Boston Universitys policies provide for equal

opportunity and affirmative action in employment

and admission to all programs of the University.

0410 100805

www.bu.edu/com/comment
2010

Manuel Morcano shows off his latest masterpiece. photo by Johannes Hirn

For the love of

LARPing page 14

ii thecomment 2010 iii thecomment 2010

Dean of the College of
Communication Editors Letter
Tom Fiedler The Man Behind the Curtain What Its Like to Forget
Katie Ryan
2 6
The Comment staff zeroed in on a themeidentityquickly this Your Name
The Comment Staff year. We had little trouble reaching consensus after someone asked, Samantha Gennuso
What makes us who we are? Is it our jobs, our families and our
Faculty Advisor cultural contexts, the hardships weve endured, the secrets we keep?
Susan Blau One answer is suggested in the photograph below by Johannes
Hirn. We think it says much about engineer-turned-hairdresser Manuel
Faculty Editor Morcano, who opened his Boston-area barbershop after almost dying Apes at Sea
A Granite State of Mind
Cynthia Anderson of a perforated colon several years ago. At the shop, Morcanos Drew FitzGerald
8 12 Eric Hal Schwartz
customers can view an array of autographed images of music legends
Student Editor and choose from such books as The 9/11 Commission Report and The
Aviv Rubinstien Definitive Book of Body Language.
Written works in the 2010 Comment also explore identity
Design and Production individual and collective. Lauren Keiper profiles women who have left
BU Creative Services their jobs in finance, voluntarily or not, in the aftermath of the credit
crisis. Drew FitzGerald limns the world(s) of libertarian Free Staters in
Staff Writers New Hampshire, Samantha Gennuso follows a film crew on its journey
Drew FitzGerald to raise awareness for muscular dystrophy and Katie Ryan shadows
Samantha Gennuso Frank Warren of PostSecret fame. LARP Me Good
Teresa Gorman We have personal explorations too. Teresa Gorman describes the Eric Hal Schwartz
14
Lauren Keiper tribulations of being the ninth of ten kids, and Aviv Rubinstien comes
Aviv Rubinstien clean as a storytellerhe hopes. In Apes at Sea, Eric Hal Schwartz
Katie Ryan takes us on a student cruise to Norway, likening the voyage to a
Eric Hal Schwartz large-scale social experiment. Even when disguised by fancy clothes
and good manners, Schwartz writes, our primate essence comes
Contributing Photographers through.
Vincent Bancheri Several other articles and essays round out our offerings, which
Johannes Hirn you can view in expanded form online at www.bu.edu/com/comment.
Vikesh Kapoor We hope you enjoy our work.
Layups and Lipstick Will Box for Passport
Cover Photo Katie Ryan
22 18 Johannes Hirn
Aviv Rubinstien, Student Editor
Vincent Bancheri Happy reading.

2010 by the College of

Communication
Boston University
Destiny USA:
Ryan Gosling Loves to Fist-Bump
The Story of a Mega-Mall 24 28
Aviv Rubinstien
and a City
Front cover: A masked Live Teresa Gorman
Action Role Player strolls the
grounds at Camp Denison,
Mass., as part of a story line.

(Re)Balancing Act Finding Our Faith

30 32 Lauren Keiper
Lauren Keiper

His Wheels Keep Spinnin Number Nine

33 36 Teresa Gorman
Samantha Gennuso
Manuel Morcanos identity surely shows on
the walls of his shop.

