thought that the firefighters would
the Internet, was in part filmed sweep me off my feet and carry That night, eighteen of my neigh-
in the Belmont Olympic Pool me out of our house on Mead- bors died. Nearly all eighteen
in Long Beach. In this scene, owbrook Road; I was sure of it. lived west of Lake Avenue, where
Rose (played by Kate Winslet) If they could not, I knew my dad the streets become less white and
holds the hand of Jack (played by would. less wealthy. This area received an
Leonardo DiCaprio) as she floats evacuation order eight hours after
on a controversially-sized door My dad has always been a hero, East Altadena did, in the middle
among the rubble of the sunken with his steady hands. One time, of the night—at 3:25 a.m. It was
ship. When a boat emerges in the when we were walking along the too late.
frame to rescue survivors, Rose Hollywood Walk of Fame, where

O
whispers with astonishment, “Jack, people dress up as famous char- ne of my favorite Christ-
there’s a boat.” She repeats this acters like Spider-Man, Marilyn mas movies is The Holiday,
phrase again and again, nudging Monroe and SpongeBob, Darth a romantic comedy about
his hand, until she stops, realizing Vader passed out, covering several two women (played by Cameron
that he is dead. Then, she kisses stars dramatically with his black Diaz and, again, Kate Winslet)
Jack’s hand and lets go of it. Hero- cape sprawled on the ground. (It who arrange a home exchange
ically, she jumps into the ice-cold turns out the Sith Lord’s getup is over the holiday season, trad-
water, and, shaking violently, she not the best for LA in July.) My ing Los Angeles for the English
pulls a whistle out from a dead dad immediately jumped into doc- countryside. When Kate Winslet’s
man’s mouth, and begins to blow tor mode; he is very serious about character, Iris, arrives in Los An-
on it, resolutely and desperately. the Hippocratic Oath. I watched geles, she is greeted by a dramatic,
Finally, a flashlight shines on her in wonder as he revived Darth romantic windstorm—the Santa
steadfast face—the face of a wom- Vader. But that day, when the fires Ana winds. In this windswept mo-
an saving her own life. started, my dad went outside to ment, she meets Jack Black’s char-
SPRING 2025 23
 I
acter, Miles. He tells her, crypti- circumstances. We showed up in n my “Madness in Korean Lit-
cally, “Legend has it that when the lobby, and it looked like a dog erature” class, we recently read
the Santa Ana winds blow, all bets shelter: golden retrievers, poodles a short story entitled “Fire.” In
are off. Anything can happen.” and pit bulls all sniffed the fur- this story, the protagonist, Suni, is
niture, confused. We got a room trapped in a domestic hell: She is
This is their meet cute. and collapsed onto the two queen constantly abused, physically by
beds. None of us could sleep. We her husband and verbally by her
It is not surprising that the Santa turned on the news and watched mother-in-law. In order to liberate
Anas are the backdrop for this the houses burn. Every cut was herself, Suni sets fire to the house.
love story; these winds are com- terrifying: What if our house was This idea comes to her when she
mon terrain for Angelenos. Joan next? “Please not our house on spies a box of matches. At this
Didion, for example, that quint- Meadowbrook Road. Please.” I moment, “A strange idea flashed
essential Californian, wrote about begged. I recognized the streets. I through her mind. She seized the
the Santa Anas in her collection recognized the houses. box, her hands trembling visibly,
of essays, Slouching Towards and hid it in her bosom without
Bethlehem. In one essay, Didion “Please turn it off,” my mom looking around. Was it not strange
describes the effect of these hot, pleaded, crying. We turned it off. that such an idea had never oc-
strong winds on the Los Angeles My dad drifted off to sleep even- curred to her before?”
psyche: She foregrounds the anxi- tually, snoring quietly. Then my
ety, the unease. “The wind shows mom turned to me and whis- As a dutiful English major, I
us how close to the edge we are,” pered, as if it were a secret, “You was struck by the repetition of
she writes. know, it is not the first time that “strange” in this scene. That
your father has had to leave his is, setting the house on fire is
Throw caution to the wind. Run home.” I knew: the last time was a “strange” idea, but it is also
like the wind. The winds of 50 years ago. “strange” that Suni had never
change. Our idioms of wind all thought of it before. What about
propel us towards this notion of I lay awake in the queen bed, my fire is so uncanny, so unnerving,
it as uprooting, catastrophic. But body draped in thin hotel sheets, that it causes our hands to trem-
what comes after the wind? listening to the soft buzzing of ble? What about fire is so strange?
the air conditioning, until I fell

