Two pieces by students who traveled off campus to find a story.
Ariel Kraakman, whose beat was public art, has a piece on the tradition of Christmas decorating the streets and rowhouses of South Philadelphia.
Ivy Gray-Klein, who covers the arts, has a story about the tremendous success of the music web site Bandcamp, which links musicians with new audiences.
Rowhouses decorated with elaborate displays of Christmas lights mark the holiday
By Ariel Kraakman
South Philadelphians love their holiday decorations so much they would take them to the grave. Literally, as in the case of Mary Yanetti.
Yanetti’s grandson, Jason Douglas, owner and teacher of Dancedelphia on the corner of 11th Street and Snyder Avenue, recently held a Christmas-themed funeral for his grandmother, founder of the dance studio.
Douglas describes it one Friday night in December as he sweeps his studio. To him, decking the halls in honor of Mary Yanetti was the obvious thing to do.
“She passed before Christmas, which was her favorite holiday to decorate for,” he says.
The event was festive, as Yanetti had hoped it would be. Poinsettias led the way into the room, which was filled with
A South Philadelphia Home at Christmas
Christmas trees “for the grandkids.” Her casket lay below a wooden beam wrapped in pine. Yanetti herself wore electronically lit Christmas earrings, which flashed even as the family closed the casket for the last time. People left the viewing to retrieve family members, so they wouldn’t miss out on the festivity.
The family also jumped out of their cars to perform the Mummers strut before entering the funeral parlor.
Mary “Grandmom” Yanetti had grown up at 7th and Federal Streets, which Douglas describes as “borderline Italian…by the projects; it was mixed…Hispanic, African American, Italians, a little bit of everything.”
Every holiday season she had strung lines of lights and decorations in her studio to please her little dancers, as Douglas does today.
Dancedelphia’s holiday lights twinkle welcomingly at all who pass by. The building’s fence and the trees behind it are luminous this time of year; garnered in white lights and classic red bows. At the side of the building, a colorful electric “Little Drummer Boy” decoration blinks on and off.
There are old-fashioned looking decorations too, like the cast iron children in Christmas hats climbing a cast-iron ladder. Inside the studio, a television broadcasts cartoons. At the end of the fence outside, in a doghouse-sized manger decked in electric stars, wooden figures of Mary and Joseph pray quietly over Jesus. On this night, miniscule red laser dots dance over a stack of pizza boxes on the front stairs, which are outlined in rope lights, movie theater-style.
That the decorations have strong Christian roots, like most in South Philadelphia, seems not to bother the many Philadelphians of all religions and backgrounds who send their children to Douglas’ studio for lessons. In fact, Douglas says, the studio is so diverse that a reality show was proposed there.
He had declined the offer.
“It might get me more customers but it would ruin my studio,” he explained. “What we are. We’re Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a diverse city, and you have it here.”
About the decorations, Douglas adds, “we see a lot of kids having a lot of joy in them, and my grandparents always did it because they wanted people to walk by and take pictures and have fun, and we’re keeping up with the tradition.”
South Philadelphia has changed since its older residents were young. Known then as a predominantly Italian-American neighborhood, it is becoming home to people of a variety of backgrounds, including a sizeable Mexican population. As the neighborhood’s identity shifts, one thing remains constant: residents’ love of extravagant holiday decorations. What started as an Italian neighborhood tradition is becoming a South Philadelphia hallmark.
The website is changing the way people buy and listen to music.
By Ivy Gray-Klein
The online music market has been revolutionized — and not by a product prefixed with the letter “i’.
Bandcamp.com has streamlined the way music is heard, shared, and bought on the Internet. With free music streaming, easy-to-access artist information, and several purchase options, the site is a one-stop destination for critics and casual listeners alike.
“I like Bandcamp because it’s simple to use and almost any active band has music uploaded,” said Alex Fryer, a frequent
visitor to the site. “I like listening to full albums and it makes that very easy to do.”
Unlike popular streaming sites Pandora and Spotify, Bandcamp listeners don’t have to pay a monthly fee to hear ad-free music.
You won’t find flashy background ads either. Bandcamp’s strength is in its simplicity. This minimalism places focus where it should be: on the music.