photo by Johannes Hirn 1 thecomment 2010


The Man
Behind
The Curtain
The Wizard
of Oz lives in
[Katie Ryan] Germantown,
Maryland.
To the
members of the
insular community
hes created, he is
omniscient. People
turn to him for guidance,
or to express their most
fundamental needs: brains,
heart, courage, a home. His fame
stems from what he is rumored to have
provided, yet as an individual he remains
shrouded in mystery.
Frank Warren, 45, is the great and
powerful Oz behind the collaborative
art project PostSecret. He collects
about a thousand anonymous
confessional postcards from
strangers around the world each
week, redistributing a selection
of the once-private divulgences in
blog installations every Sundaya
routine thats earned his website close to
300 million hits over the last five years.
HarperCollins, the publisher of Warrens
five books, has dubbed him the most trusted
man in America. But thats his public persona.
Pay no attention to the man behind the
curtainor, in this case, the man behind
the website.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Like any good revelation, the idea for
PostSecret came to Warren in a lucid dream.
It was December 2003 in Paris, and
Warren, having checked into his hotel room
Courtesy: HarperCollins
for the evening, placed three souvenir
2 thecomment 2010
postcards in a drawer before retiring. As he
slept, he dreamed that the three postcards
had been altered. The first message read,
unrecognized evidence, from forgotten
journeys, unknowingly rediscovered, writes
Warren on his PostSecret Community blog.
[T]he second message was about a reluctant
oracle postcard art project, and the last I
could not understand at the time.
When he awakened, he immediately
manipulated the postcards in the drawer to
resemble his vision. What I did not know
was that those three remade postcards
would...set me on an unimaginable journey, begin phase three of his prophetic dream. The
he says.
It was just the escape he needed. Warren,
an Illinois native who holds a degree in social
science from the University of California,
Berkeley, had moved to the Washington, D.C.,
area after graduation. There hed begun a
business called Instant Information Systems
yet it was passionless work. It was a tedious,
monotonous job, but thats what inspired these
creative projects, Warren explains. Theres
a great deal of value in a boring job because
it makes you want to work harder and find
something to make you happysomething
that matters more.
The heady combination of career
dissatisfaction and a prophetic dream ignited
something in Warren. He adopted a kind
of creative superhero persona, embodying
the unassuming career man by day and the
enigmatic alter ego by night. He was realizing
the second stage of his vision.
Warren certainly thrived as a self-
appointed oracle, although he threw himself
into the project so wholeheartedly that his
reluctance is debatable. Adopting a secret
persona he called Hobby Horse, he spent
the summer of 2004 crafting several bottled
messages to be set adrift in Clopper Lake in
Marylands Seneca State Park. The bottles,
clear glass and the size of wine bottles,
contained photographed hands on postcards
that hung suspended from the corks. These
postcards were stamped, and incorporated
cryptic messages on the back such as Your
question holds more than its answer.
The story of the mysterious Hobby
Horse and his bottles garnered widespread
attention. The Washington Post compared
the postcards to fortune cookies from the
dark. In its investigation of the anonymous
artistic litterings, the Post consulted Kerry
McAleer-Keeler, a printmaking instructor at
the Corcoran College of Art and Design, who
suggested that it could be a joke to the artist
that everyone is struggling to figure it out.
To Warren, perhaps it was a bit of a game.
Deciding what would go into each bottle was
like designing a scene, Hobby Horse told
the Post. What evidence to expose? What
to hide? How to show clues with ambiguous
meanings? How to display an airtight half-told
tale?...Allowing the pieces to be discovered
created more possibilities...The finder can
view me as provocateur or polluter; artist or
criminal.
By September, Warren was ready to
reluctant oracle delivered a final message-
in-a-bottle: You will find your answers in the
secrets of strangers.
That next Sunday, the PostSecret
movement began.
Not in Kansas Anymore
Warrens dream-inspired relationship
with the postcard and newfound passion
for public involvement with his art were the
cornerstones on which he built his Emerald
City. Armed with 3,000 self-addressed
postcards, Warren appealed to the citizens
of D.C., asking them to be part of a new
endeavor: write an anonymous secret on the
back of a postcard and mail it to him.
You are invited to anonymously
contribute a secret to a group art project, the
otherwise-blank cards read. Your secret can
be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession,
or childhood humiliation. Reveal anythingas
long as it is true and you have never shared it
with anyone before. Be brief. Be legible. Be
creative.
I knew that if I could find a way to allow
strangers to trust me with these secrets, it
would be special for me, says Warren.
About a hundred postcards found their
way to his mailbox, enough for an exhibit at a
monthlong D.C. art festival, for which Warren
suspended the secrets from the ceiling with
wire. The event was well received, and
Warren assumed the project had ended. But
new postcards kept coming, now handmade
and from distant states and countries.
Warren took this as a sign of bigger
things. PostSecret started as a lark, maybe
even a prank, he says. But the secrets have
taken on more gravity and more meaning
as times gone on. Once it became clear
that the movement had gone viral, Warren
established a blog to display some of the
secrets. He managed the secrets as he had
3 thecomment 2010
the bottles: hand-selected for their meaning,
arranged privately and broadcast to the public
once a week. Each Sunday he would select
10 postcards and add them to his site. Soon,
it became 20 cards a week. Hits to the site
increased.
Offshoots of the popular blog emerged
on social-networking websites like Facebook,
Twitter and, most notably, the PostSecret
Community forums, where fans gather online
to react to the weeks secrets and talk about
the impact the site has had on their lives.
There are those fans, for instance, who
connect so strongly to a particular secret that
they have the message or design tattooed
on their bodies; a whole section of the forum
is dedicated to pictures of and comments on
fresh, PostSecret-inspired ink.
Publisher HarperCollins has taken the
movement mainstream, producing five
PostSecret-inspired books authored by
Warren; the most recent of these, PostSecret:
Confessions on Life, Death, and God, debuted
at No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller
list in October 2009. The website shows the
immediacy of the secrets, but the books tell
the stories, says Warren.
And hes not necessarily looking to
stop there: Were looking to explore
new territorieseither TV or film. In the
meantime, Warren sets off from his Emerald
City to speak to the Munchkins at college
campuses across the country.
Off to See the Wizard
Its a cold, rainy October night when
Warren arrives at Boston University. Weather
One of the thousands of PostSecrets sent to Frank Warren.
4 thecomment 2010
notwithstanding, legions of fans are waiting.
The event is sold out. People have been lined
up at the auditorium for hours, before even
the event staff arrived.
While the Dorothies mill around the lobby
clicking their heels in anticipation, Warren
is onstage, prepping his presentation. His
appearance is meticulous, almost calculated:
His green dress shirt looks professional; the
un-tucked shirttails make him seem more
accessible. He wears pressed black pants
and black shoes. His hair is trimmed close;
wire-rimmed glasses rest between a furrowed
forehead and faint laugh lines on his cheeks.
Warren focuses on the silver Mac on
his podium, testing the volume and asking
staffers about the turnout. He takes a few
sips from a water bottle, shakes his hands
out, walks briskly across the stage and ducks
behind a curtain, building adrenaline for his
entrance.
Forty minutes after the staff opens the
floodgates, the man of the hour emerges. The
crowd erupts in thunderous applause. Warren
grins widely. Hes playing to another packed
house.
Himy names Frank, and I collect offers.
secrets! The crowd cheers voraciously.
And so it goes. Anything Warren says is
golden; they cant get enough. He talks about
the most trusted label hes been given
and how supportive his wife and 15-year-old
daughter are of this mission hes undertaken.
In contrast, however, his parents call
PostSecret diabolical and self-indulgent.
Maybe it is, Warren ponders aloud.
He plays a message that his mother left
on his wifes voice
mail: I dont really
want one of Franks
books, she had
said. Forget about
sending me one.
The audience
laughs nervously.
People are looking
around right now
wondering, Is this
funny? Is this sad?
notes Warren,
although that seems
to be the reaction he
hoped to elicit. This
project is one of
those ideas where
youre waiting for
one person to have
that crazy faith that their parents might not
understand.
And suddenly, the audience is in cahoots
with him. The event isnt about Warrens path
to PostSecret or the other artistic endeavors
that never made it quite as big; tonight, the
artist becomes the actor, playing the simple
servant of his followersthe confidante, the
friend. His parents may not understand, but his
audience does.
He gazes at the crowd. This project
doesnt make my secrets go away, but it
makes the burden easier. The statement is
an acknowledgement of self-indulgence
he confesses to what his parents have
suggestedbut somehow the act of his
admission is more compelling than any private
secret he could divulge. Hes forged a bond
with the 500-plus people in the room; they
accept him unconditionally.
And to reciprocate, Warren is
complimentary of them.
I think young people are more alive than
adults; theyre more involved in trying to
understand whats legitimate and real and less
caught up in who theyre supposed to be, he
It doesnt hurt that hes such a compelling
orator. His voice carries, yet its still soft,
lilting, with almost a Kermit-the-Frog quality.
He sits with confident, relaxed body language:
one foot on the wheels of his chair and the
other on the floor. He gestures with open
palms. The audience is rapt.
Warren continues to chat conspiratorially,
although many of his anecdotes are recycled.
The stories he tells in Boston are lifted almost
verbatim from the stories he told at an event in
New York several days earlier. He is a rock star
in his deliveryHello (insert name of city)! I
love you!
The biggest secret of the night may be how
well rehearsed Warren is.
Yet he can have it all memorized, because
his audiences are similar: all enthusiastic, all
excited to see the same never-before-seen
secrets, all asking the same questions when
the time comes. Does Warren think any of
the secrets are made up? The factual basis of
the secret isnt what matters, he asserts
after all, every postcard is art. [Each one is]
beautiful, Warren says. Whether the cards
bear legitimate secrets doesnt matter; artists
need not necessarily experience what they
depict: The very act of sharing a secret, the
process is transformative If youre truly
open to the secrets, theres a kernel of truth in
there that speaks to all of us.
The most common secret? I pee in the
shower. A secret hell never post? Warren
describes a card featuring a family portrait,
inscribed, My brother doesnt realize his
father is not our father. None of the faces are
disguised, and should the brother or any of his
friends see the postcard on the site, he would
be immediately identifiable. Secrets like that
dont belong to us, Warren says.
But one secret does belong to everyone,
Warren tells the crowd: Suicide is Americas
secret.
The mood shifts, the joviality replaced by a
collective deep breath of concern.
In this room of 500, 85 of us will think
about committing suicide, and 30 of us will
try, Warren says quietly. Students shift in
their seats and look down their rows with a
blend of suspicion and concern. Who will it be?
Warren uses the attention to talk about
Hopeline, a suicide-prevention center in
Washington, D.C., that PostSecret has aligned
with in an effort to raise awareness and funds.
Warren tells the audience that hes lost both
a close friend and a family member to suicide,
and that when he came up with the idea for
PostSecret, he was working as a volunteer at
one of Hopelines call centers.
I wont say that theres a direct connection Ill do when I see him, said Anne Harris, a
between having secrets and suicide, but I think
those considering it are a lot of times weighted
down with them, he says.
For Warrens efforts, his PostSecret project
received a special award at the National Mental
Health Associations annual meeting in 2009 for
moving the cause of mental health forward.
With such a large reader base, Id rather
use the PostSecret platform for suicide
prevention [than for commercial purposes],
he says. Ive never taken a dollar for
advertisements, but PostSecret readers have
raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for
Hopeline and suicide prevention. I think the
site has a higher purpose than ad revenue, and
I hope the readers feel that way too. I think
they do.
A Horse of a Different Color
Maybe they love him for his dedication
to suicide prevention, or maybe its the
voyeuristic appeal of knowing other peoples
secrets. Maybe its cathartic to send him a
postcard, or maybe checking his website has
become part of a Sunday routine. Whatever it
is, people adore Warren.
In Boston, his audience has been
engrossed through the entire presentation
laughing when he laughs, quiet when hes
quiet. Everything and everyone in the room
ebbs and flows on his cue: emotions, volume,
even actions. He asks people to take a break
from his speech and introduce themselves to
those around them, offering a sign of greeting
and peace. The postcards illuminated by
the overhead projector are multicolored and
illuminate Warrens face, almost as stained
glass. The auditorium is transformed into a
house of worship, with Warren as spiritual
leadermaybe even as deity.
Its not much of a stretch. Hours earlier,
before the audience was even permitted into
the auditorium, people were preparing for
If youre truly open
to the secrets, theres
a kernel of truth in
there that speaks to
all of us.
a religious experience. I dont know what husband, a father; hes been an entrepreneur,
artist, art collector. He could define himself any
student at Assumption College in Worcester,
Massachusetts. You dont understandhes
God. Another girl greets Warren after his
presentation. Ive met God, she declares as
she descends the stage steps. She turns back
and faces Warren. You are God! Five best sellers, nearly 300 million hits on
Warren is aware of the religious
implications his project can have
PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and
God is full of professions of faith, or a lack
thereof. These particular secrets in the new
book are very soulful. I wanted to capture
that, says Warren. These are full-frontal
confessions on how we really feel about
stuff we cant share at the church, or the
synagogue or the mosque.
And though Warren, the self-appointed
reluctant oracle, doesnt have a theological
background or any of the Big Answers, he can
relate to what his followers are experiencing.
This project has made my own faith evolve;
Ill put it that way.
After his presentation is over, the crowd
moves en masse to greet Warren and have
him sign their books. The event staff corrals
the excited audience into more manageable
groups of eight for visitation with Warren;
despite their excitement, people are quiet and
respectful. There are audience members openly
weeping, literally overcome by the opportunity
to meet Warren.
In Hebrew, the word secret means come
closer, says Warren. I think that when some
people send me a secret...I think theyre
searching for grace.
Theres No Place Like Home
His publishers say hes the most trusted
man in America; his fans call him God; his
parents call him self-indulgent; and to his
daughter, hes just Dad. Everyone knows who
Warren is to themits when he tries to
identify himself that things get a little tricky.
I feel like a film editor, taking scenes from
peoples lives and knitting them together,
making connections between them, allowing
the scenes to talk to us and to each other, he
says. Sometimes, I feel like an idiot savant for
secrets: Sometimes when Im building the story
for the week Ill hear a secret calling to me, one
from the week before or one Ive seen earlier,
and I go searching so I can find the right
harmony.
All of which is somewhat less than
concrete. Hows this? Frank Warren is a son, a
number of ways.
Id say more than anything else, Im
an explorer of hidden landscapes, he says
thoughtfully.
And what does this hidden landscape yield?
the website, a thousand postcards a week, an
ardent reception of his artistic vision, prominent
awards. And hundreds of thousands of dollars
raised in the name of suicide prevention.
Warrens self-description is indirect,
but perhaps its legitimate. At the end of a
yellow brick road paved with yearning for
public appreciation lies his Emerald City: an
empire built on self-fulfilling prophecies, a
city whose brilliance is not an inner light but
a reflection of its inhabitants. Warren is not
simply an explorer of this hidden landscape;
he is the Wizard behind its creation.
L. Frank Baums Wizard of Oz described
himself precisely: Im really a very good man,
but Im a very bad Wizard.
Perhaps Frank Warren is too. c
5 thecomment 2010
What
I watched myself stutter for the first time in June 2001. On
the TV monitor, my face contorted, my eyes looked down and my voice
staggered and stumbled. I felt ashamed. As a 15-year-old girl embarking on
college applications and the boys of summer, I was horrified that this thing
Id tried to stifle had a name but no specific cure. What I didnt know, sitting
in the clinic watching that video, was that asking a person who stutters to
slow down and relax was like asking a blind person to squint a little to see.
I even had trouble with my nameespecially with my name. Youd be
hard-pressed to find a person who stutters who doesnt have trouble with
Its
her name. Her address and phone number trigger anxiety as well. Its said
that the general populations number-one fear is public speaking, ranked
even higher than death. But to a person who stutters, I can assure you,
death seems like a picnic.
My first memories of stuttering are seemingly random episodes that
I dont like to recall. Fearing to raise my hand in class. Required public
Like
speaking. Sitting in English class waiting for my turn to read aloud,
knowing that the jerk behind would mimic me just low enough for our
teacher not to hear.
I started stuttering when I was 6 years old. My parents never made
a big deal about it. Yet eventually I realized I was constantly substituting
words and worrying about whether I would be able to say things. The
teasing and my confusion as to why I could not read aloud began to take an
emotional toll.
How can a seemingly small disability manifest so largely? Imagine
to
walking into a party. The host comes over, extends his hand, asks your
name. Hey, Im Ssss-ssss-sss Whoa, this girls drunk! he laughs. to stutter.
Yeah, me and the 3 million other people in this country who stutter.
Still, when my mother suggested we look into an intensive program
at the American Institute for Stuttering in New York City, I vehemently
refused. I didnt want to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with
how I talked. Fortunately, she persisted, and finally I agreed. I walked into
Forget
the first session of the program terrified of being exposed; Id tried to hide
my stuttering for so long and had never met anyone else who stuttered
before.
Stuttering took many forms that day. It was the 16-year-old boy next
to me, head down, refusing to look up as he attempted to speak. The
overbearing mother who mouthed her 14-year-old sons words as he tried,
to no avail, to introduce himself. I clutched my mothers arm, desperate to
leave this place where, at the time, it seemed I could not possibly belong.
I was not this severe, I thought. I knew how to say my own name. It didnt
matter that in order to do so, I would pretend to be distracted, or stomp
my foot, or blink my eye a certain way. When push came to shove, I could
say it.
During the first week of the program, I was forced to come to terms
Your
with things I hadnt understood. Foremost among them: Stuttering is
caused by a genetic disorder, however far back in the family tree, that
results in a misfire between the brain and vocal cords (or vocal folds).
Instead of the folds opening to produce speech, as they do in fluent
speakers, they slam shut, causing all sorts of desperate secondary
behaviors, which range from facial contortions to pen-clicking to strange
Name
sounds and breathing patterns. Its as natural for a stutterer to experience
blocked speech as it is for a fluent speaker to talk normally. Try to talk
without letting any air out. Thats the beginning. Now try deliberately to
stutter. Thats how it feels for me to speak fluently: weird and unnatural.
The AIS program required us to speak without secondary behaviors
from the first day, which is like asking a righty to write with his left hand.
In my case, I was accustomed to using the filler word um, to looking
upwards as I spoke to feign that I was thinking (and thus draw attention
[Samantha Gennuso] from the fact that I was struggling) and to subtly stamping my foot. I was
no longer allowed to do any of this. Once, when it took me 40 seconds to
say the word confidence, I won a prize. Stuttering was rewarded here
6 thecomment 2010
because we were finally confronting the demon. We had to learn to be okay
with it. If we were afraid to stutter, there was no hope of controlling it.
To hack away at the mental component of stutteringtension
in the vocal cords is increased by stresswe used desensitization
techniques. We sat in cubicles with a phone book and called every florist,
bakery, doctors office and gym in the city, asking what time they closed.
Sometimes we were told to stutter on purpose; other times we used
prolongation techniques or reformatted breathing. The group would hoot
and holler in applause if someone got a hang-up. All that mattered was
that we were doing the very thing that terrified us.
For so long I had cringed at things any normal speaker would say
without thinking (such as the aforementioned name, number and address).
Oh God, if I stutter at all, this person is going to think Im crazy or mentally
challenged. Although the severity of stuttering falls on a spectrum, youre
almost luckier if youre more severe. If someone asks your address and you
start tossing your head back and rolling your eyes, youre more likely to get
a sympathetic response than if youre silent, praying you can get through it
without looking like youve forgotten where you live.
The AIS program helped me enough that the next summer I signed up
for the annual conference of the National Stuttering Association (NSA).
There I met people who had never experienced effective therapy. It was the
first time outside of a therapy atmosphere that many of us felt safe enough
to stutter openly. I saw fluent speakers patiently waiting minutes just so
people could finally say their names. At AIS, wed been encouraged to use
the techniques we learned to generate fluency. Here, it was finally okay
Ive gone back to the NSA conference every summer since for the
workshops, seminars and mixers. When I was 18, I started the now-annual
College Transition Workshop as preparation for high schoolers. As I
entered my twenties I was let in on NSA jokes, such as One tequila, two
tequila, three tequila...Fluency! There is a sense of humor about the
disorder that stutterers embrace to lighten things up. My stuttering friends
and I frequently joke about the inevitable silences that occur on the phone
because its hard to tell when someone is silently blocking. Often well wait
patiently for each other when indeed no one is stuttering at all.
Even with the AIS program and the NSA seminars, my stuttering still
brought challenges. A significant one was introducing myself to a roomful
of non-stuttering fellow classmates at New York University. Up to that
point Id managed some combination of coughing, looking at the floor and
leaving the room to pull myself through the dreaded swamp. But after all
the AIS-induced awareness and NSA self-improvement and support, I felt
I had to face the demon. I could no longer be in denial, letting others feel
my shame as I refused to make eye contact. Instead I stood in front of
the class, heart bursting, and looked at the eager faces before me. My
name is Ssssamantha G-G-Gennuso. No, I havent forgotten my name, but
I am indeed a p-p-person who st-st-stutters. To my amazement, no one
flinched. I finished my introduction and sat down in an intoxicating haze of
relief and pride.
The tools and techniques Ive learned require constant diligence, and
they are not a cure. But Ive let my stuttering outopenly struggling on my
name at parties and on job interviews, knowing the reaction that inevitably
will come, only to crush it with confidence and a smile.
This isnt to imply Ive got it all figured out. Every stutterer has a story,
but one in particular stays with me. Its the mantra of a friend of mine from
my first days at AIS, Bob K. Bobs stuttering was so severe that he made
the commitment to practice for hours every day until he achieved relative
fluency. He left his old life of insecurity and self-hatred behind. But when
I asked him if there was anything he missed, he said, My stuttering,
because its a part of me. I thought he was crazy when I first heard him say
that, but Im starting to understand what he meant. c
7 thecomment 2010
A Granite State
of Mind
As sites for protests go, this one didnt
seem to offer much potential: a sidewalk
on a quiet lane in Keene, New Hampshire,
population 22,000, where a handful of
activists stood across from the quaint red
home of the Cheshire County Superior Court.
Past the courts drab side entrance, the
cases on the docket were not precedent-
setting. At 1:30 in the afternoon, a man
named Wallace Nolen was suing the city of
Keene for failing to give him the municipal
employee data hed requested in the computer
format he wanted. The city was stalling,
saying it needed more time.
The real show was in the lobby right
outside the courtroom, where three sheriffs
guarded the door against Sam Dodson, a
documentary filmmaker whod already spent
58 days in jail after refusing to turn off his
camera in the district-courthouse lobby. While
Dodson, camera held to his shoulder, asserted
his right to be there, the attorney inside was
bloviating about the minutiae of e-mailing
different computer file formats.
A gaunt-faced friend of Dodsons
named Ian Freeman appealed to the deputy.
Honestly, if youd just let him in, it wouldnt
have made for a very interesting film, he said
sarcastically. Its just boring lawyer talk.
The deputy didnt budge. Cameras
are not allowed unless a judge grants a
request, which in this case had been filed
only minutes ago. As an open-government
advocate, Dodson saw the extra hoop as just
another means of making citizens beg their
government for access. The officer and his
antagonist debated the finer points of the
policy while behind two sets of heavy wooden
doors the hearing petered out.
After the hearing, Dodson, Freeman and
others followed the parties through the lobby,
filming everything as they shuffled down
8 thecomment 2010
the stairs. Later that day, Freeman posted
online the footage he had recorded from his
BlackBerry under the headline Armed Gang
Assaults Sam.
Such confrontations have become
commonplace in Keene since the launch
of the Free State Project, a libertarian
initiative conceived in 2001 to concentrate
enough people unhappy with their current
government to try to establish a new system
in a new state. They took their name from the
abolitionists who settled in Kansas before the
Civil War with an eye to making it a free state.
After an online vote in 2003, the projects
constituents picked New Hampshirea
state sparse in population but kindred enough
in sentiment, they believed, that newcomers
might actually make an impact on the
electorate.
 The Keene area is
attracting a set of
people who are of the
outside-the-system
mind-set.
Freeman, who co-hosts Free Talk Live, a
After six years, the projects website
counts more than 800 pioneers who have
made the move, toward an eventual goal
of 20,000. The new residents hail from all
corners of the country, work in a range of
professions and, aside from their common
distaste for bureaucracies, often hold very
different beliefs.
Then theres Keene, a southwestern
New Hampshire town whose claim to fame
until recently was its huge annual Pumpkin
Festival, which last year boasted 29,762
[Drew FitzGerald]
photos by Vikesh Kapoor
lighted pumpkins. Although many Free State
migrants have ended up in large cities like
Manchester and on the states coast, the
newcomers to this small valley town might be
the best at getting their message across
using blogs, forums, radio shows and videos
of events posted minutes after they happen
to fight their notion of state tyranny.
Free Staters in other parts of New
Hampshire have already assumed local
elected offices, but working within the
system is not most Keene Free Staters
modus operandi. Manchester has more of
a political-activist scene, explained Free
State Project president Varrin Swearingen.
Keene is more of an anarchist, civil-
disobedient crowd.
What Keeners new neighbors lack in
political clout they compensate for in visibility.
Theres no official roster of Free Staters, but
those who stay active on FreeKeene.com
which hosts forums where everything to
do with local civil disobedience plays out
onlinehave proven savvy at spreading
their message via public demonstrations and
through adept use of new media.
I would say its the liberty media capital
of the country, if not the whole world, said
libertarian talk show that beams out to 61
stations nationwide. No caller is screened
or turned away, he said.
In addition to Freemans show, the
members of the online forums of
FreeKeene.com boast a newspaper, a
syndicated comic strip, a public-access cable
television show and a TV production company.
Theyve also made their presence felt
at the local level. From marijuana smoke-
outs in the towns main square to the
public flouting of more obscure government
regulations such as license requirements for
Ian Freeman in the Free Talk Live studio, his living room.
manicurists, Keenes newest residents have mint leaves to make their statement. I really assertion that Free State newcomers
combined creativity and a fierce dedication to dont understand what their point is, the sometimes disagree. The project has no
their ideals to gain notoriety. Their protests chief said. power over people other than to bring them
have gotten them coverage in the local Keene Meola said he doesnt think the groups to the state, he said, after which they are
Sentinel, The Concord Monitor, The New camera-heavy tactics will work in the end. on their own. In any case, the project is not