I
Didion writes, “It is hard for asleep, and dreamed of burning t is strange to watch your
people who have not lived in Los houses. ex-boyfriend’s house burn on
Angeles to realize how radically TV. It is strange to watch the
the Santa Ana figures in the local When I woke up, my mom was awning catch on fire and strange
imagination. The city burning is beside me, scrolling on her to know that after this, the whole
Los Angeles’s deepest image of phone, and my dad was sitting up house will inevitably burn. I had
itself.” in bed, on his phone too. watched enough wildfire cover-
age—two days’ worth—to know.
Was this my deepest image of Los “I got a text from Steve,” my dad Sometimes, at that point, the
Angeles? said, his eyes wide. Steve is our firefighters won’t even try. They
neighbor, who had returned to just begin dousing the house next
Meadowbrook Road early in the door.

A
fter my parents and I got in morning. My dad swept his legs to
the car, there was another the side, leaning over the bed, and I think I would be a terrible fire-
problem: We had no idea opened the text. fighter because of this: I would
where to go. I turned around and never know when to move on,
looked out the rear window to see It was a photo. when to spray the next house. I
the fire barreling down the moun- would just stand in the middle of
tain. Outside the car, embers blew My dad let out the words in a the flames, spraying water fran-
in the wind, glowing like stars single breath: “Our garage burned tically, screaming, “Not the blue
close enough to reach out and but our house is still there.” vase with peonies! Not the IKEA
grasp. Where could we go that was Fado Table Lamp! Not the photo
not on fire? I clutched my dog, He turned the phone around and of your children at Disneyland!”
Plato, beside me and my parent’s showed us the picture. I barely I think I would go mad. Maybe
wedding album in my arms. We looked at it. All I could see was some firefighters do.
decided to drive down. the phone trembling, the image
of our house on Meadowbrook I couldn’t watch the news any-
We ended up at the Fairfield Inn Road wobbling with motion. It more. Instead, I started scrolling
in Rosemead, because they said was the first time I had seen my on Brilliant Earth, Tiffany and
they would accept dogs due to the dad’s hands shake. Etsy late into the night, sometimes
24 SPRING 2025
into the morning. I was shopping “So what does your logic mean for ories, I hear men yell at me.
for wedding rings. women? That we must get mar- “What? Do you expect me to read
ried, or else die? And also, um, your mind or something?”
Well, perhaps shopping is the not all stories end with weddings
wrong word. It just became an or funerals?” It is as if trying to read someone’s
obsession. Looking at the rings had mind is a punishment, a selfish
this odd effect: They steadied me. I Not that I said any of this, though. ask. Unreasonable! Illogical!
scrolled and scrolled, acquainting I just doodled flowers until the Stupid!
myself with their terminology. Em- bell rang.
erald cut. Marquise shape. Twisted But now I know: What is love,