Bandcamp’s ad-free music library is also accessible on mobile devices for easy, on-the-go listening.
With a catalog of five million songs and counting, Bandcamp has become a premier outlet to discover new artists.
“It’s really easy to browse Bandcamp to find new music,” said Dan Colanduno of New Jersey band Slow Animal. “We’ve gotten e-mails from people who said they found us by randomly cruising the site.”
Like Twitter, Bandcamp artists can create tags to describe their albums. Visitors can use tags like “folk” or “Philadelphia” to find music.
Bandcamp provides a simple but successful option for artists to connect directly with their audience.
“I remember when we first started playing shows, we would get asked if we had a Bandcamp for people to listen to our music,” said Lucia Arias of New York band Turnip King. “I couldn’t play a show or go to one without hearing that word.”
Though created in 2008, the past couple years have marked significant growth for the site.
“Because it is so simple to use, I rest assured knowing that it is accessible to everyone,” said Arias. “I know there isn’t a barrier between the work that we’re putting out and the people that want to hear our music.”
The artist pages are designed with the listener in mind.
“I really enjoy the fact that pages are sectioned off into albums,” said Daniel del Alcazar, a talent booker for Haverford College’s concert series. “I can check out what a band’s most current sound is while still checking out what their early stuff is. This will give me a good idea of what a band will play during a set.”
Bandcamp has even inspired a series of blogs. Sites like Metalbandcamp.com and Bandcamplike.com highlight independent artists discovered on Bandcamp.
“I think a lot of listeners are finding their way to Bandcamp because of its popularity among blogs,” said Colanduno. “When blogs write about us, they almost always include our Bandcamp link.”
The user-friendly platform has also achieved a previously unthinkable feat: successfully converting pirates to buyers.
Bandcamp’s data revealed that many visitors originally searched for free downloads before coming to the site and paying for music.
Since 2008, Bandcamp cites total artist revenue at over $28 million.
Because artists can set their own prices, tracks are cheaper than on price-regulated stores like iTunes. This encourages visitors to buy full albums instead of a song or two.
On average, the market outsells albums to tracks 16-to-1. Bandcamp sells them 5-to-1.
It took 10 years and 230 drafts for Dan Torday to create his novella.
By Yara Jishi
The novella The Sensualist is set in Pikesville, a Baltimore suburb where writer Daniel Torday spent his high school years. Set in the 1990’s, the novella takes readers into the realm of fiction that tackles late adolescence through the character of Samuel Gerson.
The 175-page novella is the first for Torday, who is director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College in suburban Philadelphia.
The Sensualisttells the story of Gerson’s breaking out of the small tight-knit Jewish community where he spent his whole
Dan Torday
life. Ready to quit the baseball team and recently befriending Dmitri Abravomich Zilber, a Russian, Jewish immigrant who is infatuated with the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Samuel’s world begins to change.
When his grandfather commits suicide, Gerson begins to spend more time with Dmitri and his sister Yelizaveta, fueling a series of violent and disturbing events. This evocative coming-of-age story reminds readers of the struggles of late adolescence and the evolving nature of friendship.
Behind the glossy, light-blue finished copies of The Sensualist are 10 years of writing, drafting, researching, and editing. It took Torday 230 drafts before he felt that it was finished to his satisfaction.
The tale of Torday and his process behind writing The Sensualist offer not only a close look at what it takes to get published, but also insights into the creative process and the steps it takes to make a mark on the literary world.
In its raw and truthful take on adolescence, The Sensualist showcases the intertwining of fiction and non-fiction, and the struggles and triumphs that occur in attempt to say something lasting and real about human relationships.
Getting the Idea
Readers often wonder how much of the writer is present in what they write.
Do the main characters speak closely to the writer, or not at all? Do writers attempt to disconnect themselves from the world of fiction they create, or place themselves in it?
For Torday, it’s a bit of both. Coming up with the idea for The Sensualist was a combination of his upbringing, heritage and literary interest.
Torday’s upbringing was a different from Samuel Gerson’s. Torday spent most of his younger years in Boston, where his mother is from. After living in the suburbs of Boston for several years, Torday and his family moved to Baltimore, where he spent his high school years.
