UChiBLOGo

An increase of attendance at Pride made navigating the parade route impossible.

By Christina Pillsbury, '12

I know a lot of UChicago students now break the stereotype that we're socially awkward, pale, reclusive human beings, but at the Pride Parade last weekend I’m afraid I reinforced this perception.

I'm by no means new to the joyous, dance-filled festivities of Pride. The last time I attended I had a gay old time, and couldn't wait to relive that experience. Or so I thought.

According to all my friends’ Facebook statuses, the Gay Pride parade was the time of their lives, but for me the event became an unbearable rainbow nightmare. The Tribune reported that roughly 25,000 more people attended this year’s parade than last year's. No measures were taken to anticipate the increase in attendance.

I love supporting gay rights and busting out my rainbow outfits and dousing myself in glitter, but I can’t be alone in my fear of oppressive crowds. I’m positive other students from the school "where fun goes to die” must also be afflicted.

As I made my way from the corner of Halsted and Clark to Roscoe to meet some fellow UChicagoans, I attempted to navigate the Halsted and Belmont intersection. This turned out to be a mistake. For anyone who is claustrophobic, or who doesn't like being pressed up against 100 other sweaty, glittery people: avoid this area at all costs during Pride. Go West to Clark or even Sheffield, but don’t try to brave this awful intersection.

For at least 20 minutes—although it felt like hours—I stood at the corner as the crowd pushed, yanked, and squeezed me halfway down the block. I got to know my fellow parade-goers much too well as we were smushed into one another. The smell of beer and sweat filled my nostrils as armpits were thrust near my nose.

I had joined in on the festivities the night before, club-hopping in Boystown and running into several U of C alumni, and although the dance floors were more crowded than Psi Upsilon on Halloween, I managed to enjoy myself, so I thought I’d be able to have fun at the parade.

But the crowd induced a panic attack that bordered on psychosis. I was frozen, unable to breathe, and suddenly I was crying in front of a million people. Remember in My Girl when Anna Chlumsky, AB'02, finds out that Macaulay Culkin was stung to death by the bees? Yeah, it was kind of like that.

While the crowd wiggled me slowly toward my destination, I could vaguely make out some proud attendees in their rainbow gear and some half-naked performers on floats. Unfortunately, I couldn't get close enough to give my full attention the spectacle.

Needless to say, I wasn't able to meet up with the other UChicago students, but from what I can tell, they were smarter about getting to the less crowded spectator area. Perhaps there's a class I haven't yet taken on how to avoid impenetrable swarms of people?

Oversized crowds and outrageous conduct make for a gay day indeed.

By Mitchell Kohles, ’12

I was stuck between two girls dressed up as fairies, then in the process of applying even more glitter to their costumes, when a canon full of rainbow-colored confetti exploded to my left. Ten minutes later, two men in feather boas and tight leather shorts tried to sell me something called “ghetto shots” on the corner of Halsted and Addison. Suddenly I was covered in glitter, confetti, and a purple necklace complementing the Franzia stain on my pink linen button-up. It was Sunday afternoon, and Chicago Pride was in full swing and sashay.

I had no experience with Pride before this weekend—to me the scene resembled a music festival more than a parade. Throughout the afternoon, the “no coolers” rule was ignored by both parade-goers and law enforcement. Whenever I looked up, I saw multicolored beads flying through the air; along with the much-valued free condoms, the necklaces were launched from the floats to pinwheel parabolically down onto the glitter-soaked crowd. I also learned that “pasty” isn’t just an adjective or a meat pie.

Before the event started, people had packed themselves between storefronts and barricades for a full six blocks, between Belmont and Addison. I only managed to navigate along Halsted, but the parade route weaved around Boystown for more than 30 blocks before ending at Diversey and Sheridan.

What I found so incredible about the parade is the inclusiveness. Pride encourages expression and refuses to insult. Everywhere I went there was an atmosphere of joviality and tolerance that tempered what looked like neon-hued chaos. “It’s actually a great day for me too,” said a police officer after the parade, then supervising the massive clean-up operation on Broadway Avenue. “Even with all the alcohol, no one is starting fights or causing trouble. They’re all just in a good mood.”