Hampshire Union Leader and The Boston In fact, he sees some people mellowing as a political party, just a medium to organize
Globe as often as theyve landed them in jail. they spend more time living in their adopted people around the same liberty message.
It seems that the Keene area is attracting hometown and even paying property taxes Indeed, with freedom of thought as a given,
a set of people who are of the outside-the- as much as they protest the affront when they it follows that the newcomers hold a variety of
system mind-set, said Freeman, who has visit the local tax office. He said he views the visions of what they hope the town to be. Some
a gift for unfolding the details of his most more vocal newcomers in Keene as causing just want be left alone. Others, like cartoonist
passionate beliefs with unending politeness. a rift within the Free State Project, between Dale Everett, a Quaker from Georgia, extol the
I think the outside-the-system stuff has young anarchists and working adults, fanning invisible hand of the markethe does it with
far more potential for return on investment, the flame wars that occasionally erupt on a strip called Anarchy in Your Head. Others
frankly. Yes, it has high risk, but high risk FreeKeene.coms own message boards. believe that Keene has the opportunity to
yields high reward. Freeman takes no issue with Meolas become what San Francisco was in the 60s,
Freeman risked much himself by moving
from Florida to the relative unknown of
southwestern New Hampshire. He now lives in
an unassuming duplex with a cozy living room,
padded with sound dampeners, that serves as
the broadcast headquarters for his talk show.
His studio gets busy in the evening as co-host
Mike Edge, a wide range of guests and even
the occasional house cat stop by for a visit.
Although Free Staters constitute only a
handful of Keenes population, the transplants
have created a community Freeman admits
he kind of fantasized about in Florida. With
everything thats going on, it can be hectic.
You have to be choosy...because theres
so much going on and you can only be in one
place at one time, he said. Thats never
anything I encountered down South.
Freemans fantasy is Keene police chief
Kenneth Meolas perennial headache. For
every time the Free State migrants violate
ordinances by refusing to stand for a judge or
by causing a disturbance at a tax office, they
also find a way to antagonize officers without
breaking the law. At one pro-marijuana
Dodson refused to bring tyranny to America any further.
demonstration, for instance, protesters held
9 thecomment 2010
according to new resident Richard Onley, who
said he was there to see it.
Despite their differences, If theres
drama, it really exists on the Internet, where
people sit behind their computers and dont
really get to sit face-to-face, Freeman said.
Most people get along very well.
The courts are a different story. Although
no arrests were made, a January hearing
over a Free State activists drivers license
was packed with bailiffs in anticipation of a
fray. The move was not without precedent:
In his two years as clerk for Keenes district
court, Larry S. Kane said he has seen activists
repeatedly heckle, disparage and disobey
local judges. We know when theres
someone coming in here whos a member of
the Free State Project, Kane said. Every
case where there is a Free State Project
person involved, the camera issue comes
up...Its not something that we need to deal
with at any other time.
Dodson, for his part, said he does not
regret bringing his camera into the courtroom,
then refusing to give his name to authorities.
One judge has a dictatorship over the
town, Dodson said; he views his nearly
two-month stint in jail after the incident as a
demonstration of principles.
Those same principles were at work in
Dodsons choice to move to Keene in the first
place. Like many of the newcomers, he set
upon an uncertain path, from a high-paying
corporate job to a risky business venture he
runs out of his new home. In 2008 he was
working in Dallas for a telecommunications
company as an electrical engineer. But the
position did not sit well with him: Homeland
Security would come in all the time with
requests to query our data, he said. I realized
I was helping bring tyranny to America.
Dodson said it was newly acquired
10 thecomment 2010
knowledge of how to broadcast information so much abuse and so [little accountability]
himself that prompted him to move. Hed been that you cant really prevent people from
campaigning for Texas libertarian Ron Pauls getting hurt, she said.
presidential bid and making public speeches With an outfit called Obscured Truth
of his own when a friendly audience member Network, Dodson and McLain make videos
approached him. Somebody came up and of ways to defy the system, such as flying
said, Do you know what a podcast is? I had domestically without carrying any form of
no idea. ID. Like Freemans brand of libertarianism,
Dodson learned, and found a voice Dodsons holds little faith in any medium of
through his newfound skills. Having mastered mainstream political change. Politicians can
videography, he began making political make minor course corrections, but I think
shorts with a libertarian message. Feeling were moving in the wrong direction, he said.
increasingly frustrated with a system he I think the systems grown out of control, and
saw as unsalvageable, he decided to take I dont think theres any stopping it. The lens,
the money hed saved up in Texas to buy a not the lawmaker, is now Dodsons preferred
green clapboard house a stones throw from tool for society-wide change.
Both men said they found out about the
Free State Project on the Internet but took the
final step to move based on the reputations
of other like-minded pioneers. In contrast
with the clear distaste they show for police
officers, judges and other officials, Dodson
and Freemanlike many of their fellow
Free Statersregard the movements early
movers with reverence, even when they
disagree over certain means of protest.
The reason I chose [the Free State
Project] was because people I respected
Keene Mayor Dale Pregent says the chose it, Freeman said. Some of his friends
newcomers have yet to make a large impact. said the same thing of him.
Friendship, in this case, often derives
Keenes central square. He started recording from online acquaintance. Almost all Free
public meetings and compiling video from State newcomers make adept use of the
a computer on the second floor of his new Internet. Freeman said Keene is particularly
home. overrepresented by libertarians who
Dodsons girlfriend, Meg McLain, who at some point worked with information
taught him many of his multimedia skills, said technology.
her views about government changed more That sentimentof the value of the
gradually. The Oregon native said coping with Internet as a means of communication and
a period of homelessness left her seeing the communityis shared by Free Staters both
government as inept. At first I thought the in offices and on the streets. [Keene is] a
law could be used to help people, [but] theres center of activism in New Hampshire, as
far as Internet advertisement is concerned,
said another transplant as he stood outside
the courthouse holding a cardboard Honk
for freedom sign. The protester, who would
only give his name as Stone, wore a navy
hoodie and jeans duct-taped around his bike-
pedaling leg. His current job, he said, is to
manufacture and distribute cigarettes.
Stone isnt the only Free Stater with an
alias. Some fellow Free Keeners even refer
to each other by their online monikers. Other
members, like Freeman, who was born Ian
Bernard, answer to a pseudonymor more
accurately, a chosen name. Dodson, who once
went by the name Miller, said the decision
was more than just self-styling. I feel like my
legal name has been usurped by the state,
he said.
Stone moved to Keene from Virginia in
September, leaving his friends and family
behind. He does not regret the choice,
embracing the newfound freedom he found
wholesale. People are smoking out in the
square, gardening here [on government land]
and giving manicures without a license.
As Stone stood with his sign, some drivers
honked, and others ignored him. One woman
rolled down her window to question what
it was all about. Freedom from what? she
asked, in a not-so-friendly manner.
Exactly! Stone said, emphasizing
how much he approved of the disapproving
question. Both were silent for a second before
the driver recited: Freedom isnt free.
Exactly!
A soft-spoken elderly man suggested
an addition to the sign. How about and
responsibility? he asked, to which Stone
conceded he thought exactly the same thing.
A ruddy-faced truck driver slowed his
vehicle. You guys are part of the 4:20
[cannabis] crowd, right?
Stone asserted they were.
You do some great work, guys, the
trucker said, pumping his fist.
Keene residents have reacted by turns
indifferently, supportively and angrily to their
new neighborsin ways that are as much a
function of the locals own attitudes as of the
migrants actions.
Paige Beauregard, a cashier at The Corner
News convenience store on Main Street,
typifies the stance many locals have taken
toward the out-of-towners, who are easy to
spot even in a place where odd characters are
 Every case where
there is a Free State
Project person
involved, the camera
issue comes up.
common. New Hampshires pretty lenient,
said Beauregard. We dont really judge
people unless they make us judge them.
In this case, some Free Staters actions
have given Beauregard cause to judge. As
for the smokers on the Common...I think
they really could have done it a better way.
The way you need to change the law is to go
to the law, not by going out in public with an
illegal substance, she said.
Keene mayor Dale Pregent shares
Beauregards skepticism of the way Free
Staters sometimes go about doing things,
although he too stressed that they have the
right to their beliefs. I doubt theyve had the
impact on the city that they want to have,
Pregent said of the newcomers. As small as
this post-industrial county seat might seem
to outsiders, the mayor noted that a few
dozen people are going to be hard-pressed to
change the minds of nearly 25,000 longtime
residentsespecially in a place as blue as
Keene. Keene is a very, very Democratic
region, said Pregent, whose office is
nonpartisan, as are all local officials. Its a
very progressive city, very environmentally
friendly.
Other locals fear what may result from
the Free Stater presence. At Lindys Diner,
a greasy-spoon establishment that serves
Fluffernutter sandwiches along with more
typical breakfast and lunch fare, retired
librarian John Blomquist expressed his
reservations. A resident of nearby Walpole,
Blomquist regrets how his once-placid town
has been choked by the surge of newcomers
and said he feared the same for Keene. But
Blomquist also seemed somewhat resigned.
I suppose you have to look at it this way:
Theyre going to do it anyway, he said.
Stone would agree. I believe in freedom
in my lifetime, he said. Im ready to find
out if this is possible. The 800-and-counting
Free Staters have rallied under the same
battle cry, and for many the starting point
is this small town in the foothills of New
Hampshire. FreeKeene.com proclaims the
place the world destination for pro-liberty
civil disobedience and noncooperation. Time
will tell. Meanwhile, Stone will flag down
passing motorists with his handheld signs,
and Freeman will host his radio show. Dodson
will keep showing up at court, camera on his
shoulder, hopingor maybe notthat the
powers that be will let him in. c
11 thecomment 2010
Apes at Sea
Four percent of my DNA is all that stands between me
and a chimpanzee. Despite humanitys intellectual and technical
accomplishments, only a fractional difference in genetic identity
separates looking for life on Mars from looking for lice on a
neighbors fur.
I remember watching Discovery Channel specials on chimpanzees
and their entertaining antics, but what always struck me about those
shows was what they said about chimpanzee society. Chimpanzees
and other great apes apparently live a social life complex enough to
be understood only by a dedicated genius like Jane Goodallor by
someone who really likes soap operas.
The same, of course, is true for
humans. Even when disguised by fancy
clothes and good manners, our primate
essence comes through. Indeed, while I  It only took one week in the
pride myself on my analytical nature, it summer of 2008 to make a
only took one week in the summer of 2008
to make a monkey out of me. I spent that monkey out of me.
summer traveling Europe on an academic
cruise program called Semester at Sea.
When I boarded the ship, I had no real expectations for the first week,
the one that would take me and 600 other college students from Nova
Scotia to Norway. I was focused on what would happen once the ship
docked in port. The onshore explorations and academic aspects of the
summer loomed larger than any social consideration. I assumed that
first week would be dull and I would spend most, if not all, of my time
alone. I crammed my iPod with movies and packed books (Moby Dick
and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) to keep me busy.
What I had failed to foresee was how very much this first part
of the trip would be like a psychological experimentor, to be more
precise, a chemistry one. Take one cruise ship; add college students
with an exciting summer ahead of them. Make sure that most of
them have never met before. Grant them a maximum of free time by
ensuring that all mundane chores are taken care of. Remove nearly all
12 thecomment 2010
[Eric Hal Schwartz]
supervision. Add a dash of alcohol, and shake well on an empty ocean his shadowing of the brunette near him was effective in gaining her
for eight days. Use caution when examining contents, as the blast admiration, or was he perhaps oblivious to how he looked? It took
of hormones could strip away the inhibitions and common sense of some effort to silence these kinds of thoughts, but for once I didnt
anyone without proper protective gear. find them more interesting than actually participating. To the
The moment the ship began to move, there was a sense of contraryI encouraged my inner chimp to strangle the pedantic
uncertainty about how we might get to know one another in this lecturer in my head.
strange, unstructured environment. Lacking lice to groom, we turned to To adapt to life on the ship, some chose a different kind of
play in much the same way young chimps mightto bond and engage gameless transparent but often with stricter rules. To take part, the
with our peers. participants wore nice dresses, button-down shirts and suit jackets. Im
Everyone brought out the games, songs and jokes they knew from pretty sure I even saw someone in a tie. Together they headed for Pub
childhood. Swept up in the fervor, I dredged up memories of summer Night, a few hours of overpriced beer and overblown expectations.
camp and kindergarten for the things I Not even the most ardent of us literal game-players were unaware
used to do with my friends before we of this other way that college-age people play. Sometimes the fog of
had video games. The sentence-forming hormones was thick enough to make me dizzy. Actually, that might have
hodgy-podgy was a particular favorite. been from walking into a pole when a particularly pretty girl walked
The videographer of the voyage even by, wafting perfume as she passed. A multitude of dents would have
filmed us, fifteen or so college students marked the passage of some students had the ship been made of
sitting in a circle holding hands as we less durable material. For those who were singleand for some who
passed a clap to the nonsensical refrain. were notthe week offered an unrivaled opportunity to preen, strut
All the chairs in the room were occupied and otherwise parade themselves to an essentially captive audience.
by people laughing at the ridiculousand frequently risqu Even if this posturing was not done consciously, the methodically
sentences we would compose to the rhythm of clapping hands and questioning part of me could not help but see the chimpanzees in their
slapping knees. Of course, failing to finish a sentence (and we usually fight for hierarchy and the rewards of being on top.
failed) made us laugh even more. The zenith of the night came when The most common on-board struggle for dominance took the form
we all decided to play a variant of hide-and-seek called sardines, in of storytelling, ultimately just a more civilized version of puffing out
which only one person hides and everyone else has to search for him or the chest, screeching and throwing sticks in the air. No matter how
her. Not as intimate as eating parasites and bits of dead skin off each crazy or outlandish the tale told, someone else sitting with the group
others backs, but certainly a cleaner form of bonding. attempted to top it and thereby usurp the tellers dominance.
As much fun as I was having, the logical part of my brain still At one point, a fellow traveling scholar told us about how he
kept clicking away, filing observations, comparing phenomena and had drunk an entire bottle of vodka by himself one night and had
attempting both to explain and predict the behavior of those around barely felt sick the next morning. No sooner did the echoes of his
me. Was the enthusiastic girl encouraging us all to play really excited tale of self-abuse die away than a girl jumped in with an account
about the game, or did she just want to be the center of attention? of how shed gone on a two-day bender, drinking bottle after bottle
Did the giggling fellow bouncing like a concussed kangaroo think of liquor. The only noticeable effect: her complete lack of memory
of the second day. What point this narrative was supposed to prove
puzzles me still. I didnt ask, though. In my experience, those who pose
awkward questions tend not to be invited to parties. I never win the
storytelling game, but I suspect that those who do are lying, or at least
exaggerating. Otherwise I dont believe they would still be alive, or at
least without a dozen illegitimate children.
Meanwhile, the courtship game continued. All around me students
on the ship were engaged ina wonderful euphemismhooking
up. What hooking up exactly means varies in definition from person
to person, but vocabulary was the least of what some were sharing.
Although in retrospect it seems inevitable, I was still surprised at the
sheer number of people who found someone special, if only for a few
hours. The negative aspect of being in such a small community was
that there was little space should friction develop post-romance. No
way to avoid people after the mind cleared. Conflagrations, fights and
tears were all too common. After carefully considering the possibilities,
I decided to pursue friendship instead. From the rumors that flew
around the ship faster than the
sea birds we sailed by,
others came to that
conclusion far too
late. Rationally,
Im glad I didnt
get sucked into it, but
96 percent of me could have
swung my decision in another direction.
It wasnt until I sat at breakfast the morning we sailed into port that
I realized that for all my internally aloof analysis, I was just as invested
in this group as anyone. My very involvement had delayed the epiphany
that the social aspects of the trip were now much more engaging
to me than I could ever have imagined. Four percent may be all that
distinguishes human from chimpanzee DNA, but I choose to think this
is a compliment to chimps, rather than a slur to humanity. With that
thought, I finished my banana. c
13 thecomment 2010
 LARP
Me Good [Eric Hal Schwartz]
photos by Vincent Bancheri
The barbarian warrior shouts a battle
cry as he brings his twin swords down. The
man before him falls. Chest heaving, the
warrior steps back from the now-prone figure.
Turning, he issues a command to his fellows
and sprints past the dueling swordsmen and
fallen bodies that fill the woods. The red sash
on his tunic flares behind him. Out of sight of
the battleground, behind a lodge, he removes
his glasses and wipes them clean, careful not
to smudge the tribal paint on his face. Ryan
Cohen may be a warlord at the moment, but
he wont be able to do much rampaging the
rest of the weekend if he cant see. And as a
game director for the Steam and Cinders live-
action role-playing game, he has more than
marauding to do.
Fortunately, Cohen is not the only
one coordinating the four dozen players
spending the weekend at Camp Denison,
in Georgetown, Massachusetts. Fifteen
staffers together try to ensure that players are
continually involved in exciting adventures.
Indeed, the two-year-old Steam and Cinders
and its parent company, Be Epic, can be
counted a success thanks largely to their
efforts and those of Cohen and Be Epic
president Mike Kanarekall in the context
of the rising popularity of Live Action Role-
Playing games and the many participants
(LARPers) in New England.
LARPing is a combination of fantasy
tabletop games, historical reenactment and
improvisational acting. Game creators render
everything from accents to the very laws of
physics in as much detail as possible, and
players work to make their characters come
alive. Ultimately, those involved create a
shared world.
Kanarek has been LARPing since he was
16 and, like many of the players and staff
at Steam and Cinders, has been involved in
14 thecomment 2010
In character: Sir Alcock and Mrs. Cragswagger
Lieutenant and Lady Weathersby
several ongoing games, often simultaneously.
In that sense, hes a true LARP veteran.
Today, comfortable in his fake facial hair and
military uniform, the 28-year-old calmly sends
out his team to deal with crises, checks on
dinner (prepared by the wife of a player) and
otherwise parlays his years of experience
into running what to an uninformed observer
appears to be a madhouse with a costume
budget. You get good at pre-empting fires,
he says. And while both Kanarek and Cohen
currently work full time (Kanarek as a quality
assurance tester for the online Lord of the
Rings video game and Cohen as a manager for
a medical-device company), they both want
to grow Be Epic as a business, involving more
people and eventually starting more games.
They are even using the LARP as a way to
apply for business school.
Steam and Cinders epic journey began in
July 2007 after a barbecue during which five
LARPing friends conceived a new game, one
they could run together. While they enjoyed
the games they were in, Kanarek says, they
wanted something newsomething different
from the typical magic realms. We were
sick of the fantasy genre, Kanarek says.
So the group decided to go for steampunk,
an entirely different realm of the fantastic.
Steampunk takes the world of the nineteenth
century and asks, What if we had followed
the visions of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells,
creating mechanical computers, steam-driven
machine guns, and all the other extrapolations
of the future based on then-current society
and technology? Steampunks rising popularity
in books, games, movies and comics led the
group to use the constructs and themes of the
genre, situated on a new world named Tellus
in a frontier town called Iron City.
The group started sharing visions and
ideas, attempting to tame the wild notions
in their heads. We were ranting about our
ideas while nobody else listened, Kanarek
remembers. Id say 99 percent of what we
had at that point got scrapped by the end.
After a month of twelve-hour meetings and
maniacal rule- and world-making, the team
was ready to test its intricate creation in the
finest LARP tradition: War Day. I would call it
a horrible train wreck, Kanarek says, wincing
at memories of the event. Cohen disagrees. It
was a lot of fun, he says. But he admits that
playing is generally less stressful than running
a game, especially an untested one.
In any event, the group persevered even
though the beta testing had not gone as well
as hoped. The founders, along with interested
friends, continued to refine the rules and deal
with the mundane necessities of finding a
place to play and arranging insurance, food
and everything else. They settled on Camp
Denison, which had plenty of space and was
isolated enough that the gamewhich can
get noisywouldnt bother neighbors. Finally,
in April 2008, the team was ready to run its
first real event.
It took only casual marketing and
promotion to draw people to the camp for
that inaugural game. We relied mostly on
word-of-mouth, Kanarek says, adding that
the Internet was useful in coordination. The
weekend was not without growing pains
misunderstood rules, along with uncertainty
about the tone and structure of the game
but the staff had expected that. Theres the
way its supposed to work and the way it does
work, Cohen says. But the 40 or so people at
that first game gave enough positive reviews
to keep the game alive, and encouraged the
staff to dream even bigger.
Steam and Cinders is now played about
six times a year: three games in the fall and
three in the spring, with a few extras thrown
15 thecomment 2010
in like a winter feast and small-group summer
events. Kanarek and Cohen arent afraid to get
their hands dirty, either, actively participating
whenever possible. You can do more good
out in the game, Kanarek says. You cant Victorian England and pure fantasy. But its
just wait for problems to come to you.
Up at the camp, players wander through
the woods or sit at picnic tables discussing
their latest exploits, always in character, until
sucked into a new storyline by staff members.
The plots range from baroque political
schemes to a straight battle against raiders,
most of whom are junior staffersor, as they
are fondly called, crunchies. Theyll play
bandits or things that are pretty disposable,
and then they go crunch, Kanarek says by
way of explanation. Bruises and aches are not
uncommon, but there havent been any serious
injuries.
Near the picnic tables set up
in a clearing, an elaborate, brightly
colored tent beckons. Inside, Brit
Knowlesor Sanura, as she is
known around Iron Citycarefully
puts together alchemical grenades
(beanbags or flour wrapped in
tissues), while explaining the utility
of these and other instruments. Her
characters accent, a mix of Russian
and Arabic, adds mystique to the
tea-scented space.
Commerce in Steam and Cinders
is possible thanks to the gold coins
designed by the staff and sold for A stockpile of weapons in the Mine Office.
the game. Each coin displays a coat
of arms on one side and the profile
of the queen (actually one of the staffers) on things afloat. Happily for Cohen and Kanarek,
the other. One of our goals in this game was
to not need suspension of disbelief, Kanarek
says. We want it to feel real. To achieve
that level of verisimilitude, Kanarek, Cohen
and the rest of the staff create elaborate
props, like period newspapers and official
notices, storing them and other equipment in
the nearby staff center, known as the Mine
Office.
The inside of the Mine Office looks
like the result of a high-speed collision
of a Renaissance fair with a comic-book
convention and historical-reenactment society. at once. College students and recent graduates
Heaps of swords and shields lie piled next to
racks of costumes, while tables of guns await
the next battle and pseudo-parchment posters who come to Steam and Cinders just to play.
issue admonitions to the people of Iron City.
The edged weapons are all heavily padded or
made of soft plastic, and the guns are mainly
16 thecomment 2010
Nerf weapons, painted and modified to look
like brass and steel, evoking a technology
that never was. The mix of styles is an
absinthe addicts dream of the Wild West,
games with minimal character development to
the row of cabinets forested with taped-on
sheets of colored paper that commands the
attention of most of the staff in the room.
Each sheet lists a story or activity and all the
staff and equipment needed, and each one
advances either the narrative of Tellus or the
development of individual characters.
Running a Steam and Cinders event is
further complicated by ongoing shifts in the
roster of players. Theres a lot of turnover
in the game, Kanarek says. People leave
and come back a lot. The sheets lining the
wall of the Mine Office are really just the
tip of the creative iceberg necessary to keep
the staff is more than up to the challenge.
When Kanarek calls over several people to
organize a raid, he can count on them to follow
the elaborate tactics and the subtle story
underlying the attack (in this case, the crash
of an airship). A frisson of excitement moves
through the room as a few staffers intently
pack a crate with weapons, ammunition and
other goodies for players to discover. We
have just as much fun as the players, Cohen
says. The players themselves often are old
hands, participating in several ongoing games
make up a majority of the population. Some
participants are staff members of other LARPs
They tend to be some of the best, Kanarek
says. They understand that I poured my heart
into this thing.
For those looking for a LARP, New England
offers one of the largest such extended
communities in the country. More than a
half-dozen venues offer everything from war
LARPs like Steam and Cinders with elaborate
histories and multifarious cultures. Settings
range from fictional-but-realistic to Tolkien-
esque with diverse species as characters.
Knowles compares LARPs to romantic
prospects. LARPing is a lot like dating, she
says. Some are fixer-upper boyfriends, and
some really have everything together. You get
different things out of different games.
Occasionally LARP romance is more than
metaphor. Knowles herself met her boyfriend
at her first game, when she played a savage
barbarian. He was dressed as a spirit
who sent me out to the woods to die, she
remembers. Kanarek, the boyfriend
in question, simply laughs when
questioned about the incident.
Actually, there are many
couples playing the game, including
some sets of husbands and wives,
although their characters do
not always reflect the real-life
relationship. Men outnumber
women at Steam and Cinders,
though less overwhelmingly than
in other LARPs. In most LARP
games, there is a five-to-one ratio
of males to females, Kanarek says,
but Steam and Cinders comes
out to about a two-to-one ratio of
guys to girls. Not that such gender
imbalance really matters with so
many costumes and wigs lying around. At
every LARP you go to, at some point in the
course of the season theyre going to put a
guy in a wig and a dress, Cohen says, and
the female staff dont hesitate to go the other
way when called on.
While there are plans to make Be Epic
profitable, right now the reward for the
weekend is the experience itself. Its a
real labor of love, Cohen says. After a
weekend of running around ensuring that 50
people are having fun, dealing with crises
both in-game and out and sleeping almost
not at all, sometimes he and Kanarek ask,
Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?
But even as they leave, ideas for new plots
and new adventures start to percolate, and
excited e-mails begin to fly back and forth in
preparation for the return to Tellus. c
The Savage Circle in Iron City. 17 thecomment 2010
 Will Box for
1. Tsarnaev works out at the Wai Kru Mixed
Martial Arts Center.
2. Though hes lived in the U.S. for five years,
4. T sarnaevs family fled Chechnya in the early 1990s
because of the conflict there. He lived in Kazakhstan
before coming to the United States as a refugee.

