The Waltonian

Let’s face it: everyone has their headphones in while they study these days. Yet, if we’re honest, most of us don’t give much thought to what kinds of sounds make their way through our ears. Most of us probably have some clutter-filled playlist which jumps from commercials to tracks to commercials and maybe some more commercials. That being said, studies have repeatedly shown that music listening habits do impact your ability to focus while studying. So, you want to make the right choices when it comes to picking your spring semester soundtrack, don’t you? You want to work alongside the sounds that will aid your ability to memorize all those names and list all that data, right?

Being a music junkie myself, I thought I’d recommend some artists that I personally find to be conducive to good studying…

Deafheaven: Most people, in looking for something to really pump them up and get those mental juices going before a big test, end up settling for something along the lines of A) classic rock, or B) hip hop. They want an infectious beat, or they want a searing guitar riff, and they want it all at mind-numbing speed. While I have no doubt that Queen, U2, Kanye or 2Pac can get you psyched on a drowsy morning, the band I would recommend over all others in terms of energy is Deafheaven. Trust me: listen to Deafheaven, and you will be a living, breathing energizer bunny for whatever task you have to do next.

Deafheaven defies all genre categorization. Based in San Francisco, they fuse shoegaze, black metal, post metal, post-rock, classic rock and, at times, even pop to make some of the most mind-expanding and ear-confounding music of our day. Their strategy is simple: make the pretty parts of their music as pretty as possible, and the ugly parts downright punishing. Harsh, abrasive black metal riffs and Clarke’s unintelligibly loud howls are offset by lush, melodic backdrops of dream pop and shoegaze. Deafhaven’s latest album, New Bermuda, is their most diverse offering to date and probably your best bet on getting pumped at 7:30 in the morning (I just wouldn’t recommend them if you want something relaxing).

Sigur Rós: If don’t want something quite so loud, however, but you want something just as energizing, you can always opt for Sigur Rós. Sigur Rós is an Iceland-based trio that specializes in an otherworldly, ethereal kind of post-rock featuring vocalist Jonsi Birgisson with one of the most angelic falsettos that exists (you may get goose bumps). They make for a great listen if you want vocals but can’t study well while listening to music with words, since their lyrics are written almost entirely in Birgisson’s own made-up language, Hopelandic. Sigur Rós also uses bowed guitars – an odd technique of playing a guitar with a bow so the sound is long and drawn out – so their music is very texture-based in spite of its high energy, making it easy to focus while listening to it. Agaetis Byrjun, voted Iceland’s best album of the twentieth century, is their best work.

Ambient Electronic Music: Finally, if you’re the kind of person who can’t study at all with vocals, I highly recommend getting into ambient electronic music. Yes, everyone always recommends classical music as a reliable study buddy, but I’m not going to be boring and recommend Mozart and Bach (not because they’re boring—simply because you know who they are). Ambient music is beneficial for study simply because it is more concerned with atmosphere and texture than with pace or melody. Its airy, spacy aesthetics have a way of enveloping you in their sound without making you lose focus on what you’re doing. Brian Eno has a prolific body of ambient work, being one of ambient music’s founding pioneers. Among newcomers to the scene I’d highly recommend Nicola Jaar, especially his album Space Is Only Noise, even though it does occasionally incorporate some vocals.

Music has an uncanny ability to aid or detract from your mental capacities. So, if you really want that A+ this semester, why not listen to the music that will aid your study time best?

Optimism in the Face of Guaranteed Heartbreak

On Wed., Sept. 2 at 8:30 a.m., 18-year-old first-year Jeremy Pomeroy expressed his thoughts to a crowd of reporters about his “certain future” at Eastern University in the phenomenon fondly known as romance. Showcasing “unbridled optimism” and bubbling over with “starry-eyed, overly romanticized visions of a love life unprecedented in the history of relationships at the collegiate level,” the spiky-haired, giddy-smiling Pomeroy laid out a “fairly simple” but “utterly incomprehensible” four-year plan for finding success in the field of romantic relationships during his tenure at Eastern, all the while completely oblivious of the four years of inconsolable despair and gut-wrenching heartbreak that are sure to come.

Romance—a mutual feeling of tender affection between two living things, human or non-human—is a subject about which Pomeroy “has not a worry in the world” as he heads into his first semester as an undergraduate.

“I mean, let’s look at this realistically,” Pomeroy says, scratching his premature chin scruff while staring into the brimming, sunlit dawn. “There’s like, what? A 70-to-30 female-to-male ratio here? And I’m here for the next four freaking years of my life? That’s easy!”

Despite one particularly cynical reporter’s persistent questioning as to whether the young idealist had any idea whatsoever of the imminent heartache that inevitably follows such teen-like, testosterone-fueled notions of invincibility, he proceeds to exclaim with over-dramatized, sweeping hand motions: “I mean, I don’t how you can possibly fail in a setting like this. So many options. So much time.” Then, brushing a fly out of his slicked-up back crop, he elaborated on his so-called “plan” for romantic relationships at the collegiate level in precise detail: “Basically, the big idea is to find my soulmate and marry her, like, the day I get out of here. I’m a little more flexible when it comes to starting things, I guess, so I’ll take the first few weeks to peruse a bit, use process of elimination, maybe make a checklist and go around campus figuring out who’s single, who’s not, you know. But I think things will probably be pretty settled by week two. You don’t wanna rush in too soon, and I think week one is a little extreme. But finding her during week two—that’s more than enough time.”

