Wondering Through
Écosse
Patriotism generally has a bad reputation at Harvard. Many of us are members of what Ross Douthat derisively calls the cosmopolitan class: we feel no special attachment to the United States or wherever we’re from, preferring instead to see ourselves as citizens of a globalized, multicultural world. Why, we ask, do people get worked up so much about something that’s an accident of birth? Patriots are deluded; the results of patriotism are generally bad.
I am not ashamed to be cosmopolitan. An American who has lived abroad for a third of my life, I look at the U.S. somewhat dispassionately. I celebrated the Fourth of July this year by working on my thesis. When I look at U.S. or world events, I say somberly, with the sage wisdom of a 21-year-old not-even-economics concentrator: "Well, our leaders should make decisions based solely on the consequences for the economy."
Golden Apples and Chocolate Buttons
“Fairy tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green,” writes G.K. Chesterton. “They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.” It follows, he argues, that stories return us to the state of mind of a bright-eyed child, where everything is full of wonder.
Since I first read this argument, I have turned it over in my mind many times. I am far from an expert on myth—I once confused Joseph Campbell with Joseph McCarthy on public television. But, I imagine, when it comes to myth and fairytale, the most ordinary of ordinary people has as much a right to speak as an expert. So as a child of (mostly) the West, all I know is that in fairy tales, things come in groups of three.
How I Met My Roommate
I met my roommate because a short-haired girl in a tank-top, standing behind a veil of cotton candy, kept me from leaving the SOCH early on a Thursday night. When I recognized her face, I hello-interrupted her teasing of the candy spinner. Because of the conversation, I stayed and ate two cones.
It was the first week of freshman year, and the darkness didn’t scare me yet. I was a puppy with newly-opened eyes: Everyone was a potential friend, every activity exciting, every building full of secrets to uncover.