I
band. Gold. Silver. Diamond. arrive back in Maine in late really, if not trying, in some way,
Sapphire. They were so beautiful; I January and there is a winter to read someone’s mind? It cer-
was enamored by their glitz. storm—flurries pour from tainly is that for me. When I love
the sky, and I shiver. My partner someone, I guess the shirt they
I knew, in the recesses of my greets me at my apartment. Seeing will reach for in the morning, the
mind, there was a different reason him melts me. We head into my episode of TV they will pick to fall
I was obsessed with these rings. room. asleep each night. I try to learn
One of the articles I read about their intricacies, the way their
the fires had included a picture of There, he surprises me. “I have mind works, their favorite brand of
a woman’s hand in a blue glove, something for you,” he says. I nar- yogurt. I want to know what makes
a wedding ring glistening on her row my eyes at him. them giggle and weep and what
finger. She had found the ring makes them angry—and why. I do
when searching through the rub- “What is it?” I ask suspiciously, all of this out of love.
ble of what had been her home. searching his face. He smiles and
This ring was the only thing that pulls out a small box. “It is beautiful,” I say to him.
did not burn—the only thing she
had left. He opens it, and inside, is a ring. “Thank you.” And he smiles and
nods at me in his gentle way,
I was astonished by this realiza- I am gobsmacked. which I guessed that he would do.
tion: Rings, formed by fire, are And then he threads the ring onto
one of the only things that cannot It is a gold ring with a sapphire my finger. He holds my hand, and
be destroyed by it. They are a way jewel in the center, two diamonds I nestle my body into his, and with
in which love is fireproof. on either side. his other hand, he smooths the
soft muscles of my back. We sit

I
first read Shakespeare’s Romeo I don’t know what to say, so I say like this for a long time.
and Juliet in the 11th grade. what I’m thinking: “Are you pro-

I
The line that I remember the posing?” I ask. am reminded that love stories
most from the play is when Ro- are simultaneous with many
meo says, coyly, “O then, dear “No,” he laughs, gesturing towards other stories—stories of grief,
saint, let lips do what hands do / ourselves as if this is the answer. horror, drama, comedy and
they pray.” I thought, damn! Slick! I guess it could be: I am wear- disaster. All of these stories are
I giggled and kicked my feet. ing my Christmas pajamas, even ongoing.
though it is late January, because
The day we finished the play, I refuse to submit to the seasonal As it turns out, in the end, I am
the head of the school came to demands of capitalism. not married and I am not dead.
our class to give us a lecture. He This elates me and terrifies
began with a grand generalization: He is wearing my gray sweatpants, me. I find myself shaking. So
“There are two kinds of stories,” which fall at his mid-calves, like I clutch my shaky hands to my
he grandly generalized. “Stories pantaloons. heart, I interlace them with an-
that end with weddings and stories other, I press them together in
that end with funerals. The first “It’s my grandmother’s ring,” he prayer, I raise my glass, I crack
kind are called comedies, and the says. “I wanted you to have it.” my knuckles, I spill my drink, I
second kind are called tragedies.” How could he have known? knock on wood, I wipe my tears,
Romeo and Juliet, he said, was I wipe my ass, I write, I wrestle,
evidently the second kind. I didn’t tell him about my recent I win, I lose, I hold one finger
obsession with rings. I guess he over my lips to hush the voices
But at 16, the feminist theorist in read my mind. and then I whisper softly, but
me was brewing. “But isn’t mar- firmly, into the silence, into the
riage a patriarchal and heteronor- I used to think this was a bad mirror, “You saved my life; I
mative institution?” I wondered. thing. In fights from my mem- love you.”
SPRING 2025 25
 Taken from a scrapbook made in 1901, students smoke
pipes and cigarettes. Smoking inside of buildings was
not banned at the College until 2002.

ARCHIVES

A LOOK INTO 19TH &

20TH-CENTURY DORMS
CAPTIONS BY TALIA TRASKOS-HART
Pictures provided by Marieke Van Der Steenhoven at Special Collections and Archives

26 SPRING 2025
In 1896, a student residing in Maine Hall rests and reads in a rocking chair. In 1825, Nathaniel Haw-
thorne read in this very hall as one of its first residents.

