The BU Audubon Society, a bird-watching club founded last year, has been officially chartered this spring as a Student Association (SA) organization and a recognized chapter of the National Audubon Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bird conservation.

Club president and founding member Lisa Viviano, a junior majoring in biology, grew up with birds as pets and was inspired by her mom’s affinity for wild species.

“It’s just always been this passion for them, to a point where in high school, everyone called me ‘Bird Lady,’” she laughed.

When Viviano arrived at BU as a transfer student during her sophomore year, she heard from a roommate that the National Audubon Society had emailed the environmental studies department looking to set up a BU chapter. Viviano contacted the society’s outreach associate and started planning a bird club at BU, meeting other interested students through classes, mutual friends or professors. The club recruited members last spring, started SA paperwork over the summer and began hosting events this past fall.

The club usually hosts outdoor bird-watching excursions, along with occasional indoor activities like October’s “‘Fall’ in Love With Birds” event, where attendees made bird crafts out of leaves and learned about feather structure.

Sage Daughton, club secretary and a senior majoring in environmental studies, said outdoor events are the most rewarding.

“It’s definitely fun to have meetings and apply more educational initiatives, but it’s a whole other thing to go out and see the birds yourself,” she said. “We’ve definitely had some really cool experiences, even in the Nature Preserve, that you wouldn’t expect.”

Standout sightings from this year’s excursions included a pileated woodpecker that the group tracked for a long time, an osprey and a massive flurry of snow geese disturbed by the overhead passing of a bald eagle. This March, the club participated in the “Big Duck Day,” an annual road trip to Lake Ontario led by several BU faculty members. Julien Shepherd, an associate professor of biology who teaches Biology 379: Biology and Conservation of Birds, not only leads birding excursions, but supplies club members with leftover binoculars and facilitates interactions between his students and the club.

Viviano said faculty engagement has been crucial to the club’s success.

“[The Big Duck Day] was a spectacular event because we were joined by some expert birders and professors at BU, and we saw literally thousands of birds,” she said.

According to Viviano, the club’s role as an official Audubon conservation chapter also requires it to spend time on educational outreach. For example, in an effort to highlight bird-related conversation issues, club members have tabled with Audubon reports about migratory birds and climate change.

“[The National Audubon Society] is going to provide us with resources, information and grants we can potentially apply for, so people can get really involved and learn more about how they can help,” Viviano said.

Adrian Burke, vice president of the club and a senior majoring in biology, said belonging to this larger organization has connected the group with nationwide initiatives.

“They have a number of conservation initiatives they’re working on already with other campus chapters, and also the National Audubon Society as a whole, so they kind of have the groundwork laid out,” he said. “Now that we’re a chapter, they can add us to their efforts.”

The club has attracted some seasoned enthusiasts. Burke has been birding for six years, starting in high school with trips to Central Park. However, Viviano says it’s not just for experts.

“We wanted to have a lot of entry-level events, so a lot of people who have this spark of interest can have it develop into a hobby,” she said. “While it’s mostly [environmental studies] and [biology] majors, we’ve gotten some biochemistry and [mathematics] majors, and some people who are really in it for the photography.”

Viviano said the club has garnered more interest than she’d expected — its GroupMe chat consists of about 60 members, and there are about 100 members on its Listserv.

“It seems like whenever we set up these events, we expect to be out for maybe an hour or two, and then it extends into, ‘Oh, you guys can leave if you want, but we want to see some owls, maybe,’ and it’s just the energy that we’re met with that gets me every time,” Viviano said. “It’s gotten much more attention than I could’ve ever hoped for, and I’m so grateful for that.”

Burke said the community surrounding the activity has made it even more enriching for him after years of experience.

“I’m always going out there and seeing the birds myself, but it’s something way better when I get to share it with people,” he said.

I’ve grown and changed in countless ways since freshman year, but sitting down to write this column, I feel less inclined to write about my journey than about what I’ve found here. Some of the happiest moments of my life have been spent sampling local honey and chatting with farmers, reading zines that were dropped in my mailbox, losing my breath at basement punk shows, walking home from First Fridays and taking in the colors of our impossible, unpredictable skies. My time here as an Arts & Culture journalist has introduced me to a city of treasures; every tiny, beautiful ecosystem is a reminder that our passions are more important than the numbers on our transcripts or our future paychecks.

The story of Binghamton, as you’ve probably heard it, is the story of many post-industrial towns: factories leave, jobs are lost, economies plummet. The story doesn’t end there, though, and when all is said and done, it will be a story not just of how the arts can rebuild a community, but of how passion, creativity and love define a community more than any statistic could. There is so much to love here, and there is so much love here. The Triple Cities assure me that art, at its best, gives us the impetus to love and be loved, to connect with strangers who seem a little less strange once a song is heard or a poem is read.

If you’re reading this as a current or future BU student, take it to heart. In college, you have access to resources you might never have again — use them to help this city grow alongside you. As much as all our student groups move us forward in a myriad of ways, our progressive activist groups, both on and off campus, are fighting to ensure that everyone moves forward, and I especially salute them. While activism is not the path for everyone, I hope every BU student understands that their foremost commitment is not to grades or money or acclaim, but to people. In my conversations as a journalist, I’ve learned you can make that commitment in a number of ways: through food, or music, or science, or knitting. My advice to you is simply to make it, and to make it fully. Make choices responsibly, think beyond your four years here and consider the unforeseen consequences of every bit of energy you put out.

In the words of a past Arts & Culture Editor, one who always approached the Triple Cities’ artistic communities with the enthusiasm they deserve, “If you love Binghamton, it will love you back.” The love from a community that nurtures and inspires you is the purest love in the world — give Binghamton the chance to bring that love into your life, as it has into mine.

To Molly, Mia, Milla, Gabe and Doug: Thank you for being my first friends here. I love you guys.

To the amazing people I’ve met in the Phi, the Food Co-op and Pipe Dream: Thank you for making my college years so hard to leave behind. There are too many of you to name, and I’m endlessly grateful for the support system I’ve found here.

To everyone fighting for social justice at BU and in the Triple Cities: Thank you for your courage and resilience. I am honored to share this community with you.

Finally, to all the folks making art in and around Binghamton: Thank you for being you, and, of course, for giving me something to write about.

Gabriela Iacovano is a senior double-majoring in English and environmental studies and is the arts & culture editor. She was an assistant arts & culture editor from 2018-19.

At the time, it was a question not easily answered. By May 2, 1970, hippie culture had reached its apex at the school, and with it came acid trips and a new ambulance corps, campus conflict and canceled classes, tragedy and transcendent guitar solos.

As the coronavirus pandemic causes paralleled upheavals in campus life, the story of May 1970 is worth retelling 50 years later within the context of BU’s ever-changing political landscape. It starts with Jerry Garcia and company in the West Gym.

The music

On a Saturday evening, members of the Tau Alpha Upsilon fraternity shepherded a crowd of BU students, students from neighboring colleges and traveling “Deadheads” into a newly built gymnasium. Soon after, the Grateful Dead would commence their nearly three-hourlong set.

Richard Wolinsky, ‘71, said the Grateful Dead had not yet reached legendary status at the time of the concert, which took place barely a year after the band played at Woodstock in Bethel, New York.

“At the time they were just another one of the West Coast bands, albeit one with an amazing reputation, but I don’t think in 1970 they had the kind of reputation that they gained years later,” Wolinksy said. “It was only later that they became ‘The Dead’ in that sense.”

The Spring Fling of the late ‘60s, or “Spring Weekend,” usually featured a popular artist, whereas other concerts throughout the year were smaller. In 1970, BU’s campus had already seen visits from folk icon Arlo Guthrie, classic rock staple The Band and gospel singer Marion Williams.

According to Wolinsky, Harpur College students of the period listened to records, but radio was also a huge source of discovery, especially since college radio provided an alternative to mainstream stations. The acid rock genre, pioneered by bands like the Grateful Dead, was just one facet of a diverse musical landscape.

“I was kind of always between the hippie crowd and the student government crowd, but the student government crowd was listening to a lot of Phil Ochs or Bob Dylan or Simon & Garfunkel,” he said. “You had different groups with different tastes.”

Students at the time might have owned one of the band’s two studio albums, but they also might have heard about live shows through word of mouth. Wolinsky said the band’s live shows conveyed an entirely different image from the one crafted by its record label, as was the case with other captivating live acts like Janis Joplin.

“You’d hear of these groups, but since the albums did not necessarily reflect who they were, you didn’t know what they sounded like unless you went to a concert,” he said.

At the BU show, the band debuted the New Riders of the Purple Sage, an opening act that shared members with the Grateful Dead, while trying out a new act that split their shows into an acoustic and an electric set. Wolinsky’s review of the show, printed in BU’s Colonial News and stylized to sound like it was written on acid, maps out some highlights: “Viola Lee Blues with three buildups,” “a stirring rendition of Good Lovin” and a “totally controlled and superb Morning Dew.”

Of the more than 2,300 concerts the band has played since its formation in 1965, the BU show is consistently ranked as one of its best, with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke ranking it in his top 20 live Grateful Dead performances and Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux ranking it in his top five. The show was recorded by then-producer Bob Matthews and released in 1997 as “Dick’s Picks Vol. 8,” now coveted among collectors for whom live tapes are as integral to the band’s canon, if not more so, than studio albums. Wolinsky’s review was included in the liner notes of the physical release. Many of the band’s live tapes were recorded and circulated by concertgoers, and Wolinsky said this tradition marks the Grateful Dead as a “people’s band.”

“Most bands did not allow people to tape, and the Dead encouraged it,” Wolinsky said. “There was a certain freedom with the Grateful Dead that other bands did not have, and a lot of people thought they were crazy for doing it, but it turned out to be the smartest move they ever made.”

While the Grateful Dead didn’t always put on great shows — their Woodstock set was famously sloppy — Wolinsky said the members’ chemistry and musical ability allowed them to soar on the day of the BU concert.

“I think part of it was they were primarily an instrumental band, so even though they sang, and they could sing well, they were basically a jazz band who played rock and roll, or jazz or just spaced-out stuff,” he said. “I think their ability to improvise, to go off in whatever directions they could and have the other members of the band keep up with them, was fairly unique, and I think that’s how their audience grew.”

More than anything else, he said the concert was a miracle of chance, a product of the right band in the right place at the right time.

“It’s a venue, it’s an audience, it’s the way the musicians were feeling on a particular night,” he said. “If you’re in a place where the confluence of all that comes together, you’re gonna be seeing something very special.”

The drugs

The Grateful Dead’s legacy has become associated with not only epic live shows, but with LSD. Sound engineer Owsley Stanley maintained his status as a counterculture legend by keeping concertgoers and festivalgoers fueled on acid, and the drug was certainly common at BU during the apex of the hippie era.

According to Sal Caruana, ‘73, tripping students were sprawled on couches in the Student Center or in residential hall lounges daily, and while BU had a first-rate infirmary, the only drug counseling on campus was a student-run program called High Hopes, which was run out of a small room and contained three cots, some anti-drug literature and one student volunteer on duty 24/7.

Caruana said campus drug use reached its peak at the concert.

“Between the two sets there was an intermission, and in the intermission, a lot of people went outside, and it was pouring and these people were impervious to the rain, and that told you that they were really into the music or really out of their skulls,” Caruana said. “The whole Deadhead phenomenon was also very connected to drug use and that piece of it we weren’t prepared for. No one said, ‘What are we gonna do about that aspect?’”

When the West Gym finally emptied around 1:30 a.m., there were eight individuals left lying on the floor in various drug-induced states. Student concert staffers rushed to call local hospitals for ambulances. Campus security was also called for help, but EMT training was not yet part of their skill set.

Tensions between a conservative, working-class Binghamton community and the student body had escalated since the first student political marches Downtown in the late ‘60s, and according to Caruana, this mutual distrust influenced how student staffers handled the post-concert emergency.

“The conversations with hospital dispatchers were troubling, and the indifference our callers were sensing was thought by some to be ‘hippie payback,’” he wrote in an article on the founding of Harpur’s Ferry. “(Today, decades later and in fairness to those dispatchers, our perceptions could easily have been blurred by the agitation and impatience that commonly besets those who call for emergency assistance.)”

In an effort to avoid more “hippie payback,” Caruana and others filled a few cars with the unconscious concertgoers and rushed them to three separate hospitals: United Health Services (UHS) Binghamton General Hospital, Lourdes Hospital and Wilson Memorial Hospital, where they were promptly accepted and treated. According to Caruana, none of the eight individuals had been recognized as BU students, and the University never confirmed news of their outcomes.

“The administration’s policy toward the obvious was ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” Caruana wrote. “It sounds so incredible today, but back then benign neglect was the way it was managed on most college campuses when it came to hard drugs.”

The incident inspired the establishment of Harpur’s Ferry, spearheaded by High Hopes founder Adam Bernstein, ‘73, and Jon-Marc Weston, ‘73, of Tau Alpha Upsilon, which emptied its treasury into the project. In the wake of the concert, premed students and fraternity brothers alike banded together to get the volunteer ambulance program off the ground.

The movement

May 1970 didn’t just landmark BU’s music and drug cultures; it saw an unmatched period of student activism.

BU, previously called Harpur College before its name change in 1965, was a small liberal arts school with a national reputation, and as its intellectual communities bloomed, so did direct action on campus. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, it was as common to see a “guerrilla theatre” performance in the cafeteria as it was to see a protest on the Peace Quad.

Students today can look to previous generations of Binghamton University students for hope and inspiration in dealing with difficult times.

“Activism was happening in highly developed liberal arts schools, so places like University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Ivy League schools, and we had students who were academically eligible for these places, but financially couldn’t make it,” Caruana said. “The whole liberal arts tradition [at BU] was an accelerant.”

Young men of the period anxiously threw themselves into their studies in efforts to avoid the draft via admittance into graduate school, a loophole that was later closed. All the while, protests Downtown, on Vestal Parkway and at the University president’s office, often in response to military actions and the presence of Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) on campus, gained traction. When Nelson Rockefeller visited BU a few years later, backlash from students resulted in an unforgettable image of him flipping off his audience.

On April 30, 1970, two days before the Grateful Dead concert, the Nixon administration announced it was invading Cambodia in pursuit of its Vietnam objectives. Two days later, campuses across the nation reacted to the shooting of four Kent State University student protesters at the hands of the National Guard, and on May 15, two students were killed when police opened fire on a dormitory at the historically black Jackson State College. In the week following the concert, BU students and the Faculty Senate voted to strike, and finals were made optional as classes were suspended.

“It’s an important moment to celebrate the significance of college activism because when that happened, the protests were spontaneous and when you look back at the numbers, I’d say two-thirds of the colleges had to close because students said, ‘college isn’t important anymore, this is important,’” Caruana said. “‘What happened to these kids is important, a president that lies is important.’ It was a mass walkout from college, and that’s historically important because there’s been nothing like it since.”

While not every BU faculty member supported the anti-war effort, there were several who led protests and demonstrations alongside students, including University President G. Bruce Dearing.

Stephen McKiernan, ‘70, remembers students being warned by professors not to wear their BU jackets Downtown as local distaste for the protests escalated.

“A lot of people in Binghamton supported the war, and even when I used to take the bus back and forth into the city, students would go in pairs,” McKiernan said. “There were a lot of people who didn’t like Harpur [College] students.”

In the Colonial News’ last issue of the semester, the student paper’s Editorial Board wrote about an open forum that occurred between students, faculty and silent majority demonstrators.

“The demonstrators came here thinking Harpur [College] was closed,” the article reads. “They believed that they were taxpayers, paying for an education which we were not getting … We tried to convince them that we had gotten more of an education in the last two weeks than ever before.”

Momentum continued through graduation, where peace sign buttons were passed around and pinned to caps and gowns. McKiernan still has his.

