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(04/25/12 4:00am)
In the past four years, I have been certain of my death on two occasions. The second involves being lost for five hours in the dark in a Ugandan jungle while following chimpanzees. I’ve repressed most of that memory. The first I can elaborate on: One afternoon in Kruger National Park in South Africa, I walked around a bend on a dirt path. Protruding from savanna brush were the gray legs and trunk of a bull elephant. Yes, he was the size of a building. Yes, he moved to the center of the road, yes, he faced me and yes, he trumpeted. He charged, sound and pain left the universe, and I found myself behind the fence of the research camp. I had run, with my three companions, and the elephant had veered off. I can tell you now (maybe) how it feels before you die. Your life doesn’t flash before your eyes. Instead, you think of no one and nothing except the ground, your feet and where you can move them.
(04/19/12 7:19am)
Dear Readers,
(03/13/12 4:05am)
Dear Readers,
(02/16/12 5:00am)
Valentine’s Day forces couples to squeeze a least several month’s worth of chocolates, flowers and overt displays of affection into one evening. Like humans, red ruffed lemurs cram as much romance as possible into a short window of time. Females can have sex for just a few days each year. Their vaginas actually close. I’d say this lemur “holiday” has more significance than the human celebration of St. Valentinus.
(02/08/12 11:27am)
The Outer Banks have a strange geometry. They seem to operate in two dimensions. Flat land, flat water. Dolphin backs move like pinwheels on the sea’s surface, rising higher than the island soil. I have never seen a shore so flat. My companions are Chelsea, a photographer, and Sue Stuska, wildlife biologist for CLNS. As our boat’s nose bumps the dock, we see bubbles of washed-up jellyfish on the yellow beach. We have arrived on Shackleford Island, a part of North Carolina’s Cape Lookout National Seashore, and home to 118 wild horses. These horses are likely descendants of those that escaped shipwrecks in the 1500s. In 1974, Dan Rubenstein, then a Duke Ph.D. student of zoology, began a study of their social lives. At the time, many Duke researchers were studying the societies of primates and other animals that live with their kin.
(02/08/12 9:23am)
Dear Readers,
(11/30/11 10:35am)
Mohsen Kadivar, an Ayatollah, dissident and Iranian exile who now teaches at Duke, dedicated his first book to his father. “A humble teacher,” Kadivar calls him, “practicing reason, religiosity, and Azagadi,” the last of which Kadivar translated to Towerview’s Connor Southard as “liberal-mindedness.” Kadivar, a cleric, embodies these values as an influential proponent of democracy in monarchic Iran. To Americans this association might seem bizarre. Today, we rarely consider religious leaders “liberally minded.”
(10/26/11 9:00am)
We finish October wearing masks. Cloaked in cloaks, hair under wigs, eyes canopied by false lashes. Costumed masses will parade Franklin Street, unrecognizable. On Halloween, we experience the thrill of anonymity.
(10/25/11 8:00am)
Brian: The idea of connoisseurship is funny to me, because even as an “insider” of this practice (I write music criticism), it’s often still absurd and full of unnecessary self-seriousness.
(09/28/11 9:00am)
We have no 9/11 stories to tell. Like most Americans, we were far from New York, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. that day. Like most children, we were hesitant in our responses to tragedy. At twenty and twenty-one, we feel we should have learned the practice. Certainly, as Editors of this magazine, we have a responsibility to remind our readers of September 11, 2001, to provide content that sheds light on its weight and its truths. So we have turned to individuals who are equipped to articulate that story. Ciaran O’Connor, Emma Miller and Cart Weiland share their experiences. Professor Pedro Lasch shares his artwork. And Lindsey Rupp shares the stories of those victims who once called this campus theirs. We hope their words will honor this anniversary.
(09/28/11 9:00am)
The weather plans to turn cold tomorrow. By “cold,” we mean forecasts predict a drop to 56-degrees Fahrenheit in Durham. North Carolina routinely cushions us out of summer, remaining sultry and humid after the start of classes. But tomorrow, we will have to acknowledge that it really is September.
(07/01/11 8:58am)
SMELL THIS MAGAZINE. Ink and glossed pages—32 of them—like all the Towerviews that came before. Although it might smell and sound like its predecessors, we hope you feel something is awry. You should; you see, this page begins Towerview’s 13th volume. But your editors have no cases of triskaidekaphobia.
(04/20/11 8:00am)
Cat Crumpler graduated from Duke last May. A public policy major, she now lives with four roommates in Cherry Valley, Arkansas—population: 659. It’s hill country, and her house is on a lake. Crumpler, Trinity ’10, a Teach for America corps member, teaches fourth grade math at the only school in town. “I really wanted to do something philanthropic,” Crumpler said of her decision to join TFA after graduating from Duke last May. “I wasn’t really looking to make a lot of money—I just wanted to do something good.”
(02/09/11 11:18am)
I had something like a nightmare last night.
(12/08/10 12:44pm)
The Skukuza camp gates at Kruger National Park close at 6:30 p.m.
(11/10/10 11:00am)
Yesterday I played a game I haven’t since childhood.
(10/28/10 9:00am)
I woke to drums. The hut was too hot to sleep soundly. I heard our translator fumbling in the dark. He lit a candle and I spoke.
(10/13/10 9:00am)
I had to do laundry.
(09/29/10 10:12am)
I’ve started to forget how my life was before I came here to South Africa. At Duke I used to go to bed at 3 a.m. every night, and here I cannot sleep in later than 6:30 a.m. My company consists of the same 27 people. It has been weeks since I’ve introduced myself to anyone, and last Monday was the first I could freely use the internet (though “freely” still entails walking from my fenced-in camp to the fenced-in offices, in a group of no fewer than three, before 5:30 p.m., when it gets dark and the leopards come out).
(09/15/10 8:04am)
I have had nightmares for the past three weeks. So have many of my classmates. They are a common side effect of antimalarial medications we all had prescribed to us before leaving the United States.