By 1989, women had been attending the College for almost two decades. This student has a stack of
Bowdoin Orients piled on her windowsill.
SPRING 2025 27
 ESSAY

ROAD TRIP
Recollection through ink and film.
ESSAY AND PHOTOS BY MILES BERRY

I
n the middle of last August, It was the definitive end of an era that I am, I was tangibly aware of
during a stretch of particularly for Alex, the twilight of a world that how little I grasped what Alex was
sweltering weather all across the I had barely come to understand going through.
U.S., my brother Alex and I took a in my few short visits to the West
cross-country road trip going from Coast. The longer I think about After a couple of days frantically
west to east. The prospect of the it, the more I wonder if this was fighting through traffic and tying
upcoming journey was exciting, an the point of his move out to LA, up loose ends around the sun-
opportunity to catch a glimpse of at least subconsciously, the phys- baked city, we left his white stucco
the vast swaths of America that un- ical distance between California apartment on the morning of the
til that point remained completely and New England unmistakably 15th and headed east towards
unknown to me, but it held much mirroring the disconnect between the Mojave Desert through the
greater weight and logistical im- the largely queer, progressive never ending sprawl of suburbs
portance for my brother. After an community he found in his Sil- and exurbs—Pomona, Riverside,
exciting but tumultuous three years ver Lake neighborhood and our Beaumont. “Los Angeles is actually
in Los Angeles cooking in trendy childhood in the affluent and often more of an urban county than a
East LA restaurants, quite literally painfully homogenous suburbs of city,” Alex aptly told me.
brushing shoulders with stars and Boston. For a variety of reasons, all Hours later, surrounded by desert
working through the painful end hadn’t gone to plan, and he was and passing through old mining
of a relationship, he had decided somewhat begrudgingly heading towns with names like Quartzite,
to come back to the Northeast, and back home, a decision that slow- we reached the crest of a rust-col-
needed to bring his car back with ly became clear over months of ored mountain range near the
him—a small blue Mazda stuffed phone calls with my mom and I. Arizona border where the tempera-
to the brim with clothes, spices, Although in some ways an effective ture on the dashboard read one
pillows, lampshades and anything bridge between these two worlds, hundred and seventeen degrees.
else that could possibly fit. the liberal arts English major ally Incredulous, I naturally had to pull
28 SPRING 2025
 there are questions that have to be
asked, and responses that have to
be given. This is especially true of
travel stories, I think: When polite-
ly asked “How was your trip?” by
anyone other than a close friend,
significant other or family mem-
ber, it would be inappropriate, if
not just strange, to offer anything
like the account I’ve begun here.
No matter how meaningful the
journey, incredible the sights seen
or delicious the food tasted, deep
down no one really wants to hear
about all of it—that is, unless
they’ve been there themselves or
love you enough to care. At most,
you have a minute or two for a
quick anecdote.

But I’m not going on and on about

this out of frustration, upset at
not being able to truly share what
this journey was like; I probably
wouldn’t want to listen to myself
droning on and on about a road
trip either. Rather, I say this be-
cause of my increasingly fragile
memories of those eight days of
travel, which, half a year later, are
sinking deeper and deeper below
the repetitive, dime-a-dozen stock
images of the eternal road trip of
the American imagination. Look-
ing to articulate the experience to
others using a few cheap phrases
or seeking to quickly store it within
the recesses of my brain, it was all
too easy to revert to the well-known
script, the cross-country odyssey
immortalized by books like On The
Road or movies like Rain Man and
Vacation.

L
ooking back on it all this
the car over to the side of Route eling in the endless possibility that winter, it was difficult to sift
10 and feel it for myself. As the it all represented, and my brother out the specific memories
blistering turbulence of 18-wheel- probably grappling with the ver- from the general ones, the per-
ers washed over me, I snapped tiginous uncertainty of leaving his sonal from the symbolic. Far from
photos of Saguaro cactuses and home for good. avoiding the cliché of it all, we
otherworldly sandstone pillars actively sought it out, whether it

