Emmet Binkowski’s Journey

Posted on by

The hurdles and hardships of being trans in America

By Theresa Diffendal

            Imagine if you needed a letter from your therapist signing off on your mental stability before you could receive a prescription.

For about one in every 300 people in United States, that scenario is a reality.

Trans individuals are those who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Often times trans individuals will take hormones, a process called Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), or undergo surgery to help their bodies physically present as the gender with which they identify.

However, trans people often have to jump through a myriad of hoops before they can begin receiving these treatments, treatments which Mazzoni Center Senior Communications Manger Elisabeth Flynn said help to counteract “things like depression, anxiety, rejection by family and society…[which] stem from the difficulty of being trans or gender nonconforming in a society where being different in any way can be hard.”

Emmet Binkowski, a 22-year-old senior at Bryn Mawr College, has been taking testosterone since October 2014. Binkowski goes to the Mazzoni Center to receive health care. The Mazzoni Center is non-profit health care center located in the heart of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. It is unique in that in specializes in healthcare for members of the LGBT+ community – lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans, and other gender identity and sexual orientation minorities.

Emmet Binkowski & Friend

Emmet Binkowski & Friend

To be given a prescription for hormones, trans individuals often have to get cleared by a therapist before they can begin HRT or undergo gender reassignment surgery.

“You have to go and talk to a social worker basically,” Binkowski explained. “Some places just a regular endocrinologist will prescribe you hormones if you have a letter from a therapist that you’ve been seeing and talking to about your transition. There’s gatekeeping that goes on where you have to have this official letter.”

That’s one visit. “Then you also have to get bloodwork done to make sure there’s nothing physiological that would make it harmful for you to start hormones,” Binkowski said. For example, testosterone can make already high blood pressure worse.

“Then they show you how to do the injection. Then you can just do them yourself every week. They teach you to do it in the fat instead of the muscle because it hurts less,” he added. “Sometimes it feels like nothing at all, sometimes it stings, but it’s no big deal after you’ve done it every week for a year.”

But just getting to a health care center can be a struggle. The time period between coming out as trans and starting HRT was extended “because it was just difficult to get into the city and go all the way to Mazzoni and come back. It takes hours by the time you go there, do whatever you need to do, and come back. Continue reading →

Woman, Teacher, Poet, Muslim

Posted on by

The many aspects of Dilruba Ahmed

By Labonno Islam        

Dilruba Ahmed has multiple identities.

Every Monday and Wednesday of this past fall semester at Bryn Mawr College, she briskly walked into her Writing Poetry I class, her hands full of papers, ready to help her students write poems and become better creative writers.

But, Ahmed isn’t just a teacher or an educator. She is a complex, multi-faceted individual, and no single word can define her: Professor. Woman. Mother. Wife. Sister. Daughter. Muslim. Bangladeshi-American. Published poet.

She embodies all of these things and much more.

Ahmed was born in the early 1970s in Philadelphia but spent most of her childhood in a rural town in Ohio. Soon after she started high school, she moved to an area in western Pennsylvania about an hour north of Pittsburgh. She attended the University of Pittsburgh after she graduated from high school with a major in creative writing. After finishing her undergraduate career, she got her Master of Arts in teaching at Pittsburgh as well.

She spent the rest of her young adulthood in California, primarily working in education. Later, she worked as a project manager at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, an organization that helps teachers to reflect on their actions as educators.

Later, when she finally had the time to focus on her creativity again, she received her Master of Fine Arts in writing at Warren Wilson College.

Now, almost nine years later, she’s in the outskirts of the city she was born in, living in

Dilruba Ahmed

Dilruba Ahmed

Swarthmore, Pennsylvania with her husband and two children.

Ahmed is petite and has big brown eyes. Her dark hair, sometimes down in a bob, is now in a short ponytail. She delicately gestures with her hands when she speaks, the sleeves of her gray blazer slightly falling and revealing her thin wrists. She has a sweet smile that spreads to her cheeks and a laugh that reads across her heart-shaped face. Her voice is not too low or too high, but rises and falls, depending on the subject of conversation.

Ahmed may be a published poet and professor now, but when she first started college, she planned to add another aspect to her identity: medicine.

“As an undergrad, I was planning to major in both creative writing and be pre-med, of my own volition though,” Ahmed says, laughing slightly. “Everyone always assumed it was because my parents were South Asian and that they expected me to be like this, this or this.”

She often responded to these assumptions by stating how she wasn’t being pressured to become a doctor, but that she wanted “to do something that gave back” to society.

She describes how she pursued that track for three years, and was “probably just a few credits away from actually completing…the degree.”

“But in the end…I realized it wasn’t actually the path I wanted to take,” Ahmed says. “The people that I later interacted with loved science; they breathed it, they lived it and a lightbulb went off in my head and I remember realizing ‘Oh, that’s how I feel about writing.’”