“The whole spirit of the ‘60s and the whole spirit of Kent State was at that graduation,” he said.

A former history major, McKiernan has amassed a large collection of ‘60s memorabilia since his days at BU, much of which he donated to a 201y Glenn G. Bartle Library exhibition. While he missed the Grateful Dead concert due to a broken arm, he’s seen the band on three other occasions. He favors the BU record above all others in his collection, crediting its singularity to the pivotal time of the performance.

“If the Grateful Dead had come a year before, it would’ve just been another great concert for the Grateful Dead, but they knew what was going on around the country, and they were empathizing and they were doing it through their music as they always did,” McKiernan said. “There was a tension in the room, there was a tension in America and they were also affected by what was happening.”

Since 1970, BU has changed in enrollment numbers and diversity of course offerings, expansions that have eroded its identity as “the Berkeley of the East Coast,” according to McKiernan.

However, McKiernan said there’s still power in a small, dedicated fragment of the student body, and while popular portrayals of the hippie era paint activism as the norm, vehement opposition to the war was not as universal as some might think.

“Of the 74 million boomers, it’s estimated that only 7 percent of them were ever activists,” he said. “Now that’s a small number, but add up the millions of 7 percent of 74 and that’s quite a big group. The bottom line is everything starts small and then builds up, and there’s no question that students played a major role in ending the Vietnam War.”

While he recognizes that today’s students are often juggling more than they would have been in 1970, McKiernan said the events of that May can serve as a model for campus activism 50 years later, emphasizing that political action indicates an intellectually engaged campus.

“When students are activists and they’re responding to something in one way or another, it shows that the campus is alive, it shows that it’s active, and I know it can create tensions, but it is important because it’s a microcosm of our society,” he said. “If you have even a small inkling of activism on a college campus, then you have a healthy campus.”

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Riskey started playing piano at age 4, picking up the electric bass and the ukulele before arriving at the acoustic guitar at age 16. In her adolescence, she also started to rap, leasing out beats from YouTube. As she learned to sing and mix in high school, she started posting covers and originals to SoundCloud, slowly but steadily amassing a following which continued to grow once she came to BU.

During her junior year at BU, she received a message from a representative at Suther Kane Films asking her to record a song in Paris.

“I’m here trying to cram organic [chemistry] at the time,” she said. “I was very upset about my breakup, [and] I didn’t tell my friends because I thought this was a scam.”

Once she realized it wasn’t, she and her dad took a trip to Paris that winter break to record the song “Blue.”

The following year, Riskey’s song, “In Uh Breeze,” was randomly added on a playlist by Spotify, which opened her up to a larger audience. She has since signed with TMWRK Management, which also represents Diplo, A-Trak and Dillon Francis. She also opened for Gus Dapperton at Webster Hall in New York City and had a song featured in a Glossier advertisement.

Riskey sat down with Pipe Dream to talk about the highlights of her journey so far and how BU has contributed to her success.

You’ve recently opened for some pretty high-profile artists, so in terms of your own musical taste, have you found yourself in circles with artists you were a fan of just a few years ago?

Monica Riskey (MR): Yes! It’s crazy because Gus Dapperton was on tour with Spencer., and I was a really big fan of Spencer., even though he didn’t have too much content out. I came across his stuff around March or April of that year, and I was like ‘I love this stuff,’ him and Orion Sun. I [direct-messaged] Spencer. after we’d met when I was opening for him — cool dude, good vibes — and the last direct message I’d sent to him was when I had [direct-messaged] him to tell him I really liked his work, and it was so cute. I was like, “Oh my god, that’s crazy.” I honestly don’t even know where to put myself, because I know I made the “Bedroom Pop” playlist, but every song has its own personality. I like rapping, I like singing, I like hip-hop, R&B or grungier stuff, so people will be like what’s your genre and I’m like “I don’t know.”

Your influences must be pretty varied then. What are some of your biggest influences?

MR: From the rap sphere, I grew up really loving Eminem and then moved on to really like Mac Miller, and him just being Jewish and young and [having] this really chill vibe with good lyrics, and Hopsin, if people know him, is a crazy lyricist. From the other genres, I really liked Justin Bieber growing up and I really looked up to how he came off the internet, just as a young person … Rex Orange County — I caught him before he blew up, I caught him sophomore year at [BU]! I listened to his first lyrics and sent them to my friends and I was like, “This guy’s so good and different.” Also Amy Winehouse, with that jazzy flavor she has to her … I don’t know, also if you listen to something, does that mean you’re influenced by it? Like I listen to Kreayshawn, does that mean I’m influenced by her?

So you write in different genres, and at BU you were doing the open mics for a long time but also learning to produce and mix, so take me through writing a song: does the music come first, does a vision for the sound come first…?

MR: It can start with a vision, and I’ve definitely had moments when I’m without any instruments and I’m like, “This would sound great,” and I could pitch it to someone and they could recreate it. But I haven’t always been able to recreate something that was in my head, so in the beginning I started at the beginning with the guitar or the piano … sometimes it’s influenced by emotion, like this is exactly what I want to convey. Sometimes you let the melody kind of lead your brain and your story. When it comes to instrumentals, I now follow a good amount of producers, and I look to new producers. I love minor chord progressions, I came to realize — I never knew this because I never had formal teaching in music theory, I never knew how to describe it — a lot of jazzy chords, jazzy sounds … I’ve been using and still use GarageBand, so all the people who think you can’t use GarageBand — that’s wrong, you can use it, you’ve just gotta know how to work with it, change the frequencies of certain sounds, use your voice.

You also have two videos out, one for “In Uh Breeze” and one for “1969dime.” How much creative input have you had in these, and what’s that process been like?

MR: [“1969dime”] was shot in [BU], it was like 40 degrees … my friend Ollie, who was also going to [BU] at the time, was starting out his videography career … He edited it, but I had a lot of control in that we went to Walmart, I organized a lot of it, I had the idea, but Ollie was really good in absorbing that and adding his own vision. On top of that, I went to Fiverr, which is a really good website for freelance. It’s insane, you can do anything. I found Fiverr years ago — everything used to be five bucks, now it’s a little bit more — I paid this lady five bucks to take pictures with my name written on her forehead. And she did that, and I was like, ‘This is great for marketing,’ so the clips in “1969dime” are just random people I paid to dance to “1969dime.” And for “In Uh Breeze” I had the idea of the sex doll, we rented out a studio, it was again with Ollie. For “FU-CORONA,” we also had a ton of people I don’t know to dance to the song.

Within BU, you mention being in a dorm and playing a lot. What spaces at BU and in Binghamton helped you grow the most as an artist?

MR: I had this one week, like a seven-day period, and I performed five times in different open mics, just trying to get my face out. The open mics were such a wonderful experience, to be around creative individuals … I did Greek life and there are pros and cons to everything and as much as I love Greek life, I wanted to be in a creative atmosphere as well, so I loved the open mics … and open mics, no one goes there to show off, it’s all about good vibes … also my friends from the band POOL, like Eric [Sabshon], Joe [Gallo] and Rob [Castriota], there are ways you can take things from people and it’s not direct. Like, Eric just performed with me at Webster Hall. Me and Eric [go back to the] first week of college — he lived on the floor above me and he completely freestyled to my song “Purple,” and I was like, “This guy’s so good”… I guess being around other musicians was really inspirational.

Which moments have been most validating in the past few years as your career takes off?

MR: The trip I took to France did a lot for the way I thought about music and my relationship to music, because I’m not really a believer in “things happen for reasons, blah blah blah,” but you can make something of a particular emotion at the time. At the time, I was upset and I made a song, and that song got some result. Sometimes anger can also be turned in such a way where you can be productive and better yourself. And it was really that trip, because I was in such a low point and I’ve been kinda leaning on music ever since. Something goes wrong, no problem, I’m just going to sing about it, rap about it … and seeing my dad so surprised was a big thing for me, too.

At BU, you were a pre-med neuroscience major. Are you still planning on going to medical school?

MR: No — right now. Never say never, you know. Right now my plan is, I’m signing with TMWRK, that contract is for two EPs, I’m giving 100 [percent]. Before last summer, I was supposed to take [PHYS 122: General Physics II]. I had already taken [PHYS 121: General Physics I] and had to take [PHYS 122: General Physics II] for med school, and I just didn’t want to go — and l killed [PHYS 121: General Physics I], but no part of me wanted to go. I sat down with my dad — and he’s a doctor, so he pushed me, I guess he’d like for me to do these things, as any adult would — but he was like, ‘With you splitting yourself, you’re not gonna succeed in anything, you’re not gonna do well in school and you’re not gonna do well in music, you’ve got to give 100 to something”… So the goal right now is to do music … I never thought I’d be in this position — I wanted to be a doctor all my life, but never say never.

Here are samplings of local music available for online purchase or streaming:

Yard Party

Based in: Binghamton

Genres: alternative rock, post-hardcore, punk

In their own words: “Yard Party has been active in the local music scene since 2018. Their debut album, ‘In Search of an Exit,’ released March 27, blends rock, punk, 80’s pop, post-hardcore and alternative into a cohesive work that offers something for everyone.”

Find them on: Instagram (@yardpartyofficial), Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp

Winna Skellz

Based in: Binghamton

Genres: hip-hop, pop

In their own words: ”The diversity I have when it comes to my music keeps people on their toes because they never know what’s coming next from me. My music makes you want to live out of the box and be you at all times. That’s what it’s all about.”

Find them on: Instagram (@winnaskellzthetyger), Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp and Soundcloud

Second Suitor

Based in: Binghamton

Genres: punk, alternative, pop-punk

In their own words: “Second Suitor makes music that makes you want to laugh, cry and dance your heart out to, all at the same time! We strive to create all-inclusive safe spaces for everyone to enjoy.”

Find them on: Instagram (@secondsuitorny), Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp

The Union Argus

Based in: Endwell

Genres: ambient, conceptual

In their own words: “The Union Argus has self-released audio on Bandcamp and cassettes since late 2016, and the project has been picked up Chromatic Aberration records from Idaho. Catharsis has consistently been the purpose of making any of the things I’ve released under The Union Argus, the sound tends to take a back seat to the reason it’s being made in the first place.”

Find them on: Instagram (@theunionargus), Bandcamp and Soundcloud

Emily Gilmore

Based in: Binghamton

Genres: noise punk

In their own words: “We make confrontational, grating noise to cast down rapists, abusers and fascists. We are not musicians. We are anarchists.”

Find them on: Instagram (@xemilygilmorex) and Bandcamp

Expressions

Based in Binghamton

Genre: art rock

In their own words: “Clouds, rain and beauty. Expressions in Binghamton. Electrifying.”

Find them on: Instagram (@expressssions) and Bandcamp

Floodlands

Based in: Binghamton

Genres: sludge metal, atmospheric rock

In their own words: “Floodlands is a hurricane. Rough, loud and metallic on the outside, yet soothing, calm and strangely peaceful at their core.”

Find them on: Instagram (@floodlandsband), Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp

Devinne Meyers

Based in: Binghamton

Genres: Americana, singer-songwriter, folk, pop

In their own words: “Recent achievements have generated a buzz, but the foundation of Devinne Meyers’ vocal conviction nestled in the words of her lyrical prowess has built the basis for a promising career in the singer-songwriter arena. Influenced by songwriters like Patty Griffin, Paul McCartney, Shel Silverstein, Lisa Loeb, Fiona Apple, Susan Tedeschi and Bob Dylan, Meyers’ writing has blended influences of folk, pop, soul, blues and alternative genres with a confessional and emotional lyrical style, and edgy yet compassionate, conversational vocal styling.”

Find them on: Instagram (@devinnemeyers), Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp

Dirty Band-Aid

Based in: Binghamton

Genre: punk

In their own words: “Dirty Band-Aid is a band, yes, but it’s also a concept that people could learn from and be impacted by. We have gone through a total of eight members, but we keep going because no matter what, we want people to know even if you get pushed down you can keep it moving. Play music because you love it, start something bigger than you realize.”

Find them on: Instagram (@dirtybandaidsux) and YouTube (NRCgraphy Official)

September: “Doin’ Time” — Lana Del Rey

This single was dropped months before the release of “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” in late August, but Lana Del Rey rode her wave of success well into the fall and winter as she began to top Album of the Year lists. While some of the more sweeping, emotionally charged songs on “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” saw the singer reach her peak as a songwriter, this genius Sublime cover topped the Billboard charts as summer came to a close. The song is accompanied by an unforgettable video that riffs on cult classic “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” as Del Rey towers over Venice Beach, an apt metaphor as she rises to legend status among Southern California’s musical icons.

October: “Dirty Laundry” — Danny Brown

Danny Brown’s previous releases put him firmly in the category of rising star, but his October album, “uknowhatimsayin¿,” cemented his status as one of the most talented and creative rappers in the game. Lead single “Dirty Laundry” showcases the best of what Brown has to offer, blending an infectious electronic beat with honest and comedic lyrics about his sexual past. Brown has one of the most distinctive voices in rap, and with each release, he finds new ways to refine it.

November: “Say So” — Doja Cat

If you didn’t see Doja Cat at October’s fall concert, you might have regretted it once she released her sophomore album, “Hot Pink,” the following month. With its groovy bass line and smooth vocals, “Say So” quickly became a party circuit staple at BU, skyrocketing in popularity due to its use in TikTok dance challenges. In January, the song was released again as a radio single, pointing Doja Cat toward a future of fuller houses.

December: “Adore You” — Harry Styles

When Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac posted a public letter to Twitter in March, she congratulated Harry Styles on his recent album, “Fine Line,” saying that “it is your ‘Rumours.’” Lead single “Adore You” is a shining example of the maximalism that Styles brings to the table, a glittery declaration of love and adoration for a partner. The chorus, in which Styles proclaims he’ll “walk through fire for you,” is fittingly triumphant for a man who just wrote the best pop song of the year.

January: “Good News” — Mac Miller

Following Mac Miller’s premature death in September, the rapper’s first posthumous album, “Circles,” was released in January to plenty of social media buzz. Initially intended as a companion to 2018’s “Swimming,” “Circles” mirrors the previous album’s introspection and minimalist production style. “Good News,” which debuted at No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, features a quiet, downtempo backing track and plaintive vocals that embodies the introspective theme of the album.

February: “ringtone (Remix)” — 100 gecs feat. Charli XCX, Rico Nasty and Kero Kero Bonito

Despite 100 gecs’ debut album “1000 gecs” receiving rave reviews upon its release in May, it was a slow burn when it came to infiltrating the mainstream. After steadily climbing the charts and working their way into every indie kid’s playlists throughout 2019, February brought the remix of their song “Ringtone,” featuring a star-studded cast of guests. The song serves as the most accessible entry point to their unique brand of experimental pop, and the earworm chorus is bound to bounce around in your head for weeks. Charli XCX offers the best feature here, with her synth-pop vocals working exceptionally well with the glitchy beat behind her.

March: “Algorhythm” — Childish Gambino

Released when the chaos of the coronavirus pandemic set in, Childish Gambino’s latest album soothed the masses with an eclectic sound and lyrics that echoed the uncertainty of the times. Album highlights include a rereleased version of 2018’s “Feels Like Summer,” features from Ariana Grande, 21 Savage and more. The track “Algorhythm” embodied the difficult times with Gambino’s intense vocal delivery: “Humans gotta survive.”

April: “Heavy Balloon” — Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple’s “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” a runaway favorite for Album of the Year, was released to critical acclaim this month. The song “Heavy Balloon” is a pounding anthem of resilience in the face of a patriarchal world that causes both professional and interpersonal hurt. When Apple screams “I spread like strawberries, I climb like peas and beans,” you don’t have to understand what this means to get the feeling. It’s a triumphant refusal to go quietly into the irrelevance that the music industry so often demands of its female stars as they age. Apple is still here, and she’s still better than anyone else at what she does.

