Sadie Lou

Happy Summer Everyone!

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

We here at Sadie Lou are very pleased to announce a fantastic night months in the making: this Thursday, November 13th, the creative minds behind your favorite student-run magazine will be hosting a cross-genre reading!

This exciting event will feature a wide breadth of Sarah Lawrence’s writing talent reading prose, poetry, fiction, and selections from academic work. Because the night is meant to be multidisciplinary in all senses of the word, visual art will be on display, too, as will baked goods (for none other than your eating pleasure, of course).

So come on down to The Black Squirrel from 7:00 to 8:30 pm to hear some fresh words, view some cool art, and supplement your dinner with yummy dessert. We hope to see you there!

Questions? Comments? Want to know what’s on the menu? Contact Fiction and Poetry Editor Nick Moore or Creative Team Director Emma Zevin for more information.

Today, Sadie Lou launches its newest section, the Online Archives.

Throughout the 2008-2009 school year, members of the Sadie Lou Team will be working in conjunction with Abby Lester, College Archivist, to make selections from the Archives available for public viewing.

The Archives currently contain pieces from student journals and magazines The Keynote, Dimensions, and The Little Jackie Paper. Some of these articles were written as far back as 1928, and are nearly as old as Sarah Lawrence itself.

We hope you enjoy this new addition to Sadie Lou, and that you’ll join us as we explore, and take part in, the institutional history of student work at the College.

Well, it’s been a fun year and we here at Sadie Lou hope you’re all settling into your new groove. We’ll be accepting regular submissions all summer, and trying to keep the blog rolling, so keep checking in. Also, we’re trying out something new on the homepage, the Sadie Lou Flickr group. If you’ve got great pictures of campus or campus events, we encourage you to join the group and share them with us.

In the meantime, if you missed graduation, Jessica Lange’s keynote and Maggie Murphy’s commencement address are definitely worth a read.

A significant part of our purpose here at Sadie Lou is the desire to inspire discussion in the Sarah Lawrence community. In an effort to that end, we are introducing a series we call the Community Question. Every month or so Sadie Lou will direct a question to the SLC community via global email which reaches out to all undergraduate and graduate students, faculty members and administrative staff. We hope that this regular call will elicit responses that are relevant to the current cultural, social, and political climate on campus, as well as the individual opinions of members of our community.

The current question is: How do you believe Sarah Lawrence’s ‘no requirements’ policy is shaping and affecting your and your peers’ education?

Undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, administrators, staff and alumnae/i are welcome and encouraged to submit responses to submissions@sadielou.net.

While Community Questions are geared largely toward academic responses (housed in our “Comment” and “Essays” sections), Sadie Lou always accepts fiction, poetry, art, and other work inspired by our questions that reflects creative thought on campus. Submissions for these categories should also be e-mailed to submissions@sadielou.net.

Mark your calendars:

Tomorrow, Monday, April 14th, Sadie Lou will be holding its first-ever Student and Alumni/ae Collaborative Reading. An event that merges current Sarah Lawrence undergraduate writing talent with successful SLC-educated memoirists, poets, and fiction and non-fiction writers, the reading will be held in Reisinger Concert Hall, and is scheduled to begin at 7:30 pm.

The reading will feature collaborative work between Sadie Lou staff members and contributors Kristin Koopman, Allison Grande, Madelyn Sutton, Joanna Harmonosky, Jacqueline Strzemp, Zoë Raine Simmons, and Taylor Pavlik, and SLC alumni/ae Eireann Corrigan, Suzanne Gray, Suzanne Guillette, Liz Irmiter, Chris Prentice, Nelly Reifler (also an SLC Writing faculty member), and Estha Weiner. Each alum will read a piece of his or her own writing, followed by an undergrad, whose work will be inspired by and/or respond to the preceding composition.

A reception, featuring visual artwork by staff members and outside contributors, will follow.

On March 14, 2006 I bought the domain name sadielou.net to launch a student-run website based on work I had been doing on Raptor, incorporating what I had learned while retooling the Phoenix website. It was a long haul to secure funding as a student space and encourage adoption by the student body. Along the way, many, many students have made this site possible and great. If I can, I’d like to thank them, I hope they don’t mind me calling them out here.

Cori Johnson, Gabe Aronson, and Neil Makhija helped me shape the concept and a new design for the site during the summer ’06. In the fall, Neil, Franne Grimstad, and Jen Montalbano worked with me to establish Sadie Lou as a student space. Shortly after that, Lauren Parrish, Alex Rosenberg, and Joanna Harmonosky joined me to form a managerial/editorial staff. Alex has been instrumental in drumming up enthusiasm for the site, and Lauren worked tirelessly to encourage students to submit work to what was still a fledgling publication. Joanna, who joined as a first-year, took on a key role in the site very quickly, especially during my absence in spring ’07. Joanna shaped Sadie Lou into a well-run organization, and oversaw its substantial growth that spring. Over the summer, Joanna gave countless time and energy to adding new resources to the site, working with me to craft yet another redesign, and planning for the fall.

This year has been a runaway success, and it has everything to do with the wonderful editorial staff we’ve had this year – Rebecca Rubenstein, Joanna Bettelheim, Allison Grande, Taylor Pavlik, Madelyn Sutton, Erin Bailey, Jacqueline Strzemp, Zoe Simmons, Franne Grimstad, and Cori Johnson – and all of the wonderful contributors to the site. None of this would be possible without our readers, who have grown substantially in number this year, and who now span every state and over 60 countries. It’s been great. Thank you all, and have a good spring break.

