Dear White Friends
(05/31/20 12:02am)
To my dear white friends,
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To my dear white friends,
During this pause, I have done my fair share of Netflix and chilling, TikTok surfing, Instagram stalking, at-home workouts and whatever else to keep me from being disheartened by all the current pain and confusion in the world. I have also done a lot of thinking and processing. Particularly about the idea of normalcy. A lack of normalcy often causes panic and distress, while too much of it can drive someone mad with mundaneness. When it comes to normalcy, I have also noticed how malleable it can be. I went for a walk the other day for some fresh air and a lady passing by on the sidewalk moved a few feet off of the pavement into the grass to avoid contact. My natural reaction would have been offense just a month ago, but in this new age of COVID-19 and social distancing, her instinctive move was very considerate and much appreciated. After the second passerby almost fell off the curb into the road to avoid breathing the same air as me, it was almost without thinking that I followed suit and moved to the furthest edge of the pavement when passing a third woman on my walk. The same day my mom ordered a pizza and to her initial surprise she opened the door and the pizza was on the ground with no deliverer in sight. She then saw the deliverer off in the distance as she greeted my mom from afar. My mom laughed in light shock but quickly realized that the deliverer was following the new normative code. How quickly our sense of normalcy has changed. We truly are adaptable creatures. Just a little over a week ago I was in disbelief that something like this was happening during my lifetime but now it has slowly become a new normal and I often wonder if we will ever return to the way life was before or if we even should.
Photo by Mark Maddaloni.
Photo by Coleman Rojahn
Illustration by Emily Schoonover
Photo by Mark Maddaloni
Illustration by Emily Schoonover
Photo by Awa Dia
Photo by Coleman Rojahn
Bad news travels fast. Every year during awards show season our feeds are filled with images of fashion mishaps and risks that didn’t pay off – remember Celine Dion’s backwards tuxedo? It, among other ill-fitting separates and humdrum gowns throughout the years, is still seared into our minds perhaps more than the actual awards. But at this year’s Golden Globes Awards, the outfit that left people with the most questions was also one of the most well-received.
“When we scroll through our feed, we fail to remember that every single thing we see is curated in some way … This girl in the bikini who looks flawless might’ve taken that photo 300 times before getting the perfect one at the perfect angle, but we only see the best of the best.”
To research this article, I had to sit in a lot of weird places at a lot of weird angles. It was a lot of trouble, but it would've been a lot more trouble for a bunch of strangers to look over my shoulder and see that I was watching a video of a girl chewing a plate of zucchini pasta up against a microphone with, quite frankly, an unwarranted amount of gusto.
There's something about the South Carolina State Fair that keeps you coming back. It's not the Ferris wheels or the whack-a-moles or the funnel cakes--it's the continuity. It's the promise that year after year, decade after decade, the only thing that's going to change is the pavement.
Photo by Akuya Stoddard
Cannabis sativa. Two controversial words that carry a heavy connotation. Enter: industrial hemp, a misunderstood plant often quickly associated with its psychedelic look-alike, marijuana.
“You have games that are designed to be beautiful, designed to engage you. And when that’s available, why go outside? Why interact with people? Why do anything when you can just sit back and enjoy a world custom-tailored just to be a pleasant experience for you?”
"Interstellar," "The Martian," "Star Trek," "Star Wars," "Guardians of the Galaxy," "Firefly," "Apollo 13," "Alien," "2001: a Space Odyssey" – the list goes on and on. We have injected our fascination with space so deeply into our media that one doesn’t even blink an eye at a movie with an out-of-this-world setting anymore. And why would we not want to explore this fascination with space? Our interactions with the final frontier have been going on for over 50 years, and yet they only continue to evolve in more exciting ways as private space travel and the possibility of water on Mars fill the headlines. Space is far-reaching in our zeitgeist just as we ourselves aim to reach far beyond our stratosphere. Our imagined ventures into space are often full of hope and curiosity (Interstellar, Apollo 13), or at least fun-filled adventure (Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy). On the other hand, plots where outsiders come to Earth often venture into horror (Signs, Cloverfield). If the cultural mind of the United States is so inclined to imagine going to space, then why hasn’t there been a more recent and positive fascination with others coming to Earth?
Twenty years into the future, this article will likely make little sense to anybody who happens to pick it up in an old stack of magazines. Right now, however, I’m willing to bet that any University of South Carolina student on Twitter is familiar with “DrinkingTicket,” the popular Twitter account, garnering almost 80,000 followers, that is – self-proclaimed – South Carolina's “info authority.”
When his dog grew too large to share a bed with him, Cameron Holbrooks saw only one option: He was going to need a bed big enough to hold them both. Instead of going online to scroll through stock at IKEA, he started sketching. He went to the store, bought some materials to match his design, and built an entirely new frame from scratch. This brought about a new problem: The new bed was big enough to hold the dog, but the bedroom wasn’t big enough to hold the bed.
Imagine this: You’re a full-time student balancing school work, social life and a volunteer position. In this position, you can work flexible shifts from any location. You pull out your laptop and clock in; silently, you await the incoming messages. This isn’t a typical volunteer opportunity at a food bank or animal shelter; you have chosen to be a crisis counselor for a Crisis Text Line.