A Noble Introduction: In Which the Author Presents to You Lord Dooley

Emory is not a school known for its school spirit. I guess when your star sport is soccer, it is hard to get motivated. But even beyond athletics, Emory has a reputation for a lack of interest in school pride. If there is one thing that binds the student community together, it is a deep-seated and and self-perpetuating apathy regarding anything resembling school spirit.

All this makes it even more amusing that we have not one but two mascots. Swoop the Eagle is the one on all the athletic jerseys, the one recruiters mention in their pitches and the one in the Fiske Guide to Colleges. Our other mascot, however, is the one who matters. He has an entourage. He has a chant. In a few years, construction will be complete on a statue in his likeness placed in the center of campus. A whole wing of Special Collections in the library is devoted to him. He hugs President Jimmy Carter every year, and this past year the Dalai Lama paid his respects to him. He has 2849 friends on Facebook, and when he accepts my friend request he will have 2850. And who is this mascot who is so powerful, so familiar, so beloved that even the President of the University falls silent when he appears? Not a fuzzy bear, or a scary timberwolf, or even a friendly banana slug. No, he is a skeleton.

When people ask me my favorite thing about Emory, many different answers pop into my head. The great community, the amazing professors, the lack of athletics (I was REALLY bad at PE), the low-key but fun dorm life and the lovely campus, and so on. Inevitably though, what comes out of my mouth is one name: Dooley.

According to Gary Hauk, Vice-President of Emory University and my alma mater's unofficial but enthusiastic historian, Dooley first appeared in the October 1899 issue of Emory's then-magazine The Phoenix in an article called "Reflections of the Skeleton." Claiming to be a skeleton in one of the science classrooms, the essay bitched and moaned about how obnoxious the students returning from summer break were. The skeleton did not name himself, but went on to contemplate his role at Emory, pensively wondering if he would ever do any good when he was incapable of bringing any "love to his life or work."

Ten years later he popped up once again, also in the October issue of the 1909 Phoenix. Calling himself Mr. Dooley he explained his background as the son of a wealthy Virginia planter who eventually drank himself to death and was used as a specimen in a science classroom at Emory. At the end of his second letter Dooley promised to try to write more frequently then he had in the past, and finished his missive off with the following words: "Presidents may come and presidents may go; Professors may come and professors may go; Students may come and students may go; But Dooley lives on forever."

And so Dooley was born. For the first thirty years or so he served as a low-key contributer to the community by writing little commentary pieces for the paper, but in the 1940s, when the school trustees finally lifted the ban on dancing (Footloose University, I guess) he became known as "Lord of Misrule" and his name was attached to a yearly week-long party, then called Dooley's Frolics and today known as Dooley's Week.

Dooley is an unmistakable presence on campus and in the community at Emory. He has been known to appear at random times, and in bizarre ways: he once landed on the Quad from a helicopter, and his freshly dug-up coffin appears at random spots on campus during Dooley's Week. In fact, here is a picture of it from this past Dooley's Week, dug up right in front of the Dobbs University Center:


During Dooley's Week Dooley roams around the campus, his entourage surrounding him (more on them later), accepting the adulation of the students as his due. For those seven days he can walk into any classroom on campus and set the students free. Professors who refuse to release their prey (they are few, but determined) are sprayed with a Supersoaker. The week culminates with a no-holds-barred masquerade party on campus that, when you include pre- and after-parties, can go on for hours. For the entire week the school is covered in the garb of Dooley. Here is a picture of one of the thousands of skeletons tied to trees and lampposts during Dooley's Week:


Sorry about the layout - I did everything I could to get it to load vertically instead of horizontally, but it kept on uploading this way. The whim of Lord Dooley, I suppose.

Dooley doesn't need the excuse of having a week devoted to him to make an appearance, though. He'll show up at random events, large and small. Every year when Jimmy Carter comes to campus for his Town Hall meeting with the students, Dooley wanders in at some point, interrupting the proceedings to shake Carter's hand or slap him on the back, completely ignoring the Secret Service who are never very pleased to see him. And like I said, when the Dalai Lama came to Emory this past year to accept a weird celebrity teaching position, he and Dooley totally became BFF. It was awesome.

