"the comment" (boston university graduate school com magazine, 2010)

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For the love of

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Boston University’s policies provide for equal opportunity and affirmative action in employment and admission to all programs of the University. 0410 100805

www.bu.edu/com/comment

Manuel Morcano shows off his latest masterpiece. photo by Johannes Hirn

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Dean of the College of CommunicationTom Fiedler

The Comment Staff

Faculty AdvisorSusan Blau

Faculty EditorCynthia Anderson

Student EditorAviv Rubinstien

Design and ProductionBU Creative Services

Staff WritersDrew FitzGeraldSamantha GennusoTeresa GormanLauren KeiperAviv RubinstienKatie RyanEric Hal Schwartz

Contributing PhotographersVincent BancheriJohannes HirnVikesh Kapoor

Cover PhotoVincent Bancheri

© 2010 by the College of Communication Boston University

The Comment staff zeroed in on a theme—identity—quickly this year. We had little trouble reaching consensus after someone asked, “What makes us who we are?” Is it our jobs, our families and our cultural contexts, the hardships we’ve endured, the secrets we keep?

One answer is suggested in the photograph below by Johannes Hirn. We think it says much about engineer-turned-hairdresser Manuel Morcano, who opened his Boston-area barbershop after almost dying of a perforated colon several years ago. At the shop, Morcano’s customers can view an array of autographed images of music legends and choose from such books as The 9/11 Commission Report and The Definitive Book of Body Language.

Written works in the 2010 Comment also explore identity—individual and collective. Lauren Keiper profiles women who have left their jobs in finance, voluntarily or not, in the aftermath of the credit crisis. Drew FitzGerald limns the world(s) of libertarian Free Staters in New Hampshire, Samantha Gennuso follows a film crew on its journey to raise awareness for muscular dystrophy and Katie Ryan shadows Frank Warren of PostSecret fame.

We have personal explorations too. Teresa Gorman describes the tribulations of being the ninth of ten kids, and Aviv Rubinstien comes clean as a storyteller—he hopes. In “Apes at Sea,” Eric Hal Schwartz takes us on a student cruise to Norway, likening the voyage to a large-scale social experiment. “Even when disguised by fancy clothes and good manners,” Schwartz writes, “our primate essence comes through.”

Several other articles and essays round out our offerings, which you can view in expanded form online at www.bu.edu/com/comment. We hope you enjoy our work.

Aviv Rubinstien, Student EditorHappy reading.

Editor’s LetterThe Man Behind the Curtain

Katie RyanWhat It’s Like to Forget Your NameSamantha Gennuso

Apes at SeaEric Hal Schwartz

Will Box for PassportJohannes Hirn

Ryan Gosling Loves to Fist-BumpAviv Rubinstien

Finding Our FaithLauren Keiper

Number NineTeresa Gorman

A Granite State of Mind Drew FitzGerald

LARP Me GoodEric Hal Schwartz

Layups and LipstickKatie Ryan

Destiny USA: The Story of a Mega-Mall

and a CityTeresa Gorman

(Re)Balancing ActLauren Keiper

His Wheels Keep Spinnin’Samantha Gennuso

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Manuel Morcano’s identity surely shows on the walls of his shop.

photo by Johannes Hirn

Front cover: A masked Live Action Role Player strolls the grounds at Camp Denison, Mass., as part of a story line.

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The Wizard of Oz lives in Germantown, Maryland.

To the members of the

insular community he’s created, he is

omniscient. People turn to him for guidance,

or to express their most fundamental needs: brains,

heart, courage, a home. His fame stems from what he is rumored to have

provided, yet as an individual he remains shrouded in mystery.

Frank Warren, 45, is the great and powerful Oz behind the collaborative

art project PostSecret. He collects about a thousand anonymous confessional postcards from strangers around the world each

week, redistributing a selection of the once-private divulgences in

blog installations every Sunday—a routine that’s earned his website close to

300 million hits over the last five years.HarperCollins, the publisher of Warren’s

five books, has dubbed him the “most trusted man in America.” But that’s his public persona. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain—or, in this case, the man behind the website.

Somewhere Over the RainbowLike any good revelation, the idea for

PostSecret came to Warren in a lucid dream.It was December 2003 in Paris, and

Warren, having checked into his hotel room for the evening, placed three souvenir

The ManBehindThe Curtain

postcards in a drawer before retiring. As he slept, he dreamed that the three postcards had been altered. “The first message read, ‘unrecognized evidence, from forgotten journeys, unknowingly rediscovered,’” writes Warren on his PostSecret Community blog. “[T]he second message was about a ‘reluctant oracle’ postcard art project, and the last I could not understand at the time.”

When he awakened, he immediately manipulated the postcards in the drawer to resemble his vision. “What I did not know was that those three remade postcards would . . . set me on an unimaginable journey,” he says.

It was just the escape he needed. Warren, an Illinois native who holds a degree in social science from the University of California, Berkeley, had moved to the Washington, D.C., area after graduation. There he’d begun a business called Instant Information Systems—yet it was passionless work. “It was a tedious, monotonous job, but that’s what inspired these creative projects,” Warren explains. “There’s a great deal of value in a boring job because it makes you want to work harder and find something to make you happy—something that matters more.”

The heady combination of career dissatisfaction and a prophetic dream ignited something in Warren. He adopted a kind of creative superhero persona, embodying the unassuming career man by day and the enigmatic alter ego by night. He was realizing the second stage of his vision.

Warren certainly thrived as a self-appointed oracle, although he threw himself into the project so wholeheartedly that his “reluctance” is debatable. Adopting a secret persona he called “Hobby Horse,” he spent the summer of 2004 crafting several bottled messages to be set adrift in Clopper Lake in Maryland’s Seneca State Park. The bottles, clear glass and the size of wine bottles, contained photographed hands on postcards that hung suspended from the corks. These postcards were stamped, and incorporated cryptic messages on the back such as “Your question holds more than its answer.”

The story of the mysterious Hobby Horse and his bottles garnered widespread attention. The Washington Post compared the postcards to “fortune cookies from the dark.” In its investigation of the anonymous artistic litterings, the Post consulted Kerry McAleer-Keeler, a printmaking instructor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, who

[Katie Ryan]

suggested that it could be “a joke to the artist that everyone is struggling to figure it out.”

To Warren, perhaps it was a bit of a game. “Deciding what would go into each bottle was like designing a scene,” “Hobby Horse” told the Post. “What evidence to expose? What to hide? How to show clues with ambiguous meanings? How to display an airtight half-told tale? . . . Allowing the pieces to be discovered created more possibilities . . . The finder can view me as provocateur or polluter; artist or criminal.”

By September, Warren was ready to begin phase three of his prophetic dream. The “reluctant oracle” delivered a final message-in-a-bottle: “You will find your answers in the secrets of strangers.”

That next Sunday, the PostSecret movement began.

Not in Kansas AnymoreWarren’s dream-inspired relationship

with the postcard and newfound passion for public involvement with his art were the cornerstones on which he built his Emerald City. Armed with 3,000 self-addressed postcards, Warren appealed to the citizens of D.C., asking them to be part of a new endeavor: write an anonymous secret on the back of a postcard and mail it to him.

“You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project,” the otherwise-blank cards read. “Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything—as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before. Be brief. Be legible. Be creative.”

“I knew that if I could find a way to allow strangers to trust me with these secrets, it would be special for me,” says Warren.

About a hundred postcards found their way to his mailbox, enough for an exhibit at a monthlong D.C. art festival, for which Warren suspended the secrets from the ceiling with wire. The event was well received, and Warren assumed the project had ended. But new postcards kept coming, now handmade and from distant states and countries.

Warren took this as a sign of bigger things. “PostSecret started as a lark, maybe even a prank,” he says. “But the secrets have taken on more gravity and more meaning as time’s gone on.” Once it became clear that the movement had gone viral, Warren established a blog to display some of the secrets. He managed the secrets as he had Courtesy: HarperCollins


despite their excitement, people are quiet and respectful. There are audience members openly weeping, literally overcome by the opportunity to meet Warren.

“In Hebrew, the word secret means ‘come closer,’” says Warren. “I think that when some people send me a secret . . . I think they’re searching for grace.”

There’s No Place Like HomeHis publishers say he’s the most trusted

man in America; his fans call him God; his parents call him self-indulgent; and to his daughter, he’s just Dad. Everyone knows who Warren is to them—it’s when he tries to identify himself that things get a little tricky.

“I feel like a film editor, taking scenes from people’s lives and knitting them together, making connections between them, allowing the scenes to talk to us and to each other,” he says. “Sometimes, I feel like an idiot savant for secrets: Sometimes when I’m building the story for the week I’ll hear a secret calling to me, one from the week before or one I’ve seen earlier, and I go searching so I can find the right harmony.”

All of which is somewhat less than concrete. How’s this? Frank Warren is a son, a husband, a father; he’s been an entrepreneur, artist, art collector. He could define himself any number of ways.

“I’d say more than anything else, I’m an explorer of hidden landscapes,” he says thoughtfully.

And what does this hidden landscape yield? Five best sellers, nearly 300 million hits on the website, a thousand postcards a week, an ardent reception of his artistic vision, prominent awards. And hundreds of thousands of dollars raised in the name of suicide prevention.

Warren’s self-description is indirect, but perhaps it’s legitimate. At the end of a yellow brick road paved with yearning for public appreciation lies his Emerald City: an empire built on self-fulfilling “prophecies,” a city whose brilliance is not an inner light but a reflection of its inhabitants. Warren is not simply an explorer of this hidden landscape; he is the Wizard behind its creation.

L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz described himself precisely: “I’m really a very good man, but I’m a very bad Wizard.”

Perhaps Frank Warren is too.

engrossed through the entire presentation—laughing when he laughs, quiet when he’s quiet. Everything and everyone in the room ebbs and flows on his cue: emotions, volume, even actions. He asks people to take a break from his speech and introduce themselves to those around them, offering a sign of greeting and peace. The postcards illuminated by the overhead projector are multicolored and illuminate Warren’s face, almost as stained glass. The auditorium is transformed into a house of worship, with Warren as spiritual leader—maybe even as deity.

It’s not much of a stretch. Hours earlier, before the audience was even permitted into the auditorium, people were preparing for

a religious experience. “I don’t know what I’ll do when I see him,” said Anne Harris, a student at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. “You don’t understand—he’s God.” Another girl greets Warren after his presentation. “I’ve met God,” she declares as she descends the stage steps. She turns back and faces Warren. “You are God!”

Warren is aware of the religious implications his project can have—PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God is full of professions of faith, or a lack thereof. “These particular secrets in the new book are very soulful. I wanted to capture that,” says Warren. “These are full-frontal confessions on how we really feel about stuff we can’t share at the church, or the synagogue or the mosque.”

And though Warren, the self-appointed “reluctant oracle,” doesn’t have a theological background or any of the Big Answers, he can relate to what his followers are experiencing. “This project has made my own faith evolve; I’ll put it that way.”

After his presentation is over, the crowd moves en masse to greet Warren and have him sign their books. The event staff corrals the excited audience into more manageable groups of eight for visitation with Warren;

notwithstanding, legions of fans are waiting. The event is sold out. People have been lined up at the auditorium for hours, before even the event staff arrived.

While the Dorothies mill around the lobby clicking their heels in anticipation, Warren is onstage, prepping his presentation. His appearance is meticulous, almost calculated: His green dress shirt looks professional; the un-tucked shirttails make him seem more accessible. He wears pressed black pants and black shoes. His hair is trimmed close; wire-rimmed glasses rest between a furrowed forehead and faint laugh lines on his cheeks.

Warren focuses on the silver Mac on his podium, testing the volume and asking staffers about the turnout. He takes a few sips from a water bottle, shakes his hands out, walks briskly across the stage and ducks behind a curtain, building adrenaline for his entrance.

Forty minutes after the staff opens the floodgates, the man of the hour emerges. The crowd erupts in thunderous applause. Warren grins widely. He’s playing to another packed house.

“Hi—my name’s Frank, and I collect secrets!” The crowd cheers voraciously.

And so it goes. Anything Warren says is golden; they can’t get enough. He talks about the “most trusted” label he’s been given and how supportive his wife and 15-year-old daughter are of this mission he’s undertaken. In contrast, however, his parents call PostSecret “diabolical” and “self-indulgent.”

“Maybe it is,” Warren ponders aloud. He plays a message that his mother left

on his wife’s voice mail: “I don’t really want one of Frank’s books,” she had said. “Forget about sending me one.”

The audience laughs nervously. “People are looking around right now wondering, Is this funny? Is this sad ? ” notes Warren, although that seems to be the reaction he hoped to elicit. “This project is one of those ideas where you’re waiting for one person to have

that crazy faith that their parents might not understand.”

And suddenly, the audience is in cahoots with him. The event isn’t about Warren’s path to PostSecret or the other artistic endeavors that never made it quite as big; tonight, the artist becomes the actor, playing the simple servant of his followers—the confidante, the friend. His parents may not understand, but his audience does.

He gazes at the crowd. “This project doesn’t make my secrets go away, but it makes the burden easier.” The statement is an acknowledgement of self-indulgence—he confesses to what his parents have suggested—but somehow the act of his admission is more compelling than any private secret he could divulge. He’s forged a bond with the 500-plus people in the room; they accept him unconditionally.

And to reciprocate, Warren is complimentary of them.

“I think young people are more alive than adults; they’re more involved in trying to understand what’s legitimate and real and less caught up in who they’re supposed to be,” he offers.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s such a compelling orator. His voice carries, yet it’s still soft, lilting, with almost a Kermit-the-Frog quality. He sits with confident, relaxed body language: one foot on the wheels of his chair and the other on the floor. He gestures with open palms. The audience is rapt.

Warren continues to chat conspiratorially, although many of his anecdotes are recycled. The stories he tells in Boston are lifted almost verbatim from the stories he told at an event in New York several days earlier. He is a rock star in his delivery—“Hello (insert name of city)! I love you!”

The biggest secret of the night may be how well rehearsed Warren is.

