Last Updated: Tuesday, September 7, 1999.
Alice Walker does something really cool in one of her books: she draws pictures with words. I think it is more important what the circumstances and the feelings involved were at the time the picture was taken than the actual picture itself.
So this is an experiment. Please tell me what you think....
What's New:
New graphics, thanks to FrogFrau.
I actually added some Real PICTURES! I stole them off Maggie's Page, of course.
One new entry, plus I have decided to organize the "pictures," somewhat, by whom they concern, and sort of by time. Hey, sure it doesn't make sense to YOU, but then this isn't your page now is it? Also, I'm going to start cataloging when they were written and revised.
The Transylvanian Nerds
The Sticky People
The People I Hung Out With Senior Year, Who Are Titleless
The People I Hung Out With at Indiana University, Also Titleless
Nerds
The Fancy Dinner Party: Winter 1994
Written Spring 1997; Revised December 1998. Added capitals September 7, 1999.
This is my friends and I, (that is, my friends from home) at the first official Fancy Dinner Party, which was held at Kerrin's immaculate house. It was terribly impressive. There were even courses. We had lamb, if you can believe it, and cream of tomato soup with cream on the top, and salad and fancy dishes and silverware and a toast. And we took rolls and rolls of pictures. It was really fun.
So the picture goes like this. I think Kerrin's mom took it, and we were doing modified Madrigal Faces. I guess I have to explain that. Okay. You don't need to twist my arm. Most of us, at one time or another, were in choir with the famous Miss Witten, about whom I will try to say as little as possible. Miss Witten is the director of not only the middle school and high school choir classes, along with the help of her husband, Mr. Upchurch, but is also the queen supreme of the Bloomington High School South fancy choir group, the Madrigals. The Madrigals, incited to this action by the aforementioned Miss Witten, have a bad habit: they make madrigal faces.
A madrigal face is one of fake excitement, along with some fake suprise. It also includes arm movement- perhaps out to the side, fingers waggling, or up near your face, fingers spread out. It looks really goofy, but the madrigals do it about a thousand times each performace. Ah well. Such are the orders from the queen supreme. Okay, the picture. But first, SORRY, It ain't here yet is a picture of myself (with braces! ack!), heather, and kerrin making madrigal faces. enjoy.
The original eight, together for one of the last times, is posing in Kerrin's living room. From the left it's Liz, Megan, Julia, Kerrin, Maggie, me, Julian, and Heather.
Liz is wearing one of her earth tone outfits and looking extremely normal compared to the rest of us.
Megan, who at the time of this picture was in her hair-dyeing phase, not that she's yet left it, has red-pink-orange hair instead of blonde, and also has her fingers up poor Julia's nose. Julia, next in line, doesn't seem terribly bothered, but then, I don't know if I ever saw Julia terribly bothered. Julia and Megan are both wearing black, and it takes a minute to figure out which body is whose.
Next is Kerrin, who looks like a maniac. Usually he looks like a nice boy, but here he's a psycho. He is wearing a gray suit with one of his half tame but different red ties.
Maggie is next, in the severe hair style days, not as severe as middle school, but much more than now. She is wearing a dress she still has, which is blue velvet stuff and very pretty.
In front of Maggie is me, holding up Julian's jeans covered leg. He went ahead and wore a suit jacket, but skipped out on the tie. I'm sure he was chided adequately for this infraction. Anyway, I have my eyes crossed and I look absurd in this stupid prom dress I had for junior year, which was a fiasco that I will not write about today. I have since ripped it (the dress, not the prom fiasco) to shreds. It was bright blue-green and off the shoulder and terribly itchy because it wasn't made very well. That's what the things you buy for 30 bucks at deb are going to be like, though. Piffle.
At the end is Heather, who is wearing one of the choir dresses that women's choir was required to buy. Heather and Maggie and I all had them. They were an extremely ugly shade of purple which Miss Witten afectionately referred to as "grape black". Which, in retrospect, I find unsurprising, as Witten's favorite colors were black and purple. The damn things looked terrible with blond and red hair, so only brown-haired people stood a chance of not looking like a morose version of Barney. They had enormous puffy sleeves and no back, which meant that around 100 girls had to run out before the winter concert and buy backless bras. Which, as everyone who has ever worn one knows, are entirely impossible to put on without help, and are terribly distressing to wear. Not that regular bras aren't, but, anyway. Back to those god-forsaken dresses. They also itched terribly and rustled a lot. They made so much noise that my parents said they couldn''t hear us sing, they could only hear those idiot dresses. I gave mine away, even though it cost like 70 dollars, which Witten made us pay. I was just happy to be rid of the damn thing.