Passport:
Tsarnaev says, I dont have a single American
friend. I dont understand them.
3. Tsarnaev, who studies at Bunker Hill Community
College in Boston and wants to become an
engineer, took the semester off from school to
An Olympic Drive to Become a United States Citizen train for the competition.
[ Johannes Hirn]
5. In the absence of an independent Chechnya,
Tsarnaev says he would rather compete for the
U.S. than for Russia.
6.Tsarnaev stops to answer a call while walking to
his boxing practice.
7. Im dressed European style, Tsarnaev says.

4 6

1 3

2 5 7

Tamerlan Tsarnaev is a boxer from Chechnya who

currently trains at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts
Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Tsarnaev enters
national Golden Gloves competitions in hopes that he
might be selected for the next U.S. Olympic team and
become a naturalized American.

18 thecomment 2010 19 thecomment 2010

 8 10 11

12 9 13

8. Tsarnaev says he loves the movie Borat, even though some of the
jokes are a bit much.

9. When you start kicking, it gets dirty. Thats what I think, says
Tsarnaev. Of kickboxers, he says, They dont know how to move.

10. Tsarnaev says he doesnt generally remove his shirt when among
women at the gym.

11. Tsarnaev, a Muslim, doesnt drink or smoke. God said no alcohol,

he says.

12. Tsarnaev demonstrates a way of walking to strengthen the ankles.

In Russia, we used to train like this, he says. Here nobody does
it. I dont know why!

13.Tsarnaev takes a break from his boxing practice.