Of course, that inclusiveness goes both ways, and I was surprised to see more familiar parade entries: retired servicemen driving classic cars, smiling children walking and waving with their parents, politician-sponsored floats—Mayor Rahm Emanuel, for example, led the parade, moving quickly to shake as many hands as possible.

I certainly expected outlandish and colorful, but it was also nice to see the mundane side of Pride. But maybe what made Pride seem almost grown-up was the combination of the ordinary and the outrageous. It wasn’t just a bunch of drag queens and leather daddies—it was a community event.

Dream up a story. Grab a marker and some index cards. And follow simple advice from Ivan Brunetti, AB’89, to create your own comic strip.

By Elizabeth Station

Comics artist and teacher Ivan Brunetti describes Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice (Yale University Press, 2011) as “a classroom in a book” for aspiring cartoonists or anyone curious about the medium. “It is a ‘how-to’ book in the sense that essentially, it points you to discovering your own style, your own voice, and your own stories.”

Doc Films screens Michael Nash’s internationally acclaimed documentary Climate Refugees.

By Mitchell Kohles, ’12

In October 2006 Michael Nash read a report by the UN that claimed that there were more refugees as a result of climate change than of political or religious conflict. At the time, he wasn’t sure what that meant.

“I used to think climate change was about polar bears and Iceland,” said Nash, whose documentary film Climate Refugees screened at Max Palevsky Cinema in late June.

The film bypasses the debate over the science of climate change and focuses instead on the humanitarian crisis of people forced from their homes by rising sea levels and tropical storms. “For two years, I traveled through 47 countries in search of the human face of climate change,” said Nash when he introduced the film.

Nash’s film marked the end of “Migration: Causes and Consequences,” a three-day conference organized by the Center for International Studies (CIS) and the Program on the Global Environment (PGE) in which community members and educators from various fields learned about the social, legal, and economic issues confronting climate refugees.

“They were extremely interested in the topic of migration, and the screening was the culminating event of the conference,” said Jamie Bender, assistant director for programs at CIS.

After the screening, Nash joined Koko Warner, from the UN University-Institute for Environment and Human Society, and Mark Lycett, director of PGE, in a Q&A panel discussion with the audience.

Climate Refugees has received criticism from both sides of the aisle—the right claims Nash is an alarmist; the left criticizes him for opening the film with Newt Gingrich—and the panelists discussed the state of the debate over climate change in America. Although he hoped the film would be apolitical, Nash admitted, “Honestly, I think the right is better at selling a bumper sticker than the left is at telling the truth.”

After the film debuted at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit, Nash and a friend hopped into a cab just as two Chinese diplomats working at the UN entered the cab from the other side. The four men decided to split the fare and went out for dinner. Later that night, one of the men said something that Nash will never forget. “Make no mistake about it, the world is going green, and nothing would make us happier than for the US to continue having this debate for the next ten to 15 years. We’ve been trying to catch you for a century, and we’re going to blow by you in half a generation.”

Nash avoids discussing climate science in the movie, and during the panel discussion he explained why, for him, the debate doesn't matter all that much anymore. After a long day of filming in China, a man on his film crew said something cut through the political debate: “We better hope that man is causing this, because if he isn’t, how the hell are we going to stop it?”

Ashley Demma, AB'11, shows off her knowledge of the wizarding world that rivals Hermione's.

By Christina Pillsbury, '13

One night when I was 16, my older sister was on her first date with her current boyfriend, and I was at the midnight release of the sixth Harry Potter book. At the end of their date my mom asked them to pick me up from the bookstore. They waited in the parking lot until 2 a.m., when I finally got my hands on the book. I emerged giddily with a lightning-bolt tattoo on my forehead, a Gryffindor scarf around my neck, and round black frames around my eyes.

