Mornings are not for noise.  They are not for making doctor’s appointments or doing laundry. Mornings are for silent conversations between the voice in my head and the voice somewhere else inside me. Mornings are sacred, but the perfect morning is elusive.

Last year, school mornings meant natural light bursting into my single room. It erupted in from College Street. I had to hang dress-bags over the window’s filmy panes and swivel my bed away from the slivers of gold that crept in.  A sunrise is nice, but only once in a while. Morning was bad coffee from my Keurig machine washed down with dining-hall oranges and an hour reading the paper just because I could. I didn’t speak until class at 11:35.

May 5 and a return to 46 West 96th brought noise. I had missed home, the constant beat of subways and ambulances and hawkers with cell-phone cases, but I had forgotten about the noise inside our duplex. Now, morning was mom asking me to clear my mug before I was done, to help her plan dinner. Morning was a chance to catch all five of us in the same place at the same time. Not speaking was rude when it had once been ritual.

Instead, I ran every morning with the deafening shudder of the C train to Canal Street. While my family sat downstairs hammering out who was home for dinner and what are we having and can I invite Lexi, I tied my laces. While my mom was making mental lists of errands, I was slamming the door shut and stepping into the early smell of New York. It’s a specific bouquet, perfuming the summer haze before the piss steams from the cracks in the sidewalk and too many cigarettes have been lit.

I sprinted the half a block to the park. After I passed the stone wall between Central Park West and the wooded path with its signs proclaiming, “no biking” and “dogs must be leashed,” I breathed deeper. One minute uphill to the reservoir, to feet crunching dirt instead of thumping pavement.

I only have time for one lap. One lap to hear my breathing become jagged. To feel sweat trickle from my baseball cap into my sports bra. To remember that there’s a clandestine pleasure in New York mornings, when you feel like you’ve stolen that image of the sun reflected on still water. A quirk in a concrete jungle that lets me forget where I am, for just a couple seconds, when I round that final bend, and all I see are sleepy, muted, quiet trees.

Sex, Markets, and Power was packed at its first meeting. Professor Rosenbluth opened her lecture with a photo collection by Elle UK, in which men were photoshopped out of global political institutions: the British parliament, the UN, the US’s Situation Room, the Bundestag. The rooms appeared almost empty. According to a UN Women report, just 22 percent of “national parliamentarians” are women. This, despite the fact that when women are involved in government, more money and resources reach constituent communities, and overall public health improves. This, despite the fact that women constitute about half of the population.

The United States places 75th in the world in female representation in government, according to a list provided by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The statistics for women of color are even worse: they constitute only 6.2 percent of the 535 members of Congress. There are myriad explanations, but one of them is the reluctance of pundits and voters to appreciate gender as a valid reason for choosing one public official over another. When women voters are accused of supporting Clinton on the basis of their gender, we deflect by reciting a litany of Clinton’s policies. But why should we have to?

I can and will vote for Hillary Clinton at least in part because of her gender. The election of a female president will have a lasting impact on the lives of women, both globally and domestically. Just as the presidency of Barack Obama enabled millions of African-American children to envision themselves within our nation’s highest office, the election of Hillary Clinton will allow women and girls to share in the same dream.

Female supporters of Clinton are often targeted for playing the “gender card.” Clinton is accused of pandering to women because she has been outspoken about her commitment to “women’s issues.” Heaven forbid she acknowledge her own gender identity and speak about dire public health issues like reproductive rights. Her prolonged commitment to female empowerment—both in her global work as Secretary of State, and in her domestic advocacy—should be the marker of a genuine political commitment to human rights, not pandering to a constituency. The concerns of women should be on a national stage, a constant conversation.

Take affordable childcare. As a nation, we are still grappling with the idea of subsidizing a woman’s work outside of the home. Yet it is not until both parents in a family have equal societal support for their careers that women can bridge the wage gap. The phrase “equal pay for equal work” is a misnomer. According to economist Claudia Goldin, the problem of the wage gap isn’t women being paid less for exactly the same job, but rather the series of decisions women are forced to make that land them in lesser-paying jobs. If she is choosing between a higher-paying position that necessitates more hours on the job and a more flexible, lower-paying position, a mother, or a woman considering motherhood, will often choose the latter. This is an economic issue, not a women’s issue, and it is not only limited to greater female representation in the upper ranks of corporations. When women participate more in the labor force at all levels, from CEOs to cashiers, GDP per capita increases.