20 thecomment 2010 21 thecomment 2010

Layups
and
Lipstick
[Katie Ryan]

Eye shadow still gives me trouble. My hair is perpetually in its
ponytail. My closet is full of shorts not skirts, sneakers not stilettos.
I could probably use a little help.
When I got to middle school, I laid down my Barbies and picked up
a basketball. A decade of sports and two reconstructive knee surgeries
later, I still dont know how to put curlers in my hair, still keep my nails
short, still wake up and unconsciously dress for a basketball practice
I havent gone to in years.
Its not an easy transition from female athlete to...female. The for as long as itd take me to catch twenty in a row.
admission feels like the catharsis of a twelve-step group in a church
basement, but AA doesnt stand for Athletes Anonymous.
Hi, Im Katie, and Im a former basketball player.
It wasnt always like thisI wasnt born to be an athlete. Once
upon a time, I categorized basketball as a boy sport; I used gym class
to study the intricacies of French-braiding hair from the safety of the
sidelines. But the beautiful girls in fifth grade were beloved by boys and
upperclassmen alike, and many
of those girls were stars on the
basketball team. With infallible
tween logic, I determined that
all I had to do to be embraced by
the middle-school hierarchy was
to be good at basketball, too.
So I sauntered into my
first team practice, wearing
new jeans and cute shoes. I
was ill-prepared to see my
once-precious classmates
transformed: grosgrain
headbands replaced with
dripping sweatbands, well-
coordinated outfits traded for
mens undershirts and gym shorts. My mind raced. What world
was this?
Things worsened once I stepped onto the hardwood floor. I got
winded running the laps around the gym and stopped, pretending to
retie my now tragically un-cute shoes. My foul shots fell hopelessly
short of the rim; hard passes bounced off my fingertips.
I learned several lessons in those 90 minutes of sport: Actually
participating in gym class can make middle-school girls astonishing
athletes; crying is a punishable offense (more laps, less oxygen,
more tears, repeat); I was going to need a completely new wardrobe;
basketball is, most assuredly, not simply a boy sport.
I wont lie: For a long time, I was the worst one on the team. My
dad and I would go to our basement every night, turn on the NBA
(maybe Id improve via osmosis), and pass the basketball to each other
day swarm around me with their Ryan jerseys and WNBA regulation
Some nights were embarrassingly long.
Eventually, though, Id catch more than Id drop. I learned the names
of the Knicks starting lineup and could parrot the announcers (Did you
see that zone defense? Van Gundys out of his mind!). I shoved T-shirts
adorned with flowers deep into the recesses of my closet and bought
boys basketball sneakers. I stopped crying.
Its a delicate balance, growing up as both a girl and an athlete.
Truly dedicated players dont wear earrings or necklaces with their
baggy T-shirtsthose are telltale signs of the inexperienced, the
wannabes. A well-put-together outfit is key for a trip to the mall with
your friends; match your shirt to your shorts at practice, and you look
like youre trying too hard. Makeup? Nail polish? Your mother may have
finally relented, but what would your coach think?
High school brought new challenges. The adolescent identity crisis
is never more pronounced. Teens wander the halls trying to understand
who they are by sorting their peers according to what they do. Those
destined for the Ivy League read about high school from the safety of
the library. Up-and-coming Tony winners sing and dance as if the Great
White Way were lined with lockers. I carried my basketball with me
everywhere, and so I was happily defined as an athlete.
This is not to say that I forsook my high-school femininity entirely.
I was excited to be the Spice Girls with my friends at Halloween; it
was simply understood that Id be Sporty Spice. I pored over issues
of Cosmo, Seventeen and Sports Illustrated with equal enthusiasm.
A good night of television was flipping between Sex and the City and
SportsCenter.
Those small indulgences were all I allowed myself. Its an unspoken
rule of female athletes: Be girly, or be the best, because you cant be
both. You have to choose whats more important to you: letters from
Division I college-basketball coaches or a date to your senior prom? (I
nabbed a last-minute date to mine: a friends cousin, who borrowed my
cell phone halfway through to call his girlfriend. Awkward.)
Some girls try to straddle the line, but they get weeded out; if you
didnt go on to play in college, that was finebut it was because you
didnt want it badly enough. As girls my age deftly wielded kohl pencils
to practice eyeliner application, I had a Sharpie in hand to perfect my
signature; I would be ready for the throngs of little girls who would one
basketballs.
But my dreams of a future in the pros were dimmed after some
substantial injuries. Blowing out ligaments in one knee has been
enough to derail the careers of several professional athletes; I had
reconstructive surgeries on both of my kneesone a year before
the other, both before I graduated high school. Somehow, though,
I couldnt give up. Id worked so hard
on this identity. Who was I, without
my basketball?
Even with the surgeries, I was still  Somehow, though, I couldnt
recruited by some colleges to play, and
so I only applied to schools where I
give up. Id worked so hard
could be on the basketball team. But my on this identity. Who was I,
collegiate career was short-lived; my
bionic knees couldnt hold up, and I left
without my basketball?
the team after my freshman year.
The morning after I stepped down, I rose at 6 a.m. ready for the
team run, and realized I could simply turn over and go back to bed.
But how could I sleep? Id awakened to discover that Id become an
amputee: Had anyone seen the mass that was once attached to my
right hand? Twenty ounces or so, bright orange, answers to Spalding?
Just like that, I was back to square one. For more than ten years, I
had dedicated my life to sports, shunning anything that would not get
me closer to my goalseven outward signs of my own femaleness.
And what had it gotten me? Joints that snap, crackle and pop more
than my bowl of cereal in the morning, a closet full of sweatpants and
little idea who I was when I looked in the mirror.
And the beautiful, sporty girls of fifth grade had now evolved into
beautiful women, with manicured nails, silk blouses and high-school
sweethearts. How had I missed the priority
shift? We had once scoffed at girls who
breathed anything other than basketball; when
did we become them, I wondered?
I had some catching up to do. I went through
tubes of liquid eyeliner and bottles of nail polish. I
bought heels and blouses and blazers. I even threw
away my prized team sweatpants.
Becoming a girl was soon part of my morning routine
femininity became another layer to apply. I still woke up and put on a
hoodie, but Id police myself and return it to the closet for a cardigan.
There was time in my scheduleafter brushing my teeth but before
my coffeespecially slotted for makeup application. Id even leave the
house without a ponytail holder so Id have no way to sabotage my hair
in the middle of the day.
Yet somehow, I felt like a fake.
But a fake what, exactly? No matter how
long it may take me to master my mascara,
or how many days I sneak past my mirror in
a hoodie (if I didnt see it, it didnt happen),
the girl who French-braided hair on the
sidelines is the same girl who ran around in
boys basketball sneakers.
Lets face it: Its hard enough to grow
up at all. We spend our youths comparing
ourselves to our peers, jockeying for position. Eventually we wake one
morning to a dawning maturity, and wonder whom our peers have been
emulating while weve been so busy emulating them. Maybe growing
up means simply accepting who you are, even if youre not quite sure
who that is.
Although Im coming to terms with the unconventional path my
femininity has taken, my closet is the final frontier, where the last
schizophrenic vestiges remain. High heels Ill only wear to weddings
lie dormant next to sneakers Ill only wear on hardwood courts. There
are sequins, and there are sweatpants. If I could figure out how to wear
them together, I probably would.
What can I say? My wardrobe, my femininity, meits all a work in
progress. c

