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While neo-Nazism may have entered the vernacular of today’s political discourse, Sophie al Mutawaly ’19 saw earlier this year that even the Hitler era hasn’t quite come to a close. A German citizen, al Mutawaly spent this past summer as a legal intern at the law firm Rückel & Collegen in Munich.
A few nights ago, overcome with stress about school, family and personal relationships, I sat on the steps of the Museum of Art late at night. It was one of those perfectly cold evenings, when the wind whips your face and bites at your hands.
The wreaths around campus signal two important things for Bowdoin: winter break approaches and finals draw ever nearer. For some, the holiday season may come with little spiritual connection, perhaps just a red Starbucks cup of coffee, but for others, the holidays start earlier and have significant meaning for their faith.
Rowdy passengers, grueling layovers and long car rides: all of these mark the experiences of students traveling home. As finals week approaches and students anticipate the beginning of winter break, they must also consider plans to return home and address the varying levels of time and complication it takes to do so.
Students in the Visual Arts Department pin, hang and place their art in the Edwards Center for Art and Dance. For these students, this show is their final; the culmination of months of hard work. Drawings, paintings, sculpture and much more will fill the walls.
The passengers who undertake the 15-hour train ride from Stockholm to Kiruna are of a particular breed—what could possibly fuel a desire to reach the northern Swedish frontiers? This endless expanse of wintry emptiness, save for the sparse scatter of birch trees that dot the flat horizon every now and then?
There is no single leader of the Stowe Writers House, a new writing collective on Bowdoin’s campus. It is a purely collaborative space, devoid of hierarchy, deadlines and judgement. Loosely modelled off of the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, the Stowe Writers House group was conceived last year through a collaboration between students and Professor of Africana Studies and English Tess Chakkalakal.
Oftentimes, I forget things. I forget my OneCard, my lab notebook or I forget about the banana that I put in my backpack a week ago. But I never forget to put on my raincoat on Tuesdays.
I’ve always been a homebody. I grew up in Falmouth, Maine and coincidentally decided to go to school just thirty minutes up the road in Brunswick. To some folks, my college decision seemed crazy. Why go to school so close?
Oysters need time, movement and a little TLC, says Jordi St. John. Otherwise, their speckled shells clench up, congeal, lose the space they need to make a home. Carrying a brush and a sure grin, he runs fine bristles along the plastic bags where shellfish grow, brushing specks of algae that fall into the waves surrounding Merritt Island.
I felt the least American in the spring of my senior year of high school. It was early 2016 and we talked about Trump at least once in every class I had. My school was very divided.
What do beer and politics have in common? A lot, according to Mattie Daughtry, co-founder of Moderation Brewing Company on Maine Street, which opened last March. And Daughtry would know. Aside from running Moderation with business partner Philip Welsh, Daughtry works as a Democratic member of the Maine State House of Representatives.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane—oh, wait, it is a plane! Teddy Wecker ’22 flies above Bowdoin in a Piper Cherokee. The first-year finished his pilot’s license a few weeks before coming to the College. For him, flying in Maine is a dream.
Most regulars are hesitant to discuss the hidden gem, the Visual Art Center (VAC), because part of the building’s appeal is its serenity and relative obscurity. The students who frequent the space are well acquainted with one another, as there is a small but devoted group that studies regularly between the glass walls, bookshelves and quirky posters that line the inside.
When Shankar Mahadevan hits the chorus of the iconic Bollywood ballad “Desi Girl,” impassioned drums and raucous claps fade into the titular line that’s captivated South Asian families and popular media for the past decade: “Dekhi Lakh Lakh Pardesi Girl / Ain’t Nobody Like My Desi Girl / Sab Toh Soni N Saadi Desi Girl.” Translation: We’ve seen millions of foreign girls, but ain’t nobody like my Desi girl / The most beautiful and down-to-earth girl is an Indian girl.
Would you choose to be immortal? I think it’s fair to generalize that everyone has pondered immortality at some point in their lives. Maybe you watched “Twilight” for the first time and wondered what it would be like to stay a teenager forever.
I thought that I wouldn’t think about suicide anymore if I got into Bowdoin. All this high school stuff was to be left in the past, and I would be a better, less jaded, more upbeat person.
