by Paula Cerda A week ago, the APU students received an electronic survey aimed at identifying our university mascot. This brought back memory of a similar discussion that occurred in 2012, but unfortunately no clear conclusions were drawn that year. The Turnagain Currents reached out to Amber Peterson, ASAPU Chair, and asked her a few questions about the renewed discussion and what we can look forward to in the search for the APU mascot. Turnagain Currents: How did the APU Mascot debate of 2014 begin? Amber Peterson: ASAPU has discussed trying to figure out what APU’s mascot was for as long as I have been here (2012), and this year…
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Dr. Strangevote or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Hate the Blurb
by Evan Nasse Election season is here, and appropriately it is coinciding with cold and flu season as well. Much like a cold, the political advertisements have made many of us sick to our stomachs and assaulted nearly all of the senses save for taste (only because so many of the advertisements tasteless by nature). Having been a registered voter for quite some time and participating in the civic duty that is the democratic process as often as I remember to, I have been exposed to a fair share of campaign commercials, radio advertisements, tacky billboards, excessive fliers, stupid stickers, pedestrian promoters, political platform cereal brands, presidentially endorsed bottled waters, and…
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Finding the Russian Masters
by L.J. Bosela The wind whipped around him as the individual snowflakes landed about his shoulders, dropping as if they’d much rather be somewhere else rather than falling from the sky and turning the autumn landscape into a winter one. The leaves formed a brilliant carpet along the road, and the bare branches overhead sang low like ghosts moaning in the breeze. He didn’t notice, and wrapped his arms tighter around his abdomen to keep from shivering. His mother would have reminded him to have put on a heavier coat, but his father, in his perpetual stupor, hadn’t and so the next gust of wind washed his face in place…
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Anagama
by Nick Treinen There are galaxies in these pots, Says Tom and we watch sparks Cluster with stars as they whirl From the chimney with abandon. Front stoke, side stoke, damper shut And let elm, cottonwood and pine brew In a whispering bed of coals that tremble In wait; the plotting volcanic bowels. Or is she a dragon? Anagama, Her gut gorged with pots, breathes out. Tumbleweeds wither and ashes rustle away. As the sun rises on the fourth day, The world stops to let light fill Chino’s plain. Crickets hold their notes; in their dens The coyotes are still. No smoke rises. A lone darkling beetle crawls into sight,…
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Intro to Trad Climbing
by William Day The ground is flat beneath my inflated pad – no lumpy rocks or sticks or tussocks of tundra to disrupt my sleep. Compared to last fall, trekking through the Talkeetnas with Expedition Leadership, this feels luxurious. Alice Lake is a well-groomed campground just north of downtown Squamish, British Columbia. The roads are paved, the sites graded, trails regulated… there’s a shower house. You can even swim in the lake if you’d like. After spending last fall block camping here and there in the alpine tundra of Alaska, and all of May on the Chugach glaciers, it’s hard to believe this is an APU block course… Usually, during…
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The Deconstruction of a Hypochondriacal Ego
by Hillary Hafner Our world revolves around time and money. I believe a person’s moral standing is determined by how one chooses to spend one’s time and money, and that the most ethical way to spend time and money is benevolently. An individual’s responsibility is proportionate to their ability to affect. For example, corporations can influence multitudes of people and are now considered under law to be individuals. Thus, they ought to be affecting people positively and serving as examples of benevolence. However, we live in an egoist world and according to Hobbes, our egoism is innate. We are presented daily with choices-large and small- that give us the power…
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Johnnie Tegstrom
by Mike Gordon Just because you’ve known someone your whole life doesn’t necessarily mean you’re friends with them. Never mind that you were raised in the same neighborhood, went through Boy Scouts together, played in the school band together, got drunk for the first time together, were in school classes together year after year; 7th grade through high school graduation. I remember more friction between Johnnie and me during all those years than anything else. Sure, there were some good times we enjoyed together, but Johnnie was the big kid and I was the little kid, though we were the same age. When I turned 16 and got my driver’s…
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Removing the Mask of Grief with Shelby Coleman and Connor Tindall
by Ryan Shofner The ephemeral nature of life dawns upon all beings. One day, the powers that be remove someone special from our lives and from that day forth, life is forever changed. It is what we do with the loss and how we handle the days to come that matters. February 21, 2014: I interview Shelby and Connor, facilitators of the Young-adult, Peer-supported, Greif Group, Co-sponsored and supervised by the Hospice of Anchorage and the University of Alaska Anchorage School of Nursing that caters to 18-30 year-old individuals. Christina, an intern of the Hospice of Anchorage and assistant of Shelby and Connor sums up the group: “We provide a…
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Equanimity
by Megan Baker Swirls of something and nothing flow as rivers of sand in my dreams, teasing me with little glimpses of him. My daydreams told me he would show up at the perfect moment, scoop me off my feet, and we would ride off into the sunset on a white stallion. Reality told me otherwise. My life was everything but ordinary. I spent my childhood battling aliens in distant galaxies, saving earth from the malicious wizards who use black magic to threaten the innocent, and brawling nasty ghouls who threatened to take away my superhuman abilities. On the shore society curse the brave sailors of the mind who dare…
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Cosmos
by Alexa Dobson Good evening, friends. My name is Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and I’d like to thank you for joining me for the thirteenth and final episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Over the past twelve weeks, we’ve traveled through both space and time, exploring the depths of space, our own planet and even our minds. We know that the observable universe was born nearly fourteen billion years ago in a fiery explosion, and since then, countless stars and planets have coalesced into galaxies and solar systems not too different from our own. In our little corner of the universe, life has grown and flourished for thousands of millions of…