The coronavirus outbreak has predictably resulted in an outpouring of memes, fads and internet trends as people look to keep busy indoors. This includes the omnipresence of fresh bread on social media as people fight boredom with baking. The craze seems to have captured people of all ages, and BU students are no exception.

Sarah Starace, a senior majoring in biology, started baking bread almost a year ago, making her own sourdough starter at the beginning of this academic year.

“I took a long time off from bread because the school year got busy and there’s not that much time to make bread when you’re going to class every day,” Starace said. “But since everything [happened] with the quarantine, I’ve been making bread at least once a week.”

Lilly Griffin, a sophomore majoring in biology, started making sourdough last year while she was at home on Long Island. She also noted that the hobby is more feasible now that regular class schedules have been altered.

“It’s nice to have the time to bake a loaf of bread,” Griffin said. “It takes all day because you have to let it rise.”

Like Griffin and Starace, many quarantine bakers have specifically taken on the project of making sourdough bread. The creation of sourdough can take anywhere from a few days to months, depending on how long the baker wants to let their dough ferment. The process involves the daily “feeding” of a jarred flour and water mixture, where water is added and small amounts of dough are removed and discarded.

While the process has been derided as wasteful by some, bakers often use their discarded dough to make other treats while waiting for the bread dough to ferment. Starace has made sourdough crackers and scallion pancakes from hers, even adding it in small amounts to other recipes like garlic knots and cakes.

The trend has also led to yeast and flour shortages across the United States, and Griffin said the effects of shortages have been visible in stores near her.

“It’s been kind of crazy trying to get the ingredients to make bread,” Griffin said. “I had to ask my friend for bread flour because she had an extra bag, and it’s impossible to find flour or yeast in the stores right now.”

Philipine Mariaud, a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law, has been baking bread with her family since she was a kid, but she said newcomers to the practice are likely finding inspiration online.

“Everyone’s putting their baking on social media, so everyone else wants to do it,” Mariaud said.

While some might call it a fad, the virtues of making bread seem to go beyond the simple satisfaction of posting a photo or scarfing down a tasty loaf. Mariaud said the practice keeps her family better connected with the food they’re eating.

“My parents are French, so they just like making their own bread, but definitely more since COVID-19,” Mariaud said. “It’s more practical and just healthier, and you know what’s going in. There’s no harmful preservatives.”

Eden Donelli, a freshman majoring in psychology, said baking bread has been helping her bond with her stepmother.

“In a period where so much of our classes and interactions are online, doing something practical that ends in a tasty product is really grounding,” she said.

Starace also said food has been helping her connect with loved ones.

“I like cooking things from scratch because it gives me a lot of joy, I like giving food to my friends,” Starace said. “A lot of my friends already went home, and I sent them home with bread, or cooked them a meal before they left, just because I think it’s a really nice way to connect with other people.”

Starace compared the recent trend of bread baking to the comfort of playing video games like Minecraft and Animal Crossing, both of which have become wildly popular since the outbreak started.

“It’s something that keeps me grounded, gives me something to do and keeps me focused on something that isn’t the coronavirus,” she said. “If you’re not partaking in it, it’s so easy to be like, ‘That’s so pointless, why are you making that,’ but if you are one of the people that’s doing it, it’s really therapeutic and a lot of people find it really calming. I don’t personally play video games, but I know a lot of people play video games to calm down. I know baking has a really similar feel for some people.”

Griffin agreed that both the process and the results of baking bread can make isolation a little more bearable.

“A fresh hot loaf of bread is so delicious, but especially now with everything going on in the world,” she said. “It’s something to relax with and take your mind off what’s going on.”

Amber Cherichetti, a DJ at WHRW and a sophomore majoring in English, has organized the first-ever Minecraft Moefest, to be held April 25.

Cherichetti said the cancellation of this year’s Moefest, an annual music festival hosted by WHRW, gave her the impetus to take on the project.

“The reason I wanted to do it was because I knew I was missing Moefest,” Cherichetti said. “In the spirit of the radio, because I love it, I named it after the real festival.”

While the WHRW E-Board has not been involved in the event’s planning, it has shown support, promoting it on the station’s social media accounts. Laurie Azoulai, the general manager for WHRW and a senior majoring in integrative neuroscience, wrote in an email that she quickly warmed to the idea of an in-game festival.

“I was a bit skeptical at first because while Minecraft is a very well-known game, it may not seem so accessible to everyone,” Azoulai wrote. “However, the aesthetics of it are pretty cool.”

Azoulai expressed some concern about the accessibility of the event, adding that not everyone has easy access to a computer or reliable internet service. However, she emphasized that the event is still well suited for making the best of an uncertain situation.

“This is nice because people can prerecord material to be aired [the] day of the event,” Azoulai said. “With a situation like this that we are living in, it is definitely well adapted.”

Cherichetti and a friend have been designing the Minecraft server where attendees will be able to interact with a virtual stage and other settings. The concert audio can be accessed simultaneously through a Discord chat, where performers can address listeners in real time while their prerecorded sets are streamed. Starting at 8 p.m., each artist will play a 20-minute set.

Student acts Roni, Julien Cubeiro, MC 469, ANACHROME and Jacob Morenberg will be playing in the festival alongside Claudia Sheffner, Onlinefriends, Naff and Saltlick. In order to fill the lineup, Cherichetti asked friends and found people on social media who would volunteer to play.

“I started out with [Binghamton University] student bands because that’s usually what Moefest is, student openers and outside headliners, but for this there really isn’t a headliner, so what I did was half BU students and half people I knew were talented and kind of outside [BU],” she said.

Eric Rothenhofer, an undeclared freshman who produces electronic music as MC 469, said this will be his first time participating in a livestream.

“Even though it’s all prerecorded, and there is that digital barrier still, I can feel the eyes watching it, and that’s kind of altering my workflow in kind of making it more listenable than I normally would,” Rothenhofer said.

Minecraft concerts were a growing trend before the coronavirus pandemic. In September 2019, Cherichetti attended Mine Gala, a Minecraft festival that featured a few high-profile acts like 100 gecs and Dorian Electra. From these festivals, Cherichetti was inspired to emulate the same atmosphere with an online Moefest.

She said the atmosphere of the concert was more interactive than one might expect.

“It was less like you’re just sitting there and watching it, and more like you’re here with a bunch of other people and you’re in the same spaces and feeling a kind of connection,” Cherichetti said.

She added that artists have taken steps to compensate for whatever was lost in the move from physical to digital stage.

“It’s not as high-energy as a real show would be, so when 100 gecs was playing, the highlight of them playing was that they were playing songs that you wouldn’t hear unless you saw them live,” she said. “So it’s not just like you’re listening to music in a group setting, there’s exclusive stuff happening as well.”

Cherichetti isn’t the only student using Minecraft to simulate the hallmarks of BU social life. Housemates Brandon Corey, ‘18, and Ryan Maloney, a fifth-year graduate student in the 4 + 1 program studying systems science and industrial engineering, started playing the game during quarantine and have been using it to build a virtual Binghamton.

“When we were [first playing Minecraft] it was a Thursday, so the normal Thursday routine is to go to Peterson’s for $5 burgers and beers, and Peterson’s was closed at that point, so we decided that was going to be the first thing we built in Minecraft,” Corey said.

So far, Corey and Maloney have collaborated with friends and housemates to build models of their current house, their old house on Walnut Street and Peterson’s Tavern. They hope to continue building Binghamton landmarks like State Street and Maryam’s Halal Food and Gyro, eventually opening the server to friends.

“We’re more in a construction mode right now, but once we’re done we can definitely get some use out of it,” Corey said.

While a virtual trek to State Street might be more of a novelty, Rothenhofer said the switch to online social events can be especially meaningful in artistic spheres.

“I’m excited to ride this wave of musical festivals where there is no geographical barrier, which then means there’s no barrier for entry,” he said. “The kids are running the asylum, the people who are producing the music are able to get it out as directly as possible to the consumer.”

Cherichetti said she hopes to put on more events, even after live music returns to basements, lawns and concert halls.

“It was already a concept that I felt needed to be opened up because the fact that it’s accessible to everyone is so, so cool, and I think that now we’re really exploring what accessibility for music events can be and taking it further because everyone’s quarantined,” she said. “I think that we should continue doing it after everyone’s allowed to go outside.”

As the coronavirus pandemic has forced museums, galleries and other spaces to close since mid-March, Binghamton has been devoid of the public events that usually shape its art scene. While February’s First Friday was postponed due to snow, April and May will mark the first full months in recent memory without First Friday events.

Joe Schuerch, house manager at the Phelps Mansion Museum, said the museum is taking financial hits from closing.

“A lot of our income comes from being open for tours and hosting programs and events, so not being able to do that right now has really impacted the museum’s finances because we don’t have that income coming in,” he said. “Much like any other museum or nonprofit in the area, we all rely on the same kind of income, so we’re all in the same boat.”

To maintain interest while events are canceled, some institutions have moved their programming online. Schuerch said he’s been collaborating with Chelsea Gibson, treasurer of the mansion’s board of trustees and a visiting assistant professor of history at Binghamton University, on education programs to stream via Facebook Live, where the mansion has its greatest body of followers.

“A lot of our engagement on our social media pages has been way up, so there’s a lot of engagement in some of the posts, especially our live ones,” Schuerch said.

So far, the page has hosted a Facebook Live mansion tour, a guided coloring activity, a book talk and a “behind the scenes” tour of the mansion’s third floor and basement, which are usually not part of tours. Schuerch said the staff is also trying to get educational materials, such as a virtual tour of the mansion, completed and onto the website, especially since students and children that frequently tour the mansion are now learning from home.

Some organizations have taken up the task of not only hosting events online, but also using internet outreach to support artists. The Broome County Arts Council’s (BCAC) website shares links to grants and other resources for artists who have been financially impacted by the virus. In addition, the BCAC’s Artisan Gallery has been promoting local retail artists on its Instagram account.

Shawna Stevenson, programs and marketing manager of the BCAC, said featuring artists has made artists more competitive.

“There’s actually a lot out there which is really good, but I think it’s probably competitive right now because a lot of people have been put out by this,” she said.

The BCAC is also showcasing art submissions from social media followers. Inspired by other art groups in the community, the organization has been posting Daily Art Boosts, art-related videos made by followers or other local organizations, to Facebook.

“We’re trying to encourage our local community to share those little bits of art that they’re making with us,” Stevenson said.

Artist Kristen Nicole Mann, 30, of Binghamton has been hosting live painting sessions on her personal Facebook and Instagram accounts and sending parents ideas for home art projects to do with their kids. She said the digital shift has provided the opportunity to shed light on art’s importance for everyone.

“The quarantine has given people time to maybe form a gift they never paid attention to when they were busy,” Mann wrote in an email. “It’s definitely a great time to tap into your artistic side to fight depression and anxiety. I’m excited to see what the generations currently having to survive through this time create.”

Stevenson said the quarantine might also lead to new strides in accessibility even after the virus subsides.

“Something I’ve noticed personally is that there’s a lot of events that have been shown online, like the Roberson Museum [and Science Center] or the Bundy [Museum of History and Art] or the Memory Maker Project, that I probably wouldn’t have known were happening and might not have been able to go physically,” she said. “I think it’s been really cool to see our community step up and do that, and it does make it more accessible to everyone, not just because of the coronavirus epidemic, but just generally accessibility issues. I think this could be a really interesting shift in how we share projects.”

Click here for a list of online events happening over the next few weeks.

Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) Broome County Gardening Workshops:

“Building and Planting in Raised Beds” — April 20 from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Zoom

“Growing Edibles in Containers” — April 27 from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Zoom

CCE Broome County will host two Zoom gardening workshops this month, each with a fee of $10. The first event, on April 20, will discuss the benefits of growing plants in raised beds and how to construct them. Succession sowing and succession cropping will also be covered. The second event, aimed at both beginner and experienced gardeners, will focus on growing edible plants in containers. Interested participants can register on the CCE’s website.

“Edit Wikipedia for Citizen Science!” — BU Libraries — April 21 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. via Zoom

The BU Libraries will host a Wikipedia edit-a-thon, an event aimed at improving Wikipedia’s information on a certain topic. In honor of Citizen Science Month, the articles participants can choose from will be focused on health, engineering, biology, psychology and women in science. Both novice and experienced Wikipedia editors are welcome. Interested participants can sign up and find Zoom access information on the event’s Facebook page, or contact Neyda Gilman, nursing and pharmacy librarian at BU Libraries, at ngilman@binghamton.edu with any questions.

Roberson Virtual Field Trips — Tuesdays at noon on the Roberson Museum and Science Center’s Facebook page

Every Tuesday at noon, the Roberson Museum and Science Center has been livestreaming themed tours of the museum and mansion. On April 21, all attendees will take a walk through the museum’s “NatureTrek” exhibition to discuss its lifelike taxidermy dioramas. The April 28 tour will take viewers into the Roberson Mansion’s parlor room and discuss the significance of parlor rooms to women of the early 20th century.

Broome/Tioga Counties Virtual Earth Day 2020 — April 22 from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the CCE Broome County Environment Facebook page

In celebration of Earth Day, this Facebook Live event will feature educational presentations, music and more from local artists and organizations that promote environmental causes in Broome County.

Art Talks with the Memory Maker Project — Wednesdays from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Zoom

Every Wednesday, the Memory Maker Project allows participants to view and discuss art from a local exhibition. The program is designed specifically for people living with memory loss, but all are welcome. Zoom IDs and other meeting details can be found on the Memory Maker Project’s Facebook page.

Facebook Live Art Talk – April 25 from noon to 1 p.m. on the Phelps Mansion Museum’s Facebook page

A Phelps Mansion Museum guide will lead a tour of the mansion’s collection of artwork which includes pieces by Douglas Arthur Teed, Robert Pratt and more.

Tom Jolu Facebook Live – May 9 at 8 p.m. on the Vestal Museum’s Facebook page.

In the spirit of the Vestal Museum’s Second Saturdays, which usually feature intimate “Coffeehouse” sets, frontman Thomas Joseph Lewis of the local band Tom Jolu will play a Facebook Live set.

Wolf has become one of the most prominent figures in Binghamton poetry, hosting monthly open mics for the past 14 years. Originally from Freeport, New York, Wolf has lived in Connecticut, Massachusetts, California and Ireland, spending nearly 40 years as a singer-songwriter. Wolf began his career in his early high school days.

“I like to say I was better than a living room player, but not as good as some of the folk people I hung out with,” he said.

In fact, Wolf was involved in some prominent circles; he frequented Speakeasy, a popular New York City folk club in the ‘80s, and also played as a part of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc., a collective led by musician Pete Seeger that began fundraising for Hudson River cleanups in 1969.

Shortly before putting out an album in 2003, Wolf was diagnosed with tonsil cancer, which left him unable to sing for eight months. In that time, he decided he was more drawn to writing than he was to playing, and he changed his direction permanently.

“The thing about music is you’re limited in terms of you can’t really write what you can’t play, and you’re structurally limited because for the most part people are trying to write rhyming constructions — and not everybody does that, obviously there are people like Joni Mitchell who could basically write anything and it was amazing — but I found that moving on to poetry allowed me the freedom to say the things I wanted to say without those limitations,” Wolf said.

Wolf has since published three full-length collections and has seen individual poems published in several anthologies.

One collection, “Baiku: On the Nature of Motorcycles,” is a book of motorcycle poetry in the tradition of writers like Hunter S. Thompson who have drawn literary inspiration from the biker lifestyle. In his time in Cape Cod, Wolf was a member of the Highway Poets Motorcycle Club, an international society of biker poets. Wolf’s chapter rode across the state of Massachusetts, organizing and performing at readings along the way.

