The Old Powers Family Farm

        In a small valley above the Allegheny River sits the remnants of the old Powers Family farm. Every morning, I wake up to light peering through the same shagbark hickory that watched over my mother as a child. My house is held up by eighty-year-old logs, offspring of the ancient red oaks that have framed my family's land since 1780. I walk to school along Powers Run Road, named after my ancestors, and pass O’Hara elementary school, which resides over the old Powers' strawberry fields.
        Growing up in an environment so full of my mother's Protestant history has separated me from my Jewish heritage, so I do not know what grew around my father's family. I can only assume that wheat and soybeans were among their staple crops like other Eastern European Jews. My backyard instantly connects me to the Powers family, but I had to go to a screening of Woman in Gold in order for the Holocaust to resonate with me after seventeen years. That same night I returned home in an attempt to further process my peoples' suffering, but I could not ignore the irony of gaining such awareness while standing on land colonized by my mother's family.
        Before that night I thought that the Powers farm had only been covered with strawberries, lettuce, yams, and other produce that sustained the region. Today, I notice more of the broomrape that came over with my European ancestors. This foreign, parasitic plant lacks any chlorophyll, so it latches onto the roots of its host, sucking away nutrients. Today, I reflect on the Shawnee Native Americans who once thrived across Western Pennsylvania in a small valley above the Allegheny River before colonialism was brought from overseas.
The roots of colonialism extend from my yard out, constricting indigenous people around the globe. I first witnessed this expanse while teaching visual art and music with my parents in Nicaragua. In the rural coffee cooperative of El Porvenir, we worked to foster creative and critical thinking in response to the poverty caused by foreign intervention from 16th Century Spanish imperialism to late 20th century U.S. political presence in the Nicaraguan Revolution. During our two visits to El Porvenir, our goal was to create not artists and musicians, but observers and questioners who can see their environment and their reality differently and can thus self-determine their futures against the pressures of oppressive foreign endeavors.
        I returned home from Nicaragua awakened to my role as a descendant of both the oppressors and the oppressed. As a white male raised and nurtured off of stolen land, I must actively decolonize my mind from thoughts of white supremacy, misogyny, and all other systems of inequality that benefit me. As I remove the broomrape from my yard, I see how the Powers farm is a model for the world - one that I can help to decolonize by making policies which challenge the advantages of my ancestry and create equal opportunity for all people.

The Storm

Hi everyone!

As you all are aware, fall semester is in full swing, and for seniors that means college application season. As such, I unfortunately don't have time to go into everything I'd like to talk about for this post (more on that next time!), but I thought I'd share a piece I wrote for English. I hope you guys enjoy!

The Storm

At first, it starts

the pitter-patter of the sleek, black panther, of the rain

broken

by dusk’s glistening bluffs of cool stone,

by the supple sway of whispering grasses.

The heavens pull up

their soft, grey blanket,

but it is a fitful sleep,

and the sheets roil and blacken.

The wind coos as it whistles through

palmy, leafy rustles -

an omen of a darker tune.

The starlings alight in

a tormented dance

rolling in and out of chaos

among the gathering darknesses.

Then

the skies are alive.

The rain, at panther’s pace,

swells to the stampede of a hundred elephants,

besieging the soft earth with watery bolts,

roaring in the night.

The wind thunders its rage

at the helpless flora,

shackled to the earth

who so gently bore them.

All who can creep or crawl

have fled.

It is in this madness that the sparks

dance.

Falling, falling

a strained elegance imbibed in their

microscopic pirouettes

swirling in rivulets

among the bombast of the blustering wind,

among the noble indifference of the rain’s assault.

They court their earth-borne brothers,

prancing amid the whirling tempest

bound in a precarious harmony.

They join hands -

a flash -

and they crack the sky in two.



Thanks everybody! See you next time.

Che.

Sailing and AP Classes

My favorite thing about sailing is the people. Most jobs have their own stereotypes about them, but sailors are as kaleidoscopic as the ocean. I find that the only things sailors have in common are their love for adventure and willingness to work hard.

I've met some of the most interesting people I know while working on a tall ship. Being surrounded by people with diverse backgrounds and life stories got me to understand the importance of getting to know people, and once I started making it a goal to cut down on the number of strangers in my life, I started becoming a happier person.