There will be other socioeconomic effects too, if Clinton is elected president. A female leader of the United States would send a strong message to companies with respect to hiring practices. Despite public avowals to strive for gender parity in the workplace, most companies fall far short. According to the HeForShe Parity Report, “one in four senior leadership and board positions are held by women,” and women “hold 19.2 percent of board seats across S&P 500 companies.” 95 percent of CEOs of the world’s largest companies are men, but stocks perform better if women serve on company boards. Part of the reason is female prowess in collaboration: we are socialized to be better listeners from a young age. According to the Dr. Melvin Konner—a professor of anthropology, behavioral biology, and neuroscience and author of Women After All—women are better dealmakers, and more likely to work and play better with others. They don’t jump into conflict to stroke their egos. They are less likely to be corrupt.

How, then, are we surprised that workplace environments are so often hostile to women? The people setting the tone are men, who don’t have to consider sexual harassment or the challenges of breastfeeding when creating workplace culture. But a revolution in the workforce would defy the dominant political and societal traditions in this country, which devalue women’s labor. We don’t pay for our wives and mothers to devote hours of work to the upkeep of their families, so their unpaid labor—of which women still do the lion’s share—is not considered valuable. There are simply inadequate resources for working mothers and families, and therefore inadequate means of achieving gender parity. They will remain inadequate until a woman ascends to the highest office and implements supportive family policies, and until the American people agree that a woman can occupy the Oval Office.

In her concession speech to Obama, Clinton said: “To build that future I see, we must make sure that women and men alike understand the struggles of their grandmothers and their mothers, and that women enjoy equal opportunities, equal pay, and equal respect… Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.”

This is next time. And the anger that I feel in the pit of my stomach when the right to equal pay and maternity leave are shuffled aside as “women’s issues” has only grown since 2008.

So when I’m told that I’m only supporting Clinton because I’m a woman, I’m deeply insulted, because the implication is that I haven’t bothered to do any real research. That I’m being guided by “sisterhood” and emotion. Or else, that voting for a woman has to be justified in a way that a man’s support of a male candidate does not. But I’m not supporting Carly Fiorina. I’m supporting a woman who has proven her lifelong commitment to policies that support my human rights. She champions an amendment that will safeguard the right of poor women to reproductive healthcare; she has received the endorsements of NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Like any savvy voter, I am defending my interests by supporting a candidate that promises to value them.

I’m supporting a woman whose career merits and demands the recognition of her capacity to lead. If she were male, so many of the jabs at her record would simply not exist. Would she be asked about her partner’s affairs if she were a man? Unlikely. Would the media spend time describing her clothing? Doubtful. In an interview, Lena Dunham—who’s been stumping for Clinton in Iowa—recited a list of sexist, condescending words that are regularly used to describe Clinton. “Shrill. Inaccessible. Difficult. Frumpy. Plastic.” And Donald Trump used the unambiguously phallic “schlonged” to describe her 2008 loss to a male opponent, Obama. Have any of those words been lobbed at male candidates? NPR describes Hillary’s response to a frankly sexist accusation that she had been “dishonest” as “an energetic, finger-pointing defense that might have struck some as defensive.” Even her defense is deemed too defensive.

Any woman knows that when we’re assertive and outspoken, we’re called bitchy. So many people in this country are afraid of answering to a head bitch in charge.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the leaders of America’s suffragist movement, said in 1869: “We need women’s thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government.” It’s high time the American public actually acted on that sentiment.

Citizenfour is different. It is a movie in which we, as the public subject to the policies unveiled by Edward Snowden, are members of the cast. We already know its beginning, middle, and end, and probably have some strong opinions about its main character. Thus, the impact of Citizenfour is not in the reenactment of the 2013 revelations, but how its intimate perspective shifts our understanding of a story we thought we knew.