When she was a high school senior visiting Bowdoin as a swimming recruit, it was an OutPeers and OutAllies list in an Osher dorm that made Kat Gaburo ’19 feel confident that the team she would soon join would be a welcoming place.
“The football team remains terrible—but sheesh, that was cool.” The flash of the lights. The crack of the bat. The buzz of the crowd—BACs cookin’ well above .08. The smell of the turf. The taste of victory and second-hand Juul exhaust.
Cecile and I found ourselves in a crowd of beaked babushkas, their perfume reeking nostalgically as we passed, calling to mind stuffy tea times in my grandma’s living room, surrounded by porcelain knick-knacks dusted with age.
This past February, during my sophomore spring semester, I decided I wasn’t going to study abroad. Ever since arriving at Bowdoin, studying away for a semester had been on my mind. I’d cycled through a lot of possibilities: minor or major in Spanish and go to Spain or South America, take a semester of Italian and go to Italy, take a biology class and go to Tanzania, take a semester of Greek and do the College Year in Athens.
To Rose Warren ’21, there is an obvious need at Bowdoin for more student discussion of mental health. Three weeks ago, she received an official charter from the Student Organizations Oversight Committee to found the Mental Health Club.
Computational creativity can seem—at first—like an oxymoron. Computer science is often associated with dark rooms and daunting technology while creativity connotes vivid color, energy and novelty. In the case of Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sarah Harmon’s new Computational Creativity course, however, this dichotomy could not be further from the truth.
I first visited Adams Hall on a quest to find my own white whale: the perfect Bowdoin study space. Convinced that the right location was all I needed to reach peak productivity, I found myself, dripping wet, on the stairway leading to the fourth floor one rainy afternoon.
Not all students imagine confetti-shooting cannons as they arrive on a plane for their first year at college. For Antonio Watson ’12, those cannons also contained sunshine and glitter. Watson lives his life with the goal to explore his authentic identity.
Enduring the contempt of strangers can be emotionally draining. And contempt is, unsurprisingly, the primary impulse of those whose doors are knocked on when they’re eating dinner with their family, or when their newborn child has just fallen asleep, or they’re just about to dash off to the airport to catch a plane or when they’re already running late and a bright-faced, sweaty, idealistic kid shows up at their door telling them about the plight of sea turtles or the midterm elections.
Flashing lights, flocks of ill-tempered travelers, the symphony of yelling intermixed with cars honking—I was instantly shrouded in the familiar temperament of the city as I stepped outside the arrival hall. Within a matter of minutes, thanks to being a seasoned veteran of John.
It was by a stroke of fate and a seating algorithm that on an EasyJet flight I met Nino. Romi and I were on our return flight from London. While traveling in pairs is normally not an issue, on a plane with three-seat aisles, the third seat is left to chance.
It has been a tough couple weeks for beer. Nevertheless, we’re back providing our readers with the content they crave about the worst beers on the market. We were chided after our last review by the proud staff of the Orient that this is a “beer column,” and so we actually need to “write about beer.” To make up for this grave omission, we are bringing to you a surplus of beer this week—volume and variety, not word count— pushed together in ways that neither the father, the son nor the Brothers Bissell ever intended.
Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Bowdoin Eduardo Pazos Palma believes the study of religious traditions can help with understanding many issues that grip the increasingly globalized world. Pazos Palma wants to initiate this conversation with a new Multifaith Program at Bowdoin.
Along Bath Road, just a little ways down from Pine Street Apartments, sit Cameron’s Lobster House and a State Farm Insurance office. Next door is an unassuming white-paneled building with a purple door, on which a piece of paper is taped to the glass.
Autumn hugged Uppsala, a small college town on the periphery of Stockholm. The air had chilled, the sky had greyed and things were dying beautifully. We paused on the way to a museum at a café for a brief indulgence of coffee and kanelbulle and ran into a fellow American abroad.
Rain drips outside, and the warm wood interior of the Roux Center for the Environment has a kind of hearth-like warmth. It’s Thursday morning, the day of the building’s dedication. I’m not here for class or for office hours, just to sit in the space and to look.
