Before the internet, how someone discovered a new band or musician was a different process. A lot of these outlets – the radio, flyers, word of mouth, periodicals – still exist, but they were people’s only option. No one had the privilege to boot up a computer and do some music research on their own. There wasn’t any SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Purevolume, Spotify, or other sites that offered music streaming. A trip to the record store or going to a band’s live gig was the only way to experience most of a musician’s catalog. What you could access was limited. Today, it is almost infinite.

With the ability to access music so easily and form one’s own opinion, people don’t have to be so dependent on the opinion of a “professional critic.” The fact that Rolling Stone gave a record four stars seems to make less of an impact. Reading reviews used to be a more convenient way to figure out which music to buy before heading to a music store. But with so much of it available a few mouse clicks away, it’s not as helpful to read about what Joe Doe of some music magazine thinks of some new band’s first record. Of course, some people still care about these reviews and they can still be worthwhile reads. It’s not a “useless” medium. But the common person can now become a reviewer. You don’t have to be a member of the Associated Press to start a blog about the music you like.

The internet has created a revolution of giving music fans their own voice while seemingly creating more “independent” music fans. People will always look towards the opinions of others, but the internet gives a person more options of opinions. It no longer has to be a journalist or from the mouth of someone you know personally. There is an entire blogosphere of music out there. You find ones that suit you. Some of it is lacking in quality and there is a lot to search through, but the end result is finding more of what you love. It’s less about being fed an opinion from a critic and more “Hey, check out this band and see if you like them.”

As someone who has never quite been a fan of music reviews and rating albums with stars, I couldn’t be more thrilled by this shift in music discovery. People have unique tastes and unless you care a lot about what other people think, what a journalist thinks about an album has little bearing on your taste. I myself write music reviews for my college paper, but over the years I’ve come to realize that the more objective I am the better. I also never bother to write negative reviews. If I don’t like it, I don’t write about it. I want people to be aware of certain music, but I want people to figure out how much they like it on their own. The negative review serves no purpose to me.

The internet puts the entire world of music at people’s fingertips. So go and discover new bands. Become a critic. Be opinionated. The most important opinion when it comes to the music you listen is your own.

I have crossed several borders in my life and the sljiva trees had become a familiar sight during my three weeks in Croatia, but never had I seen a hummingbird the size of my thumbnail. I watched it dart in and out of flowers on a Friday afternoon from my spot sipping Turkish coffee on the porch of a yellow house. At my exclamations of amazement, my boyfriend, Vanja, looked over his shoulder into the flowerbed lining his Uncle’s porch.

It was already gone.

After a lunch full of meat, laughter, and introductions, we drove into Mostar, the largest city in the Herzegovina region. In some areas, there was no indication that just over a decade ago the city was left ravaged by the effects of war. However there were other sights foreign to me, not because of any cultural differences, but because of the clear signs of past violences and danger. The image of a newly constructed building joined at the hip with a dilapidated, bullet-ridden twin was imprinted in my mind. There stood a newly-erected indication of a recovering city connected to a reminder of utter destruction. The smooth, whitewashed walls of the reborn twin stood as a pitiful contrast to its ruined companion. Fissures ran through the worn brick like streams of memory rolling down a tear-streaked face. Cracks in the foundation echoed in the lives of the city around it. I asked myself why one house had been rebuilt but not the other. Like their former inhabitants, the war destroyed the stability and foundation between the neighbors, leaving them forever different and marking them as such. Mostar, I came to realize, is a city stuck in transition. Despite multi-million dollar reconstruction efforts, it is clear that it will never shake the past. It is a city grasping at the future, but with a heavy weight of memories pulling it back.

One site I was told I must see was the Old Bridge. The one standing today is a rebuilt version of the original, which was commissioned in 1557 by Sultan Sulaiman the Magnificent. Legend has it that the first bridge’s architect, Mimar Hajrudin, planned his funeral for the very day the scaffolding was to be removed because no one could believe that the arch would stand without supports. The plans proved unnecessary because the arch stood for the next 427 years, a testament to Ottoman power. It was the largest man-made arch at the time of its completion, inspiring awe in all who saw it. It is a sentiment that carries on into this century, as I, like so many before me, stood in amazement of this UNESCO World Heritage site.

Walking over the bridge is somewhat physically challenging. The stones underfoot are so worn from the foot traffic that they are downright slippery. Although it is an arch in shape, there is the sense that there is a tipping point directly in the middle. All of a sudden the climb becomes a descent, each step being equally perilous because of the smooth stones. Luckily, every few feet a row of stones sticks up, providing a stopper for feet to brace themselves. I passed divers in the middle of the bridge who, for a few euro, will dive into the river below. I am told that this is an incredibly dangerous feat because of the shallowness of the water. The divers must hit in exactly the right spot or else the 24-meter fall will leave them seriously injured. I watched as they stood suspended, arms outspread, at the peak in the bridge’s center, waiting for that moment when they lose all hold and there is no turning back. This country too is at a pivotal moment, suspended between the past and the future.

Once across the bridge, I marveled at the world I had entered in just a short crossing. The bazaar-style streets of the old side advertised Turkish teapots and gleaming hookahs, while the new side marketed t-shirts and miniatures of the Old Bridge. Tourists, sadly, seemed to me the only people crossing the bridge these days, and were the one constant on both sides.

Eventually, I came to see that the bridge today is not the impressive achievement of a powerful empire, but rather the symbol of a nation rebuilding. The original bridge was destroyed in 1993 by artillery fire during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The act blatantly represented the destruction of the peaceful coexistence between the various ethnic and religion groups in the region. Today, the reconstructed bridge maintains the division between those groups. What was once a unifying symbol in the diverse region is now the very thing that draws a line between its people. I was told that the Old Bridge divides the “new,” predominately Christian side of Mostar, from the “old,” predominately Muslim side. Just as society tried to salvage what it could from before the time of war, so were the pieces of the bridge salvaged. The new bridge, which was inaugurated in 2004, was built from local materials as well as pieces of the old bridge recovered from the Neretva River below. UNESCO helped fund the rebuilding efforts of not only the Old Bridge, but of several other buildings in Mostar as well.

As an outsider, I initially found the outline of both minarets and church steeples to be a beautiful indication of unity. However, I quickly learned that the reason for their abundance is competition, not coexistence. Each time a new church is erected, a bigger mosque must be constructed to overshadow it and vice versa. In 2000, a 33 meter-high cross was erected on Hum Hill, overlooking Mostar. The cross can be seen from everywhere in the city, even at night, when it is illuminated. The cross has become a topic of much debate and has deepened ethic tensions because of what it represents. The bishop who oversaw the inaugural ceremony in 2000 deemed it a symbol that was meant to spread peace. However, the city’s Muslims do not share the same sentiments. It is viewed as a symbol of domination, Hum Hill having been an important strategic position during the war. The more I learned about history’s presence in the current landscape, the more I felt the unavoidable, deep-seeded ethnic tensions in Mostar.