“I felt like an outsider there,” Torday said, “it was a tight-knit, but closed community in a lot of ways.”
Torday constructed Gerson’s character to be an outsider, to be a character who didn’t know where he fit amongst friends and the tight-knit community he was born into. Gerson, literally meaning alien or outsider in Hebrew, grapples with his identity and sense of belonging throughout the novella.
“There were periods where I had to think of him like me, and periods where I had to think of him differently,” Torday said, speaking to the versatility in constructing characters, and the ways they end up being a compilation of the writer and his experience and of other people he has met. Continue reading
A lapsed Catholic and one-time atheist’s journey to Buddhism
By Emily Kluver
8:00 a.m. Sunday, December 9
Chris Geissler lets his door shut quietly behind him as he walks out into the dark hallway. He is careful not to wake any of his hall mates as he heads down the stairs and out the door into the cold morning mist.
The world is silent. And though he professes to be tired, everything he does is done with energy. He walks quickly, talks quickly, thinks quickly. Everything is done quickly, in great contrast with the languid quality of morning.
He sits down on a bench at the train station and waits. By 8:15 a.m. the train arrives and Geissler escapes SwarthmoreCollege’s sleeping campus, bound for the Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia.
Geissler, a 22-year-old senior at Swarthmore College, was not raised in the Buddhist faith tradition. The New Jersey native
The Buddha
was not technically raised in any religion at all.
His mother, raised Catholic, has never liked religion and tends to stay away. Geissler describes his father, raised Episcopalian, as someone who has a vague belief in God but does not think about it much.
“I was baptized Catholic,” Geissler says. “When I was born my mother was vaguely afraid of limbo and my grandmother on that side wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
As a child, Geissler attended what he affectionately calls, “The Hippie School,” until middle school when, against his parents’ wishes, he decided to attend a Catholic School for grades seven through 12.
Growing up, Geissler knew very little about religion. He says, “When I was about to start the Catholic school, I finally realized, wait a minute. People actually believe this stuff? On a factual level?”
Geissler jokes that his early moral instruction was rooted in Thomas the tank engine. “That was my first religion,” he says, only half in jest.
4 p.m. Wednesday, December 5
Geissler tries his hand at explaining Buddhism. He gets progressively more animated as he fills the blackboard in an empty classroom with strange terms like Gelugpa, Nyingma, and Padmasambhava.
“In tantric practice you visualize yourself as the deity, in whatever context, you are the deity,” Geissler says, crouching on a desk chair and gesturing enthusiastically. “This is seen as extremely efficacious because you are taking the goal as the path, but it is actually very dangerous because if you aren’t ready for it or you do it wrong, this is something that will cause huge inflation of ego and pride.”
As the lesson gets more and more complicated, Geissler’s speed increases as though these teachings were second nature.
But Buddhism is complicated, especially for people in the West who only get glimpses of what Buddhism is and how it is practiced.
Geissler tries to get down to the basics. He explains that Buddhism was founded based on the teachings of the original Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, who is believed to have lived and taught sometime around the 5th century B.C.
Tibetan Buddhism is a sect of Buddhism that is known in the West due to the prominence of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of all Tibetan Buddhists. The majority of people practicing this particular branch of Buddhism live in Tibet, India, Nepal and Bhutan.
Chris Geissler
Geissler’s personal journey with Buddhism began around the middle of high school when he decided that he needed something to attach himself to.
“I was jealous of these folks who had this connection, this group identification,” says Geissler.
But at the time, he found the idea of following God preposterous and identification with atheism purposeless. That’s when he started going to the Ethical Culture Society Center near his home in Maplewood, N.J. The group was founded on a religion of ethics. Geissler appreciated that they had a congregation, even if he was the youngest member by several decades.
As time went on, Geissler began reading about Buddhism. His religious development was influenced in large part by two Buddhists, a massage therapist and a psychotherapist, who were members of the Ethical Culture Society.
“In Catholic school, I came in an atheist and left a Buddhist,” Geissler says smiling. “I think a lot of my interest in religion as a practitioner is a result of growing up in dialogue with the Catholic Church.”