22 thecomment 2010 23 thecomment 2010

 The gates of wonderland opened. Buses
drove past a man-made lake with so many
trout that they could be pulled out by hand.
Hunters of the transported wildlife at the
reserve waved as the buses passed on their
way to a mansion-sized log cabin.
To the 200 people who gazed at Savannah
Dhu through the buses tinted windows, the
landscape must have seemed wholly
Destiny USA:
unfamiliar, a world much farther away from
their hometown of Syracuse, New York, than
the hours drive would suggest. It was October
2005, and the men and women on board the
buses were there to be shown that they too
could be part of a fantasy, as the same man
who had created Savannah Dhu planned
to transform an aging Syracuse mall into a
mega-mall that would rival any in the nation.
The Story of a Mega-Mall and a City It sounded almost too good: The simple
Carousel Center that had been around since
1990 would morph into Destiny USAa
rival of the Mall of America and maybe even
[Teresa Gorman] of Disney World, if the advertisements in
the current mall were rightwhich in turn
would transform the struggling city. The men
and women on the buses had been hired as
the workforce to execute a plan that some
were calling grand and others were calling
grandiose.
Already artists renderings had made the
project look like an elaborate science-fiction
conglomeration of commerce, entertainment
and luxury. There would be a replica of the
Erie Canal, 400 stores, rock-climbing walls, an
aquarium, two golf courses, 1,300 hotel rooms
and an arena. More than 122,000 jobs would
be created, and $12.5 billion allegedly would
course throughout the state as a direct result
of the tourism destination.
The workers must have been hopeful as
they listened to Savannah Dhus owner, Robert
Congel, speak about how he came from humble
beginnings like many of them, and how Destiny
USA would become a reality. Destiny USA
would change the lives of Syracusans by giving
a living wage to those who had been working
at fast-food joints and gas stations, providing
opportunities, and enhancing the citys collective
well-being. The workers werent the only ones
who would hear Congelthe magnate behind
Pyramid Companies, owner of Carousel and the
A fenced-in construction area of Arendi, the first phase of Destiny USA, near a largest private developer of shopping malls in
parking lot of Carousel Center. The Lord & Taylor has been in Carousel Center since the United Statesgive his pitch. Politicians
1993, three years after the shopping mall opened. and influential citizens were also bused to
Savannah Dhu to hear the Destiny USA pep talk,
including how Congel had begun his empire in
1970 right there in Syracuse.
24 thecomment 2010
Little did the employees know that within
three months most of them would be laid
off. Half a decade later, the only sign of the
fabulous development is a 900,000-square-
foot gray appendage to the side of Carousel
mall, built by contractors from out of state.
There are no tenants for the new structure,
and the high hopes and tax dollars residents
invested in the process are stymied.
It sounded too good to be true. Maybe
it was.
The city of Syracuse is known more
for snow accumulation than as any kind of
tourism mecca. But even though its won the
Golden Snowball Award (a competition among
upstate New York cities for which has the
most snowfall in a given season) every year
since 2002, there is much more to their city,
residents say. Syracuse University and other
colleges are within the city limits. Many parts
of the city are inviting places in which to live.
The countryside is a fifteen-minute drive away.
Yet none of these attributes alters the
 People are willing
to grab anything that
looks like a lifeline.
economic reality that Syracuse has faced
in the past few decades as a poster child
for post-industrial decline. A city with deep
blue-collar roots, from Erie Canal commerce
to manufacturing, Syracuse has not recovered
from the departure of its largest employers.
General Electric is gone, and the Carrier
Corporation, a once-stable core of the
economy, is just a hazy memory left behind
as a moniker on Syracuse Universitys Carrier
Dome stadium. Over time, the Rust Belt has
tightened around Syracuse, taking much of
its vitality with it. Empty storefronts have
accumulated downtown. The population has
dwindled from 221,000 in 1950 to roughly
140,000 today.
It was to this compromised, once-proud
city that Congel made his pitch, according
to local developer Bob Doucette. Doucette,
who is also a professor at LeMoyne College,
describes the situation as he sees it from
his office in the middle of Armory Square, a
downtown neighborhood that he has been
instrumental in reviving. The King of Armory
Square, as Doucette is sometimes called, says
the instability of Syracuse made it vulnerable
to accepting any leadership or momentum.
People are willing to grab anything that
looks like a lifeline, Doucette, says, leaning
forward. If it bears some resemblance to a life
preserver, they grab for it.
Destiny USA wasnt the first time Robert
Congel had tried to alter the landscape of his
hometown. In the 1980s, he won over local
politicians to his plan to have Pyramid build a
mall in Syracuse. The mall would bring jobs,
generate revenue. The clincher was Congels
promise to build on top of part of Oil City, a
toxic dump on the shores of Onondaga Lake,
which had earned a reputation as the most
polluted lake in the nation. The nearly 100
acres occupied by nine active oil companies
were surrounded by 700 more acres of
decrepit buildings.
Pyramid spent millions cleaning up
contamination on the 75-acre mall site and
dedicated more to the dump surrounding
it. Carousel Center opened in 1990 despite
concerns that such a thing was not possible.
Can a Mall at a Toxic Dump Revive an Ailing
Syracuse? asked a New York Times headline
on October 17, 1990. The economic revival did
not occur to the extent the city had hoped, and
the condos and offices supposed to surround
the mall never appeared, but Pyramid did
continue to clean up the area.
People who credited Congel with helping
the Syracuse economy the first time around
were more likely to be on board the second
time. Syracuse Common Council President Van
Robinson, for one, says the Oil City clean-up
and mall development were a boon to the city.
To expand it would only have made sense,
he says in retrospect. Though Van Robinson
was elected in 2006, sixteen years after the
original mall opened, he ran unsuccessfully for
the council in 1987 and would have supported
an expanded plan then, he says. People come
from all over to shop here, Van Robinson
says. They come from Canada, they come in
tour buses. More would come if Destiny USA
was built.
Perhaps Congel, who was not available for
an interview, heard those echoes of build it
and they will come, though Pyramid had much
more than a field in mind when the Destiny
project was first presented. In 2001, Carousel
drew about 17 million visitors. By comparison,
plans called for Destiny USA to draw 40
million people in a year. The price tag:
$15 billion with all phases complete.
25 thecomment 2010
 The problems began as soon as
pamphlets of artists renderings of the
imitation Tuscan marketplaces that would
flourish within the climate-controlled glass of
Destiny reached the hands of local politicians
and businesspeople. The reality of this
monster of an idea that would outsize any
mall in the nation hit. Tax breaks were battled
over, including a 30-year payment-in-lieu-of-
taxes (PILOT) agreement. Tensions between
a split Common Council and mayors office
spilled over, and debates grew more heated.
In the end, political maneuverings around the
development would go all the way to then-
Governor George Pataki and then-Senator
Hillary Clinton. Everyone wanted to have a
say, and nothing real was being said.
Cynicism among Syracuse residents
began to grow, according to Chuckie
Holstein, the executive director of
community-betterment organization Forging
Our Communitys United Strength (FOCUS).
Thats just how people are here, Holstein
says. FOCUS hands out Be Positive
stickers to the Syracuse community, but
maintaining such a position is difficult, she
says, during periods when the economy
is gray along with the weather. Even so,
Holstein wears a sticker every day.
Pyramid and the Greater Syracuse
Chamber of Commerce even proclaimed
Destiny USA dead in 2003. It will not be
built within the city limits, an anonymous
Pyramid source told The New York Times on
July 12, 2003. Soon, though, the project was
revived, gaining concessions with the PILOT
program. Still, matter after matter arose.
Congel had not included a roller coaster in
the plans, but he had one now.
In 2005, residents of Syracuse and
Onondaga County received a press release
during a period of new uncertainty. Does
Destiny stand to gain as a developer?
the release asked. Yes. And we are the
only ones at risk. Is the community at risk
under any circumstances? Not at all. The
release assured residents that Pyramid was
confident that the expansion of Destiny USA
would again put Syracuse on the map. At
the same time, a radio campaign bombarded
listeners with sound bites. Support Destiny
USA: Syracuse and this nation need it.
But it was 2005, and nothing had been
built. A few piles had been driven into the
parking lot of Carousel Center during a press
conference, complete with a ribbon cutting.
There they still stood. Stacks of steel across
26 thecomment 2010
the street from Carousel Center sat rusting.
Drivers who passed the mall could see the rust
grow almost by the day.
According to Armory Squares Bob
Doucette, the lifeline mentality crippled the
Destiny project from the start. The government
acted on ideas without questioning them at all,
he says, which led to many of the problems.
Chief among them was the actual idea of
mega-malls, which in general do not benefit a
city, says Doucette. The sprawling development
of a project like Destiny USA would never be
the answer to economic problems. I dont like
it, Doucette says of mega-mall development
in general. I dont think its been good for
our country. Sprawl has used up a lot of our
resources. America bought into the suburban
model of building, building, building, and now
there is all of this empty infrastructure out there.
Since the 1980s Doucette has been known
America bought into
the suburban model
of building, building,
building, and now
there is all of this
empty infrastructure
out there.
in Syracuse for his own work developing
properties. Both he and Congel are avowed
lovers of Syracuse, with family nearby,
but their approaches have been opposite.
The King of Armory Square began to turn
downtown Syracuse from a place of empty
storefronts and crime into a lively center of
apartments, arts and businesses. His influence
remains such that newly elected Syracuse
mayor Stephanie Miner chose him as head of
the economic-development-and-job-creation
transition team before she took office in
January 2010.
Doucette works in a building that his
management company renovated. Inside,
antique moldings contrast with the plans
and mock-ups for new projects that fill the
space. One such project is to add a food
co-op into a historic building; another is for
green homes in neighborhoods that cater to
Syracuse University. These kinds of projects
survive because they evolve organically from
the heart of the city, he says. People said
Destiny was a crazy idea way back in the
beginning, says Doucette. They started
having problems...and it just kept going.
In 2005, more than 180 workers were
hired as the initial Destiny workforce. Few,
if any, had construction experience. Yet they
would all be taught jobs and earn $60,000
a year. The workers soon appeared in
commercials thanking Destiny USA for saving
Syracuse. Everything was a marketing tool,
says Emad Rahim, a former employee. Rather
than build on what may have been a great
concept, they relied on marketing.
Rahim was skeptical, but still he applied
for a job. He thought maybe he would write
his dissertation on the process for his masters
in project management. But even he began
to be sucked into the idea. Syracuse needed
somethingwho knew if this was it? he
says. At first, the new job seemed exciting,
Rahim recalls, but after a minimum of training
the workers often sat around doing nothing.
They never hammered or soldered a thing
onto Destiny USA, he says. Moments of
excitement, such as the day trip to Savannah
Dhu, stood out as bright spots.
Rahim still remembers the day he was
laid off.
It was...surreal, Rahim says. Everyone Emerald City without waiting for Destiny,
started to realize just what a pipe dream
this was. In a conference room, colleagues
wept as they heard they would be fired after
only three months of work. Yet many workers
stayed dedicated to Destiny and blamed the
city. The city blamed Destiny. Only a few
employees remained. Rahim was not one
of them. He never wrote the Destiny USA
dissertation, but fortunately he had planned
ahead and eventually founded a consulting
business.
For Pyramid and for Congel, the gig
wasnt up yet. In fact, things might turn out
more favorably than anyone dared hope, the
company proclaimed in 2006. Not only could
Destiny be the Emerald City of malls, it could
be completely and truly green. It wont be
just any building...this time well make a
difference, Destiny USAs website currently
states.
The latest plan is that Destiny USA will
be the worlds largest sustainable structure,
according to the United States Environmental
Protection Agency, which is now on board
with the project. It will reduce emissions,
recycle materials and be paperless. Trucks development by young people in Syracuse. I can
will run on biofuel, and solar power will be a shop online. Its like that everywhere.
main energy source. Commercials emphasized Robinson says the blame does not belong
the mall will not use foreign oil. One ad to Pyramid or Destiny, or to Congel, for that
shows a picture of Osama bin Laden before a matter. This is only normal, Robinson says.
mother tells us that evil will not be supported With the economic downturn of the last year
by buying oil. Thats why I support Destiny and a half, everywhere in the nation is facing
USA, she states on her sons playground, changes in plans. Given these changes,
before running off to the swings. The irony there is no public plan for when the next
of building a green mega-mall on the site phases of the project will begin, says Destiny
of a former toxic dump doesnt seem to be USA spokesman David Aitken. Promotional
foremost in anyones thoughts. materials inside Carousel Center suggest
In the old mall, the maintenance crew otherwise. Good things come to those who
has repainted every banner and handrail kelly wait, reads one kiosk outside of a vacant
green. The color clashes with the original store that used to have a CompUSA in it.
teal. Already cracks are beginning to spread But the King of Armory Square prefers not
through the green as it wears off of surfaces. to wait. I would rather bet on the concept of
Out in the parking lot, there are even green a city thats 10,000 years old, Doucette says.
spaces for hybrids close to entrances, though Mall development started in the 1940s, and I
more often SUVs and minivans fill the spots. want to bet on the fact that malls are done.
Holstein, the executive director of FOCUS, For Robinson and Holstein, Destiny USA
received the first green sticker for her hybrid remains a possibility, if not a definite reality.
at a special event announcing the initiative, It would be an asset if it worked, Holstein
which includes efforts to green the city of
Syracuse as well. As she spoke about the day,
says. If it doesnt, Syracuse has survived until
now, and we still will.
the din of workmen installing solar panels For now, Destiny USA remains a gray
outside her office leaked in.
That is what will put us on the map,
appendage. Strings of white bulbs hang
within Arendi. At night, light radiates through View of Carousel Centers seven floors
Holstein says. A green city with a green a long window in the structure, illuminating from the lower level.
the vacancy within. c
Destiny USA next to it.
But Syracuse will take on the name
Holstein says. Former mayor Matthew Driscoll
gave Syracuse the name in 2008, and other
green companies already have begun to
settle in the city. [We are] beginning to take
our own initiative, make our own change,
Holstein says. She doesnt think Destiny is
a life jacket for Syracuse and its people, at
least not anymore. Sometimes people are
overzealous, Holstein says. It would be an
asset, but when it comes to Syracuse people,
they really can survive anything...We dont
need a lifeline anymore; we have all that the
city already has.
Arendi, the first phase of
Destiny USA which, according
Arendithe recently completed
to reports, is set to open
addition to Carousel Center, the only
sometime in 2010.
manifestation of Destiny USA so farmay
be nominally green, but that doesnt mean
its inviting. The Syracuse New Times has
compared it to Guantnamo Bay. No tenants
have been lined up to fill the space.
The reason is partly circumstantial. Malls
are not as popular as they used to be in C.N.Y.
[Central New York], says J. T. Barnes, a member
of the group 40-Below, which encourages
27 thecomment 2010
 Ryan Gosling Loves to
Fist-Bump
All I want for my birthday is for you to tell the wolf story. My
friend Kirsten shoves her hands into her pockets. Its October 14, and
its freezing on Brookline Street in Cambridge. I do a little Oh-my-god-
Im-so-cold dance out by my bands van, which has a dead battery. getting fed up. Then I catch a glimpse of the Dead Mans Bones road
Kirsten and Dan do a similar dance as we wait for AAA to come or for a
kind stranger to pass by with jumper cables.
Shitty, right? I forgot to mention a few yards away there are 50
hysterical girls, in a clump, waiting for Oscar nominee (and all-around
dreamboat) Ryan Gosling to appear. His band, Dead Mans Bones,
played the club next door to where we did. Those young ladies have
been standing there for over two hours.
You have to tell it the way your dad does, Dan chimes in. They
want the thick Israeli accent, too.
I dont want to tell the wolf story. Not just because its cold and
Im in a rotten mood, but because it exhibits a mental illness my father
suffers from. An illness that I have unfortunately inherited. Were
storytellers.
When I was little, I used to take my dads big fish stories as
gospel. My favorite was the one about his pet wolf. As I got older,
my father would tell my friends the same stories he told me in my
childhood, always exaggerating the exploits of his trusty wolf: I found
a wolf once in the forest. I trained it, and domesticated it. It could
accurately distinguish between me and my twin brother. (The twin
brother does exist.) It could accurately distinguish between Israelis and
Lebanese. It could break the laws of physics, play chess. It could smell
pregnancy
No, seriously.
But being embarrassed of the wolf story as a teenager didnt stop
me from exaggerating stories from my own life or telling the wolf story
at parties to gain some positive attention. We all do it, right? Im not
like my father. My feet are planted firmly in reality. All of my stories
operate within the laws of physics.
Still, theres a problem. Now when I look back on my past I have
trouble cutting through my own hype. I cant remember what actually
happened and what Ive created. Recentlyupon meeting my girlfriend
for the first timemy Dad told the wolf story once again. I realized
then that I have myself exaggerated his wolf story, punching up certain
parts and filling in holes with my own brand of crazy. How could this
have happened? What does it mean? Am I destined to become my
father? Is this how he started? Or worse, am I exhibiting the first signs
of undifferentiated schizophrenia, a real, no foolin mental illness?
One-thirty in the morning rolls around, and Ryan Gosling has just
28 thecomment 2010
[Aviv Rubinstien]
finished signing autographs. AAA does not seem to be coming. Kirsten
and Dan have given up trying to coax my fathers wolf story out of me,
and the three of us are trying to flag down any car that passes by. Im
crew. After psyching myself up for a moment I march right past The
Notebook star and ask his driver for a jump.
Oh, no, man. We dont have any cables. Let me try and help you
out here. Im paraphrasing. Ryan Goslings road manager makes an
announcement to the dozens of shivering girls. One group of three girls
claims to have jumper cables in their car and will gladly jump us. Lets
call them Charlies Angels. Autographs in hand, the Angels clop away,
their high heels reverberating against the pavement. They promise to
be right back. Yeah, right. Thanks to my dad, I know how to spot a lie
when I hear one.
Dan, Kirsten and I fantasize aloud about asking Ryan Gosling to
jump-start our van. Slipping him a screenplay wed written. Asking him