The next day, the pall of past militarism hanging over this culture did not lift as we left the city and drove toward Konjic, the town where my boyfriend’s parents were raised. They had to flee in the early 90s at the onset of the war, and I imagine how unsure the road must have looked then. That day, I felt secure driving through this valley alongside the Neretva River, which flows for 143 miles from the mountains of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Adriatic Sea. Our car sped peacefully between the rocky hills rising on either side of the crystal blue waters. I soon learned, though, that there are unseen eyes behind these grandmother mountains. Embedded deep inside her heart is a 6,500 square-meter bunker, built during the Cold War to shield ex-Yugoslav leader Jopsip Broz Tito from nuclear attack. Until recently the space had remained top-secret, never before seen by the public. Today, that has changed, as the bunker has been transformed into an art gallery. The space was born out of a fear of utter destruction and devastation, but now is a place for culture. Like the rest of the country, this area is trying to recover something beautiful from the ashes of a violent, fear-ridden history.

The green hills and snaking river were left behind as we entered Konjic. The car kicked up a fine, pale dust into the hazy blue sky as we ascended to his grandparent’s house, a brick and cement block that imposed on the overgrowth surrounding it. We parked next to his grandparents’ little red Volkswagen Golf, which had over 600,000 miles on it and to this day doesn’t show any sign of quitting. Neither do its drivers.

Vanja explained that the house I was looking at was not the same house his mother and her siblings grew up in, “The original house was shot during the war with seven or eight bombs that fell directly onto it. My uncle and my grandpa built the new house and that one stayed intact. The whole family was supposed to live there together: my grandparents, aunt, and uncle, because it was a big house. The first floor was supposed to be one apartment and then the top two floors were supposed to be two separate apartments. The basement used to be a workshop for my grandpa.”

The new house was a shell, as empty inside as the people who dreamed its bright future. Only the first floor is livable, and the workshop of a once-successful woodworking business is now a dark cellar filled with the remnants of a past life. Only the sound of silence echoed off the walls as I stood looking at the items that were salvaged after the workshop was ransacked. “My grandfather was one of the best woodworkers in the town. They were really well off back in the 80’s,” Vanja said. All that changed when the war came and neighbors forsook each other. “My uncle, my grandma, and my aunt were all running. They were hiding in the woods, trying to get over the mountains to escape. My grandfather spent a lot of time in prison during the war by himself. I remember him telling me he would get beat up just because he was Croat. He talked about it once but never again. People try to repress those memories. He was lucky to get out alive.” I wondered if I would see those memories somewhere in the deep lines on his grandfather’s face or in the upward curve of his smile.

I had been told a great many things about this resilient family. When I met its patriarch, I tried to find a defeated man behind the toothless grin. He was not there. I searched his eyes for past pain, but I was only met with a twinkle. Despite undoubtedly painful memories, Vanja’s grandfather, like the small Golf he drives, shows no indication of slowing down. “My grandpa is a hard working person, he’s almost 80 and he still works. He says that’s what keeps him going. He told me that if you produce with your hands you will never go hungry, and it’s true.” This snow-haired man, who I was told “only puts his teeth in for pictures,” was everything a grandfather is pictured as being. He was warm and caring from the moment I met him. We did not speak each other’s language, but I did not need a translator to know that his coaxing me to take a few swigs of rakia (traditional Croatian moonshine) was a sincere attempt at making me feel welcome.

As another meat and laughter-filled lunch was being prepared in the house, I took a walk with Sanela, Vanja’s cousin. We left the confines of the cool cement walls to take a walk across the untamed land. Coarse, thick grasses clung to my ankles, and the tangled shoots were comforting in a way. It was a mess created by Nature, not human nature. We passed by a destroyed stone hut, its roof completely caved in and only a faint shape of the four walls that stood there. Sanela is older than Vanja, and therefore can remember when this pile of stones used to be a barn. “We used to house our cows, chickens, and pigs. We used to have a few lambs as well and rabbits before that. I remember my mom talking to me about how we had a cow in labor one winter and since it was extremely cold winter and the baby wouldn’t survive in the barn we took a huge blanket and wrapped it around the calve and took it in the house in order to keep it from freezing.” The little space that preserved so much life is now a pile of rubble. The pile of stones looked like the bottom half of an hourglass stemming from the old foundation: fanning out across the floor and coming to a peak where they met the ceiling.

I asked Sanela what it was like to grow up there before she and the rest of the family fled. “We used to play, Vanja and I, down at the creek. There were a lot of turtles in the water and we had so much fun catching them. Also, it was really fun stealing our neighbors’ corn, even though we had our own, and then cook [the cobs] over a fire even though we were grounded a lot by our parents for doing that.” I remembered Vanja telling me how the fruit they stole from the neighbors’ trees always tasted sweeter because they were doing something wrong. She went on to tell me about the dog they used to have who was killed in the war and a lamb that used to come to the terrace and eat sugar out of their hands.  I laugh when she tells me about how she learned to swim. “I learned to swim down at Neretva. I mean at the time I wasn’t so sure I knew how to swim, but my uncle Ivica lured me into the boat and took me halfway across the river. He looked at me, threw me over the [side of the] boat, and said ‘Swim or drown,’ and of course I was swimming.”

It was a peaceful life filled with love and security, Sanela says: “All in all those were the great times in growing up without worries and fears. We could spend our days outside from early in the morning until late at night without anyone worrying about us getting killed or robbed or kidnapped. We did not have virtual friends. We had real friends.” The stories were unique, but at the same time universal. Growing up is something we all do, some more quickly than others. Hearing Sanela talk made the present all the more real to me. It made the sting of their loss sharper. Not necessary the loss of physical things, but of the life they represented. Having “real friends,” real relationships, is what forges understanding. The transformative path of history, of a story, becomes much easier to travel when you are guided by someone who has already been down it.

This is by no means a broken family. The hardships they endured brought them closer and made them value what they have more. I never once heard self-pity when they mentioned the way things used to be. There was longing and sadness, but always an awareness that the most important thing from their lives was preserved: family. Family is what is most important to Vanja, “I didn’t see [my grandparents] for three and a half or four years. I remember we were going there for the first time after the war and everyone was so happy because there were times during the war when you didn’t know if your relatives were dead or alive. There’s nothing worse than that. We were happy because everybody ended up being alive, which was pretty rare. We were really lucky. Now when I go, I probably don’t see it as beautiful as you do. I understand it has cultural value but it doesn’t mean a lot to me. At all. I just go somewhere to see my family. I don’t really care about the place. I don’t know why I feel that way. I don’t care about the place or the people, I just care about seeing my family.”