A
looming in the distance. As corny ny story, when repeated was fighting through tour groups
as it sounds, I couldn’t stop my- too often, risks collapsing to peer over the rim of the Grand
self from thinking something like into nothing but a few trite Canyon or strolling through a sea
“Yes, this is it: The Great Ameri- expressions, a handful of clichés of cowboy hats and flashing neon
can Road Trip.” And it was. The and verbal shortcuts carefully in downtown Nashville. Even the
highway unfolded in front of us, a crafted to avoid boring the listener. brotherly squabbles Alex and I
jaw-droppingly sublime landscape While no one’s fault in particular, had—resulting from a dead car
as far as the eye could see, and our it’s an inevitable consequence of battery in the middle of Navajo
thoughts were limitless—mine rev- the kind of conversations where Nation or an injured finger in a
SPRING 2025 29
30 SPRING 2025
steamy Waffle House parking lot— and patriotic level instilled in me sounds incredibly annoying, film
seem somehow pre-programmed, since childhood that this is what photography is always imbued with
overdone or choreographed, America should be: raw, untamed, memory, with a sense of what-has-
necessary moments of conflict to the land of the frontiersman and been, a quality that pictures hast-
bring us closer to each other by the sublime experience. Every ily snapped on an iPhone rarely
the end of the journey. Even in crumbling mesa, orange-gray exhibit. I think it has something to
the moment, I remember having sagebrush flat and rusted-out gas do with the discontinuity of film,
the feeling that our trip was ines- station made perfect sense in my the insurmountable gap in time
capably inflected with some larger mind, serendipitously reinforcing between taking a photo and seeing
meaning, and that whatever it was, my fantastical vision of a place it slowly come to life in the dim
it definitely had something to do I was experiencing for the first red light of the darkroom. By the
with America with a capital A. time—even if I felt like I already time you are looking at an image
knew it so well. captured on film, the thin slice of
This was particularly true in the reality it depicts is already firmly in

A
Southwest, home to a landscape s entangled and depersonal- the past.
that was both shockingly alien to ized as my memories of the
me and comfortingly familiar at trip may have become, lost In this case in particular, as the
the same time. While I had never into a mix of concrete experiences, distance between my shooting of
set foot in either Arizona or New meaningless clichés and cultural the film and actually seeing the
Mexico and was giddily awed by mythologies, all that was needed pictures was not just a few days
almost each and every treeless, for them to come rushing back or weeks but months, this feeling
rugged mile Alex and I passed to the forefront of my mind was a of rediscovering the past, literally
through, I felt like I was truly in handful of photos. After collect- re-membering was all that more
America, more than I had ever ing dust on my desk for months pronounced. Poring over the
been before. Standing in marked on end, I finally developed the photos, I was happily greeted by
contrast to the tempered, often six rolls of film that I had shot on many of the images that explicitly
gentle landscapes of the Northeast the trip—four in color, two in had “Road Trip” written all over
so familiar to me, I understood black and white. In a way that I them—empty Western plains,
on some strangely problematic can’t quite explain, and probably wind-battered desert shacks and of
SPRING 2025 31
 I’ve thought about it, I’ve realized
that like Alex, I, too, was leaving
one home and returning to an-
other. Having just finished up an
internship in New York where I
had felt my first real taste of adult-
hood, working a nine to five and
for the most part living with my
girlfriend at the time, I was now
returning to school one last time
and feeling caught between two
stages of life.

But my home is—for the next

couple of months, at least—still
in Maine. The last roll of photo-
graphs, taken after reaching the
end of the journey, are all the
evidence I could possibly need of
this. The brave rocky coastline, fad-
course, the pure enormity of the looking ahead to the next chapter ed pink wildflowers and scheming,
Grand Canyon. But most of the of his life, thinking about returning dastardly seagulls give me a fuzzy
pictures weren’t so easy to read. home to the East Coast, et cetera, comfort matched only by the gen-
In many cases, I struggled to even et cetera—I think the most import- tle gray pillows of fog nestled in the
remember the approximate time ant thing that rediscovering these background of these images. More
and place where they were taken, photos did is cause me to call my than just coming back to a place,
much less how I had felt at that brother, something I don’t do often however, I returned to the beaming
particular moment or what detail enough during the middle of the faces and welcoming embraces of
within the frame had caught my semester. beloved friends—many of whom I
attention. hadn’t seen in over a year because

A
s we’ve talked about it again of conflicting semesters abroad.