After dinner we had a Disney World trip (this link doesn't work yet, but I swear to God it will someday!) meeting, and then we went to a swing dance. Kerrin and Julia especially are teriffic swing-dancers, but the rest of us are good too. Although swinging is not really Julian's strong suit. He's much better at waltzing.
Spring, 1996: The Time the Nerds Came to See My Play
Written Spring, 1997; Revised December 1998. Capitals added September 7, 1999.
This (the actual picture, this time. Don't think it's going to happen again or anything) was taken at the second (Friday) performace of the play Risa and I co-directed at the academy, The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde. Julian brought his little brother, Heather, Maggie, and Liz up to Muncie to see it. I was very very happy when they came. I don't think I really expected them to. Tricia came, too, and so did my Dad, but Mom didn't come because she was too scared of the drive. I was very upset about that afterward. She has never ased to see any videotapes of the play either. I don't know why.
The picture is of Julian, Julian's brother (in back), Heather, Maggie, myself, and Liz. We are sitting on the couch that Mrs. Crouse got us for the performance; Melissa Marvell, who I became friends with later and her dad brought it to us in their truck. The couch has real talent. It did a lovely job.
Maggie's, Christmas 1996
Written, Spring 1997; Revised, December 1998. Capitals added, September 7, 1999.
This picture was taken at Maggie Sullivan's Christmas party. At the top left to right are Bryan, Chris (Maggie's then-boyfriend), and Maggie's Christmas tree; on the top of the couch are Julian, Kerrin, myself, Jamie Snyder, and Brock; and on the couch are Megan, Liz, (and on the other side of Brock) Risa, Heather, and Daniel.
Bryan is making his "I'm smiling for the camera, dammit, take the picture" face, and Chris is being his sunshiny self.
Julian, with his growing out bleached hair, is smiling like a freak. He and megan have matching bleachedy hairstyles. I have no idea what Liz is thinking about, I really don't. Kerrin looks relatively normal, and I'm looking amusedly at Risa.
Risa hates to have her picture taken. I only have one decent picture of Risa, and I know she would hate it if I put it on the web for the whole world to see. This one might be okay, though, because she did a very good job of hiding. Jamie, next to me, just looks intimidated by the big group picture.
All of the people I brought to Maggie's party, Jamie, Brock, and Matt (who isn't in the picture; I think he might have taken it? or maybe he was sitting on the other side of the room?)all felt a little weird. Brock was rather obnoxious that night although he looks angelic in the picture. The book he is holding is my copy of _The Princess Bride_, which he read during the entire party. My friends thought it was rather rude of him, and I've been hearing about it ever since. Heather, next to Risa, has done that crazy thing with eye makeup again. She and Daniel are being cute over on the end of the couch.
Sticky People
Sometime 1994: Emily
Written Spring 1997; Revised, December 1998. Capitals added September 7, 1999.
This is a picture of Emily. She is my first roommate Maggie's twin sister. It was taken in her room, so in the background there is her beloved fish kite and the purple jacket that she worse all during my junior year, well, except in the winter.
So anyway Emily in this picture is standing with her hands folded on her stomach, wearing the cloak that she made for Jordan. The cloak was extremely beautiful. The outside of it is a funny-odd very soft light tan material, and the inside is beautiful dark blue-green satin. This picture has a title, in someone else's scrapbook (possibly Emily's). It was part of a series of Emily pictures with varying expressions. Emily's expression here is something like, well, who the hell knows. It's Emily, after all. I'll have to put this one up on the web, then. The captions were,
in order, (I think this was the third one) something like "Hey there, Luke!" "Use the force, Luke!" "No no Luke, you moron, the force!!". Anyway.
Fall 1996: Maggie and Emily
Written Spring 1997; Revised December 1998. Capitals added September 7, 1999.