Today, in the comfort of my familiar Philadelphia life, Vanja tries to explain the unexplainable, “[The war] was really bad because [before it] you had people living in perfect harmony: Serbs, Croatians, Muslims. They would just turn on each other and there were a lot of cases where people would go to their neighbors’ houses and just shoot them. They’d decide, ‘I don’t like you anymore,’ and BOOM. All because of politics. Generations will go on, but people won’t forget. From my point of view, it’s just something that I don’t think will be forgiven. You think people are going to come back to a town where your neighbors would shoot you because you weren’t their religion? Because you were just a little bit different than them? No one is going to come back there, ever. There’s no way. They can change the views; they can change whatever they want. People who used to live there will never go back there.”

It is a history that will always be out of my reach of understanding, out of the range of emotions I have felt in my life. Perhaps that is why it is so easy to want to go back. I can never truly know the deep divisions in that place, and the unspeakable things that silenced the warmest of men and women. That’s not to say I didn’t learn more than dates and facts in those few days. It is a humbling experience to realize that being privileged and educated does not constitute a complete understanding of the world.

The buildings and culture that I viewed at the start of my trip as unified were actually remnants of a broken society. The family I saw as warm and welcoming has unspeakable memories under all of their love. I struggled to find a label other than tourist, because that’s not the only view of this place I wanted to walk away with. I cannot justify calling myself more than an invested observer. Seeing more than meets the eye takes time and precipitates attachment. As true as the facts of the war were to me, they did not hit home until I saw how the war had left people I had come to care about. Before I set out on this trip, to me the story of Bosnia and Herzegovina was moving, but fleeting in its impact. Now, however, it has become as unexpected and unforgettable as a hummingbird I once saw from the terrace of a yellow house.

References:

“Annex VIII – part 4/10 Prison Camps.” University of the West of England Archives. n.d. Web.

Brownell, Ginanne. “A Nuclear Bunker Comes In From the Cold as an Art Gallery.” The New York Times September 5, 2011. Web.

“The Bridge of Mostar: The Jewel that Divides Two Cultures.” Environmental Graffiti. n.d. Web.

“Historic Mostar bridge being rebuilt.” BBC News June 7, 2001. Web.

“Mostar bridge opens with a splash.” BBC News July 23, 2004. Web.

“Old Bridge Area of the Old City of Mostar” UNESCO World Heritage Centre 2012. Web.

Smajilhodzic, Rusmir. “Yugoslav military installation sees light of day as art museum.” The Daily Star July 20, 2011. Web.

The most comfortable (and least stressful) way to view theatre is from the comfort of your own home. There you can wear pajamas, eat whatever snacks you want, and curl up on the couch under a blanket. You don’t have to wait in line to use the restroom, and if you’re watching a recording, you can pause it whenever you need to. However, you also have to deal with any and all distractions around your home, i.e. barking dogs, phone calls, and people constantly interrupting you. While this may be the most comfortable way to watch theatre, it is also, in my opinion, the least fulfilling.. At movie theatres, there are always those people talking or texting through the movie, and just being disruptive. By watching something on TV, you lose a lot of the emotion of the performers, as well as the energy and feel of an auditorium full of people who truly care about what is going on in the performance. When I used to watch Les Miserables on TV with my grandmother, we would sing along with the actors and not exactly pay attention to them. While we had a lot of fun doing that, I felt like something was missing sometimes by not just sitting and listening to the performers. In the home arena, the show becomes more about yourself and the things going on around you and less about the actual show and its plot. You become more easily distracted, and lose sight of what you wanted to get out of watching the show.

Although I enjoy watching shows at home, it sometimes just isn’t enough. I feel like there’s something lacking, and at the end of the show I’m left wanting more out of the experience. When this happens, I try to get out and go see a live performance of a show. While this might be more inconvenient than watching one at home, it is more fulfilling in the end. From the audience, you feel all of the emotion and passion the actors put into their performance. You feel like you are a part of what is taking place on the stage, if only passively. For me, it’s a kind of escape, almost like reading a book is. By being a part of the audience, there’s nothing to distract you from the performance. You can lose yourself in the plot, forget about all of your troubles and worries for a while, and just be. I get invested in the characters, especially if the actors are heartfelt. And the imperfections that are always a part of live performances make it all feel more real, like it’s actually happening. You don’t get that in a filmed production. When I went to see Les Miserables off-Broadway with my family a few years ago, I felt all of this while watching the performance. Unlike when I was at home with my grandmother, I was not singing along with the actors and talking through a lot of the show. I was spellbound, mesmerized by the skill and passion of the actors I was watching. Even though I was all dressed up and did not have access to whatever snacks I wanted, being in the audience was a better experience for me. I was privy to the emotions of the entire audience, how each person felt when one of the characters died. It felt like we were one, all caught up in the moment together.

For me, the best place to view a theatrical performance is the stage itself. As an actor, you feel all of the same things an audience member does, only in reverse. While performing, you can lose yourself in your character and actually become that character. You aren’t thinking about anything that doesn’t relate to what you have to do during the performance, and you become part of a family. Because that’s what a cast is: they’re a family connected by the show. You all work together to create the emotions and drama that the audience members feel, and you can see it take hold of them. I know that’s not usually what I’m thinking about while I’m performing, but it hits me full force after the show when people from the audience come up to me and tell me how the performance made them feel. When I was in the fourth grade, I played the part of young Cossette in my high school’s production of Les Miserables. I was ecstatic that I got to be in a show with the “big kids,” people I looked up to as actors. They treated me like one of them, not like some annoying little kid they were stuck with. That dynamic came across on the stage while we performed, and it made the performances even better. After the show, a lot of adults came up to me and told me how much they enjoyed the show and how much it moved them. To me, that is the most gratifying part of being in a show: the audience reaction. And that is why I will continue to keep theatre as a huge part of my life.

Now that I’ve found the thing that defines my life, I am never going to let it go. Being part of a theatre group allows me to touch people in ways I would never be able to any other way, and it’s something fun that I love to do. Everyone should have something that makes them feel like that. It makes life all the sweeter.

The bus ride down to Port Elizabeth that day had flown by in a rush of back-of-the-bus banter and jibes aimed at the bus driver, exhorting him to drive just a wee bit faster. All twenty-two of us were crammed happily in the back of a little bus, heading towards our 7^th game of the field hockey schedule.

At that point in the season, we were 6-0 and the mood was suitably buoyant. Boasts were flying back and forth about how many goals we would smash past our opponents that day. Some of us discussed the most appropriate post-goal celebration after the third goal of a hat trick. Cocky, yes, but our record and the manner in which we were rattling off wins had added a bit of a swagger to our step.