Yet he can have it all memorized, because his audiences are similar: all enthusiastic, all excited to see the same “never-before-seen” secrets, all asking the same questions when the time comes. Does Warren think any of the secrets are made up? The factual basis of the secret isn’t what matters, he asserts—after all, every postcard is art. “[Each one is] beautiful,” Warren says. Whether the cards bear legitimate secrets doesn’t matter; artists need not necessarily experience what they depict: “The very act of sharing a secret, the process is transformative… If you’re truly open to the secrets, there’s a kernel of truth in

the bottles: hand-selected for their meaning, arranged privately and broadcast to the public once a week. Each Sunday he would select 10 postcards and add them to his site. Soon, it became 20 cards a week. Hits to the site increased.

Offshoots of the popular blog emerged on social-networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and, most notably, the PostSecret Community forums, where fans gather online to react to the week’s secrets and talk about the impact the site has had on their lives. There are those fans, for instance, who connect so strongly to a particular secret that they have the message or design tattooed on their bodies; a whole section of the forum is dedicated to pictures of and comments on fresh, PostSecret-inspired ink.

Publisher HarperCollins has taken the movement mainstream, producing five PostSecret-inspired books authored by Warren; the most recent of these, PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God, debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list in October 2009. “The website shows the immediacy of the secrets, but the books tell the stories,” says Warren.

And he’s not necessarily looking to stop there: “We’re looking to explore new territories—either TV or film.” In the meantime, Warren sets off from his Emerald City to speak to the Munchkins at college campuses across the country.

Off to See the WizardIt’s a cold, rainy October night when

Warren arrives at Boston University. Weather

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there that speaks to all of us.” The most common secret? “I pee in the

shower.” A secret he’ll never post? Warren describes a card featuring a family portrait, inscribed, “My brother doesn’t realize his father is not our father.” None of the faces are disguised, and should the brother or any of his friends see the postcard on the site, he would be immediately identifiable. “Secrets like that don’t belong to us,” Warren says.

But one secret does belong to everyone, Warren tells the crowd: “Suicide is America’s secret.”

The mood shifts, the joviality replaced by a collective deep breath of concern.

“In this room of 500, 85 of us will think about committing suicide, and 30 of us will try,” Warren says quietly. Students shift in their seats and look down their rows with a blend of suspicion and concern. Who will it be?

Warren uses the attention to talk about Hopeline, a suicide-prevention center in Washington, D.C., that PostSecret has aligned with in an effort to raise awareness and funds. Warren tells the audience that he’s lost both a close friend and a family member to suicide, and that when he came up with the idea for PostSecret, he was working as a volunteer at one of Hopeline’s call centers.

“I won’t say that there’s a direct connection between having secrets and suicide, but I think those considering it are a lot of times weighted down with them,” he says.

For Warren’s efforts, his PostSecret project received a special award at the National Mental Health Association’s annual meeting in 2009 for “moving the cause of mental health forward.”

“With such a large reader base, I’d rather use the PostSecret platform for suicide prevention [than for commercial purposes],” he says. “I’ve never taken a dollar for advertisements, but PostSecret readers have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hopeline and suicide prevention. I think the site has a higher purpose than ad revenue, and I hope the readers feel that way too. I think they do.”

A Horse of a Different ColorMaybe they love him for his dedication

to suicide prevention, or maybe it’s the voyeuristic appeal of knowing other people’s secrets. Maybe it’s cathartic to send him a postcard, or maybe checking his website has become part of a Sunday routine. Whatever it is, people adore Warren.

In Boston, his audience has been

“If you’re truly open to the secrets, there’s a kernel of truth in there that speaks to

all of us.”

One of the thousands of PostSecrets sent to Frank Warren.


I watched myself stutter for the first time in June 2001. On the TV monitor, my face contorted, my eyes looked down and my voice staggered and stumbled. I felt ashamed. As a 15-year-old girl embarking on college applications and the boys of summer, I was horrified that this thing I’d tried to stifle had a name but no specific cure. What I didn’t know, sitting in the clinic watching that video, was that asking a person who stutters to slow down and relax was like asking a blind person to squint a little to see.

I even had trouble with my name—especially with my name. You’d be hard-pressed to find a person who stutters who doesn’t have trouble with her name. Her address and phone number trigger anxiety as well. It’s said that the general population’s number-one fear is public speaking, ranked even higher than death. But to a person who stutters, I can assure you, death seems like a picnic.

My first memories of stuttering are seemingly random episodes that I don’t like to recall. Fearing to raise my hand in class. Required public speaking. Sitting in English class waiting for my turn to read aloud, knowing that the jerk behind would mimic me just low enough for our teacher not to hear.

I started stuttering when I was 6 years old. My parents never made a big deal about it. Yet eventually I realized I was constantly substituting words and worrying about whether I would be able to say things. The teasing and my confusion as to why I could not read aloud began to take an emotional toll.

How can a seemingly small “disability” manifest so largely? Imagine walking into a party. The host comes over, extends his hand, asks your name. “Hey, I’m Ssss-ssss-sss…” “Whoa, this girl’s drunk!” he laughs. Yeah, me and the 3 million other people in this country who stutter.

Still, when my mother suggested we look into an intensive program at the American Institute for Stuttering in New York City, I vehemently refused. I didn’t want to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with how I talked. Fortunately, she persisted, and finally I agreed. I walked into the first session of the program terrified of being exposed; I’d tried to hide my stuttering for so long and had never met anyone else who stuttered before.

Stuttering took many forms that day. It was the 16-year-old boy next to me, head down, refusing to look up as he attempted to speak. The overbearing mother who mouthed her 14-year-old son’s words as he tried, to no avail, to introduce himself. I clutched my mother’s arm, desperate to leave this place where, at the time, it seemed I could not possibly belong. I was not this severe, I thought. I knew how to say my own name. It didn’t matter that in order to do so, I would pretend to be distracted, or stomp my foot, or blink my eye a certain way. When push came to shove, I could say it.

During the first week of the program, I was forced to come to terms with things I hadn’t understood. Foremost among them: Stuttering is caused by a genetic disorder, however far back in the family tree, that results in a misfire between the brain and vocal cords (or “vocal folds”). Instead of the folds opening to produce speech, as they do in fluent speakers, they slam shut, causing all sorts of desperate secondary behaviors, which range from facial contortions to pen-clicking to strange sounds and breathing patterns. It’s as natural for a stutterer to experience blocked speech as it is for a fluent speaker to talk normally. Try to talk without letting any air out. That’s the beginning. Now try deliberately to stutter. That’s how it feels for me to speak fluently: weird and unnatural.

The AIS program required us to speak without secondary behaviors from the first day, which is like asking a righty to write with his left hand. In my case, I was accustomed to using the filler word “um,” to looking upwards as I spoke to feign that I was thinking (and thus draw attention from the fact that I was struggling) and to subtly stamping my foot. I was no longer allowed to do any of this. Once, when it took me 40 seconds to say the word “confidence,” I won a prize. Stuttering was rewarded here

because we were finally confronting the demon. We had to learn to be okay with it. If we were afraid to stutter, there was no hope of controlling it.

To hack away at the mental component of stuttering—tension in the vocal cords is increased by stress—we used desensitization techniques. We sat in cubicles with a phone book and called every florist, bakery, doctor’s office and gym in the city, asking what time they closed. Sometimes we were told to stutter on purpose; other times we used prolongation techniques or reformatted breathing. The group would hoot and holler in applause if someone got a hang-up. All that mattered was that we were doing the very thing that terrified us.

For so long I had cringed at things any normal speaker would say without thinking (such as the aforementioned name, number and address). Oh God, if I stutter at all, this person is going to think I’m crazy or mentally challenged. Although the severity of stuttering falls on a spectrum, you’re almost luckier if you’re more severe. If someone asks your address and you start tossing your head back and rolling your eyes, you’re more likely to get a sympathetic response than if you’re silent, praying you can get through it without looking like you’ve forgotten where you live.

The AIS program helped me enough that the next summer I signed up for the annual conference of the National Stuttering Association (NSA). There I met people who had never experienced effective therapy. It was the first time outside of a therapy atmosphere that many of us felt safe enough to stutter openly. I saw fluent speakers patiently waiting minutes just so people could finally say their names. At AIS, we’d been encouraged to use the techniques we learned to generate fluency. Here, it was finally okay to stutter.

I’ve gone back to the NSA conference every summer since for the workshops, seminars and mixers. When I was 18, I started the now-annual “College Transition Workshop” as preparation for high schoolers. As I entered my twenties I was let in on NSA jokes, such as “One tequila, two tequila, three tequila . . . Fluency!” There is a sense of humor about the disorder that stutterers embrace to lighten things up. My stuttering friends and I frequently joke about the inevitable silences that occur on the phone because it’s hard to tell when someone is silently blocking. Often we’ll wait patiently for each other when indeed no one is stuttering at all.

Even with the AIS program and the NSA seminars, my stuttering still brought challenges. A significant one was introducing myself to a roomful of non-stuttering fellow classmates at New York University. Up to that point I’d managed some combination of coughing, looking at the floor and leaving the room to pull myself through the dreaded swamp. But after all the AIS-induced awareness and NSA self-improvement and support, I felt I had to face the demon. I could no longer be in denial, letting others feel my shame as I refused to make eye contact. Instead I stood in front of the class, heart bursting, and looked at the eager faces before me. “My name is Ssssamantha G-G-Gennuso. No, I haven’t forgotten my name, but I am indeed a p-p-person who st-st-stutters.” To my amazement, no one flinched. I finished my introduction and sat down in an intoxicating haze of relief and pride.

The tools and techniques I’ve learned require constant diligence, and they are not a cure. But I’ve let my stuttering out—openly struggling on my name at parties and on job interviews, knowing the reaction that inevitably will come, only to crush it with confidence and a smile.

This isn’t to imply I’ve got it all figured out. Every stutterer has a story, but one in particular stays with me. It’s the mantra of a friend of mine from my first days at AIS, Bob K. Bob’s stuttering was so severe that he made the commitment to practice for hours every day until he achieved relative fluency. He left his old life of insecurity and self-hatred behind. But when I asked him if there was anything he missed, he said, “My stuttering, because it’s a part of me.” I thought he was crazy when I first heard him say that, but I’m starting to understand what he meant.

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assertion that Free State newcomers sometimes disagree. The project has no power over people other than to bring them to the state, he said, after which they are on their own. In any case, the project is not a political party, just a medium to organize people around the same “liberty message.”

Indeed, with freedom of thought as a given, it follows that the newcomers hold a variety of visions of what they hope the town to be. Some just want be left alone. Others, like cartoonist Dale Everett, a Quaker from Georgia, extol the invisible hand of the market—he does it with a strip called “Anarchy in Your Head.” Others believe that Keene has “the opportunity to become what San Francisco was in the ’60s,”

mint leaves to make their statement. “I really don’t understand what their point is,” the chief said.

Meola said he doesn’t think the group’s camera-heavy tactics will work in the end. In fact, he sees some people mellowing as they spend more time living in their adopted hometown and even paying property taxes—as much as they protest the affront when they visit the local tax office. He said he views the more vocal newcomers in Keene as causing a rift within the Free State Project, between young anarchists and working adults, fanning the flame wars that occasionally erupt on FreeKeene.com’s own message boards.

Freeman takes no issue with Meola’s


As sites for protests go, this one didn’t seem to offer much potential: a sidewalk on a quiet lane in Keene, New Hampshire, population 22,000, where a handful of activists stood across from the quaint red home of the Cheshire County Superior Court.

Past the court’s drab side entrance, the cases on the docket were not precedent-setting. At 1:30 in the afternoon, a man named Wallace Nolen was suing the city of Keene for failing to give him the municipal employee data he’d requested in the computer format he wanted. The city was stalling, saying it needed more time.

The real show was in the lobby right outside the courtroom, where three sheriffs guarded the door against Sam Dodson, a documentary filmmaker who’d already spent 58 days in jail after refusing to turn off his camera in the district-courthouse lobby. While Dodson, camera held to his shoulder, asserted his right to be there, the attorney inside was bloviating about the minutiae of e-mailing different computer file formats.

A gaunt-faced friend of Dodson’s named Ian Freeman appealed to the deputy. “Honestly, if you’d just let him in, it wouldn’t have made for a very interesting film,” he said sarcastically. “It’s just boring lawyer talk.”

The deputy didn’t budge. Cameras are not allowed unless a judge grants a request, which in this case had been filed only minutes ago. As an open-government advocate, Dodson saw the extra hoop as just another means of making citizens beg their government for access. The officer and his antagonist debated the finer points of the policy while behind two sets of heavy wooden doors the hearing petered out.

After the hearing, Dodson, Freeman and others followed the parties through the lobby, filming everything as they shuffled down

the stairs. Later that day, Freeman posted online the footage he had recorded from his BlackBerry under the headline “Armed Gang Assaults Sam.”

Such confrontations have become commonplace in Keene since the launch of the Free State Project, a libertarian initiative conceived in 2001 to concentrate enough people unhappy with their current government to try to establish a new system in a new state. They took their name from the abolitionists who settled in Kansas before the Civil War with an eye to making it a free state. After an online vote in 2003, the project’s constituents picked New Hampshire—a state sparse in population but kindred enough in sentiment, they believed, that newcomers might actually make an impact on the electorate.

After six years, the project’s website counts more than 800 pioneers who have made the move, toward an eventual goal of 20,000. The new residents hail from all corners of the country, work in a range of professions and, aside from their common distaste for bureaucracies, often hold very different beliefs.

Then there’s Keene, a southwestern New Hampshire town whose claim to fame until recently was its huge annual Pumpkin Festival, which last year boasted 29,762

lighted pumpkins. Although many Free State migrants have ended up in large cities like Manchester and on the state’s coast, the newcomers to this small valley town might be the best at getting their message across—using blogs, forums, radio shows and videos of events posted minutes after they happen to fight their notion of state tyranny.

Free Staters in other parts of New Hampshire have already assumed local elected offices, but working “within the system” is not most Keene Free Staters’ modus operandi. “Manchester has more of a political-activist scene,” explained Free State Project president Varrin Swearingen. “Keene is more of an anarchist, civil-disobedient crowd.”

What Keeners’ new neighbors lack in political clout they compensate for in visibility. There’s no official roster of Free Staters, but those who stay active on FreeKeene.com— which hosts forums where everything to do with local civil disobedience plays out online—have proven savvy at spreading their message via public demonstrations and through adept use of new media.