Picture 5 is of Maggie and Emily. They sent this to me during my senior year, after I sent them a package. The package contained the face masks they're wearing in the photo. I got the masks at a dance that the Academy band held (I seem to remember it as the Halloween dance?) to pay for their trip to Canada. I was a band girlfriend at the time so I went; all the band girlfriends did. Afterwards there were lots of free masks- they had been giving them out at the door- so I snatched some pretty ones and sent them to Maggie and Embly. And in return they sent me this nice picture of themselves, standing in someone's doorway at Williams College, wearing those masks.
Fall 1994: Maggie
Written Spring 1997; Revised, December 1998. Capitals added... You know the drill.
This one is of Maggie-roomie (as opposed to Maggie Sullivan of the aforementioned nerds). She was my first roommate. Since then there have been five others; Laurie, Risa, Greg, Jonathan, and the Brock.
This is one of Maggie's normal faces.
She's holding gumby. It's a Russian class tradition at the Academy to steal the instructor's Gumby, which she used to teach prepositions, as soon into the year as possible. This Gumby was stolen about a week into school, which was a record. Once we had him we wrote lots of cute little ransom notes and attached pictures of Gumby dressed up in inventive little outfits, like the pasties and
fishnets shown here. I made them. Gumby is also wearing a "Famous for Steakburgers" hat just like one one Maggie is wearing. The larger one came from Steak and Shake.
The desk behind Maggie is mine. You can see our curtains, which are silver emergency blankets that I bought at walmart for two dollars each when Maggie and I went on a decorating spree at the beginning of the year. Also on the wall there's Maggie's "The Scream" poster (the Edvard Munch painting, not the movie. This was way before the movie) which she bought at TIS in the village for five bucks. On my desk there is an incredible amount of crap, although the collection is much less incredible than this year's. That silver thing is a duct tape hat that I made. I think I gave it to jeffery.
October 1994: Face Painting With Magnolia and Me
Written Spring 1997; Revised December 1998. Yup, capitals on September 7, 1999.
This is of me and Maggie in the hallway outside out room. Again there are the emergency blanket curtains. The next roommate, Laurie, wouldn't let me put them up. She had a habit of not being any fun that way, sometimes.
Anyway, this was just before the Halloween dance, junior year. I asked Maggie to paint my face with a butterfly, because I was going to go as a butterfly, which I did. I went to the dance and didn't enter the costume contest and somehow managed to win second place anyway. And all I did was have my face painted, wear a black dress, and attach some very makeshift wings. I
think I might have had antennae, come to think of it. It was a pretty fun party. Three different guys tried to pick me up, :) , and I won $5 without even trying.
But anyway, here we are in the hallway. Maggie painted her face herself. Oh yeah, for people who don't know me, I'm on the right. With the butterfly. The pictures above me are door decoration. I used to put everything on my door. The things that you can see are a Joe Bob Briggs column and an article from Spy about the psudonyms that romance novels use for "penis." It's really funny. My RC (residence counselor) Lisa May didn't care for it, but no one asked me to take it down, although a few suggested it. I didn't, of course.
Senior year
Fall 1995: I Found This Picture In the Yearbook
Written December 1998.
I was looking through my Senior yearbook not too long ago and found a picture with me in it that I had totally forgotten. It's of this field trip that they took the entire Academy on sometime during the fall. Most of the picture is taken up by Mr. Stuart, who I never had a class with. This event was some sort of auction for the Black Students for Unity club, and he was the auctioneer. In the picture he is pointing at someone out of the frame. Sam and I are sitting on the grass near the left-hand bottom corner of the picture (which is black and white, incidentally). Next to us but mostly obscured are Roger and Robyn, who were also dating at the time, and whom Sam and I hung out with quite a lot. They broke up about the same time too, I think.
The four of us used to sign out together all the time and then split up so it would look less suspicious to the RCs at the front desk. Not that I think, in retrospect, we fooled anyone at all. We did stay together sometimes though; I remember one time when we played with Roger's Ouigi board and melted red candles all over this concrete slab near the river.