As we pulled into the car park, the slate grey skies above opened up and rain began to fall. The metronomic pitter-patter of the rain off the sides of the bus did little to dampen our mood. We bounded off the bus, decked out in our traditional blue and white, and inhaled deeply as the salty breeze coming off the Indian Ocean did its best to drive the rain sideways. We grabbed our gear from the trailer behind the bus and made our way across the car park and out onto the field. Thoroughly soaked in a few minutes, we were nonetheless irrepressible and joked our way through the pre-match warm-up.

Across the field our opponents limbered up. Decked out in red and black, they looked impressive as they worked their way through a fast-paced warm up routine. As was the case with most of the teams we had faced that year, they had a significant physical advantage over us.  They were massive prepubescent teens whose growth spurt had arrived much earlier than our own.

We carried on our warm up unperturbed, more occupied with making fun of our coach’s futile attempt to stay dry than with the game to come.

The referee called the two captains together with a blast of his whistle. Ours jogged over with his navy blue socks rolled down to his ankles for luck. Theirs marched up with a grim face. Up went the coin and our luck held. We would start the game with the ball.

Our pre-match routine complete, we got into our team huddle for a final word from our coach before taking to the field for the start of the game.

The blast of the whistle started the match and we surged forward. Our ability to adapt to the soggy grass allowed us the edge in the early engagements as our opponents struggled to get the ball under control. Unlike the other teams we had played that season, they were not intimidated by the speed of our play or the intricate passing patterns but stuck to their physical approach to the game.

Then came the moment that changed the flow of the game. On a routine pass down the right side of the field, I got leveled by a player from the other team who I had not seen coming. As I rolled over expecting a hand up in accordance with the spirit of sportsmanship, he simply glared down at me with a look I can only describe as feral. This seemed to be the key that their team needed to get a foothold on the game.

What followed was a period of intense pressure as wave after wave of attack pinned us into our own half. Shell-shocked and unable to respond we conceded a goal and then another before two more sailed past our hapless goalkeeper just before the referee’s whistle brought the relief of half time.

We were four goals down and the boisterous pre-match mood was gone. In its place there was complete and utter dejection.

Picture the scene: fifteen 14 year-olds huddled in a semicircle on the sideline of a soaked field. Varying in height, girth and color, the only link between them was their proximity, the color of their uniforms and the downtrodden looks on their faces. Pacing back and forth in front of them was their coach, a middle-aged man dressed in a tracksuit of similar colors, his balding head covered with a faded blue cap. His pacing came to a stop and Coach turned to face us. We couldn’t look him in the eye. For a lot of us, the intricacies of our shoelaces were more fascinating than the angry look on our coach’s face.

“Men!” He paused. “You have two options right now. You can continue to do what you are doing right now and feel sorry for yourselves. Or you can pick your sorry selves up off the floor and do something about the situation that we find ourselves in. Being down four goals at half time is not the worst thing that can happen to a team. No boys, that honor goes to quitting instead. Now, I know that you are not going to take the first choice.”

Our gazes started to rise to meet his as soon as he said the word “men.” How could he say that after we had crumbled so pitifully just minutes ago? And this whole business of options ? We were four goals down and playing horribly. And yet as Coach continued, these mental objections started to fall away.

“Why ? Because of the words inscribed below that crest on your chest. Nec Asperra Terrent [Difficulties do not dismay us]. When adversity hits, we respond. Where others quit, we persevere. When we fall, we rise up again stronger. When we are four goals down at half time, we regroup and find a way to win. Why? Because we are College!”

In those five or so minutes, our entire mood changed. Our chests inflated, our backs straightened, and we believed. We believed again that it was within the grasp of the collective ability of our team to turn the result around.

I can still feel the rising excitement in my chest as I recall those words. I would later sit and go through that speech to try and find the language that caused it to have its effect on me. I failed.

Because it was not the words that Coach used that day that lifted a group of dejected players but rather the emotional levers that he was using to engage us. By calling us men, he touched on our sense of responsibility. By giving us a choice, quit now or fight on through adversity, he made us feel like we still had a say in the way the game would turn out. And finally by pointing to the motto on our chest, he brought us together as a group.

When we took to the field for the second half, we were a team renewed. I had grown to double my height, hounded my opposite number with renewed tenacity, and played what I still consider to this day my best 45 minutes of hockey.

It is a lesson that I apply myself. Whether with my college-age men’s rugby team this past fall or with my Under-14 boys soccer team last weekend, the lesson still holds as true as it did all those years ago in South Africa. The things that motivate people are not the words they hear but rather the levers that those words activate.

As an American, saying you love British culture is different than, for example, saying you love Italian culture. Many see a preference for British culture to American culture as an attack on the United States as a whole. Some friends will tease me about it, while other people seem genuinely offended. What is it about Britain that makes the response so different from when someone admits to a love of other cultures? Is the Revolutionary War still affecting people’s view of Britain? Why is it difficult to get people to understand that my affinity for British culture isn’t an attack on my home? I simply found a culture that suits me better, but how and why does it suit me better?

Bits of British culture entered my life when I was a child. Scottish relatives and Atlantic crossings on British ships introduced me to aspects of the culture. My Glaswegian aunt would give me Smarties, which I have always preferred to M&Ms. I loved throwing “tea parties” when I was younger and fell in love with the concept of afternoon tea. My mother is a fan of Jane Austen and other English literature that I also grew to love. None of this seemed very foreign to me and seeped into my life naturally. I wasn’t looking for a different culture. I wasn’t trying to escape America’s. Before my late teen years, I barely noticed how much of British culture crept into my life. For a long time I couldn’t explain a lot of these preferences, but television changed that.

Until British television “happened” for me, I hated television. I’d watch it from time to time as a kid but it never really captured my attention. As I grew older I attempted to watch some of the shows my friends did such as “American Idol” and “The O.C.” but wound up hating most of it. My thoughts on television were similar to those of a jaded old man’s. I saw it as a waste of time and considered that it maybe really did rot brains. Any show I did find that I felt was well written was usually canceled prematurely. I nearly gave up on the medium entirely until I realized it was just American television I hated.

Not too long before college started, I decided to give some British television shows a try at the recommendation of my friend. We both had a mutual love for some of the few American shows I found acceptable so I felt I could take her advice. I fell in love with the revival of quintessential British program “Doctor Who.” It had drama, humor, and science fiction blended together in a way I had never seen before. From there I kept watching more shows. I indulged my love for Arthurian Legend with “Merlin.” I already knew my sense of humor was more in line with British humour so I delved into comedies like “Spaced,” “The Mighty Boosh,” the British version of “The Office,” and later “The Inbetweeners.” I looked back towards “Fawlty Towers,” “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” and a “A Bit of Fry & Laurie.” I fell in love with dramas like “Life on Mars” and “Being Human.” After discovering writers and actors I thought were talented, the list grew and grew. I stumbled across mini-series, T.V. movies, and quiz shows I loved.

