#grinnell college

[nodynasty4us]

From the November 15, 2023 article:

In a Nov. 13 letter signed by State Representatives Barb Kniff McCulla, Austin Harris, Dean Fisher, Jon Dunwell, Helena Hayes and Hans Wilz and Senators Ken Rozenboom and Cherielynn Westrich, the group said they will not attend a Nov. 28 dinner at the college. They said their absence is intended to express their disappointment in a statement made by the college in the wake of a walk-out led by students to show support for Palestine and condemn Israel’s actions in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Read the article for details, but in short:

A student group asked the college administration to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The administration did not do this but instead issued a generic statement calling for understanding and hope.

Republican lawmakers are apparently disappointed that the administration did not discipline or at least denounce the students.

Also of note is this bit:

The legislators were concerned with another part of the message, which said instances of antisemitic and Islamophobic harassment are on the rise on college campuses, and the college denounces antisemitism and Islamophobia.  The lawmakers  said that statement equates the two forms of discrimination.

Gee, I wonder which prejudice they consider to be more serious?

(Grinnell College is private, not state-supported.)

[minnesotafollower]

Loving Herbie Hancock’s Jazz Music  

The New York Times recently published commentaries on Herbie Hancock’s jazz music from 11  jazz musicians, writers and critics.[1] Here are Herbie’s tunes that they listed as ones that would make someone fall in love with jazz: Textures Actual Proof Maiden Voyage (Remastered) Hornets 4 A.M. Speak Like A Child Butterfly Chameleon The Prisoner (Remastered) Rockit Head Hunters Although this…

[kemetic-dreams]

[whohebecomes]

I submitted my application 11 /19 /2024

I going to get accepted. This is the first day of the rest of my life.

[allfifaworldcup]

Grinnell College attempts NCAA record 111 3-pointers in win

Grinnell College attempts NCAA record 111 3-pointers in win

GRINNELL, Iowa — Grinnell College set an NCAA men’s basketball record for 3-point attempts when it tried every one of its 111 shots from beyond the arc in the Division III school’s 124-67 victory over Emmaus Bible College. The number eclipsed the 109 3-point shots Troy attempted in its infamous game against DeVry on Jan. 12, 1992, when the Trojans won 258-141 in what is still the highest-scoring…

[history-of-fashion]

ab. 1640 Justus Sustermans - Portrait of a Lady in Red Dress

(Grinnell College Museum of Art)

[jules-has-notes]

2019 VoicePlay spring roundup — here, there, and everywhere

An eventful start to the year led into an equally busy spring. In particular, they put out a deluge of music videos, releasing a new one every other week during April and May before settling down to a more reasonable pace.

.

Celebrate good times

Layne and Tony started the spring by unboxing PattyCake's 100K YouTube subscriber plaque during a livestream chat with their fans. The next day, VoicePlay released a long-awaited video for "Any Way You Want It". A few days after that, VP passed new subscriber milestones of their own on both YouTube and Facebook.

Then the boys spent most of the rest of April working on various projects. In addition to releasing their next video — this time for a Chris Stapleton inspired rendition of "Tennessee Whiskey" — they also had a fair bit of dance rehearsal for their updated "Boy Bands" medley.

They did take a weekend off for some fun times in the middle of the month, though. J.None went to see rapper / singer Tobe Nwigwe. Layne and Cyndi had a night at the theater to see friends in the Andrew Lippa musical Wild Party.

J.None with Tobe Nwigwe and singers // Steins and friends having a night out

VoicePlay then capped off the their April adventures with two nights of shows at a casino ballroom in northern Nevada.

VoicePlay on stage at Cactus Petes in Jackpost, NV — photo by Matt Hartgrave

.

The hits keep on coming

May began with yet more music videos. VoicePlay put out their groovy version of Prince's "Kiss", and PattyCake released the second episode of their Villains Lair series featuring a trio of disgruntled fairy tale step-moms.

The day after that, VoicePlay headed back to NYC. This time they hit the town in style for the Shorty Awards.

The winner of their category was announced rather unceremoniously in a montage of several awards, and sadly it wasn't our guys, but they seem to have had a fun time anyway. At the very least, they got to visit New York and meet some other folks who are situationally famous.

.