Update: I really should also thank all those who preceded me, in addition to those who have carried the site forward. Matt Bateman was running Raptor when I started here, his commitment to and ability with the server was almost super-human and has been an inspiration. Emily Sharp culled me when I was first getting my feet wet designing faculty websites, and has been a close friend, advocate, and mentor since. Jess Hamilton worked with me on Raptor, and helped me establish my own web design sensibilities. Kimmie Nguyen, who had designed the print edition of the Phoenix, inspired my own thinking about layout. Alex Berger has put up with me for years going on and on about Raptor and then Sadie Lou, his design advice alone is responsible for the maturity of the site, and his support of Sadie Lou as it found its sea legs has been generous and greatly appreciated. Liz Henderson, who was the chief at the Phoenix when I entered, worked hard with me to make the Phoenix’s website into something usable, and taught me how much work really goes into running a large campus publication. Greg Conn hired me as a web programmer a few years ago; he shaped all of my thinking about site management and usability and has always encouraged my efforts with Sadie Lou. Winston Churchill-Joell has amazed me with his ability to wear creative and management caps with aplomb, our conversations about design, web standards, and usability have been instrumental in the formation of the site. I can’t really begin to describe how much all of their help, support, advice, etc. has meant to me and to the site these past years, and I hope they don’t mind me saying that their work is a big part of what Sadie Lou is.

On a final note (I feel like there should be an orchestra that has swelled to full blast by now), an enormous credit is due to the Campbell Corner Language Exchange, an ongoing project established by Elfie Raymond to explore, examine, and admire the connections between philosophy and poetry, in a world where both are so easily overlooked. I have had the honor of working alongside the people running the Language Exchange and its poetry contest (Carlin Wragg, Phillis Levin, Vijay Seshadri, Rachel Hadas, Susan Guma) as their webmaster. Sadie Lou is a very different kind of site and project, but I count the Language Exchange as its predominant progenitor. At Sadie Lou, we are far more immersed in the fast-paced flux which prevails in the culture. The Language Exchange exists as a different sort of stopping off point on the web: it is full of gems, but it is not shiny.

My introduction to the blogosphere happened early, which is funny considering my family didn’t acquire the Internet (let alone a computer with a CD-ROM drive) until I was twelve. Just before my freshman year of high school, a friend introduced me to Bobby Burgess, a 20-year-old wanderer who, through his playful memoir writing style, managed to accumulate money from curious readers who wanted to support his travel habit, and, in effect, help him continue his blog. While it’s gone through various names (including perceptions and a little gray box with words inside) and has been hosted on several platforms, Bobby’s journal continues, seven years later, to be a source of my Internet dilly-dallying. For best results, hit the random button to get a good look into the former nomad’s brain (he’s since somewhat settled in San Francisco).

About a year ago, I discovered the wondrous Future Shipwreck. A blog devoted to art, culture, and a variety of other musings, FS is the brainchild of actor and aspiring filmmaker and photographer Graham Kolbeins. Graham’s affinity for critically assessing L.A.‘s cultural underground, mixed with his ability to tell good stories and his monthly musical podcasts, keeps me coming back and hungry for—dare I say?—future posts. His portfolio ain’t half-bad either.

Fig Crumbs is the last site on my blog reading list worth mentioning. A recent addition to said list, it’s difficult to describe exactly what the blog is, but it does contain Jack Handey-like writing and art you might find at MoMa. Its sister site is Plump Plum, which features blogger Michael Crowe’s favorite found photographs.

In direct contrast to Allison’s time-saving first installment of “Sadie Lou Reads…,” I must admit most of the websites I read provide great ways to procrastinate. One of the best things about the Internet, in my opinion, is that it’s so easy to Stumble Upon websites you enjoy. I wouldn’t know about many of the websites I now look at daily if it weren’t for word-of-mouth (or perhaps word-of-blog).

My absolute favorite has to be Toothpaste for Dinner. It’s run by this guy named Drew from Columbus, Ohio, and every day around midnight, the site is updated with a new comic. Drew may not be the best at drawing, but his clever and quirky captions more than make up for his lack of artistic skill. He added a blog to the site about two years ago, which he posts to periodically. There’s also a store where one can purchase t-shirts emblazoned with choice comics from the site, and a few YouTube videos Drew created. Two other great websites are associated with TFD: Natalie Dee and Married to the Sea. The former is run by Drew’s wife Natalie, and the latter by the two of them together.

After discovering TFD a few years ago, I had the good fortune to come across two other fabulous webcomics. Although Achewood and Perry Bible Fellowship don’t update quite as faithfully, the quality of their absurdist humor is worth it. Achewood is sort of an acquired taste—not everyone will find it funny. But for me, following the lives of anthropomorphic stuffed toys, robots, and pets is something I always look forward to. Perry Bible Fellowship, which originated in the Syracuse University newspaper The Daily Orange, is just as bizarre. The funniness of the strip is usually characterized by the juxtaposition of childlike imagery with morbid humor. The most recent involves a child with extraordinary eyesight pointing out a bee on an eye chart, instead of saying “E.” Of course, the optometrist thinks the child can’t see, so the poor kid ends up getting laser eye surgery. Funny? Well, I think so.

Outside the realm of comics, I love to read The Morning News. Though it can be considered a reliable news provider, it may not report the news one would expect. Today, it covers the huge meat recall in California, the Democratic candidates, robotic sculptures, the annual Tournament of Books, and growing up with strict Muslim rules in mainstream America. You probably wouldn’t find the same variety of articles on Yahoo—and definitely not the clever, intelligent writing.