I thought I was the ultimate Harry Potter super-fan. That is, until I encountered Ashley Demma, AB’11. Deemed the biggest “Uberfan” in an Embassy Suites competition, her passion puts mine to shame. The victory landed Demma $10,000, an iPod 4G, and 20 free stays at any Embassy Suites hotel.

I had heard rumors around campus about her legendary devotion to the books: she came to the University in part because the campus looks like Hogwarts, she wrote her BA thesis about war themes in the series, she plans on getting a Harry Potter-related tattoo, and she worked in the Museum of Science and Industry’s Harry Potter exhibition. But talking to her, I realized the rumors didn't do justice to her adulation for and intricate knowledge of the books and movies.

For the midnight showing of the final movie Thursday night/Friday morning, Demma and her museum coworkers purchased VIP tickets in advance, and spent the evening drinking cocktails and dressed head to toe in Harry Potter gear.

What does the final movie's premiere mean in the grand scheme of your fandom?

It’s kind of a slap in the face to my childhood. I just graduated in June, and now the last movie is coming out, and it’s like the world is saying, “Get your head out of the clouds and enter the real world.” But the books will still be alive for those who are reading them, and I can only hope the books will become classics.

Is there anything you were afraid would be overlooked in the translation from book to movie in this film?

I felt so good about the Deathly Hallows, Part I film that I think it will be great. The only thing I’m worried about is how they will work in Teddy Lupin in the epilogue. It would be so good to see a werewolf-metamorphmagus hybrid, but I’m afraid they’ll leave him out. He’s the orphan of Nymphadora Tonks [a metamorphmagus—a person who can change their appearance at will] and Remus Lupin [a werewolf], and he is kissing Bill and Fleur Weasley's daughter Victoire.

Which character do you most identify with?

Tonks. She’s really the first strong teenager in a field of men—she has to keep up with all the greatest aurors like Mad Eye Moody. I really identified with her when I was a teenager. She was a spunky, clumsy, quirky girl in a man’s world. She was definitely capable of getting the job done, but she didn’t confine herself to ministry standards. She had pink hair and wore punk rock clothing. That’s exactly what I wanted to be like when I was 15.

When did your fandom start to emerge?

I remember making my own T-shirts when I was a kid. I had a countdown T-shirt for when the Half Blood Prince [the sixth book] came out. I put a different number on it every day, starting with 100. I also dyed my hair pink in high school because I wanted to be like Tonks.

I was upset when my Hogwarts letter never came. I had a friend who worked at Scholastic who got to write back to all the kids who wrote in asking where their letters were. She had to write something like, “Unfortunately Hogwarts is full this year, but you can still do magic in your own life by being a good person.” There are a lot of disappointed kids out there.

Tell me about your experience working as a tour guide at the museum exhibit.

I got to act, which is something I have never really done before. Throughout the whole exhibit I had to learn how to do a British accent. I kind of fibbed on the application and said that I could do an accent, so I had to watch a lot of videos of Kiera Knightly to get it.

It was amazing to work with all the original costumes and props. They were all actually used by the actors in the films, not their stunt doubles or anything. It was very tempting to touch everything, because of course you wanted to.

Did you ever touch anything?

Yes—oh man they’re going to be so mad at me—but I touched Ron’s quilt. It just looked so soft. It actually wasn’t though.

Why was Harry Potter worth writing about for your BA thesis?

Well, what I say to people who are not Harry Potter fans, and who don’t think the books are worthwhile, I say the same thing that I do about the Beatles. You don’t have to like the Beatles, but you can’t deny that they changed the game forever.

Addendum: After the movie came out, we followed up with Demma.
(CAUTION: POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT!)

What was your reaction to the epilogue?

It was funny when it needed to be, serious, heartbreaking, all that. I think having David Yates on as director for the last few films has really maintained a nice cohesion for the series.

Teddy Lupin did not make it to the epilogue! Sadness. All I wanted was a punky little wolf-wizard hybrid. Is that so much to ask?

Meet the UChicago doubles team who won back-to-back NCAA titles.