During a couple more weeks plugging away at home, some of the guys also worked on other projects. Layne and Tony finished off a group of videos they'd produced for YouTubers Danny Gonzalez and Drew Gooden, and J.None played a string of private events with Paradigm Party Band.

Then VoicePlay released their video for club jam "Lost In Japan" in mid-May before heading out of town again for a concert in Fairmont, MN. On the way there, Earl had a chance airport encounter with wrestling legend Shawn Michaels.

Fairmont, MN show — photos by Joseph Kreiss

.

On the way home, J.None took a detour to Virginia to attend his high school choral director's final spring show and wish him well on his retirement after more than thirty years as an educator.

J.None and Dr. Don Krudop at the Salem High School spring choral concert

VoicePlay finished the month by filming the fiercely demanded video for an expanded version of their boy bands medley that had been thrilling audiences at live shows for many years.

Backstreet's back! Alright!

.

Family time

At the beginning of June, the fellas took a few days of well-deserved rest with their loved ones. Eli and Ashley had a fun night out with an old friend and said hello to Matt Sallee again when Pentatonix came to town on their tour. Layne and his girls celebrated Dori's third birthday with another adorable family music video and a whole royal court of well wishers.

.

Back to work

When VoicePlay reconvened once more, they gathered at Rayne's Room for a relatively simple video shoot compared to their recent output — the next entry in their "Aca Top 10" series. This time they tackled themes from popular sitcoms.

A few days later, they hopped on a plane to Iowa where they headlined a concert at Grinnell College's fifth annual Summerfest.

When they got home, they dropped their next album. In response to popular demand, the boys compiled a baker's dozen of the tunes from their music videos over the previous two and a half years, and released them on physical media. "Citrus" includes the best of the best from that period, starting with J.None's first collaboration with the group before he was a permanent member, and spanning through his first full-length co-arrangement for the group.

.

As you were

The guys took a little more downtime to close out the month and spend time with their families.

Meanwhile, J.None was still on that grind. He played a set in a group show at a local venue with his occasional collaborator, Daniel Kelley Howard.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by J.None 🧈🎶 🎙📝🎬🎹🎸📽🤣 (@itsjnone)

Then he headed over to Cocoa Beach to film a promo video for another gig band called Summer Breeze, which is part of Entertaiment Central's offerings. That group's specialty is, as the name suggests, yacht rock and light retro party tunes.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Entertainment Central (@entertaincentral)

.

Things calmed down a bit for the summer, but that's a story for another time.

[xxconnection]

from Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement

text: Above [1st photo, by Louise Brotsky], Chicago WITCH hexes the Transit Authority for raising the subway fare.

Right [2nd photo, by Marilyn Salzman], Washington DC WITCH hexes billion-dollar corporation, United Fruit Company for "slave-labor practices abroad and sex discrimination in hiring at home."

Opposite page [3rd photo, by Henry Wilhelm/East St. Gallery, Grinnell, Iowa] Grinnell College (Iowa) students stage a nude-in to confront a representative from Playboy Magazine speaking on "The Playboy Philosophy." They demanded that he also take off his clothes. He fled.

Opposite right [4th photo, by Bill Nowlin/LNS-NY], Women's Liberation guerrilla theater at the Bridal Fair, New York. Disruptions of merchandise shows for brides took place all over the US in 1969.

Opposite below [5th photo, by Paul Stelter/Chicago Maroon], Protest against the firing of Marlene Dixon, radical, feminist, and teacher, at the university of Chicago, 1968. A major riot followed, and university buildings were seized and held by students.

The sign in the last picture reads: "UC's concern for women: 1. Dormitory hours 2. Teacher putdowns 3. Ignoring the study of women 4. 9 tenured women faculty 5. Firing Marlene Dixon

[nodynasty4us]

The Vivek Ramaswamy campaign continues to spin a traffic accident as an attack.

The student newspaper at Grinnell College was on the scene and points out that the unoccupied car was illegally parked, and that the campaign tried to hide this from police investigating the accident.

[thebloodbrothers-archive]

The Blood Brothers - Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA

September 11, 2003

[vintagepipemen]

Unidentified student, Grinnell College, 1965. 

