Opinion
ZM/vNebraskan
Since 1901
Editor. Sarah Baker
Opinion Page Editor Samuel McKewon
Managing Editor Bradley Davis
Bit of gratitude
Students have many things
tobethankfulforatUNL
We could’ve been sappy with our
Thanksgiving editorial. We chose to be sincere.
Main and simple, there are things we’re thankful
for on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln cam
pus in the new century.
We are thankful for those administrators and
faculty and staff members dedicated to helping
students learn and grow at UNL.
We are especially thankful for those people
who have given more than a few years of their
lives to students here. You do make a difference.
We are thankful this university is striving to
improve. We’ll even tolerate the decade-long
construction site as long as administrators don’t
forget who they are working for- the students.
We’re thankful for the arts on campus. We
enjoy seeing premiere theater at the lied Center
for Performing Arts, which has done a good job
of attracting big shows such as “Cats” last season
and fresh shows such as Anthony Zerbe’s inter
pretation of e.e. cummings' poetry.
We're also lucky to have the Hixson-lied Fine
and Performing Arts College, as well as a solid
creative writing program in the English depart
ment
Most oi an, we re manKiui ior naving me
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, which always
brings innovative art
Whether it’s Conrad Bakker’s cul-de-sac art,
the spacey, racy “JAM Portfolio" or the perma
nent pieces of Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock,
the Sheldon provides stunning pieces of art to
admire. We’re hopeful the governor will not veto
another attempt to provide more money for the
museum.
In the midst of the crossroads that is the
Nebraska Union, we’re thankful for one quiet
spot The Rotunda Gallery.
It offers a bit of culture while we wolf down a
Subway sandwich in between class, and it gives
us a chance to contemplate more than our next
paper, test or overdue assignment. We’re most
thankful that it has continued to serve the pur
pose it was built for.
Once we leave the Nebraska Union, we’re
thankful the art continues outside through the
campus’ public sculpture. Scattered among the
buildings meant for study is artwork we won’t
encounter anywhere else in Lincoln and, in
some cases, in Nebraska.
We’re thankful for the Nebraska volleyball
team, the real crown jewel of the NU Athletic
Department that has forged an undefeated
record and has a real shot at the national cham
pionship. The NU Coliseum atmosphere, players
and Coach John Cook - it’s worth a visit or two.
We are thankful Maya Angelou could come to
campus this semester. Her poems and wise
words inspired us and encouraged us to not be
passive learners or passive citizens and to spend
our lives “composing." Hearing her deep, sultry
voice recite the poems of Langston Hughes and
William Henley reminded us of the intrinsic
beauty of words.
In what can sometimes seem like a sea of
small minds and inequality, we're thankful for
the people who are willing to speak out against
what is wrong and unjust
Showcased recently in the fight against
Initiative 416, the so-called Defense of Marriage
Act, a number of University of Nebraska-Iincoln
students have likely sacrificed school and per
sonal time to fight for an unpopular cause.
Disabled students, highlighted in a recent
Daily Nebraskan story, showed courage in
speaking against what they perceived as unfair
treatment by the new director of the Office for
Students with Disabilities.
Editorial Board
Sarah Baker, Bradley Davis, Josh Funk, Matthew Hansen,
Samuel McKewon, Dane Stickney, Kimberly Sweet
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Web she communicates
Four years ago, the Sheldon Art Gallery estab
lished a Web site for die specific purpose of engaging
and interacting with communities of educators and
students through the gallery's significant permanent
collection.
What we have discovered is that our Web site is an
important means by which we communicate visually
our identity and our mission.
It is from this perspective that I applaud UNL’s
redesigned Web site Too many university sites func
tion as static inventories of “basic information" and
decorated with die requisite “campus” photograph of
suitably “suburban, middle-class," sweatshirt-clad
undergrads in an artificial “conversation."
A university is not a collection of picturesque
buildings on a tranquil campus. It is a dynamic com
munity of teachers and learners, working together
through dialogue and debate for the advancement
and pursuit of knowledge.
UNLfc new site actually visually and conceptually
communicates die presence of a dynamic and diverse
educational community. In fact, the new Web site now
affirms rather than undermines UNLs strategic agen
da and other recent institutional initiatives that are
intended to place the university in the forefront of
land-grant institutions.
Indeed, the new Web site even makes much more
accessible the very documents that lay out this agen
da.
Moreover, the new site also affirms the important
role that die Sheldon Art Gallery and the other signifi
cant museums on this campus play in the UNL com
munity. The Sheldon’s Web site was easily accessible
from the main site’s welcome page. This is not
insignificant because most universities bury their
museums so deeply into their Web site (if they are
there at all) that access is extremely difficult and, if
nothing else, communicates to the visitor that the
museum plays litde role in its intellectual life.
In fact, UNLsV\feb site goes a step further and inte
grates details of important works of art from the
Sheldon's collection throughout the site.
If UNL is serious about its desire to be one of the
finest land-grant universities in the nation, it has suc
ceeded at least in visualizing a dynamic learning com
munity, where teaching, research and service are at
the foundation and the arts and humanities play a
fundamental role.
