Author Archives: thh55

Keynote: Full Circle

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This talk had several speakers, but one in particular who stood out to me was Santee Smith, who was also billed as Tekaronhiáhkhwa, or Picking Up The Sky. Smith is a member of the Kahnyen’kehàka Nation, which is located several hours North from Ithaca. This is what stood out to me, since the Native communities I interact with most are from California, where I’m from and where my family originated from.

I don’t know much about Native history outside of California, so when Smith spoke, I was eager to hear about the histories. She touched on the abusive schooling practices geared toward tribal children, which I’d mostly heard about from teachers or online. The part I enjoyed most was her art film: this was rooted in her own experience, and the experiences of her community. Her work was beautiful, and I was glad that she showed it to us as a Keynote speaker.

Racism in the time of COVID

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This was a really interesting topic, one that I was glad to see being covered in an event. Oftentimes, attention is only called to racism when it captures the interest of white populations; during COVID, people are interested in seeing the ways society is changing as a consequence to the pandemic. This has prompted new discussions about racism, which cover slightly different topics than ever before. In this case, the topic was a surge in hate crimes for Asian populations around the world.

Hate crimes are an easy way for white populations to identify racism, which was one point brought up during the talk. The reality is that racism comes in many forms, including generational trauma, displacement, and environmental racism, but these are often less obvious for those who have never needed to recognize it. Populations with high concentrations of people of color are oftentimes sidelined when it comes to resource allocation, voting, and safety: we saw this with Flint, Michigan, and numerous other communities which have experienced poisonous conditions that may still remain undetected. Due to the complex nature of centuries old acts of racism, one more noticeable way to measure racism in media tends to be the measure of hate crimes.

Finale for Queen’s Gambit

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This was the finale for Queen’s Gambit, a Netflix original I’d heard a lot about before seeing being aired at Rose House. I’d heard of this series before, namely because of its principal actor; Anya Taylor-Joy, an Argentinian actor, was recommended to me as someone to look out for after she spoke out about topics related to the politics of Latin-American background.

As someone of Latin-American descent myself, I was interested to hear what Anya Taylor-Joy had addressed, because she herself was of a British background while also being Argentinian. Multiethnic identity is heavily politicized in many circles, particularly when it comes to Latin America, because of the mixed nature of many of the populations. Taylor-Joy used her platform as the star of Queen’s Gambit to provide some background on how, and why, many of these populations can identify both as British and Argentinian. I really appreciated that, because of the amount of people she was able to reach with her words. For this reason, I wanted to give her show a watch, and understand a bit of how she came to have such an incredible platform.

Different Artstyles

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This was an outdoor painting event, that I was happy to attend with some friends from within the House. We all sat outside on a bench, and pulled from GRF Maggie’s collection of art supplies: pens, pencils, brushes, bowls, canvases, pieces of paper, and loads of acrylic paint were included on one of the picnic tables for our group to select from.

During the course of the event, my group and I were all able to produce extremely varied pieces of wildly different art styles. This semester, I’m taking a game design course, for which I’m producing art; on my canvas, I replicated the game’s protagonist character over our game’s color scheme. One of my friends drew a large tree in the foreground of her piece, to replicate nature. Another one drew a realistic rendition of one of West Campus’ buildings. After looking at all of our pieces separately, I realized how different all our pieces were, and how appreciative it made me of our own respective methods of creativity.

Learning to Crochet!

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When I didn’t manage to reserve a spot in the first crochet workshop, I was really disappointed; when the second workshop was announced in the weekly email, I jumped at the chance to re-enroll. I managed to reserve a spot, which I’m very grateful for. Following my confirmation email, I received supplies in my mailbox: a crochet needle, a ball of yarn, some sewing scissors, and some plastic bits to mark my progress. These all came in a small bag, which was great news, because I had none of those supplies lying around my dorm room.

During the workshop itself, I learned some of the basics to crochet stitches. I worked for a while on how to get my piece started, which took up the first half of the workshop, because it was all so new to me. I worked for a while then on how to extend my first yarn chain, and by the end, I had gotten a solid start to a crochet piece!

A walk through Cornell’s Botanical Gardens

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For this week, I signed up for a walk through Cornell’s gardens. I ran into some friends from Rose House, and was glad to walk with them across campus into the gardens! From there, we looped around, and saw the gorgeous plant life that was beginning to emerge from the snow.

My favorite part of this walk was seeing my friends, and walking with them through the nature. We were able to see a part of Cornell that we wouldn’t have encountered otherwise, because it’s so out of the way of all our classes. I learned a lot from my friend about New York’s landscapes, which was new to me, having come from California. We don’t have snow where I’m from, so I was really eager to hear how the environment deals with harsh conditions that occur cyclically. An added benefit was seeing these plants and animals in person, over the course of the walk.

Individual Matches in Chess

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This was an interesting event, one that I hadn’t seen offered before: a chess meet! It had individual chess matches between members of the Zoom call, hosted on a website online. There was a logistical preamble to matching up students, and then we were set off to complete the matches with the specific restraints.

For the matches, we had time constraints, so each side had to battle within limits. Myself, I’m very new to chess, so I had some trial and error before I realized some key aspects of the game. Using a pawn to reach the other side creates a new piece, one that is much more powerful: the app allowed me to choose, so I usually chose to add another queen to the board.

Knowing this, my strategy quickly became to just launch my players across the board as quickly as possible. This didn’t work out for me in most matches, because when the time ran out, I was usually way behind in terms of points. I was able to win a match toward the end, though, which felt great!

Calligraphy, Intermediate

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This was the second calligraphy workshop as part of the series. After having attended the first one, I knew I wanted to get further instruction on how to write. By this point, I could write my name, but was unfamiliar with the letters outside of my own name. For this reason I was really glad to see a continuation of the first workshop.

For this workshop, I was able to really refine my technique. At this point I knew that the brushes I had wouldn’t hold me back from creating really beautiful letter strokes; if anything, varied types of paper could produce more of the varied appearances I was looking for. I spent more time working, with a new set of pens and paper from GRF Seema. And at the end of the session, I was really proud of my progress!

Beginning Calligraphy

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As soon as I saw the email for a calligraphy workshop, I made sure to sign up. This is the first calligraphy workshop of a series, and I was glad to be able to attend! GRF Seema made sure to deliver supplies directly into my mailbox, which was a really great way to help me get started. In the packet there were worksheets, blank pieces of paper, and a calligraphy pen in a beautiful red color primed and ready to go.

During the event, Seema made a brief introduction before getting started with an explanatory video. In the video, the author gave some brief examples of beginner’s strokes. We worked independently for a while, and by the end, we were able to write our own names in strokes. I was really proud of my work, and glad to have gotten started learning this skill! I have my name displayed outside of my dorm room now, written in calligraphy.