“I would say it’s the liberty media capital of the country, if not the whole world,” said Freeman, who co-hosts Free Talk Live, a libertarian talk show that beams out to 61 stations nationwide. No caller is screened or turned away, he said.

In addition to Freeman’s show, the members of the online forums of FreeKeene.com boast a newspaper, a syndicated comic strip, a public-access cable television show and a TV production company.

They’ve also made their presence felt at the local level. From marijuana “smoke-outs” in the town’s main square to the public flouting of more obscure government regulations such as license requirements for

A Granite Stateof Mind

manicurists, Keene’s newest residents have combined creativity and a fierce dedication to their ideals to gain notoriety. Their protests have gotten them coverage in the local Keene Sentinel, The Concord Monitor, The New Hampshire Union Leader and The Boston Globe as often as they’ve landed them in jail.

“It seems that the Keene area is attracting a set of people who are of the outside-the-system mind-set,” said Freeman, who has a gift for unfolding the details of his most passionate beliefs with unending politeness. “I think the outside-the-system stuff has far more potential for return on investment, frankly. Yes, it has high risk, but high risk yields high reward.”

Freeman risked much himself by moving from Florida to the relative unknown of southwestern New Hampshire. He now lives in an unassuming duplex with a cozy living room, padded with sound dampeners, that serves as the broadcast headquarters for his talk show. His studio gets busy in the evening as co-host Mike Edge, a wide range of guests and even the occasional house cat stop by for a visit.

Although Free Staters constitute only a handful of Keene’s population, the transplants have created a community Freeman admits he “kind of fantasized about” in Florida. With everything that’s going on, it can be hectic. “You have to be choosy . . . because there’s so much going on and you can only be in one place at one time,” he said. “That’s never anything I encountered down South.”

Freeman’s fantasy is Keene police chief Kenneth Meola’s perennial headache. For every time the Free State migrants violate ordinances by refusing to stand for a judge or by causing a disturbance at a tax office, they also find a way to antagonize officers without breaking the law. At one pro-marijuana demonstration, for instance, protesters held

[Drew FitzGerald]

Dodson refused to “bring tyranny to America” any further.

Ian Freeman in the Free Talk Live studio, his living room.

“The Keene area is attracting a set of

people who are of the outside-the-system

mind-set.”

photos by Vikesh Kapoor


according to new resident Richard Onley, who said he was there to see it.

Despite their differences, “If there’s drama, it really exists on the Internet, where people sit behind their computers and don’t really get to sit face-to-face,” Freeman said. “Most people get along very well.”

The courts are a different story. Although no arrests were made, a January hearing over a Free State activist’s driver’s license was packed with bailiffs in anticipation of a fray. The move was not without precedent: In his two years as clerk for Keene’s district court, Larry S. Kane said he has seen activists repeatedly heckle, disparage and disobey local judges. “We know when there’s someone coming in here who’s a member of the Free State Project,” Kane said. “Every case where there is a Free State Project person involved, the camera issue comes up . . . It’s not something that we need to deal with at any other time.”

Dodson, for his part, said he does not regret bringing his camera into the courtroom, then refusing to give his name to authorities. One judge has a “dictatorship” over the town, Dodson said; he views his nearly two-month stint in jail after the incident as a demonstration of principles.

Those same principles were at work in Dodson’s choice to move to Keene in the first place. Like many of the newcomers, he set upon an uncertain path, from a high-paying corporate job to a risky business venture he runs out of his new home. In 2008 he was working in Dallas for a telecommunications company as an electrical engineer. But the position did not sit well with him: “Homeland Security would come in all the time with requests to query our data,” he said. “I realized I was helping bring tyranny to America.”

Dodson said it was newly acquired

knowledge of how to broadcast information himself that prompted him to move. He’d been campaigning for Texas libertarian Ron Paul’s presidential bid and making public speeches of his own when a friendly audience member approached him. “Somebody came up and said, ‘Do you know what a podcast is?’ I had no idea.”

Dodson learned, and found a voice through his newfound skills. Having mastered videography, he began making political shorts with a libertarian message. Feeling increasingly frustrated with a system he saw as unsalvageable, he decided to take the money he’d saved up in Texas to buy a green clapboard house a stone’s throw from

Keene’s central square. He started recording public meetings and compiling video from a computer on the second floor of his new home.

Dodson’s girlfriend, Meg McLain, who taught him many of his multimedia skills, said her views about government changed more gradually. The Oregon native said coping with a period of homelessness left her seeing the government as inept. “At first I thought the law could be used to help people, [but] there’s

Keene Mayor Dale Pregent says the newcomers have yet to make a large impact.

so much abuse and so [little accountability] that you can’t really prevent people from getting hurt,” she said.

With an outfit called Obscured Truth Network, Dodson and McLain make videos of ways to defy the system, such as flying domestically without carrying any form of ID. Like Freeman’s brand of libertarianism, Dodson’s holds little faith in any medium of mainstream political change. “Politicians can make minor course corrections, but I think we’re moving in the wrong direction,” he said. “I think the system’s grown out of control, and I don’t think there’s any stopping it.” The lens, not the lawmaker, is now Dodson’s preferred tool for society-wide change.

Both men said they found out about the Free State Project on the Internet but took the final step to move based on the reputations of other like-minded pioneers. In contrast with the clear distaste they show for police officers, judges and other officials, Dodson and Freeman—like many of their fellow Free Staters—regard the movement’s “early movers” with reverence, even when they disagree over certain means of protest.

“The reason I chose [the Free State Project] was because people I respected chose it,” Freeman said. Some of his friends said the same thing of him.

Friendship, in this case, often derives from online acquaintance. Almost all Free State newcomers make adept use of the Internet. Freeman said Keene is particularly “overrepresented” by libertarians who at some point worked with information technology.

That sentiment—of the value of the Internet as a means of communication and community—is shared by Free Staters both in offices and on the streets. “[Keene is] a center of activism in New Hampshire, as

far as Internet advertisement is concerned,” said another transplant as he stood outside the courthouse holding a cardboard “Honk for freedom” sign. The protester, who would only give his name as “Stone,” wore a navy hoodie and jeans duct-taped around his bike-pedaling leg. His current job, he said, is to “manufacture and distribute cigarettes.”

Stone isn’t the only Free Stater with an alias. Some fellow Free Keeners even refer to each other by their online monikers. Other members, like Freeman, who was born Ian Bernard, answer to a pseudonym—or more accurately, a chosen name. Dodson, who once went by the name Miller, said the decision was more than just self-styling. “I feel like my legal name has been usurped by the state,” he said.

Stone moved to Keene from Virginia in September, leaving his friends and family behind. He does not regret the choice, embracing the newfound freedom he found wholesale. “People are smoking out in the square, gardening here [on government land] and giving manicures without a license.” As Stone stood with his sign, some drivers honked, and others ignored him. One woman rolled down her window to question what it was all about. “Freedom from what?” she asked, in a not-so-friendly manner.

“Exactly!” Stone said, emphasizing how much he approved of the disapproving question. Both were silent for a second before the driver recited: “Freedom isn’t free.”

“Exactly!”A soft-spoken elderly man suggested

an addition to the sign. “How about ‘and responsibility’?” he asked, to which Stone conceded he thought exactly the same thing.

A ruddy-faced truck driver slowed his vehicle. “You guys are part of the 4:20 [cannabis] crowd, right?”

Stone asserted they were.“You do some great work, guys,” the

trucker said, pumping his fist.Keene residents have reacted by turns

indifferently, supportively and angrily to their new neighbors—in ways that are as much a function of the locals’ own attitudes as of the migrants’ actions.

Paige Beauregard, a cashier at The Corner News convenience store on Main Street, typifies the stance many locals have taken toward the out-of-towners, who are easy to spot even in a place where odd characters are

common. “New Hampshire’s pretty lenient,” said Beauregard. “We don’t really judge people unless they make us judge them.”

In this case, some Free Staters’ actions have given Beauregard cause to judge. “As for the smokers on the Common . . . I think they really could have done it a better way. The way you need to change the law is to go to the law, not by going out in public with an illegal substance,” she said.

Keene mayor Dale Pregent shares Beauregard’s skepticism of the way Free Staters sometimes go about doing things, although he too stressed that they have the right to their beliefs. “I doubt they’ve had the impact on the city that they want to have,” Pregent said of the newcomers. As small as

this post-industrial county seat might seem to outsiders, the mayor noted that a few dozen people are going to be hard-pressed to change the minds of nearly 25,000 longtime residents—especially in a place as blue as Keene. “Keene is a very, very Democratic region,” said Pregent, whose office is nonpartisan, as are all local officials’. “It’s a very progressive city, very environmentally friendly.”

Other locals fear what may result from the Free Stater presence. At Lindy’s Diner, a greasy-spoon establishment that serves Fluffernutter sandwiches along with more typical breakfast and lunch fare, retired librarian John Blomquist expressed his reservations. A resident of nearby Walpole, Blomquist regrets how his once-placid town has been “choked” by the surge of newcomers and said he feared the same for Keene. But Blomquist also seemed somewhat resigned. “I suppose you have to look at it this way: They’re going to do it anyway,” he said.

Stone would agree. “I believe in freedom in my lifetime,” he said. “I’m ready to find out if this is possible.” The 800-and-counting Free Staters have rallied under the same battle cry, and for many the starting point is this small town in the foothills of New Hampshire. FreeKeene.com proclaims the place the “world destination for pro-liberty civil disobedience and noncooperation.” Time will tell. Meanwhile, Stone will flag down passing motorists with his handheld signs, and Freeman will host his radio show. Dodson will keep showing up at court, camera on his shoulder, hoping—or maybe not—that the powers that be will let him in. c

“Every case where there is a Free State

Project person involved, the camera

issue comes up.”


of the second day. What point this narrative was supposed to prove puzzles me still. I didn’t ask, though. In my experience, those who pose awkward questions tend not to be invited to parties. I never win the storytelling game, but I suspect that those who do are lying, or at least exaggerating. Otherwise I don’t believe they would still be alive, or at least without a dozen illegitimate children.

Meanwhile, the courtship game continued. All around me students on the ship were engaged in—a wonderful euphemism—hooking up. What hooking up exactly means varies in definition from person to person, but vocabulary was the least of what some were sharing. Although in retrospect it seems inevitable, I was still surprised at the sheer number of people who found someone special, if only for a few hours. The negative aspect of being in such a small community was that there was little space should friction develop post-romance. No way to avoid people after the mind cleared. Conflagrations, fights and tears were all too common. After carefully considering the possibilities, I decided to pursue friendship instead. From the rumors that flew around the ship faster than the sea birds we sailed by, others came to that conclusion far too late. Rationally, I’m glad I didn’t get sucked into it, but 96 percent of me could have swung my decision in another direction.

It wasn’t until I sat at breakfast the morning we sailed into port that I realized that for all my internally aloof analysis, I was just as invested in this group as anyone. My very involvement had delayed the epiphany that the social aspects of the trip were now much more engaging to me than I could ever have imagined. Four percent may be all that distinguishes human from chimpanzee DNA, but I choose to think this is a compliment to chimps, rather than a slur to humanity. With that thought, I finished my banana.

his shadowing of the brunette near him was effective in gaining her admiration, or was he perhaps oblivious to how he looked? It took some effort to silence these kinds of thoughts, but for once I didn’t find them more interesting than actually participating. To the contrary—I encouraged my inner chimp to strangle the pedantic lecturer in my head.

To adapt to life on the ship, some chose a different kind of game—less transparent but often with stricter rules. To take part, the participants wore nice dresses, button-down shirts and suit jackets. I’m pretty sure I even saw someone in a tie. Together they headed for Pub Night, a few hours of overpriced beer and overblown expectations.

Not even the most ardent of us literal game-players were unaware of this other way that college-age people play. Sometimes the fog of hormones was thick enough to make me dizzy. Actually, that might have been from walking into a pole when a particularly pretty girl walked by, wafting perfume as she passed. A multitude of dents would have marked the passage of some students had the ship been made of less durable material. For those who were single—and for some who were not—the week offered an unrivaled opportunity to preen, strut and otherwise parade themselves to an essentially captive audience. Even if this posturing was not done consciously, the methodically questioning part of me could not help but see the chimpanzees in their fight for hierarchy and the rewards of being on top.

The most common on-board struggle for dominance took the form of storytelling, ultimately just a more civilized version of puffing out the chest, screeching and throwing sticks in the air. No matter how crazy or outlandish the tale told, someone else sitting with the group attempted to top it and thereby usurp the teller’s dominance.

At one point, a fellow traveling scholar told us about how he had drunk an entire bottle of vodka by himself one night and had barely felt sick the next morning. No sooner did the echoes of his tale of self-abuse die away than a girl jumped in with an account of how she’d gone on a two-day bender, drinking bottle after bottle of liquor. The only noticeable effect: her complete lack of memory

Four percent of my DNA is all that stands between me and a chimpanzee. Despite humanity’s intellectual and technical accomplishments, only a fractional difference in genetic identity separates looking for life on Mars from looking for lice on a neighbor’s fur.

I remember watching Discovery Channel specials on chimpanzees and their entertaining antics, but what always struck me about those shows was what they said about chimpanzee society. Chimpanzees and other great apes apparently live a social life complex enough to be understood only by a dedicated genius like Jane Goodall—or by someone who really likes soap operas.

The same, of course, is true for humans. Even when disguised by fancy clothes and good manners, our primate essence comes through. Indeed, while I pride myself on my analytical nature, it only took one week in the summer of 2008 to make a monkey out of me. I spent that summer traveling Europe on an academic cruise program called Semester at Sea. When I boarded the ship, I had no real expectations for the first week, the one that would take me and 600 other college students from Nova Scotia to Norway. I was focused on what would happen once the ship docked in port. The onshore explorations and academic aspects of the summer loomed larger than any social consideration. I assumed that first week would be dull and I would spend most, if not all, of my time alone. I crammed my iPod with movies and packed books (Moby Dick and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) to keep me busy.

What I had failed to foresee was how very much this first part of the trip would be like a psychological experiment—or, to be more precise, a chemistry one. Take one cruise ship; add college students with an exciting summer ahead of them. Make sure that most of them have never met before. Grant them a maximum of free time by ensuring that all mundane chores are taken care of. Remove nearly all

supervision. Add a dash of alcohol, and shake well on an empty ocean for eight days. Use caution when examining contents, as the blast of hormones could strip away the inhibitions and common sense of anyone without proper protective gear.