So here, finally, is what makes Dooley so great. First of all, he is over 100 years old, and he's still going strong. That is permanence, y'all. More importantly, though, he's a very organic, dynamic tradition. He is permanent but constantly evolving. He changes in different ways every year, and what makes him so central to the Emory experience is that those changes connect him deeper and deeper to the student body. Case in point: as with all mascots, when Dooley makes an appearance, he does so in the form of a person wearing a skeleton suit and top hat. That person is a student, a senior to be exact, who has been chosen by a secret society to play Dooley for the year because of his (or her!) involvement in the Emory community. Also, a troupe of six to ten other seniors are picked to be Dooley's Guards and play the role of his entourage, protectors, and voice pieces. Dooley, you see, can't talk, but instead writes his words and has a guard speak them for him.

And that is how Dooley has stayed so central to life at Emory. Not only is he a constant on campus, not only are streets and campus cafes and even whole weeks named after him, but every freshman who enters Emory can dream of one day becoming Dooley. Maybe if they work hard enough, play on enough intramural teams, do enough volunteer activities, get shit-faced at enough frat parties (who knows on what merits Dooleys are picked, after all), maybe in four years they will get to be the idiot parachuting out of a helicopter in a skeleton suit. In a way, it is sort of like being back in first grade and thinking, "I'm going to be the president one day." In this way Dooley simultaneously embodies Emory's institutional past and the potential of each Emory student, all while walking with a dapper cane and wearing a super cool top hat.

Of course, at the end of the day, when I say I love Dooley, all that stuff I wrote above isn't what I'm thinking about. What I'm thinking is this: MY MASCOT IS A SKELETON. That is freaking awesome. As a school, Emory can sometimes feel too safe. There is nothing particularly edgy or exciting about Emory, nothing that jumps out at you and says "hey, this place is crazy and insane and awesome, so look at us." We aren't the smartest, or the craziest partiers, or the best at sports. We don't have any famous traditions known 'round the country. Even our school rivalries are half-hearted and mostly concocted by the student government to get more involvement in campus life. For goodness sake, people confuse us with Wash U. all the time. But we have a skeleton as a mascot. That is creepy and weird and so interesting, so full of character and tradition, that I can't help but love it. Dooley gives Emory color and he gives it a little bit of excitement and edge.

Dooley sometimes weirds out prospective students. "What do you mean, your mascot is a skeleton? Thats kind of strange." And yes, it is kind of strange. If you can't deal with Dooley, you can't deal with Emory. He's our school's dealbreaker, and he's how we figure out what type of kids we want on this campus. They have to be okay with the fact that we aren't crazy-good at sports, that we don't have a lot of school spirit, that we're mostly just smart kids looking to get a good education and make good friends in a low-key environment. And they have to be willing to rally around, get excited about, and sometimes devote themselves to a person dressed up in a skeleton costume. Dooley is Emory's heart, and the students who recognize that and embrace it are the ones who do best there.

During commencement weekend, there were many opportunities to sing the Emory alma mater. By the end of the official events I could stumble through it, but it was amazing how many people just didn't know the words. But the moment Dooley appeared at any event, students snapped to attention and were able to rattle off his chant at a moments notice. As one, we opened our mouths and said: "Presidents may come and Presidents may go; Professors may come and professors may go; Students may come and students may go; But Dooley lives on forever." As far as I'm concerned, that is the real Emory fight song. Its the one I know best, and the one I'll be able to recite forty years from now. I've graduated now, but for four years my mascot was a skeleton. How freaking awesome is that?

