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150 Years of StoriesBy Paisley Hibou QuailBellMagazine.com Plastered in my “respectable” make-up and clothes, I walked up to the iron-wrought fence with a tote bag. I curled my fingers around the tracery to catch myself from falling. It was a typically hot and humid July afternoon in Washington and I had spent the past hour exploring Capitol Hill. Even a big can of sweet tea wasn't enough to revive me. I was in a stupor. But no matter how out of it I was, I could still appreciate the beautiful Civil-War-Hospital-turned-community-art-space before me. This would be my office for the next week. My task—and my joy—would be to mentor two fourth-grade girls in writing short stories. Old buildings carry the magic of many people and their experiences. Sometimes that magic is good magic; sometimes that magic is black magic. I prefer to think of hospitals as places of healing rather than places of illness and death. Even during the Civil War, when wounds and disease were a sad reality that contributed to a high mortality rate, I try to imagine the anguished nurses sacrificing rest and sanity to save the soldiers. No matter the outcome—positive or negative— the intent to cure was always positive. The nurses loved the soldiers the way they loved their brothers as they fought together for the same cause. That positivity fueled my young writers and me for the week. It seeped from the old walls and floors and into our heads and hearts. The girls and I never once discussed how the building where our workshop took place was once a hospital. Instead we saw the paintings and photographs on display, and the posters for upcoming receptions. In passing, we saw other children throwing pottery and piecing together mosaics. Everyday before, during, and after workshop, we witnessed the act and celebration of creation. People go to art school and enroll in creative writing programs for that reason: to be immersed in the spirit of creation. But that creative energy was not all that was at work. On our second-to-last day, the art center's administrative staff had placed us in a small side room that also seemed to be used for storage. While the girls were tapping away at their keyboards, I noticed an unlabeled cardboard box. It stood out because all the other boxes had something scrawled in Sharpie on the side. Curious, I pulled open the flaps and saw two thick stacks of books. It was a new title about D.C.'s Civil War sites. With the federal government being such a prominent industry in D.C., it's easy to overlook everything else the city has to offer: the second biggest theatre scene in the country (after New York and before Chicago), a flurry of competitive and recreational river sports, and even something as seemingly obvious as Civil War history. Washington was, after all, the capital of the Union. I started flipping through the book for the last five minutes before the girls would read their latest paragraphs to me. And the other explanation for the girls' productivity during the week suddenly clicked: This old building had stimulated their creativity simply by being old. The building had changed more than we could ever know over the past 150 years. My girls' short stories and the story we had lived by workshopping there that week would become a part of the building's ongoing (and hopefully never-ending) history. Thus I will always champion the muse of historic architecture. #CreativeWriting #Teaching #Education #CivilWar #NavalHospital #Pedagogy
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Kickin' It On the FieldProducers/Stylists: Sidney Shuman, Amy Gatewood, Shannon Minor, Lindsey Story Photographer: Jasmine Thompson Model: Whitney Downing Clothing: Rumors Boutique It's heating up. Have you thrifted your spring looks yet? Our pick: 1970s sportswear. Rock it. #Fashion #Photoshoot #Athletic #Field #Rumors #RVA
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"Words fall through me"By Zack Budryk QuailBellMagazine.com Raychel didn’t want to see Juno. The 2007 indie film was at the height of its buzz in early 2008, when we first started seeing each other, resting in the sweet spot right between racking up four Oscar nominations and everybody souring on it because it had convinced Hollywood Michael Cera was a legitimate leading man. I hadn’t been sure what to expect when I saw it with a friend, but I’d ended up loving it and I’d been trying to sell Raychel on watching it with me ever since. “Nope,” she said. “Not into that preciously pretentious mumblecore shit.” (I can’t remember her exact words, so for now I am pretending she talks like a barmaid in a gangster movie. She kind of does, but that’s not what she said.) She stood her ground until early 2009, when she found it on TV and watched it for lack of anything better on. Surprise, surprise, she loved it (we have gone through this same process withJustified, Game of Thrones and Orange is the New Black). Now, as luck would have it, this was right around the time I was planning on proposing to her, and I needed something that was uniquely me but could be done on a tiny budget (which is also very me, but not uniquely so). Once the ring I had ordered online arrived in the mail, secure in the knowledge that she would get the reference, I bought several boxes of orange Tic-Tacs and put them in our mailbox in front of the ring and then asked Raychel if she wanted to check the mail while we were on our way out the door. I’ve written a lot (or at least written aggressively) about both the hurdles having an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can present in a relationship and the unexpected, welcome perspective it can provide, and I think to discuss Asperger’s syndrome as it’s specific to me, you really have to discuss my passion for movies at some point. Lots of Aspies have specific areas of knowledge/interest/borderline obsession, and I’m pretty lucky one of mine is one that lots of people in general can relate to as opposed to, say, trains or something (no disrespect). Movies are a pretty easy in if you’re nervous about talking to people; you have to know your audience before holding forth on politics or comic books, but the average person will be able to pick up the ball if you ask them what kind of movies they like. That helped guide me a lot in the early days of my relationship with Raychel; it helped that she didn’t find my enthusiasm on the subject off-putting, and was fairly curious