By Elizabeth Station

Kendra Higgins and Chrissy Hu fell short of winning their third consecutive NCAA doubles title this past spring. As consolation, Higgins took runner-up honors in Division III singles—and Hu, AB'11, finished an economics degree and an honors thesis on the political economy of Taiwan.

Higgins, a fourth-year from Vero Beach, Florida, is a human-development and Latin American–studies major. Hu is from Palo Alto, California. Top athletes in high school, neither had played tennis indoors until coming to Chicago. They talk about finding their groove in the latest issue of the Core.

Back in high school, how did people react when you told them you were going to play tennis at the University of Chicago?

Chrissy Hu: UChicago is kind of under the radar. Not that many people have heard of it. The tennis team was unranked when I came in. We didn’t really become strong until Kendra’s first year, when we jumped from something like No. 29 to No. 4 within a year.

Early on, did you sense that you would be good doubles partners?

CH:The beauty of our first year is that we didn’t go into it thinking we were great. It was amazing that we won at the NCAAs in 2009—we went into the tournament unseeded.

What’s the secret to your success together?

Kendra Higgins: When we play a match, we rely on each other. We’re always there to cover each other.

CH: She always knows where I’m going to be.

Have you learned anything in class that applies to tennis?

KH: I feel like tennis and school need to have the same work ethic.

CH: You have to go out and perform, even if you haven’t had any sleep.

As Division III athletes, how do you balance practice with studying?

CH: During the season, pretty much all we do is tennis and school. When you’re not at tennis, you’re at the library.

KH: You’re in our brand new [Mansueto] library. It’s gorgeous.

CH: They did build it over the tennis courts, though.

What were your favorite classes at Chicago?

KH: A political-science course with professor Robert Pape. He’s the world expert on suicide terrorism, and our TA was the world expert on female suicide terrorism. I felt like we had insider information.

CH: I took Dinosaur Science, an upper-level bio class, and I loved it. After graduation we went on a 10-day excavation with Paul Sereno to Montana. For a class called Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Beyond, we looked at photos and manga—Japanese cartoon books—as primary sources. It wasn’t a typical University of Chicago course where you’re reading Freud and Marx and all that.

A night in the life of a Doc Films projectionist.

By Mitchell Kohles, '12

I remember watching Fight Club as a 16-year-old and first understanding how movies made it up onto the big screen. Or thinking I understood. It wasn’t until volunteering at Doc that I learned projection involves more than watching the upper right-hand corner of the screen for “cigarette burns.”

Unless you’re Tyler Durden, this isn’t the fun part: transferring the film onto show reels, rewinding the film, checking and repairing splices, and adding our own if necessary, noting the scenes where dots (those cigarette burns) appear to indicate the end of the reel, determining the print's proper sound format and aspect ratio.

Doc is dedicated to passing these skills on to new volunteers, and I let my APs do this prep work while I look over their shoulder or tend to the projectors. Hopefully, after three quarters of working under different projectionists, an AP will take the projectionist exam to become a PJ, running his or her own show the following quarter.

For 35mm film, we use a changeover system with two projectors, affectionately named Evelyn and Wanda for their east/west location. When the show starts, the film will run through Evelyn until the reel is almost empty—about 20 minutes. Eight seconds before the end of the reel, the dots will appear in the screen's corner for an eighth of a second–four frames-and I'll turn on Wanda’s motor and raise the douser to let the light flood into the chamber. In the print's final second, as the film is running through Wanda, a second dot will appear, and I'll step on the changeover pedal to project Wanda’s image instead of Evelyn’s, which is now just black filler, the reel’s “tail.” If everything goes well, the audience doesn’t notice a thing.

When my APs confirm the film’s aspect ratio, I swap out Evelyn and Wanda’s lenses for the correct ones. I also rub the film gate down with a 50-50 alcohol–water solution we call “the mix” and shoot pressurized air into the chamber to clear any loose dust. Before most shows, it is only necessary to clean the components that touch the film. The cool thing is that hardly any of the film actually touches the projector: despite looping through locks and clamps and pulleys, the film is mostly guided along by rotating wheels with sprockets that engage the film's perforations and prevent any significant transfer of dirt or grime. I try to perform this simple maintenance before each show, although the real cleaning is left to the equipment chair.