As the third part of a documentary trilogy from activist filmmaker Laura Poitras, Citizenfour complements two earlier films, My Country, My Country (2010) and The Oath (2006), whose plots revolve around the theme of U.S. government surveillance in a post-9/11 America. These two films play a unique role in the production of the third: Snowden contacted Poitras because the movies identified her as critical of the U.S. government’s surveillance methods in its War on Terror. She was someone he knew would be comfortable with the secrecy needed to decipher his encrypted emails (Poitras has been the subject of surveillance and had already taken measures to secure her personal data), and who he thought he’d be able to trust.

Needless to say, the role of a documentary film director is not usually shrouded in secrecy, nor is the director usually so integral to the events she is trying to record. In the Hong Kong hotel where the majority of the film takes place, Poitras was not only orchestrating the dissemination of the NSA files—to do so, she recruited journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, of The Guardian—but also attempting to capture footage and create a narrative around the then 29-year-old Snowden, whose moniker in those first emails was simply “Citizenfour.”

Shifting the focus to Snowden was perhaps the only option left to the filmmaker when, like a production of Romeo and Juliet, the end of the movie cannot be a surprise. Poitras masterfully confronts the unique challenge of creating suspense by inciting her audience to empathize with the—until now—characterless Snowden. The suspense sets in not only when the viewer begins to empathize with Snowden, but also realize that his struggle is not his alone.

As I walked out of the theater, I realized I had to reevauluate everything I believed about Snowden and the NSA. With Citizenfour, we can assign a real identity to an internationally polarizing figure beyond that of a vigilante. We see him in a bathrobe, fixing his hair, putting his contacts in. We see the worry in his eyes when he talks about his girlfriend’s interrogation. Further, we hear the passion in his voice when he explains why he chose to give up his freedom; he repeats throughout the film his certainty that he will never be able to resume normal life. Poitras shows a Snowden that is less a rebel than a moralist who has found himself in what he perceives to be an unjust institution and is seized by an unshakable desire to upend the status quo. We hear the growing disgust and even incredulity in his voice when he describes the tactics of the NSA, and understand the grave danger our privacy is in we when he declares: “This isn’t my issue, it’s everybody’s issue.”

Opening an Italian restaurant in New Haven could seem like a poor business decision. Being a resident of New Haven means having a favorite pie from the three old-timers: Pepe’s, Sally’s, and Modern. Yet the menu of Tarry Lodge, New Haven’s latest Italian incursion, has a separate section devoted to pizza that, according to its website, emerges from “an oven crafted by Valoriani, the storied family operation that has constructed ovens outside of Florence since 1890.” In a conversation with Mark Bomford, Director of the Yale Sustainable Food Program, at the Whitney Humanities Center on January 23rd, Mario Batali explained his rationale for adding to the already-stiff competition and discussed his new cookbook, America Farm to Table. According to his website, the New York City based restaurateur owns 27 establishments from Las Vegas to Hong Kong to Singapore, and in his words, the thought “let’s not go somewhere where the pizza competition is so intense” crossed his mind more than once. But, by Batali’s own admittance, “our expansion [team] has never been one of a rational group of people.”

The Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group (Joe and Lidia Bastianich are Batali’s co-owners) did not choose New Haven arbitrarily. The new location was an organic addition to the two other Tarry Lodge locations in Connecticut, the first of which opened in Port Chester in 2008 and then Westport in 2011. Batali explained that rather than allow other entrepreneurs to poach young cooks rising through the ranks of his kitchens, he strives to provide those budding chefs with executive-chef positions within his own empire. The only way to do that with dozens of such rising talents is to open more restaurants, their locations determined by the places those now-partners call home. By allowing them to realize their career aspirations in their hometowns, they can cultivate their careers while maintaining family roots. For Batali, “cooking is still fundamentally done in the home or the restaurant to serve the people you love…the nature of a true cook is the nature of true generosity.”

New Haven, though, is a hometown that has already experienced an explosion of restaurants in the past few years that categorize themselves as “Farm to Table,” a term that lends itself to the title of Batali’s new cookbook. Tarry Lodge joins Harvest Wine Bar, Heirloom, Oak Haven Table & Bar, Caseus, and various other eateries that have changed New Haven’s food identity from a pizza-oriented destination to what a 2014 Livability.com post called the “number one foodie city in America.” New Haven has boasted beloved (and delicious) institutions like Mamoun’s and Louis’ Lunch for many years, and is considered by its locals to have a rich culinary history. Only recently has the city accrued national attention for these more cutting edge restaurants.