R
ather than the photographs over the last few weeks or so, As my time at Bowdoin with these
themselves, it is the work I’ve realized that even com- people winds down, it is these
of uncovering, puzzling, ing from very different stages of moments of feeling profoundly at
remembering and reconnect- life, the way we remember the trip home, the sun-dappled smiles pre-
ing they inspired for which I am is remarkably similar—an exhila- served in these photographs, in all
especially grateful. After finally rating stretch of untetheredness, a of their singularity and complexity,
seeing them this February, I spent true moment of being in between that I hope I can return to time
hours swiping through the scanned different stages of life. The longer and time again.
images on my phone or laptop,
immersing myself in the world
that they offered up to me once
more. Eventually, the welcoming
barks and coarse, weathered fur
of the mangy dogs that faithfully
protected the guest house where
my brother and I stayed drifted
back into my thoughts. I started
to recall the confused bliss I felt
while smoking with Alex and my
friend Michael in an empty lot
in Nashville, laughing to myself
as I hazily pondered how strange
it was that we had all ended up
here. And somewhat in vain, I
tried to decipher the mute words
on my brother’s lips as he gazes
out onto the road ahead. While I
could locate so much meaning in
his soft, open countenance—he’s
32 SPRING 2025
ESSAY lived with four host families over
a span of three and a half months.

IS HOME In the moment where I least

expected to find home—living
with strangers across cultural and

CONCRETE? sometimes even language barri-

ers—I did.

A baker’s dozen of bedrooms. In India, I looked forward to

fruit, peeled and cut by my host
BY KAYA PATEL mother, Asha, that I had to eat if
I didn’t want to be mildly scold-

T
he idea of home has always had never known what it was like ed in Hindi when I got home
been a complicated subject to have my heart and my belong- from school. I embraced nightly
for me. As a child of divorce ings all in the same place for more walks pacing back and forth on
from the age of three, I never had than a week. our small terrace for “digestion”
one home. I packed duffel bags with my host brothers, Prince and
each Saturday in preparation for And so I began to build my first Sagar. And six months after I left
going to my “dad’s house” or my home in Coleman 403. I deco- their home, I still smile when I re-
“mom’s house” but never “home.” rated my room more than I ever ceive Instagram reels from Prince
That’s not to say that I never felt at had in any of those 13 bedrooms. and random WhatsApp texts from
home growing up. My home just But the first time I called Bowdoin Sagar.
didn’t have a physical quality to it. “home,” I shuddered. Something
felt off. How could it be home In South Africa, home was Auntie
Home was spending weekends when so many people that I loved Sharida exclaiming “my baby”
with extended family playing were so far away? and giving me hugs as I came
board games. Home was cooking home from class. It was the two
with my dad and going on bike During my first semester of col- birthday parties she threw and
rides and walks together in Lo- lege, my mother and stepfather the four cakes purchased for
antaka Brook Reservation. Home moved from where I grew up in me. It was learning how to make
was watching movies with my northern New Jersey to a small koeksisters—the most delicious
mom even though she would key off of Sarasota, Fla. Longboat donuts I’ve ever had—and visiting
always fall asleep halfway through. Key is lovely, but I don’t think I my host parents at the Sunday
Home was eating my grand- will ever be able to call Florida market where they sell seasoned
mother’s khichdi, okra, mango rus home. So I often go back to New corn each week. And the feeling
and bhakri for dinner and Good Jersey during breaks, where I stay of home hit me like a truck as I
Humor toasted almond bars for with my father, stepmother and packed my things to leave Salt
dessert while Jeopardy and Wheel five-year-old half-sister. Each time River.
of Fortune played on the televi- I come home, I see the space
sion. Home was sometimes even change as my sister goes through In Argentina, I quickly fell in love
my teachers’ offices or hallways in new phases of interests, puts new with two cats, Biorke and Bowie,
which my friends and I gathered. drawings and toys in her playroom who would greet me with flutter-
and talks about memories for ing paws as soon as they heard the
The walls that watched me grow which I wasn’t there. apartment door open. I cherished
up were always changing, too. By weekly tours of the city with my
the time I graduated from high I see my extended family mem- architect host mother, Ana. And
school, I had lived in 13 different bers grow older and all the chil- on the day that I was missing
houses, several of which under- dren in my life get taller. I come home the most, Thanksgiving,
went major renovations. back feeling different myself but home was singing in the kitchen
struggle to reconcile with how the as chickens fire-roasted.
Given how often I moved people I return to change as well.
throughout my upbringing, pack- For the first two years of college, I always found the phrase “home
ing for college should have been going home brought relief but is where the heart is” to be rather
an easy task for me. But for the also much dismay as I tried so des- cliché, but if I learned anything
first time in my life, I wasn’t pack- perately to claim home in a place from all these iterations of home,
ing to just live in another house; to which I was only a visitor. it’s that what I call home are sim-
I thought of it as building my first ply moments of love. I don’t know
home. The idea of living in one With all these ideas of home swirl- if home will ever be a concrete
room for an extended period of ing through my mind, I studied place in my mind, but for now,
time frightened me a little bit. I abroad during my junior fall and I’ve made peace with that.
SPRING 2025 33
HUFF & PUFF 60 Chagall, Antony, Rosenthal,
et al.
64 Goodbye in Genoa

