We at sadielou.net are hard at work, scattered across the country and abroad for the summer. We’ve got a great year ahead of us and summer solstice is tonight, so we thought we’d give you an update. After the overwhelmingly positive response from our event this spring “I Can’t Believe I Wrote That” we aren’t sure how we’re going to outdo ourselves this fall. Please email Nick or Nic at nick.sadielou@gmail.com or nfeldman@gm.slc.edu with suggestions or events you’d like to see happen. Community is about collaboration, and no idea is too small or too big and we welcome all of yours. In the spirit of summer (even though it’s felt like fall so far this season) we offer you the copy from the “Wear Sunscreen” or “the Sunscreen Speech” which was originally an essay actually called “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997. The most popular and well-known form of the essay is the successful music single released in 1999, credited to Baz Luhrmann. The lyrics are below. You were expecting Pound? We’re on vacation!
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’99
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be
it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by
scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. Sing. Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements. Stretch Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the
people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out. Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you’re 40, it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth. But trust me on the sunscreen…”
updates from our staffers abroad all summer and book lists soon. email in and join the team, we want to give you web writing experience, blogging credit, recommendation letters, and friendship.
As Ever,
Nicole and Nicholas
Friends In The Sarah Lawrence Community And Beyond,
When the SadieLou team got together to try to figure out what our next issue would be, it was decided collectively we would explore the controversy surrounding Pluto as an outcast planet. Our annual SLC science lecture on campus was approaching and the speaker set to enlighten was Dr. Michael E. Brown aka “the guy who outed Pluto” We decided we would post from our own perspectives about the situation, as is part of our diverse, wonderful, Sarah Lawrence dialogue, we had differing opinions on the matter. I have chosen to file these posts under “history” because a shifting of an entire planet in our universe is truly an event in time to be noted. Below you will find three posts from members of the community sharing their take on Pluto and here is mine: As a young student in most school systems, no matter the country, we are taught about the planets. It is a unifying piece of information no matter the culture, language or location.
My
Very
Educated
Mother
Just
Served
Us
Nine
Pizzas
translates to
Mars
Venus
Earth
Mercury
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
When Pluto was outed, our collective knowledge as learners shifted. Our collective body of knowledge will forever be a little different. No matter the opinion on whether the tiniest planet should have been told to go (and I type this standing at five foot one inch tall) it is almost a melancholy thing to ponder: How much of my knowledge as a conscious changes because Pluto is not a planet, but now, really a ball of ice? or Was it always a ball of ice, and was I dreaming?
The relatively recent demotion of Pluto and discovery of Eris has a lot of people upset, for various reasons. I’ve heard people declare their emotional attachment to the poor dwarf planet, which I can understand, but I’ve also heard people scoff at the lack of precision in the entire field of astronomy.
They are absolutely right to. The field in astronomy is unique in many ways, but possibly one of the most important ones is that it is entirely possible that we will literally never see most of what we’re studying. Humanity as a whole will never touch a star, poke an exoplanet, or prod the cosmic background radiation; the vast majority of what we study about the universe is thirdhand inferences and cautious assumptions simply because everything is so inconcievably far away. To put it in perspective, if you take the distance between the Sun and the Earth to be an inch, Pluto would be three feet away. Alpha Centauri, the nearest star, would be four miles away, and the radius of the Milky Way would be ten times the radius of the Earth. The nearest galaxy would be ten times further away from the Earth than the Moon, and the universe, as far as we know, would span a diameter of roughly fifty times further away than – well – Pluto.
And this is on the scale of the distance between the Earth and the Sun being one inch.
So no, astronomers hadn’t defined the word “planet” until recently. Frankly, they had bigger things to worry about.
-Kristen Koopman, Sadielou.net, May ’09
The Pluto formerly known as a planet is not the only, or indeed the first Pluto to be given less than their due. Anyone remember Mickey Mouse’s pet dog? What about him? He’s a dog, just like Goofy, but he has to wear a collar and walk on all fours while Goofy has a snazzy turtleneck and vest ensemble. Not to mention the fact that Goofy had his own movie in 1995, while Pluto was the only major character not featured in Mickey’s Christmas Carol. What’s up with all the Pluto hate?
For more on the differences between Pluto and Goofy, read this Mental Floss article: The Difference? Pluto vs. Goofy
-Joanna Bettelheim, Sadielou.net, May ’09
When I was very little. Pluto was Mickey Mouse’s dog. He was yellow with a black, whip-like tail. He was a happy puppy with a curious streak. Pluto was nothing else.
When I was little. Pluto became the ninth planet. It was cold and distant. I always imagined it was a blue, cat’s eye marble floating in infinite black.
When I was a little older, I learned later that Pluto had a moon roughly the same size, Charon. I always pronounced Charon like Sharron, who was my baby sitter. I liked the idea of Pluto having a friend for eternity.
When I was older, Pluto was removed from our solar system. I felt the loss. Suddenly, Pluto had spun outside the close-knit family. It was lost in the net of stars. Pluto was unfamiliar. It was part of the other now. From this loss, I learned eternity was a lie. I was a quick learner.
