Tag Archives: English House Gazette

Please Pass the Pickled Pepper

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On the forefront of fermentation in Philadelphia

 

By Sasha Rogelberg

At Martha, a bar and restaurant in Fishtown, Philadelphia, a pickle is more than just a cucumber wading in a salty brine.

The winner of Philadelphia Magazine’s Best Pickle last year, Martha has lots of fermented fare, including olives marinated in pickled peppers and preserved lemons, local cheese plates and charcuteries, and pickle boats with whatever vegetables are in season, from beans to broccoli to radishes. They even have a sandwich made up of almost entirely fermented foods called the “Vegan Jawn,” which is filled with a carrot terrine, consisting of fermented, pureed, and cooked carrots set with agar that gives it the consistency of a deli meat, fermented radish, and dried, miso-cured eggplant.

Though unique in their ingenuity for the uses of fermentation and pickling, Martha is not the only Philadelphia establishment with a fiending for fermentation.  Local breweries like Fermentary Form, bakeries like Mighty Bread Company, and small distilleries across the city, are all fermenting foods and drinks for the public.

In fact, the process of fermentation — or the growth of healthy bacteria on foods to preserve and give them their funky, sour notes — has grown in popularity all over the country, mostly thanks for the slow food or “locavore” movement putting an emphasis on eating local foods, instead of buying from huge industrial companies.

Mike Landers, who does much of Martha’s fermentation, explained that people ferment and eat fermented foods for reasons ranging from the food being healthier, easier to store, and just as a way of using up food that would have gone to waste.

“Cooking makes things more digestible, but fermenting make food digestible and keeps more nutrients,” he said.

Landers, however, said that food becoming healthier through the pickling process was just a “happy accident.”  He enjoys fermented foods because the process of developing bacteria on the outsides of vegetables and cheeses extracts deep and complex flavors that can’t be created with other cooking techniques.

Despite now being popular and more common in restaurants and small-batch breweries, fermentation is nothing new.  Rather, it’s an activity that’s very old, but one that big corporations have lost interest in, as it takes time and resources that may only be available seasonally.

Ethan Tripp, the founder of Fermentary Form, started his business trying to resurrect an art he believes is now scarce.

The crowd at Fermentary Form

Tripp explained that back in the 1700s before people understood that there were multiple microbes, or the bacteria that is responsible for foods fermenting, or a “microbial world,” people would replicate the food preparation practices that worked for them.

This was how beer and wine were created, and after people realized one could consume spoiled beer and wine in the form of vinegar, this is how vinegar was created and popularized as well. Continue reading →

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

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How Rom-Coms made a Com-back on Netflix summer 

By Amana Abdurrezak

“As you wish.” – Westley, The Princess Bride

And don’t forget…I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.” – Anna Scott, Notting Hill

Whether your favorite line from a romantic comedy came from 1987’s The Princess Bride or 1999’s Notting Hill, there’s no denying that the heyday of romantic comedies has passed. Behemoths like Marvel and Disney have figured out the formula to dominate every month of the year, leaving little room for romantic comedies to make a splash at the box office.

And that’s where Netflix comes in.

Netflix, the streaming service with approximately 137 million worldwide subscribers, hoped to expand its collection of original movies in 2018 with the “Summer of Love”, its initiative to revive the rom-com genre. Subscribers were treated to movies like “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” and “Set it Up”, a story about two twenty-somethings in New York City trying to trick their bosses into falling in love.

All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

 

Of the six original movies that were released throughout the summer, “Set it Up” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” quickly became fan favorites. At Bryn Mawr College, a women’s college in the suburbs of Philadelphia, many students heard about Netflix’s newer rom-coms through word of mouth.

“A friend of mine told me about ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’ during the summer,” said junior Valeria Aguilera.

In the movie adapted from Jenny Han’s book with the same title, the story follows high schooler Lara Jean Covey after five of her love letters are accidentally mailed to her past and present crushes.

After hearing about the plot, Aguilera was hooked and searched for it on Netflix. “It hadn’t been released yet, but I always had it in the back of my mind,” she said, “When some people on Facebook mentioned that it was finally released, I watched it.”

Though many heard about Netflix’s Summer of Love lineup when meeting up with friends, more heard about it online.

“Netflix sent notifications, but I also saw those movies on the ‘Movies that Are Trending Now’ list on Netflix,” said senior Ana Meta, “Everyone kept talking about it on Buzzfeed too.”

Much of the praise that “Set it Up” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” received from the media and students at Bryn Mawr stemmed from how the topic of love was tackled.

For Meta, movies like “Set it Up” weren’t revolutionary, but they were less problematic. “They still have a lot of the old elements and tropes…they’ve kept some of the old fuzzy feelings.” said Meta.

“But they’ve incorporated new faces. You tell that it’s 2018,” emphasized Meta.

In “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”, Aguilera appreciated the diversity of the cast and the presentation of a different kind of family. The movie showcases a Korean-American family where the three sisters are half Korean and half white. Continue reading →

Conquering Stress

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One Haverford student uses what’s called cognitive reappraisal

 By Ryan Dukarm

Heather Robinson may be stressed, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her.

The easy going and energetic Haverford College senior from the Boston area has dealt with her fair share of stress as a college student. However, she credits a new technique she learned in her Stress and Coping class to helping alleviate some of her worry in her final year at Haverford.

“It’s called cognitive reappraisal. It’s part of cognitive behavioral therapy” said Robinson, a Psychology major and Neuroscience and Dance double minor, “but it’s more of an easier everyday technique that you can do.”

“I had a little journal and whenever I had these negative thoughts I would write down the situation and what was happening when I had this thought, my mood during it, the thought itself and then whether or not the thought was helpful or accurate.”

Many of Robinson’s stressors were about the amount of responsibilities she balanced, both academically and other wise. When she would go through her responsibilities for

Heather Robinson

the day, things that she enjoyed and loved began to feel like chores among all the other obligations she had. That led to negative feelings around things she enjoyed.

“Say, I have Bounce rehearsal later today” Robinson said, giving an example of a potential area for cognitive reappraisal by referring to her hip hop dance group Bounce, a group Robinson has been in all four years of college, “I really don’t want to go, I’m so tired, I’m so exhausted, I just want to go back to bed. But thinking about it like that meant that I was dreading it instead of looking forward to seeing my friends.”

Cognitive reappraisal has helped Robinson change her outlook on things she can’t change her commitment to. She loves dancing, so keeping those negative thoughts in a notebook where she can analyze whether they are helpful or not allows her to put a more positive spin on stressors in her life and continue to enjoy her many obligations.

Robinson went on to say that as a senior her stress has developed into stress about managing her responsibilities and worrying about her future. As a first year, she was often worried “about the high school to college transition.” Continue reading →

Tending to Haverfarm

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Haverford College has a farm — yes, a farm — on its campus.

By Sally Pearson

Wandering between beds of produce–carrots sprouting in one bed, spinach in the next—Ellis Maxwell, my tour guide for the afternoon, identified plants as we walked. The spinach under the tarp here was recently planted and would grow quickly. The onions here would grow over the winter and could be harvested in early spring. These rows had already been harvested so the green ground cover was revitalizing the soil.