out for Chinese food. Is that how were going to tell the story years
from now?: Hey, Aviv, Dan, Im Ryan Gosling, you know, from The
Notebook. Anyway. Im a big fan of your band. It looks like you need a
jump. Now pop that hood!
I can see my future grandchildrens faces twisted in confused horror
as I tell them how the actor jump-started my van with nothing but his
bare hands.
No. This is not what I will become.
Okay. Lets get serious here. Compulsive embellishment is not
a mental disorder. Its not done to deceive, but rather to entertain.
However, my inability to distinguish between the truth and my stories
is a big, big problem. In entertaining through these stories, delighting
folks with my flights of fancy, Ive repeated my lies to myself hundreds
of times. Like a criminal preparing to take a polygraph test, Ive
conditioned myself to believe it all, letting it become a part of me.
Starring in the movie of my life.
Racking my brain trying to cut through my own bullshit,
differentiating things Ive created from things Ive lived is much harder
than I expected. I find it distressing that I can actually see memories
that Ive created for myself. I can see things that I know definitely did
not happen.
Maybe I spoke too soon about not having a mental illness.
Ryan Gosling has left to get some pizza. All the girls now mill
around aimlessly like pasturing livestock.
At least theyve stopped screaming.
Its been about 30 minutes since Charlies Angels left to get us
cables, and weve given up hope when we see
a pair of headlights wobbling toward us in a
slightly-too-tipsy-to-drive fashion. The Angels
pull up beside us and exit their car triumphantly
The only picture that exists
of Ryan Gosling and Aviv.
holding jumper cables.
After a brief argument about which side
to ground, we get the van started. As we let
the battery charge, I see Mr. Gosling and his
entourage returning from dinner, pizza in
hand.
Hes about to walk right by us, ignoring
us completely, until I just think, Oh fuck it.
Mr. Gosslin? Do you want to pose for
a picture with us jump-starting our van? I
mispronounce his name.
He stops. Looks around for a minute
as though hes just been woken up.
Yes, I do.
Ryan Gosling poses with me in front
of the Angels car. Afterwards, I try to shake his hand. Gosling,
Aviv
however, wants to fist-bump.
I awkwardly shake his closed fist.
The actor fist-bumps Dan, then Kirsten.
Ryan
Ryan Gosling loves to fist-bump.
I have to do something to stay in touch with reality, or else Im
Gosling
going to become just like my dad. Im giving it up! I will tell no more
stories, no more exaggerations of my life. Furthermore, to keep the
old stories from popping back up, I am setting the record straight. I am
poking truth holes in all of my wonderfully wound webs of anecdote:
I never made out with a TA when I was a freshmanalmost,
though.
I never professed my love to the girl I was enamored with in high
school. I always wish I had.
I never pretended to be blind just so I could bring my golden
retriever into a pizza shop.
The story of the goth-club bathroom in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is
true. Every word of it.
Respect how difficult that was for me.
And I vow not to create any new exaggerations as long as I live.
Im hanging up my spurs. Ive seen what I might become, my Ghost of
Christmas Future, and I refuse to let myself continue down this path.
The actor and his fans have disappeared, and were ready to take
off when the AAA truck finally arrives.
A moosey gentleman rolls down the tow-truck window.
You guys called? Yeah, like two hours ago
No, were okay. I yell over the trucks motor. Youll never believe
this, but the guy from The Notebook just gave us a jump.
Maybe Im not done storytelling. c
29 thecomment 2010
 n c i n g
a l a
) B
e
(R Act
Liz Sadwick, Sylva Hsieh and Alla
Zaydman used to have a lot in common.
The three women were among the commuters
who thronged each morning to urban
financial centers to carry out duties at banks
and investment firms. Handsome salaries
compensated long hours worked, making
sacrifices at home and in relationships seem
worthwhile. Sadwick and Zaydmans years
of employment qualified them as veterans in
the industry. Hsieh was quickly building her
rsum.
Now, in the aftermath of a credit crisis
that triggered massive reconfigurations in the
financial sector, the women still have much in
common. Turmoil in their industry has affected
all three, leaving them unemployed in finance
and having to reconstruct their careers and
their lives.
Figures suggest that women in finance and
banking have borne a disproportionate share
of the effects of the recent downturn in the
financial sector. In the two years after December
2006, when employment in the sector hit a peak
following a decade that had men and women
alike flocking to careers on Wall Street and at
firms around the nation, female employment
fell 4.7 percent, to 3.8 million. During that same
time, male employment dropped 3.2 percent,
according to the U.S. governments Current
Employment Statistics survey. In November
2009, the unemployment rate for women in
finance, a subset of the financial services
industry, reached nearly 7 percenttwo and
a half times what it was in late 2007, at the
official onset of the recession. Yet for all the
grimness of the statistics, the job changes
Sadwick, Hsieh and Zaydman have experienced
have provided one unexpected benefit: the
opportunity to re-evaluate some fundamental
life choices.
At 43, Sadwick, who lost her job in
September 2009, doesnt speak like a victim
30 thecomment 2010
[Lauren Keiper]
of the worst financial crisis since the Great
Depression. Instead, like Hsieh, Zaydman
and other women who have been laid off in
financial services or who left a finance job out
of exhaustion and frustration since the onset
of the recession, she is doing some overdue
soul-searching. I dont miss my emotional
well-being being tied to the market, Sadwick
says. What she does miss, she says, is the
people she worked with and the relationships
she established over more than twenty years
in the industry.
During the last decade, Sadwick built
a solid reputation at a Boston-area asset
management firm. Although shes not arrogant
about her accomplishments, she exudes pride
for the team she assembled and the caliber
of people shes come to know through her
position. Such prowess made Sadwick both
valuable and vulnerable. Senior executives
like her are among the most expensive and
therefore often the first to be cut when
companies face layoffs. The situation is even
more complicated for women. According to
Nicki Gilmour, CEO of The Glass Hammer, an
online community for women executives in
business, workplace diversity has become
relatively less important in the past eighteen
months, and women in senior positions have
been let go alongside their male counterparts.
If a smaller percentage to start with were
women, that didnt particularly leave us in a
good place, Gilmour says of the cuts.
In any case, Sadwick now questions
whether making money in finance and making
money for other people is how she wants to
leave her footprint. Looking back over the last
two years, she calls it disheartening and
disgusting that a sector that rallied together
after 9/11 was so quick to let greed topple
it. She is beginning to wrestle with her next
steps. Recognizing that her marketing and
communication skills are transferable, she is
considering putting them to work in another
industry, she says.
New Yorker Alla Zaydman, 37, who
parted ways with her former employer in
November 2008, has already mapped out a
new plan for herselfand it has little to do
with her former career. After sixteen years
in finance performing credit and investment
analysis, Zaydman now finds herself as an
intern at Warner Music Group. The change is
welcome, she says. Unlike Sadwick, Zaydman
was exhausted by the personalities she
encountered daily at work, the pressure of
the job and what she called a lack of ethics
in the industry. She was certain shed land
somewhere outside of New Yorks financial
community. And she did, enrolling in a New
York University certificate program in human-
resources management in January 2009 with
plans to pursue a masters degree. Accepting
the fact that she has to work her way up in a
new career, she says she feels fortunate shes
interning for a woman who is supportive of
midlife career changers.
As for Sadwick, shes taking an eyes-
wide-open approach as she grapples with
a possible career change. She knows the
marketplace is flooded with underutilized
talent: There has been a cascading effect,
and it has rippled through every industry,
she says. Now Im competing with people
who have expertise in those other industries.
So Sadwick is doing what she does best
building relationships with people, networking
and looking for her next opportunity. I am
talking to everyone I know and everyone who
will listen, she says.
The initiative Sadwick has taken in the
time since the layoff can only enhance her
marketability as a job candidate, according
to Kathy Robinson, a career and business
consultant at Boston-based TurningPoint. Its
about being willing to get involvedthats
what successful job searching looks like this
year, Robinson says.
While acknowledging the importance of
networking, Sadwick says shes dedicating
much of her free time to a bigger cause. Acting
on her belief that her generation needs to
take a more active civic role, Sadwick is now
volunteering for organizations shes passionate
aboutfrom caring for children at the local
YMCA to helping out families that need shelter
or support. In the past she was only able to
give with her checkbook; work kept her on the
road at least two weeks every month.
Sadwick is most animated when she talks
about her contributions to Martha Coakleys
recent campaign to fill Edward Kennedys
senate seat. In fact, the first call she made
after losing her job was to the campaign to
offer her time and efforts. I dont want to
make money on politics, she says. I want to
contribute. But Sadwick doesnt rule out the
possibility that her skills could find a home in
the political arena. Social connections made
through her volunteer efforts may well lead to
her next career move.
Sylva Hsieh, at 27 the youngest of the
three women, found her break at a cookbook
club. For her, the transition from a lucrative
position in the legal group of a New York
equity hedge fund has been dramatic.
Attracted by the swanky offices, the fast pace
and the earning potential, Hsieh found a job
with the then-small-but-growing fund in mid-
2005, not long after graduating from college.
In the years that followed, she occasionally
considered leaving the company to attend law
school but never did. [Being there] was a lot
of fun and a lot of money, she says. Why
would I leave?
It was a heady time. Like others in the
industry, the hedge fund was doing well.
Hsieh took advantage of all the company
had to offera better position, a raise and
other perks. But by the end of 2008, the fun
was subsiding. Hsiehs prospects at the firm
were beginning to dwindle with the industry
downturn. The work environment grew
stressful, the hours became more demanding
and deadlines tightened. I felt like I was
running a marathon every morning, only taking
a breath at noon, she says.
Hsieh survived the first round of layoffs.
Then, despite being told her job was secure,
she decided she wanted out. She reached that
conclusion while out voting in the November
2008 national election. Realizing she hadnt
left the building during the day in ages, she
walked into her supervisors office after
casting her vote and asked to be considered
for the next round of layoffs. That cut never
came, but Hsiehs mind was made up. She
quitwithout a severance package or the
security of unemployment compensation
and says she hasnt looked back. Shed
been secretly harboring hopes of applying
to veterinary school, but she never received
the bonus shed been counting on to fund
her plans. Instead, she began volunteering
for animal-rescue operations throughout
New York. She also donated time to The
Safety Net/Pets for Life NYC, which offers
guidance and solutions for people considering
abandoning their pets.
But there was a dilemma. While
volunteering was giving Hsieh insight into
what shed like to do in the future, it didnt
replace her lost income. And the soft economy
didnt help. For the first time in her still-young
career, Hsieh doubted her future earning
potential. Shed been sending out rsums
and not receiving responses. It was a reality
checkIm not as marketable as I thought
I was, she says. Vet school is now on hold
while Hsieh takes science courses to enhance
her application.
In the meantime, shes landed a job in
a growing industry. When a friend started
a cookbook club, Hsieh thought it would be
another way to reconnect with friends during
her period of unemployment. But it was at
this social gathering that she met the COO
of a renewable-energy provider. Hsieh was
hired as a manager of project coordination,
which means she has her hands in all parts of
the businesssales, finance, bids and office
needs. Common-sense knowledge transfers,
she says of the shift, noting her training at the
hedge fund prepared her to take on project
management.
The current job is far more low-key than
her old one. Now, when she leaves work, she
leaves work. People know their boundaries,
she says of her new industry.
Hsiehs story is not unique. Especially
now, bad energy in the office and unhealthy
work environments are driving people to
change careers, according to Kirsten Lundeen,
Associate Director of Alumni Relations at
Boston University. Wherever conditions are
not good to begin with, the recession makes
them worse. According to Lundeen, women
in finance are among those re-evaluating
their impact on society and considering other
careersoften ones that they believe will
provide more fulfilling work. There are trade-
offs. The pay cut can be a major hurdle, she
says; the reassessment in ones standard of
living can be sobering.
Both Zaydman and Sadwick acknowledge
the financial impact on their lives now. We
cut back on a lot of stuff. Were not planning
as many vacations, not eating out as much,
says Zaydman of her current lifestyle. Its
a slower pace, quieter. But the funny part
is, thats okay. The sentiment is echoed
by Sadwick, who kept an already-paid-for
February 2010 vacation intact but explained
to her 14-year-old son that holidays would be
downsized this year.
With two young daughters and a husband
who works full-time, Zaydman says its more
important that she is mentally healthy for her
family than that she bring home a six-figure
salary. Just having time for her husband and
children is no longer enough for Zaydman;
she now strives for a better quality of
interaction among them. Certain she will find
that too in her new career path, Zaydman is
imparting lessons to her daughters. It would
be silly to advocate they go into finance, she
says. Instead, shes encouraging her older
daughters interest in teaching. There is a
balance you have to keep in your head of what
you are willing to do for how much money,
what you put in versus what you get back
emotionally.
At the same time, Zaydman fully expects
to rejoin the workforce. She is, she says,
excited to put her newfound passion and
education to work. Im not going to school for
nothing, she says. Life without two incomes
isnt sustainable.
Its clear, in any case, that Zaydman wont
be on the early train into Manhattan anytime
soon. Nor will Hsieh, who finds the commute
out to her new job in New Jersey a lot less
taxing than battling the city traffic. Sadwick
remains uncertain about what her future
will hold. Working her contactswhether
at the local Y or on the campaign trailshe
continues to question where her career path
will lead. She has not ruled out a return to
finance. But if she does rejoin others for the
familiar drive from the suburbs into Bostons
financial district, she will do so differently
than she did beforemore mindful this time
of meaning, and of life balance. c
31 thecomment 2010
 Finding
Going to the chapel...and the synagogue
Our Faith
Book officiant. Thats what all
the bridal magazines told me to
do at least nine months before the
wedding.
To be honest, with a year to
plan Id been more preoccupied
with short ribs or halibut,
buttercream or fondant, than with
deciding who would perform our
ceremony. But somewhere between
Lauren and Eric pose for their engagement
photos. selecting mini crab flautas to be
served during cocktail hour and
corn bisque for a starter, I realized the menu shouldnt be my top
priority. For the first time, Eric and I would have to explicitly address
our different religious backgrounds and decide how Judaism and
Christianity would factor into our life together.
While we were dating, Eric and I had introduced our different
traditions to each other. I relished giving him his first Christmas
stocking. Now we celebrate that holiday with my family in
Pennsylvania. Sometimes we dine with friends on the Jewish Sabbath
and for Rosh Hashanah. When we celebrated Passover with his
family, I was introduced to the prayers and the food in addition to the
extended family.
The religious differences that had seemed simply novel early in
our relationship became more significant after he slipped a ring on my
finger. Neither of us demanded our religion take top billing. I didnt
want to get married in a church and offend Eric or his family. He didnt
want to force us to have the ceremony in a synagogue. Yet selecting
the place wed be married and someone to officiate would be viewed
by friends and family as a public announcement of the identity wed
assume as a couple and the religion wed most likely pass on to our
children.
I would have gone to city hall the day after he proposed, but Eric
wanted a more traditional celebration. I got on board with the idea
and, as in many couples, assumed the female lead in executing the
plans. Initially, I focused on creating a completely secular event.
We moved forward with plans to book our ceremony in an outdoor
courtyard with a reception in one of our favorite restaurants. We
considered asking a friend to marry us, having fun thinking about
who would tell a good story, who would cry. Our second thought was
to hire an officiant, someone without ties to either of us. Id found
nondenominational and interfaith leaders who would travel to Boston,
learn our story and craft a custom ceremony for our day.
Eventually those ideas fizzled, and we found a meaningful, if
not religious, place for the ceremony and reception. The Boston
32 thecomment 2010
[Lauren Keiper]
Public Library was devoted to art, architecture and learning. A hidden
courtyard offered privacy and intimacy. Eric and I were both excited
about the space. Still, we had a site, but no one to perform the
wedding.
Our families, meanwhile, were further along in the debate over our
religious future than we were. Throughout our planning, Erics parents
encouraged us to talk with their rabbi. On the wall of Erics childhood
bedroom is a poster of him clutching a basketball and wearing a
baseball cap. The poster is inscribed with words of congratulations
for his bar mitzvah. Mazel tov, the kids from school penned in red and
black Sharpie. His parents probably look forward to participating in the
same coming-of-age ritual for their grandchildren. I suspect they also
may worry that since Im planning the event, Christianity will trump
Judaism on our wedding day and beyond because its what I know.
But my own family wonders if our kids will be raised Jewish, perhaps
assuming that our physical proximity to Erics parents and their more
active role in a religious community will influence us.
In any case, Eric wasnt actively seeking a Jewish congregation to
join, and I hadnt been interviewing Protestant churches. Maybe we
were just being lazy; maybe we were avoiding a task that would send
us in different directions rather than help us move forward together.
I didnt expect to find our answer at the voting booth. Id rushed into
the church that served as our neighborhood polling place for the local
elections one fall day, worried there would be a line. But I was alone
to cast my vote. When I left, the sun was beginning to fade. I breathed
in the fall air and glanced around. I hadnt noticed it when I went in,
but there were two flags out frontone with the seal of the Episcopal
Church, the other with the Star of David.
I learned from the churchs website that in addition to the Episcopal
gathering on Sundays, Jewish services were held there on Friday
evenings. There was a rabbi in residence, and the two congregations
had formed an urban interfaith center.
But it wasnt until my first Sunday service that I found out the
Jewish worshippers had roots in this old Protestant church. The
progressive Jewish congregation didnt just lease space. The faiths
shared offices and worshipped under the same roof. The Episcopal
priest prayed with the Jewish congregation, and the rabbi addressed