8:50 a.m. Sunday December 9
As he gets off the train, Geissler checks his watch. Reading Terminal market will not be open for another 10 minutes so he takes a seat at his bench, the one he always waits at before he grabs breakfast.
The meal does not vary much. He gets his usual bagel with cream cheese and this week he stops for a coffee because he was up past 2 a.m. the previous night and does not want to fall asleep during meditation.
There is plenty of time before services start at 10 a.m. so he sits and eats and talks about the bagel place he used to frequent. The place had brought in H&H Bagels from New York until the company closed while he was studying abroad in India the previous semester.
Creating a computer catalogue of Haverford College’s historic Arboretum
By Eleanor Durfee
It was a warm day in early December, and Mike Startup, one of the Haverford College Arboretum’s three horticulturalists, was almost done for the day. First, though, he had to plant several new dogwood trees—and then input them into a computer program.
The new technology, which will help Startup and his colleagues to catalogue the many plant species and ages, is a far cry from the olden days of the Arboretum, which was founded in 1834.
Nature Trail at Haverford's Arboretum
tie the old and new together.
Now, the Haverford Arboretum’s new management, led by the plant curator Martha Van Artsdalen, is attempting to bring the Arboretum into the 21st century, a task that involves a complete computer inventory of it’s plants and trees. The technology represents the latest in landcape management. Still, many aspects of the work haven’t changed since the college started.
Startup pushes away the old roots from the planted tree, snipped off several hours earlier, and gently pours a jug of water over the mound of earth at its base. After covering this with fallen leaves, he pulls a metal tag out of his pocket, with the name of the species pressed into the metal.
“The white tags they come with just look cheap,” Startup explained. The new tags are made by the arboretum workers and lovingly tied around the young trunks, loose enough so that they won’t choke, waiting for the professional plaques that label all of the older trees on campus.
Startup used to work for Longwood Gardens, a botanical garden about 30 miles southwest of the College in Kennet Square, Pa. Longwood is well-known for its jaw-dropping cultivated gardens, which require immense amounts of precision and attention to detail from their teams of designers and horticulturalists.
Now, Startup has a different focus.
Describing Haverford’s atmosphere as “relaxed”, he summed up a year’s work in humble terms. Most of his work involves caring for the campus’s trees, many of which are rare or state champions, and tending to its many gardens. He and the other horticulturalists are also deeply involved in the reimagining the grounds, with each member responsible for a certain area of campus. Startup was deeply involved in the design of athletic center’s gardens. His favorite tree, a rare pine from Australia, sits near there.
Three new entries on diverse topics.
Ava Cotlowitz, whose beat is art, writes how technology is changing making of art and the art world in new and profound ways.
Alicia Ramirez, who covers technology in education, writes about the web programs that let yoou post your work — and display it to the world. Her piece is called Forevemore.
Technology is changing the way we make and display art
By Ava Cotlowitz
For Gladwyn Elementary School Kindergarteners, art class is a highly anticipated activity. Students aged five and six rush into the brightly lit classroom and take their seats around square tables fit for five. As the chatter of children elevates, Gladwyn art teacher Rebecca Wolfe returns from a nearby pantry with stacks of flat, black, iPads.
“Once you have your iPad in front of you, please turn it on and go directly to the Brushes application,” said Wolfe.
All around the room, miniature fingers elegantly swiped, poked, and prodded the angular tablets that lay flat on their tables like paper.
“Today you are going to be painting a scene that you experience in the winter,” Wolfe said, “Remember that once you are
An iPad Portrait of David Hockney
finished please raise your hand and we will go print out your picture.”
At once, a frenzy of motion swept over the room as fingers, hands, and fingertips moved rapidly about the iPads’ surfaces.
With an instantaneous tap of the screen, any student’s drawing tool, color, or erasure could be substituted.
Kasey, 5 sat quietly among his table of four classmates, concentrating on his current creation. Using the tip of his pinky finger, Kasey speckled his digital canvas with a multitude of blue dots.
“I’m making snow, and that’s me in the snow, and that’s a snowman,” Kasey said, pointing to the different elements of his painting.
When asked what his favorite thing about making art on the iPad was, Kasey said,
“I like that I can fix when I mess up and I like all the colors – there’s so may to choose!”