Wish yourself into the eye of a hurricane. Search for your home in the sea of red pixels at the center of the storm. See the national news anchor stand where you and your friends took prom pictures; hear him say the coming night will smash it to pieces.
Between Sills and Searles, there exists an exceedingly large population of squirrels. They hang on tree branches and scurry in bushes, but largely, they romp around freely in the open grass. While the squirrels most frequently travel alone, they occasionally appear en masse and sometimes are seen in hot pursuit of other fellow squirrels.
Our moderately filterless minds were recently asked to give a few buzzwords about what defines a Bowdoin student. We felt that this was an awfully loaded question. How can you define students who hail from wide swaths of the world?
Lorenzo Meigs ’21 has lived in the same city for practically all of his life. I’ve always been fascinated by my peers’ relationships to place, especially by those who seem to embody their homes. Meigs is one of those people.
Every Tuesday and Friday, from May 1 until November 20, local farmers set up shop on the Brunswick mall along Maine Street to share the fruits of their harvest with the Brunswick community. It’s unusual to find a Maine city or town without a local farmers’ market, so what sets this particular market apart?
After noticing her accent, the first question Bostonians often ask Director of Writing and Rhetoric Meredith McCarroll, is where she is from. When she answers the South, her new acquaintance responds, usually in an exaggerated southern drawl, “Where in the South?” to which she says, “In the mountains of North Carolina,” more commonly known as Appalachia.
This is the story of four American girls—wait—one half-Jamaican, half-Lithuanian girl, Tyrah; one Israeli-born, but Belgian passport-carrying girl, Romi; one Serbian-American girl, me; and the token American amongst us, Cecile. This is the story of how four girls found themselves playing King’s Cup until one in the morning in Kloster bar, near the Södermalm neighborhood in Stockholm.
This place holds secrets. I remember going outside in the early morning fog to be greeted with deafening silence from the cicadas who had stayed up all night buzzing. I remember staring out the car window for hours at sizzling gravel roads, wondering what horrors the rocks had seen.
“You aren’t immortal. Your time is limited and precious,” my mom constantly tells me. It’s not as if she gives this advice to deter me from doing the things I love—or even from pursuing life-threatening endeavors.
When President Barack Obama emerged from his post-tenure elusiveness to give a speech at the University of Illinois, he was accepting an award named after a Bowdoin alum. The Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government is named in recognition of a distinguished economist who graduated from the College in 1913.
Welcome sweet readers, For guys like us, the explosion of craft beer has been great. Instead of developing fully formed personalities, we can learn a simple vocabulary, e.g. “citra,” “dry-hopped,” “milk stout,” “double IPA,” “notes,” “you’ve had too much,” “I’m cutting you off” and then be semi-functioning members of society, mindlessly quoting “Good Will Hunting” back and forth while drinking overpriced beer to distract from the fact that we have not a shred of individuality.
You’d never guess it from looking at him now—sitting comfortably, a smile spreading across his face as he describes his orchestra, voice bouncing and echoing across the recital hall—but George Lopez, Beckwith artist-in-residence and director of the Bowdoin orchestra, never wanted to be a musician.
Ladd House—occupied by sophomores in recent memory—has a new set of residents: class of 2019. As the only exclusively senior space within the College House system, the iconic red facade of Ladd now represents an experiment in keeping the social scene for upperclassmen centered on campus.
Almost one year ago, I wrote a Talk of the Quad titled “Dirigo” about the constant movement during my childhood and the freedom I felt when I put roots down in Maine. I’ll say now, it was naive of me to think that after years of movement, I thought I would suddenly and poetically find my home.
When he permanently leaves Brunswick in a few months, Adam Berliner ’13 will do so in a small, yellow school bus. No longer used to transport students but to support a life on the road, the bus will be Berliner’s home for the near future.
Monday through Saturday, you can usually find reruns of Seinfeld playing at 90 Union Street, home to Brunswick’s new (as of last spring) cafe, Dog Bar Jim. That is, when it’s not 85 degrees out and you arrive to find a sticky note that reads, “Too hot for Seinfeld,” on the vintage TV that rests near the cash register.
Breakfast at the Paramount in Boston meant a 45-minute wait in the standing line to order, a subsequent fight for a table and an inevitable shouting match between Conversation and Noise. “Izvini sto kasnim!” I yelled, “I’m sorry I’m late!” She waved at the air to both forgive and beckon me to her table.