What remains to be seen is whether UNL can ful
fill in reality what it communicates virtually.
Daniel A. Siedell
(Glass of’89)
curator
Sheldon Manorial Art Gallery
Digesting the wrath of T
I interrupt my self-aware
discovery to spread cheer and
thanks on this turkey-filled
week
Here in the eating disorder
clinic, the idea of a
Thanksgiving dinner has been
mougntnmy planned, uur -1
superiors have correctly adju- petaluma
dicated that the very onus of a Watson
day solely centered on food
would be too much for this
gaggle of women, who have mirrored Thanksgiving's
idea and used transference to apply it to every single
day, all of that day, then its night, too.
So we’re having T-day, as I like to call it a few days
early. It keeps in step with the idea of girls like us wolf
ing down before we get the main meal, which of
course we’d daintily turn down when it came about
Mommy Nadia was the professional at this act,
deferring in restaurants to her suitor, who would
inevitably pick up the notion that she wanted to eat
small Men, occasionally, deserve more credit than we
give them.
Our T-day is not like your T-day if yours has the
works that most assuredly includes:
The T, otherwise known as turkey, is that large,
steaming pile of juices that tastes so pangy against the
back of throat drat you eat it once a year.
Notice, too, that because of all other foods that go
along with T-day, you never actually consume as
much T as you initially think, and, oftentimes, you
never consume all the T that was originally plopped
on the plate.
More often than not, the plated T never looks as
tantalizing as the T yet left on the serving platter,
which looks juicier and more finely curved than theT
before you. Then, as you draw thatT closer, you recog
nize it, in fact, is the same T that you have on your
plate, and you immediately get dissatisfied with the
Monet-like quality of all the baked T. So then, you turn
to other foods like:
Potatoes, which are steamed and mashed to the
point that they become increasingly difficult to throw
up.
Or green beans, which are preferably in a Funyun
casserole with onion water and cheap, clumpy
cheese, so greasy and slimy that they make me think of
worms in mud, sliming all over the grass that I’m
about to pick up and tweeze in my mouth.
Sometimes, the worms seem as though they are
defecating all over the grass, even though I am not
sure that worms actually defecate, or just run the dirt
all the way through their system so that it comes out
cleaner than it was before, under which case the dirt
would be about as safe as it ever was going to be.
Or stuffing, your mother's or grandmother’s col
lection of bread and other food too inedible to eat by
its lonesome so it arrives in the stuffing. I believe that it
is entirely possible that supermarket folks put out the
most intestinal sausage they can find, I mean the
absolute ground-up snout of the pig (or of the cow, if
one prefer to clog their heart with beef), near this hol
iday so that it can be sold and simultaneously recog
nized as the worst sausage, and therefore put into the
stuffing as yum-yum filler meat
Cranberry sauce, which I was taught at a young
age exactly resembled the hardened blood extract of a
giant South American spider. The live blood, for any
one who may be interested, is most like tomato soup
without the milk, which then hardens and darkens
into cranberry sauce. The hardening process, I have
been told, lends to die darkening, hence the coloring
change.
That tray of shit, with all die shit on it, which varies
from family to family, and typically contains the most
fattening-per-capita foods that the world has ever
seen and will only see on T-day. Like those ground-up
deviled eggs that could actually double as nuggets of
certain pulmonary death if 20 are consumed. Or the
food version of the bulbous vagina - the olive, which
taunts with its ability to make feet explode.
This shit tray is key, quite key really, because it
serves as the alternative to the T, which has already
dissatisfied you, and now serves to stare back at you in
anger, because it is T-day, and you bought this hunk of
T meat instead of a big roasting chicken. And now,
frightful eater, you have been forced to eat it
What the shit tray does is give an excuse, really, to
keep lifting from it before and during the main meal,
and thus turn the T away by using the excuse that the
shit tray did you in. Parents enjoy scolding their chil
dren for this, as my mother did to me, when, in fact we
only learn from watching them as they are attempting
to escape the wrath ofT on an empty.
Then, of course, there is dessert, which for a girl
like me, trumps all that has come before it by simply
being called dessert and having a desserty item upon
it like chocolate sauce.
Like, say, you take a foul piece of potted meat.
Douse this in chocolate sauce, and I am more excited
about this supposed dessert than I was the T or the
stuffing, which had foul ground-up snout in it anyway.
I understand that for some un-petaluma reason,
pumpkin has been included in the dessert items onT
day and thus can only be saved by whipped cream. We
blind ourselves to the reality of pumpkin, or PMP as I
like to call it Has one after scooping out all the goop
that is in the Halloween PMP considered eating that
PMP? And yet toss some fake syrup into the mix and
drudge it down into the powder, and one is ready to
dive in.
Much worse is the mince meat the foulest collec
tion ofyucky nuts and fruits thrown in a conglomera
tion. It’s worst than trail mix-it’s trail mix ground-up
into semi-size chunks. Others attempt to save it with
those giant chocolate chips.