“I’m technically still a member of the Highway Poets [Motorcycle Club],” he said. “There are very few of us left.”

Wolf’s more recent efforts have been in romantic poetry, a subject matter he said has captured him. His collection “The Moon is Always in Transit” is inspired specifically by the works of legendary Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

“I read [Neruda]’s ‘Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair’ 25 or so years ago, and my head exploded,” he said. “Essentially what I took from that is he gave me the permission I needed to write the way I wanted to write, his voice resonated with me and I said, ‘This is the direction I want to go in,’ sort of being allowed to be romantic and maybe wander into magical realism.”

Wolf’s next collection of what he dubs “intimate poetry” will be published by the Bundy Museum Press.

“I’m older and I’m single … and I think writing poetry is in some ways a wish list,” he said. “I write all these things about love and beauty and romance because these are things that I’d like to live in, and this is where I want my head to be, and not having someone in particular doesn’t stop me from having all those experiences and writing about them in a hopeful way. There is some understanding that comes with years of experience and there’s an acceptance that comes with getting older, looking at the world and saying ‘I may want certain things, but I accept that I am the person who created my life and therefore this life is the choice I made.’”

After a lifetime of moving around, Wolf decided he wanted to live in upstate New York while visiting a friend in Greene years ago. He lived in Harpursville for seven years before moving to Binghamton, where he’s lived for the past 14 years. A furniture refinisher and antiques aficionado hailing from modern Long Island, Wolf has taken an interest in the historic offerings of post-industrial areas like the Triple Cities.

“It’s radically different,” he said. “Long Island is newer and there, most of the things you couch in this area as historical are gone or the few left are treated like museums. There’s something fascinating about the old buildings and the literal history that comes with that. You stand on a hill here and you can see the old Ansco [Camera] Factory which is now apartments — there’s a lot of that here.”

While a few poems, like 2015’s “Main Street,” reflect this change in setting, Wolf says most of his work focuses on people as opposed to places.

“I’m not primarily influenced by geography because as someone who’s traveled quite a bit, the world is the world,” he said. “People are who they are wherever they are, so writing about people is not necessarily place-specific.”

As a Binghamton community member, Wolf has hosted weekly open mics, first at RiverRead Books, a now-closed bookstore once located on Court Street, and now at the Bundy Museum of History and Art. He said the poetry scene was already active when he first arrived in the city, and events continue to see participation from a solid community of poets.

“The arts scene in general in this area is pretty robust,” he said. “There’s a lot of arts activity here, which makes sense in this sort of post-industrial city. People are gathering to do art … I’m impressed with the connectedness and the commitment people have to being part of this.”

Wolf said he ultimately aims to allow people to share the vision he’s presenting in his poetry, and he often feels closest to achieving this goal during local events.

“One of the most wonderful things that has ever happened to me happened here in Binghamton,” he said. “When I was regularly attending open mics, someone said to me, ‘I heard you read and I decided that I wanted to do poetry and you inspired me.’ One of the great pleasures of writing is to read a piece aloud or have someone read something and have them say, ‘Wow, I get it, I have that experience’ or ‘I want that experience.’ It’s a sense of connection and a sense of being heard.”

Warfield, 25, of Binghamton, is an artist who incorporates poetic text into works of visual art. Born and raised in Whitney Point, Warfield completed her bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and communications at Cornell University. After graduation, she worked in multiple positions at the Broome County Arts Council before creating her own business, Anna Warfield Art, LLC. Her business has allowed her to pursue her art while taking up other creative contracts, such as LUMA Projection Arts Festival.

Warfield said she began to focus on the written word early in her artistic career, and chose to attend Cornell University specifically to enter a program that would let her pursue both communications and fine arts. She said the cultural back-and-forth between Whitney Point and the fine arts world encouraged her to make multilayered art that could be appreciated in both spaces.

“This stems all the way back to undergrad for me,” she said. “Working in a fine arts space, finding ways to be as clear in what I’m trying to communicate as possible was important to me, and I think that’s partly because of my background.”

At Cornell University, she got involved in book arts, which counterintuitively involved little text and lots of line work, until making the transition into soft sculpture with fabric books and other objects. One of her early soft sculpture pieces, a cornhole board that reads “Touch Me” with beanbags that look like women’s midriffs, addresses sex and misogyny in relation to college party culture. Continuing in the thematic realm of sex and gender, Warfield later closed in on a specific style involving stitched and stuffed lines of text.

Warfield said her poetic voice, which she used in writing artist statements, developed concurrently with her sculptural vision.

“I’m constantly thinking through the most concise way to capture a feeling, an emotion or something that maybe I’ve experienced and parsing that down to the exact right words for what I’m trying to say,” she said.

She said the journey of marrying words with sculpture has allowed audiences an insight into the creative process itself.

“Stepping into the writing was me deciding that I wanted to take ownership of my voice, but I also wanted people to sit with the writing for a long time like I was doing,” she said. “My meditative experience at my sewing machine with these words for a long duration of time was what I wanted to impose on other people as well.”

Warfield said her process begins as poetry writing before moving into aesthetic structuring, wherein structure matters as much as the text itself. Her “Soft Thorn” series arranges phrases like “Speak from the back of your eyes” into readable columns, one word per line.

“The language in those pieces relates to the female in her position, and her body in this weird, sexualized kind of way, and ownership, so the language is very command-oriented,” she said.

In contrast, Warfield’s “All Things Being Blue” series sees words running into each other as part of one horizontal line. She said this format is meant to physically engage audiences, forcing viewers to turn their heads to read a long stretch of text.

“[‘All Things Being Blue’] explores the way men talk to women and reduces that into something without giving them ownership of it,” she said. “It’s less referential on the female, more referencing the actions made toward her.”

Warfield’s “Ten Commands” series, consisting of sexual commands meant to parallel the Ten Commandments, similarly uses visual tricks to influence viewers’ interactions with the text. The letters on each two-dimensional piece are stitched from striped fabric and set against a backdrop of the same fabric turned 90 degrees so the lines are pointed in the opposite direction.

“It kind of creates a reverberance, so from afar you don’t see it reading as anything, but up close it has these very explicit commands,” Warfield said.

Warfield also aims to make connections between material and content in her art; for example, the “Ten Commands” series is made of fabric rejected from a church garment-making project. As the words in “All Things Being Blue” are entirely blue, “Soft Thorn” features varying shades of pink, and Warfield says she chose both colors with their gendered implications in mind. She said the “Soft Thorn” series was in part inspired by soft teachable objects, like the plush Bible books of her childhood that were both comforting and weighty.

“When making these pieces I was thinking about the structure being a soft, sort of approachable, squishy fluffy thing that’s lighthearted, but then what I’m talking about is often quite explicit and referential to sex and the female body,” she said.

The style and content of Warfield’s pieces are also inextricably linked by associations of textile work with domesticity. Warfield said she came into college wanting to make quilted portraits but was dissuaded from that pursuit under the pretense that it wasn’t fine art. In her upper-level courses, when it came time to choose her medium of focus, she stepped back into working with fabric.

“It was really expensive to be a painter, and I come from a low-income background, so I found myself working with things I had access to,” she said. “My mom was an industrial embroiderer and my dad did industrial screen printing, so I had access to those tools, and they were familiar.”

Coming off a show at Corning’s Evelyn Peeler Peacock Gallery, Warfield said she believes her text pieces have succeeded in spreading messages because of their relatability. As she moves forward in her career, she said she hopes to continue challenging the assumption that textile work and fine art are mutually exclusive labels.

“I definitely embrace it as something that’s gendered as feminine but I try to push back at it like, ‘Why is it something that doesn’t deserve this space?’” she said. “‘I can work in fiber and I can use the color pink and it doesn’t mean that it’s lesser than something else.”

“All Things Being Blue,” Warfield’s upcoming series, is scheduled to open June 5 at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, New York.

The River Bistro

The River Bistro offered a number of limited-time only dishes for last spring’s Restaurant Week, including an apple, gorgonzola and pistachio flatbread. If you’re up to the challenge of making a flatbread at home, this apple brie pizza or vegan apple pizza capture the same balance between fruity, crunchy and savory. If you’re feeling a little lazier, this salad employs the same main ingredients as the original River Bistro dish. Last spring, River Bistro also served an India pale ale-infused coleslaw as a side dish for its South Carolina ribs. If you’re feeling daring, give this beer coleslaw recipe a try; it could be a hit at future barbecues.

Number 5

While you might not be able to drag your parents there this year for an expensive graduation dinner, you can pay homage to one of Number 5’s trademarks: its constant rotation of flavored butters. Last year’s Restaurant Week, for example, saw the steakhouse pairing its sourdough with a cherry chocolate butter. If you’re looking for something similarly sweet, spice up your morning toast with this cinnamon-vanilla honey butter recipe, or welcome spring with this strawberry butter recipe. You can also get creative with savory flavors like garlic herb, chipotle lime or spring pea with shallot and lemon.

South City Publick House

South City Publick House shone in spring 2019 with its Hawaiian Burger, a limited-time only creation that paired a jerk-spiced burger with pineapple and arugula. As the weather gets warmer, you can recreate it by firing up the grill and following this recipe, or this vegan alternative. If burgers aren’t your style, you can opt instead for this salad, which also incorporates pineapple and arugula. Add some spicy baked tofu for a twist that brings the flavor profile closer to the original burger’s.

The Colonial

The Colonial’s Restaurant Week options usually stick pretty close to the restaurant’s regular menu, but last year’s spring menu offered a unique seasonal treat — a mint chocolate shamrock shake, booze optional. While St. Patrick’s Day is long over, you can recreate the magic at home with this copycat recipe, based on the McDonald’s Shamrock Shake, or a shamrock smoothie if you’re looking for something healthier. If you don’t have a blender, try this shamrock sundae or this Baileys mint martini, an ultra-festive cocktail to keep in your back pocket for next year’s festivities.

Lost Dog Cafe

Lost Dog Cafe brought its characteristically offbeat eye for desserts to last spring’s Restaurant Week, offering a PB&J cupcake alongside some more conventional choices. Lost Dog’s version marries a basic vanilla cupcake with peanut butter frosting and strawberry jam filling, similarly to this recipe. If a recipe involving filling seems too complicated, try this one, which places both the peanut butter and the jelly on top of the cupcake, or this peanut butter and jelly cookie recipe.

Social on State

Social on State, known for its unique tapas plates, brought some especially quirky offerings to Restaurant Week in spring 2019. Emulate last year’s beet tartare — an intricate assemblage of beet chunks, mango puree, salad greens and ricotta — with a simpler beet salad. This recipe features the classic combination of beets, creamy cheese and citrus, calling for a lemon vinaigrette that might evoke the tartare’s lemon-honey glaze. Social on State’s spring 2019 dessert menu was even more daring than its dinner menu, offering a choice between a smoky s’more-inspired chocolate mousse and a dish consisting of burrata cheese and basil ice cream in a sauce of roasted strawberries and red wine. Recreating either would probably be a challenge, so if you’re more of an amateur chef, you can opt instead for these s’more cookies. If the idea of savory ice cream intrigues you, this springy strawberry rhubarb ice cream topping features a balsamic and bourbon sauce.

Founded in 2004, the Binghamton Theatre Organ Society (BTOS) is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the two publicly owned theatre organs in Broome County. While one of the organs, housed in the Roberson Museum and Science Center, is no longer in use, the Broome County Forum’s Robert-Morton IV/24 theatre organ is one of about 300 operating theatre organs in the world.

“We want to keep the instrument because of the volunteers that came before us; we don’t want to let it slide because a lot of people enjoy it,” said Nancy Wildoner, ‘83, resident organist for BTOS.

Starting in the 1910s and continuing through the 1920s, theatre organs were built so movie theaters wouldn’t have to hire entire orchestras to accompany silent films. Equipped with unique effects like bird calls and train whistles, they became obsolete with the advent of the “talkies,” movies with sound.

The Robert-Morton IV/24 originally belonged to a theater in Denver, Colorado in 1922, becoming obsolete when a sound system was installed in 1927. The organ was sold to a church, later being sold again and kept in storage in a Michigan chicken coop. In 1972, Robert Nash, then president of the former Binghamton Savings Bank, found out about the organ and purchased it for the Tri-Cities Opera. Sent in pieces, the organ was rebuilt by a team of local engineers working in conjunction with organ builder Albert Emola. Because the pipes of a theatre organ are built into the venue itself, it couldn’t be installed in any theater. Luckily, the historic Broome County Forum Theatre, built in 1919, fit the bill.

“For a small town like this, this is a lot of organ,” said BTOS President John Demaree. “When they rebuilt it, so many of the pipes that came in were scrapped and had to be replaced or repaired, and it’s got a different personality to it than it did when it was born.”

Dennis James, one of many theatre organ artists who tour with silent films, performed at the organ’s 1976 debut. James returned to the Broome County Forum Theatre this past weekend with “Love,” a silent film based on Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina.” James’ performances are interactive; before screening a film, he provides background on its history, and screenings include an intermission. When James tours with “Love,” he always asks audience members whether they’d rather see the ending true to Tolstoy’s novel or the alternate “happy ending” crafted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.

Wildoner studied on the Robert-Morton IV/24 under the late M. Searle Wright, a professor of music at Binghamton University in the early 1980s. A pianist since childhood, Wildoner started lessons on the organ before going to college.

“There were way too many piano majors, so I thought, ‘I’ll play the organ, not as much competition,’” Wildoner said.

During her time at BU, she was awarded a scholarship to work specifically with the theatre organ. While Wildoner academically studied classical and church music, organs were prevalent in the pop landscape of the ‘70s, so she also learned contemporary music in her free time. BTOS’ next event, “Pop Pipes: Women,” will feature Wildoner playing pop songs revolving around women in celebration of Mother’s Day.

According to the group’s website, BTOS will need to raise $250,000 over the next five years to restore the Robert-Morton IV/24 and an additional $250,000 to help rebuild the Link III/19 organ at the Roberson Museum and Science Center. Wildoner said the organization is looking to expand its volunteer and donor base by offering membership packages, where frequent attendees will get reduced tickets to events.

Marcia Blackburn, ‘09, an instructor of communications at Broome Community College, has been attending BTOS events for the past few years at both the Roberson Museum and Science Center and Broome County Forum Theatre. Looking back on her childhood, Blackburn remembers similar events at Radio City Music Hall, which were marketed as a novelty even in her parents’ time.

“This is something everyone should see because you don’t get this kind of experience anymore,” Blackburn said. “Most of the time people are streaming things, so you don’t get that experience of being with people in a theater reacting to a film. It’s a slice of life that doesn’t really exist anymore except in this special, rarefied location.”

The “Trail of Truth,” held annually since 2015, honors people who have died from substance use disorder by involving friends and family members in a march and live performance art piece. According to Alexis Pleus, founder and executive director of Truth Pharm, the first march was planned in about two weeks as an act of protest against the county for not counting overdose deaths appropriately.

“Our message is you’re not just losing empty souls, it’s not just numbers, these are human beings who are loved, who had qualities, who had attributes,” Pleus said. “We wanted to create an event where the county couldn’t deny that people had lost their lives. We decided that because it was so beautiful, and people really appreciated it and said it was a good healing time for them, to do it each year.”

In the years since the event’s conception, Truth Pharm has ensured that photographers are present to document the annual march. This year, they were unable to have their usual photographers at “Trail of Truth,” so the organization put a call out on social media. Binghamton resident Arra Norton, 29, a street photographer who usually shoots local rallies and other community events, responded to it.

“I really wanted to see what it was about because I’d never been to it, and I wanted to capture the emotions of the event and share it,” Norton said. “I like to use my photographs to start conversations.”