The moment the ship began to move, there was a sense of uncertainty about how we might get to know one another in this strange, unstructured environment. Lacking lice to groom, we turned to play in much the same way young chimps might—to bond and engage with our peers.

Everyone brought out the games, songs and jokes they knew from childhood. Swept up in the fervor, I dredged up memories of summer

camp and kindergarten for the things I used to do with my friends before we had video games. The sentence-forming “hodgy-podgy” was a particular favorite. The videographer of the voyage even filmed us, fifteen or so college students sitting in a circle holding hands as we passed a clap to the nonsensical refrain. All the chairs in the room were occupied

by people laughing at the ridiculous—and frequently risqué—sentences we would compose to the rhythm of clapping hands and slapping knees. Of course, failing to finish a sentence (and we usually failed) made us laugh even more. The zenith of the night came when we all decided to play a variant of hide-and-seek called “sardines,” in which only one person hides and everyone else has to search for him or her. Not as intimate as eating parasites and bits of dead skin off each other’s backs, but certainly a cleaner form of bonding.

As much fun as I was having, the logical part of my brain still kept clicking away, filing observations, comparing phenomena and attempting both to explain and predict the behavior of those around me. Was the enthusiastic girl encouraging us all to play really excited about the game, or did she just want to be the center of attention? Did the giggling fellow bouncing like a concussed kangaroo think c

Apes at Sea[Eric Hal Schwartz]

It only took one week in the summer of 2008 to make a

monkey out of me.


The barbarian warrior shouts a battle cry as he brings his twin swords down. The man before him falls. Chest heaving, the warrior steps back from the now-prone figure. Turning, he issues a command to his fellows and sprints past the dueling swordsmen and fallen bodies that fill the woods. The red sash on his tunic flares behind him. Out of sight of the battleground, behind a lodge, he removes his glasses and wipes them clean, careful not to smudge the tribal paint on his face. Ryan Cohen may be a warlord at the moment, but he won’t be able to do much rampaging the rest of the weekend if he can’t see. And as a game director for the Steam and Cinders live-action role-playing game, he has more than marauding to do.

Fortunately, Cohen is not the only one coordinating the four dozen players spending the weekend at Camp Denison, in Georgetown, Massachusetts. Fifteen staffers together try to ensure that players are continually involved in exciting adventures. Indeed, the two-year-old Steam and Cinders and its parent company, Be Epic, can be counted a success thanks largely to their efforts and those of Cohen and Be Epic president Mike Kanarek—all in the context of the rising popularity of Live Action Role-Playing games and the many participants (LARPers) in New England.

LARPing is a combination of fantasy tabletop games, historical reenactment and improvisational acting. Game creators render everything from accents to the very laws of physics in as much detail as possible, and players work to make their characters come alive. Ultimately, those involved create a shared world.

Kanarek has been LARPing since he was 16 and, like many of the players and staff at Steam and Cinders, has been involved in

several ongoing games, often simultaneously. In that sense, he’s a true LARP veteran. Today, comfortable in his fake facial hair and military uniform, the 28-year-old calmly sends out his team to deal with crises, checks on dinner (prepared by the wife of a player) and otherwise parlays his years of experience into running what to an uninformed observer appears to be a madhouse with a costume budget. “You get good at pre-empting fires,” he says. And while both Kanarek and Cohen currently work full time (Kanarek as a quality assurance tester for the online Lord of the Rings video game and Cohen as a manager for a medical-device company), they both want to grow Be Epic as a business, involving more people and eventually starting more games. They are even using the LARP as a way to apply for business school.

Steam and Cinders’ epic journey began in July 2007 after a barbecue during which five LARPing friends conceived a new game, one they could run together. While they enjoyed the games they were in, Kanarek says, they wanted something new—something different from the typical magic realms. “We were sick of the fantasy genre,” Kanarek says. So the group decided to go for steampunk, an entirely different realm of the fantastic. Steampunk takes the world of the nineteenth century and asks, What if we had followed the visions of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, creating mechanical computers, steam-driven machine guns, and all the other extrapolations of the future based on then-current society and technology? Steampunk’s rising popularity in books, games, movies and comics led the group to use the constructs and themes of the genre, situated on a new world named Tellus in a frontier town called Iron City.

The group started sharing visions and ideas, attempting to tame the wild notions

LARP[Eric Hal Schwartz]

Lieutenant and Lady Weathersby

in their heads. “We were ranting about our ideas while nobody else listened,” Kanarek remembers. “I’d say 99 percent of what we had at that point got scrapped by the end.” After a month of twelve-hour meetings and maniacal rule- and world-making, the team was ready to test its intricate creation in the finest LARP tradition: War Day. “I would call it a horrible train wreck,” Kanarek says, wincing at memories of the event. Cohen disagrees. “It was a lot of fun,” he says. But he admits that playing is generally less stressful than running a game, especially an untested one.

In any event, the group persevered even though the beta testing had not gone as well as hoped. The founders, along with interested friends, continued to refine the rules and deal with the mundane necessities of finding a place to play and arranging insurance, food and everything else. They settled on Camp Denison, which had plenty of space and was isolated enough that the game—which can get noisy—wouldn’t bother neighbors. Finally, in April 2008, the team was ready to run its first real event.

It took only casual marketing and promotion to draw people to the camp for that inaugural game. “We relied mostly on word-of-mouth,” Kanarek says, adding that the Internet was useful in coordination. The weekend was not without growing pains—misunderstood rules, along with uncertainty about the tone and structure of the game—but the staff had expected that. “There’s the way it’s supposed to work and the way it does work,” Cohen says. But the 40 or so people at that first game gave enough positive reviews to keep the game alive, and encouraged the staff to dream even bigger.

Steam and Cinders is now played about six times a year: three games in the fall and three in the spring, with a few extras thrown

In character: Sir Alcock and Mrs. Cragswagger

photos by Vincent Bancheri

Me Good


in like a winter feast and small-group summer events. Kanarek and Cohen aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, either, actively participating whenever possible. “You can do more good out in the game,” Kanarek says. “You can’t just wait for problems to come to you.”

Up at the camp, players wander through the woods or sit at picnic tables discussing their latest exploits, always in character, until sucked into a new storyline by staff members. The plots range from baroque political schemes to a straight battle against raiders, most of whom are junior staffers—or, as they are fondly called, crunchies. “They’ll play bandits or things that are pretty disposable, and then they go crunch,” Kanarek says by way of explanation. Bruises and aches are not uncommon, but there haven’t been any serious injuries.

Near the picnic tables set up in a clearing, an elaborate, brightly colored tent beckons. Inside, Brit Knowles—or “Sanura,” as she is known around Iron City—carefully puts together alchemical grenades (beanbags or flour wrapped in tissues), while explaining the utility of these and other instruments. Her character’s accent, a mix of Russian and Arabic, adds mystique to the tea-scented space.

Commerce in Steam and Cinders is possible thanks to the gold coins designed by the staff and sold for the game. Each coin displays a coat of arms on one side and the profile of “the queen” (actually one of the staffers) on the other. “One of our goals in this game was to not need suspension of disbelief,” Kanarek says. “We want it to feel real.” To achieve that level of verisimilitude, Kanarek, Cohen and the rest of the staff create elaborate props, like period newspapers and official notices, storing them and other equipment in the nearby staff center, known as the Mine Office.

The inside of the Mine Office looks like the result of a high-speed collision of a Renaissance fair with a comic-book convention and historical-reenactment society. Heaps of swords and shields lie piled next to racks of costumes, while tables of guns await the next battle and pseudo-parchment posters issue admonitions to the people of Iron City. The edged weapons are all heavily padded or made of soft plastic, and the guns are mainly

A stockpile of weapons in the Mine Office.

Nerf weapons, painted and modified to look like brass and steel, evoking a technology that never was. The mix of styles is an absinthe addict’s dream of the Wild West, Victorian England and pure fantasy. But it’s the row of cabinets forested with taped-on sheets of colored paper that commands the attention of most of the staff in the room. Each sheet lists a story or activity and all the staff and equipment needed, and each one advances either the narrative of Tellus or the development of individual characters.

Running a Steam and Cinders event is further complicated by ongoing shifts in the roster of players. “There’s a lot of turnover in the game,” Kanarek says. “People leave and come back a lot.” The sheets lining the wall of the Mine Office are really just the tip of the creative iceberg necessary to keep

things afloat. Happily for Cohen and Kanarek, the staff is more than up to the challenge. When Kanarek calls over several people to organize a raid, he can count on them to follow the elaborate tactics and the subtle story underlying the attack (in this case, the crash of an airship). A frisson of excitement moves through the room as a few staffers intently pack a crate with weapons, ammunition and other goodies for players to discover. “We have just as much fun as the players,” Cohen says. The players themselves often are old hands, participating in several ongoing games at once. College students and recent graduates make up a majority of the population. Some participants are staff members of other LARPs who come to Steam and Cinders just to play. “They tend to be some of the best,” Kanarek says. “They understand that I poured my heart into this thing.”

For those looking for a LARP, New England offers one of the largest such extended communities in the country. More than a half-dozen venues offer everything from war games with minimal character development to LARPs like Steam and Cinders with elaborate histories and multifarious cultures. Settings range from fictional-but-realistic to Tolkien-esque with diverse species as characters. Knowles compares LARPs to romantic prospects. “LARPing is a lot like dating,” she says. “Some are fixer-upper boyfriends, and some really have everything together. You get different things out of different games.”

Occasionally LARP romance is more than metaphor. Knowles herself met her boyfriend at her first game, when she played a savage barbarian. “He was dressed as a spirit who sent me out to the woods to die,” she

remembers. Kanarek, the boyfriend in question, simply laughs when questioned about the incident.

Actually, there are many couples playing the game, including some sets of husbands and wives, although their characters do not always reflect the real-life relationship. Men outnumber women at Steam and Cinders, though less overwhelmingly than in other LARPs. In most LARP games, there is a five-to-one ratio of males to females, Kanarek says, but Steam and Cinders comes out to about a two-to-one ratio of guys to girls. Not that such gender imbalance really matters with so

many costumes and wigs lying around. “At every LARP you go to, at some point in the course of the season they’re going to put a guy in a wig and a dress,” Cohen says, and the female staff don’t hesitate to go the other way when called on.

While there are plans to make Be Epic profitable, right now the reward for the weekend is the experience itself. “It’s a real labor of love,” Cohen says. After a weekend of running around ensuring that 50 people are having fun, dealing with crises both in-game and out and sleeping almost not at all, sometimes he and Kanarek ask, “Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?” But even as they leave, ideas for new plots and new adventures start to percolate, and excited e-mails begin to fly back and forth in preparation for the return to Tellus. c

The Savage Circle in Iron City.


Will Box for An Olympic Drive to Become a United States Citizen

Tamerlan Tsarnaev is a boxer from Chechnya who currently trains at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Tsarnaev enters national Golden Gloves competitions in hopes that he might be selected for the next U.S. Olympic team and become a naturalized American.

1. Tsarnaev works out at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts Center.

2. Though he’s lived in the U.S. for five years, Tsarnaev says, “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.”

3. Tsarnaev, who studies at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and wants to become an engineer, took the semester off from school to train for the competition.

4. Tsarnaev’s family fled Chechnya in the early 1990s because of the conflict there. He lived in Kazakhstan before coming to the United States as a refugee.

5. In the absence of an independent Chechnya, Tsarnaev says he would rather compete for the U.S. than for Russia.

6. Tsarnaev stops to answer a call while walking to his boxing practice.

7. “I’m dressed European style,” Tsarnaev says.

1 3

4 6

2 5 7

[ Johannes Hirn]

PaSSPoRt:


108

9 13

8. Tsarnaev says he loves the movie Borat, even though some of the jokes are a bit much.

9. “ When you start kicking, it gets dirty. That’s what I think,” says Tsarnaev. Of kickboxers, he says, “They don’t know how to move.”

10. Tsarnaev says he doesn’t generally remove his shirt when among women at the gym.

11. Tsarnaev, a Muslim, doesn’t drink or smoke. “God said no alcohol,” he says.

12. Tsarnaev demonstrates a way of walking to strengthen the ankles. “In Russia, we used to train like this,” he says. “Here nobody does it. I don’t know why!”

13. Tsarnaev takes a break from his boxing practice.

11

12


Eye shadow still gives me trouble. My hair is perpetually in its ponytail. My closet is full of shorts not skirts, sneakers not stilettos.

I could probably use a little help.When I got to middle school, I laid down my Barbies and picked up

a basketball. A decade of sports and two reconstructive knee surgeries later, I still don’t know how to put curlers in my hair, still keep my nails short, still wake up and unconsciously dress for a basketball practice I haven’t gone to in years.

It’s not an easy transition from female athlete to . . . female. The admission feels like the catharsis of a twelve-step group in a church basement, but AA doesn’t stand for Athletes Anonymous.

Hi, I’m Katie, and I’m a former basketball player.It wasn’t always like this—I wasn’t born to be an athlete. Once

upon a time, I categorized basketball as “a boy sport;” I used gym class to study the intricacies of French-braiding hair from the safety of the sidelines. But the beautiful girls in fifth grade were beloved by boys and

upperclassmen alike, and many of those girls were stars on the basketball team. With infallible tween logic, I determined that all I had to do to be embraced by the middle-school hierarchy was to be good at basketball, too.

So I sauntered into my first team practice, wearing new jeans and cute shoes. I was ill-prepared to see my once-precious classmates transformed: grosgrain headbands replaced with dripping sweatbands, well-coordinated outfits traded for

men’s undershirts and gym shorts. My mind raced. What world was this?

Things worsened once I stepped onto the hardwood floor. I got winded running the laps around the gym and stopped, pretending to retie my now tragically un-cute shoes. My foul shots fell hopelessly short of the rim; hard passes bounced off my fingertips.

I learned several lessons in those 90 minutes of sport: Actually participating in gym class can make middle-school girls astonishing athletes; crying is a punishable offense (more laps, less oxygen, more tears, repeat); I was going to need a completely new wardrobe; basketball is, most assuredly, not simply a “boy sport.”