Of course, Kasey isn’t the only artist to share this sentiment.
British pop-artist David Hockney, 75, also uses Apple iPad’s Brushes application to create touch screen masterpieces.
Hockney’s iPaintings were even the subject of his 2011 art exhibition ‘‘David Hockney: Fleurs Fraîches’,” featured on gallery walls lined with iPads and iPhones.
“It took me awhile to realize it’s quite a serious tool you can use,” Hockney said, according to The New York Times, “It’s like an endless piece of paper that perfectly fitted the feeling I had that painting should be big.”
Within this age of technology, the digitized world has undoubtedly informed and altered the classical modes of art making. The traditional platforms of canvas and paper can now be substituted for Adobe Photoshop and Apple’s Brushes Application.
And the concept of fine art as high art, unattainable by the regular folks, has been usurped by democratizing online art databases and art sharing sites like Flickr, Instagram, Art.sy, and QR Codes.
Now, fine art is not just an experience reserved for the museum or gallery, but is one that is only one click away.
Flickr is the most straightforward platform for exhibiting and sharing art online: upload artwork, leave and receive comments. According to Yahoo, since it started up in 2004, Flickr had a total of 51 million registered members and 80 million unique visitors in 2011.
Its users benefit from the digital gallery-friendly template by uploading artwork onto their photostream and categorizing their art into sets or collections, similar to a chronicle of exhibitions.
Thanks to the web, everyone now has a permanent record that all can see
By Alicia Ramirez
Finding eternity is possible. Just look yourself up online.
Among the first things that come up when you type your name on a search engine are the links to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages, if you have any of them. In a society where our information is currently at everyone’s disposal, students at Bryn Mawr College are becoming more cautious about what is published about them online.
Added to the growing list of things of things must now worry about is having their class work visible to the online world.
Not too long ago, most courses taken by Bryn Mawr students were limited to classroom discussions typically inside a designated room of a particular building. Written assignments were exclusively for a professor to critique and grade. Now with the Internet as the tool of choice, the norm for an effective classroom dynamic has changed.
Class discussions can continue online after class is dismissed using such programs as Moodle, widely used by students and teachers
Anne Dalke of Bryn Mawr
With Moodle, students can engage in discussions with other class members. They can access the materials for a specific class and post questions related to what was
covered and everyone enrolled in the class, including the professor, can read and comment on them.
Senior Lena Blount is open to submitting work online but the privacy settings of one of her class’ Moodle page make her slightly anxious.
“That is a question that has come up in my senior seminar in terms of posting drafts of our theses and posting our theses on Moodle and I personally don’t like that,” Blount said. “I wish that they (professors) would change the privacy settings so that we could never see who has turned in what and who hasn’t.
Blount said it contributed to the stress for some students who go to Moodle and find that they haven’t turned an assignment while everyone else has or someone turned in their draft and it was pages longer than theirs.
“In some ways it has been really problematic in terms of creating this competition and this anxiety between students,” she said. “I think there is probably just ways to change the privacy settings where students can still submit work online but not like be constantly comparing and judging themselves against their peers.”
Moodle is open to members of a class; Serendip Studio is open to the world.
Serendip Studio, formerly known as Serendip, is website where students and teachers can engage in discussions about different academic interests and post their work.
Bryn Mawr English Professor Anne Dalke’s favorite feature on Serendip Studio is its openness. In an email she described it as a “digital ecosystem,” open, on the web, available to be read by the world (not a closed corner of information exchanged by an insular group).
“I think it is a great place for students to practice being ‘public intellectuals,'” Dalke added, “speaking out loud about topics of interest to them as they are learning about them, writing papers that are “windows” for others interested in these issues, rather than as private demonstrations of competence to a professor.” Continue reading
Is talk about religion taboo at Bryn Mawr, Haverford & Swarthmore?
By Emily Kluver
Bryn Mawr College prides itself on having a diverse and tolerant student body. But to Maryam Elarbi, a sophomore who is Muslim, the college does not offer her an accepting environment.
“I don’t get to have an opinion that doesn’t agree with them,” the 20-year-old says as she looks around at students milling 
around Haffner dining hall at the suburban Philadelphia school. “Religion is not a welcome topic. It doesn’t go along with the general agenda.”