[ludmilachaibemachado]

Jefferson Airplane, Grinnell College, lowa 1966❤️💙

Via @isabelfutre on Instagram💙

[lboogie1906]

Danai Jekesai Gurira (born February 14, 1978) is a Zimbabwean-American actress and playwright. She is known for her starring roles in The Walking Dead, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. She is the playwright of the Broadway play Eclipsed, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. She has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, In The Continuum, which she co-wrote and starred in. She was born in Grinnell, Iowa to Josephine Gurira, a college librarian, and Roger Gurira, a tenured professor in the Department of Chemistry at Grinnell College (both parents later joined the staff of the University of Wisconsin–Platteville). She lived in Grinnell until age five she and her family moved back to Harare, Zimbabwe, after the country gained independence. She returned to the US to study at Macalester College, graduating with a BA in Psychology. She earned a MA in acting from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She taught playwriting and acting in Liberia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. She performed in a production of the Ntozake Shange play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf”. She appeared at the Global Green Sustainable Design Awards to read a letter written by a New Orleans native displaced by Hurricane Katrina. She co-founded Almasi Arts, an organization dedicated to continuing arts education in Zimbabwe. She serves as the Executive Artistic Director. She signed an open letter begun by the ONE Campaign. She founded the non-profit organization Love Our Girls, which aims to highlight the issues and challenges that specifically affect women throughout the world. She partnered with Johnson & Johnson in the fight against HIV/AIDS. She was announced as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador. As a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, she dedicates her support to putting a spotlight on gender equality and women's rights. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence https://www.instagram.com/p/CopQgRgrnHb/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[loverusticacreativeleadership]

Creative Leadership Project Proposal

I recently graduated from Grinnell College in December 2023 and a few months after I graduated, the student newspaper published an article about the Meskwaki Nation’s relationship with the college. My creative leadership initiative will involve empowering students of the Meskwaki Nation and improving the relationship between the Nation and the College. Creative leadership is a form of leadership that is based on shared values, beliefs, and community in order to promote creative thinking.

Grinnell College is a small liberal-arts college located in central Iowa, about an hour between Des Moines and Iowa City. It is located on land that originally belonged to the Meskwaki Nation, a Native American tribe that occupied parts of the midwest United States and Canada before colonization. Now, after forced displacement, the Meskwaki have a small settlement near Tama, IA which is about 30 minutes from Grinnell by car. Grinnell College is known for its rigorous academics and its diverse student body, which consists of students from all 50 states and 50 countries, as well as about 25% domestic students of color. Still, about 10% of students are from Iowa, which is one of the top states that students come from. Due to the proximity of the Meskwaki settlement to the college, one would assume that at least a few Grinnell students are Meskwaki, but this is not the case. There are very few Native American Students at Grinnell, with zero students identifying as native between 2017 and 2022.

My proposed project would work to empower students from the Meskwaki Nation through opportunities at Grinnell College and improve Grinnell students' understanding and appreciation of Native people and the Meskwaki Nation. The project would take place over 2 years and include a first year seminar class on Native American history, a Meskwaki art show in the College art museum, and a new yearly scholarship opportunity for Meskwaki students. This initiative will give local Native students more education and leadership opportunities outside of the settlement as well as introduce more diversity and knowledge to the Grinnell community. Native peoples are known for using communal leadership and sustainable practices, so introducing some of this knowledge to the greater college community, as well as giving our native neighbors and students a platform to share their experiences and knowledge will foster community and allow for amazing learning opportunities for everyone involved.

The first part of the community building initiative is to start creating the scholarship that will be available to Meskwaki students applying to Grinnell College. The scholarship would require the student applying to be a registered member of the Meskwaki Nation, and would provide a 4-year scholarship to one student each academic year. Grinnell already offers many scholarship opportunities to incoming and applying students, so one unique opportunity for Meskwaki students makes a lot of sense due to the proximity of the Meskwaki Nation and the desire for the college to maintain a racially diverse student body. For this to happen, I would need to find a donor, or fundraise in order to create an endowed scholarship.

After setting up the scholarship, the Grinnell Office of Admissions will need to connect with the Meskwaki Nation and advertise the new scholarship. The Office of Admissions could do a short presentation at the settlement school explaining the scholarship application as well as the general application process for Grinnell and answer any questions the students have. Furthermore, the admissions officers should pass out admissions pamphlets that introduce people to Grinnell College, as well as a pamphlet specific to the Meskwaki scholarship.