Getting Up to Speed

So, things that have happened since the last time I posted (in no particular order):
I turned 22
I learned to like (or at least choke down) beer
I graduated college
I interviewed in New York for jobs at auction houses and began to hyperventilate at the thought of moving to the city
I didn't get the jobs at the auction houses, making all my hyperventilating a waste
I graduated college
I baked scones
I baked more scones
I baked even more scones
I baked pain au chocolate
I graduated college
I got a red bike!
I moved out of my apartment and out of Atlanta
72 hours later, I moved out of my house in Berkeley and into a house in Albany
I baked rugelach
I baked pinapple upside down cupcakes
I applied for a million jobs
I went to a lot of parties
I studied
I stopped writing my thesis
I graduated

Somewhere in there I also slept, ate things that weren't baked, shopped, read, hung out with friends, and went to class, but you get the idea.

This past semester was crazy. It was my last, which made it poignant, but I don't think I realized just how final it was until graduation. I'm glad of that - it meant that there wasn't very much, "oh, I have to do everything before graduation" talk. Sure there was some - I doubt I would have consumed as much PBR as I did if I hadn't been thinking that - but I think my friends and I were pretty good about doing things because we WANTED to do them, not because it was our last chance ever, omg, end of the world, etc.

To go along with the random list above, I give you a photographic account of Shoshana's Spring Semester, 2008 (also in no particular order):
C and M 22 at around the same time, so they threw a joint birthday party which is was pretty crazy. On C's actual birthday, though, we went out to Cafe Intermezzo, a silly European-style coffee house and dessert bar. I say silly because it obviously thinks too highly of itself, but man, those desserts are killer. In fact, its probably one of my favorite places to eat sweet things. What you see in the picture below is me, intensely examining their dessert display while a Intermezzo Cake Expert (my term) guides me through my options. I had a lot of questions, so it took awhile.


Earlier in the month there was a crazy snow storm. Friday and Saturday were both completely snowed-in, and neighborhood kids (and adults) went crazy building snowmen and sledding down some very sad hills. Snow is so rare in Atlanta that we all got caught up in the excitement of what was, to be honest, a very sad little snowfall. Here are E and A dancing outside the Target Greatland (oh, my home away from home) enjoying the snow (its the gray haze behind us.)


I lived with a Protestant and two Catholics and I happen to love breakfast food, so I couldn't let Fat Tuesday (also known as Shrove Tuesday) go by without a pancake. C and I made crepes with nutella to have as a study break snack, and C even managed to find Polish doughnuts at the grocery store. Apparently they are only available around Shrove Tuesday. There must be some sort of Shrove Tuesday magic, too, because by Wednesday they tasted disgusting. Below E and I make faces at the pancakes,and the camera.


Suddenly it was March, and along with that came my birthday. I was home for spring break on the actual day and Isaac made the trip up to celebrate with me. He, my mom, and I went to Copia in Napa and then to a winery, followed by dinner with Kiva, Grandma, and Eva and Janusz. It was all very Northern California yuppie. Copia, if you didn't know, is subtitled "the center for wine, food, and the arts," and it is the very soul of bougie. A museum-cum-monument to Nor-Cal lifestyle, it elevates foodies and gourmands to the level of history-makers. I, of course, ate it all up. Here my mom and I stand, like greek statuary, next to the enormous urns made out of bottle caps that grace a grand quote by Robert Mondavi engraved in the marble at the entrance of Copia. I feel very epic, and yet very foolish.


Back in Atlanta I had a small party for my friends. My roommates, being the glorious people they are, actually bought me a gold brocade cape for my birthday. A CAPE. Its always good to know who my true friends are, and now I have the perfect standard of measure: would they buy me an absurd, useless item of costume-y clothing? If the answer is "no," then I really shouldn't be hanging out with them. Here I am, trying on the cape and unable to contain my excitement:


C and A were trying to help me get it on but I think the ridiculousness of the situation became too much for A. I can't tell if she's laughing or about to vomit, but if its the second then it must be vomit of happiness. Below is M and I at the party as I wear the cape nonchalantly, as if there is nothing weird about being wrapped in several pounds of heavy gold brocade:


At some point L and Z came to visit. They actually came separately - L and I had been planning her visit out since high school graduation so cruelly separated us, and Z and her friend K just happened to be driving through from Chicago to Florida for their spring break. Z and K got in right at the end of L's visit, so I had some time with each of them. Here are L and I at the statue of the weird flying children in Decatur Square. Decatur is a cute little town right next to the suburb where Emory is located - its home to Agnes Scott College and very precious. In fact, I have been known to mutter about how Agnes Scott girls don't deserve Decatur - Emory really should be closer to it. Still, its the closest actually commercial downtown near Emory (Emory Village doesn't count) and I love it.