Of course, a screening doesn’t always run smoothly. Projectionists have nightmares about the bubbling, deep-colored metastasis on screen that signals a burning print inside the projector. Though not all mistakes in the booth have such inflammatory results. If a film breaks below the sound chamber, the outgoing film will spill onto the floor in huge ribbons while the projector continues to show the print on screen. A PJ can recover from this film spill if he is quick and cool-headed enough to find the broken end of the print, reattach it to a new takeup reel, replace the original reel with the new one, guide the spilt film back onto this new reel, and allow the stronger tension of the takeup motor to catch up to the film still running through the projector. All this can be done without stopping the show or alerting the audience. That’s the fun part.

Of course, this sort of stunt would only be done if the screening were more important than the print—we would never risk damaging a rare or archival print by letting it spill out onto the floor. In that case, it's better to just stop the show.

As a profession, projectionists’ numbers have been dwindling ever since the xenon bulb was introduced in the ‘60s. We became even more expendable when a new reel system that used platters was introduced in the ‘70s. Platters are used by most multiplex cinemas today: all the film is placed onto one giant reel–thereby avoiding the changeover process–and fed through the cinema so that the same print runs through several projectors and appears on several screens. That’s why Green Lantern will be showing at 6:00 and 6:15––it takes 15 minutes for the print to travel from one projector to the next. A multiplex can handle 12 or more screenings in a night with just one projectionist.

We don’t do that at Doc (remember Evelyn and Wanda?). We prep the print of Hitchcock or Brakhage, and we usually show it only once or twice before shipping it back to the distributor. The labor-intensive changeover system allows us to project films from archives that demand the more gentle system. On the other hand, most of us aren't pros. “As a volunteer-based student organization that puts a lot of emphasis on teaching people how to project film, Doc is not exactly at the top of the list of groups to lend fragile and valuable prints to,” explains Andrea Nishi, ’13, co-general chair of Doc.

Still, our changeover system makes us more attractive to film depositories than a platter house is. Kyle Westphal, AB‘07, former Doc programming chair and head projectionist at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, describes the tradeoff in an interview with the San Francisco Film Festival: “There are good reasons for such policies—namely that it forces the projectionist to actually be there during the screening and maintain the integrity of the print by not cutting and re-splicing it at heads and tails of every reel." There are upsides to platters too. "In some ways, platter projection extends the life of a print; a film opens at a multiplex, and it stays there for weeks. It screens dozens of times, but because it's all built up, there's less handling involved, less wear and tear and random damage in that each reel isn't rewound and threaded over and over every day."

The film industry is changing, and as distribution goes digital and film repositories become more selective about who they lend to, Doc’s commitment to showing original prints on physical media has become increasingly difficult and expensive. In May 2010 volunteers and board members (also volunteers) gathered to discuss how Doc would address the changes. Some proposed hiring full-time projectionists, cutting the volunteer staff nearly in half. Others proposed establishing an “office manager” position to maintain relations with distributors and handle Doc’s finances. Becca Hall, AB’10, a former Doc volunteer and cofounder of the Northwest Chicago Film Society, attended the conference and describes Doc’s predicament: “Basically, Doc presently operates as if it's still the 16mm era, when films were available to anyone and striking new prints was easy—and when the equipment used was simple enough for a schoolteacher to use and maintain. All this puts the possibility of Doc continuing to exist as we've known it in serious jeopardy.”

As part of the University community for more than 75 years, Doc proudly holds the title of longest-running student-operated film society in the country. As I watch my APs thread the 35mm film into the projector, I can only hope we don’t give that up.

Cell biologist Stephanie Levi's Night Labs series makes science accessible.