This day in late October the Haverford junior wandered in black sweatpants and a black hoodie. He was comfortable on the farm, a year-round farming and educational space on the Main Line campus.

The Lavender plants were hiding under a white cloth. Maxwell crouched down and pulled up the cloth and bent off a muted green stem to smell.

Many of his favorite plants seemed to be those with tea making potential. He said he liked trying different combinations of herbs in his tea. He taught himself to make his own. Now, he admitted, he makes it almost every day.

Outside the fence of the garden, Maxwell picked a sprig of Chocolate mint, a brown and green marbled plant growing along the ground near the outside fence and handed it to me, it could have been mistaken for a weed to a less experienced eye. It can also be used for making tea, he said. He rubbed his own stem between his fingers. “Or I just eat it” he smiled, and chewed his bit of chocolate mint.

Ellis Maxwell strikes a comic pose

Haverfarm was quiet that afternoon. It was just Maxwell, me, the Farm Fellow who was working that day, and the occasional dog walker taking a detour from Haverford College’s nature trail.

These walkers remind you of your close proximity to the rest of the world. A neighborhood was behind a few lines of trees, a road was within calling distance, and Center City Philadelphia was nine miles from the secluded community garden where we stood. Haverfarm’s existence is a bit unexpected.  Maxwell, too, is full of the unexpected. Continue reading →

The ‘Invisible Yellow’ Speak

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Bryn Mawr gets high marks from Chinese students….

But many wonder if the understands them.

By Yuqi Zha

The number of Chinese students at Bryn Mawr College has increased 20 times in 10 years, from only nine students enrolled in 2008 to 181 Chinese students enrolled in 2018, according to Patricia Lausch, the director of International Student and Scholar Services and Advising at Bryn Mawr College. Chinese students now represent 13% of the total student population, the largest single group of international students.

What do Chinese students think of Bryn Mawr College?

To find out the answers, we surveyed all of the Chinese students on campus, including a few recent graduates, and interviewed eight respondents. Seventy-nine students answered our survey, which is a 43% response rate, high for a voluntary survey. In addition, 31 students appended anonymous comments to the survey sent out through Survey Monkey in late April. Chinese students are willing and eager to share their feelings and opinions.

Overall, Chinese students are pleased with their experience at Bryn Mawr, with 24% rating it excellent and 61% rating it good.

Q: Overrall, how would you rate your experience at Bryn Mawr?

They also have a generally favorable opinion of the services they use. The percentage of students rating each service good or excellent are: 73% for the Pensby Center for international students, 65% for the Writing Center, 63% for the Health Center, 67% for the New Dorm Dining Hall and 59% for the Erdman Dining Hall. The one exception was the Counseling Center, considered good or excellent by only 35% of the respondents. The low rating of the Counseling Center is partly influenced by the fact that fewer Chinese students have contacted with the counseling service.

As one respondent to the survey put it: “Without BMC I would not be who I am. In my four years here, BMC not only taught me priceless professional knowledge and expanded the scope I interpreted the world around me, but also helped me have a better understanding of myself. I learned critical thinking here, but more importantly, I learned tolerance from the open and comprehensive environment of BMC.”

Praise was not universal. When asked if the school offered a welcoming environment, 33% students rated it fair or poor. Another 34% said they had experienced some discrimination at the school.

Interviews with students fleshed out some of those feelings. Some aspects of the college have not adapted to the explosion of Chinese students.

In sum, Chinese students want improvement in three areas: They want staff with Asian backgrounds on the campus. They want International Student Orientation back. They want attention to their particular needs and not be the “invisible yellow” anymore, as one student put.

There is one issue that symbolizes that failure to adapt. It centers on the issue of white rice.

Bryn Maw College offers Chinese students lousy white rice.

White Rice

Bryn Mawr College has two dining halls, the New Dorm Dining Hall and the Erdman Dining Hall. Erdman provides only traditional American food, while the New Dorm  has a special buffet, devoted to food from different countries and regions around the world, including Chinese and other Asian food. Students call that part of the New Dorm Dining Hall the special bar. The origin of the food provided on the special bar changes every month.

Probably because of the special bar, Chinese students slightly prefer the New Dorm Dining Hall over the Erdman Dining Hall: 87% said they frequently use the New Dorm Dining Hall, compared to 67% who said they frequently use Erdman Dining Hall.

When the special bar in the New Dorm Dining Hall provides Asian food, it also provides white rice, because white rice is the basis of Asian food. Asians have very different opinions about rice from Americans. They like tender, moist, sticky and fluffy white rice, very different from brown rice. If cooked white rice has the same hard and chewy taste as brown rice, it is considered as “half-cooked” and terrible by the Asians.

The white rice provided at the special bar followed the American standard of preparation. That’s why Chinese students had many complaints about it.

“I don’t really understand how they can make white rice taste so bad,” said Cheyenne Zhang, a sophomore Math and Philosophy major.

“Is it so hard to cook white rice? Come on, it’s just white rice!” said Hou Wang, a senior Fine Arts major.

“It’s true that Chinese food has many regional cuisines and it’s hard to satisfy all the Chinese students from different parts of China, so I don’t even want to comment on the Chinese dishes on the special bar. But I just want a bowl of normal white rice every day,” said an anonymous respondent to the survey.

Probably, there is no other culture that can exceed the extent to which Chinese culture values food.

“Food is the first necessity for man,” according to an old Chinese saying.

Therefore, if a bowl of white rice can make the campus a much more comfortable environment for Chinese students, why not make the change?

Q: Have you ever felt discriminated against at school because of your nationality?

Staffs with Asian Backgrounds

Shining Zhu, a junior Psychology major, who has worked at the New Dorm Dining Hall for three years, provided an answer—lack of student supervisors and managers with Asian backgrounds at the New Dorm Dining Hall.

“They think sticky and fluffy white rice is gross,” said Shining Zhu, referring to American staff and student workers at the New Dorm Dining Hall.

The student supervisors and managers at the New Dorm Dining Hall are predominantly white, so the food provided there is according to an American standard, including the special bar.

“There isn’t anyone to represent the opinion of Chinese student workers or Chinese students in general at the weekly staff meeting,” said Zhu, “Chinese students might be afraid or nervous to give advice directly to the managers or the college.”

The New Dorm Dining Hall is not the only place lacking staff with Asian backgrounds. Out of the six services surveyed, the Counseling Center was the least frequently used by Chinese students, with 71% saying they rarely or never used it.

There are complicated cultural and social reasons behind this phenomenon. In China, the education system doesn’t pay much attention to the mental health of students. Therefore, many Chinese students didn’t realize that the Counseling Center was an option they could go to when they encountered problems.

Four out of eight interviewees mentioned that they didn’t think they needed any counseling service, but they also mentioned that they felt homesick or stressed, especially in their freshman year.

Another important reason behind the low usage of the Counseling Center is the language barrier.

“I am afraid that I can’t express myself clearly in English, especially for emotions and feelings,” said Jia Wei, a freshman, “The multilingual service of the Counseling Center is only available in Spanish. Therefore, I didn’t use it frequently.”