Although she realized her passion for writing late into her college career, Ahmed was not a stranger to it. Continue reading →

Finding a World in Music

Posted on by

Yue Yang strives to become a violinist

By Elisabeth Kamaka

Yue Yang was not planning on studying music when she first arrived at college in the U.S.  She was interested in biology and political science.

Now a senior majoring in music at Bryn Mawr College, Yang, a 21-year-old violinist, has risen in the ranks, holding the coveted title of Concertmaster of the Haverford-Bryn Mawr Bi-Co Orchestra.

As concertmaster, Yang is the lead violin and the assistant conductor of the orchestra. This unexpected turn in Yang’s education and career path sum up her belief that we each have our calling, something we were meant to do in our lives.

Born in 1994 in the southeastern coastal province of Zhejiang, China, Yang started the violin at age four because her family “wanted me to start music.”

Her father had a colleague who played the violin and offered to give Yang and her brother

Yue Yang

Yue Yang

lessons. After Yang won a prize in a small competition, her parents decided to continue her violin lessons with another teacher. However, Yang “only played [the violin] for fun” even as other students around her were beginning to take their musical training very seriously.

Yang’s early musical influence began at home. Her family loved music. When she thinks back to her childhood, she recall a time when there wasn’t music in her life. Even before she started playing the violin, Yang’s father would play pop tunes on the family piano for Yang and her brother.

Yang’s brother later quit the violin to play the piano, influenced by the joy that the piano had brought to the family.

Other family influences kept Yang close to music. Her uncle is a music professor at Shanghai University. There is great pride that comes from the accomplishments of family members and Yang said her uncle “influenced me even though we were not close.”

High school brought many changes. Yang was enrolled in a boarding school in Ningbo, also located in the province of Zhejiang and would only go home about once a month. Although this initial separation from her family during her teen years was difficult, Yang said that it helped her immensely when moved to the U.S. to attend college.

While attending Ningbo Xiaoshi High School, Yang joined the orchestra, which was “the only high school with an orchestra in [her] province.” Yang continued to pay the violin for fun, never imagining that one-day it would be her career.

Go to Bryn Mawr

When she began to look into colleges, a friend from high school recommended that she apply to Bryn Mawr College in the US.  Yang chose Bryn Mawr because she liked the location and its proximity to Philadelphia, as well as its rich and unique heritage. Of course, she adds: “financial aid was a major factor.”

Continue reading →

Working Hard

Posted on by

We chronicle three local businesses that are making their way in the world:

Ryan Gooding reports on Hatboro’s Crooked Eye Brewery and Pub, a family-run business that started in a kitchen.

Marcelo Jauregui looks in on Miquel Gomez and his effort to run an old-fashioned  video store in Ardmore.

Kelsey Peart profiles the husband-and-wife team behind Creperie Bechamel in Wayne.

The Making of a Micro-Brewery

Posted on by

How one family went from brewing 5 gallons to 220 gallons of beer

By Ryan Gooding

Micro-breweries often conjure up a certain mental image: dimly lit, barrels disguised as tables, un-recognizable indie music wafting down from the house speakers – an almost hipster aesthetic.

The Crooked Eye Brewery defies those stereotypes.

Set back off of the main drag in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, the Crooked Eye sits quietly tucked adjacent to Silvio’s Deli and behind the Davidian Tattoo Studio.

Above the un-marked, windowless door — that looks more like a back-door than a main entrance, sits a sign: “Crooked Eye Brewery: For What Ales You”.

The brewery is not imposing, nor is it flashy.

Pulling the door open reveals, a large, fluorescently lit, almost colorless space.  Along the wall opposite the entrance, is the bar itself – completely normal save for its bare plywood side walls and white cinderblock backsplash.

“It’s brand new,” says co-owner Paul Hogan, gesturing towards the bar, “we just expanded it a couple weeks ago . . . big improvement over what it used to be.”

Hogan stretches out his arms, as if to demonstrate the size of the previous bar.

“Couldn’t have been much more than six or eight feet long,” he clarifies.  “Only sat three.”

Now, the L-shaped bar runs for nearly 20 feet and seats 13.

Crooked EyeAcross from the bar are four stainless steel tables – the kind of tables that might easily be confused with workbenches – and dozens more matching stools.

A garage door immediately to the left of the entrance serves not only as the bar’s only window during the winter time, but also as a makeshift outdoor bar in the summer months.

The floors are concrete, and dotted with industrial, floor-level drains.  The walls are unpainted, and almost completely devoid of hanging accoutrement.

“We’re going on our third year in the space,” Hogan said one recent Wednesday evening, during a visit to Crooked Eye, “and it’s never not been a work in progress.”

