The summer after my senior year of high school, right before we all headed off to college, my best friends and I would go on these long drives. Mostly, we’d fantasize what the next four years would be for us, and we’d always come back to the fear we’d become such radically different people. The fear that one day, we wouldn’t know each other anymore.
Read MoreI imagine that, in the fifties, things were simple. A boy asked you out, you were “going together,”, he took you to the sock hop (what even is a sock hop?) and then he dumped you right before home-ec. I’m not saying it was easy, but it was simple. It was clear cut. (Or maybe it wasn’t at all, sorry grandma.)
Read MoreI live in Bushnell, on the south side of campus. It's one of the two ski lodges they're about to bulldoze to make way for “apartment style housing.” If you're wondering, it is absolutely charmed to live in a building the college has already decided is functionally useless and has no value. We did a great job with the wall decor, though, which helps.
Read MoreOver the past few months I’ve begun to notice an abundance of songs in my rotating music collection that have to do with “Georgia.” By this I mean either Georgia the state, or Georgia in reference to a person. I’ve never been to Georgia, and I don’t know anyone named Georgia personally, but for some reason I’ve become invested in accumulating this music.
Read MoreLast October, I created a playlist called, Walking Through a Ghost Town, about returning to a place after a long absence due to quarantine and realizing things will not be the same as long as this pandemic remains. If you listen to it, my sadness was not subtle. The change that occurs after a gap in time is shocking to anyone, but I think the pandemic has altered things in ways we could never imagine.
Read MoreAre you feeling squirrely? Do you like cheese? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then we have the playlist for you. As the title insinuates, this is a collection of songs for all rodents out there. Mice, rats, squirrels, and even possums are included (we do not discriminate).
Read MoreIt’s 1AM on a Tuesday and you’re three blocks away from your local drugstore. At this time of the night, the world is nothing more than that drugstore. Nothing matches the feeling of walking through those sliding doors and being bombarded by an array of lipsticks, Cheetos, and tacky keychains. A tiny woman wearing a red vest and an over-eager smile greets you from behind the counter. The only thing you can think of is that she should not be working in this part of town at this time of night. She asks if you need help finding anything and you can’t answer her. You’re not sure why you came here.
Read MoreThe sun is setting. I’m cradled in an Adirondack chair, soaking in the last crackling warmth of a bonfire with my fellow WWOOFers. I breathe in the crisp Maine breeze, take in the weathered grass and spicy pine air, the twilight light falling over this patch of earth, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Franklin, a 40-year old former school teacher from North Dakota, break out his guitar. The soft first few chords of Gillian Welch’s Everything is Free ring out, and soon we’re all singing along.
Read MoreRight now, we’re in the middle of a lot of things: Midterms, a pandemic, 2020, October, college, an election. And with all that going on, it’s pretty easy to lose track of your own skull. Personally, I think I lost mine a while back in March somewhere off the coast of Lake Michigan, but somehow, I’m still going. Who knew 2020 would turn us into a bunch of cockroaches blessed with the ability to live without our heads.
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