“It makes me sadder when I need to pour out my fears and worries in English,” said one respondent in the survey.

The presence of an Asian psychiatrist or counselor may encourage Chinese students to use the Counseling Center more often.

The phrase “a dean or Admin staff with an Asian background” also appeared frequently in the comments from the survey.

“I think the only way to ensure that Bryn Mawr creates a supportive environment for international students (Chinese students particularly in this case) is to hire an official dean with a real Chinese background—not someone who grew up abroad but someone who really knows the academic, cultural and professional barriers that Chinese students face,” said one survey respondent.

“We don’t even need an Asian dean, but just someone who really understands Asian culture,” said Hou Wang, “someone who can really understand us.”

All the interviewees agreed that this would be a good idea.

“It’s not like we want an Asian dean to handle all the Asian students, but the mere presence of such a dean will help us feel safer and have more sense of acceptance,” said Wang, “the psychological effect of such a dean or admin staff is very essential. We will feel recognized by the college.”

As in the case of the New Dorm Dining Hall, Chinese students want a dean or a member of the administrative staff with an Asian background to function as the connection between them and the college.

“I feel like if we have such a dean, the dean’s office and the administration can consider the need of Chinese students better when they organize activities or make decisions,” said Siyuan Luo, an alumna who graduated in 2017.

 

“Invisible Yellow”

Fifty-six percent of Chinese students said they never or rarely encountered discrimination on campus. However, 36% percent of Chinese students said they felt discriminated against usually or sometimes because of their nationality Surprisingly, most of these experiences were academically related. It is hard for many professors and domestic students to recognize or respect the struggle international students face, especially when it comes to language.

Luo described her experience in a class called Introduction to Modern Architecture: “I got a really bad grade on my first paper and I decided to talk to the professor. The first thing she said in our conference is ‘I can’t understand your English. I think you should withdraw from this class’, without telling me what I did wrong or helping me improve. I am an East Asian Languages and Cultures major and I have to do a lot of writing. But I never got the similar comment from any other professors.”

In the end, Luo withdraw from the class because she was afraid that the professor wouldn’t offer her any help to pass the course.

Gaoan Sheng, a freshman, encountered great difficulties when she tried to communicate with her classmate in ESEM. ESEM is a seminar course all the freshmen have to take, in order to prepare them for academic writing and discussion.

“The American student sat next to me every class,” said Sheng, “but whenever the professor asked us to discuss in pairs, she always ignored me, even if there was no one else she could discuss with.”

Sheng felt especially hurt when she saw that student happily talking with other students both in class and after class.

The discrimination that Chinese students encountered was mostly due to certain stereotypes about Chinese in American culture, ignorance about Chinese culture and a lack of understanding of the recent development of China.

“It’s not really about feeling discriminated, but about feeling ignored,” said Wang, “We are part of the ‘invisible yellow’ in the American society.”

Chinese students themselves have to take some responsibilities for this invisibility. Compared to other ethnic groups on campus, Chinese students are quieter when it comes to campus-wide conversations on many issues.

As one respondent to the survey said, “I wish Chinese students could engage in more panel discussions on campus, or hold the panel discussions themselves.”

Part of this reticence is due to Chinese culture—Chinese are used to tolerate and adapt themselves to difficult conditions. They are good at changing themselves to fit into the environment, but not at changing the environment for themselves.

However, another essential reason behind the “invisibility” is the feeling of insecurity Chinese students face on this foreign land.

“Because we are living on a foreign land, sometimes I felt I don’t have the right to comment on things,” said Eva Liu, a sophomore Biology major, “I am afraid that I will be attacked if I ask them to change. In the end, they are the owners of this land, you know.”

“I am sorry that sometimes I am a coward,” said Wang, “When I heard people having silly conversations about China, I didn’t have the courage to correct them. Because this is not our home, we can’t always say what we want.”

Chinese students also don’t have a student association that can organize and represent their voices in the campus-wide conversations. Probably this is something Chinese students have to work out themselves. But if the college can appoint a dean or admin staff with an Asian background, they may alleviate the feeling of insecurity of Chinese students and give them more courage to speak out on this foreign land.

As the number of Chinese students increases, more and more Chinese students do speak out or participate actively in campus-wide activities and discussions.

“I am really grateful for those who actively raise their voices on campus, like Koukou Zhang in the LGBTQ movements and Xiaoya Yue in SGA,” said Wang, “but for some reason, their efforts as Chinese students ended up invisible. I don’t know why and I don’t know how we could change.”

Q: Rate the efforts made at the school to create a welcoming environment for Chinese students. International Student Orientation

Surprisingly, Bryn Mawr College recently made a change regarding international students, but a negative one. Bryn Mawr College will no longer have International Student Orientation (ISO) for freshmen, starting from next fall.

 

Originally, international students would come to campus two days earlier than domestic students for the ISO. The college would take the students to get their Social Security numbers and arrange a series of events to help the students adapt themselves to this new environment. International upperclassmen would work as volunteers during the ISO to take care of the freshmen.

In the interviews, when asked about the best thing the college has done for international students, half of the interviewees mentioned ISO.

“ISO provides a soft landing for international students,” said Eva Liu, “we were able to meet students from the same origin first before we were fully exposed to this unfamiliar environment.”

“International students need more time to adapt themselves to this new environment,” said Cheyenne Zhang, “even just for the jet lag.”

“It’s a perfect chance for upperclassmen to know freshmen,” said Gaoan Sheng, “it’s crucial for freshmen to have this bond with upperclassmen from the same origin. Because they are the only people on campus who can understand the struggle that the freshmen will go through.”

However, the freshmen coming in 2018 will no longer have all these experiences.

At the end of a long welcome back email from Patricia Lausch to all the international students during this winter vacation, she said, “International Student Orientation will be incorporated into Customs 2018. If you are interested in greeting incoming students, consider applying for a Customs positions.”

Customs is the general orientation for all freshmen at Bryn Mawr College.

“I knew ISO was canceled only when I decided to apply for ISO assistant and contacted Patti,” said Sheng.

The situation was the same for Jia Wei.

“I think they should at least give us an explanation,” said Wei, “Patti mentioned in a meeting, not about ISO, but something like ISO was canceled because the number of international students has increased and we can take care of ourselves. I don’t understand the logic at all.”

“I feel bad for the freshmen coming next fall,” said Liu, “they will see all the parents of the domestic students helping them moving in, while they are alone in this strange land. And they will only have Customs People to help them, who wouldn’t be able to offer any help.”

The Customs People are student volunteers working during the Customs and throughout the whole year. They help organize traditional events to welcome the freshmen to the campus. Each floor of each dorm will have two Customs People. However, during the interviews, freshmen and sophomores had many complaints about Customs People.

“My Customs People never showed up in any events,” said Wei, “she didn’t even greet me when we encountered in the hallway.”

“Many Customs People don’t care about their responsibilities at all,” said Sheng, “they just care about the good single room they can get.”

In exchange for their work during the year, Customs People get the opportunity to choose one of the best single rooms on each floor. Room Draw at Bryn Mawr College is a random process—each student will get a number randomly and choose a room based on the sequence of their assigned numbers. Only the first 100 students of each class year can get a good single room. Therefore, applying for the Customs people becomes a good way for many students to avoid the risk of bad luck in the Room Draw.