Having L in town provided the perfect opportunity for a picnic in Piedmont Park, which is the Golden Gate Park of Atlanta. Here we are, late in the evening:


Finally, below you can see Z, L and I united at last in a Waffle House. I don't have enough space to talk about Waffle House (it requires its own personal post), but just know that when you are driving around the Southeast, nothing is more comforting or welcome then that yellow and black sign rising from the wooded jungles or concrete wastelands that surround the interstates. They are truly magical places, were the waffles are huge and copious and the potatoes come smothered, covered, and choked, or some crap like that.


Every year we have Dooley's Week, a seven-day celebration of Emory's unofficial but very legitimate mascot. Once again, this needs a whole post to explain (one that, unlike the epic Waffle House entry, I actually plan on writing) but it culminates with a huge school-sponsored party called Dooley's Ball. Technically a masquerade, people wear all sorts of crap to it. Here are C and A. C isn't in costume, and A says she was dressed as a pirate. I said she was going as a Hot Tranny Mess. You decide.


And here are C and I, practicing our dance moves as we wait for the shuttle to arrive to take us to the party. It never came and so we had to get there under our own power. This mostly involved walking in bare feet while holding our heels and bitching until an Emory Escort pulled up. It was already pretty full of other drunk students but we begged the driver to let us pile in, which he did. This means that I rode to Dooley's Ball sitting on the floor of a minivan, between the knees of my three best friends and two wasted strangers. Good times. But anyway, before we gave up on the shuttle we were waiting at the stop. C and decided to practice some of the steps we had learned in Social Dance the semester before. This is the result:


That is basically it. A lot of stuff happened this semester that wasn't documented on camera, and this is just a sampling of what I do have photos of. Also, I'm not including what might be the biggest thing - graduation. Another post about that is on the way, I just have to get my life together first.

Oh, but one last picture: at some point during the semester A decided she would try to ride me like a horse. It didn't work.

I do remember that walk!

No, but seriously, how could I have forgotten what an AMAZING movie A Walk to Remember is? Whoever said that no good decisions are made after midnight was wrong or crazy (or both?) because while I was channel-surfing at 12:15 this (last?) night I hit upon that wonderful Nicholas Sparks treasure and I was reminded again of how awesome it must be to be a seventeen-year-old prude dying of lukemia. I mean, that movie made wasting diseases sexy again.

I like to think of myself as a cold-hearted bitch (my not-so-secret passion for sensitive-floppy-haired-boy music aside) but damned if The Notebook and A Walk to Remember don't get my tear ducts flowing like non-environment-friendly faucet. Nicholas Sparks strikes again!

P.S. A longer wedding post is forthcoming, but here is a nugget of awkward dancing to whet your appetite:

As it is currently the Jewish holiday of Asian-Food-and-Movies, my brothers, the eldest's better half, a step-brother and a family friend all went to the movies (preceded by Thai food.) What, you ask, did we watch? National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets.

I should preface this by mentioning that I have seen National Treasure 1: There is a Treasure Map on the Back of the Declaration of Independence (spoiler alert!) and I adored it. Yeah, it was bad, but it was also GREAT. A fabulous pop movie, it had clever direction, relatively acceptable script, and a tight, if implausible, plot. Also, it was about AMERICAN HISTORY. What more could your average American movie-goer ask for?

When apparently Jerry Bruckheimer and John Turtletaub thought that the average American movie-goer was asking for a bloated film with an implausible AND discombobulated screenplay, because thats what National Treasure 2: Disaster Bugaloo was made of. Its not that I don't like outrageously impossible situations, because I do. And the problem wasn't the patently false action scenes, because hello, Die Hard 4? Best movie of the year by my vote. But this movie... it didn't DO anything! Nothing happened! No plotlines were resolved!