I hadn't known that any pictures of me and Sam together actually existed. This reminds me of the fact that Brock and I supposedly appeared in the Indiana Daily Student sometime in the fall of my freshman year, possibly the first week of school, although neither of us ever saw it. Some guy on Brock's floor said that we were sitting underneath a tree, and we made the front page. Shows you how many people actually read the IDS.
Many thanks to:
This page was last modified January 7, 2000.
This page was created in Fall of 1996.
Alice Walker does something really cool in one of her books: she draws pictures with words. I think it is more important what the circumstances and the feelings involved were at the time the picture was taken than the actual picture itself. So this is an experiment. Please tell me what you think....
What's New:
New graphics, thanks to FrogFrau.
I actually added some Real PICTURES! I stole them off Maggie's Page, of course.
One new entry, plus I have decided to organize the "pictures," somewhat, by whom they concern, and sort of by time. Hey, sure it doesn't make sense to YOU, but then this isn't your page now is it? Also, I'm going to start cataloging when they were written and revised.
The Transylvanian Nerds
The Sticky People
The People I Hung Out With Senior Year, Who Are Titleless
The People I Hung Out With at Indiana University, Also Titleless
Nerds
The Fancy Dinner Party: Winter 1994
Written Spring 1997; Revised December 1998. Added capitals September 7, 1999.
This is my friends and I, (that is, my friends from home) at the first official Fancy Dinner Party, which was held at Kerrin's immaculate house. It was terribly impressive. There were even courses. We had lamb, if you can believe it, and cream of tomato soup with cream on the top, and salad and fancy dishes and silverware and a toast. And we took rolls and rolls of pictures. It was really fun.
So the picture goes like this. I think Kerrin's mom took it, and we were doing modified Madrigal Faces. I guess I have to explain that. Okay. You don't need to twist my arm. Most of us, at one time or another, were in choir with the famous Miss Witten, about whom I will try to say as little as possible. Miss Witten is the director of not only the middle school and high school choir classes, along with the help of her husband, Mr. Upchurch, but is also the queen supreme of the Bloomington High School South fancy choir group, the Madrigals. The Madrigals, incited to this action by the aforementioned Miss Witten, have a bad habit: they make madrigal faces.
A madrigal face is one of fake excitement, along with some fake suprise. It also includes arm movement- perhaps out to the side, fingers waggling, or up near your face, fingers spread out. It looks really goofy, but the madrigals do it about a thousand times each performace. Ah well. Such are the orders from the queen supreme. Okay, the picture. But first, SORRY, It ain't here yet is a picture of myself (with braces! ack!), heather, and kerrin making madrigal faces. enjoy.
The original eight, together for one of the last times, is posing in Kerrin's living room. From the left it's Liz, Megan, Julia, Kerrin, Maggie, me, Julian, and Heather.
Liz is wearing one of her earth tone outfits and looking extremely normal compared to the rest of us.
Megan, who at the time of this picture was in her hair-dyeing phase, not that she's yet left it, has red-pink-orange hair instead of blonde, and also has her fingers up poor Julia's nose. Julia, next in line, doesn't seem terribly bothered, but then, I don't know if I ever saw Julia terribly bothered. Julia and Megan are both wearing black, and it takes a minute to figure out which body is whose.
Next is Kerrin, who looks like a maniac. Usually he looks like a nice boy, but here he's a psycho. He is wearing a gray suit with one of his half tame but different red ties.
Maggie is next, in the severe hair style days, not as severe as middle school, but much more than now. She is wearing a dress she still has, which is blue velvet stuff and very pretty.
In front of Maggie is me, holding up Julian's jeans covered leg. He went ahead and wore a suit jacket, but skipped out on the tie. I'm sure he was chided adequately for this infraction. Anyway, I have my eyes crossed and I look absurd in this stupid prom dress I had for junior year, which was a fiasco that I will not write about today. I have since ripped it (the dress, not the prom fiasco) to shreds. It was bright blue-green and off the shoulder and terribly itchy because it wasn't made very well. That's what the things you buy for 30 bucks at deb are going to be like, though. Piffle.