“I don’t understand why and how the college made this decision about ISO,” said Sheng, “it’s definitely not because of lack of ISO assistants. Many freshmen like me are very passionate and willing to become ISO assistants.”

As the number of international students increases, the resources, especially money and staff, devoted to international students haven’t increased accordingly. Therefore, the attention that each international student receives decreases.

“I don’t want to feel like an ATM, but sometimes I do,” said Wang, “we paid so many full tuitions to the college but they cared less and less about whether we feel good or not.”

 

Can Everest Make It?

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Lower Merion High School’s robot, Everest, faces a big challenge

By Sean Woodruff

When his body is fully extended, Everest towers over almost everyone. His steel skeleton sits upon a sturdy base with wheels and a single claw protrudes from his neck.

But right now, he is asleep. Most of this robotic behemoth is covered beneath a large plastic shroud.

Everest’s elevator mechanism, which allows him to grow to eight feet tall, is broken and the young engineers of Lower Merion High School are scrambling to fix it before the end of the night.

It’s the evening before the Mid-Atlantic-District Championship of FIRST, a major event in the world’s largest youth robotics contest (FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).

If these students and their robot do well enough over the three day competition, their team will qualify for the World Championships in Detroit later in April.

But everything depends on Everest’s elevator. Without it, he won’t be able to perform a critical move at a tomorrow’s event. He needs to be able to lift boxes more than 6 feet in order to secure an important source of points.

Tonight, the lab is electrified with a sense of subdued activity as students in safety glasses hasten to make adjustments. Another group tinkers with his claw to make sure he has a strong and consistent grip. Others sit at computers, optimizing his code.

The focused murmur is occasionally interrupted by the buzz of an electric saw.

***

It’s day one of three in the District Championship. A sea of people in color coded t-shirts are gathered in Lehigh University’s Stabler Arena. The “Gearaffes” wear orange, “Wolfpack Robotics” wear navy blue. The Lower Merion High School students, nicknamed “Dawgma” wear a distinctive deep maroon.

Maya Levitan, Dawgma’s Team Captain, stops by the Pit, where Everest is inspected and fine-tuned between matches. “It’s like in NASCAR”, Maya says.

Maya is the shortest person in the lab, but she’s poised and confident. She watches carefully as the robot is unpacked. Luckily, the elevator was fixed last night and seems to be working correctly. Nothing more can be done but hope for the best.

Satisfied, Maya enters the arena and is confronted by a wall of sound. An announcer speaks enthusiastically into a loudspeaker. Pop music blares in the background. Teams fight over the remaining sonic real estate with various chants.

An opposing team begins a cacophonous cheer. “Blue Alliance!” Clap. Clap. Clap-Clap-Clap. Their voices crack as they stretch the limits of their adolescent vocal cords.

The members of Dawgma begin to bark and howl back, embodying their school’s mascot. A student in a full Bulldog costume coaxes them on from the lower bleachers.

It’s time for Everest’s first match of the day.

Each match is between two alliances of three teams: Red and Blue. In these early matches, the alliances are pre-determined and change every game. Right now, Everest is wearing red.

The most compelling part of the game is the Scale, a large teetering see-saw on which the robots must balance bright yellow cubes. Tip the Scale to your side, and your Alliance gains control, earning 2 points for every second that you maintain the advantage.

Two similar mechanisms are on the floor called Switches. These are important too, but without control of the Scale, it’s almost impossible to win.

“3…2…1…Power up!”

The match begins and Everest zooms across the field, beating everyone else to the Scale.

These first 15 seconds of the match are completely autonomous—they are also critical to the game.

“It’s really hard to catch up if you lose control of the Scale early,” says Paul Leeds, a junior.

If anything goes wrong, Everest is all alone.

But Dawgma’s hard work last night paid off. In one smooth motion, the robot extends his elevator up and drops the cube onto the Scale, gaining control for the Red Alliance. Everest is standing tall.

For the next two minutes, human drivers take control of the robots. The Blue Alliance gains brief control of the Scale, but not for long enough.

Paul was right—their opponents were unable to overcome the early loss and Dawgma ended the first match with a 100 point lead. The entire team shoots up in excitement.

There are 12 more Qualification matches to go and this early success has boosted the team’s confidence.

The matches continue over the next two days. A win. A win. A win. A one point loss. Another win.

The team’s energy is palpable and Paul smiles a goofy grin.  It’s looking like they will be ranked high enough to be Alliance Captains.

During the final day of competition, the top eight teams get to choose their alliance for the remainder of the games.

But choosing who to pick is a complicated strategy question in and of itself.

Maya and Annie Liang, a Sophomore, are tasked with scouting out the best teams to work with Everest.

In between Dawgma’s string of wins, Maya and Annie take meticulous notes on each match and log information in an intricate set of Excel spreadsheets. These scoring algorithms are nuanced and complex—a Dawgma alumnus dedicated weeks to set them up.

As Annie and Maya carefully discuss their plans on the bleachers, Dawgma scoops up six more wins.

An enthusiastic parent swings a Dawgma sign and dances after every single one.

***

Back in Dawgma’s lab, before the final day of competition, Maya and Paul reflect on the semester so far.

It’s taken a lot of commitment to design and build Everest from the ground up. The team met for more than 15 hours each week.

“This year, we decided to pull out all the stops,” says Maya.

Instead of playing it safe and building a robot that specializes in just one task, Dawgma built Everest to be a versatile competitor.

“We bit off exactly as much as we could chew,” Maya says while adjusting her glasses.

Paul jumps in: “Yeah, we were up until midnight before the last preliminary competition.”

They built two robots this year, which allowed them to tinker with multiple design elements simultaneously. They even built a mock playing field in a spare classroom to practice driving Everest.

So far, their work has paid off. “This has easily been the best year so far,” Maya says.

The team is good natured, and lives by the FIRST’s mantra of “gracious professionalism”, which states that learning and communal growth are more important than winning.

Dawgma has even helped other teams with their code.

But there is also no denying the stakes at tomorrow’s competition: prestigious awards, ego, and of course—how a good ranking will look on college applications.

Most importantly, tomorrow’s performance will decide whether Dawgma moves on to the World Championship.

***

It’s the final day of competition. After two long days of Qualifications, Dawgma has come out strongly ahead.

Now ranking seventh among 125 teams, Maya and Annie get to pick their carefully selected dream team as the Blue Alliance: The Pascack π-oneers (π as in “Pi”) and the Mechanical Mustangs.

The Quarterfinals are three back to back matches against someone else’s dream team. Tensions are high.

Quarterfinal Match 1 of 3

The first Quarterfinal match is a little hard to watch. After two days of working flawlessly, Everest seems tired. The elevator that the young engineers worked tirelessly to fix is now stalled.

Everest tries to reach up to the Scale, but strains only a few inches away. What once appeared a towering behemoth now looks more like a toddler trying to reach the counter on his tip-toes.

He spends the rest of the match trying to hold control of the ground Switches, but it’s not enough. They lose 263 to 386.