Most sailors when sailing.

The other thing I learned over the summer was the importance of having a job. It teaches you so much more than just responsibility. Privileged people have the tendency to look at unskilled jobs as easier, more brainless, and I admit that I thought that too. And when I started out working as a hostess, I got a huge reality check...

I take AP classes, and sure, I don't get As in all of them, but I take pride in what I've accomplished as a student. But during my first weeks working as a hostess, I felt like the dumbest person in the room. There were people I worked with who had a different high school experience than I had and they were flawlessly doing their job. I admire all my coworkers. I've gained respect for people like them, and I've seen people who work from 9 to 9 in jobs like mine. My coworkers all had their own stories, and like my sailing friends, I've come to love the stories they tell me.

My challenge this year was finding a way to learn from people our high school, where everyone has essentially the same life story -- that is to say, not much. However, we are still surrounded in life by people who do have stories and a slew of life decisions that we are too young to make. Your barista at the coffee shop might have been friends with a star soccer player in her youth. Your bus driver might have overcome leukemia. That old man who lives in your neighborhood might have captured ten Nazi soldiers in World War II, or might have been captured by ten Nazi soldiers and survived.

The difficult thing about our generation is that sometimes, we view ourselves as the most interesting people in the room. The reality is that almost always, we are not.

This year, I've chosen a class schedule that gives me a lot of free time. I've decided that in that free time, I'm going to learn as much as I can from everyone around me. I challenge you to do the same.

When you meet a someone --maybe a cashier at a grocery store, maybe whoever has a locker near yours, maybe a teacher-- find out what they know most about, and in whatever time you have, try to learn. I guarantee that you'll come to the same conclusion that I've reached: we aren't better than the people we encounter, we just know different things about life.

Get To Know the Tapestry Staff: Helen P.

Hey Everyone!

My name is Helen, and I am a sophomore on the Tapestry Senior Staff.  I’m excited to be the layout apprentice as my Tapestry job this year!

I can’t believe it’s already October!  The first month of school flew by.  Even though I still don’t want to believe that it’s too cold to go out in shorts and sandals anymore, I’m excited about the new fall season.

For my first post on the Tapestry blog, I thought I’d share a little more about me, along with a few things that I’ve thought are awesome lately.  Enjoy :)

I enjoy all types of art, filmmaking, and design.  I love watercolor paintings, and I think this pretzel print is so much fun!

Pretty stationery and paper is the best.  The print on the notebook to the right  is even called “Tapestry”!

I love every type of food (sweet & savory), and I’m always open to trying something new.  The food in these photos look delicious!

Apples and grapes are some of my favorite fruits.

Confetti Tape!!  This just makes me want to wrap a bunch of presents!

Hope everyone has a great week!

~Helen P.

Tapestry's Underway!

Hey, hey, hey! It’s a new school year, and with that comes a new storm of submissions to Tapestry! For those who don’t know what Tapestry is, it’s the official FCAHS literary arts magazine. We accept student art, photos, poems, short stories and essays. Each year, we sift through the ocean of submissions and choose pieces that reflect the variety of opinions and experiences found at Fox Chapel Area High School. Anything that can be written, drawn, or photographed is eligible!

Once your piece is submitted, it undergoes an anonymous peer-review process to decide if it should be included in this year’s edition of Tapestry. Written material will get a verdict of “In”, “Out”, or “Manuscript”. If a piece shows potential but needs revision, we’ll look up the author and invite him or her to discuss it with the Senior Staff during Manuscript, which is open every day in room 176 during QRT. The selection process is completely open; any student is welcome to join the Tapestry staff by attending the peer-review meetings. They take place every other Thursday, and like Manuscript sessions are in room 176 during QRT.

You can share your materials with us any time between now and February. After that, submissions are closed so that we can plan, edit, and revise the book’s format before publication. The members of Senior Staff work together to create a unique book each year: the Grammarian checks all the written pieces for grammar, Art Liaisons create the book’s cover, and the Head of Layout comes up with preliminary designs and ideas. Then the entire Senior Staff gets together and edits the first drafts of the book...