Friday’s talk between Bomford and Batali drifted from Batali’s own industry beginnings at an institution called “Stuff your Face Stromboli” while he was enrolled at Rutgers, to his status on the food-labeling debate (“Why would you tell someone that they can put 5 percent rat balls in something and not tell us that?”), to his robust social media presence. If you haven’t checked out @MarioBatali, it’s high time you do so on Twitter and Instagram—He eschews Facebook, even though he describes the website as “the Macdaddy of them all.”

Batali also spent a lot of time talking about his efforts to combine the need of a restaurant to make money and create delicious food with his desire to maintain ethical business practices. He monitors the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch list to determine which species should be avoided for sustainability purposes, and ensures that all of his restaurants are LEED Platinum certified. Batali insists that all of his efforts serve to make food “more tasty intellectually, and also on your tongue.” Eating without guilt—or with as little guilt as possible—is high on Batali’s list of priorities. “I want my kids to be able to eat bluefin tuna,” he said, “which is why I don’t serve it in my restaurants.” He acknowledges that as a chef, he is “a firm believer in the environment as the first thing we should be protecting.” This commitment to proper choice and sourcing of products is a lesson that Batali is most focused on imparting in his new book. “All the books that I write,” Batali intones, “are about helping someone make something delicious by themselves.” This book, more than any other, stresses that the “best way to make the most delicious food is to find the best products,” rather than the classical recipe-based approach of his other cookbooks. The best products, for Batali, come from local farmer’s markets that not only support the farmers economically, but also feature products devoid of unnatural growing and feeding practices.

Batali is unquestionably devoted to sustainability, provided it is mingled with the pursuit of deliciousness. The best way for college students to pursue those dual goals and change the food system for the better, Batali says, is to “become a part of the system…Find out what farming really is, what processing is, what serving is: Find how food gets to where we are.” And there is no set path to that immersion, he stressed. Given Batali’s college major—business management and Spanish Theater of the Golden Age—your choice of major matters less than the magnitude of your passion. “I stand firmly in the hedonist crowd,” he concludes. “I find pleasure and delight in all the things that I do.”

And to the inevitable question as to which current New Haven pizza purveyor served up the best slice, Batali provided the perfect answer: “Not to diminish the greatness of Pepe’s, Sally’s and Modern…but I’ve heard on good rumor and good taste that the Yale Farm students’ pizza is the best.”

Still trying to justify the hours of your life you’ve devoted to the wizarding world? Now you can tell yourself you were learning science history all along!

Grab the neglected broomstick/swiffer from your suite, wedge it between your thighs, and go to the John Hay Whitney Medical Library to see Harry Potter’s World, Renaissance Science, Magic and Medicine, a traveling exhibit from the National Library of Medicine from Monday, January 19, 2015 – Saturday, February 28, 2015. If you find yourself waiting behind someone in costume with a cauldron, you’re in the right place.

Outside the plastic tarp, the early autumn breeze sweeps over the farm, but inside, the air is warm and still. Sweat drips down my back and condenses in little drops on my lips and the back of my arms. It’s Friday afternoon, and I have found myself meandering through neat rows of tomatoes that creep upwards on their stalks, taller than I can reach. We twist them off the vines, and Bumblebees, Cherries, and mottled Tiger varieties soon fill teal pint-sized containers. When I sneak a bite of one, the skin gives way to intoxicating sweetness. In fewer than twenty hours, these tomatoes—along with bunches of kale and chard, three types of eggplant, hot and sweet peppers, green beans, and potatoes—will be on sale at the Wooster Square Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning for anyone who stops by the Yale Farm’s booth.

In the shade of the wood-and-brick pavilion that overlooks the farm, Emmett Hedin, PC ’17, a farm manager, rubs dirt-streaked hands over his knees. “There’s nothing like picking something out of the ground that you can sell the next day,” he said, smiling. “To pick the produce, to bring it to the market, to sell it to the consumers…” He pauses. “It’s a way to interact with the New Haven community. The point of the farm is to teach students about sustainability and agriculture, but we’ve created this produce. We’re not going to let it go to waste.”