At the end is Heather, who is wearing one of the choir dresses that women's choir was required to buy. Heather and Maggie and I all had them. They were an extremely ugly shade of purple which Miss Witten afectionately referred to as "grape black". Which, in retrospect, I find unsurprising, as Witten's favorite colors were black and purple. The damn things looked terrible with blond and red hair, so only brown-haired people stood a chance of not looking like a morose version of Barney. They had enormous puffy sleeves and no back, which meant that around 100 girls had to run out before the winter concert and buy backless bras. Which, as everyone who has ever worn one knows, are entirely impossible to put on without help, and are terribly distressing to wear. Not that regular bras aren't, but, anyway. Back to those god-forsaken dresses. They also itched terribly and rustled a lot. They made so much noise that my parents said they couldn''t hear us sing, they could only hear those idiot dresses. I gave mine away, even though it cost like 70 dollars, which Witten made us pay. I was just happy to be rid of the damn thing.
After dinner we had a Disney World trip (this link doesn't work yet, but I swear to God it will someday!) meeting, and then we went to a swing dance. Kerrin and Julia especially are teriffic swing-dancers, but the rest of us are good too. Although swinging is not really Julian's strong suit. He's much better at waltzing.
Spring, 1996: The Time the Nerds Came to See My Play
Written Spring, 1997; Revised December 1998. Capitals added September 7, 1999.
This (the actual picture, this time. Don't think it's going to happen again or anything) was taken at the second (Friday) performace of the play Risa and I co-directed at the academy, The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde. Julian brought his little brother, Heather, Maggie, and Liz up to Muncie to see it. I was very very happy when they came. I don't think I really expected them to. Tricia came, too, and so did my Dad, but Mom didn't come because she was too scared of the drive. I was very upset about that afterward. She has never ased to see any videotapes of the play either. I don't know why.
The picture is of Julian, Julian's brother (in back), Heather, Maggie, myself, and Liz. We are sitting on the couch that Mrs. Crouse got us for the performance; Melissa Marvell, who I became friends with later and her dad brought it to us in their truck. The couch has real talent. It did a lovely job.
Maggie's, Christmas 1996
Written, Spring 1997; Revised, December 1998. Capitals added, September 7, 1999.This picture was taken at Maggie Sullivan's Christmas party. At the top left to right are Bryan, Chris (Maggie's then-boyfriend), and Maggie's Christmas tree; on the top of the couch are Julian, Kerrin, myself, Jamie Snyder, and Brock; and on the couch are Megan, Liz, (and on the other side of Brock) Risa, Heather, and Daniel.
Bryan is making his "I'm smiling for the camera, dammit, take the picture" face, and Chris is being his sunshiny self.
Julian, with his growing out bleached hair, is smiling like a freak. He and megan have matching bleachedy hairstyles. I have no idea what Liz is thinking about, I really don't. Kerrin looks relatively normal, and I'm looking amusedly at Risa.
Risa hates to have her picture taken. I only have one decent picture of Risa, and I know she would hate it if I put it on the web for the whole world to see. This one might be okay, though, because she did a very good job of hiding. Jamie, next to me, just looks intimidated by the big group picture.
All of the people I brought to Maggie's party, Jamie, Brock, and Matt (who isn't in the picture; I think he might have taken it? or maybe he was sitting on the other side of the room?)all felt a little weird. Brock was rather obnoxious that night although he looks angelic in the picture. The book he is holding is my copy of _The Princess Bride_, which he read during the entire party. My friends thought it was rather rude of him, and I've been hearing about it ever since. Heather, next to Risa, has done that crazy thing with eye makeup again. She and Daniel are being cute over on the end of the couch.
Sticky People
Sometime 1994: Emily
Written Spring 1997; Revised, December 1998. Capitals added September 7, 1999.
This is a picture of Emily. She is my first roommate Maggie's twin sister. It was taken in her room, so in the background there is her beloved fish kite and the purple jacket that she worse all during my junior year, well, except in the winter.
So anyway Emily in this picture is standing with her hands folded on her stomach, wearing the cloak that she made for Jordan. The cloak was Fall 1996: Maggie and Emily
Written Spring 1997; Revised December 1998. Capitals added September 7, 1999.
