Low Res: Hook, Line, and Sinker

Image courtesy of cruiselinehistory.com

Even when we put down the windows, my family’s 1998 Toyota Sienna minivan still smelled like a basement. Maps that we used to rely on before we had iPhones, old faded copies of National Geographic and Cooking Light, and a couple of packs of gum that had long lost their crisp shape, were all crammed into the pocket behind the driver’s seat. Squeezed behind these obsolete artifacts was a book, lovingly crumpled from a combination of wear, and, later, of neglect.

882 ½ Answers to Your Questions About the Titanic sustained me through most car rides, long and short, throughout early elementary school. Each section in the book was short and manageable, introducing me to facts about the steerage, and the bow and the stern every time I turned the page. Some passengers brought their dogs on board.  The kitchens were equipped with twenty-five cases of olive oil, and the three hundred cases of shelled walnuts.  Supposedly, thirteen couples traveling were on their honeymoons. Some scholars speculate it would have been safer to hit the iceberg straight on.  All eight members of the ship orchestra lost their lives. I learned that April 15—tax day—was the day the Titanic sank. Engrossed, I didn’t mind the mild nausea I felt as I read in the backseat.

Hat Trick: Gifts

As we usher in a new theme, hat trick, it seems only fitting to take a look back at “Hat Trick,” a seemingly lighthearted piece published in December of 1977. According to the information about contributors for the issue, the author, Alice Weil, was “a junior in the writing option.”

Weil’s prose piece traces exchanges of flowers through two phases of the narrator’s life, both before and during college. When Rachel finds herself in Cambridge, she meets Jeff. Jeff at the time “didn’t have a beard, but he was still tall and imposing in the style that strikes you either as alluring or ridiculous.” Jeff and Rachel share a night together, but fail to fully define their relationship. On her twentieth birthday of that year, she receives three gifts from three friends: a heather plant, a forsythia branch, and a bouquet of daisies and jonquils. As she leaves her teenage years behind, she seems to achieve a hat trick of gifts and “scores” three times. Yet, as the story comes to a close, Rachel looks at the note Jeff attached to the bouquet and realizes that he signed off with a sterile “—” rather than “Love.”

Poor Rachel.

Habit: The Key to Muscle Memory

My keychain is heavier than it needs to be. As my fingers move from the central loop outwards, keys and knick-knacks gradually become less and less important. On the central loop itself is my dorm key. One loop removed is the key to home in San Francisco, a key to 21 South Street, my CVS ExtraCare card, and a miniature rice bowl keychain I bought last summer in China. If my fingers need to dig any further in my pocket, they eventually will hit a bottle opener and pair of compressible chopsticks. It’s always good to be prepared.

I realize that my pockets could be much lighter, but the bulk of the keys together makes the keys much harder to lose. I’d rather have too much in my pockets than not enough.

Picture This: Photographic Media in the Harvard Advocate

The history of photography in the Harvard Advocate is an ongoing and rich one, a confrontation of the enduring question: How does the image find its place in a literary magazine? To commemorate the launch of The Harvard Advocate’s Winter 2013 issue, “Origin,” we have traced the emergence and changing role of the image in the Advocate and the ways in which the photographic image has been read on the page.

Although photography had emerged in print in the early twentieth century, photographs only first began to appear in the magazine during the fifties and sixties as illustrative content and as advertisements.  A portrait of T.S. Eliot was included in the centennial issue, used as a visual reference to one of the Advocate’s most esteemed alumni. All of these examples speak to the then secondary, supplementary nature of visual media to the magazine.