The next part of my initiative is to create a class specifically about Native Americans, with an emphasis on the Meskwaki Nation. If I decide to pursue this community building initiative I will begin by reaching out to my former professors to create the course content and find a professor interested in teaching the class. For example, I took two classes in Education Studies with Professor Deborah Michaels, who has worked with the Meskwaki Nation schools to develop their History classes which focus on Native American history. Due to her relationship with the Meskwaki Nation and knowledge of their history she would be a great candidate for teaching this new course or for gathering course materials and designing the syllabus. Depending on student interest, it could be either a recurring course offered every other year or a special elective that is only offered once. In addition, depending on what professor is interested in teaching the course and what the course ends up looking like, it could be categorized as a History, Sociology, Anthropology, or first-year seminar class. The class would include a field trip to the Meskwaki Nation settlement and Meskwaki Cultural Center and Museum to encourage connection and respect between the Nation and the College.

The final piece of the community building project is to host an art exhibit of historical and current artwork by Meskwaki people at the Grinnell College Museum of Art. The Museum of Art is free for anyone to visit during its open hours, so students and any community members in the surrounding area, including members of the Meskwaki Nation would be welcome to experience the exhibit for the semester. This is another example of a way for Grinnell College to give Meskwaki people a platform and foster connections between the college and the Nation to support creative leadership in the community.

[xoxrevkitty]

A BDSM “101” Resource List

Updated Fall 2023 Glossaries The Kinkly Sex DictionaryA list of Terms Overviews What is BDSM? Your Queer Guide to Kink, Domination, Bondage, and More by Evelyn Bauer Subcultures and Sociology: BDSM by Grinnell College What is BDSM Sex? on WebMD Think Pieces More Than a Taboo | The Rich history of BDSM It’s Time to Recenter Kink and BDSM as Part of Radical Queer History by Cameron…

[sunaleisocial]

Study evaluates impacts of summer heat in U.S. prison environments

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/study-evaluates-impacts-of-summer-heat-in-u-s-prison-environments/

Study evaluates impacts of summer heat in U.S. prison environments

When summer temperatures spike, so does our vulnerability to heat-related illness or even death. For the most part, people can take measures to reduce their heat exposure by opening a window, turning up the air conditioning, or simply getting a glass of water. But for people who are incarcerated, freedom to take such measures is often not an option. Prison populations therefore are especially vulnerable to heat exposure, due to their conditions of confinement.

A new study by MIT researchers examines summertime heat exposure in prisons across the United States and identifies characteristics within prison facilities that can further contribute to a population’s vulnerability to summer heat.

The study’s authors used high-spatial-resolution air temperature data to determine the daily average outdoor temperature for each of 1,614 prisons in the U.S., for every summer between the years 1990 and 2023. They found that the prisons that are exposed to the most extreme heat are located in the southwestern U.S., while prisons with the biggest changes in summertime heat, compared to the historical record, are in the Pacific Northwest, the Northeast, and parts of the Midwest.

Those findings are not entirely unique to prisons, as any non-prison facility or community in the same geographic locations would be exposed to similar outdoor air temperatures. But the team also looked at characteristics specific to prison facilities that could further exacerbate an incarcerated person’s vulnerability to heat exposure. They identified nine such facility-level characteristics, such as highly restricted movement, poor staffing, and inadequate mental health treatment. People living and working in prisons with any one of these characteristics may experience compounded risk to summertime heat. 

The team also looked at the demographics of 1,260 prisons in their study and found that the prisons with higher heat exposure on average also had higher proportions of non-white and Hispanic populations. The study, appearing today in the journal GeoHealth, provides policymakers and community leaders with ways to estimate, and take steps to address, a prison population’s heat risk, which they anticipate could worsen with climate change.

“This isn’t a problem because of climate change. It’s becoming a worse problem because of climate change,” says study lead author Ufuoma Ovienmhada SM ’20, PhD ’24, a graduate of the MIT Media Lab, who recently completed her doctorate in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro). “A lot of these prisons were not built to be comfortable or humane in the first place. Climate change is just aggravating the fact that prisons are not designed to enable incarcerated populations to moderate their own exposure to environmental risk factors such as extreme heat.”