about it. One of my earliest, fondest memories is watching the 2007 Academy Awards in my dorm room together. Raychel wasn’t familiar with any of the nominees but one: “Falling Slowly,” performed by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova for the Irish romance Once, which was nominated for Best Original Song. Raychel had fallen in love with the song when she heard it on my iTunes, and had just recently asked if it was okay if she thought of it as “our song.” (Per Elton John, I was presumably now free to tell everybody.) As John Travolta opened the envelope and announced the song as the winner, Raychel leaned forward and yelled “YES!”, the most excited and into the whole thing I’d seen her all night. My geekery and Raychel’s open-mindedness have served us equally well in tougher times. In fall of 2009, Raychel had been cut off by the family friend who had paid her tuition and her half of the rent; we had a month after the expiration of our old apartment’s lease to find new jobs and get her financial aid. We didn’t mind working for a living but it was the eye of the storm in terms of the recession and I barely had my foot in the door working at the local grocery store. It was around this time that I got one of my favorite films, True Romance, from the college library. Today it’s best remembered for either scene-stealing, prefame turns by James Gandolfini and Brad Pitt or that scene where Dennis Hopper tells Christopher Walken Sicilians are descended from black people, but it’s also got one of the great underdog couples in modern film, which was why I wanted to watch it with her. Early on, during a scene where Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette fall in love while he lets her into his comic shop after hours, I mentioned that Slater’s character was pretty obviously meant to be an avatar of a then-unknown Quentin Tarantino, who wrote the movie. “Really?” Raychel said. “Because he reminds me of you.” I doubt I processed it properly at the time, but in that moment it was clear everything was going to be okay. There are people who scoff at this kind of thing, and remind you that real life isn’t a movie/TV show/Bruce Springsteen song (although I’m sure as of this writing there’s a BuzzFeed quiz claiming otherwise). And yes, that’s true. It’s also true that the art we love (or have a rambling obsession with) can be a part of what molds us just like our actual experiences. Are Juno and Once and True Romance all works of fiction? Of course. But they’ve still been real parts of my life by bringing me closer to the woman I love in the face of real things like autism and financial difficulties and being tone-deaf enough to order an engagement ring online. And six years in, that feels pretty real. #Movies #Relationships #Juno #ASD
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The Absence of Ring EnvyBy The Love Fairy QuailBellMagazine.com Recently an intern in the office—eager to show her knowledge of history—piped up that in the 1920s premarital sex grew more common with the rise of the engagement ring. If a woman became pregnant and her fiancé ran off, she could cash in on the ring. Less worry about spreading those legs then. Whether truth or legend, the story put my mind once again on engagement. Though the most popular time to get engaged is around the holidays, my Facebook feed says otherwise. Now seems to be the time. Inevitably, those posts make me think of my own romantic future, which is heading in the same direction. (My boyfriend is terrible at keeping surprises.) That being said, I don't want an awe-inspiring bauble. The song “Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend” really gets on my nerves because, darn it, why can't books be my best friend? For a short while, I thought I didn't want a ring at all. Then my boyfriend and I stepped into a family-owned jewelry store that had recently opened in my neighborhood. With my busy life, I had not noticed the new store or seen the article about it in the newspaper. But while on our Saturday afternoon walk, my boyfriend and I decided to check it out. The store was small with blue wax molds on ledges that lined the bright white walls. Original pieces, mostly rings and earrings, filled the glass cases. The gentleman behind the counter greeted us and introduced himself as the son in the store name. He explained that the store had been located in another neighborhood not too far away since the 1970s, but they had relocated it because they also lived in my neighborhood. His father was getting older and wanted to be able to walk to work. Then, of course, came the man's sales pitch, but he wasn't going for the hard sell. We talked about the neighborhood for a bit and I later admitted that I needed to get my class ring cleaned. Looking at my boyfriend, though, the man had sensed there was another reason we had come into the store. He half-smiled and said that they do custom orders. After my boyfriend asked a couple of questions, we thanked the man and left. I once read about this man who proposed to his girlfriend in Central Park. But the tale does not end there. He actually rode up to her on a horse, dressed as a knight in shining armor. I remember laughing, putting down the magazine, and not being able to continue. This grand gesture of love just came off as comical. Compare that to my 7th grade science teacher's experience: She was sitting on the sofa eating potato chips with her boyfriend when he proposed. That seems much more my style. Though I prefer tortilla chips. Somehow, though, advertising has brainwashed many men into believing they need to give a girl something massive and sparkling and do it with flair worthy of a Broadway show. Otherwise, thumbs down, mister. I don't ask normally ask my acquaintances how he proposed or to see the ring because I am simply happy that they found love. I also see these details as somewhat private. If a woman wishes to share, go ahead, but if she wants to keep them to herself, that's cool, too. I don't need to know that he proposed right before orgasm. I just don't. I'm also not that interested in whether the ring cost $300, $3,000, or $30,000. I do hope that there is mutual love and respect and that the couple shares a set of similar life goals. Those are the things that make for a healthy marriage. Those green with ring envy are missing the point. #Engagement #Love #Marriage #Folklore #Myths #FactOrFiction
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