Picture 5 is of Maggie and Emily. They sent this to me during my senior year, after I sent them a package. The package contained the face masks they're wearing in the photo. I got the masks at a dance that the Academy band held (I seem to remember it as the Halloween dance?) to pay for their trip to Canada. I was a band girlfriend at the time so I went; all the band girlfriends did. Afterwards there were lots of free masks- they had been giving them out at the door- so I snatched some pretty ones and sent them to Maggie and Embly. And in return they sent me this nice picture of themselves, standing in someone's doorway at Williams College, wearing those masks.
Fall 1994: Maggie
Written Spring 1997; Revised, December 1998. Capitals added... You know the drill.
This one is of Maggie-roomie (as opposed to Maggie Sullivan of the aforementioned nerds). She was my first roommate. Since then there have been five others; Laurie, Risa, Greg, Jonathan, and the Brock.
This is one of Maggie's normal faces.
She's holding gumby. It's a Russian class tradition at the Academy to steal the instructor's Gumby, which she used to teach prepositions, as soon into the year as possible. This Gumby was stolen about a week into school, which was a record. Once we had him we wrote lots of cute little ransom notes and attached pictures of Gumby dressed up in inventive little outfits, like the pasties and
fishnets shown here. I made them. Gumby is also wearing a "Famous for Steakburgers" hat just like one one Maggie is wearing. The larger one came from Steak and Shake.
The desk behind Maggie is mine. You can see our curtains, which are silver emergency blankets that I bought at walmart for two dollars each when Maggie and I went on a decorating spree at the beginning of the year. Also on the wall there's Maggie's "The Scream" poster (the Edvard Munch painting, not the movie. This was way before the movie) which she bought at TIS in the village for five bucks. On my desk there is an incredible amount of crap, although the collection is much less incredible than this year's. That silver thing is a duct tape hat that I made. I think I gave it to jeffery.
October 1994: Face Painting With Magnolia and Me
Written Spring 1997; Revised December 1998. Yup, capitals on September 7, 1999.
This is of me and Maggie in the hallway outside out room. Again there are the emergency blanket curtains. The next roommate, Laurie, wouldn't let me put them up. She had a habit of not being any fun that way, sometimes.
Anyway, this was just before the Halloween dance, junior year. I asked Maggie to paint my face with a butterfly, because I was going to go as a butterfly, which I did. I went to the dance and didn't enter the costume contest and somehow managed to win second place anyway. And all I did was have my face painted, wear a black dress, and attach some very makeshift wings. I
think I might have had antennae, come to think of it. It was a pretty fun party. Three different guys tried to pick me up, :) , and I won $5 without even trying.
But anyway, here we are in the hallway. Maggie painted her face herself. Oh yeah, for people who don't know me, I'm on the right. With the butterfly. The pictures above me are door decoration. I used to put everything on my door. The things that you can see are a Joe Bob Briggs column and an article from Spy about the psudonyms that romance novels use for "penis." It's really funny. My RC (residence counselor) Lisa May didn't care for it, but no one asked me to take it down, although a few suggested it. I didn't, of course.
Senior year
Fall 1995: I Found This Picture In the Yearbook
Written December 1998.
I was looking through my Senior yearbook not too long ago and found a picture with me in it that I had totally forgotten. It's of this field trip that they took the entire Academy on sometime during the fall. Most of the picture is taken up by Mr. Stuart, who I never had a class with. This event was some sort of auction for the Black Students for Unity club, and he was the auctioneer. In the picture he is pointing at someone out of the frame. Sam and I are sitting on the grass near the left-hand bottom corner of the picture (which is black and white, incidentally). Next to us but mostly obscured are Roger and Robyn, who were also dating at the time, and whom Sam and I hung out with quite a lot. They broke up about the same time too, I think.
The four of us used to sign out together all the time and then split up so it would look less suspicious to the RCs at the front desk. Not that I think, in retrospect, we fooled anyone at all. We did stay together sometimes though; I remember one time when we played with Roger's Ouigi board and melted red candles all over this concrete slab near the river.
I hadn't known that any pictures of me and Sam together actually existed. This reminds me of the fact that Brock and I supposedly appeared in the Indiana Daily Student sometime in the fall of my freshman year, possibly the first week of school, although neither of us ever saw it. Some guy on Brock's floor said that we were sitting underneath a tree, and we made the front page. Shows you how many people actually read the IDS.
This page was created in Fall of 1996.