My toes balance on the slotted, concrete boat launch, and the water around my ankles is cold. I walk forward, and the water makes itself known higher and higher on my body. Goosebumps coat my skin: I know I must dive in and that it will be warmer once I’m submerged.
Growing up, my anxiety was like a cloud. Always there, mostly invisible to others, making everything a little bit more grey. For many years, I thought that everyone had one. I had always been taught that my brain was my most valuable possession.
Four floors of evenly-spaced windows tower over the Androscoggin River. The faded brick structure stands firm, bookending Maine Street just before Topsham. Though unassuming from the exterior, Fort Andross is a place bustling with motion – hundreds of individuals enter and exit every day, each with a unique purpose.
For many, Cumberland Self Storage signifies transition: a temporary place to store belongings. But for the past 11 years, Manager Steve Howe has been a constant friendly face to greet and help customers. “A lot of people think it’s dull and boring—you just sit on your butt all day long and don’t do anything—but that’s not the case.
Every Saturday from November to May, vendors selling goods from freshly-harvested mushrooms to homemade body lotions shuffle in to fill the first floor of Fort Andross with their colorful stalls. This is the Brunswick Winter Market, where the vendors are as eclectic and versatile as they are passionate about their craft—whether it is cheese- and butter-making, coffee roasting or knife sharpening.
Next door to the Winter Market is the Waterfront Flea Market. In fact, customers have to walk past the flea market to get to the winter market. A lot of people pause before the flea market, look, a bit confused and intrigued, at the couple of mismatched chairs out front, but many just continue to the other market.
John Bisbee has exclusively welded nails for the past 32 years. “I thought it was just a little phase, and it wasn’t,” said the artist in his riverside Fort Andross workshop, where he has worked since 1996.
Leaning back comfortably in a well-worn chair, Jim Bleikamp describes how he has gone “über-local.” The president of Radio 9 WCME, housed in the heart of Fort Andross and found at AM 900, he says, “You could tune in to the station every hour and figure that the Northern boundary of the world is maybe Rockland and the Southern boundary is Freeport.
With a median age of 44.5 years, Maine is the oldest state in the United States. An aging population presents a variety of challenges. Brunswick itself has three senior housing facilities, one of which is Mid Coast Senior Health Center.
Any north-facing windows at Fort Andross provide a full view of the Brunswick dam, a massive concrete structure on the Androscoggin River with a capacity 19,000 kilowatt-hours, according to the Maine Governor’s Energy Office. Today’s dam is hydroelectric, owned by Brookfield Renewable, a subsidiary of the international asset management company, but dams have shaped Brunswick’s development for centuries—the first was built in 1753 to serve the town’s sawmills.
Deborah Todd crafts every one of her colorful ceramic tiles by hand, from start to finish, through a process she invented at the start of her career 37 years ago as the apprentice to a potter in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Hidden in the basement of Fort Andross, First Class Fitness & MMA is easily overlooked by many of the Fort’s visitors. “Fort Andross is such a giant building that a lot of people don’t really know we’re there,” said owner John Raio.
Rather than continuing to work in biology laboratories post-graduation, Ian Trask ’05 opted to pick up trash. After winding his way through various jobs, he ended up as a groundskeeper at a hospital in Massachusetts, cleaning parking lots and he ultimately deciding to use trash as a medium for art.
Cappuccino Meltaway Truffles. Almond Butter Crunch. Coconut Clusters. Dark Chocolate Pecan Turtles. Peering into the glossy display case at Wilbur’s of Maine Chocolate Confections on Maine Street is enough to entice even the slightest of chocoholics.
We are basically in a relationship. It’s been eight years. We’ve lived together for two and a half, traveled around the world, hung out with each other’s families and are currently listed as each other’s “emergency contact.” You can find us eating most meals together in Thorne, popping up most often in each other’s tagged photos and wearing full-set matching pajamas when we go to bed together each night.
The summer before to my freshman year, a burglar ransacked my house while I was home alone. It was a lazy morning. I was reading in bed when I heard the first knock. I continued reading without pause, noting that my mother—the only other resident of our home—was not due home until lunchtime.