...Then there’s a party! We’ll hold a publication party in May once the book is finally printed and sent to us. It’s pretty awesome; I’m pretty sure Taylor Swift’s coming. I sent her an email yesterday. I don’t want overhype it, but Taylor Swift could totally be there. So… yeah.

How to submit: If you’re reading this, I assume you’re already on the Tapestry Blog. In that case, click the button on the top right that says “Submit to Tapestry”. It’ll take you to a form where you can fill out information about yourself and your piece, but remember to share it with us on Google Docs too!

Alternately, you can go to tinyurl.com/submit-to-tapestry to access the form.

But there’s more to Tapestry than just submitting to a book! We set up open mics throughout the year -- if you have a slam poem, song, or other performance piece you want to share, the open mics are the place to do it. Tapestry even hosts local speakers who come to share their thoughts or conduct slam poem workshops!

What are you waiting for?
Get writing!

Here's a picture of Taylor Swift lookin' fine.

Open Forum: Who's your favorite superhero?

We're kicking off this school year with an open forum! So, who's your favorite superhero?

Batman?

The Green Lantern?

Spiderman?

...Aquaman?

Or someone else? Why? Comment below!

(p.s It's fun googling superhero memes)

Purple Martins of Lake Chautauqua

 By David Han
This is a repost from the National Geographic Club magazine at https://foxchapelnatgeoclub.wordpress.com - the other version has photography.

Peering up at the circling birds, Jack Gulvin steadily winds the nest box down while expounding upon their biology and habits to the gathered crowd.  To Gulvin, monitoring and caring for the effervescent purple martins that reside in nest boxes surrounding Chautauqua Lake is a time-consuming yet essential task in maintaining the health of the population.  “I started out as a teenager as a birder”, he says, “back in the good old days when my hearing was good enough that I could hear birds … As a typical birder I never paid any attention to purple martins, as they were semi-domestic.”  But after he was put in contact with Louise Chambers, who publishes the quarterly magazine for the Purple Martin Conservation Association, Gulvin quickly began to learn the skills relevant to the bird colony’s upkeep, such as nest cleaning and behavioral observation.  Jack monitors the population size each year for Chautauqua Institution’s Bird, Tree, and Garden Club, and demonstrates his caretaking regimen each Friday to groups of interested passerby, expounding upon the natural history of the birds in a slight, measured drawl.  Describing the reluctance of the fledgling birds, which are preparing to leave the nest, he jokes “There are a lot of parallels between martin society and human society.  Once [the young martins] get to a certain age they may be larger than their parents.  The parents have to call them from outside to get them to leave the nest.”.  A woman from the assembled group chuckled, “Just like my kids!”.

Holding a week-old martin in his calloused hands, Jack Gulvin notes the worried expressions of the surrounding group.  “A lot of people worry about [handling purple martins]… But it doesn’t do them any harm, and the parents come right back. In fact, it’s probably the number one myth in America today, is the idea that if you handle baby birds they’ll be rejected by the parents.  There’s no truth whatsoever to that statement.”.  The common platitude probably stems from the belief that the parents can detect the scent of humans on their young, but birds, according to Scientific American’s Robynne Boyd, have a relatively weak sense of smell due to their limited olfactory capabilities. 

After winding the birdhouse down the pole, Gulvin unlocks the latch securing each individual nest box within the birdhouse and carefully records the number of young in each.  When he notices boxes with very young birds, he gingerly removes them and places them on a nearby tray.  Because of parasites, such as bird fleas and blowfly larvae, the dried white pine needles that the nest is comprised of must be replaced on a regular basis, as the irritation can drive young to leave prematurely and the blowflies will often kill the youngest nestlings.  Despite the reasoning behind intervention, he told us that many audience members still seemed uncomfortable.  Grinning, Gulvin said “I find that once [the audience] sees the blowfly larvae, there’s no more skepticism.”  Due to the nest maintenance, Gulvin says that the survival rate is increased from 50% to 90% during a good year.  That’s good news for the martins, as they have become nearly dependent upon humans due to their near-domestication; since pre-colonial times, the martins have been housed by humans, ranging from Native American gourds hollowed and hung from trees, to the ornate, custom-fit Amish houses that resemble the Victorian homes along the shore of Lake Erie.  Without the care afforded to them by dedicated naturalists and amateurs, purple martins may disappear from the Great Lakes region for good.