Suddenly with this discovery of how much I adored British television, all the other British things I loved became more prevalent. I began stating my preference for much of British culture. I was told I was un-American. Some people would look at me weird if I said I watched a lot of British television and asked “Why?” For a while all I could offer was “Well, I have Scottish relatives so I guess I just grew to like British culture.” But that wasn’t why I liked the culture, but rather partially why I was connected with it. I couldn’t really explain why I think British candy tastes better or why I like tea so much, but it turned out examining why I like the British entertainment industry was the key. I came to the conclusion that it’s because I love the arts.

While this isn’t true for every television program or film, the British seem to aim for quality, for art, more than Americans. The industry runs differently than ours. While mainstream American seasons (which the British refer to as “series”) may have twenty episodes often British seasons only have six to eight. Longer seasons only have about thirteen. British programs may also only have a couple seasons and sometimes how many there will be is planned from the very start so an ending is already in mind and episodes can be carefully written to lead to it. The American industry tries to squeeze as many seasons out of a program as they can and fight to get renewed. If a show is successful in America, they’ll try to make another program very similar to it. Britain seems to try to look towards new ideas more often. Britain doesn’t have a Hollywood and the type of superstars we do. Many of their actors have started in theatre. Roles seem to be casted more by talent whereas in the States, there is an American ideal of beauty to fulfill. America aims for entertainment. Britain aims for art. Yes, art can be and often is entertaining, but usually quality appears to be the British’s main goal.

Of course, this is all very generalized. There is plenty of terrible British television and fantastic American television. But for the most part, I find Britain trying to create works of art in the mainstream where that tends to happen in America’s independent or underground industry. America is more capitalistic. Entertainment is a product that needs to be sold so they go for quantity. Once I noticed this difference, I could explain my preference better and apply it to some other interests.

My love for soccer over popular American sports perhaps has similar reasoning. Soccer is more fluid, more of an art form. American football is rougher, more structured. Fans of soccer sing throughout matches. NFL fans mainly just yell. Whether one approach to “entertainment” is better than the other comes down to personal taste. I cannot stand shows like “Glee” but to fans of the program they are entertained and that’s all that matters. I do not simply want to be entertained. I want to experience more. I want something to think about.

Maybe this preference does make me “un-American.” But so what? Is it a requirement of my citizenship that I like American entertainment and American foods more? This kind of nationalism that makes my love for Britain offensive concerns me. Of course, nationalism exists elsewhere. In Britain itself, Scotland, England, and Wales all have their own personal identities they hold onto (and as history shows conflict has arisen because of this.) Even the fact that I love all of Britain becomes an issue. Some wonder how a mutual love for Scotland and England is even possible. There is also my heritage; I am half Irish. The fact that I like England at all is brought into question on that front.

Historical conflict and national pride are hard to escape if one dares to love a certain culture different than the one she was born into. For a little while I felt like I was supposed to apologize for it, that maybe I should leave the country at once. But I love Philadelphia and don’t plan on leaving anytime soon. Culture is a taste like anything else. I am not sorry I find most British television programs to be better written than American ones. I am not sorry I drink a lot of Twinings tea. I will always think that Cadbury is better than Hershey, that Glaswegian accents are the most beautiful, and that the EPL is far more enjoyable than the NFL. I may not be very “American,” but why do I have to be?

The Presidential debates in 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon were the first to ever be broadcast on television. It was during this time that television had become a staple of entertainment in the home and the new format for the debates attracted a lot of publicity. It also had a big impact on viewers’ opinions; those who watched the debate on television thought that Kennedy was the sure winner, while those who listened to the radio broadcast felt that Nixon had won. Now, in 2011 and 2012, we can see how social media is having a similar impact on opinions about presidential candidates and politics in general. Websites like Twitter and Facebook give us an even closer look at politicians and lawmakers that we didn’t necessarily have before.

The 2008 presidential election was not only historical in that Barack Obama became the first African-American president, but also in that he became the first president to utilize social media throughout his presidency. Many other politicians and political groups have followed suit, creating Twitter accounts and Facebook pages which allow users to follow updates and news, as well as provide feedback and interact with other followers. You no longer have to wait for the news to come on to hear what the president’s thoughts are on a certain issue. You don’t even have to watch presidential speeches or debates during the campaign season on television. Why would you when you can live stream those events online, all while being able to provide your opinions and have discussions with other people around the country in real time.

In fact, this is one of the things I love about watching the current GOP debates. Media platforms, such as Yahoo!, ABC, Fox News, and others, allow users to watch the debates online while providing various means of interaction and involvement. Users can be a part of the debate through submitting questions for the GOP candidates to answer, participating in polls, or posting their opinions and replying to other users’ thoughts and comments. It’s no longer necessary to wait for the commentary at the end of the debate to figure out which candidate did the best when you can actually see the feedback from thousands of other Americans who were also watching. In fact, I think it’s interesting to see how user comments differ from what news anchors and analysts have to say. When their opinions drastically differ or they fail to comment on certain topics or candidates, it really shows how the media is trying to get us to think about some things more than others.

These same platforms also provide other ways for people to get more involved. Of course, one of the most important ways of making sure your voice and opinions are heard is by voting each November on Election Day. However, not every citizen of the US is able to vote and not every citizen is knowledgeable enough to make an informed decision at the ballot box. Even further, not every issue is even put to a vote by the people. With the advent of social media people are able to gather information quickly as well as pass that information on to others.

One of the big news stories this year was the Occupy Wall Street movement. The movement originated in New York City, where citizens rallied together against Wall Street and corporate bailouts. The movement gained more attention and it spread like wild fire across social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. Eventually, the organization started its own website to broadcast news and information regarding the movement. This lead to people from outside of New York City to get involved, which, in turn, lead to other Occupy protests throughout the United States, Canada, and even across Europe.

In more recent weeks, Americans have begun to see just how effective this method can be. Both the Senate and Congress recently created two different versions of a bill calling for the blocking of websites that infringe upon copyrights or that enable copyright infringement, named the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act respectively. At first there was a mix of support and backlash from big companies like Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, and leaders in the entertainment industry such as the MPAA and RIAA. As more companies took sides and got involved, news of SOPA and PIPA became more widespread and generated protests in the form of websites such as Fight for the Future and American Censorship, which oppose the bills. Through these websites, people were able to learn more about the bills and were able to spread the information to other people by link sharing and e-mailing. The websites also prompted those against the bills to censor their websites, blogs, and even status updates to show everyone what the Internet would be like if the Senate and Congress passed the bills. On Wednesday, January 18, websites such as Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing, and WordPress participated in an “Internet Blackout Day” in protest of the two bills. These actions prompted the White House and President Obama to release a statement that stated they would, “not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” I have been following this movement since November and it has been interesting to see different tactics used and how the involvement of people and businesses has grown, all through the use of social media.