Ishani Agarwal ’20 says she came to Bowdoin “blind.” An international student from Mumbai, India, Ishani gleaned everything she knew about Bowdoin from pamphlets and the internet. Once transplanted to campus and settled in small-town Maine, Agarwal wondered about a lot of things.
With its history of Arctic exploration and museum research, Bowdoin’s connection to the Arctic go way back. Today, with issues still surrounding various polar environments, Bowdoin continues to make strides in the field, as exemplified through a continuous, cross-disciplinary pursuit by faculty members across several academic departments.
“The quad is really the heart of campus,” I used to tell unconvinced tour groups, faking a smile as we walked along snow banks piled four feet high through the winter. “It’s really beautiful during the first and last weeks of the year!” I promise them.
Two years ago during my sophomore fall, I stumbled across an opinion article by Professor of Philosophy Sarah Conly in the Boston Globe. Professor Conly was writing on the heels of China’s decision to end its decades-old one-child policy and allow two children per family.
“Perché gli americani vogliono imparare l’italiano?” (“Why do Americans want to learn Italian?”) This was the question my friends asked when I told them that I was going to go from working on my Master’s in Italy to teaching Italian conversation at Bowdoin.
I met Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Erin Johnson in her studio in the Edwards Center for Art and Dance. Midday sun streamed in through room’s the large windows, generously lighting the space. There was very little furniture in the room, giving it an airy quality.
Behind Hannaford, a five-minute walk from Bowdoin’s campus, sits the primary facility for Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program (MCHPP). The nonprofit, which handles over a million pounds of food each year, combats food insecurity—a perpetual and growing issue that affects over 200,000 Maine residents each year.
Holding court behind the counter as two men from a local band walk through the store’s glass door, Gary Lawless asks: “What’s a drummer who’s lost his girlfriend?” It’s quiet for a beat. “Homeless,” he exclaims.
This article is the fourth and final installment in the Diversity Matters series, in which students from the Diversity in Higher Education seminar present research based on interviews with 48 seniors. To read the first installment, click here.
Camille Serrano ’18 is from Olathe (oh-LAY-thuh) Kansas, about 20 miles southwest of Kansas City. When asked if there are any places in Olathe that she thinks about when she thinks of home, this is what Camille said: “Oh my goodness.
This article is the third installment in the Diversity Matters series, in which students from the Diversity in Higher Education seminar present research based on interviews with 48 seniors. To read the first installment, click here.
We asked six first years to tell us what they wish they knew before starting at Bowdoin. These are their responses.
When I was looking at colleges, I placed a very particular (almost unreasonable) emphasis on the weather. I wasn’t looking for anything perfect; rather I wanted something different. The weather in Los Angeles always seemed too sunny and perfect—in fact the weather in California is so perfect that we have a perpetual problem with droughts.
Two figures stand under a tree near the Bowdoin Chapel. It is a birch tree or maybe an oak—I am not sure, and it doesn’t even matter. The tree is just beginning to bloom. Its silvery green leaves shudder in the cool May breeze, and its rosy buds are filled to burst with flowers that reach to meet the morning sun and cast stippled shadows across the grass.
Last Thursday night, I attended my first “underground queer party.” Inspired by Wesleyan’s biweekly “secret gay keg parties,” this was intended to bring together and revitalize Bowdoin’s lackluster queer community. This party wasn’t the local gay club I frequented abroad, replete with handsome men in their mid-twenties, strobe lights, drag queens and complimentary drinks.
This article is the second installment in the Diversity Matters series where students in the Diversity in Higher Education seminar present research based on interviews with 48 seniors. To read the first installment, click here. Students can easily go through Bowdoin with color-blind understandings of race unchallenged and undisrupted.
Scuffed Carhartts, funky mountain art and red walls keep the warmth inside Kaladis Brothers Coffee during the dark winter months, when a cup of coffee is about 130 degrees hotter than the temperature outside. Although Rachel Zafren ’18 spends most of her year away from Anchorage, every other customer is coming up to talk to her.