Why doesn’t one soul think of what I and Nads
(and apparently jayme) used to in our T heydays? Pure
chocolate. Like take chocolate chips, melt them and
create a paste that you can drink out of the short glass.
It comes up amazingly fast when it comes up, which is
the essential goal of the entire process.
Here in the clinic, T-day will include some health
vitamins, fruits and for those who are truly brave and
entirely cured, which is not possible, a small T basting
in its juices on the yonder table. There will be no
dessert as this might create a wave of binge and purge
this world has not yet seea
No stuffing, no PMP, no potatoes. No dried up
blood. No games. No options. No obsessing. No con
trol, no control whatsoever because you only get that
when there seems to be no control.
Here, we are not even presented with attacking the
T-day foods and then succumbing to hypocrisy and
devouring them. No viable alternatives. No fun. No
eating disorder. I suppose, in my dark logic, that this is
die point w
V —
After turkey,
ignore your
wallet's plea
“America has
more shopping
malls than high
schools
-sign held by
a protester on
Buy Nothing
Day, the day after
Thanksgiving. KaiWI
As I think Rmum
back to my child- ^m
hood, I remem
ber - besides snakes eating my first
brother, my father dressing like a
woman (when he thought I was sleep
ing) and my mom punching my 10“
birthday cake with her fist-going to the
mall the day after Thanksgiving. This is,
after all, the biggest shopping day of die
year.
Back to childhood. Not just any mall
did I grace with my presence but the
Scottsbluff mall 45 minutes and 16 beers
away. I didn't go so much to spend qual
ity time with my mother, which she was
always pressuring me to do (It's like, go
find some friends your own age, Ma.),
but after she offered to buy my love, I
went happily to accumulate stuff that I
wanted, not needed.
“Spend time with loved ones rather
than money on them, was the message.
Ultimately, security guards grew wise to
the nature of these non-consumer activi
ties and most BND (Buy Nothing Day)
crews were asked to leave.”
~adbusters.org
Of course, it’s so hard in this day and
age to discern between “want” and
“need” when that plastic thingy on your
mantle breaks and it’s imperative to
replace it ASAE
The junk is there for your eyes to sift
through, and you have enough money
just burning a whole in your wallet,
sooooo screw charity, I need my 20th
pair of shoes. My CDs need a rack to put
them in; I need a few more CDs to fill this
new rack. I need a new bedspread
because my Strawberry Shortcake and
the Muffin Man one was so '94, and of
course I need plastic bins of all sizes to fit
all of my other crap at home into.
When the crap is slovenly placed in
the bins where it can’t be seen, I’ll have to
buy more crap to put on top of them.
And thus, the cycle continues.
“Sensing the urgency of the moment,
many have chosen to cast their vote
against a ‘global economy’duds running
us all out of our resources.”
-adbusters.org
Because Kimball is somewhat dry
and boring, void of feeling and a theater,
Mom and I would go to this Mecca
known as Scottsbluff and bond. You
know, covalent style.
We shared everything on these jour
neys - laughter, stories, beer (usually 16
as mentioned above) - and when we
finally arrived in Scottsbluff we felt we
could breathe once again, despite the
overbearing odor of rotten eggs not
because of the overabundance of excess
gas the patrons of Scottsbluff produce
but the sugar beet factory.
Back on track, I remember looking
around the mall, a tear running down
my porcelain cheek in awe of the mil
lions of glistening stores with plastic
people looking at mannequins’ with the
latest trends.
“In America, Buy Nothing Day played
out in some of the nation’s last remaining
public spaces - its malls.”
-adbusters.org
Now in college, nothing has
changed. I love shopping malls and all
their wonderful scenes.
Why just last week a sense of urgency
(or was that my herpes) ran through my
body, and I felt like my cheap, simple,
white Hanes T-shirt was no longer good
enough in the eyes of the expensive,
simple, white Structure T-shirt that was
mocking my hard-earned stains and
holes, promising that this T-shirt would
produce elite stains and holes.
I bought it; my wallet screamed.
Then, I looked at my newly pur
chased high-class white T-shirt, and I
wanted more. The virus was hitting me
full force.
I tried to tell myself that I don't need
anything else, but “want" told “need” to
shut its ugly face. As I looked down at my
father’s jeans I was wearing (hand-me
downs in high school), I thought I might
need a new J.Crew pant suit, or an
LLBean sweater.
“A mere 20 percent of the earth’s pop
ulation uses 80 percent of its natural
resources. Our overconsumption is
killing the planet"
-adbusters.org
I told myself to wait until this Friday
when everyone who’s anyone will be at
the mall fighting to get the last Sony
PlayStation 2, and I’ll dodge into the Gap
to get my very own sweatshop-made
sweatshirt
Since the holidays are for giving, I
will sort out my old junk, making way for
the new and give it to Goodwill
After all, not everyone can afford to
shop at the mall and consciously take
part in the most wonderful day of the
year. These people must either be poor
or very un-American.