This isn’t just something going on in the United States; social media is a global phenomenon. In 2010, social media played a large role in the Arab Spring movement. Protests were coordinated through the use of Facebook. An article in the Huffington Post mentions how critics of social media platforms wrote off websites like Twitter and Facebook as simply being used for celebrity gossip and self-aggrandizement. However, the role that these websites played in the movements and protests in countries like Egypt shows just how effective these sites can be in giving people a voice.

As time goes on, I certainly think social media websites will continue to be an important part of campaigning and the political world in general. Instead of placing campaign signs in the front yard, people will simply show their support through blogs, tweets, and status updates.

The first death in the series is that of Lily and James Potter. This is one of the sadder death scenes, because one-year-old Harry is left by himself after watching his parents get murdered and almost being murdered himself. However, we find out in the seventh book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) that Snape came to the Potter house shortly after the deaths occurred. Hagrid then appears to whisk Harry away to his aunt and uncle’s house, where he lives for eleven years believing his parents died in a car crash. Neither Petunia nor Vernon Dudley (Harry’s aunt and uncle) care to tell Harry how his parents really died or clue him in on the fact that he is a famous wizard. Lily and James’ deaths are mentioned again in the third book when Harry has visions of them when Dementors close in on him on the Hogwarts Express. It’s sad when Harry deals with that for the first time, because all he hears is his mother screaming “No! Not Harry!” What a horrible memory of your mother.

Cedric Diggory’s death is the first that occurs in real time in the series, and takes place in book 4, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. During the Triwizard Tournament, Harry and Cedric are transported by portkey to the graveyard in Little Hangleton, the town in which Lord Volemort’s ancestors lived. Once there, Peter Pettigrew (one of Lord Voldemort’s minions) kills Cedric because he was not needed (“Kill the spare!”). One could argue that Cedric’s death is the first casualty in the Battle of Hogwarts, even though the battle does not take place until the seventh book. Still, his is the first pointless death. And by pointless I mean there was no reason for him to be killed. All he did was show up at the wrong place at the wrong time because he was trying to live up to the Hufflepuff’s reputation of being noble.

The next unfair death scene belongs to Sirius Black, James Potter’s best friend and Harry’s godfather. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3), Harry finds out that Sirius did not betray his parents to Voldemort as he believed, but that Sirius is his godfather. For the first time in the series, Harry has a real family again, someone to write letters to during the school year and receive presents from at Christmas. But then Sirius dies in the battle at the Ministry of Magic in Book Five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. His death is unfair, like Cedric’s, because his cousin kills him. Or I should say, sends a spell at him that causes him to fall into the Veil, never to return. I know I, for one, have no idea what the Veil is or why Sirius just disappears into it, but that’s what happens. And only two years after meeting Harry too! It was bad enough reading the scene in the book, but the movie made it worse. The last thing Sirius Black says in the movie is “Nice one, James!” In the heat of battle, he mistook Harry for his father. I understand poetic license, but to me that’s just taking things too far.

Albus Dumbledore’s death was a sad, dramatic scene. When he and Harry arrive on top of the astronomy tower, Dumbledore is already very sick from the potion he drank while trying to obtain a horcrux. The last thing he needs is for Malfoy to meet him there and try to kill him. And of course, Dumbledore immobilizes Harry under his invisibility cloak (in the book at least) so that Harry cannot do anything rash, like fend off Malfoy so that Dumbledore might not die. And then Snape comes to do the job that Malfoy can’t: Snape murders Dumbledore. At this point in the series, no one knows if Snape is a good guy or a bad guy. All the readers, and characters for that matter, know is that Snape was at one point a Death Eater but is now reformed and a member of the Order of the Phoenix thanks to Dumbledore. So Snape kills a weakened Dumbledore, after which Dumbledore’s body falls from the astronomy tower (the highest tower at Hogwarts) to the ground.

Throughout the seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, characters are killed off in the fight against Voldemort. Some of them are named characters who have small roles in the series, while others are more prominent. They include Hedwig (Harry’s owl), Alastor Moody, Rufus Scrimgeour, Dobby the House-Elf, Ted Tonks, Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, and Lavender Brown. By far the most undignified of these deaths is Fred Weasley’s. He dies in an explosion by having a wall fall on him. And the worst part is, the last thing he does is look incredulously at his normally uptight brother Percy and say “You actually are joking, Perce… I don’t think I’ve heard you joke since you were–” He gets cut off by the explosion and death.

Dobby has the most heroic death, because he dies while trying to save Harry and his friends from Malfoy Manor. Although there is not an actual death scene for Lupin and Tonks, their deaths are sad. A few months before the battle in which they die, Tonks had a son whom they named Teddy after her father. Since both his mother and father die, Teddy is left to the care of his godfather, Harry. Even though it is not stated in the series, it is most likely Molly Weasley who takes care of Teddy Lupin.

The last, and most well written, “good guy” death scene is that of Severus Snape. Up until his death scene, the reader does not know if Snape is a good or an evil character. Most readers, myself included, believed that Snape was evil and would die evil. However, that is not the case. While Snape was, at one point, a Death Eater, he gave that up to become a spy for Dumbledore once he realized that Voldemort wanted to kill Lily Potter’s son. He did this because he was in love with Lily Potter, whom he had known since childhood. Lily and Snape grew up in the same village in houses not too far from each other. It was Snape who told Lily all about being a witch and going to Hogwarts. Once they went to school, the two started drifting apart. Snape got involved in dark magic while Lily was forcefully against it. Then she married James Potter, whom Snape hated, and all contact between Lily and Snape ceased. However, he did not stop caring for her and looking out for her. Snape is the one who convinced Dumbledore to put the Potters’ into hiding to keep them safe from Voldemort, who had set out to kill Lily’s son Harry. Unfortunately for Snape, his mission fails and Lily is murdered. However, Harry survives, and Snape vows to protect the child, and does until his death. What makes the whole thing sadder is that Harry is the last one Snape sees before his death, and Harry does not find out how much Snape did for him and his family until it’s too late to make amends.

In my opinion, the most moving death scene is Severus Snape’s. It was not until I read his death scene that I realized how well his character had been written. He comes across as this mean, evil man who will do everything in his power to make Harry’s life a living hell, and yet he’s actually protecting Harry from Voldemort. That is twisted, but in a good way. I love how he became a character to despise, and then at his death I was thinking “Oh my god! That is the worst way to die! Poor Snape!” I felt for him, and that was not something I was expecting to do. It was one of the best written scenes I have ever read.

A tribute to all of the fallen characters can be found here.