The study’s co-authors include Danielle Wood, MIT associate professor of media arts and sciences, and of AeroAstro; and Brent Minchew, MIT associate professor of geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; along with Ahmed Diongue ’24, Mia Hines-Shanks of Grinnell College, and Michael Krisch of Columbia University.

Environmental intersections

The new study is an extension of work carried out at the Media Lab, where Wood leads the Space Enabled research group. The group aims to advance social and environmental justice issues through the use of satellite data and other space-enabled technologies.

The group’s motivation to look at heat exposure in prisons came in 2020 when, as co-president of MIT’s Black Graduate Student Union, Ovienmhada took part in community organizing efforts following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

“We started to do more organizing on campus around policing and reimagining public safety. Through that lens I learned more about police and prisons as interconnected systems, and came across this intersection between prisons and environmental hazards,” says Ovienmhada, who is leading an effort to map the various environmental hazards that prisons, jails, and detention centers face. “In terms of environmental hazards, extreme heat causes some of the most acute impacts for incarcerated people.”

She, Wood, and their colleagues set out to use Earth observation data to characterize U.S. prison populations’ vulnerability, or their risk of experiencing negative impacts, from heat.

The team first looked through a database maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that lists the location and boundaries of carceral facilities in the U.S. From the database’s more than 6,000 prisons, jails, and detention centers, the researchers highlighted 1,614 prison-specific facilities, which together incarcerate nearly 1.4 million people, and employ about 337,000 staff.

They then looked to Daymet, a detailed weather and climate database that tracks daily temperatures across the United States, at a 1-kilometer resolution. For each of the 1,614 prison locations, they mapped the daily outdoor temperature, for every summer between the years 1990 to 2023, noting that the majority of current state and federal correctional facilities in the U.S. were built by 1990.

The team also obtained U.S. Census data on each facility’s demographic and facility-level characteristics, such as prison labor activities and conditions of confinement. One limitation of the study that the researchers acknowledge is a lack of information regarding a prison’s climate control.

“There’s no comprehensive public resource where you can look up whether a facility has air conditioning,” Ovienmhada notes. “Even in facilities with air conditioning, incarcerated people may not have regular access to those cooling systems, so our measurements of outdoor air temperature may not be far off from reality.”

Heat factors

From their analysis, the researchers found that more than 98 percent of all prisons in the U.S. experienced at least 10 days in the summer that were hotter than every previous summer, on average, for a given location. Their analysis also revealed the most heat-exposed prisons, and the prisons that experienced the highest temperatures on average, were mostly in the Southwestern U.S. The researchers note that with the exception of New Mexico, the Southwest is a region where there are no universal air conditioning regulations in state-operated prisons.

“States run their own prison systems, and there is no uniformity of data collection or policy regarding air conditioning,” says Wood, who notes that there is some information on cooling systems in some states and individual prison facilities, but the data is sparse overall, and too inconsistent to include in the group’s nationwide study.

While the researchers could not incorporate air conditioning data, they did consider other facility-level factors that could worsen the effects that outdoor heat triggers. They looked through the scientific literature on heat, health impacts, and prison conditions, and focused on 17 measurable facility-level variables that contribute to heat-related health problems. These include factors such as overcrowding and understaffing.

“We know that whenever you’re in a room that has a lot of people, it’s going to feel hotter, even if there’s air conditioning in that environment,” Ovienmhada says. “Also, staffing is a huge factor. Facilities that don’t have air conditioning but still try to do heat risk-mitigation procedures might rely on staff to distribute ice or water every few hours. If that facility is understaffed or has neglectful staff, that may increase people’s susceptibility to hot days.”

The study found that prisons with any of nine of the 17 variables showed statistically significant greater heat exposures than the prisons without those variables. Additionally, if a prison exhibits any one of the nine variables, this could worsen people’s heat risk through the combination of elevated heat exposure and vulnerability. The variables, they say, could help state regulators and activists identify prisons to prioritize for heat interventions.

“The prison population is aging, and even if you’re not in a ‘hot state,’ every state has responsibility to respond,” Wood emphasizes. “For instance, areas in the Northwest, where you might expect to be temperate overall, have experienced a number of days in recent years of increasing heat risk. A few days out of the year can still be dangerous, particularly for a population with reduced agency to regulate their own exposure to heat.”

This work was supported, in part, by NASA, the MIT Media Lab, and MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems and Society’s Research Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism.