I’m heading back to St. Louis this weekend and have an exciting week ahead: next Thursday, the Jewish Student Union (which I am the President of) will be bringing internationally acclaimed musician Matisyahu to campus as part of the Washington University Assembly Series. Matisyahu will be on campus all day Thursday; at 4:00 p.m. he’s going to be talking about the development of his career, the fusion of his musical style and religious philosophy and his new album. If you’re on campus at WashU, come down to Graham Chapel to hear him speak and perform some acoustic songs; if not, check here for photos of the day (I plan to have my camera and possibly my FlipCam with me most of the day).

Also next week is my thesis defense—a daunting one-hour exam that will (hopefully) end with the successful completion of my thesis. There isn’t much to do in the run up to my defense, but it’s scary to think about that morning nonetheless. If all goes according to plan, by Friday afternoon I should be able to relax and enjoy the rest of the semester.

My thoughts about next year are ongoing, but slowly beginning to take shape. As soon as I have a sense for exactly how things will turn out, I’ll be sure to post here with the details…and how I’ll be chronicling them .

Finally, I’ll wrap up with a mind-blowing random fact that my friend Trisha shared with me a few weeks ago (and a plug for her new Olympic sports news blog). Apparently, there were 108,500 condoms distributed free of charge at the athlete’s village during the recent winter games in Vancouver; that translates to roughly 42 per athlete. If that’s not news, I don’t know what is.

For those interested in my project, below is an illustration (generated via Wordle.net) of the most commonly occurring words throughout the paper. The size of the word correlates to the number of times it was used.

For the less graphically inclined this is the abstract for the project, entitled Invented History: Memorializing the Holocaust Through Fiction:

This paper examines the ways in which post-Holocaust authors have told and re-told the story of the Shoah and discusses a spectrum for evaluating those methods. Using survivor testimony as source material, authors expand on the basic history of the Holocaust to create a narrative that is both personally meaningful and continuously relevant to new generations. Initially, writing about the Holocaust follows the pattern literary critic Marianne Hirsch calls postmemory, using the repetition of traumatic images as a mechanism for dulling the shock of recalling the events. As postmemorial work succeeds in exposing a new audience to the collective recollection of the Holocaust, however, the need decreases for a means of aesthetic representation that deals explicitly with trauma. It is then possible to describe the Holocaust within the larger context of Jewish history. This paper will explore the way in which three contemporary authors—Art Spiegelman, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander— manipulate shared memories and represent different stages in their relationship to the Holocaust in order to decrease the traumatic shock of the Shoah without losing its relevance to contemporary authors and audiences.

Anyways, I’ll be back in the real world for a little bit. Keep an eye out for a few photos I’ve printed from my photography classes, pictures from Purim last night and updates about plans for next year.

In addition to announcing the editor in chief, the board also awarded the Gregory M. Freeman Award for Outstanding Achievement in Journalism to senior Sam Guzik, current director of new media and former editor in chief. This award recognizes an individual’s significant contributions to the quality of Student Life and its service to the University community. Those reading the applications for the award considered promoting journalistic values as among the most important traits of an award winner.

The other Freeman Award was given to Brittany Meyer and Dennis Sweeney for their work revolutionizing Student Life’s approach to graphic and multimedia story telling. It’s unusual for the Board to name two recipients for that award, but both of them truly deserve their recognition for the countless hours they’ve devoted to the paper this year.

Reflecting on Saturday night, I can’t help but thinking that receiving the Freeman Award is a bittersweet experience. On one hand, it is a reminder of three and a half  years working with an amazing staff, experiencing new things and generally having a great time. On the other, receiving a “career achievement award” of sorts is a reminder that my time at Washington University is slowly winding down and that next year will be very different from this one.

I’m so excited for Kate and the entire staff. Like I wrote almost a year ago after finishing my tenure as editor in chief, I’m thrilled to see where Kate, her senior editors and the entire staff take the paper. I’ll never forget the countless nights I spent in the Student Life office, the interviews I’ve had and the articles I’ve written.

In a lot of ways, the banquet was a culminating moment for my career with Student Life, and I’m sure I’ll miss it no matter what next year holds. Regardless of where I end up, I think it will be hard to break my habit of checking StudLife.com most mornings. Still, I’m looking forward to starting next year in a new city with new responsibilities. And, more importantly, I know that I will be a more successful person for everything Student Life has taught me.

¡Increíble!

Green is an internationally recognized performer in the world of Jewish music. He received his first exposure to the music of his “Rebbe” and musical mentor, Reb Shlomo Carlebach, at the age of five. Two decades later, Yehudah shared the stage with Reb Shlomo. Subsequent performances together evolved into a relationship that became the musical equivalent of “the passing of the torch.” Yehudah’s audiences span the entire spectrum of the Jewish world, evoking an emotional response that few of today’s performers can match.

Of all the events I’ve ever covered, this was one where I really regretted not having my FlipCam on me. The still images do a good job of capturing the event, but some of the motion was just too fast to really look good—and forget about capturing the energy of the crowd singing along.

For information about print from the event, please contact me.

My new years resolution is to make an infographic on every This American Life ever made. The idea is to expand and add context to the stories and information contained in the shows. Basically, anything I am curious about while listening to the pieces. —This American Infographic

The designer behind the project is beginning with the show’s earliest episodes and working forward. Unfortunately, there haven’t been too many new posts in recent days, but I’m hoping that they will keep showing up soon.

I’d be particularly interested to see the graphic for episode 218, titled Act V. That episode tells the story of inmates in a high-security prison learning about and performing Act V of Hamlet—”it’s a play about murder and its consequences, performed by murderers, living out the consequences,” the TAL website says. The actors discussed in the show were part of a program in Missouri called Prison Performing Arts that I’ve been thinking a lot about since seeing another performance staged by Prison Performing Arts earlier this week (I’m hoping to get together a blog post about that at some point soon).

English majors…they’re like alcoholics with books

This is what 70 page projects do to the brain.

For anyone who doesn’t speak Hebrew, that was Ernie’s trademark Rubber Ducky song from Rechov Sumsum, the Israeli version of Sesame Street. Watching the two clips side-by-side, I think the Hebrew version may just have dubbed over the English, but nevertheless, it’s really cool.

All I can say is that if peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians bore some similarity to this video (in terms of tone and demeanor…any other similarities would just be too weird), perhaps the world would be a better place.

According to a report from yesterday, it appears that the car had been borrowed bringing down the sketch’s price tag a little, but its still quite amusing.

I’m starting to put together a (hopefully) cool interface for interacting with data from Student Life’s annual sex survey. The project will launch with the paper’s Valentines Day Issue; the idea is to let users analyze our raw data to get their own observations and conclusions. If this works as planned, it will be highly dependent on AJAX, JQuery and whatever other nifty tools I find along the way.

For know, though, the only thing on my plate is finishing a draft of my thesis. The final copy isn’t due until the end of February, but right now I’m handing in a draft for feedback from my adviser. The project is almost “there,” but in order to arrive I’m going to be putting in a few solid days of work this week. Starting now.