Dawgma only has six minutes to repair Everest before the next match.

Maya sits stoically, trusting the technicians down in the playing field to fix their robot before the next round.

Paul shifts a bit on the bleachers.

Quarterfinal Match 2 of 3

Luckily, the technicians know Everest in and out, and he enters the second Quarterfinal match good as new.

As if make up for his previous flub, Everest places an impressive two cubes on the Scale during the all-autonomous portion of the match, creating an insurmountable lead that gives the Blue Alliance its first Quarterfinal win.

The team’s barking and howling becomes deafening. A human “wave” makes its way around the stadium.

Quarterfinal Match 3 of 3

The third match starts even better than the second. A robot on the opposing alliance loses connection for more than 40 seconds, allowing Everest to swoop in and tip the Scale.

“Last year, things like that happened to us a lot,” Paul says, obviously proud that Dawgma has learned how to be more consistent.

The team screams each time Everest balances another cube on the Scale. Maya creates a megaphone with her hands, amplifying her cheers.

In the last ten seconds, the Blue Alliance has more than a 100 point lead. Everest does a victory lap around the field before the clock even runs out.

High fives and hugs are shared all around. Dawgma is now the leader of a top 4 alliance—this is a big deal.

“We’re also in the running for a control systems award,” Paul says.

“Yeah, the judges have been to our Pit several times,” Maya says. She allows a smirk to breach her natural humbleness. “We’re probably going to get the award.”

Semifinal Match 1 of 2

Spirits are high going into this match. Dawgma’s cheers easily drown out their rivals’.

The match begins and Paul sits on the edge of his seat, his eyes glued to the chaotic flurry of yellow cubes in the arena below.

These six robots are top-notch and the whole match looks like a well-coordinated dance.

Unfortunately, the Red Alliance is just a bit more coordinated. It’s not looking good for Dawgma.

The rival chant begins to gain steam as the Blue Alliance’s defeat becomes inevitable.

“Red Alliance!” Clap. Clap. Clap-Clap-Clap.

As soon as the match is over, Paul hunches over.

The team members look back and forth at each other. “We usually lose the first match,” they try to reassure themselves.

Semifinal Match 2 of 2

The arena is more packed than its been the whole event. It’s hot—and humid with the sweat of more than a thousand people.

“Who let the Dogs Out” starts playing on the loud speaker. One Dawgma member swings her head back to the others.

“Stand up!” she shouts. “Are you listening to it? It’s our song!”

It seems like a good omen for the next match. The team begins to bark again.

The Bulldog mascot does his best to keep up the energy, but three days of dancing has begun to take its toll.

One of Dawgma’s alliance members calls a time out. The Mechanical Mustangs’ robot, Cutlass is having a technical problem. “It looks like his claw is broken”, Paul says.

“Red Alliance!” Clap. Clap. Clap-Clap-Clap.

The barking fizzles out.

The match begins, but Paul looks a little worried. “I don’t know if it’s fixed or not…”

Everything starts well, but Everest accidentally knocks a cube from the Scale. Cutlass stutters along, and his injured claw fumbles several cubes.

Maya claps in encouragement, but most of Dawgma is silent. With thirty seconds left Dawgma’s alliance is more than 100 points behind.

But the Blue Alliance has one last trick up their sleeves.

The Pascack π-oneers’ robot, Dragon, begins a dramatic transformation as two huge wing-like platforms fold down from its body. The robot extends its neck and latches onto the Scale.

There is one more important source of points in the game. If your robot lifts itself a foot off the ground at the end of the match, your Alliance gains extra points.

It’s a difficult task, and the only thing in the game that Everest can’t do.

But he can be lifted by robotic comrade and Dragon’s platforms were specifically designed to carry other robots up to victory. Maya and Annie added Dragon to their dream team for just this reason.

It’s risky, but it’s their only chance.

The clock counts down. 4— Everest climbs onto the platform—3—he secures his placement—2—the platform begins to rise…

At the last second, Everest topples. Down with him goes Dawgma’s chance at competing in the Finals.

Everest lays motionless on the ground as Paul and Maya give a few conciliatory claps from the bleachers.

“I think I have to go change,” says the Bulldog, drenched in sweat.

***

Although they didn’t make it to the final round, the whole team is proud.

Dawgma finish the regional championship ranked 6th out of 125 teams, and they did end up winning the prestigious “Innovation in Control Award”.

Even more impressively, Dawgma’s performance secured them a spot at the World Championship in Detroit.

Detroit is a long trek from Ardmore, but the team is ecstatic.

“I’m definitely going to go—even though I’ll miss a lot of physics class,” Paul says.

Artifact Intelligence

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Students are using a rich array of original artifacts in their studies at Bryn Mawr

By Yi Gao                                                      

Learning with primary source materials is hot at Bryn Mawr College.

Working with authentic artifacts, rare books or archival documents fascinates students and generates interesting ideas. In recent years, the traditional, teach-centered classroom has become dynamic laboratory in which students can physically handle original materials.

Japanese prints, Quaker historical documents, pottery, sculpture and rare photographs are just a few of the items now available to students.

“Though professors have used primary sources in teaching for decades, it’s much more popular over the past four or five years,” said Marianne Weldon, collections manager of Bryn Mawr Special Collections. According to Weldon, special collections librarians have spent considerable time and energy improving the visibility and accessibility of the College’s collections and building collaborations with teaching faculty across multiple disciplines.

No. 2

This semester, Erin Schoneveld, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Haverford College taught her class Ukiyo-e: The Art of Japanese Print with Bryn Mawr’s collection of Japanese woodblock prints. Weldon assisted with her classes several times. Weldon said Professor Schoneveld thinks incorporating actual primary materials into teaching “fuels lively discussion and cultivates critical thinking.”

Bi-Co (Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College) faculty and students benefit from special collections of both colleges. Bryn Mawr’s special collections are more diverse and broad while Haverford is especially renowned for its Quaker collections and photograph collections.

Xingya Wang, a Bryn Mawr College senior student majoring French, said she took a war photography class at Haverford and had the opportunity to see some precious photographs of American Civil War.

“Their collection of war photographs is fantastic! Everyone was very excited! And it’s good that we (Bi-Co) share resources,” said Wang.

“Yes, I think our learning is more practical and interesting than when I was a freshman,” said Wang.

Many classes engage students with primary sources. On the other hand, students more actively use the college’s collections to do research. There are two important elements in the development of this trend.

No. 3

The first one is the digitization of special collections.

According to Eric Pumroy, Seymour Adelman Head of Special Collections at Bryn Mawr College, big libraries and institutions have been digitized their collections since the late 1980s.

Bryn Mawr College’s Special Collections, since it is a small institution with less funds, started establishing digital records of collections in the late 1990s. However, not until 2008 did Bryn Mawr begin making special collections accessible on the Internet to the public.

“It was a complicated work,” said Pumroy. First, Special Collections bought the collections management software called Embark. Second, librarians migrated the existing data to the new system. Then they cataloged the rest of the collections. Besides, collaborating with Swarthmore College and Haverford College, they established TriArte, a special database of 33,500 art and artifacts from Tri-Co.