The exhibition is being held at Binghamton Photo, which is part of the Bundy Museum of History and Art. Norton is a member of the Binghamton Photo darkroom and when she was asked by the Bundy Museum to exhibit her photos of the event, she collaborated with Pleus in selecting the photographs. Truth Pharm, which maintains a relationship with the Bundy Museum as a partner organization for its radio station, tabled at the opening reception.

Pleus said Norton’s photographs showed her a side of the event she often misses as an organizer.

“I love them because as the person who organizes the event and leads it, you kind of almost have to be detached when you’re at it because it’s very emotional, and just to function you almost have to divorce yourself of your own emotions and you miss a lot,” she said. “For me, it’s really beautiful to see the photographs and then I can get in touch with my own emotions about the event and the experience, and it’s powerful for me to see what other people were experiencing at the event.”

Christie Hansen, ‘19, an administrative assistant at Truth Pharm, said a photograph that depicts a megaphone and a sign reading “Stop the Stigma” was one of her favorites.

“It kind of speaks for itself in a way,” Hansen said. “I think the black-and-white photos bring out so much more emotion than if they were in color, to be honest. The contrast in feeling is represented in the contrast of color.”

Hansen said she hopes the exhibition aids Truth Pharm’s mission to inspire similar events in other cities and possibly lead to a nationwide movement.

“I’m hoping that they’ll start to understand that there are actual issues and it’s affecting everyone, and I think [Pleus] is doing a great job bringing awareness,” Hansen said.

Pleus said her own background as an artist has motivated her to include the arts in the work Truth Pharm does. She hopes the photographs serve to inform exhibition visitors.

“Having this as a part of First Friday is beautiful because we’re reaching people who would maybe never be exposed to Truth Pharm and know about our work and know about our walk,” Pleus said. “They might come to it next year, but then they’re also seeing what’s behind it, the loss of all these human lives, and they might get concerned about the issue. I feel like art reaches a broader audience and reaches people in a way that sometimes words can’t.”

Pipe Dream’s News Editor Jacob T. Kerr and Arts & Culture Editor Gabby Iacovano sit down with Laura Johnsen, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate studying anthropology. Johnsen studies the technology surrounding the world of sex and the social implications it carries with it.

This episode was hosted by Jacob T. Kerr and Gabby Iacovano and post-production work was done by Design Manager Kade Estelle and Digital Editor Kimberly Gonzalez. Thank you to Laura Johnsen for her support of the show.

After dropping out of Columbia College in Chicago, Bulnes, 24, started “Classroom Crush,” a podcast where guests discuss formative childhood and adolescent crushes. Since the podcast’s start in 2017, guests have ranged from past hookups to Bulnes’ mother, and while names are often changed, stories are told with a refreshing vulnerability. Pipe Dream sat down with Bulnes to talk romance, rejection and the unique struggles of Generation Z crushing.

Pipe Dream (PD): What motivated you to start “Classroom Crush?”

Rebecca Bulnes (RB): I was always very “boy-crazy” and I didn’t like the connotation of that. Even in my high school film class — and I was good in that class, I wrote decent papers — I got my teacher to write in my senior yearbook, and he wrote something like, “I think it’s funny how no matter what film it is, you’ll find a way to love the leading man.” I was like, “Haha, that’s funny,” but also like, “Fuck you, I was a person beyond vocalizing that I was horny for Jimmy Stewart!” Like, everyone’s horny for Jimmy Stewart, get over it! But I always had a lot of crushes, and I wanted to start a podcast because I started writing about podcasts for AV Club when I moved to Chicago. One day I was thinking about my main nemesis crush from K-8 school, and I remember thinking, “I wonder what’s going on with him,” you know, “that guy fucked me up!” So I first came up with the idea of, “What if I talk to my old crushes,” and then that turned into, “What if you talk about them? What if you talk about them with people? And talk about how they formed you?” It is a thing that I feel passionately about, and I feel like I’ve defined myself so much by romance or the lack thereof, but I didn’t like the idea that that was a bad thing; just because it happens when you’re young doesn’t mean it’s not important. And I noticed that whenever I brought up the idea, people would want to talk to me about it because it’s such a universal thing.

PD: The focus of the show is childhood crushes, but you also mention recent crushes and hookups. Is there any intent to show that the heartbreak we associate with adolescence can hurt just as much as an adult?

RB: I think for the podcast I really value radical honesty above all else, and sometimes I’ll be talking about something in the past, and it parallels what’s happening in my life now … It’s all valid, that’s why people go to therapy! People give validity to really traumatic things, and not that it’s the same, but we give validity to everything else that happened in our childhood — why not “puppy love?” Because it guides you; if you’re a person like me, who has a lot to give, it’s also a sort of trauma.

PD: I heard you say in an episode that you think your crush fixation stems from a feeling of wanting to be chosen, and that feeling extends to other facets of your life. Do you think a person’s early 20’s are an especially vulnerable time for that?

RB: In this area of your life, so much hinges on external validation. The same way I want to skip the flirting and go straight to the boyfriend, I also want to skip to the career, but all that hinges on someone choosing me. Leaving anything up to anyone else is hard to do, and that’s because when you leave things up to other people, you have to make sure they know what you want. And that’s something I’m trying with my new job, where I’m very shamelessly saying “I want this thing,” but it’s hard because then if you don’t get it, everyone knows how much you wanted it and that it didn’t line up for you. I’m sure it’s tied to age because there’s a lot of stuff floating around in the atmosphere as far as what direction you go in, and a lot of it has to do with other people. What’s so funny is that when you see someone asking for what they want, it’s never embarrassing; usually when you see that in the world you’re like, “Wow, that’s so badass,” so then why can’t we do it? It’s because of classic self-loathing, and not wanting to settle.

PD: You were only in college for two semesters, but do you remember any formative romantic experiences from that time? Any college dating advice?

RB: Typically people talk about college as the time to have sex and experiment, and I did hook up in those times and didn’t have a relationship, obviously. I think it’s important to know what’s it like to have an empty hookup — which is fun — but then at the same time you learn what it feels like to want something more … I’m probably the worst candidate for college dating advice, but what I will say is I wasn’t living in dorms, and I’d always fantasize about college dorm life and running into people because my favorite thing in the world is when people are stuck together. It’s why I love the show “Lost,” because it’s a bunch of people stuck together in a place, and shit’s gonna happen … so I feel like you’ve got to take advantage of people being stuck there with you!

PD: If you could’ve given yourself any advice in that period of 18 to 21 years old, what would it be?

RB: I think up until 18 to 21, you’ve only had so many options, and a lot of that has to do with what the world has told you [that] you want. This was sort of my college reawakening, and I recognized a lot of my internalized racism that I had never thought about until I was surrounded by white people. I realized how much of my own taste is because the world sold to me this person that I’m supposed to like, and that shook me. I think college is a really good time to sit with yourself outside the context of everything and think, “What really makes me happy?” If college is meant to explore, explore sexually but also explore yourself emotionally, and be open to different kinds of people.

PD: Do you think Generation Z is faced with any unique problems when it comes to dating?

RB: I think I’m pretty good at translating my real voice to my online voice, but not everyone is good at that, and online, of course, people want to present the version of themselves. You can also just put off meeting someone in real life for as long as is comfortable and then you can grow expectations and then have them more severely crushed. But at the same time, I love the internet because when someone feels like they haven’t found their people, you can find your people elsewhere … I have a sister who’s 16, and it’s funny because when she’s started talking to me about boys and stuff, it is 90 percent about the social media interaction. What things mean keep changing, and I think that keeps on presenting new opportunities for miscommunication. My sister said this one guy fire-reacted to her selfie, and I want to tell her that’s because he likes you, but I don’t know that. Especially with young people, they’re craving attention, and they know that they’re going to get attention with something like that, and there are so many ways to grab attention but also to be irresponsible about what that attention means.

PD: Has the fact that you’ve never been in a relationship changed the way you approach new prospects?

RB: Especially when it ends up being really hookupy, I remember that I have so much to give, and the longer I go without having a place to put it the harder it gets for someone to slowly unravel it. I was talking to my friend about this and she said, “It’s okay to be nice to men, men don’t know how to be tender with each other and they need it.” And it’s true; I shouldn’t have to not be nice when I’m a nice person and want to say nice things to you, I shouldn’t have to hide that to make you more comfortable in the little game we’re supposed to be playing. And I love that quality about myself, that I really know how to love with my whole heart and I don’t want to change that … I’ve interviewed so many guys on the show and they’ll say they like it when a girl’s a little mean to them, but I feel like so much of that is because of the culture, and I think men especially want to have won the person over and want to regain the power. And I think for some reason we don’t value niceness and sweetness as powerful, even though in the end it is the most powerful thing — not to sound like fucking J.K. Rowling — but it’s true. And that’s why when a relationship ends, it can be so damaging and world-turning, because then that love is taken away. I don’t get why we don’t see it as powerful — why, because it’s a feminine thing? But then again, I’ve done the same thing where someone’s been very nice to me and I’m like, “boring!” We all do it, but I think it has a lot more to do with what we’re supposed to find attractive than what we actually find attractive.

PD: You always end your show talking about music. What are some favorite crush songs?

RB: I’ve been wanting to talk about this one — I love oldies because there’s something so great about knowing that this shit is down the line — this one by Chet Baker: “I fall in love too easily / I fall in love too fast / I fall in love too terribly hard / For love to ever last / My heart should be well schooled / Cause I’ve been fooled in the past.” It’s like I wrote it when I was 16 years old, I love that song so much. There’s something very reassuring about knowing Chet Baker was singing about it and I still feel that way. I’ve talked about this one on the show before, it’s one I always return to because it’s so perfect, Gladys Knight and the Pips’ “If I Were Your Woman.” This part is like the “Classroom Crush” motto: “Life is so crazy and love is unkind / Because she came first, darling / Will she hang on your mind? / You’re a part of me / And you don’t even know it / I’m what you need / But I’m too afraid to show it.” That’s a good Rebecca encapsulation song.

Elder, an adjunct lecturer of music, has recently been revisiting Robert Glasper’s “Black Radio,” released in 2012. Glasper, a 41-year-old pianist and record producer, has released 10 albums since his 2004 debut.

“Glasper is a trained jazz pianist, but his music is really an amalgamation of jazz and hip-hop and soul and funk, put together in packages that are really fresh and current and very original, so there’s something really special about him,” Elder said. “While he draws on the authenticity of the jazz roots, he’s done some things that really brought the music current.”

“When you talk about genres, I think it seems like the walls are coming down more than they used to when putting something into a definition,” he said. “So much music is influenced by jazz now, but it’s not jazz — you wouldn’t put it into the category of mainstream jazz.”

This fall, Elder taught Music 113: Jazz In American Music, which led him to revisit “Black Radio.” Among several other music classes, he also teaches Music 216: Musicianship I and Music 282A: Music Technology, where volunteer musicians come in to be recorded by his students. He said a class he’s teaching can inspire the music he’s listening to. When teaching his class about jazz, he also revisited the work of bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding.

“She writes some really edgy stuff, and did some stuff where she combined jazz with chamber music and some orchestral and symphonic works, so she’s very out of the box and yet still very faithful to tradition,” he said.

He said classes about jazz history are especially interesting to teach because the genre is continually evolving.

“Jazz history, unlike a lot of other types of history, is not done,” he said. “With certain kinds of music history, the books have been closed on it, but jazz is alive and well. The history is unfolding as we speak.”

Mehta, undergraduate director of English and an associate professor of English, usually listens to Hindi film music generated by the Bollywood film industry. Mehta teaches and studies film songs and said while she listens to music for pleasure, she also thinks in terms of where an album falls within the context of the industry and how it compares to other soundtracks.

One of Mehta’s favorite albums of the past year is the soundtrack to “Gully Boy,” released in 2019. The film, based on the real-life stories of two rappers, follows a young working-class man in Mumbai who forges his way to rap stardom. Mehta said she’s interested not only in the album’s themes, but in its roster of more than 50 contributors, far more expansive than that of a usual Bollywood film.

Bollywood cinema soundtracks often employ playback singers and have actors lip-sync songs, but the star of “Gully Boy” sings and raps a number of songs on his own. Mehta said her opinion on this creative choice changed after seeing the film instead of just hearing the soundtrack.

“I thought it might have been better if a playback singer had sung it rather than him because he’s not so great, but when I watched the film it made sense that he was the one who did the singing because we follow this guy’s craft from just beginning to rap to becoming a star rapper, and then by the time that happens in the film, the album also changes to give him a voice appropriate for that,” she said. “So for me that becomes interesting — that listening generates one kind of reading about the voice and its appropriateness, whereas watching the film generates a different kind of reading about that same voice.”

Mehta said she was particularly struck by a track that translates as “Distance.” In the film, it’s played during a scene where the main character is working as a driver for a wealthy family, and the young woman he’s driving is crying in the car.

“As the song is playing, the camera moves between shots of him driving the car and her sitting in the back and we see the strip of the car that divides the two of them, and the song itself begins to both narrate and question the class differences that separate them, that also don’t allow them to be emotionally close, that he’s not allowed to hold her or hug her or say ‘What’s wrong?’ because after all, he’s the driver,” Mehta said.

Hindi film music exists outside the context of films as pop music, and Mehta said this aspect of the genre makes it an especially interesting object of study.

“Most people who know the soundtrack don’t necessarily know the film,” she said. “They function both as part of the film, but they circulate outside of it. It definitely makes them very interesting because the song can generate a story that may contradict the story that’s in the film.”

Record of the Year

Our pick: “bad guy” — Billie Eilish

At the age of 18, Billie Eilish has already become a household name, leveraging a brand of edginess that is both intriguing and accessible to mainstream audiences. Album opener “bad guy” is one of the most polished earworms of the year, a perfect introduction to Eilish’s undeniable humor and precision.

Pat’s nomination: “Juice” — Lizzo

While “Truth Hurts” dominated the charts this summer, the best production on Lizzo’s “Cuz I Love You” can be found elsewhere on the track list. “Juice” is an infectious, punchy pop track with the catchiest chorus of the year. Lizzo’s vocals blend perfectly with the colorful production to create a hook guaranteed to get caught in your head.

Gabby’s nomination: “Frontier” — Holly Herndon

Inspired by the Sacred Harp tradition of Holly Herndon’s Southern childhood, “Frontier” employs a transfixing vocal ensemble that includes Spawn, an AI trained to process and respond to music. The resulting sound, both clearly augmented and unmistakably human, speaks to the themes of technology, physicality and transience woven into Herndon’s latest album, “PROTO.”

Album of the Year

Our pick: “Norman F*****g Rockwell!” — Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey’s maximalist pop has never shined as bright as it does on the unquestionable album of the year, “Norman F*****g Rockwell!” This is one of the most visually evocative albums of the decade, and Del Rey’s growth as a songwriter and performer suggests the possibility of a career yet to reach its prime.

Pat’s nomination: “I Need a New War” — Craig Finn

In both his solo releases and his work as the frontman of The Hold Steady, Craig Finn has focused on telling stories about good people with deeply flawed lives. With standout tracks like “Magic Marker” and “Something to Hope For,” his most recent effort has cut out the inconsistency that defined his earlier records and found the best version of his unique storytelling voice.

Gabby’s nomination: “MAGDALENE” — FKA twigs

FKA twigs, already an innovator from the start of her career, blossomed in 2019 when she released a marvelous studio album while raising the bar for live performance. “MAGDALENE” is beautiful as a whole, but tracks “home with you” and “cellophane” elevate it to Album of the Year status; both have the same emotionally vulnerable, cinematic quality that suggests they’ve never been written down.