I’m not surprised.  Save for the bar itself, you might easily mistake the place as a workshop.

But, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

Continue reading →

The Last Picture Store

Posted on by

Ardmore’s Viva Video is a blast from the past

By Marcelo Jauregui

Monday: Dec. 7, 2015: 11:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

Mere seconds have passed from the official store-opening time, and a customer has already pulled up in front of the back entrance of Ardmore’s Viva Video: The Last Picture Store.

Following right behind her is a man and child. Both walk briskly. The man’s shoulder-length hair is visible from a distance. He holds his son’s hand, pulling him along towards the store.

The woman hands Miguel Gomez an encased DVD before driving away. Gomez opens up the store and walks inside with his five-and-a-half year old son, Ash. Ash stays at the store with his father Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 11 a.m. to 12:40 p.m. when he gets dropped off at Kindergarten.

Ash runs around the store yelling excitedly about the large pile of movies that were

Miguel Gomez of Viva Video

Miguel Gomez of Viva Video

dropped off overnight. Gomez plugs in an auxiliary chord into his 4th generation iPod classic. Rock music immediately erupts from speakers around the store. Gomez helps Ash bring in the returned movies onto the counter.

“Oh, this one looks pretty cool,” says Ash.

“What’s that one?”

“Salamander?”

A huge smile runs over Gomez’s face. “How did you read that? Did you sound that one out? That’s the longest words you’ve ever sounded out, Ash!”

Ash takes me on a tour around the store. The store is somewhat divided into three spaces: one facing the parking lot, one facing the counter (this would be the middle of the store), and one facing Lancaster Avenue. The first space contains the DVDs on sale; the second, new releases; the third, everything else. The movies people ordered are in shelves behind the counter. Movie posters run throughout the store. Behind the counter are rankings written up on white boards and chalkboards: “Best Reviewed New Releases,” “Last Week’s Top Rentals.”

Salsa music is now playing as Ash shows me around. The first place he takes me to is the horror section. “I never watched this one, but my favorite one is probably The Evil Dead because my name is Ash.” Ash is the name of the main character of that film. Ash then leads me to the kids’ section. “I’m here a lot,” says Ash. He pulls out a few of his favorites: Garfield, Charlie Brown, G-Force. Ash points to a Harry Potter movie, questioning why it was in the kids section. We then start to talk about Harry Potter. “I have two of the books, but I didn’t read them because I don’t like books with no pictures,” states Ash.

We walk back to the counter. Before arriving, Ash quickly turns around and says, “Oh, one more thing, there are 14,000 movies here!”

Gomez chuckles. “I didn’t know he knew how many movies we had. He is correct.”

“You told me!”

“I know Ash! You have such a good memory, much better than mine.”

Ash goes to color near the back entrance. Gomez rushes over to the phone and answers. On the other line is a representative from The Ardmore Initiative, a business development bureau that provided Gomez with a job creation grant when he opened Viva Video.

Three years later, and Gomez is still keeping the place running. He is at the store Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Sundays from 2 p.m. to 10.p.m. The store is open from 11a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. When Gomez is not working, his two partners in crime, Dan and Bryan, are at the store.

Continue reading →

The Little Creperie That Could

Posted on by

A husband and wife team work to make their small shop a success

By Kelsey Peart

Nestled in the corner of a half-residential, half-commercial cul-de-sac in the town of Wayne, Crêperie Béchamel serves up delicious and healthy crêpes.

The husband-and-wife team of Patrick and Jennifer Yasaitis work hard behind the counter, pumping out dozens of crêpes for hungry customers.

The small shop situated at the top of Louella Court. is a testament to the couple’s love for cooking and baking, letting Jennifer show off her skills as a pastry chef.

Jennifer and Patrick Yasaitis

Jennifer and Patrick Yasaitis

Although, the sweet crêpes are not their only specialty. The menu is divided into selections like breakfast, savory, kid friendly, dessert and classic sweet crêpes.

Patrick, of Bucks County, met Jennifer, of Delaware County, through mutual friends, “she was a friend-of-a-friend,” he says.

Their first date was at a crêperie in Philadelphia, which was–and still is–Patrick’s favorite food.

Now residing in Chesterbrook, not far from their crêperie, he says that they opened Crêperie Béchamel because “there weren’t a lot of places in the area where we could eat crepes the way we wanted.”

Jennifer had grown up and lived in Wayne so it feels “close to home. It’s our neighborhood.”

The crêperie has been open for three-and-a- half years, but “it hasn’t changed too, too much,” says Patrick. “You know, we are just trying to make things a little bit better. You get a little busier every day, every month. We have a lot of regulars we see a lot of the time, which is great. We improve as we can.”