& BLOW YOUR 65 Big

66 Amherst school which rivals-
Bowdoin Dining

HOUSE DOWN 67 Wing, abbr.

68 Double curves
69 “The Taming of the Shrew”
CROSSWORD BY TALIA TRASKOS-HART setting

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 DOWN
1 Chomp
14 15 16 17 2 Not worth ____
3 Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web,
18 19 20 21 e.g.
4 Scrooge, e.g.
22 23 24 25
5 Then, Fr.
6 Songs for one
26 27
7 Scoundrel
28 29 30 31 32 33 34
8 Thornfield in Jane Eyre, e.g.
9 Tool for a typist, or one locked
35 36 37
outside
10 Mandarin oranges
38 39 40 41 11 Home of monster “Nessie”
12 Ink stain
42 43 13 Norwegian P.M. Stoltenberg
23 Here and there, quaintly
44 45 46 47 48 39 24 Costume for the wolf in Little
Red Riding Hood
50 51 52
25 Southern neighbor of re-
named Gulf of Mexico
53 54 66
28 Fireplace sights
56 59 60 61 62 63
29 Tree whose wood is used in
guitar-making
64 65 66 30 Name of rotating globe in
Yarmouth
67 68 69 32 Relatively safe investment
security
33 Went on and on and on
ACROSS 31 Many a perfume counter 34 2013 #1 album from Kanye
1 Lightning McQueen, e.g. worker West
4 State in which Little Women is 35 Jacob’s first wife 39 Waterwheel
set 36 One and ___ 40 Out early
8 Active ingredient in marijuana 37 Subway fee 45 Dining hall doers
11 Second president born in 38 Glandular prefix 46 Dickens’ dreamer
Texas 41 Double-reed instrument 47 What the three little pigs
14 Actress Stephanie 42 Madame Bovary and Mrs. should have used
15 Failed Microsoft portable Dalloway, e.g. 48 Anthill resident
toilet 43 Epitome of cool, with “the” 54 Secrecy contracts, for
16 Astros, on scoreboards 44 Half step above E short
17 Exclamation to a bull 45 She, in Salerno 55 My turn!
18 Long, long time 49 French tire 56 Obama health law, abbr.
19 Notes after fa 50 Singer Twain 57 Auction action
20 CPR pro 51 Memo abbr. calling for alert- 58 Rotten
21 Not pro ness 61 Neat!
22 Heathcliff’s home, to Bronte 52 Does not subtract 62 Fort Collins sch.
26 Tax org 53 Absolutely, quaintly 63 Retirement
27 Des Moines sch. 56 Dear advice giver income funding
28 Guitar neck segment 59 Greek theater
34 SPRING 2025
36 SPRING 2025