Song of the Year

Our pick: “Truth Hurts” — Lizzo

Could it really be any other song? Lizzo’s unbelievable rise to stardom over the last year was propelled first and foremost by “Truth Hurts,” her four-times platinum single that took the world by storm and made her a household name. Originally released in 2017, the track was re-released in 2019 as a bonus track on critically acclaimed album “Cuz I Love You,” and it seems that the second time was the charm.

Pat’s nomination: “When Am I Gonna Lose You” — Local Natives

Focusing on the anxiety that accompanies any long-term relationship, “When Am I Gonna Lose You” is a triumph of power pop that pounds through your headphones at its most intense moments. The slow build of the second half’s crescendo is liable to give you chills. In a year of failed attempts by indie-pop bands to reinvent their sound, Local Natives succeeded with flying colors.

Gabby’s nomination: “Hot Girl Summer” — Megan Thee Stallion (feat. Nicki Minaj & Ty Dolla $ign)

Summer 2019 belonged to Megan Thee Stallion and the Hot Girl ethos, which brought fans together via the rapper’s Instagram for LA parties and bikini beach cleanups. Released Aug. 9, “Hot Girl Summer” quickly climbed the charts, inviting some dark climate-related humor and proving that Stalli’s influence will outlast the changing of the seasons.

Best New Artist

Our pick: ROSALÍA

Rosalía Vila Tobella is by no means a new artist, but the past two years have seen her take new leaps toward pop stardom. 2018’s “EL MAL QUERER,” which infuses Top 40-worthy songcraft with the traditional styles of ROSALÍA’s native Spain, finally saw the artist’s aesthetic vision fully realized. The singles she’s released this past year, including the intense “A Palé,” the simultaneously sweet and biting “Milionària” and reggaeton hit “Con Altura,” have proven her potential to enliven the landscape of mainstream American pop, adding new shades to a sonic palette that often seems homogeneous.

Pat’s nomination: Better Oblivion Community Center

Indie darlings Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers combined to form Better Oblivion Community Center and released an album of the same name, filled to the brim with introspective lyrics and fundamentally sound songwriting. Standout tracks “Dylan Thomas” and “Didn’t Know What I Was in For” are raw, emotional attempts to understand sadness and cruelty through an empathetic lens.

Gabby’s nomination: Orville Peck

Orville Peck may have ridden pop culture’s “yee haw” zeitgeist into 2019, but upon hearing the masked singer-songwriter’s work, it’s clear he’s internalized the sound and vision of country-western as a genuine influence. Fashion fads come and go, but Peck’s Marty Robbins-style vocals, heartfelt lyrics and commitment to both tradition and subversion have marked him as a bona fide cowboy.

Best Pop Solo Performance

Our pick: “SPIRIT” — Beyoncé

While Ariana Grande and Lizzo delivered stellar vocal performances this year, the songs nominated for this category don’t showcase their talents as well as some others. Beyoncé’s vocals are predictably strong on “SPIRIT,” written for “The Lion King” and controversially snubbed for an Oscar.

Gabby’s nomination: “Birthday” — Tami T

Swedish artist Tami T creates glittering synth pop in the vein of Charli XCX and MARINA, but the almost childlike quality of her blunt, confessional lyrics sets her apart from industry giants. Her plaintive delivery on “Birthday” captures the heartbreaking essence of a long walk home from an empty night out.

Pat’s nomination: “So Hot You’re Hurting my Feelings” — Caroline Polachek

A synth-pop banger in the vein of Charli XCX, “So Hot You’re Hurting my Feelings” is the catchiest song off of Caroline Polachek’s excellent 2019 album “Pang.” The production is tight and groove-filled while Polachek’s vocals capture the desperation of missing a partner who offers you something no one else can.

Best Rock Song

Our pick: “Harmony Hall” — Vampire Weekend

I wouldn’t necessarily classify Vampire Weekend as rock, but it’s hard to argue that it’s anything less than the best song on the list. The lead single off of the band’s long-awaited album “Father of the Bride,” “Harmony Hall” sounds like Paul Simon started a jam band, in the most complimentary sense.

Pat’s nomination: “953” — black midi

It’s hard to describe black midi, as their most defining attribute is that they don’t sound like anybody else. “953” features pounding guitars and ridiculously complex drum lines in between vocals inspired by David Byrne. The result is a beautiful mess that encapsulates both the violence of punk and the musical talent of the best rock bands of the ’80s and ’90s. Oh, and they’re all teenagers. Hopefully, black midi is just getting started.

Gabby’s nomination: “Cemetery” — Brutus

It seems ridiculous to file Belgian post-metal power trio Brutus into the Grammys’ frustratingly vague rock category, but the group’s most recent album, “Nest,” is absolutely one of the year’s most powerful. “Cemetery” features gripping vocals from singer Stefanie Mannaerts and a pounding, transcendent progression that repeats after each chorus. It stuns me every time I hear it.

Best Alternative Album

Our pick: “U.F.O.F” — Big Thief

Big Thief’s “U.F.O.F” may be the highlight of a discography comprised entirely, so far, of modern classics. The band brings its melodic gifts to a cohesive, delicately rendered world of cattails, fruit bats’ eyes and cool autumn rain, and is an album you’ll want to keep revisiting as a whole instead of plucking out key tracks.

Pat’s nomination: “Purple Mountains” — Purple Mountains

While the decade has brought a slew of albums attempting to contribute to a greater understanding of mental health struggles, few have been capable of finding the line between melodrama and mockery as well as Purple Mountains’ self-titled album. It’s a tragedy that the album serves as a final effort for singer David Berman, who took his own life shortly after the release, but “Purple Mountains” is an empathetic and powerful look at living with a woefully misunderstood illness such as chronic depression.

Gabby’s nomination: “Caligula” — Lingua Ignota

Lingua Ignota’s “Caligula,” an apocalyptic portrait of feminine rage, employs a palette of disparate sources: baroque ceremonial marches, Billy Bragg, black metal, Frank O’Hara and the Jonestown death tape. Musician Kristin Hayter has long taken an academic approach to music, and her attention to detail shines through in her finest work yet, a thesis on righteous anger and suffering.

Best Rap Song

Our pick: “Suge” — DaBaby

Known for his goofy persona and creative videos, DaBaby rose to stardom this year with two great albums and a slew of acclaimed guest verses alongside Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, Lil Nas X and more. Suave and minimal, “Suge” encapsulates the rapper’s appeal as one of 2019’s most fascinating figures.

Pat’s nomination: “Blood of the Fang” — clipping.

Arguably the best political song of the year, “Blood of the Fang” tackles police violence and the underappreciated experience of being a black man in the United States. This track is coursing with chaotic energy and is built off of an incredibly creative sampling from a 1970s horror film.

Gabby’s nomination: “Cold” — Rico Nasty & Kenny Beats

Album opener “Cold” begins with a robotic voice asking, “Hey, you there. Aren’t you tired of the same old thing?” Rapper Rico Nasty, whose sharp wit and Riot grrrl energy have paved her way to prominence, quickly offers an alternative as the song explodes into braggadocious mayhem.

Since 2010, Rooney has sold baked goods online and from her home. When the Rooney family moved in August from Chenango Street to Leroy Street, De Colores moved with them.

Rooney said after the new shop opens, the business will no longer be operating from the Leroy Street house.

“We’re growing, so it was time to get into a bigger space,” Rooney said.

De Colores Cookies y Mas will share a storefront with Upstate Grain, a business run by local artist Morgan Hastings, 32, of Binghamton. A friend of Rooney’s, Hastings discovered the Johnson City location in October after toying with the idea of opening a store.

The store will operate as a retail and bake shop boutique, where each business owner will run her own register.

“We knew we wanted to keep both our identities, both of our businesses, so it’s basically a shared space,” Rooney said.

De Colores Cookies y Mas will still sell its usual cookies, tarts, quiches and more, while likely trying out new items as well. Rooney said the store will eventually start carrying hand-painted prints and greeting cards from a friend in Savannah, Georgia, who operates as Darling Lemon on Etsy. According to Rooney, Upstate Grain specializes in “cozy living” type items; the Etsy shop currently offers candles, blankets, bath products and Binghamton-inspired merchandise. Hastings also makes custom wooden signs, a skill that she’ll be sharing at in-store classes. Rooney will host classes of her own, teaching attendees how to decorate cookies.

Rooney, whose husband, Brian Rooney, is a lecturer of biology at Binghamton University, said she envisions the bake shop as a potential hangout or study spot for students once a cafe area is set up.

“It’ll be very BU-friendly, so students have a place they can go to and study and have coffee and just relax,” Ely Rooney said. “We kind of want it to be a home away from home, because our big thing is we really want to grow in the community and we want to be community-friendly, especially to our students.”

While many of her Leroy Street customers were in walking distance of De Colores Cookies y Mas before the move, Rooney said she believes they will follow her to Clinton St., as many of them did after the shop’s first location change. She said the Antique Row location, which neighbors the newly opened Parlor City Vegan and offers free parking nearby, is an ideal spot to run a business.

“It’s an up-and-coming space, I think we’re in an area that is going to grow eventually,” she said. “We’re hoping to bring people out to other businesses as well.”

On Thursday, JB Brager introduced Binghamton University students to zines, small self-published booklets that can be created from a single sheet of paper. Brager, a comics artist who currently teaches history at Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, visited both the Q Center and a class taught by Tina Chronopoulos, an associate professor of classical and Near Eastern studies and interim director of the Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Chronopoulos learned about Brager a few years ago while volunteering in Madison, Wisconsin for LGBT Books to Prisoners, an organization that sends books to LGBTQ-identifying people who are incarcerated.

She said she invited Brager to visit campus because the final project for her class, Classics 380C: America & Classical Antiquity, asks students to create a zine about a figure from an underrepresented group within the field of classics or ancient Mediterranean studies.

“I also wanted to invite JB [Brager] in order to put someone else at the front of the room other than me, so students can get a different perspective and meet someone whose artistic work is about empowering sex workers and trans[gender] [or] nonbinary folks, and whose activism centers around indigenous rights and police brutality,” she wrote in an email. “I think our campus isn’t quite political [and] activist enough, so I wanted my students to meet a real radical.”

Brager shared a genealogical history of zines with the class, starting with the invention of the printing press, before leading a hands-on workshop. Later in the day, they led a more informal workshop at the Q Center, where a small table of attendees learned the “one-page-fold” technique and took an hour to draw, collage or write a zine.

In addition to making zines and comics, Brager has also taught university courses, facilitated workshops and given lectures on subjects including comics, zines, social media, photography, human rights and genocide studies.

Brager said college can be a good time to explore zine-making, especially since students often have resources like printing at their disposal. They said Chronopoulos’ class was a unique forum for talking about the medium.

“I think it’s a testament to the fact that zines can be about anything,” Brager said. “They sort of activate a different part of your brain and your creativity, and you can make a zine in a physics class — it doesn’t matter. It just allows us to be creative when there’s not many opportunities to do that in college when you’re stressed out.”

While zines are often associated with historical moments like the Riot grrrl movement of the ’90s, Brager has noticed resurgences of zines within the past decade via online communities like LiveJournal, where users often create networks of pen pals.

“In some ways [zines] are making a comeback, but in some ways they never left,” Brager said. “There’s something about the materiality of a zine that has a different effect and resonance with people, getting one is more like getting a present than getting an email … It’s a more human thing.”

Zines hold value in the art economy, and according to Brager, they also serve an important role during the rise of digital surveillance.

“People are realizing that digital spaces are not secure in terms of sharing information, especially for activists, so one of the things I told the class is that right now in Hong Kong with the democracy protests, those protestors in one of the most technologically advanced places in the world are making zines,” they said.

Julian Zumbach, a junior majoring in medieval and early modern studies, sat in on Chronopoulos’ class and the Q Center’s workshop.

“I learned that anybody can make a zine and it doesn’t matter how it turns out — you can just make it for the joy of making something,” he said.

Brager said there’s freedom in both the accessibility and ephemerality of zines, which can be photocopied, distributed, destroyed or given as gifts, depending on the artist’s intent.

“It’s all these moments that you get to save in this interesting way,” they said. “They’re ephemeral enough that you can make them disappear if you decide to, but they’re maybe precious enough that you’ll want to save them.”

I arrived a little over half an hour into the party and immediately found myself underdressed in a leather jacket and jeans as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Partygoers stuck to the theme, sporting crinolines wide enough to part a crowd, more top hats than I could count and dark accents like jeweled canes and black feathers. One guest showed me a rubber crow they had modified into a purse. In one small room, a taxidermied deer and squirrel — perhaps a clue into what morbidity meant to the people who actually lived in the early 20th-century home — loomed over an old desk littered with festive glasses. Kitschy touches like holographic-moving photos clashed with the genuinely eerie air of the mansion itself. I wasn’t hungry and didn’t feel much like drinking, so I passed up the spread of food and the bar on the first floor, which offered specialties like the “Poison Apple and Black Magic Sangria.” A sign reading “curiosities” instead pointed me up the stairs, where I participated in a few Victorian parlor games — an old version of “mafia” and a game where a ring of guests passed a card behind our backs.

Later, I found myself seated before a Ouija board with two ghost hunters. Before we gave it a go, one asked me if I’d ever tried it (I hadn’t) and the other told a story about their own Ouija board disappearing. After a few minutes of chatting, one predicted, “I bet if we all touch this thing, it won’t move.” It didn’t. Once the ghost hunters left, I had a second try with a self-identified medium and two other guests. One looked at the board with weary eyes before we began, concerned that they had too much “baggage” to participate. When we all touched the triangle, I finally felt it move, though I suspected the medium might be helping it along. I’ve read some of the science behind Ouija boards — I’d guessed that the stronger the participants’ convictions, the more likely it is to move. As the movements formed random letter jumbles, “ENS,” “CMAT,” “DABCE” (“dance?”) and “BLUCOX” (“maybe it’s been a while”), the guest who’d been worried about baggage reported a numb feeling in the hand touching the board, which persisted even after they switched hands. I learned a few basic rules: that you’re supposed to have an equal number of women and men at the table, that you can’t rest your arms on the table and that the crucifix I was carrying was possibly damaging our connection with the ghosts.

I briefly stopped at the third-level ballroom and heard Kesha’s “TiK ToK” — unfortunately, not as atmospheric a choice as I was hoping for — while bustled skirts swished across the dance floor. I stayed for only a moment before hurrying down the stairs to catch the 9:45 p.m. séance, one of the three performed that night at times advertised outside the small room where they were held. A line had already formed when I got there 10 minutes early, and after just making it into the room, I was told by the mentalist conducting the séance that we’d be calling on the ghost of Alonzo Roberson. It played out a bit like a magic trick, culminating in a hypnotized audience member correctly choosing the key to a wooden box. The box contained a fishing lure supposedly cherished by Roberson, and the image of the mentalist dangling the lure before the audience is one I won’t soon forget. This particular amalgamation of spirituality and performance didn’t quite agree with me, and I probably won’t be biting the hook anytime soon. I was admittedly a little creeped out, though, later walking down the mansion’s long, secluded hallways and passing the elevator, the most haunted part of the building according to several guests.

Before leaving, I sat to take some notes in the “funeral parlor” on the first floor. A speaker played a recording of Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” near a few rows of chairs, which faced a black coffin decorated with what looked like a horse skull with black flowers pouring from its empty cavities. The seats were empty, save for a few couples chatting and looking through their phones, but at the front, a lone guest in a huge fur coat looked solemnly downward as if at a real wake. The image struck me, maybe because I saw in it the same impulse that had pushed me to spend my Saturday evening in a creepy mansion full of strangers. For each guest who approached the night’s festivities with skeptical lightheartedness, there was surely another who came in search of fulfillment — be it aesthetic, Dionysian or spiritual. As I left the mansion, its green-light-bathed exterior recalling the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave or Félicien Rops that I gravitate toward every autumn, I decided I’d found mine.