-Poppy Little, Sadie Lou, May ’09
Dear friends!
I am happy to announce that we are now looking for candidates for next year’s Executive Committee of the Student Senate!
Student Senate is the governing body of the undergraduate students. Student Senate is a forum for student voice, and is responsible for allocating the student activities fee to student groups across campus. Each year during the end of the spring semester, we elect five students for the Executive Committee of next year’s Student Senate.
The positions are: Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer, Parliamentarian and Students for Student Scholarship Fund (SSSF) Chair. The Executive Committee facilitates weekly meetings, handles the logistics of Student Senate, serves as a liaison between staff, faculty and students, and communicates regularly with the student body.
If you are interested in running or have questions about any of these positions, please email studentsenate@gm.slc.edu and we will send you an election packet.
Election packets are due back in Student Affairs by 5pm on Monday, April 20th.
Elections will be held on April 25th!
always,
Michelle Lewin
Student Senate Chair
Class of 2009!!
I draft this letter to you expressing my dissatisfaction and reserved optimism. For a majority of this year we have been plagued by vague, counterproductive buzz words, i.e. “consistency” and “transparency”. We choose to rally behind personal objectives instead of reflecting the wants and desires of our constituents.
Ignoring the fact our “open” meetings seldom feature non-Senate students—despite the accessible meeting time—we fail to recognize our elected privilege. It is crucial that we remember the student body voted every one of us into office, we were not self-appointed. Rather than acting on their behalf, we make our decisions based on personal beliefs, but our heart and gut are not our constituency.
We are out of touch and out of control. We need to reintegrate student opinion and welcome discussion outside of the meeting time. The opinionated student body’s interests remain absent from our agendas. Internal dynamics, although structurally important, do not reflect the general concern of the larger student body, especially when left unexplained. When our discussions endlessly revolve around our own conflicts, we fall victim to circumlocutory ramblings.
This needs to change. The most recent issue of the Sadie Lou Standard addresses our ineffectual year. The blasé attitudes of the other articles directly reflect our inability to connect with our constituents. However, while the Standard announces the problem, it offers no viable remedy.
Here is how we do it. First and foremost, our goals need to be tenable. Attention must focus on the micro issues rather than the macro. All of our small accomplishments will amount to noteworthy productivity. Please take “hate speech” as an example. Instead of concentrating directly on SLC Anon, we decided to target hate speech. Our taskforce did not address either issue, and the website was removed because of Terms of Use violation. Hate speech still exists.
I propose the list below as the most immediate and accessible forms of implementing the necessary metamorphosis.
1. In accordance with standard procedure, to show equality, have Senate attend Student Life and request Pub Table space for regular solicitation of agenda topics from passers-by.
2. Reconfigure the next month’s set agenda topics to directly reflect the pertinent concerns.
3. Post our week’s agenda around campus similar to an advertisement for a dance.
4. Host Meet-the-Senators events. Provide free food. Order food late because people will stay. This does not mean follow current by-laws, and host exclusive class-events. This means welcome the entire student body once a month and just have a big social*.
We need to make our presence known: emails are easy to delete, people are difficult to ignore. As Senators, we act as direct mechanisms of change on this campus. Let’s start now.
If you’ve been shopping around for new smartphone technology lately (or if you’ve just been hanging around any Verizon shop), you’ve probably noticed BlackBerry’s got its own answer to the iPhone. It’s called the Storm, and it’s been designed with the iPhone-seeking, but BlackBerry-savvy consumer in mind.
In today’s New York Times, there’s a two-page editorial filled with readers’ reactions to the new product. But nothing beats the quirky, inaugural Fawkward podcast, where Adam Stepinski and Sadie Lou’s former Managing Director Nevan Scott weigh in on what might become everyone’s chosen stocking stuffer:
The well-known website I Can Has Cheezburger? has produced yet another branched-off collection of captioned pictures: Once Upon a Win. It provides user-submitted photos and videos of relics from the past, including (so far) original Chuck Taylors, Duck Hunt, Fun Dip, and Bob Ross, that painter guy with the afro who was sometimes on TV.
Of course, some fads come back into style years later—one cannot walk across the SLC campus without seeing at least one pair of Converses. Thanks to the amazing innovation that is the Internet, games like Duck Hunt can still be found. And old-school candy, like Fun Dip, bubblegum cigarettes, Ring Pops, and rock candy, is still available online and at some candy stores.
Due to the holidays, the blog’s been a little slow as of late, but there’s nothing like a relaxing animated video to kick things back into gear (especially when Conference Week is just around the corner):
Jasmine Rivera interviews Lane Montgomery, a humanitarian photographer and author who came to campus on Feb 26th at 7PM to speak about her recently published book of photos and essays of “the six major genocides of the 20th and 21st centuries”.
India Nicholas humorously and insightfully discusses her year “abroad” in New Orleans and the importance of studying in a new setting, with or without leaving the country.