While students are happy to talk about liberal topics centered on gender and sexuality, Elarbi siad she finds that open discourse on religion is rare and even frowned upon in different social groups.
“You become this ‘other’ when you’re more conservative at all on social or religious things,” Elarbi says, then laughs and shakes her head. “When I do something religious, it’s in its own little bubble, not integrated into campus life.”
As a practicing Muslim, Elarbi does not participate in the party scene on- or off-campus. “I feel like I’ve become very disconnected from the Bryn Mawr community because on a social level, I’m not there with everyone else,” she says.
The Bryn Mawr community is not the only school where students who practice their faith find this gap in acceptance of religion. Students at Swarthmore College and Haverford College see many of the same problems.
Carolyn Anderson, 21, a Presbyterian at Swarthmore says that while she feels comfortable talking to her close friends about religion, not all situations offer the same openness.
“I think the only situations I have been uncomfortable being open about my beliefs were in classes– religion for instance,” the junior says. “It’s very difficult to study your own religion in class because you have to deal with hostile reactions from others about things that are very dear to you.”
Twenty-year-old Robert Homan, a junior at Haverford and practicing Catholic, echoes Anderson’s feelings.
“With those I know well, it’s easier to talk about religion,” Homan says. “That said, in a more public setting it could become difficult. I wouldn’t be as likely to say something.”
Twenty-two-year-old Ben Goossen, a Mennonite at Swarthmore, wishes that people would talk more about their different beliefs.
“No one has ever been opposed to me at least after having a conversation with me,” says the senior,who notes that students often have problems with religion when they assume it connects directly to conservative politics.
Religious = Conservative
Pressures to conform in college are avoided by some students when they choose to go to a religious institution. But while the experience of students at religious colleges differs in the openness of religion, the experience is far from perfect.
Homan sometimes considers what his experience would look like at a religiously affiliated school.
“Perhaps there would have been more of a community around religious life and that could have helped me grow in faith and such,” he says and quickly dismisses the idea. “I wouldn’t trade Haverford for anything, and my experience being religious here has been great even if it had been challenging at times.”
Homan and Anderson have mixed feelings about the openness of students at their respective schools. And both have suggestions on how the attitude toward religion on campus could be improved.
Homan says: “There could perhaps be more willingness to invite religious speakers to campus and to have more dialogues about religion in general, just as one would about other issues like race or class.”
Anderson feels that the individual religious opportunities at Swarthmore are sufficient, but she says, “I would like to see more interfaith events and discussions, and I’d like to see the faith groups on campus having dialogues with the campus community on hard issues as well.”
Professor of Religion at Swarthmore, Steven Hopkins, says that he would like to see the college opening up a religious space open to all students of all faith traditions. He notes that being religious at college can be challenging because students who are confused in their beliefs have nowhere to go to openly question and explore religion.
“Being religious at Swarthmore is difficult because it is not seen as part of the skepticism or spirit of inquiry,” Hopkins says. “I don’t teach that way. I encourage intellectual as well as spiritual journeys.”
Lack of balance
Joyce Tompkins, an independently funded interfaith advisor at Swarthmore, feels that the college has a long way to go in providing avenues for students interested in exploring faith.
Tompkins says, “I think it would be helpful to have an official office of religious and spiritual life because students who are interested in exploring religious practice or spirituality in general really have nowhere to go.”
Tompkins acknowledges that the past eight years at Swarthmore have produced some positive growth toward encouraging religious exploration.
“The Dean’s staff are mostly supportive of my work and seem to appreciate that religion is important to many students,” Tompkins says. “Also, admissions has initiated conversations with me about how to attract and support religiously affiliated students.”
It can be challenging for unaffiliated schools to find ways to facilitate religious exploration on campus, but tolerance is not a one-sided goal.
Students like Maryam Elarbi feel that the college experience focuses so much on being accepting of ideas associated with liberal politics that it shuts down any dialogue about religion, which creates barriers between students. She asks the question, is the extreme tolerance of one group worth the exclusion of another?
“It’s a problem when it becomes about right and wrong, not different,” Elarbi says. “There’s not a balance of views.”