Bush and Nappi have produced two self-funded feature films in the area. “Demon Messenger” (2012) and “House on Ghost Hill Road” (2016) were both low-budget projects borne of Nappi’s interests in film and theatre and Bush’s lifelong passion for horror. The two met during their time at Broome Community College before Nappi went on to get his master’s in theatre at Binghamton University. Bush said the pair’s first forays into feature filmmaking coincided with broader changes in the medium, which made larger-scale projects easier to complete.

“We used to do short films because back then we were still shooting on actual film, which was cool, but everything was kind of changing to digital at that point, so you could afford to just get a digital-editing software and it was a big change in things,” he said.

Both films were directed by Nappi, with Bush writing and acting as a jack of all trades, filling in for missing sound or camera workers. “Demon Messenger” tells the story of a woodland spirit awakened by conflicts over fracking, and “House on Ghost Hill Road” borrows its villain, the King in Yellow, from a late 19th-century short story collection that inspired the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Bush said the film was inspired by the debate over fracking in New York state.

“I live just outside Broome County and it’s very rural, and I had a lot of people around me who wanted fracking to come because they were going to make money, and I had a lot of people who did not want fracking to come because of the environmental concerns,” he said. “This is kind of the classic tale about a family who wants to make money at it, and one member doesn’t know about it and they call on this made-up demon — based on some legends of Bigfoot, Rougarou, all these demons of vengeance — to stop the frackers.”

Bush said his stories are often based not just on experience, but around the physical resources that are available to him. The story of “House on Ghost Hill Road” was built around the house it was shot in, which was offered to them as a set by its owner, a fan of their previous work.

Andy Horowitz, ‘89, an artist in residence in the theatre department at BU, has been in over 30 films and played villains in both the team’s features. He got involved with the project because he knew Bush and Nappi from the area and said he appreciates the spontaneity of low-budget filmmaking.

“It’s really fun — the problem solving is ad hoc, when something goes wrong you have to fix it, the lighting is often a long string of extension cords going to someone’s house or car,” he said. “Everybody is ready for the adventure.”

For both films, the pair locally sourced their cast and crew with open calls for auditions. To work around busy schedules, they only shot on the weekends, which resulted in approximately six-month-long shoots. Horowitz said “Demon Messenger” was shot mostly outdoors from the summer into the fall.

“Everything was difficult — sudden downpours, cold, heat, you name it,” he said. “All of a sudden we’d all be huddled in a little tent [to] keep our costumes dry and our makeup on our faces while we waited for Mother Nature to decide whether we could keep filming or not.”

The two features are Horowitz’s only horror projects to date. He said the job of playing a villain, much like that of acting in an independent film, is a distinctive experience, one that has been made more enjoyable by the creative freedom granted by Bush and Nappi.

“There’s this thing that any actor understands — you never play evil, you always believe your character is right at any given moment,” he said. “The fun of it is finding the wit and laughter. If you’re playing an evil villain, but you’re also charming and engaging and you laugh readily and you shake people’s hands very warmly, it adds a new level of creepiness to the role. Working with [Bush] and [Nappi], who are dear friends of mine and who really trust me as an actor, if I have an idea, they’re going to let me try it in one of the takes, and that’s just great. It’s very freeing and it’s largely why I was interested in doing the films.”

Bush said while the pair is not currently working on any features, there might be a few shorts coming up, which will likely be released in an anthology. He said he’s motivated to make horror films because he grew up with the genre and because of its allegorical potential.

“I enjoy the way it can be used to broach wider issues like equality in gender and race, as well and many other social and political issues through a safer lens,” he said.

On Sunday, Oct. 20, the Jewish Community Center (JCC) of Binghamton in Vestal hosted its first installment of Drag Queen Story Hour, a worldwide project that encourages drag queens to serve their local schools, community centers and libraries with independently run story-time events.

Drag queen and JCC employee Peaches Eclair, who organized the event, has previously hosted drag brunches at the JCC, the proceeds of which partially support Identity, a local LGBTQ youth center. Eclair, who has been doing drag for two years and has known the other participating queens for years prior, said youth outreach is an exciting new focus and an opportunity to showcase the JCC’s other resources for children.

“The fact that I have this huge platform and can bring in all this positivity energy, I love that,” Eclair said.

The event was free and open to the public. Drag queens India Bombay, Katrina, DeDe Kupps, Dusty Boxx, Paris LuRux and Eclair, some dressed like popular children’s characters, took the stage in colorful costume to read to a crowd of families. Kupps, who read Ian and Sarah Hoffman’s “Jacob’s New Dress,” prefaced the story by giving out some rainbow stickers and explaining what the symbol meant.

“What we all have to learn to do is love each other,” Kupps said. “That’s what today’s all about, right?”

LuRux, who has experience working with children as a teacher and water safety instructor, read “Something Special” by David McPhail. She said she felt the book would be relatable to a young audience.

“I feel like kids are very much like, ‘Oh, my older brother or sister is doing something, so I want to do it,’ and when they’re not good at it, they get kind of down on themselves,” she said. “So [the book] was very much like, ‘What can you do that’s special to you and that makes you unique?’ and that’s what I really liked about it.”

Boxx, who read “My Friend Has Down Syndrome” by Jennifer Moore-Mallinos, said she chose the book for its message of inclusivity.

“I chose the book I read because I think it’s important to use our platform to stand up for people who are different and to bring love, diversity and acceptance to our community,” she said.

Gina Hernandez, 29, of Vestal, brought two children to the event and said she appreciated the stories that were chosen.

“We had a really good time,” Hernandez said. “The stories that everybody picked were really good stories about inclusivity and being different and being special, so it was nice for both [my children] to hear stories that centered around those themes.”

A drag queen story hour held at the Broome County Public Library in January 2018 made state news after facing backlash from Facebook users. Events across the nation have elicited similar responses, prompting protests, counterprotests and social media debates.

LuRux said responses to the JCC’s event, which was her first experience with the program, have been positive.

“I love the community and the atmosphere of things like this,” she said. “It was so fun, especially with it being my first one. The fact that it was well received and everyone was so loving and humble about the situation, it was so good to walk into.”

Eclair, who hopes to hold the JCC’s next Drag Queen Story Hour this spring, most likely in March or April, said the queens themselves serve as models of confidence for both children and adults.

“They show acceptance, they show love and it’s [a] new experience, so for kids, they’re like sponges and they absorb anything, so if they see somebody up there who’s comfortable, who knows who they are and is accepting and loving, they’ll take that into consideration, and then they’ll start showing that as well,” she said. “It’s funny how you can see reactions with new experiences even with adults. When they try something new, they’ll remember it later and they won’t be as timid or scared, or look at it in a different way, so I’m all for new experiences.”

Boxx said she hopes to set an example that previous generations might not have had.

“I wanted to participate in this event because when I was little, no one told me I could grow up to be whatever I want to be,” she said. “I’m here to show these kids that it doesn’t matter if you’re different, if you’re weird, if you’re picked on — it’s all of our differences that make us all the same.”

“Death Comes To The Phelps,” an annual candlelight tour that explores death and mourning in the 19th century, has returned for the month of October.

Mark Dickinson, chair of the mansion’s board of trustees, has been involved in the tour for four of the five years it has been offered. The presentation features items from Dickinson’s private collection, gleaned from estate sales and antique shops. He will be leading tours along with Joe Schuerch, the mansion’s house manager, and Chelsea Gibson, treasurer of the mansion’s board of trustees and a visiting assistant professor of history at Binghamton University.

According to Dickinson, the tour sells out every October.

“Excitement for it grows every year, which is interesting since the subject matter is not too lively, if you’ll pardon the pun,” he said. “I think people find a morbid curiosity in it.”

Dickinson said he tries to add a few new pieces each year to keep attendees interested, and this year, the script for the tour was also changed.

“We changed the script to focus more on the American aspect of 19th-century mourning — even though everything was influenced by the British because at that time whatever Queen Victoria said everyone followed, it eventually became Americanized,” he said. “We talk a little more about local people involved in the business, and we’ll be focusing more on the family this time.”

The Gilded Age mansion, located at 191 Court St., was completed in 1871 and housed businessman Sherman Phelps and his family. Just 11 years after the mansion was built, every major member of the family had died. Tour guests are led through each room of the mansion, where the death date of a Phelps family member is announced before the presentation of topics like morbid nursery rhymes, embalming practices, superstitions and Puritan attitudes toward death that precede the Victorian era.

One room, for example, focuses on infant mortality and death during childbirth. The exhibit featured Alexandria feeding bottles, infamous for causing infant deaths via bacteria buildup in their long necks. Another displays a vial meant to catch widows’ tears, a “death mask” cast from a corpse’s face and a few art pieces woven from the hair of dead loved ones.

With high infant mortality rates and low life expectancy because of factors like the use of arsenic in ornamental items, unsanitary surgeries and disease outbreaks that worsened with urbanization, the Victorian era was immersed in what Dickinson calls a “culture of death,” which produced some of the era’s most intricate art.

“There was such fine craftsmanship, from the jewelry to the clothing to paper crafts, down to the last detail,” he said. “And no one really mourns like they used to, now you just get two days off from work.”

According to Gibson, the Victorians were also known for an enormous language of symbolism that figured into mourning traditions. Funeral wreaths had a horseshoe shape so that the two ends would point to heaven, and white calla lily wreaths for deceased mothers and infants symbolized youth and purity. Headstones were engraved with a variety of icons; an open book might have signified a love of learning, and drapery often symbolized the veil between life and death.

“I personally really like learning the symbology, because you become literate in a culture that is completely beyond us at this point, so now you can go to a cemetery and read the headstones in that way,” Gibson said.

Victorian widows followed the strictest mourning rules, undergoing mourning periods of about two years. While men usually just added black accents to their clothing for a short period after a death, grieving women adhered to specific dress codes and were barred from attending festive gatherings. Women were also tasked with preparing dead bodies for burial, a role that later switched when attitudes about death and medicine marked undertaking as a man’s job.

Gibson said the era’s mourning rituals were heavily influenced by class and gender expectations.

“As historians, we’re trained to look at race, gender and class, so I find it interesting how mourning in the 19th century was such a class-based and gendered thing,” she said. “Wealthy people or middle-class people would perform mourning to fit a kind of social [norm].”

In addition to the Phelps family, the tour touches on local points of interest like the Spring Forest Cemetery, established in 1849. Gibson said the guides’ research on the Phelps family and local affairs allowed them to more carefully gauge people’s attitudes toward death at specific points in time.

“One puzzle we have is that Robert Phelps decided to put all of the family in a mausoleum right before he died,” she said. “Did he do it because all the wealthy people in Binghamton were doing it, did he do it because he was afraid of grave robbing or was there another reason? I found this grave robbery that happened in New York City around the same time he created the mausoleum, so that kind of causality is interesting to figure out.”

A small painting displayed on the mansion’s first floor is said to embody the Victorian ideal of the good death: a peaceful death at home, surrounded by friends and loved ones. Gibson said this ideal has echoed through time as modern philosophers discuss the “right to die,” and it’s just one of many Victorian attitudes that might open modern minds toward the subject.

“This kind of thing can make people extremely uncomfortable because we don’t deal with it,” she said. “It was demystified in that period, and I think that’s something useful. As a historian, I think that when it comes to facing death, we’re the first century that hasn’t had to do that, and people forget how recent that is. So seeing this culture that’s so steeped in it seems really weird, but then you’re like, ‘Oh wait, that’s the fundamental process that unites everything.’”

“Death Comes To The Phelps” will be held at the Phelps Mansion Museum on Friday and Saturday evenings for the remainder of October. Starting times can be found on the event’s Facebook page. Each tour runs for about an hour. Adult tickets cost $15 and student tickets cost $10.

Binghamton’s Serling Fest, held annually since 2017, is hosted by the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation. While 2017’s festival lasted only one day and 2018’s lasted two, “The TZ@60” spanned three days, with events held at Atomic Tom’s on Friday, the Broome County Forum Theatre on Saturday and the Helen Foley Theatre at Binghamton High School on Sunday.

Andrew Polak, 58, president of the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation and a Binghamton resident, said the event has been able to grow because of the close-knit community surrounding Serling’s work.

“There’s a really big online presence of fans; there’s a dozen ‘Twilight Zone’ Facebook pages and we all just keep in touch with each other,” he said. “This is a good way for a lot of fans to get together.”

Attendees sat in on panels and presentations from “Twilight Zone” scholars and podcasters, pausing between programs to browse displays of Serling memorabilia and get books signed by featured authors. Panels focused on both Serling himself and his works, including “The Twilight Zone” and the horror anthology series “Night Gallery,” which turned 50 this year. Bill Mumy, who acted in “The Twilight Zone” as a child, called in via satellite for a discussion on Saturday. Fans young and old, mostly of “The Twilight Zone,” had opportunities to explore the Serling-verse past the show’s original run of 156 episodes.

Willow Katz, 44, of Texas, who has seen all 156 episodes at least a few times over, found out about the festival through the “Twilight Zone” podcast.

“It’s huge that after so many years people are still so affected by it and passionate about the show,” Katz said.

Cassie May, 19, of Auburn, New York, proudly showed off her “Twilight Zone” nail art and Rod Serling phone wallpaper. She said she revisited the show as a teenager after watching it with family as a child, and Serling’s writing challenged her assumptions about mid-century television.

“[Serling] was a pioneer, and especially since I know more about him, I know he really didn’t dig censorship,” she said. “He definitely wanted to talk about more, but he couldn’t, so he had to disguise it.”

Discussions touched upon Serling’s similarities to Charles Dickens, the series’ themes of nuclear anxiety and its influence on 21st century media, with Jordan Peele’s 2019 reboot being an especially hot topic.

Martin Grams, 42, of Maryland and author of “The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic,” said the show’s influence can be seen not only in new iterations, but in its status as a gold standard for media.

“It’s amazing how many shows will be produced and they’ll have a quote from some reviewer saying it’s the new ‘Twilight Zone,’ even though it has nothing to do with it, but they feel that’s the biggest compliment they can get, so I see it for television ads all the time,” he said.

On Friday, performers from Bold Local Artists of the Southern Tier (BLAST) performed a dramatic reading of “The Happy Place,” an unproduced, never-released script that was originally meant to serve as the pilot of “The Twilight Zone.” Liam Roma, a Binghamton High School student who performed, has a coincidental connection to Serling — his grandfather, William Fitzgerald, hailing from Vestal, was stationed with him during World War II. Fitzgerald’s name was used in “The Purple Testament,” a “Twilight Zone” episode about a World War II soldier who can sense impending deaths in his platoon.

Serling moved to Binghamton from Syracuse as a toddler, spending his youth in the city before joining the army after high school graduation. Helen Foley, a schoolteacher whom Serling was especially fond of, started the memorial foundation in 1985, 10 years after Serling’s death. The influence of Binghamton on Serling’s writing can be seen in the “Twilight Zone” episode “Walking Distance,” in which a man travels back in time to find his childhood self riding a carousel said to have been inspired by the one in Recreation Park.

Serling’s daughter, Anne Serling, author of “As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling,” said “Walking Distance” was probably the most autobiographical “Twilight Zone” episode that her father wrote.

“He said he had a propensity to write about the past,” she said. “He had a very idyllic childhood and loved Binghamton.”

In the closing narration of “Walking Distance,” Serling describes the episode’s main character as “successful in most things, but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives — trying to go home again.” A quote from Serling on display at the fest echoes this view of the hometown as a universal source of comfort: “In the strangely brittle, terribly sensitive makeup of a human being, there is a need for a place to hang a hat, or a kind of geographical womb to crawl back into, or maybe just a place that’s familiar because that’s where you grew up … For whatever else I may have had, or lost, or will find, I’ve still got a hometown.”