I won’t lie: For a long time, I was the worst one on the team. My dad and I would go to our basement every night, turn on the NBA (maybe I’d improve via osmosis), and pass the basketball to each other for as long as it’d take me to catch twenty in a row.

Some nights were embarrassingly long. Eventually, though, I’d catch more than I’d drop. I learned the names

of the Knicks’ starting lineup and could parrot the announcers (Did you see that zone defense? Van Gundy’s out of his mind!). I shoved T-shirts adorned with flowers deep into the recesses of my closet and bought boys’ basketball sneakers. I stopped crying.

It’s a delicate balance, growing up as both a girl and an athlete. Truly dedicated players don’t wear earrings or necklaces with their baggy T-shirts—those are telltale signs of the inexperienced, the wannabes. A well-put-together outfit is key for a trip to the mall with your friends; match your shirt to your shorts at practice, and you look like you’re trying too hard. Makeup? Nail polish? Your mother may have finally relented, but what would your coach think?

High school brought new challenges. The adolescent identity crisis is never more pronounced. Teens wander the halls trying to understand who they are by sorting their peers according to what they do. Those destined for the Ivy League read about high school from the safety of the library. Up-and-coming Tony winners sing and dance as if the Great White Way were lined with lockers. I carried my basketball with me everywhere, and so I was happily defined as an athlete.

This is not to say that I forsook my high-school femininity entirely. I was excited to be the Spice Girls with my friends at Halloween; it was simply understood that I’d be Sporty Spice. I pored over issues of Cosmo, Seventeen and Sports Illustrated with equal enthusiasm. A good night of television was flipping between Sex and the City and SportsCenter.

Those small indulgences were all I allowed myself. It’s an unspoken rule of female athletes: Be girly, or be the best, because you can’t be both. You have to choose what’s more important to you: letters from

Division I college-basketball coaches or a date to your senior prom? (I nabbed a last-minute date to mine: a friend’s cousin, who borrowed my cell phone halfway through to call his girlfriend. Awkward.)

Some girls try to straddle the line, but they get weeded out; if you didn’t go on to play in college, that was fine—but it was because you didn’t want it badly enough. As girls my age deftly wielded kohl pencils to practice eyeliner application, I had a Sharpie in hand to perfect my signature; I would be ready for the throngs of little girls who would one day swarm around me with their “Ryan” jerseys and WNBA regulation basketballs.

But my dreams of a future in the pros were dimmed after some substantial injuries. Blowing out ligaments in one knee has been enough to derail the careers of several professional athletes; I had reconstructive surgeries on both of my knees—one a year before the other, both before I graduated high school. Somehow, though, I couldn’t give up. I’d worked so hard on this identity. Who was I, without my basketball?

Even with the surgeries, I was still recruited by some colleges to play, and so I only applied to schools where I could be on the basketball team. But my collegiate career was short-lived; my bionic knees couldn’t hold up, and I left the team after my freshman year.

The morning after I stepped down, I rose at 6 a.m. ready for the team run, and realized I could simply turn over and go back to bed. But how could I sleep? I’d awakened to discover that I’d become an amputee: Had anyone seen the mass that was once attached to my right hand? Twenty ounces or so, bright orange, answers to Spalding?

Just like that, I was back to square one. For more than ten years, I had dedicated my life to sports, shunning anything that would not get me closer to my goals—even outward signs of my own femaleness. And what had it gotten me? Joints that snap, crackle and pop more than my bowl of cereal in the morning, a closet full of sweatpants and little idea who I was when I looked in the mirror.

And the beautiful, sporty girls of fifth grade had now evolved into beautiful women, with manicured nails, silk blouses and high-school

sweethearts. How had I missed the priority shift? We had once scoffed at girls who breathed anything other than basketball; when did “we” become “them,” I wondered?

I had some catching up to do. I went through tubes of liquid eyeliner and bottles of nail polish. I bought heels and blouses and blazers. I even threw away my prized team sweatpants.

Becoming a girl was soon part of my morning routine—femininity became another layer to apply. I still woke up and put on a hoodie, but I’d police myself and return it to the closet for a cardigan. There was time in my schedule—after brushing my teeth but before my coffee—specially slotted for makeup application. I’d even leave the house without a ponytail holder so I’d have no way to sabotage my hair in the middle of the day.

Yet somehow, I felt like a fake. But a fake what, exactly? No matter how

long it may take me to master my mascara, or how many days I sneak past my mirror in a hoodie (if I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen), the girl who French-braided hair on the sidelines is the same girl who ran around in boys’ basketball sneakers.

Let’s face it: It’s hard enough to grow up at all. We spend our youths comparing

ourselves to our peers, jockeying for position. Eventually we wake one morning to a dawning maturity, and wonder whom our peers have been emulating while we’ve been so busy emulating them. Maybe growing up means simply accepting who you are, even if you’re not quite sure who that is.

Although I’m coming to terms with the unconventional path my femininity has taken, my closet is the final frontier, where the last schizophrenic vestiges remain. High heels I’ll only wear to weddings lie dormant next to sneakers I’ll only wear on hardwood courts. There are sequins, and there are sweatpants. If I could figure out how to wear them together, I probably would.

What can I say? My wardrobe, my femininity, me—it’s all a work in progress.

Lipstickand[Katie Ryan]

Layups

c

Somehow, though, I couldn’t give up. I’d worked so hard

on this identity. Who was I, without my basketball?

25 thecomment 2010

Destiny USa:The Story of a Mega-Mall and a City

The gates of wonderland opened. Buses drove past a man-made lake with so many trout that they could be pulled out by hand. Hunters of the transported wildlife at the reserve waved as the buses passed on their way to a mansion-sized log cabin.

To the 200 people who gazed at Savannah Dhu through the buses’ tinted windows, the landscape must have seemed wholly unfamiliar, a world much farther away from their hometown of Syracuse, New York, than the hour’s drive would suggest. It was October 2005, and the men and women on board the buses were there to be shown that they too could be part of a fantasy, as the same man who had created Savannah Dhu planned to transform an aging Syracuse mall into a mega-mall that would rival any in the nation.

It sounded almost too good: The simple Carousel Center that had been around since 1990 would morph into Destiny USA—a rival of the Mall of America and maybe even of Disney World, if the advertisements in the current mall were right—which in turn would transform the struggling city. The men and women on the buses had been hired as the workforce to execute a plan that some were calling grand and others were calling grandiose.

Already artists’ renderings had made the project look like an elaborate science-fiction conglomeration of commerce, entertainment and luxury. There would be a replica of the Erie Canal, 400 stores, rock-climbing walls, an aquarium, two golf courses, 1,300 hotel rooms and an arena. More than 122,000 jobs would be created, and $12.5 billion allegedly would course throughout the state as a direct result of the tourism destination.

The workers must have been hopeful as they listened to Savannah Dhu’s owner, Robert Congel, speak about how he came from humble beginnings like many of them, and how Destiny USA would become a reality. Destiny USA would change the lives of Syracusans by giving a living wage to those who had been working at fast-food joints and gas stations, providing opportunities, and enhancing the city’s collective well-being. The workers weren’t the only ones who would hear Congel—the magnate behind Pyramid Companies, owner of Carousel and the largest private developer of shopping malls in the United States—give his pitch. Politicians and influential citizens were also bused to Savannah Dhu to hear the Destiny USA pep talk, including how Congel had begun his empire in 1970 right there in Syracuse.

Little did the employees know that within three months most of them would be laid off. Half a decade later, the only sign of the fabulous development is a 900,000-square-foot gray appendage to the side of Carousel mall, built by contractors from out of state. There are no tenants for the new structure, and the high hopes and tax dollars residents invested in the process are stymied.

It sounded too good to be true. Maybe it was.

The city of Syracuse is known more for snow accumulation than as any kind of tourism mecca. But even though it’s won the Golden Snowball Award (a competition among upstate New York cities for which has the most snowfall in a given season) every year since 2002, there is much more to their city, residents say. Syracuse University and other colleges are within the city limits. Many parts of the city are inviting places in which to live. The countryside is a fifteen-minute drive away.

Yet none of these attributes alters the

economic reality that Syracuse has faced in the past few decades as a poster child for post-industrial decline. A city with deep blue-collar roots, from Erie Canal commerce to manufacturing, Syracuse has not recovered from the departure of its largest employers. General Electric is gone, and the Carrier Corporation, a once-stable core of the economy, is just a hazy memory left behind as a moniker on Syracuse University’s Carrier Dome stadium. Over time, the Rust Belt has tightened around Syracuse, taking much of its vitality with it. Empty storefronts have accumulated downtown. The population has dwindled from 221,000 in 1950 to roughly 140,000 today.

It was to this compromised, once-proud city that Congel made his pitch, according to local developer Bob Doucette. Doucette, who is also a professor at LeMoyne College, describes the situation as he sees it from his office in the middle of Armory Square, a downtown neighborhood that he has been instrumental in reviving. “The King of Armory Square,” as Doucette is sometimes called, says

[Teresa Gorman]

the instability of Syracuse made it vulnerable to accepting any leadership or momentum. “People are willing to grab anything that looks like a lifeline,” Doucette, says, leaning forward. “If it bears some resemblance to a life preserver, they grab for it.”

Destiny USA wasn’t the first time Robert Congel had tried to alter the landscape of his hometown. In the 1980s, he won over local politicians to his plan to have Pyramid build a mall in Syracuse. The mall would bring jobs, generate revenue. The clincher was Congel’s promise to build on top of part of “Oil City,” a toxic dump on the shores of Onondaga Lake, which had earned a reputation as the most polluted lake in the nation. The nearly 100 acres occupied by nine active oil companies were surrounded by 700 more acres of decrepit buildings.

Pyramid spent millions cleaning up contamination on the 75-acre mall site and dedicated more to the dump surrounding it. Carousel Center opened in 1990 despite concerns that such a thing was not possible. “Can a Mall at a Toxic Dump Revive an Ailing Syracuse? ” asked a New York Times headline on October 17, 1990. The economic revival did not occur to the extent the city had hoped, and the condos and offices supposed to surround the mall never appeared, but Pyramid did continue to clean up the area.

People who credited Congel with helping the Syracuse economy the first time around were more likely to be on board the second time. Syracuse Common Council President Van Robinson, for one, says the Oil City clean-up and mall development were a boon to the city. To expand it would only have made sense, he says in retrospect. Though Van Robinson was elected in 2006, sixteen years after the original mall opened, he ran unsuccessfully for the council in 1987 and would have supported an expanded plan then, he says. “People come from all over to shop here,” Van Robinson says. “They come from Canada, they come in tour buses. More would come if Destiny USA was built.”

Perhaps Congel, who was not available for an interview, heard those echoes of build it and they will come, though Pyramid had much more than a field in mind when the Destiny project was first presented. In 2001, Carousel drew about 17 million visitors. By comparison, plans called for Destiny USA to draw 40 million people in a year. The price tag: $15 billion with all phases complete.

A fenced-in construction area of Arendi, the first phase of Destiny USA, near a parking lot of Carousel Center. The Lord & Taylor has been in Carousel Center since 1993, three years after the shopping mall opened.

24 thecomment 2010

“People are willing to grab anything that looks like a lifeline.”


the street from Carousel Center sat rusting. Drivers who passed the mall could see the rust grow almost by the day.

According to Armory Square’s Bob Doucette, the lifeline mentality crippled the Destiny project from the start. The government acted on ideas without questioning them at all, he says, which led to many of the problems. Chief among them was the actual idea of mega-malls, which in general do not benefit a city, says Doucette. The sprawling development of a project like Destiny USA would never be the answer to economic problems. “I don’t like it,” Doucette says of mega-mall development in general. “I don’t think it’s been good for our country. Sprawl has used up a lot of our resources. America bought into the suburban model of building, building, building, and now there is all of this empty infrastructure out there.”

Since the 1980s Doucette has been known

in Syracuse for his own work developing properties. Both he and Congel are avowed lovers of Syracuse, with family nearby, but their approaches have been opposite. “The King of Armory Square” began to turn downtown Syracuse from a place of empty storefronts and crime into a lively center of apartments, arts and businesses. His influence remains such that newly elected Syracuse mayor Stephanie Miner chose him as head of the economic-development-and-job-creation transition team before she took office in January 2010.

Doucette works in a building that his management company renovated. Inside, antique moldings contrast with the plans and mock-ups for new projects that fill the space. One such project is to add a food co-op into a historic building; another is for green homes in neighborhoods that cater to Syracuse University. These kinds of projects

The problems began as soon as pamphlets of artists’ renderings of the imitation Tuscan marketplaces that would flourish within the climate-controlled glass of Destiny reached the hands of local politicians and businesspeople. The reality of this monster of an idea that would outsize any mall in the nation hit. Tax breaks were battled over, including a 30-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) agreement. Tensions between a split Common Council and mayor’s office spilled over, and debates grew more heated. In the end, political maneuverings around the development would go all the way to then- Governor George Pataki and then-Senator Hillary Clinton. Everyone wanted to have a say, and nothing real was being said.

Cynicism among Syracuse residents began to grow, according to Chuckie Holstein, the executive director of community-betterment organization Forging Our Community’s United Strength (FOCUS). “That’s just how people are here,” Holstein says. FOCUS hands out “Be Positive” stickers to the Syracuse community, but maintaining such a position is difficult, she says, during periods when the economy is gray along with the weather. Even so, Holstein wears a sticker every day.

Pyramid and the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce even proclaimed Destiny USA dead in 2003. “It will not be built within the city limits,” an anonymous Pyramid source told The New York Times on July 12, 2003. Soon, though, the project was revived, gaining concessions with the PILOT program. Still, matter after matter arose. Congel had not included a roller coaster in the plans, but he had one now.

In 2005, residents of Syracuse and Onondaga County received a press release during a period of new uncertainty. “Does Destiny stand to gain as a developer?” the release asked. “Yes. And we are the only ones at risk. Is the community at risk under any circumstances? Not at all.” The release assured residents that Pyramid was confident that the expansion of Destiny USA would “again” put Syracuse on the map. At the same time, a radio campaign bombarded listeners with sound bites. “Support Destiny USA: Syracuse and this nation need it.”