Seriously, here's what happens: Nicholas Cage's treasure-hunting character (named Ben Gates) is astonished and horrified to find out that his ancestor might have been a conspirator of John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln-killer. Gates and his trusty sidekick and German GF pay a visit to the French Statue of Liberty, kidnap the president, and discover an ancient Aztec city of gold (in South Dakota! Because of course there were Aztecs there), which somehow is supposed to absolve his great-great-great-great-grandfather. Like, "sure, maybe he did help kill one of America's favorite presidents, but maybe he didn't! That great huge pile of GOLD you uncovered is leading me to say not." Whatever.

Sorry, its just that I like my bad movies to be awesome, and this one just sucked. I'm actually really angry about that.

A speech for my mother, on the occasion of her wedding

I was trying to write a toast for my mom's wedding, which was this last Sunday. Everything I wrote was coming out sounding like an essay for a class called My Mother Gets Married 251, but then my brother suggested I try writing it in blogger. Wonder of wonders, it worked, so I figured I might as well post it. Enjoy!

So the thing is, she was always supposed to marry George Clooney. I had it all planned out - he'd sweep her off her feet, treat her in the manner to which she would be happy to become accustomed, and take us all to his villa on Lake Cuomo. And then, of course, he'd introduce me to some young Hollywood heartthrob and I'd start attending movie premieres and have spreads in YM Magazine and suddenly this is all about me but you get the point. And yes, he's a little too young for her, but she's young at heart! And he's not Jewish, but its not like they'd be raising kids together, and he's in the movie business which is essentially the same thing. And yeah, it probably wasn't too realistic, but I really wanted to date JTT and I didn't see any other way of making it happen.

Besides, its no more ludicrous than some of her early wedding shenanigans. My mom doesn't want you to know this, but this is actually third wedding she's agonized over: her second took place during a sandstorm but her first was between her two troll dolls, Bam Bam and Colonel Corny, at her Rohnert Park ranch house when she was a kid. It was a lavish affair and she was in total control with Connie and her best friend Geraldine as assistants . She even composed the musical accompaniment. And, unlike this one, it made it into the newspaper.

My point is, there are all these images floating around of what my mom's wedding was supposed to be like. I wanted it to be all hollywood glamor, paparazzi, and me dating Devon Sawa, and she saw herself as a squat, plastic, potbellied doll. At the end of the day, though, this is the wedding that matters. The wedding that Lenny and my mom planned together, toiled over, sweated over and made happen so beautifully, is what matters.

And what is more important even then this wedding (although these last few days my mother would have told you that NOTHING is more important than this wedding) is what Lenny and my mom have managed to do with their families. In the same way that my mom has been the glue that holds our family together and, in some ways, the glue that has helped build this community, she and Lenny are now the bindings agents of this new family, one that I for one am very excited to be a part of.

Back in the Saddle Again

I should be working on my prospectus for my honors thesis. It is 500 words long and basically just has to include my thesis statement and a survey of the literature on the topic. Of course, given that my thesis statement changes on a daily basis and a "survey of the literature"would require that there be actual "literature" on my topic, I'm finding this rather difficult. Therefore: blog post!

Apparently I think in video montages, because when I try to reflect on my past semester I get a series of images of myself baking, procrastinating, working late into the night because of my procrastination, making foolish online purchases, adventuring to Tennessee, baking, and generally acting a fool. Some highlights follow:

Between the four of us, the residents of Tower 1312 and 1313 have two balconies, which we have put to appropriate use over the course of the semester. Above, C and I gossip about how cute her asymmetrical haircut is.

Below, I spray paint the patio table that E's mom bought C and I, while A supervises and generally looks bored.

In a past life (high school) A just might have been a cheerleader. Below, she shows C and I the intricacies of a move that I believe has the word "doughnut" in it, though I can't be sure. I wasn't great, but I blame that more on the misplaced chair in front of me than any failing on my part. Anyway, this is all taking place in A and E's apartment, which you can tell because of the lack of fresca cans and haphazardly stacked books strewn about the place.