Charlie Todd and some of his college friends came up with the idea in 2001. Their first “mission” was posing as musician Ben Folds, of the alternative rock group Ben Folds Five, in a West Village bar. Todd says on his website that he had always been a prankster and as a new actor to the city, the experience showed that he could create his own theatre instead of fighting for stage time. He wrote that, “ Three hours later, ‘Ben Folds’ was drinking on the house surrounded by women and his ‘two big fans’ were thrown out of the bar for ‘stealing Ben Folds’ wallet.” Since then, Charlie Todd and Improv Everywhere have caused over 100 “scenes” in New York City and across the globe. The goal, Todd writes, is to have fun and to “make people laugh, smile, and notice the world around them.”

At the presentation on Wednesday night in the Main Auditorium, Charlie Todd told that story of how Improv Everywhere came to be and about some of his favorite pranks. The talk was set up as a Q&A format along with Todd telling some background stories from throughout the years. While I had seen most of the videos he mentioned on YouTube, it was still interesting to hear how the pranks were set up and what happened afterwards. Charlie Todd also had a lot of advice for those who want to get into improvisational work. The only requirement he has for the actors that participate in his pranks is that they keep a straight face. One of the dilemmas Todd ran into when Improve Everywhere first started was that he was unsure of how to end the pranks. He realized that he didn’t want to have a “Candid Camera” moment in which people found out they had been fooled. Instead, he decided he wouldn’t say anything, so that even if people figured out they had been pranked, it would still make for a good story they could tell for the rest of their lives.

Todd was also asked about which pranks were the most difficult to pull off. While the Main Auditorium didn’t have a projector to watch the videos as he was describing them, most of those in attendance had at least seen a few on YouTube. Todd described the Fake U2 Concert prank as the hardest to pull off. The improv group had to rent equipment and set it up on the roof of Todd’s building. The timing of the prank also had to be exact since the real U2 was performing at Madison Square Garden, right across the street from Todd’s home. They pulled off the prank a couple of hours before the real show and hundreds of U2 fans on the way to the concert were fooled into thinking it was the real thing. Todd also mentioned that it was funny that the cops showed up, which paralleled U2’s music video. They did end up having to go to court, but in the end their case was dismissed.

This wasn’t the only time Improv Everywhere had a run in with the cops. Todd also told about the Best Buy prank, where they had at least 50 people dressed up in blue polo shirts and khaki pants go into a Best Buy. While some of the Best Buy employees thought it was funny, the store managers did not. When the police arrived, however, they told the managers that it wasn’t against the law to wear blue polo shirts. In another mission involving a department store, they were told that doing jumping jacks was not allowed in shoe store DSW. Todd said that one of the most important things about the pranks they pull off is keeping everything a secret. Not only does secrecy make the events more fun, but it also helps get around roadblocks like not having proper permits.

Other advice Todd gave was to those wanting to start up their own group like Improv Everywhere. Improv Everywhere is already 10 years old and has a huge following, so people just starting out get discouraged when only 50 people show up to a planned prank. Todd explained that early Improv Everywhere events also had only a few people, but that it grew over time. He also mentioned Facebook as a great way to make more people aware of events. Todd told a story of someone from London who was studying at NYU. The student didn’t know many people besides his roommate, but through Facebook was able to get hundreds of people to show up for a silent disco he had the idea for. So even someone new to the city, with no contacts, could put together an event and get people to show up.

The best part of the presentation, however, was getting to see a video for a prank that hadn’t yet been released. The video showed a couple sitting on a bench in Central Park. Out of nowhere, someone comes up and places a table in front of them. They are served wine and food. The table was taken away and they were given tickets to a show. Eventually, another man came along and took their tickets. Musicians came up and played a few minutes of music. At the end of the prank, the actors simply left and the couple was left on the bench smiling. This is what Improv Everywhere is all about: making people laugh and smile, and giving people an experience they will never forget.

When the event ended, Charlie Todd stayed to answer any additional questions people in the audience might have had. The event was sponsored by Urban Playground, a group similar to Improv Everywhere that organizes large flash mobs, small pranks, and restores playgrounds in Philadelphia. The talk was also a part of CAB’s Comedy Week, which also included movie screenings, paintball, balloon artists, a comedy street fair, student comedy competitions, and other presentations. The week ended with the 12th Annual Fall Comedy Show on Saturday, November 12th in the Main Auditorium. For more information about the CAB Comedy Week and events being held in the future, take a look at their event page.

If you are interested in learning more about Improv Everywhere, or to see videos of what they do, check out http://www. http://improveverywhere.com/.

For me the choice to go to medical school is one I made a long time ago. From my experiences volunteering in hospitals and nursing homes, I came to appreciate it more and more. I loved spending time with patients and transporting them to different places in the hospital. When I got to college, I took my required classes. I memorized the steps of photosynthesis and learned about centripetal acceleration, but I was still unaware of the emotional challenges of becoming a physician. When I was getting ready to apply, I decided it would be a good time for me to shadow a physician. Up until then I had understood medicine from the patient’s perspective. But now it was time for me to spend some time with doctors.

I began my shadowing experience on the critical care floor at Hahnemann University Hospital. The floor is primarily occupied by patients who suffer from a wide range of illnesses such as lung disease, heart failure, obesity, and renal failure. Most of the patients are smokers and suffer from a variety of symptoms as a result of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). In other words, these patients are all very, very sick and more often than not, they suffer from several conditions at once. In an environment like this, a physician is faced with an enormously difficult task to try and keep patients alive and stable while multiple organs in their body are failing.

Luckily for me I got the opportunity to shadow a pulmonary and primary care physician who is a walking encyclopedia for medical knowledge. He opened my eyes to the world of critical care in medicine and would describe to me in detail each one of his patients’ conditions, personal histories and previous treatments. He is not only an excellent doctor, but a valuable teacher and mentor to medical students, residents and fellows. During the time I spent shadowing him, he was simultaneously teaching and training a fellow who was interested in pulmonary care. I usually got to the hospital by 7:30 am on Friday mornings and accompanied the attending and his fellow on grand rounds as he visited his patients.

On one particular Friday morning I got to the hospital a little early, and had time to talk to the fellow before we sat down with the attending to look over patients’ x-rays and CAT scan results. We spoke about the MCATs, about applying to medical school and her experience of it all. She told me that she was married to another physician at the hospital and lived just outside of Philadelphia. Her short dirty blonde hair was a mess and I could tell she had spent the night in the on-call room at the hospital. She was on her second cup of coffee that morning and anticipated having a few more throughout the day. When it was time to sit down with the attending, we gathered around a few desktop screens. We watched the attending go through x-ray slides, point out effusions, fissures of the lung, pacemakers inside the patients’ bodies and other physiological markers. He took us through the CAT scan results and explained the structure of the lung to, showing me where the trachea splits into the right and left bronchi of the lungs. I loved every minute of it.