For digitizing art and artifacts, librarians should not only enter information but also upload high-quality images. Pumroy said for some “special” three-dimensional objects, they need to produce 360-degree pictures.

No. 4

Pumroy said several digitization projects are still going on but 90 percent of the work has been done. Undoubtedly, the acceleration of mass digitization highly improves the availability and visibility of special collections. Faculty and students can search online, find the artifacts needed, send a request and get the objects to analyze in person.

Bryn Mawr College’s encouragement of experiential learning is the other major element. This change can be seen within the History of Art Department.

“I am happy to see that more art history professors incorporate practical learning” said Poppy Pu, a senior student majoring in art history. She said that when she was a freshman, she really wanted to take art history classes at University of Pennsylvania since some of them are taught in Penn Museum. “Though at that time in some classes we could saw authentic objects, we were rarely asked to do an independent research on the objects or to produce an exhibition” said Pu.

No. 5

Things changed over the past three years. In Fall 2015, Bryn Mawr announced a new Museum Studies Program which allows students to gain practical hands-on experience in Bryn Mawr Special Collections or even in museums in Philadelphia. Courses such as The Curator in the Museum and Contemporary Art in Exhibition provide students a full experience with primary sources. Thanks to the pilot program, every semester Bryn Mawr has several student-curated exhibitions on view in the Rare Book Room of Special Collections.

Pu said many upper-class art history major students use special collections to do their own research that is part of their theses. “It is amazing! Working with primary sources helps our studies a lot and makes them much more interesting,” she said. “I am a bit jealous of the freshmen. They can get this experience in their first year.”

Guide: All items are from the Bryn Mawr collections.

Item 1. Color woodblock by Katsushika Hokusai. Title: The Great Wave, from the series 36 views of Mount Fuji.

Item 2. Artist: Utagawa Kunisasa (1786-1864) Title: View of Hodogoya, from the series 53 Stations of the Tokaido Road, ca. 1838.

Item 3. Polychrome Glass Aryballos (Oil Flask), Greece/East Mediterranean, 6th Century BCE.

Item 4. Bronze Bust of Napoleon. Artist: Achille Collas, (1795-1859) after Antoine-Denis Chaudet, ca. 1838-1859.

Item 5. Portrait of M. Carey Thomas, President of Bryn Mawr by Frank C. Benning (1893-1983), 20th century.

 

Lights? Camera? Action?

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The travails of a student filmmaker

By Steve Lehman

Ethan Grugan is making a film. All he’s missing are actors. And a script.

And a camera.

Grugan, a sophomore film major at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, had a great plan: create a short movie in the style of famous director and actor Charlie Chaplin, where Chaplin and fellow early cinema star Buster Keaton would be the main characters.

But who would play the famous filmmakers? When and where would they film? And who would be behind the camera?

On a rainy Sunday morning in his university’s dining hall, Grugan explained the complex and nuanced saga of the writing, directing, and editing of this film. He just hasn’t done any of it yet.

Monday, March 19th

Gabrielle Miller, Adjunct Professor of Film at St. Joseph’s University, assigns a creative project for her course “Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.” In the class, students from a variety of disciplines study the two seminal filmmakers and their influence on the history of cinema.

The task seems simple enough: create a film in the style of Keaton or Chaplin. Black and white, mostly silent, and a healthy dose of visual gags should do the trick.

Grugan gets excited and starts to form a plan. In the earliest stages, the film begins to take shape in his mind. The next steps: storyboard, script, actors, and crew.

Thursday, April 5th

The class doesn’t meet too often, due to frequent snow days and the professor being occupied with her own TV pitch. Grugan, however, doesn’t mind having a professor who’s busy doing real film work. “It’s pretty cool, but also a little stressful.”

Grugan plans to film in two weekends. The premise: Charlie Chaplin trying to get Buster Keaton to smile.

Keaton will naturally be played by Grugan himself, a 6-foot-2-inch former rower with broad shoulders and a big smile. Two of his classmates agree to play Chaplin and hold the camera, with Grugan directing.

Millie, Grugan’s new poodle puppy, will be the film’s MacGuffin. What’s a MacGuffin? “It’s like the briefcase in ‘Pulp Fiction,’” according to Grugan. “It’s a plot point that you don’t see that much, but sort of drives the whole thing.”

Later, the budding filmmaker is quick to display a picture of Millie on his cell phone: she’s a puff-ball of curly black fur, small and adorable.

“She’s my little stinky MacGuffin,” he says proudly.

Wednesday, April 11th

Everything falls apart.

The filming is planned for the upcoming weekend, but Grugan’s classmates can’t come and the script and storyboard aren’t finished yet.

Grugan also comes to the realization that Relay for Life, a charity event where participants stay awake for 12 hours straight doing games and activities to raise money for cancer treatment and research, is being held this weekend as well. That makes things a bit more complicated.

The new plan: get background footage and work on the plot. In other words, film some scenes without actors and try to coordinate the schedules of three over-worked college students. Everything will be fine.

Sunday, April 15th

The big weekend is finally here…

And it’s pouring. Rain whips through the grey campus of the Catholic university as students run from building to building, their umbrellas useless in the wind. Grugan, of course, can’t film in these conditions. Not only that, but Relay for Life knocked him out for most of the weekend.

“It was definitely worth it,” Grugan says of the event, but “I was probably a little bit too ambitious thinking that I could stay awake for 17 hours straight. And film a film.”

After starting at 7 p.m. Friday night and going until the wee hours of Saturday morning at the charity event, it took him most of Saturday to recover. He slept until 2 p.m., but “wasn’t functional until about 7.”

“You know those days where you’re like ‘Oh, it’s only 17 hours.’ Yeah I get those a lot.”

Instead of filming in the rain, he explains over coffee and breakfast sandwiches the plan moving forward.

If he were to be filming today, it would be footage of two of his dogs, Millie (the puppy) and Oso (an adult), running around his house in Bala Cynwyd. This would serve as background for the real footage that would include actors.

Grugan uses salt and pepper shakers to explain how he’ll film Chaplin and Keaton. Gesturing with the two plastic cylinders on the table- which represent the two characters- he demonstrates that the best method is to film each scene from multiple angles to create a 3-D effect in the editing process.

He’s still trying to figure out a rain date for filming. “She [the professor] still hasn’t told us when it’s due… so that would be helpful to know.”

Even after the storyboard is turned in and the filming is finished, Grugan will have to edit the final product into a cohesive five-minute movie.

“Or we might just scrap it,” he says simply, after spending the past hour explaining the filming process, his plan, and the steps needed to finish the project. If he doesn’t end up filming, he can always just explain his ideas to the class verbally… just like everyone else.

As it turns out, the actual assignment was to describe to the class, out loud, what film you would make, if you were to make film. But actually making one? That’s optional.

And in the class of 25 students, how many other people will be making actual films? “Oh it’s just me,” Grugan says cheerfully. “You can just describe it, but I don’t see the fun in that.”

Grugan also reveals that, once he does establish a filming time, he doesn’t actually have access to a camera from the film department because it’s not an official class project. Technically, it’s just an oral presentation.

He’ll use his iPhone instead.