By Ruth E. Kott, AM'07

Molecular geneticist and cell biologist Stephanie Levi, PhD'09, wants people to understand what she does. To explain the Golgi apparatus, which she studied at Chicago, she uses a simile: it's "a structure in the cell that is like the cell’s post office," she says on her website, Science-is-Sexy.com. "The Golgi takes newly made proteins (the mail) and attaches a sugar molecule to them, which acts like a molecular zipcode that tells the cell where to send the protein."

She doesn't stop at similes. To bring science to a wider population, in 2008 Levi, who coordinates Northeastern Illinois University's Student Center for Science Engagement, started Night Labs, a series of public talks about how science fits into everyday life. "Science intersects everything," she says. "I wanted people to talk across those lines and help adults who weren't scientists see science as part of their lives—and important." After leading lectures on the science of sex and attraction and on the science of extinction, in May she hosted a Night Lab on the science of coffee, which filled the second floor at Schubas Tavern in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood. Afterward she gave an interview about what science can teach us about coffee.

Why do a Night Lab on coffee?

Night Lab is all about helping adults access science in an entertaining, enjoyable way, while highlighting science in their everyday lives. I have long been interested in doing programs on food, since in addition to being a molecular geneticist, I'm a huge foodie who takes full advantage of Chicago's rich food culture.

I don't know of anything more ubiquitous than a morning cup of joe, and I fell in love with Intelligentsia the first time I took a sip of a cappuccino from one of their retail stores. There's tons of science involved in every step of the processing, brewing, and enjoyment of coffee, and I chose to highlight those. I will be having numerous food programs in the coming years, although this was my first.

What kind of research did you do to prepare?

I had multiple meetings with the program's presenter, Sarah Kluth. Sarah is tremendous and an incredible expert on all things coffee. She is the green manager and buyer at Intelligentsia and is basically air traffic control for the company, telling them when different coffees should go to market based on their seasonality and, I'm sure, many other factors. She had a great deal of scientific expertise on coffee and brought that to our discussions.

I did quite a bit of reading just out of my own interest, and, of course, being a scientist, I know the chemistry, physics, and biology that underlie all of it, but did not specifically know the information that pertained to coffee. One of the fun parts of doing Night Labs is that I get to learn about various aspects of science and continually make new discoveries about fields I would otherwise know nothing about, and offer a stage to scientists and other thinkers to share their work and ideas with the broader public.

What do you look for in a cup of coffee? What do you usually drink?

Honestly, a cappuccino at Intelligentsia is my ideal—it's creamy, mellow, tastes like caramel and chocolate; it is such a treat. The milk is perfect; the temperature is perfect. It's a Saturday treat for me.

How do you make coffee at home?

I have always used one of those Italian stove-top coffeemakers—you put water in the bottom, coffee in a metal filter right above that, and put it on the stove, and it percolates to a chamber in the top, which you then pour into your cup. I also have a French press and use that mainly at work. I'm switching to an automatic coffee maker, however, which, I learned from Sarah, gives the coffee preparer (me) less control.

What did you learn from Kluth's talk? Will it change the way you make coffee?

After the Night Lab event, I'm switching one of those gold filters instead of paper—the molecules that give coffee its aroma and complexity can stick to a paper filter. I now want to go out and get a burr grinder as well; it provides a uniform grind to the coffee beans, unlike an electric grinder, and I learned from Sarah that you really want a uniform grind to your coffee so that the surface area of each grain of coffee is even, and the extraction of coffee into your water is even, giving a good-tasting cup.

I also use purified water, not distilled or tap. Distilled has no minerals to attach to the molecules that give coffee a great flavor, so you wind up with a really weak-tasting, flat cup of coffee if you use it. Tap is loaded with chlorine, which gives you an off-tasting cup. Ideally, the temperature of coffee needs to be pretty precise too—Sarah shared with us that the ideal range of extracting a cup of coffee is about 195–205 degrees F (the boiling point of water is 212 degrees).

[Finally] I will never, ever put coffee in the fridge as a way of keeping it. I will try to use my coffee within two weeks of buying it. Sarah gave guests of the Night Lab program a half pound of coffee, and it had been roasted two days prior.