When we were ready to begin rounds, the attending asked me to accompany the fellow to see a “special” patient while he looked over some notes in a patients’ file. I wasn’t sure what he meant by “special” but went with the fellow instead. We walked across the floor into a dimly lit room where a woman in her fifties was lying asleep, or so I thought. Upon walking in, the fellow turned on all of the lights and made her way to the opposite side of the bed where a ventilator machine stood. She bumped into the side of the bed, rolled the bed tray away and was surprisingly making quite a bit of noise. She then began to lightly smack the side of the patient’s cheek, and I was shocked. I almost wanted to tell her to be quieter so as not to wake the patient, but when I looked more closely at the woman and the ventilator machine, I realized she wasn’t asleep. As the fellow explained to me, the patient was brain dead and she had to come in everyday to check for signs of life. The fellow explained that although most of her brain activity had stopped, according to the ventilator she was still breathing at a rate slightly higher than the setting on the machine indicating that there was a small amount of independent breathing going on. Technically there was still life inside her body. But that’s all she was doing, breathing with no brain activity.

It was then that I understood why the fellow was giving her light smacks on the face, and palpating other areas of her body to see if she could get some sort of physical response to her touch. I watched as the fellow conducted several quick tests. She moved the patient’s blankets and tapped on her knees a few times with a small instrument to see if she would react, but she didn’t. She took a pen of hers and scraped alongside the sole of the patient’s feet to see if the patient would react to pain, but she didn’t. She pounded her fist on a surgical scar that the patient had on her chest to see if her pain sensors would respond, but they didn’t. She even grabbed a small piece of paper towel from the sink and poked the patient’s eyes to see if they would tear or if she would blink, but of course nothing happened.

It was difficult to watch a physician treat a patient so aggressively, but at the same time I knew it was necessary. When I asked the fellow what would happen if the patient’s condition remained the same, she shrugged her shoulders. “The family doesn’t want to end life support; they believe that she’s still alive. But even if she’s breathing, there’s no way her brain tissue can ever recover from being dead for so long and having no supply of oxygen. So we just wait, we talk to them every day but it’s hard because most of the family doesn’t speak English.”

I saw that same patient on three more Fridays after the first and her condition was the same. The second time I saw her, I walked into the room to find her entire family sitting there. She had a daughter and three grandkids that were asleep on the armchairs in the room. They spoke to the doctors and I could see the daughter’s frustration at her mother’s situation, the look of confusion on her face form trying to decide what to do, being responsible for her mother’s life.

As a pre-medical student, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to have that conversation with a family, especially a family with strong ties to the patient. I don’t believe you could ever really prepare yourself for such a situation, knowing that your decision will directly affect someone’s life. The only way pre-medical students can prepare themselves for the emotional challenges of a career in medicine is by spending time in a hospital and witnessing doctor-patient interactions in different scenarios.

I am still shadowing the same physician at Hahnemann University Hospital. My experiences have given me valuable insight into the world of medicine beyond just the technical aspects of it. Every week I find myself learning more and more about the complex field of medicine.

With this in mind, photographs inside state mental institutions taken by Christopher Payne in his new book Asylum and my conversations with him have opened my perspective, my worldview concerning these buildings and treatment of the mentally ill, both then and now.

Payne tells a central story with his photographs of 19th-century mental hospitals and hopes that people see the story of these buildings through his work. Payne argues that these buildings played a vital role in the US for over 100 years.

“They were once thriving communities where thousands of people lived, worked, and died,” he said. “I hope people will realize these architectural treasures are worth saving instead of tearing down, even if they are negative symbols of a less enlightened era.”

It was this “operation as self-sufficient communities” that held Payne’s interest over his six to seven yearlong project. Perhaps one of the best representations of this is a photograph of a wooden box containing five rows of patient toothbrushes from Hudson River State Hospital in New York. The toothbrushes are hanging upside-down on tiny metal hooks, abandoned like the buildings and like the mentally ill. Each toothbrush once belonged to a patient, whose true tale was probably never told, whose true treatment was likely never known. The colorful toothbrushes pop from the background of the plain wooden box and gray-chipped paint of the wall from which the box hangs. The toothbrushes humanize the patients in a very dehumanizing world.

Probably the most iconic image of Payne’s Asylum work is a white straightjacket hanging on a bare wall. For me, the image strikes anxiety, the fear I would have if I was ever imprisoned in a straightjacket, much less a mental institution. The only hint of color in the photograph is the red printed letters and numbers on the inside of the jacket, which remind me of the black lettering on orange jumpsuits in prisons. As Payne said, both the patient toothbrushes and the straightjacket “show personal effects of human scale and individual use, and so we can relate to them.”

Payne said that photographs of the architectural interiors are also representative of the story his photographs tell. These photographs include views down the wards and empty hallways with doors left ajar as if the ground were suddenly evacuated. The wards, Payne said, reveal the monotony of daily life in the hospitals and show the need for control and order.

There is little color in most of these photographs, perhaps an isolated red chair facing a window where a patient perhaps sat longing for freedom or the green trees poking through an open space in the slaughterhouse of a North Carolina state hospital. I cringe to think what happened to people in that room. A sea green color seems to be universal in many of these places as well. It is the color of chairs in the beauty salon of the Trenton State Hospital and of several worn down walls and corridors revealing brown splotches where the paint has chipped. It is the color of a patient’s suitcase among a pile of disorganized suitcases from a hospital in Tennessee and the laces of bowling shoes from a hospital in New York.

The negative connotation attached to the mentally ill has ruined the reputation for these buildings, Payne said. “Now that the patients have left, the stigma attached to mental illness has been passed on to the buildings, making them easy targets for the wrecking ball.” This is why Payne sees a need to photograph these buildings. While they were made for specific purposes during specific times, they are now obsolete, but Payne said that the quality of their design, construction, and craftsmanship could never be replaced.

Payne has a special appreciation for the construction and design of buildings, as he is an architect-by-training. Payne believes that his background in architecture helps him with photography because he’s been looking at buildings his entire life. He has the ability to understand the feeling of a space, and uses photographic elements to capture these feelings. Payne said he visualizes a shot by making a mental sketch or sometimes one on paper, similar to the sketching he did as an architect. “Photography or drawing, it’s the same intention, just a different medium.” He hopes others see the “incredible care and effort” that went into the construction of these buildings and realize they were not meant to be “human warehouses.”

Payne’s photographs reveal a scary world, one which appears to be abandoned. But as Payne told me, most of these hospitals are still running, although parts of them may be abandoned. The mentally ill are still institutionalized and I’m not sure that people know enough of the history and treatment of mental illness and how far it has come today. Payne sees a need to photograph these buildings, to tell their story before it’s too late. He said, “I suppose, like many others, I feel a sense of urgency to document these places because I know they will soon be gone.”