Suddenly Grugan remembers that he has to go to play rehearsal this afternoon. He sips a blueberry smoothie as he looks off into the distance, thinking about all the time he doesn’t have.

Despite playing a cop with four lines in the last scene, Grugan found out last night that he has to go to all four hours of rehearsal. He’s not sure why.

After breakfast, Grugan pulls up his YouTube channel to talk about other videos he’s made. Besides class projects, he also likes to make highlight reels for Philadelphia sports teams. His film about the Eagles has almost 500 views.

“All my videos combined don’t even hit that,” he says as he checks the views of his other movies.

“Holy shit!” he yells suddenly, almost spilling the large purple smoothie he had been drinking. A surprise: his Sixers pump-up video reached over 1,000 views in just one week.

Grugan can’t believe it. “Holy shit. Okay. Holy shit,” he says as the number sinks in. He puts his phone down on the table and looks out at the rain lashing against the window.

After a tough week, finally, some success.

 

The Smuggled Dumplings Caper

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How a Bryn Mawr student gets food from her home in China

Caught by Customs

By Yuqi Zha

On her long flight from China to the United States, Alice Tang, a rising senior at Bryn Mawr College, had a nightmare.

In her dream, she was walking past the Customs Check at the JFK International Airport, New York, with a heavy 28-inch piece of luggage.

Her face was covered with a pair of dark purple sunglasses and a cotton mask. Her strange appearance drew the attention of the officer at the U.S. Customs.

Tang got nervous and walked faster. Despite praying thousands of times in her heart, what she tried to avoid finally happened—a customs officer approached her and asked her to stop.

“Excuse me Miss, passport please,” said the officer.

Tang handed her passport over.  The sweat in her hand made it wet.

“What’s in your luggage?” The officer looked at her bag with suspicion.

“Just…clothes, cosmetics and books,” Tang almost shouted, trying to cover her fear, “nothing special!”

“I would like to inspect your luggage. Follow me please,” said the officer.

As the officer was going to take the luggage from her hand, Tang took her luggage and ran with all her strength towards the exit. But, she could not escape.

Ten seconds later, she was dragged into the most horrible place in the U.S. for international students and immigrants, the so-called “dark room”—the reception room of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The travelers on the same flight with Tang looked at her sympathetically while she was screaming, “No! You can’t take the spirit of home away from me!”

This was how Tang described her nightmare to her friend, Amber Lin, as the two stepped off the plane.

It was the seventh time Tang had flown from China to the U.S., returning from her home to the college after vacations. Like in her dream, her luggage was loaded with food from home.

“You still have a chance to throw them away after you get your luggage but before you enter the Customs Check. I can help you with that,” said Lin,  also a rising senior at Bryn Mawr College and the best friend of Tang, who always traveled with Tang.

“No way!” refused Tang without a doubt, “That dream was stupid! Who will wear a pair of sunglasses and a mask? You should be as normal as possible.”

“Okay…God bless you,” sighed Lin.

“I have succeeded six times. I won’t fail,” said Tang firmly, like a warrior who is going to the battlefield.

Her experiences of the past three years had made her a professional “smuggler” of the spirit of home—the homemade dumplings and rice dumplings made by her grandparents, in a well-packaged heat-preserving bag with ice packs. She was ready to face the same challenge and risk everything for her love again.

       * * *

The kitchen at Tang’s home in Nanjing, China, was crowded with raw food materials: shiitake mushrooms, black agarics, reed leaves all soaked in water, sticky rice soaked in soy sauce, salt and sugar, two giant pieces of pork shoulder and streaky pork on two separate cutting boards. It was the busiest day for the grandparents of Tang—two days before Tang’s flight to the U.S.

It was 8 a.m. A burst of rapid and crisp sounds coming out of the kitchen marked the beginning of their complicated work. Chengjian Hu, the grandpa of Tang, was chopping the pork shoulder for the meat filling of the dumplings. He first cut the meat into thin slices, then into strips, then into very small cubes. Finally, he picked up two knives with both of his hands, hitting the cutting board swiftly and accurately, as if he was a professional drummer hitting the drum with two drumsticks. This awe-inspiring drum solo lasted for half an hour and produced a big bowl of perfectly cut meat mash.

It is not very common for Chinese people to make the meat mash by hand anymore, because they can easily get machine-cut meat mash at any supermarket or food market.

“Our little Tang is a picky gourmet,” said Lihua Chao, Tang’s grandma, with a warm smile. “She can tell the difference between machine-cut meat mash and handmade meat mash. She said the handmade meat mash tastes much better. So we insist on making the meat mash by hand.”

Tang, who was packing her luggage in her bedroom, replied with a playful grin, “The handmade meat mash has the magic taste of love.”

Tang’s parents were too busy to take care of Tang. Therefore, after the birth of Tang, her grandparents moved to live with them. It is her grandparents who prepared healthy breakfast, sent Tang to school in the morning, picked up her from school and cooked a delicious dinner in the afternoon every day in Tang’s childhood.

“I can’t live without the food my grandparents cook,” said Tang.

* * *

While Hu was preparing the meat mash, Chao was cutting the streaky pork into thick strips for the rice dumplings. She soaked the strips in soy sauce, salt, sugar ,and spices.

“To make the perfect rice dumplings that I like the best, the correct piece of streaky pork with exactly 40% fat is the key,” said Tang while peeping at her grandparents’ work, “Could you imagine the meat, saturated with soy sauce and spices, melting on your tongue?”

As Chao started to fry the pork strips after an hour, the alluring smell of meat and spices quickly filled the whole house.

Tang popped her head into the kitchen and asked, “Grandma, may I have a piece of pork strip? They smell so good!”

“Your small greedy cat”, Chao patted on Tang’s forehead, “Go play your computer games. Don’t mess around in the kitchen.”

Tang had a hard time tearing away and she kept looking to the direction of the kitchen while playing on her computer.

“Oh my God, I am going to be drowned in my saliva,” complained Tang helplessly.

  * * *

At the end of the day, around 5 p.m., the heat-preserving bag was filled with 20 rice dumplings and 30 dumplings. The rice dumplings were made with soy sauce soaked sticky rice and fried streaky pork, packed in reed leaves and wrapped up with cotton thread. The dumplings were made with the mesh of pork shoulder meat mixed with minced shiitake mushrooms, black agarics and salted egg yolks, packed in hand-rolled dumpling skins.

“This…whu…is…Hea…whu…ven!” panted Tang, as she gobbled a hot dumpling just out of the pot.

“Impatient gets hot bean curd,” said Chao accusingly, as she filled a bowl with hot dumplings and put it under the air conditioner to cool them faster.

It is a Chinese saying that means haste makes waste.

Half of Tang’s luggage was filled with the heat-preserving bag along with other snacks.

Tang put the luggage, which was so full that it might burst open any time, on the weight scale and was desperate to find that it was 28 kg, — 8 kg more than the limited weight of international flights.

“Oh no, why does it happen again?” squeaked a panicked Tang.

Of course, it happened every time.

After struggling for an hour, Tang managed to lower the weight to 22 kg.

“I am sure it will be ok,” said Tang, exhausted.