***

The next morning, under overcast skies, farmers’ market devotees flood the Yale Farm’s booth. Justin Wang, MC ’17, the student farm manager on duty that day, and Brendan Bashin-Sullivan, PC ’15, the YSFP market manager, man the table. They had met early that morning at the farm to harvest herbs and flowers to add to the day’s produce. By 7:45 a.m., they loaded the truck for the market, and the stand was up and running by 9:00 a.m.

“We were one of the first vendors at what’s now one of the most successful and biggest markets in Connecticut,” said Jacqueline Lewin, Programs Manager for the Yale Sustainable Food Project (YSFP). A group of students started the YSFP in 2003 to promote sustainable food and agriculture; in addition to expanding the sustainable food offerings in Yale dining halls and growing food-related education offerings, the YSFP founded the Yale Farm. At the same time, Jennifer McTiernan, CC ’99, JD ’15, was toying with the idea of beginning a farmers’ market. “Jennifer was starting a farmers’ market in the city at the same time as the Yale Farm was getting going, and [she] was looking for vendors,” Lewin said. The farm now sells its produce at the market from start of May until the end of the year.

“The funding we get from market is really helpful and awesome, but that’s not the driving reason that we go,” Lewin said. “It’s more of the community connection. Going to market is a complete breakdown of the Yale bubble. Suddenly, you’re a vendor, and you’re a part of the scene of a really robust New Haven market.”

Before joining Wang and Bashin-Sullivan behind the table, in the spirit of supporting the market I picked up a cup of locally roasted coffee and a banana-nutella hand pie from two other stands. As the next two hours pass, scores of New Haven residents stop by. I note, with pride, that many of the tomatoes I harvested go quickly; I watch a woman inquire about pesticides used at the farm (answer: none) before loading the rest of our green beans into her bag.

The last customer of the day is a woman, child-in-tow, who approaches the table and considers the three different varieties of eggplant. “I need four dollars worth,” she tells Wang, who nods and dutifully weighs a couple on a small metal scale. “This should do it,” he says, placing the eggplants into a bag and handing them to her. In return, she gives Wang four red wooden coins, and moves on to the next stand.

***

These red coins are the farmers’ market iteration of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps. CitySeed, the organization that runs the Wooster Square market, as well as four other markets in the city, is responsible for these coins. Nicole Berube, Executive Director of CitySeed, explained to me in an email that the Wooster Square market accepted federal benefit program assistance from its inception and, in doing so, became the first farmers’ market in Connecticut to use the wireless system that allows for the seamless transaction from benefits into coins. In conjunction with a program that doubles the value of SNAP when used for the purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables, the initiative has dramatically increased the number of low-income consumers at the markets. According to Berube, in 2005 consumers redeemed about 600 dollars at the market; she expects that 2014 will yield 12,000 dollars of SNAP purchases.

Margaret Shultz, ES ’16, is a farm manager who worked at YSFP and the market over the summer. While she said that SNAP holds immense potential, Shultz questioned the efficacy of the program. “[SNAP] is a really good way to give people access to fruits and vegetables,” Shultz said. “It’s not perfect though. It’s not a final solution.” In large part, Shultz said she questions the plausibility of those who would take advantage of the SNAP program having the luxury of time to travel to the market and then cook and prepare the fresh ingredients. Hedin, the farm manager, shared her reservations. “The general demographic of people with SNAP benefits aren’t people paying four dollars for cilantro, even with the double value program,” he said.

Back under the pavilion, Lewin and I chopped shallots and peppers that hadn’t been purchased at that weekend’s market. From our perch, we had a clear view over the farm. The tarp was gone; a rectangle of bare earth lay where it had stood. As we pushed the last scraps of vegetables into a compost bin, Lewin said that while she realizes that there are limitations to the SNAP effort at the market, she lauds CitySeed’s efforts to bring the farm’s produce to more Connecticut residents. “We know that mothers and fathers want to feed their children well, and will do so if they have the means. Well, hey,” Lewin said. “Here are the means.”

–Graphic by Alex Swanson