 Saturday busyness

On Saturdays, Crêperie Béchamel is packed. The tables are full and Jennifer’s actions are visible behind a short, glass divider, all the customers watch as they share gossip, catch up and chat.

Jennifer works methodically, pouring batter onto the crêpe pans. She pours a large dollop in the center, spreads it evenly and waits. Flips the crêpe with a thin, long spatula and waits.

In the back, less visible, Patrick cooks the ingredients that will be folded into the crêpes. From the veggies to the meats, he prepares the gooey fillings and delivers them in silver bowls to Jennifer.

Continue reading →

Four Trends

Posted on by

Where do asexuals fit into the gay culture?  Theresa Diffendahl writes about asexuals at Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore.

Kelsey Peart reveals that canning isn’t just something your grandmother did. It is  making a come back among Millennials.

Ava Hawkinson writes about the intrusion of ghosts and things that go bump into the night into selfies.

It may be hard to believe, but beer is less popular on college campuses these days. Ryan Gooding explains why.  Gooding also offers a profile of a brewer who specializes in making the ancient libation called mead..

 

A is for Asexual

Posted on by

Asexuals search for a place in gay culture

By Theresa Diffendal

The “A” in the acronym LGBTQIA+ that is used as an umbrella term for the queer community as a whole is thought by many to stand for allies. In fact, it represents a group with growing visibility: the asexual community.

Asexuality, defined as a lack of sexual attraction to other people, in conjunction with aromanticism, which a lack of romantic attraction to other people, exist on the aromantic/asexual, or aro/ace, spectrum.

The spectrum serves to show the degree to which people feel sexual or romantic attraction, with allosexual — those who experience sexual attraction on a regular basis, — at the opposite end of asexuality. Those who fall in between allo- and asexual on the spectrum often refer to themselves as “demi” or “gray” sexual or romantic.

Asexual group at 2011 San Francisco parade

Asexual group at 2011 San Francisco parade

However even as the queer community seeks to be all-inclusive and establish “safe spaces,” or places those with marginalized gender or sexual orientations can feel included, a rift has formed over the issue of hyper-sexuality.

Many queer-exclusive spaces have a reputation of being hyper-sexualized, such as Pride Parades, bathhouses, and gay bars. Many of these scenes also exclude members of the very community they are supposed to serve because they are only accessible to those over 21.

The increasing visibility of asexuality has many queer groups trying to find ways to adapt to accommodate those who do not engage in or are made uncomfortable by sexual activity.

The origination of the term asexuality as it refers to sexual orientation can be attributed to Michael Storms who, in 1979, put forth a model of sexuality similar to the aro/ace spectrum discussed above. The Kinsey Scale – a scale which rates sexual orientation from strictly heterosexual to strictly homosexual – also added the category “X” in its Kinsey Reports as early as 1948 to represent those who reported little to no sexual attraction.

Role of social media

Despite the early originations however, AVEN (the Asexual Visibility and Education Network) which focuses on issues related to asexuality, states that the first group for asexuals did not appear until October of 2000 in the form of a Yahoo group called “Haven for the Human Amoeba.”

Asexuality — and marginalized orientations in general — have often found acceptance and communities on the internet. Tumblr has a number of blogs whose purpose is to provide information about or help people come to terms with asexuality, such as asexual research.

Continue reading →

Yes, We Can!

Posted on by

Canning food at home makes comeback

By Kelsey Peart                                                                                                        

Mina Harker, ‘15, is finishing up her degree this semester but something she has found during her time at Bryn Mawr will stay with her after she leaves.

Harker discovered her love for canning while juggling a knack for gardening and a tight, student budget.

Canning“There’s something magical about opening a can up in the winter and reliving memories from the summer,” she says, motioning towards her kitchen cabinet that houses her various canned creations.

The Wall Street Journal credits “the worst recession in decades and a trend towards healthier foods” as the main influences towards self-sustainability. Canning is the next logical step for an avid gardener.

Reasons to can include cost-efficiency, better taste, year-round organic produce availability, and the pure joy that comes with “a mini-time capsule,” as Harker describes it.

Although there is not a lot of hard data available about canning, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence: canning-related cookbooks and workshops are popping up all over the country.

There is one solid statistic that is telling. Ball Corporation, a name synonymous with the Mason jar, has seen a 60 percent rise in stocks over the past three years,due mostly to an increase in sales.

2014 has been one of the most successful years for Ball Corp. According to its annual report, it has seen a 5.5% increase in net sales from 2013, every year’s sales proving to be better than the last.

Sales up

Ad Age reveals that Ball Corp.’s sales were mostly flat throughout the ’90s, so this rise in popularity is attributed to the millennials. Ball Corp. has begun targeting the younger generations as a result.

Continue reading →