Christian worshippers once a month. For the last five years, the two
faiths had literally been living and growing together.
It sounded like a good prescription for our marriage. After church
that day I called Eric, who was traveling for work. I think the relief in
my voice was audible. I told him the lines in that church were blurred
just enough that I could see our future there. The rabbi and the priest
were checking their availability for August 7, 2010.
And Id added another check mark to our wedding planning list. c
Darius Goes West is the story of
Darius Weems, who suffers from Duchenne
muscular dystrophy.
Im not suffering, Darius interrupts.
He is onstage at the 2009 Technology,
Entertainment and Design conference, with
his best friend, Logan Smalley. Theyre
performing a skit to present their mission to
an audience of experts, physicians and PhDs.
Youre not suffering? asks Logan. You
were born with the ability to walk, your
muscles are deteriorating and now youre in
a wheelchair.
That dont mean Im suffering.
You have a 100-percent fatal disease. Kids
with your disease die in their late teens and early
twenties. Dont you know that youre dying?
Indeed, Darius Weems appears healthy.
He was born with the number-one genetic
killer of children in the worlda disease that
already has limited his mobility and affected
his heart and that eventually will compromise
his ability to breathe. But for now, he is very
much alive.
and education from Harvard University, went
Bits of regurgitated wasabi fly through
the air as Darius coughs and sputters. The
teenager is drawing even more attention
than his massive, wheelchair-bound presence
normally does. Nearby, his friends collapse
in hysterics. Hes recovering from a dare they left their home state of Georgia. Together with
proposedthat he down a spoonful of wasabi
having no idea what the condiment was.
At a Carnegie Hall fund-raiser, the audience
watches this scene from the award-winning
documentary Darius Goes West. Eyes well
up. Pranks like this would seem cruel toward
anyone, let alone a teenager who has lost the
use of his hands and motor skills. But as Logan
Smalley, the films director and Dariuss best
friend, points out, this crew is made of equals,
and they spare Darius nothing. Why would
they, they reason, when time is running out?
DGW, as the film is nicknamed, chronicles
a road trip across America in a quest to
pimp (or embellish) Dariuss ride on MTVs
reality series Pimp My Ridethe ride in
this case being a wheelchair. Darius and the
DGW crew hoped to document wheelchair
accessibility while raising awareness for DMD
along the way. Although the film debuted in
2007, the groups journey has only begun. It
continues with education and intensive fund-
raising: tens of thousands of dollars raised,
more than 100,000 miles traveled, hundreds of
schools visited and more than 600 screenings
of the film.
[Samantha Gennuso]
photos courtesy of DGW
The project originated with Dariuss
older brother Mario, who died from DMD
when he was 19 years old. Logan, who holds
a masters degree in technology innovation
to middle and elementary school with both
Weems boys. He grew close to Mario while
working at Project Reach, a camp for kids
with disabilities. Before Mario died, he asked
Logan to take care of Darius, who had never
eleven friends, Logan and Darius began a trip
that would see Darius across the country.
Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a slow
killer. The most common fatal genetic disease
among young males, it usually claims its
victims by the time they reach their early
twenties. When the Carnegie Hall audience
hears these facts seconds after watching
Darius grin as he tells his friends to get out
his way in a DGW scene, many seem visibly
shaken. But pity is the last thing Darius wants.
Sometimes you go through things in life to find
yourself, he says. Im 20 years old and Im
still pushing it, and I aint planning on leaving
this world for a long time. Im a fighter.
The documentary, which compressed
300 hours of footage from the road into
90 minutes, was Logans first foray into
filmmaking. It has already had an impact
on the crew, on those who have seen the film
and, perhaps most notably, on those affected
by the disease. Charleys Fund, founded by
Benjy and Tracy Seckler to raise funds for
DMD research, receives all proceeds from
Darius Goes West, the organization. But the
Secklers cause is especially urgent: They
33 thecomment 2010
are hoping to find a cure for DMD
in the lifetime of their nine-year-old
son, Charley. Not yet aware of the
seriousness of his disease, Charley
keeps a Darius bobblehead figure on
his desk (its his prized possession,
says Tracy) and an Audience
Choice Darius Goes West film
award on his wall. All he cared about
when he met Darius were his cool
wheelchair gadgets and his chances
for beating him at the popular video
game Madden 09. Darius awaits his first hot air balloon ride.
The morning after the Carnegie
Hall screening, the air is cool in Central Park.
The DGW guys are enjoying every second
of their time in the Big Apple for the films
first New York screening. Aidan, a young boy
with DMD who appeared in the documentary,
playfully kicks a soccer ball, while Darius rams
into unsuspecting friends in his chair. One of
them, Sam Johnsonmessy red hair blocking
his peripheral visionshouts out, Come on,
man! Darius laughs, relentless. John Hadden,
cinematographer for the film, brags, I kick
so much butt at soccer. I dont discriminate.
Everyone feels the ragebabies, adults, kids
with DMD, I spare no one the abuse! Darius
just grins. He done show nobody whos boss,
he lyin, he murmurs.
The documentary, in addition to shadowing
the crews antics in a temperamental RV,
offers viewers broad insight into the disease:
Theres one genetic cause; were talking of something so amazing, says Logan. We
about one target, explains Benjy Seckler.
One domino tips over, and then all of the
dominoes in its path begin to fall. If you can
stop that one domino, these children are
either going to be cured or have remarkable
improvement in their quality of life. In 20
years, a generation of children with Duchenne
is lost, so the race is on, and were in the
race.
After enjoying newfound famethe
movie was selected for New Yorks Tribeca
Film Festival, among numerous other
awardsDarius and his crew decided to
34 thecomment 2010
take a yearlong trip, this time making fund-
raising their number-one goal. They visited
schools on a weekly basis and fund-raised
on the Internet constantly. We covered 42
states and 50,000 miles [in 2008]. We were in
a different city practically every night, says
Logan. We got a DVD of Darius Goes West
into every middle school and high school in
the country. All the people we originally met
at festivals helped us spread the word.
The DGW crew consists of eleven of
Dariuss and Logans friends, most of whom
are now in their twenties. They show their
devotion to Darius in different ways, some
by sobbing during more poignant scenes
in the film, and others by getting a Darius
Went West tattoo inked on their bodies as a
permanent reminder of their journey.
Curing DMD will always be a goal in
every crew members life. Weve been a part
see it as an opportunity and a responsibility.
We were fortunate enough to make a movie
that has the power to make people both laugh
and be inspired.
Indeed, what started as an attempt to
spread the word about DMD by using the
money from pre-selling dozens of movie
credits has morphed into something much
larger. Most recently, it led them to the
Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED)
organization, which is devoted to publicizing
innovative ideas in a myriad of fields. Logan
and Darius were recently inducted as TED
fellows. We practiced it a lot,
Darius says of the DMD skit they
presented at the ceremony. I was
kind of nervous, but not as nervous
as Logan. He grins.
The TED presentation was the
first time Logan and Darius publicly
discussed the fact that DMD
will take Dariuss life. Darius is
certainly very comfortable talking
about death, says Logan. But
if you focus on the sad parts, it
wouldnt be true to his character. To
not portray his humor and unique
style would be a missed opportunity
to introduce a really cool person.
Day to day I dont really think about it,
says crew member Jason Hees. I think about
the stuff we did and the people we met. But
I [imagine] us getting together in 30 years
reminiscing about it and I think, Jesus, Ds not
gonna be around for that. But his storys going
to live on; hes always going to be there
weve got hours and hours of footage. lost one son to DMD and will inevitably lose
In spite of all the attention and acclaim,
Darius remains much like any 20-year-old. He
eventually did get his wheelchair customized
(though not by MTV), and is now equipped
at all times with an iPod, a hands-free
cell phone, a 13.5-inch flat-screen TV, a
PlayStation, a stereo, a ten-inch subwoofer,
two amps, spinner rims and the worlds
loudest wheelchair horn. He also loves
football, rap and his mothers cooking.
But most teenagers havent been featured
on the back of a Doritos bag. Most teenagers
will never star in a film or win a major prize
for community servicein this case, the Do
Something! award from MTV. It was this
award that caught the eye of MTVs public-
relations director, Jeff Castaneda. Although
they had initially refused to pimp Dariuss
ride, citing health risks, MTV finally decided
to air Darius Goes West on MTVU and MTV2,
to an astounding 80 million viewers, on
Dariuss 20th birthdaya present better than
any stereo system he could imagine. Wed
basically given up on MTV, says Logan. It
was one of those full-circle moments, after
hundreds of miles of travel and all the time
wed spent trying to reach out to them.
In the five years since the film was
made, Darius has grown into an articulate
young man, well versed in speaking with
interviewers and more poised than most
his age. Hes learned that his story isnt just
inspiring; its essential. Youve got to find two
things: what you want to do with your own
life and what you can do to help other people.
The way I look at it, DMD is the whole worlds
problem. This disease doesnt discriminate,
he says. Telling our story will make people
want to make life better for others.
One reason the crew conducted so many
screenings in schools was to give DMD
a face. It is Darius, with his huge smile,
propensity for imitating John Madden and sly
remarks that keep his friends constantly on
their toes. It is Charley Seckler, with his head
of curls, who can break it down on the dance
floor better than most. It is Mrs. Weems, who
another, and Benjy and Tracy Seckler, whose
child faces an uncertain future.
Your life is shattered into so many
pieces, you cant even count them. And the
pieces are so small, says Benjy Seckler in
the documentary. Your life as it was is over.
Instead you have to find a way to put those
pieces together and make your life meaningful
again. And not only do that but also find a way
to cure this disease.
There is progress. Charleys Fund has
funded more than a dozen different DMD
research partners over the course of five
years. Eighteen months after starting the
foundation, the Secklers hired a PhD with 20
years in the biotech industry to help identify
the most promising research and work directly
with scientists to ensure success. Still, DMD
is not nearly as publicized as they would
wish. After all, it took two years for MTV to
recognize the DGW movement.
But that movement is growing by the
week. Thousands of donors have become
crew members by giving to DGW. During
Facebooks American Giving Challenge this nine-year-old Charley.
past year, the organization placed 12th in For his part, Charley seems unfazed by
a contest of hundreds, winning $10,000 in Dariuss disability. He recently told his parents,
addition to the $30,000 in donations that If I were older, that couldve been Charley
earned it the ranking. Goes West. Thats what it shouldve been!
Everywhere they go, the guys yield new The Secklers gratitude is palpable.
supportersa result, no doubt, of their Instead of [Charley] having to be told about
enthusiasm for the project. Its the most fun [DMD], he just sees someone managing it as
nonprofit Ive ever been a part of because beautifully as you possibly can, says Tracy
we have a product that sells itselfDarius Seckler. If theres one thing I want besides
Goes West, says Daniel Epting, the groups a cure, its a group of friends like that for
designated RV driver. Theres a compassion Charley.
level with the whole crew, and Ds fortunate As Logan points out in the documentary,
to be a part of that. Mrs. Weems considers the crew embarked on the three-week trip to
herself lucky, too. Come Mothers Day, celebrate Dariuss life, not to save it. While on
theyre all my boys, she says of the crew in the road, Logan says, he came to realize that
DGW. Every single one. Darius understood this, even at 15. It shook
As the group gains momentum, Logan is me the way Mario did when he asked me to
accumulating even more on his plate. When look after his brother, and the way it would
hes not leading screenings with other crew anybody whos been to a funeral for someone
members, he is working online to spread their own age. It shook me to action, he says.
the word about DMD. I wouldnt say Im an During the final scenes of Darius Goes
expert; Id call myself an experimenter. Were West, Logan reconciles the past, present and
constantly trying to figure out ways to reach future of their mission. Darius is saying, Look
more people, he says. out for my brother when Im gone, Logan
You cant stop yourself from coming says. He knows that he is the vehicle. And
to Earth, and you cant stop yourself from that doesnt make me want to cry. It makes me
leaving. But youre here in life to make want to fight. c
something of yourself, says Darius in the
documentary. Currently hes
focusing on a rap career, in
addition to reaching out to
fans via Skype at screenings.
Due to congestive heart
failure, an inevitable symptom
of late-stage DMD, he can
no longer travel. Im not a
person that gives up, and Im
not a person that accepts
defeat. Theyre gonna have to
come get it if they wanna take
my life because I got a reason
to be living, he says. I cant
let the fans down. But when
Darius refers to finding a cure,
hes not talking about himself.
At 20 he is old by DMD
Darius looks out over the Grand Canyon.
standards. Hes talking about
35 thecomment 2010
 3 5678 10
4
12Number 9
Smiles strain as a camera clicks. Look here! the
photographer shouts.
It is the afternoon of my sister Marys wedding. I am the only girl
who hasnt yet made it to the altarthe fifth and last Gorman girl. But
my brothers have some catching up to do. Not one of the five has made
the leap yet.
Yes, the Gorman kids comprise five girls and five boys, totaling a
somewhat startling ten.
For the photo, all of us squeeze together with my parents in the
middle. The womens lip gloss shimmers in the slanting light. Ties are
perfectly knotted, pinstripes clean and neat. It will be a miracle if the
slew of pictures results in one where 24 eyes
are open and 12 mouths are smiling, I think as
I smooth my bridesmaids dress and glance at
everyones expressions.
Twenty-one years after I joined this family
as number nine, the chaos of posing together
hardly fazes me. That was not always so.
Being part of a middle-class curiosity was
uncomfortable when I did not know my place
in the picture. Yet it was partly through photos
that I eventually learned where I belonged.
In junior highthe height of identity crisis
for girls with braces, acne or Coke-bottle
glasses, let alone nine brothers and sistersI
spent a summer immersed in our family photos.
It was my job to organize the shoe boxes full
of decades of memories that covered our Number nine stands out with hands firmly planted on hips.
living-room table. Somehow the task became
mine permanently. Years later, on breaks from college, I still tackle
photo-related chores that have been set aside for me. (The job does
have its perks: In a recent effort to find childhood bath-time pictures to had nine other lives to live up to. When I first became the family
display for guests to see in our bathrooms, I mysteriously did not find
any of me.)
At the beginning, dealing with the holiday piles was especially
daunting. There were Christmas and Easter towers, behind which my
brothers would tease me by pretending to be Godzilla. The stacks only
grew as my older siblings began to move away, eventually extending
our family tree from New York City to California. Group photos became
all the more obligatory because we were all together so rarely.
36 thecomment 2010
[Teresa Gorman]
The Gorman family poses at Marys wedding.
Inevitably I posed uncomfortably, knees bent, because I could never My pile grew, and so did my stature. My humble role as Fork B4 in a
find the perfect space among my family members. Even as I played the local production of Beauty and the Beast was documented, but then so
mini-mom and told my little brother David to smile with teeth, I could was the sequined, curve-hugging costume I donned as Dolly in Hello,
not wait for the sessions to end. Dolly. By high school my soloist pictures were mounting up: one for the
Indeed, the negatives often showed number nine off to the yearbook as Senior Song Bird, another singing the Christmas Mass
side, and how could that not be so with the cast of characters that solo at my church, and so on. It was becoming clearer that not only
surrounded me? The parents, Timothy Gorman and Gail Formichella, could I stand on my own, but I could also be the center of attention.
met and married young. Moms Italian-olive-toned skin stood out in my I underscored my independence by moving to Boston for college
Dads Roman-Catholic-Irish parish. Dad, a lawyer who sometimes still farther than any of my siblings had gone.
wears his suit while on the treadmill, finished law school while they When I started unpacking my things in my dorm room, far from that
lived in married student housing. From there, adventures ensued with table of albums and stacks of pictures (310 miles away, to be exact), a
ten children. photo I had tacked onto my bulletin board caught my eye. It was a copy
I split the siblings into of a much larger family picture, taken before I was a star on the stage,
two groups: the top five even before I was the go-to photo person.
and the bottom five. Katie, I recalled the original, hanging above the kitchen table back at
Emily, Edward, Mary and homeone of the few professional photographs that have captured
Claire made up the top. all of us. If you look quickly, it almost seems life-size. The sight of it
Andrew, Joseph, Peter and as you open the back door into the house is alarming. The massive
David maintained the chaos frame surrounds a bevy of blue-clad, awkwardly placed figures. But
as I grew up. From start to as I looked closely at the smaller copy on my board, my perspective
finish we spanned 18 years. changed. The characters Id always been able to see were there,
Our memories came from individually, but also as a collective. All of us were enhanced in the
different decades, but all of context of our gene pool.
us had to deal with being Years later, I brave another professional photographer, at Marys
defined by our large family, wedding. Clenching my bouquet, I make a move from the end of the
whether we liked it or not. group, inserting myself into the long line of Gorman faces.
Although we sometimes Look at each other! the photographer demands. A few bumbling
shared similar experiences, seconds of confusion follow the bizarre request, and then our gazes
being number nine slowly shift from the camera lens to each other.
presented a unique challenge. I was not granted a title as others I stare into my sister Katies eyes. We smile, and suddenly all ten
werethe oldest or the smartest, the funniest, the babybut I still siblings start to laugh.
Now look here! the photographer yells.
archivist, I was in the midst of that quandary. As I slid pictures of The pictures show us shoulder to shoulder, laughter overwhelming
dinners (complete with a vat of macaroni and cheese) into plastic us, our best family photo since the blue one. Everyone appears ready
album sleeves, I imagined that I would always be known as an oddity to move away from the picture and on to the celebration of new family.
who happened to share a gene pool with more than your average The next day I will sit at the living-room table clicking through digital
number of people. cameras, choosing which pictures to print and which to post to our
Part of the photo job was organizing individual stacks for each family blog. But at that moment, I put my system aside. I am ready now
sibling. My own pile, at first, was small in comparison to my older to celebrate the addition of new members into our family, because the
siblings stacks. Yet as time went on, that slowly began to change. more there are, the better we all are. c
37 thecomment 2010