After press time, reporters were left in a congenial atmosphere of “fascination” at Pomeroy’s sheer optimism, especially considering the seemingly-endless four-year cycle of heartbreak he is about to undergo. Reporters agreed that, strange as it may seem, Pomeroy didn’t even seem to acknowledge “the dozens of girls that will turn him down halfway through the first date, the numerous relationships that will start out in an intoxicating state of pure infatuation and end in grudges of silence, and the nights he will spend staining his bed with tears and wishing his parents had never even dropped him off that fateful day a long, long time ago.”

Further coverage of Pomeroy’s inevitable misery and heavy-hearted affliction is sure to follow in the coming days.

Roaring in from the Pacific Ocean at a record-breaking 200 mph, Hurricane Patricia sent the people of Mexico scrambling for shelter in preparation for her imminent arrival. Over 4000 Mexican navy officers were deployed to offer aid in areas of high risk. Some 1780 shelters were constructed for more than 240,000 individuals. One official said that the storm had a chance to be the most catastrophic hurricane ever to hit Mexico.

All that hysteria faded into a whimper last Friday, when the earth-shaking storm faded into little more than a tropical depression, with wind speeds hovering around just 40-mph. This change is due, in large part, to the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range, which severely impeded the storm’s relentless pace. Not only did the mountains prevent the hurricane from moving further inland, but it directed the winds to touch down in a largely unpopulated coastal fishing region, narrowly evading the cities of Puerto Vallarta Manzanillo. Mexico’s coastal landscape also stifled Patricia’s chances at being catastrophic insofar as it did not offer the storm enough water to cause flood damage.

Thus far, only six storm-related fatalities have been reported: two because of a fallen tree, and four because of a storm-related car accident.

Robert Sandoval, governor of Nayarit State, told CNN, “We as government are not supposed to mention faith and God, but the only thing I can tell you is that God helped and watched over us so this monster of a hurricane did not hurt us here in Nayarit and in Mexico.” The president of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, expressed similar optimism last weekend with a tweet, saying, “So far, there are no reports of major damage from Patricia.” Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, Mexico’s transport secretary, agreed: “Nature was good to us.”

In the days following the storm, Mexico remained on guard for potential flash floods and mudslides caused by the heavy rain. However, meteorologists confirmed that because the storm moved so quickly, rain did not stay in place long enough to cause any threatening floods.

Although the storm did damage some areas, Mexico can breathe a huge sigh of relief that it wasn’t nearly the disaster it could have been.

Sources: nytimes.com, nbcnews.com, usatoday.com, cnn.com

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Walking across Eastern University’s campus, it’s easy to feel like you’re in a Spanish villa up on a hillside with a vineyard down below. No, it’s not a Spanish Villa, and no, there’s no vineyard, but the lush, hilly landscape and beautiful Mediterranean-style buildings with their terra-cotta roofs and vaulted, medieval-like interiors are enough to make a first-time visitor momentarily forget the place still belongs in the otherwise-humdrum little city of Wayne, Pennsylvania.

Most people familiar with Eastern University know—however vaguely—that before it was a college, it was “some rich guy’s estate.” Which is true, in a sense, but there is a rich (and somewhat mysterious) history behind the campus most people are generally unfamiliar with.

What if I told you, for instance, that a Western comedy was filmed at the estate? Or that the president of the United States was one of the many famous visitors who attended banquets here? Or that an architect so famous there is now a museum in his honor laid down the roof tiles for the estate?

You probably wouldn’t see the campus in quite the same light.

In 1910, after suffering a heart attack, businessman Charles S. Walton decided to escape the demanding confines of his office life and build a country estate. Walton hired Dr. Knickerbocker Boyd, a renowned architect in the Philadelphia area, to help him design it. The estate was completed in 1913 and named “Walmarthon.” The Walton family frequently visited California, so Charles was inspired to have the buildings styled after the classic Spanish-Renaissance style which dominated southern California.

While Boyd did most of the architecture, the tiles were put in place by the legendary architect Henry Mercer. Mercer led a curious life: he began his career as an archaeologist, leading to an interest in ceramics and tiles which eventually brought him fame as an architect and the author of six books. Today Mercer’s home in Doylestown, Pennsylvania has been turned into a museum and major tourist attraction. With such prestigious designers at work in the Walmarthon’s creation, it isn’t hard to see why the site still remains such a beauty.

The Walmarthon did more than just look beautiful, however; it also acted as a vital communal gathering place for both neighbors and people from all over the world. The Waltons hosted preachers, politicians, and missionaries on furlough in addition to the poverty-stricken and people of color. President William Taft once paid a visit. The estate acted simultaneously as a meeting-house for the sophisticated and a refuge for the rejected. Today, none of this may seem overly impressive, but when one considers the time period in which it all took place, the Walmarthon was truly revolutionary. In those days most people as wealthy as the Waltons didn’t let anyone outside of the upper-class on their property. That the Waltons allowed for such diversity and intermingling of different races and classes was a testament to their generosity as well as to the love inherent in their Christian faith.

In 1918, a silent film entitled “Oh, Johnny!” was filmed using the grounds of the Walton estate. Directed by Ira Lowry, the film was a Western comedy starring Virginia Lee and Louis Bennison. Bennison, playing a cowboy named Johnny, rescues a young woman named Adele (played by Lee) after she is orphaned by her father’s death. The film still survives in the archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Considering that Eastern University is consistently ranked among the most beautiful campuses in the US, the campus owes a lot to the designers of the Walmarthon. And considering that the campus stands for faith-oriented learning at its core, the site is but part of a longstanding tradition of Christ-centered living going all the way back to the early 20th century and starting with the Walton family.

Images courtesy of Matt Wolek/The Waltonian & Russell Risden/Radnor Historical Society