But it was 2005, and nothing had been built. A few piles had been driven into the parking lot of Carousel Center during a press conference, complete with a ribbon cutting. There they still stood. Stacks of steel across

View of Carousel Center’s seven floors from the lower level.

Arendi, the first phase of Destiny USA which, according to reports, is set to open sometime in 2010.

survive because they evolve organically from the heart of the city, he says. “People said Destiny was a crazy idea way back in the beginning,” says Doucette. “They started having problems . . . and it just kept going.”

In 2005, more than 180 workers were hired as the initial Destiny workforce. Few, if any, had construction experience. Yet they would all be taught jobs and earn $60,000 a year. The workers soon appeared in commercials thanking Destiny USA for saving Syracuse. “Everything was a marketing tool,” says Emad Rahim, a former employee. “Rather than build on what may have been a great concept, they relied on marketing.”

Rahim was skeptical, but still he applied for a job. He thought maybe he would write his dissertation on the process for his master’s in project management. But even he began to be sucked into the idea. “Syracuse needed something—who knew if this was it?” he says. At first, the new job seemed exciting, Rahim recalls, but after a minimum of training the workers often sat around doing nothing. They never hammered or soldered a thing onto Destiny USA, he says. Moments of excitement, such as the day trip to Savannah Dhu, stood out as bright spots.

Rahim still remembers the day he was laid off.

“It was . . . surreal,” Rahim says. “Everyone started to realize just what a pipe dream this was.” In a conference room, colleagues wept as they heard they would be fired after only three months of work. Yet many workers stayed dedicated to Destiny and blamed the city. The city blamed Destiny. Only a few employees remained. Rahim was not one of them. He never wrote the Destiny USA dissertation, but fortunately he had planned ahead and eventually founded a consulting business.

For Pyramid and for Congel, the gig wasn’t up yet. In fact, things might turn out more favorably than anyone dared hope, the company proclaimed in 2006. Not only could Destiny be the Emerald City of malls, it could be completely and truly green. “It won’t be just any building . . . this time we’ll make a difference,” Destiny USA’s website currently states.

The latest plan is that Destiny USA will be the world’s largest sustainable structure, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, which is now on board with the project. It will reduce emissions,

recycle materials and be paperless. Trucks will run on biofuel, and solar power will be a main energy source. Commercials emphasized the mall will not use foreign oil. One ad shows a picture of Osama bin Laden before a mother tells us that evil will not be supported by buying oil. “That’s why I support Destiny USA,” she states on her son’s playground, before running off to the swings. The irony of building a green mega-mall on the site of a former toxic dump doesn’t seem to be foremost in anyone’s thoughts.

In the old mall, the maintenance crew has repainted every banner and handrail kelly green. The color clashes with the original teal. Already cracks are beginning to spread through the green as it wears off of surfaces. Out in the parking lot, there are even green spaces for hybrids close to entrances, though more often SUVs and minivans fill the spots.

Holstein, the executive director of FOCUS, received the first green sticker for her hybrid at a special event announcing the initiative, which includes efforts to “green” the city of Syracuse as well. As she spoke about the day, the din of workmen installing solar panels outside her office leaked in.

“That is what will put us on the map,” Holstein says. “A green city with a green Destiny USA next to it.”

But Syracuse will take on the name “Emerald City” without waiting for Destiny, Holstein says. Former mayor Matthew Driscoll gave Syracuse the name in 2008, and other green companies already have begun to settle in the city. “[We are] beginning to take our own initiative, make our own change,” Holstein says. She doesn’t think Destiny is a life jacket for Syracuse and its people, at least not anymore. “Sometimes people are overzealous,” Holstein says. “It would be an asset, but when it comes to Syracuse people, they really can survive anything . . . We don’t need a lifeline anymore; we have all that the city already has.”

“Arendi”—the recently completed addition to Carousel Center, the only manifestation of Destiny USA so far—may be nominally green, but that doesn’t mean it’s inviting. The Syracuse New Times has compared it to Guantánamo Bay. No tenants have been lined up to fill the space.

The reason is partly circumstantial. “Malls are not as popular as they used to be in C.N.Y. [Central New York],” says J. T. Barnes, a member of the group 40-Below, which encourages

development by young people in Syracuse. “I can shop online. It’s like that everywhere.”

Robinson says the blame does not belong to Pyramid or Destiny, or to Congel, for that matter. “This is only normal,” Robinson says. “With the economic downturn of the last year and a half, everywhere in the nation is facing changes in plans.” Given these changes, there is no public plan for when the next phases of the project will begin, says Destiny USA spokesman David Aitken. Promotional materials inside Carousel Center suggest otherwise. “Good things come to those who wait,” reads one kiosk outside of a vacant store that used to have a CompUSA in it.

But the King of Armory Square prefers not to wait. “I would rather bet on the concept of a city that’s 10,000 years old,” Doucette says. “Mall development started in the 1940s, and I want to bet on the fact that malls are done.”

For Robinson and Holstein, Destiny USA remains a possibility, if not a definite reality. “It would be an asset if it worked,” Holstein says. “If it doesn’t, Syracuse has survived until now, and we still will.”

For now, Destiny USA remains a gray appendage. Strings of white bulbs hang within Arendi. At night, light radiates through a long window in the structure, illuminating the vacancy within. c

“america bought into the suburban model

of building, building, building, and now there is all of this

empty infrastructure out there.”


Ryan Gosling Loves toFist-Bump

[Aviv Rubinstien]

“All I want for my birthday is for you to tell the wolf story.” My friend Kirsten shoves her hands into her pockets. It’s October 14, and it’s freezing on Brookline Street in Cambridge. I do a little “Oh-my-god-I’m-so-cold” dance out by my band’s van, which has a dead battery. Kirsten and Dan do a similar dance as we wait for AAA to come or for a kind stranger to pass by with jumper cables.

Shitty, right? I forgot to mention a few yards away there are 50 hysterical girls, in a clump, waiting for Oscar nominee (and all-around dreamboat) Ryan Gosling to appear. His band, Dead Man’s Bones, played the club next door to where we did. Those young ladies have been standing there for over two hours.

“You have to tell it the way your dad does,” Dan chimes in. They want the thick Israeli accent, too.

I don’t want to tell the wolf story. Not just because it’s cold and I’m in a rotten mood, but because it exhibits a mental illness my father suffers from. An illness that I have unfortunately inherited. We’re storytellers.

When I was little, I used to take my dad’s big fish stories as gospel. My favorite was the one about his pet wolf. As I got older, my father would tell my friends the same stories he told me in my childhood, always exaggerating the exploits of his trusty wolf: “I found a wolf once in the forest. I trained it, and domesticated it. It could accurately distinguish between me and my twin brother. (The twin brother does exist.) It could accurately distinguish between Israelis and Lebanese. It could break the laws of physics, play chess. It could smell pregnancy…”

No, seriously.But being embarrassed of the wolf story as a teenager didn’t stop

me from exaggerating stories from my own life or telling the wolf story at parties to gain some positive attention. We all do it, right? I’m not like my father. My feet are planted firmly in reality. All of my stories operate within the laws of physics.

Still, there’s a problem. Now when I look back on my past I have trouble cutting through my own hype. I can’t remember what actually happened and what I’ve created. Recently—upon meeting my girlfriend for the first time—my Dad told the wolf story once again. I realized then that I have myself exaggerated his wolf story, punching up certain parts and filling in holes with my own brand of crazy. How could this have happened? What does it mean? Am I destined to become my father? Is this how he started? Or worse, am I exhibiting the first signs of undifferentiated schizophrenia, a real, no foolin’ mental illness?

One-thirty in the morning rolls around, and Ryan Gosling has just

finished signing autographs. AAA does not seem to be coming. Kirsten and Dan have given up trying to coax my father’s wolf story out of me, and the three of us are trying to flag down any car that passes by. I’m getting fed up. Then I catch a glimpse of the Dead Man’s Bones road crew. After psyching myself up for a moment I march right past The Notebook star and ask his driver for a jump.

“Oh, no, man. We don’t have any cables. Let me try and help you out here.” I’m paraphrasing. Ryan Gosling’s road manager makes an announcement to the dozens of shivering girls. One group of three girls claims to have jumper cables in their car and will gladly jump us. Let’s call them Charlie’s Angels. Autographs in hand, the Angels clop away, their high heels reverberating against the pavement. They promise to be right back. Yeah, right. Thanks to my dad, I know how to spot a lie when I hear one.

Dan, Kirsten and I fantasize aloud about asking Ryan Gosling to jump-start our van. Slipping him a screenplay we’d written. Asking him out for Chinese food. Is that how we’re going to tell the story years from now?: “Hey, Aviv, Dan, I’m Ryan Gosling, you know, from The Notebook. Anyway. I’m a big fan of your band. It looks like you need a jump. Now pop that hood!”

I can see my future grandchildren’s faces twisted in confused horror as I tell them how the actor jump-started my van with nothing but his bare hands.

No. This is not what I will become.Okay. Let’s get serious here. Compulsive embellishment is not

a mental disorder. It’s not done to deceive, but rather to entertain. However, my inability to distinguish between the truth and my stories is a big, big problem. In entertaining through these stories, delighting folks with my flights of fancy, I’ve repeated my lies to myself hundreds of times. Like a criminal preparing to take a polygraph test, I’ve conditioned myself to believe it all, letting it become a part of me. Starring in the movie of my life.

Racking my brain trying to cut through my own bullshit, differentiating things I’ve created from things I’ve lived is much harder than I expected. I find it distressing that I can actually see memories that I’ve created for myself. I can see things that I know definitely did not happen.

Maybe I spoke too soon about not having a mental illness.

Ryan Gosling has left to get some pizza. All the girls now mill around aimlessly like pasturing livestock.

At least they’ve stopped screaming. It’s been about 30 minutes since Charlie’s Angels left to get us

cables, and we’ve given up hope when we see a pair of headlights wobbling toward us in a slightly-too-tipsy-to-drive fashion. The Angels pull up beside us and exit their car triumphantly holding jumper cables.

After a brief argument about which side to ground, we get the van started. As we let the battery charge, I see Mr. Gosling and his entourage returning from dinner, pizza in hand.

He’s about to walk right by us, ignoring us completely, until I just think, Oh fuck it.

“Mr. Gosslin? Do you want to pose for a picture with us jump-starting our van?” I mispronounce his name.

He stops. Looks around for a minute as though he’s just been woken up.

“Yes, I do.”Ryan Gosling poses with me in front

of the Angels’ car. Afterwards, I try to shake his hand. Gosling, however, wants to fist-bump. I awkwardly shake his closed fist.

The actor fist-bumps Dan, then Kirsten.Ryan Gosling loves to fist-bump.

I have to do something to stay in touch with reality, or else I’m going to become just like my dad. I’m giving it up! I will tell no more stories, no more exaggerations of my life. Furthermore, to keep the old stories from popping back up, I am setting the record straight. I am poking truth holes in all of my wonderfully wound webs of anecdote:

I never made out with a TA when I was a freshman—almost, though.

I never professed my love to the girl I was enamored with in high school. I always wish I had.

I never pretended to be blind just so I could bring my golden retriever into a pizza shop.

The story of the goth-club bathroom in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is true. Every word of it.

Respect how difficult that was for me.And I vow not to create any new exaggerations as long as I live.

I’m hanging up my spurs. I’ve seen what I might become, my Ghost of Christmas Future, and I refuse to let myself continue down this path.

The actor and his fans have disappeared, and we’re ready to take off when the AAA truck finally arrives.

A moosey gentleman rolls down the tow-truck window. “You guys called?” Yeah, like two hours ago…“No, we’re okay.” I yell over the truck’s motor. “You’ll never believe

this, but the guy from The Notebook just gave us a jump.”Maybe I’m not done storytelling. c

Ryan Gosl ing

Aviv

The only picture that exists of Ryan Gosling and Aviv.


considering putting them to work in another industry, she says.

New Yorker Alla Zaydman, 37, who parted ways with her former employer in November 2008, has already mapped out a new plan for herself—and it has little to do with her former career. After sixteen years in finance performing credit and investment analysis, Zaydman now finds herself as an intern at Warner Music Group. The change is welcome, she says. Unlike Sadwick, Zaydman was exhausted by the personalities she encountered daily at work, the pressure of the job and what she called a lack of ethics in the industry. She was certain she’d land somewhere outside of New York’s financial community. And she did, enrolling in a New York University certificate program in human-resources management in January 2009 with plans to pursue a master’s degree. Accepting the fact that she has to work her way up in a new career, she says she feels fortunate she’s interning for a woman who is supportive of midlife career changers.

As for Sadwick, she’s taking an eyes-wide-open approach as she grapples with a possible career change. She knows the marketplace is flooded with underutilized talent: “There has been a cascading effect, and it has rippled through every industry,” she says. “Now I’m competing with people who have expertise in those other industries.” So Sadwick is doing what she does best—building relationships with people, networking and looking for her next opportunity. “I am talking to everyone I know and everyone who will listen,” she says.

The initiative Sadwick has taken in the time since the layoff can only enhance her marketability as a job candidate, according to Kathy Robinson, a career and business consultant at Boston-based TurningPoint. “It’s about being willing to get involved—that’s

what successful job searching looks like this year,” Robinson says.

While acknowledging the importance of networking, Sadwick says she’s dedicating much of her free time to a bigger cause. Acting on her belief that her generation needs to take a more active civic role, Sadwick is now volunteering for organizations she’s passionate about—from caring for children at the local YMCA to helping out families that need shelter or support. In the past she was only able to give with her checkbook; work kept her on the road at least two weeks every month.

Sadwick is most animated when she talks about her contributions to Martha Coakley’s recent campaign to fill Edward Kennedy’s senate seat. In fact, the first call she made after losing her job was to the campaign to offer her time and efforts. “I don’t want to make money on politics,” she says. “I want to contribute.” But Sadwick doesn’t rule out the possibility that her skills could find a home in the political arena. Social connections made through her volunteer efforts may well lead to her next career move.

Sylva Hsieh, at 27 the youngest of the three women, found her break at a cookbook club. For her, the transition from a lucrative position in the legal group of a New York equity hedge fund has been dramatic. Attracted by the swanky offices, the fast pace and the earning potential, Hsieh found a job with the then-small-but-growing fund in mid-2005, not long after graduating from college. In the years that followed, she occasionally considered leaving the company to attend law school but never did. “[Being there] was a lot of fun and a lot of money,” she says. “Why would I leave?”