She gave up a couple dresses, cosmetics, and books, but the half with food remained completely untouched.

    * * *

“Passengers on flight Cathay Pacific CX888 from Hong Kong to New York, you can claim your bags on carousel 1 in Terminal 8,” said the baggage claim announcement.

As Tang ran towards carousel 1, she shouted in Chinese, “My dear rice dumplings! My dear dumplings!”

Lin panted, “I hope our bags have arrived successfully.”

Their travel this time didn’t go smoothly because of the bad weather. Their flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong was delayed and they missed their next flight. Therefore, they had to stay in Hong Kong for a night and caught the same flight the next day. It is easy for bags to get lost or delayed in this kind of situation.

“I can’t bear to lose them,” Tang groaned, as she watched bags coming out on the carousel anxiously.

“Were the rice dumplings and dumplings the only things you care about in your giant luggage?” said Lin, rolling her eyes.

“If I lose my clothes, cosmetics, stationaries or books, I will feel sad,” said Tang, thinking about the question seriously, “but if I lose the spirit of home, I will die!”

“So yes! They are the only things I care about,” said Tang, confirming herself.

Lin walked to the other side of the carousel to check the bags there, knowing that it was not possible to persuade Tang to throw the dumplings and rice dumplings away before they entered the Customs Check.

“All right, the seventh time,” muttered Lin to herself.

* * *

Tang was walking past the Customs Check at the JFK International Airport, New York, with a heavy 28-inch piece of luggage.

Tang merged into the flow of international students, returning from home all over the world to their campuses in the U.S. They had different colors, different cultures, and different languages, but they all brought with them the expectation and love of their family in some forms.

One officer at the Customs Check looked at Tang. She looked back with a polite smile.

No one paid special attention to her.

Twenty meters, ten meters, five meters. She walked not too fast, not too slow, keeping the pace with other students around her.

Tang walked out of the exit of the baggage claim hall. She made it!

“See? Easy enough!”said Tang proudly while waiting for the pickup service, “I never fail because I am doing something sacredly. It’s the spirit of home!”

Lin looked at her overly excited friend, sighed and smiled.

There will be an eighth time.

 

The Hackathon at the Museum

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Contestants gather each year to create apps for the Museum of Art

By Sean Woodruff

Visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art often feels like stepping back in time. Its galleries are filled with 2,000-year-old ceramics, 100-year-old paintings, and statues crumbling with age.

But in a backroom of the museum, the environment feels more like a Silicon Valley startup than a 142-year-old fine arts institution.

A dozen people sit in front of computers, their screens a flurry of movement. If you look closely, you can catch glimpses of paintings by Monet and Degas as the programmers toggle between windows of complex code. The coders are here as part of the museum’s Hackathon, a six-week long competition to design innovative new apps that integrate technology with art.

The team that comes up with the best app will take home a grand prize of $2,000.

“It’s really about finding new ways to connect people to the art, and finding new ways to connect with each other,” says Ariel Schwartz, Associate Director for Interactive Technologies at the museum.

According to Schwartz, the program been a big success so far. What started as a small weekend event three years ago has grown to include almost 100 contestants.

Today, the museum is hosting a “Hacklab”, where the teams can test out their apps in the galleries and collaborate with museum staff.

Snacks and soda line the tables at the edge of the room, but they are left mostly untouched. The coders are too busy discussing plans with their teammates and tapping away at their keyboards.

***

Lacy Rhoades furrows his eyebrows. An app developer by trade, and a recent Philadelphia transplant, Rhoades thought the Hackathon would be a great way to get to know people and contribute something to his new city.

But his team has been struggling to come up with a workable idea. The biggest challenge, he says, is walking the line between engagement and distraction.

“I don’t want our app to be too game-like,” he says. “I don’t want people’s eyes to be glued to a screen.”

Earlier in the afternoon, Rhoades spent some time exploring the museum, which gave him the inkling of an idea. He was struck by how much of a personal relationship he felt with certain galleries.

“After I walked through the museum, I felt that I was changed, but also that the museum was changed in a way too. I want to catalog that feeling,” Rhoades says. “I want to create a collective virtual memory for the museum.”

Rhoades envisions an app that can track people’s journeys throughout the galleries. “Imagine seeing the virtual footsteps of people who have walked here before,” he says.

Visitors will also be able to publicly tag and comment on art pieces they feel particularly connected to. This way people can look at the app and get a sense of the history of personal connections within each gallery.

He’s excited about his idea, but he rubs his eyes as he thinks about the work left to do.

“I’m a bit of a procrastinator,” he says. But admitting that seems to give him a renewed sense of urgency and he turns back to his computer screen.

***

At the next table over, Yilin Wu lets herself subtly smirk. “We have a great idea,” she says. She speaks quietly, but without mumbling—she deliberately enunciates every syllable.

Their app, called Art Mind, is a recommendation system that will match people with works of art that they will enjoy.

“It’s like Tinder for art,” she says, “It will help you find the works of art you’ll love.”

The app will show visitors 10 works of art before they enter the galleries. People then swipe right or swipe left depending on whether they like each piece. Based on those preferences, the app will use a complicated machine-learning algorithm to build a custom museum tour for each person.

Even more impressive is that the algorithm learns over time. So the more that people use the app, the better it will get at recommending art.

If Wu’s team has time, they also wants to implement a forum feature, so that people can start discussion threads about each art piece.

But even if they don’t get a chance to implement that feature, Wu is confident that her team will make it past the preliminary judging round on May 16th.

***

Another team sits in the corner, deep in discussion. They are debating the best layout for their user interface. Rob Mruczek strokes his bright orange beard, which almost seems to glow underneath the fluorescent lighting.

His team has integrated their app with the music streaming service Spotify to create a social network based on music and art.

“The idea is that people can share songs that they associate with specific works of art,” Mruczek says. Other people can then vote on those songs, creating a crowdsourced playlist to pair with each artwork.

One benefit of a music focused app is that it encourages people to look at the art instead of down at their phone.

The app also provides a way to bring a piece of the museum back home with you. Now, once you listen to a particular song, you can think back to the work of art you saw while listening to it at the museum.

Mruczek scrolls through the app they have built so far with satisfaction. It looks polished and professional.

“Music and art are both really personal, so we thought it would be great to combine the two,” he says.

***

Schwartz, the organizer of the Hackathon, beams as he walks away from the clatter of keyboards and back towards his office. He’s proud of the way the Hackathon has grown, and is inspired by the contestants’ imaginations.

“We never know how fresh minds will attack the challenge, and we’ve been rewarded every year with approaches we’ve never thought of,” he says.

With so many innovative and ambitious projects, it’s hard to know whom the judges will award the $2,000 grand prize.

But the judges aren’t the only ones to select a winner. On May 25th, the five finalists will have the chance to showcase their apps to the public. Museum visitors will then get to choose the recipient of the $500 People’s Choice Award.

Regardless of who wins, Schwartz thinks that everyone involved in the Hackathon is important. To him, it’s not just about the final product, but about community building and creativity.

“We’re turning around the thinking of what a museum does, and should do,” says Schwartz. “It’s really exciting.”