Thirteen portraits on a slanting wall in David Saul Smith Union show students’ faces superposed over images that remind them of home. The art is striking, as is the message behind it. Cheng-Chun (Kevin) Yu ’19 and Shinhee Kang ’18, who created the exhibit together, hope to shed light on the presence of international students at Bowdoin and the unique challenges they face as they try to fit in and access the same opportunities as domestic students.
Isaac Kabuika ’20 doesn’t get much sleep, but you would never be able to tell. The neuroscience and computer science double major just started an IT Learning Program to help underprivileged populations in Lewiston, Maine, in addition to taking five classes this semester.
When we applied to Bowdoin, we checked boxes on the Common App designating our “official” identities, which suggest to Admissions how we might add to “diversity” on campus. But what happened next, after arriving on campus?
In high school, I spent countless hours babysitting younger kids. It was my primary source of spending-money and more importantly an experience that helped me grow immensely as a person. Kids are full of contagious enthusiasm that makes it hard to be anything but happy when you’re around them.
“So, you’re a vivid dreamer. You really need to get those dreams analyzed,” my doctor told me with the authority of her white coat and the distance of a wide desk. I discussed the recurring themes and characters in my dreams: my middle school volleyball coach, my first boyfriend, my second boyfriend, my family friends, my parents.
I love my Amtrak Downeaster six-trip college pass. For 86 dollars, I can take three round trips from the doorstep of campus to Woburn, the gateway to JOB (Just Outside of Boston) land. My three—or four or five, depending on weather and track repair—hour rides have punctuated my seven semesters on campus, bookending Thanksgiving and spring breaks.
Irfan Alam ’18 isn’t sure how to pronounce his first name. The confusion stems from the varied intonations of his friends at Bowdoin (air-fawn), his family (air-fawn) and his friends from his largely white private high school in Austin, Texas (urr-fawn).
Vessel and Vine, the newest addition to Brunswick’s assortment of small businesses, opened on Thursday on the corner of Maine and Pleasant streets. Part restaurant, part wine bar and part retail store, Vessel and Vine is the brainchild of owner Nikaline Iacono’s culinary and aesthetic sensibilities.
If you call up Autometrics auto-repair and supplies for a consultation, a new part, or some advice on your car, you might be surprised. When the ringing stops and the line clicks, the voice on the other end is not the one you might expect: that of a gruff mechanic, grabbing a call between repairs.
AUDIO: Carly Berlin reads. When I came to Bowdoin, everyone asked me where my accent was. Where? Nowhere. This was a matter I had never considered. I hadn’t noticed that my parents spoke with subtle twangs ’til my college friends noted this, but that would be years down the road.
AUDIO: Ellice Lueders reads. Tucson, Arizona, is a city confined unlike any other. Geographically bound by mountains in every direction, Tucson is the only major US city without a highway running through it. The city is an asphalt island surrounded by a sea of towering, spiny kelp.
During my time away from Bowdoin, my life changed dramatically when somebody close to me was diagnosed with a severe case of bipolar disorder. Part of their diagnosis also included “psychotic tendencies,” or sensory experiences of things that do not exist and/or beliefs with no basis in reality.
When white “Freedom Rider” and Wesleyan professor Dr. John Maquire visited Bowdoin over 50 years ago, he left the message that Bowdoin students would never fully understand the struggle for civil rights until they personally and directly understood what it was like to be black in the south.
Moulton light room (MLR) is a panoptical experience. Loyal MLR’ers are both inmates and guards, simultaneously watched while watching others. Eyes latch onto us the moment we enter, observing everything from our meal companions to our outfits.
Eight months ago I checked into Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, changed into a hospital gown and mustard-colored socks and plummeted into the depths of general anesthesia to the sound of Paul Simon’s first solo album.
Craig Finn is the lead singer of The Hold Steady, an indie group that has been called “America’s best bar band” by Rolling Stone. Tad Kubler is the guitarist. They both cheat at beer pong. As to the cheating, Derek Kraft ’06 noted, “[Arms] just hanging over the table, things like that.
It’s not hard to see why Union Street Bakery has quickly won a place in the hearts of locals since its opening nearly three years ago. In this short period of time, Brunswick residents have walked again and again up those distinctive green steps, sometimes hungry for gooey chocolate chip cookies, other times for fresh brioche cinnamon buns, but most often, for lively chats with owner Sandy Holland.