It was a heady time. Like others in the industry, the hedge fund was doing well. Hsieh took advantage of all the company had to offer—a better position, a raise and other perks. But by the end of 2008, the fun was subsiding. Hsieh’s prospects at the firm were beginning to dwindle with the industry downturn. The work environment grew stressful, the hours became more demanding and deadlines tightened. “I felt like I was running a marathon every morning, only taking a breath at noon,” she says.

Hsieh survived the first round of layoffs. Then, despite being told her job was secure, she decided she wanted out. She reached that conclusion while out voting in the November 2008 national election. Realizing she hadn’t left the building during the day in ages, she

Liz Sadwick, Sylva Hsieh and Alla Zaydman used to have a lot in common. The three women were among the commuters who thronged each morning to urban financial centers to carry out duties at banks and investment firms. Handsome salaries compensated long hours worked, making sacrifices at home and in relationships seem worthwhile. Sadwick and Zaydman’s years of employment qualified them as veterans in the industry. Hsieh was quickly building her résumé.

Now, in the aftermath of a credit crisis that triggered massive reconfigurations in the financial sector, the women still have much in common. Turmoil in their industry has affected all three, leaving them unemployed in finance and having to reconstruct their careers and their lives.

Figures suggest that women in finance and banking have borne a disproportionate share of the effects of the recent downturn in the financial sector. In the two years after December 2006, when employment in the sector hit a peak following a decade that had men and women alike flocking to careers on Wall Street and at firms around the nation, female employment fell 4.7 percent, to 3.8 million. During that same time, male employment dropped 3.2 percent, according to the U.S. government’s Current Employment Statistics survey. In November 2009, the unemployment rate for women in finance, a subset of the financial services industry, reached nearly 7 percent—two and a half times what it was in late 2007, at the official onset of the recession. Yet for all the grimness of the statistics, the job changes Sadwick, Hsieh and Zaydman have experienced have provided one unexpected benefit: the opportunity to re-evaluate some fundamental life choices.

At 43, Sadwick, who lost her job in September 2009, doesn’t speak like a victim

of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Instead, like Hsieh, Zaydman and other women who have been laid off in financial services or who left a finance job out of exhaustion and frustration since the onset of the recession, she is doing some overdue soul-searching. “I don’t miss my emotional well-being being tied to the market,” Sadwick says. What she does miss, she says, is the people she worked with and the relationships she established over more than twenty years in the industry.

During the last decade, Sadwick built a solid reputation at a Boston-area asset management firm. Although she’s not arrogant about her accomplishments, she exudes pride for the team she assembled and the caliber of people she’s come to know through her position. Such prowess made Sadwick both valuable and vulnerable. Senior executives like her are among the most expensive and therefore often the first to be cut when companies face layoffs. The situation is even more complicated for women. According to Nicki Gilmour, CEO of The Glass Hammer, an online community for women executives in business, workplace diversity has become relatively less important in the past eighteen months, and women in senior positions have been let go alongside their male counterparts. “If a smaller percentage to start with were women, that didn’t particularly leave us in a good place,” Gilmour says of the cuts.

In any case, Sadwick now questions whether making money in finance and making money for other people is how she wants to leave her footprint. Looking back over the last two years, she calls it “disheartening and disgusting” that a sector that rallied together after 9/11 was so quick to let “greed” topple it. She is beginning to wrestle with her next steps. Recognizing that her marketing and communication skills are transferable, she is

Act(Re)Balancing[Lauren Keiper]

walked into her supervisor’s office after casting her vote and asked to be considered for the next round of layoffs. That cut never came, but Hsieh’s mind was made up. She quit—without a severance package or the security of unemployment compensation—and says she hasn’t looked back. She’d been secretly harboring hopes of applying to veterinary school, but she never received the bonus she’d been counting on to fund her plans. Instead, she began volunteering for animal-rescue operations throughout New York. She also donated time to The Safety Net/Pets for Life NYC, which offers guidance and solutions for people considering abandoning their pets.

But there was a dilemma. While volunteering was giving Hsieh insight into what she’d like to do in the future, it didn’t replace her lost income. And the soft economy didn’t help. For the first time in her still-young career, Hsieh doubted her future earning potential. She’d been sending out résumés and not receiving responses. “It was a reality check—I’m not as marketable as I thought I was,” she says. Vet school is now on hold while Hsieh takes science courses to enhance her application.

In the meantime, she’s landed a job in a growing industry. When a friend started a cookbook club, Hsieh thought it would be another way to reconnect with friends during her period of unemployment. But it was at this social gathering that she met the COO of a renewable-energy provider. Hsieh was hired as a manager of project coordination, which means she has her hands in all parts of the business—sales, finance, bids and office needs. “Common-sense knowledge transfers,” she says of the shift, noting her training at the hedge fund prepared her to take on project management.

The current job is far more low-key than her old one. Now, when she leaves work, she leaves work. “People know their boundaries,” she says of her new industry.

Hsieh’s story is not unique. Especially now, bad energy in the office and unhealthy work environments are driving people to change careers, according to Kirsten Lundeen, Associate Director of Alumni Relations at Boston University. Wherever conditions are not good to begin with, the recession makes them worse. According to Lundeen, women in finance are among those re-evaluating their impact on society and considering other careers—often ones that they believe will

provide more fulfilling work. There are trade-offs. The pay cut can be a major hurdle, she says; the reassessment in one’s standard of living can be sobering.

Both Zaydman and Sadwick acknowledge the financial impact on their lives now. “We cut back on a lot of stuff. We’re not planning as many vacations, not eating out as much,” says Zaydman of her current lifestyle. “It’s a slower pace, quieter. But the funny part is, that’s okay.” The sentiment is echoed by Sadwick, who kept an already-paid-for February 2010 vacation intact but explained to her 14-year-old son that holidays would be downsized this year.

With two young daughters and a husband who works full-time, Zaydman says it’s more important that she is mentally healthy for her family than that she bring home a six-figure salary. Just having time for her husband and children is no longer enough for Zaydman; she now strives for a “better quality of interaction” among them. Certain she will find that too in her new career path, Zaydman is imparting lessons to her daughters. “It would be silly to advocate they go into finance,” she says. Instead, she’s encouraging her older daughter’s interest in teaching. “There is a balance you have to keep in your head of what you are willing to do for how much money, what you put in versus what you get back emotionally.”

At the same time, Zaydman fully expects to rejoin the workforce. She is, she says, excited to put her newfound passion and education to work. “I’m not going to school for nothing,” she says. “Life without two incomes isn’t sustainable.”

It’s clear, in any case, that Zaydman won’t be on the early train into Manhattan anytime soon. Nor will Hsieh, who finds the commute out to her new job in New Jersey a lot less taxing than battling the city traffic. Sadwick remains uncertain about what her future will hold. Working her contacts—whether at the local Y or on the campaign trail—she continues to question where her career path will lead. She has not ruled out a return to finance. But if she does rejoin others for the familiar drive from the suburbs into Boston’s financial district, she will do so differently than she did before—more mindful this time of meaning, and of life balance. c


“Darius Goes West is the story of Darius Weems, who suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy.”

“I’m not suffering,” Darius interrupts. He is onstage at the 2009 Technology, Entertainment and Design conference, with his best friend, Logan Smalley. They’re performing a skit to present their mission to an audience of experts, physicians and PhDs.

“You’re not suffering?” asks Logan. “You were born with the ability to walk, your muscles are deteriorating and now you’re in a wheelchair.”

“That don’t mean I’m suffering.”“You have a 100-percent fatal disease. Kids

with your disease die in their late teens and early twenties. Don’t you know that you’re dying?”

Indeed, Darius Weems appears healthy. He was born with the number-one genetic killer of children in the world—a disease that already has limited his mobility and affected his heart and that eventually will compromise his ability to breathe. But for now, he is very much alive.

Bits of regurgitated wasabi fly through the air as Darius coughs and sputters. The teenager is drawing even more attention than his massive, wheelchair-bound presence normally does. Nearby, his friends collapse in hysterics. He’s recovering from a dare they proposed—that he down a spoonful of wasabi having no idea what the condiment was.

At a Carnegie Hall fund-raiser, the audience watches this scene from the award-winning documentary Darius Goes West. Eyes well up. Pranks like this would seem cruel toward anyone, let alone a teenager who has lost the use of his hands and motor skills. But as Logan Smalley, the film’s director and Darius’s best friend, points out, this crew is made of equals, and they spare Darius nothing. Why would they, they reason, when time is running out?

DGW, as the film is nicknamed, chronicles a road trip across America in a quest to “pimp” (or embellish) Darius’s ride on MTV’s reality series Pimp My Ride—the ride in this case being a wheelchair. Darius and the DGW crew hoped to document wheelchair accessibility while raising awareness for DMD along the way. Although the film debuted in 2007, the group’s journey has only begun. It continues with education and intensive fund-raising: tens of thousands of dollars raised, more than 100,000 miles traveled, hundreds of schools visited and more than 600 screenings of the film.

Book officiant. That’s what all the bridal magazines told me to do at least nine months before the wedding.

To be honest, with a year to plan I’d been more preoccupied with short ribs or halibut, buttercream or fondant, than with deciding who would perform our ceremony. But somewhere between selecting mini crab flautas to be served during cocktail hour and

corn bisque for a starter, I realized the menu shouldn’t be my top priority. For the first time, Eric and I would have to explicitly address our different religious backgrounds and decide how Judaism and Christianity would factor into our life together.

While we were dating, Eric and I had introduced our different traditions to each other. I relished giving him his first Christmas stocking. Now we celebrate that holiday with my family in Pennsylvania. Sometimes we dine with friends on the Jewish Sabbath and for Rosh Hashanah. When we celebrated Passover with his family, I was introduced to the prayers and the food in addition to the extended family.

The religious differences that had seemed simply novel early in our relationship became more significant after he slipped a ring on my finger. Neither of us demanded our religion take top billing. I didn’t want to get married in a church and offend Eric or his family. He didn’t want to force us to have the ceremony in a synagogue. Yet selecting the place we’d be married and someone to officiate would be viewed by friends and family as a public announcement of the identity we’d assume as a couple and the religion we’d most likely pass on to our children.

I would have gone to city hall the day after he proposed, but Eric wanted a more traditional celebration. I got on board with the idea and, as in many couples, assumed the female lead in executing the plans. Initially, I focused on creating a completely secular event. We moved forward with plans to book our ceremony in an outdoor courtyard with a reception in one of our favorite restaurants. We considered asking a friend to marry us, having fun thinking about who would tell a good story, who would cry. Our second thought was to hire an officiant, someone without ties to either of us. I’d found nondenominational and interfaith leaders who would travel to Boston, learn our story and craft a custom ceremony for our day.

Eventually those ideas fizzled, and we found a meaningful, if not religious, place for the ceremony and reception. The Boston

Public Library was devoted to art, architecture and learning. A hidden courtyard offered privacy and intimacy. Eric and I were both excited about the space. Still, we had a site, but no one to perform the wedding.

Our families, meanwhile, were further along in the debate over our religious future than we were. Throughout our planning, Eric’s parents encouraged us to talk with their rabbi. On the wall of Eric’s childhood bedroom is a poster of him clutching a basketball and wearing a baseball cap. The poster is inscribed with words of congratulations for his bar mitzvah. Mazel tov, the kids from school penned in red and black Sharpie. His parents probably look forward to participating in the same coming-of-age ritual for their grandchildren. I suspect they also may worry that since I’m planning the event, Christianity will trump Judaism on our wedding day and beyond because it’s what I know. But my own family wonders if our kids will be raised Jewish, perhaps assuming that our physical proximity to Eric’s parents and their more active role in a religious community will influence us.

In any case, Eric wasn’t actively seeking a Jewish congregation to join, and I hadn’t been interviewing Protestant churches. Maybe we were just being lazy; maybe we were avoiding a task that would send us in different directions rather than help us move forward together.

I didn’t expect to find our answer at the voting booth. I’d rushed into the church that served as our neighborhood polling place for the local elections one fall day, worried there would be a line. But I was alone to cast my vote. When I left, the sun was beginning to fade. I breathed in the fall air and glanced around. I hadn’t noticed it when I went in, but there were two flags out front—one with the seal of the Episcopal Church, the other with the Star of David.

I learned from the church’s website that in addition to the Episcopal gathering on Sundays, Jewish services were held there on Friday evenings. There was a rabbi in residence, and the two congregations had formed an urban interfaith center.

But it wasn’t until my first Sunday service that I found out the Jewish worshippers had roots in this old Protestant church. The progressive Jewish congregation didn’t just lease space. The faiths shared offices and worshipped under the same roof. The Episcopal priest prayed with the Jewish congregation, and the rabbi addressed Christian worshippers once a month. For the last five years, the two faiths had literally been living and growing together.

It sounded like a good prescription for our marriage. After church that day I called Eric, who was traveling for work. I think the relief in my voice was audible. I told him the lines in that church were blurred just enough that I could see our future there. The rabbi and the priest were checking their availability for August 7, 2010.

And I’d added another check mark to our wedding planning list.

FindingFaithOur [Lauren Keiper]

[Samantha Gennuso]

The project originated with Darius’s older brother Mario, who died from DMD

when he was 19 years old. Logan, who holds a master’s degree in technology innovation and education from Harvard University, went to middle and elementary school with both Weems boys. He grew close to Mario while working at Project Reach, a camp for kids with disabilities. Before Mario died, he asked Logan to take care of Darius, who had never left their home state of Georgia. Together with eleven friends, Logan and Darius began a trip that would see Darius across the country.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a slow killer. The most common fatal genetic disease among young males, it usually claims its victims by the time they reach their early twenties. When the Carnegie Hall audience hears these facts seconds after watching Darius grin as he tells his friends to “get out his way” in a DGW scene, many seem visibly shaken. But pity is the last thing Darius wants. “Sometimes you go through things in life to find yourself,” he says. “I’m 20 years old and I’m still pushing it, and I ain’t planning on leaving this world for a long time. I’m a fighter.”

