After a cross-country road trip and some time in France this summer, Pam moved to New York to begin her life as Uma—an “alternative electronic soul” singer ready to take the NYC music scene by storm.
The Alex Adams award was established in 2007 in memory of its namesake, Jay Alexander Adams. It provides financial support to undergraduates who elect to spend two months of their summer producing an original work of art. Halcyon Person ’10 was one of the two recipients chosen last spring. What follows are excerpts from her project, for which she spent the summer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, conducting interviews with members of her father’s and grandfather’s generation who had worked at the since closed Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill.
I remember the first time someone I knew died. My sister’s friend had gone missing, and when the news finally came that her death was sure, I privately went through my phone, which had previously been my sister’s, and searched for the friend’s name.
There is a tiny man in her hair and he is screaming at me. “Hello there!” He is screaming. “Please remove me from this strand of hair!” He is screaming. “This is a terribly inconvenient place for me to be right now!” He is screaming.
Sometimes, you forget: there are people out there who do absolutely brilliant, incredible things. Even at achievement-filled Princeton—especially at achievement-filled Princeton—greatness, which is a level below the place I write about, can become benign and unimpressive. Talent becomes the norm … Read More
“But then the Romans didn’t want paunchy, lumpy bodies in their villas (aside from their own), so they decapitated Sokrates, already green and moldy from the hemlock, and shoved his face alone in their alcoves, dressing him up in pure white marble.”
