Oberlin Blogs

Papageno, essentially a humanized bird and bird catcher, sang about how he wanted to catch chicks. And when he said "chicks," he didn't mean those little yellow baby chickens.

I love warm weather. Everything feels better when you can walk out the front door and realize you're wearing too many layers.

Several weeks ago, I found myself on a top floor balcony suite at a ski resort 300 miles away, talking and sharing laughs with a couple of the freshest talents out of Cleveland. How did I wind up there?

For three weeks of the year, the walls of the Bent corridor (which I totally thought was just a descriptor, not the name of two illustrious alumni, up until last week) are graced with beautiful local artwork from students from the 9th Congressional District. I was ever so lucky to be there photographing it.

There were, of course, pages of specific instructions and a symbol key, but that doesn't change the fact that for my friend's recital I was required to look at a photo of a rabbit man in a suit running away from artillery fire and translate it into a part for drum set/percussion.

I had envisioned myself waking up with the sun and birds each morning, going for a long run during which I'd plan out my writing for the day, then plunking down with my laptop and an oversized mug of fair-trade coffee at Oberlin Market and getting to work. (Nope.)

Forget that there was no hot water in my bathroom and that the hotel gym cost an extra $18 a day to work out at; I was delighted with our 13th floor window overlooking Lake Michigan, and the opportunity to spend some time with Linda, whom I adore.

There's more to the New York art scene than pretentiousness and Andy Warhol, but you certainly won't find it in this post. What you will find is a retrospective of some of the various art--both deliberate and not--that we happened to come across during our afternoon visit.

"Ha! Zeez are not musician's 'ands! Zees are scientist 'ands, for working in ze laboratory! Out! Out!"

There is, in fact, only one magical way to schedule all the performances (AND hit every single "Welcome back to a new semester! We missed you!" activity AND manage to see all your friends who you missed all of winter term... which can all coincide sometimes).

The second of two pieces I wrote during first semester about performances in Oberlin.

The movie centered on Darius, a 15-year-old with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Darius' brother Mario died of the same disease when he was 19, and Darius talks about his brother occasionally during the film.