The documentary, which compressed 300 hours of footage from the road into 90 minutes, was Logan’s first foray into filmmaking. It has already had an impact—on the crew, on those who have seen the film and, perhaps most notably, on those affected by the disease. Charley’s Fund, founded by Benjy and Tracy Seckler to raise funds for DMD research, receives all proceeds from Darius Goes West, the organization. But the Secklers’ cause is especially urgent: They

Going to the chapel . . . and the synagogue

Lauren and Eric pose for their engagement photos.

c

photos courtesy of DGW


take a yearlong trip, this time making fund-raising their number-one goal. They visited schools on a weekly basis and fund-raised on the Internet constantly. “We covered 42 states and 50,000 miles [in 2008]. We were in a different city practically every night,” says Logan. “We got a DVD of Darius Goes West into every middle school and high school in the country. All the people we originally met at festivals helped us spread the word.”

The DGW crew consists of eleven of Darius’s and Logan’s friends, most of whom are now in their twenties. They show their devotion to Darius in different ways, some by sobbing during more poignant scenes in the film, and others by getting a “Darius Went West” tattoo inked on their bodies as a permanent reminder of their journey.

“Curing DMD will always be a goal in every crew member’s life. We’ve been a part of something so amazing,” says Logan. “We see it as an opportunity and a responsibility. We were fortunate enough to make a movie that has the power to make people both laugh and be inspired.”

Indeed, what started as an attempt to spread the word about DMD by using the money from pre-selling dozens of movie credits has morphed into something much larger. Most recently, it led them to the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) organization, which is devoted to publicizing innovative ideas in a myriad of fields. Logan and Darius were recently inducted as TED

are hoping to find a cure for DMD in the lifetime of their nine-year-old son, Charley. Not yet aware of the seriousness of his disease, Charley keeps a Darius bobblehead figure on his desk (it’s his prized possession, says Tracy) and an “Audience Choice” Darius Goes West film award on his wall. All he cared about when he met Darius were his cool wheelchair gadgets and his chances for beating him at the popular video game Madden ’09.

The morning after the Carnegie Hall screening, the air is cool in Central Park. The DGW guys are enjoying every second of their time in the Big Apple for the film’s first New York screening. Aidan, a young boy with DMD who appeared in the documentary, playfully kicks a soccer ball, while Darius rams into unsuspecting friends in his chair. One of them, Sam Johnson—messy red hair blocking his peripheral vision—shouts out, “Come on, man!” Darius laughs, relentless. John Hadden, cinematographer for the film, brags, “I kick so much butt at soccer. I don’t discriminate. Everyone feels the rage—babies, adults, kids with DMD, I spare no one the abuse!” Darius just grins. “He done show nobody who’s boss, he lyin’,” he murmurs.

The documentary, in addition to shadowing the crew’s antics in a temperamental RV, offers viewers broad insight into the disease: “There’s one genetic cause; we’re talking about one target,” explains Benjy Seckler. “One domino tips over, and then all of the dominoes in its path begin to fall. If you can stop that one domino, these children are either going to be cured or have remarkable improvement in their quality of life. In 20 years, a generation of children with Duchenne is lost, so the race is on, and we’re in the race.”

After enjoying newfound fame—the movie was selected for New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, among numerous other awards—Darius and his crew decided to

fellows. “We practiced it a lot,” Darius says of the DMD skit they presented at the ceremony. “I was kind of nervous, but not as nervous as Logan.” He grins.

The TED presentation was the first time Logan and Darius publicly discussed the fact that DMD will take Darius’s life. “Darius is certainly very comfortable talking about death,” says Logan. “But if you focus on the sad parts, it wouldn’t be true to his character. To not portray his humor and unique style would be a missed opportunity

to introduce a really cool person.”“Day to day I don’t really think about it,”

says crew member Jason Hees. “I think about the stuff we did and the people we met. But I [imagine] us getting together in 30 years reminiscing about it and I think, ‘Jesus, D’s not gonna be around for that.’ But his story’s going to live on; he’s always going to be there—we’ve got hours and hours of footage.”

In spite of all the attention and acclaim, Darius remains much like any 20-year-old. He eventually did get his wheelchair customized (though not by MTV), and is now equipped at all times with an iPod, a hands-free cell phone, a 13.5-inch flat-screen TV, a PlayStation, a stereo, a ten-inch subwoofer, two amps, spinner rims and the world’s loudest wheelchair horn. He also loves football, rap and his mother’s cooking.

But most teenagers haven’t been featured on the back of a Doritos bag. Most teenagers will never star in a film or win a major prize for community service—in this case, the Do Something! award from MTV. It was this award that caught the eye of MTV’s public-relations director, Jeff Castaneda. Although they had initially refused to “pimp” Darius’s ride, citing health risks, MTV finally decided to air Darius Goes West on MTVU and MTV2, to an astounding 80 million viewers, on Darius’s 20th birthday—a present better than any stereo system he could imagine. “We’d basically given up on MTV,” says Logan. “It

Darius awaits his first hot air balloon ride.

was one of those full-circle moments, after hundreds of miles of travel and all the time we’d spent trying to reach out to them.”

In the five years since the film was made, Darius has grown into an articulate young man, well versed in speaking with interviewers and more poised than most his age. He’s learned that his story isn’t just inspiring; it’s essential. “You’ve got to find two things: what you want to do with your own life and what you can do to help other people. The way I look at it, DMD is the whole world’s problem. This disease doesn’t discriminate,” he says. “Telling our story will make people want to make life better for others.”

One reason the crew conducted so many screenings in schools was to give DMD a face. It is Darius, with his huge smile, propensity for imitating John Madden and sly remarks that keep his friends constantly on their toes. It is Charley Seckler, with his head of curls, who can break it down on the dance floor better than most. It is Mrs. Weems, who lost one son to DMD and will inevitably lose another, and Benjy and Tracy Seckler, whose child faces an uncertain future.

“Your life is shattered into so many pieces, you can’t even count them. And the pieces are so small,” says Benjy Seckler in the documentary. “Your life as it was is over. Instead you have to find a way to put those pieces together and make your life meaningful again. And not only do that but also find a way to cure this disease.”

There is progress. Charley’s Fund has funded more than a dozen different DMD research partners over the course of five years. Eighteen months after starting the foundation, the Secklers hired a PhD with 20 years in the biotech industry to help identify the most promising research and work directly with scientists to ensure success. Still, DMD is not nearly as publicized as they would wish. After all, it took two years for MTV to recognize the DGW movement.

But that movement is growing by the week. Thousands of donors have become “crew members” by giving to DGW. During

Facebook’s American Giving Challenge this past year, the organization placed 12th in a contest of hundreds, winning $10,000 in addition to the $30,000 in donations that earned it the ranking.

Everywhere they go, the guys yield new supporters—a result, no doubt, of their enthusiasm for the project. “It’s the most fun nonprofit I’ve ever been a part of because we have a product that sells itself—Darius Goes West,” says Daniel Epting, the group’s designated RV driver. “There’s a compassion level with the whole crew, and D’s fortunate to be a part of that.” Mrs. Weems considers herself lucky, too. “Come Mother’s Day, they’re all my boys,” she says of the crew in DGW. “Every single one.”

As the group gains momentum, Logan is accumulating even more on his plate. When he’s not leading screenings with other crew members, he is working online to spread the word about DMD. “I wouldn’t say I’m an expert; I’d call myself an experimenter. We’re constantly trying to figure out ways to reach more people,” he says.

“You can’t stop yourself from coming to Earth, and you can’t stop yourself from leaving. But you’re here in life to make something of yourself,” says Darius in the documentary. Currently he’s focusing on a rap career, in addition to reaching out to fans via Skype at screenings. Due to congestive heart failure, an inevitable symptom of late-stage DMD, he can no longer travel. “I’m not a person that gives up, and I’m not a person that accepts defeat. They’re gonna have to come get it if they wanna take my life because I got a reason to be living,” he says. “I can’t let the fans down.” But when Darius refers to finding a cure, he’s not talking about himself. At 20 he is old by DMD standards. He’s talking about

nine-year-old Charley. For his part, Charley seems unfazed by

Darius’s disability. He recently told his parents, “If I were older, that could’ve been Charley Goes West. That’s what it should’ve been!”

The Secklers’ gratitude is palpable. “Instead of [Charley] having to be told about [DMD], he just sees someone managing it as beautifully as you possibly can,” says Tracy Seckler. “If there’s one thing I want besides a cure, it’s a group of friends like that for Charley.”

As Logan points out in the documentary, the crew embarked on the three-week trip to celebrate Darius’s life, not to save it. While on the road, Logan says, he came to realize that Darius understood this, even at 15. “It shook me the way Mario did when he asked me to look after his brother, and the way it would anybody who’s been to a funeral for someone their own age. It shook me to action,” he says.

During the final scenes of Darius Goes West, Logan reconciles the past, present and future of their mission. “Darius is saying, ‘Look out for my ‘brother’ when I’m gone,’” Logan says. “He knows that he is the vehicle. And that doesn’t make me want to cry. It makes me want to fight.”

Darius looks out over the Grand Canyon.

c


Smiles strain as a camera clicks. “Look here!” the photographer shouts.

It is the afternoon of my sister Mary’s wedding. I am the only girl who hasn’t yet made it to the altar—the fifth and last Gorman girl. But my brothers have some catching up to do. Not one of the five has made the leap yet.

Yes, the Gorman kids comprise five girls and five boys, totaling a somewhat startling ten.

For the photo, all of us squeeze together with my parents in the middle. The women’s lip gloss shimmers in the slanting light. Ties are perfectly knotted, pinstripes clean and neat. It will be a miracle if the slew of pictures results in one where 24 eyes are open and 12 mouths are smiling, I think as I smooth my bridesmaid’s dress and glance at everyone’s expressions.

Twenty-one years after I joined this family as number nine, the chaos of posing together hardly fazes me. That was not always so. Being part of a middle-class curiosity was uncomfortable when I did not know my place in the picture. Yet it was partly through photos that I eventually learned where I belonged.

In junior high—the height of identity crisis for girls with braces, acne or Coke-bottle glasses, let alone nine brothers and sisters—I spent a summer immersed in our family photos. It was my job to organize the shoe boxes full of decades of memories that covered our living-room table. Somehow the task became mine permanently. Years later, on breaks from college, I still tackle photo-related chores that have been set aside for me. (The job does have its perks: In a recent effort to find childhood bath-time pictures to display for guests to see in our bathrooms, I mysteriously did not find any of me.)

At the beginning, dealing with the holiday piles was especially daunting. There were Christmas and Easter towers, behind which my brothers would tease me by pretending to be Godzilla. The stacks only grew as my older siblings began to move away, eventually extending our family tree from New York City to California. Group photos became all the more obligatory because we were all together so rarely.

Inevitably I posed uncomfortably, knees bent, because I could never find the perfect space among my family members. Even as I played the mini-mom and told my little brother David to smile with teeth, I could not wait for the sessions to end.

Indeed, the negatives often showed number nine off to the side, and how could that not be so with the cast of characters that surrounded me? The parents, Timothy Gorman and Gail Formichella, met and married young. Mom’s Italian-olive-toned skin stood out in my Dad’s Roman-Catholic-Irish parish. Dad, a lawyer who sometimes still wears his suit while on the treadmill, finished law school while they lived in married student housing. From there, adventures ensued with

ten children.I split the siblings into

two groups: the top five and the bottom five. Katie, Emily, Edward, Mary and Claire made up the top. Andrew, Joseph, Peter and David maintained the chaos as I grew up. From start to finish we spanned 18 years. Our memories came from different decades, but all of us had to deal with being defined by our large family, whether we liked it or not.

Although we sometimes shared similar experiences, being number nine

presented a unique challenge. I was not granted a title as others were—the oldest or the smartest, the funniest, the baby—but I still had nine other lives to live up to. When I first became the family archivist, I was in the midst of that quandary. As I slid pictures of dinners (complete with a vat of macaroni and cheese) into plastic album sleeves, I imagined that I would always be known as an oddity who happened to share a gene pool with more than your average number of people.

Part of the photo job was organizing individual stacks for each sibling. My own pile, at first, was small in comparison to my older siblings’ stacks. Yet as time went on, that slowly began to change.

My pile grew, and so did my stature. My humble role as Fork B4 in a local production of Beauty and the Beast was documented, but then so was the sequined, curve-hugging costume I donned as Dolly in Hello, Dolly. By high school my soloist pictures were mounting up: one for the yearbook as “Senior Song Bird,” another singing the Christmas Mass solo at my church, and so on. It was becoming clearer that not only could I stand on my own, but I could also be the center of attention. I underscored my independence by moving to Boston for college—farther than any of my siblings had gone.

When I started unpacking my things in my dorm room, far from that table of albums and stacks of pictures (310 miles away, to be exact), a photo I had tacked onto my bulletin board caught my eye. It was a copy of a much larger family picture, taken before I was a star on the stage, even before I was the go-to photo person.

I recalled the original, hanging above the kitchen table back at home—one of the few professional photographs that have captured all of us. If you look quickly, it almost seems life-size. The sight of it as you open the back door into the house is alarming. The massive frame surrounds a bevy of blue-clad, awkwardly placed figures. But as I looked closely at the smaller copy on my board, my perspective changed. The characters I’d always been able to see were there, individually, but also as a collective. All of us were enhanced in the context of our gene pool.

Years later, I brave another professional photographer, at Mary’s wedding. Clenching my bouquet, I make a move from the end of the group, inserting myself into the long line of Gorman faces.

“Look at each other!” the photographer demands. A few bumbling seconds of confusion follow the bizarre request, and then our gazes slowly shift from the camera lens to each other.

I stare into my sister Katie’s eyes. We smile, and suddenly all ten siblings start to laugh.

“Now look here!” the photographer yells.The pictures show us shoulder to shoulder, laughter overwhelming

us, our best family photo since the blue one. Everyone appears ready to move away from the picture and on to the celebration of new family. The next day I will sit at the living-room table clicking through digital cameras, choosing which pictures to print and which to post to our family blog. But at that moment, I put my system aside. I am ready now to celebrate the addition of new members into our family, because the more there are, the better we all are.

10123 54 6789Number

Number nine stands out with hands firmly planted on hips.

[Teresa Gorman]

The Gorman family poses at Mary’s wedding.

c

"the comment" (boston university graduate school com magazine, 2010)

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