De Colores Cookies y Mas, a cottage bakery that hosts weekly pop-up sales, recently opened on 100 Leroy St. Shop owner Ely Rooney and her husband Brian Rooney, a lecturer of biology at Binghamton University, moved to Binghamton last year, originally running the business from Chenango Street. They closed on the Leroy Street house days before Porchfest 2019, which was the new location’s first day of operation.

The shop usually operates on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., offering different items each week. Rooney never makes items in bulk, and she attributes the “punch of flavor” in her treats to her commitment to baking small batches. In addition to her decorative cookies, she makes scones, bakery cookies, tarts and savory items like quiches and rolls. While she used to work in upscale Italian and French cuisine, she’s found that she also has a knack for baking.

“I was always taught that you’re either a baker or a chef, but it turns out I’m both,” she said.

Rooney has been in the food industry for nearly 20 years, studying culinary arts at the Art Institute of Houston and working as an executive sous-chef in Texas. After getting married in 2010, she moved from Houston to Georgia, where she started making custom hand-painted cookies for friends and eventually opened an Etsy shop. With four kids, three cats, a dog and a fish to look after, she said she entered the baking business so she could focus more on family life without having to “hang up the apron.”

“Food has always been in our family and has always been a way to express myself,” Rooney said. “It’s something that has always been there from the beginning and I love it so much more now because of that. There’s a lot of patience you have to have. It’s very time-consuming, but at the same time, it allows me to step away from it for a little bit and be a mom.”

Using both family and original recipes, Rooney offers unique creations like “kaleidoscope cookies” while honoring her Mexican heritage with empanadas, tres leches cake, traditional gingerbread cookies and more.

She said she infuses her Mexican pastries with warm tones by adding ingredients like citrus zest, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, drawing inspiration from tradition while also putting her own spin on recipes she finds. She said she hopes her business brings something unique to the area by offering authentic Mexican food.

“I’m from Texas, which is a big melting pot,” she said. “There are a whole lot of little shops and things that are cultural-friendly toward the Latin community, and you don’t find a lot of that here. It was something I was nostalgic for and that I missed, so I love to offer that to anybody who’s out here and willing to try it. It can be a bit daunting — they can get an empanada with ground beef and olives and cranberries and pecans and they wouldn’t think that’s delicious, but it is.”

Since moving from Chenango Street to her brightly decorated home on the West Side, Rooney said she has found both a larger base of customers and a greater sense of community. Many of her patrons live within walking distance of the shop, stopping by during Saturday morning strolls.

“There’s been a huge change,” she said. “People always came out there, but now there’s maybe five times more.”

In addition to her pop-up sales, Rooney takes custom orders, caters local events and supplies seasonal decorative cookies for Taste NY and other shops. She said that while custom cookies are not a huge seller in Binghamton, her ventures into other products have allowed her to find a niche.

“I knew we could do our bakery anywhere, and I wanted to serve the community,” she said. “It’s been a dream of ours to be involved in the community in that way and also to kind of provide that southern hospitality — it’s important for me to have that kind of connection with people.”

Rooney said the business allows her to not only hone her creativity and support her family, but also to keep her roots close to heart.

“I wanted to show people that this is part of our culture, and it’s beautiful and full of flavor and there’s a lot of family involved in it as well, and that’s what they get when they come here,” she said. “I think the beauty of having what we have right now is even if we grow, this is how it’s going to be. My family in Texas has a lot of influence in this as well, in the decor and the colors we use and everything. They are in this business every day because I’m proud of where I come from.”

Eggleston, 24, grew up in Chenango Forks, approximately 10 miles northeast of Binghamton. In summer 2018, he started commuting to Binghamton to bus tables at newly opened Dos Rios Cantina. He said he’d grown up hearing Binghamton described as a “wasteland,” but these notions were challenged once he got to know the area.

“When I started working Downtown, I realized there was a lot of really neat things that people are just cynical about and don’t pay attention to,” he said.

Once Eggleston started commuting to Binghamton and spending more of his free time there, he began using Instagram to document unique snippets of the Triple Cities with his phone camera. His early snapshots captured a Bob Ross mural at the Oakdale Mall, a Sour Patch Kids toy peeking out from a window near The Printing House and a set of whimsical fish-shaped bike racks Downtown. Later posts featured everything from murals to cafes, sharing event information and profiles of community members. One follower, hailing all the way from Britain, messaged Eggleston to praise the account as a “gallery of the city.”

Eggleston said he finds his subjects simply by going on long walks, during which he daydreams and keeps an eye out for oddities.

“You find these wonderful things in these weird, vacant, obscure areas,” he said. “Binghamton is definitely a weird town — there are a lot of gems.”

One of his favorite discoveries is a mural of a cat swatting at a goldfish, which he stumbled upon while strolling down Clinton Street.

“It’s this beautiful mural and it’s just on this really weird abandoned building,” he said. “I find that really beautiful; it’s a diamond in the rough.”

Eggleston dabbles in stand-up comedy, and he usually pairs his photos with captions that range from humorous to heartfelt. One of his recent posts compared a sign with a rhyming slogan to a fictional shop from “The Simpsons”; and another mused, “Time is a good investment. The older you get the more valuable it becomes.” He said he prefers writing to performing stand-up because the former gives him a better opportunity to exact change.

“I like writing a lot more because what I’m producing can be of service to people,” he said. “The stand-up is fine, but I think it can be a little self-indulgent. It’s fun, but it’s just me on a stage making jokes, which is fine but it’s not really helping.”

The Open Art Collective, a student organization at Binghamton University, reached out to Eggleston after he commented on one of the group’s Instagram posts, and he said he hopes to be involved in a new magazine that’s in the works.

Whenever Eggleston notices a new follower, he usually sends a direct message to thank them, a habit that he said has sparked several new connections. He remembered a moment when he was debating whether to continue the account and was affirmed by interactions with people around town who recognized him.

“It’s really gratifying that I’m able to connect and have meaningful conversations based on my ambition to shed some positivity into the area,” he said.

He added the figures involved in Binghamton arts have proved especially inspiring, remembering a Broome County Arts Council poetry reading that particularly touched him.

“To hear people express their pain in such a beautiful way really speaks to the soul of this town,” he said. “A thing I’d like to do more is to show all the wonderful people in town and praise the human spirit, as cheesy as that sounds. I think people are really tough and really great in the face of challenge, and I think Binghamton has a lot of grit and character to it.”

Since deciding he wasn’t a perfect fit for the upbeat party scene at Dos Rios, Eggleston now works at Weis Markets, and still makes the 20-minute commute to Binghamton. Through @binghamton__eggs, he plans to expand his writing skills and enter the marketing field, using his following of more than 500 users as a selling point when pitching ideas to small businesses.

As local art blooms with the growth of events like LUMA, Porchfest and the Broome Art Trail, Eggleston said he hopes to eventually invest his money back into the scene, perhaps by opening a small business of his own.

“Working at Dos Rios, I was able to see a vacant building go from being vacant to being packed … and that put the idea in my head that change can happen,” he said. “I think now is an exciting time … I could be wrong, but I see no reason not to be optimistic.”

Eggleston, who insists that “the secret to success is empathy,” says he hopes the account encourages the personal growth of his followers as much as it has encouraged his own.

“I want some kid in Nebraska to see what I’m doing in my local community and say, ‘Maybe I should focus on my own community and be inspired and try to do my best to better my immediate surroundings,’” he said. “I think that’s the best anyone can do.”

“House of Sugar,” aptly released on Friday, Sept. 13, is the newest album from 26-year-old Alex Giannascoli, whose gutsy sonic palette has resulted in eight vastly different studio LPs. “Beach Music,” his first release with Domino Recording Company in 2015, gave his storytelling prowess and Elliot Smith-style vocals a darkly fantastical, pitch-shifted makeover, while “Rocket,” in 2017, honed in on roots-rock and country flavors years before “yeehaw” culture entered the indie consciousness. Giannascoli’s latest confidently blends all these elements in his most polished album to date, as imaginative and singular as ever.

“House of Sugar” sticks to Giannascoli’s most recently developed sonic trademarks with the help of frequent collaborators, old friend Emily Yacina and girlfriend Molly Germer, supplying vocals and violin, respectively. “Southern Sky” melds its clanging, disjointed piano introduction into a melodically beautiful, but deceptively creepy folk tune. “Gretel,” wherein the album’s title is sung amid a foreboding cacophony of bells and whistles, and the percussive, twangy “Bad Man” create similar effects. As per usual, Giannascoli balances his eccentricities with catchy hooks and plenty of heart, opting for more conventional formats on tracks like “Hope” and “Cow.” “House of Sugar” is not as stylistically cohesive as some of his other albums — he takes a sharp turn halfway through with the hypnotic “Near” and glitchy “Project 2,’’ two tracks reminiscent of his recent work with electronic producer Oneohtrix Point Never. The album’s ominous climax, “Sugar,” could easily soundtrack some scene of backcountry violence in a Western or horror film, and the closer, “SugarHouse,” a Springsteen-style live cut complete with wistful saxophone solos, is sure to throw fans for a loop. It’s a perfect aesthetic match for the album art, a figure skater under the stars that could grace the cover of a pithy young adult paperback circa 1985.

Sugar, with its production historically reliant on American slavery, functions easily as a shifting symbol in Giannascoli’s dreamscape of twisted Americana. His native Philadelphia was a hub for sugar refinement in the 19th and early 20th centuries — in fact, the SugarHouse Casino for which the closing track is named was built on the site of an old sugar refinery. In a recent interview with The FADER, Giannascoli touched on the album’s dealings with gluttony: “Everything that I do, and everything that everyone does — you’re just gobbling up everything around you.” “Taking” and “Bad Man” point to literal indulgence as their narrators devour a “spoonful of sugar” and a “pillar of fat.” Giannascoli’s alternate universe “Gretel” leaves her brother to die in the witch’s house, momentarily tempted back not by guilt, but by the prospect of eating more candy — “It’s calling me back / House of sugar.” Like most (Sandy) Alex G records, the album is rife with spellbinding repetition, evidenced by the mournful opener “Walk Away” (“Someday I’m gonna walk away from you / Not today”) and the obsessive “Near” (“All I want is to be near you”). Both evoke the pull of an addiction. Other elements, like the recurring image of flame-colored skies in “Southern Sky,” “Bad Man” and “Cow” are tied less clearly to metaphor, but serve nonetheless to immerse listeners in the idea of a warped frontier.

“House of Sugar” depicts pieces of Giannascoli’s life alongside his fiction, peppering the track list with returns to reality. “Hope,” named for a street the songwriter used to live on, earnestly tells the story of a roommate’s fatal overdose. “In My Arms” brings the recurring topic of impulse control to a familiar context as he sings, “You know good music makes me wanna do bad things.” In the tender, sweet “Cow,” “you big old cow” becomes a term of endearment as the narrator gorges himself not on sugar or roulette, but on love. In these three gentler tracks, which describe a scene of comfort, dreams of gentle admonishment from the sea and Giannascoli himself honoring a fallen friend, he shares a glimpse not only of transgression, but of salvation.

Unlike most fairy tales, “House of Sugar” denies its listeners an explicit moral. Giannascoli’s work is generally less about takeaway than atmosphere, far easier experienced than explained. When “SugarHouse” brings us at last to the casino, a classic symbol of vice and an otherworldly landscape in its own right, our narrator’s language is rife with clichés, kissing dice and calling bluffs. The last lines though, leave us with a cliffhanger, another nursery rhyme touched by dark magic: “I won’t be forgotten / Let ‘em bury me in the sand / When our children go digging for answers / I hope they can put me together again.”

Zentner, an assistant professor in Binghamton University’s English department, released “Copperhead,” his third novel, in July. The novel chronicles the aftermath of a tragic accident caused by Jessup, a teenager conflicted by a dependence on his stepfather, David John, and a growing discomfort with David John’s white supremacist leanings and history of violence. In the wake of the accident and Jessup’s attempts to cover it up, this conflict is heightened, and everything Jessup values — including relationships with his black football coach and his mixed-race girlfriend — is compromised. Pipe Dream sat down with Zentner to talk about the novel.

PD: The novel’s setting, an upstate New York college town, shares demographic similarities with cities like Ithaca or Binghamton. Aside from your familiarity with places like these, why write about them?

AZ: I think there’s a lot of tension that comes with towns where a university is central, because there’s a portion of town that is privileged beyond the people who live there year-round, and then the people who are employed by the university have a stability in their job that is not really available to everyone else, so there’s a kind of economic and class tension driven by that. And as a writer, there’s something really freeing about writing a fictionalized version of a place you know, because you know it, so it’s an easy model to build upon, but it’s still fictionalized. You’re changing things that don’t fit, so you’re not beholden to the actual geography of the place.

PD: Have you noticed anything particular about this region when it comes to racial or class dynamics?

AZ: In upstate New York, you have towns and cities, and there can be a quick dividing line between the people who live within the cities and those who live outside. The barrier between rural and urban is often very quick, and I think people forget that there are pockets of poverty that are often hidden from sight. And when people think of New York, they think of New York City — they don’t understand how big, diverse and varied New York state is. Even when you just look at Binghamton, there are several different Binghamtons: There’s the University itself, there’s Downtown, there’s Vestal, there’s some rural areas around Vestal — it’s not monolithic.

PD: A recurring trend in the novel is the educated, white liberals’ neglect for people like Jessup. Have you found that academia does a poor job of addressing the concerns of the white working class?

AZ: I think academia as a whole can be problematic because there’s a lot of privilege that goes into getting into an institution like BU. You don’t just have to be smart, you have all these other hoops to jump through, and a lot of what academia does is focus on ideas instead of people, which can be a bad thing because people fall through the gaps. But I would always argue that a good teacher teaches to students, not to the class as a whole, so I think if you’re paying attention, you should be able to teach students of every background.

PD: The relationship between gun violence and right-wing radicalism has been a hot topic lately. What did you intend to say about it here?

AZ: Gun culture in America is heavily masculinized, and guns are violent instruments. I don’t have a problem with hunting, and I come from Canada, where there is a hunting culture, but there’s no gun violence culture there comparable to America’s. I do think there are aspects of gun ownership that are not about simply owning a gun, but about sending a message, and unfortunately, there’s only one message you can send with a gun.

PD: There’s a dichotomy in the novel between overt and covert white supremacy. For example, David John won’t let his family use the N-word. Why illustrate this?

AZ: I think one of the interesting things about the book is that David John, aside from the racism, is a pretty wonderful father and wonderful guy, but that’s a very big aside. It would’ve been easier to write a book that flatly says “racism is bad,” and obviously, my personal belief is that racism is bad, but I don’t think that accomplishes anything other than just proving that I have the correct morals. So I wanted to explore this question of what you do when the people you love hold beliefs that are problematic. It’s an extreme example, but I hear this from a lot of students even: What do you do when your parents are voting for a party that holds a position you can’t stand?

PD: In telling this story, do you think you run the risk of portraying white supremacy as a two-sided issue?

AZ: I think that I tried very hard for that not to be the case, but I didn’t want to write a novel that just serves to show that I’m a good person, with the “right morals.” I wanted to raise these questions instead of giving a lecture. I don’t think you can convert people by yelling at them, which is a shame because it’s easy to yell. I think whatever complaints people had about the book, that wasn’t one of them, but that is one of the things that’s scary about writing a book like this. To write it well is incredibly risky, but that’s what art is.

PD: What’s one point you most want readers to take away?

AZ: I want people to know that if you ask honest questions, you get honest answers, and if you don’t ask those hard questions, you don’t progress. The point of being progressive is that you progress, and in order to do that, you have to ask questions that are difficult. But pretty much anything worth doing that is difficult.