Over fall break C and I continued our tradition (two years now! that counts as a tradition, right?) of roadtripping the south and took off in the Mom Van for Nashville, Tenn. Apparently, it had been calling C's name. When we got there, of course, the city promptly shut up, but more on that later. Here I am on the most touristy street in Nashville, dancing with the King:

In the picture below I'm making a thumbs-down and a pouty face, but that was over the $16 admission price into the Country Music Hall of Fame and not over the museum itself, which was actually pretty awesome. I've been developing an appreciation for old country music - living next door to E can do that to a girl, and the American Studies major in me likes the way the music works to enshrine the myths and stories Americans tell themselves about their country. Plus the museum was full of outrageous fringed dresses, sparkly cowboy boots, and a convertible covered in silver dollars. What's not to like? Besides the outrageous admission price, of course.

We had planned to spend 24 hours in Nashville, cramming in all the sites, but we were actually only there for 10 or 12 hours. This is because a)Nashville was sort of boringly overwhelming (does that make sense?) and b) we kept on getting distracted by things we wanted to do while we were on the road, like visit the Civil War battlefield that you see below, or four Goodwills, or QTs, or Cracker Barrel.


Of course, the trip was ultimately all about lovin' on America, which y'all know I did in abandon:


We even ran into Abraham Lincoln at a bar! What he was doing in Nashville is nobody's guess, but I'll take what I can get when it comes to the Great Emancipator. We were sitting a few tables over and C kept yelling, "Abe! Abe! Come over here! I'm showing my friend the south, you need to come over here!" Lincoln ignored her, which just pissed her off. As I write this, C is telling me that at the time, getting Abraham Lincoln's attention seemed like the most important, vital thing she could be doing. Obviously, she was right.


Later in October A turned 22 and threw a joint birthday party with a friend. It was wine-and-cheese liberal themed, but we were pretty much the only people who dressed up at all. Also, I made bleeding-heart liberal cupcakes, but they were disgusting - I used tablespoons instead of teaspoons for the sugar, utterly destroying their flavor. They were real cool looking though, with jam in the middle to simulate the blood and frosting made to look like the ventricles of the heart. Unfortunately, no pictures were taken. Anyway, here we are:


From left to right, C, E, me and A.

Other than fall break trips and birthday parties, I've been trying to get my work done, hang out with friends, get out of my apartment occasionally, and do other, mundane college-y things. And thats where my life is at now. You can see now that I haven't been writing in the blog because my life hasn't been extraordinarily interesting - I'm basically going to classes, doing work, avoiding work, hanging out with friends, hanging out with friends in order to avoid doing work, and so forth. Y'all can blame this little nugget on Agi - she badgered over Thanskgiving, so I've delivered. I've procrastinated long enough, though... back to the prospectus!

Can I graduate with a degree in Baked Goodsology?

So college is all about self-discovery, right? I mean, exploring your horizons, expanding your senses, figuring out who you really are, etc. And boy, have I made some discoveries. A few of them follow:

1. I am a procrastinator. When given the choice to do something now or later, I will, without fail, choose later. Which wouldn't be such a problem if I didn't have to pass my classes in order to graduate, or if passing classes didn't require that I complete and hand in assignments on time. Unfortunately, we live in a flawed world where bizarrely, authority figures actually expect you to do what they tell you to do in the time frame that they laid out. Crazy.

2. I have the ability to discuss world politics, American history, and fashion with the same level of intensity and heartfelt interest. I'm not sure what that says about me as a person.

3. OMG BAKING. No, but seriously. My procrastinating (see number 1 above) has mutated into some horrible baking compulsion. I've made two cakes, three batches of scones, two batches of rugelach, some experimental cannales, a trillion black-bottom cupcakes, and more cookies and brownies than imaginable since classes started. Just last night I was thinking, "wow, I should really work on that Honors Thesis I'm writing... guess its time to make some rugelach!"

Someone needs to take the hand-mixer away from me.