Winter 2021 Issue: "The Beauty Of..."

Hypotheticals are especially interesting during a pandemic, as even our most secure plans for the future abruptly came apart in March, leaving us with a blank canvas upon which we could fantasize about what could've been. While concerts, trips, and get-togethers likely filled that canvas, I recently thought of the inverse hypothetical: what would not have been if not for the pandemic.

Despite the evident downsides of the disease, I wonder if I actually owe my discovery of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses to COVID-19. Without the pandemic, would I have found my way to Dr. Rouse's Wild West elective? Without taking her class, would I have found my way to All the Pretty Horses, an astounding novel about beauty and pain?

All the Pretty Horses details the journey of John Grady Cole through the wild Mexican terrain on his quest to become a cowboy, a real oldy. He enters the shining Western vistas as a boy with hope. He leaves Mexico as a man, hardened by violence. While the novel contains hundreds, maybe thousands, of worthy quotes, one stands out as especially pertinent to our time and to the content of this issue.

"He thought... that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong decifit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower" (McCarthy 282).

Dark and uncertain times produce beautiful feats. Our issue tries to highlight some of these "flowers" growing amidst 2020. And we urge you to use the pandemic or any other pain to grow as an individual (see what we did there?).

The club thanks Mrs. Baker (our lovely faculty sponsor), Ms. Herod, Mrs. Miller, and the Collegiate Tech team for their support in this publication. And to our readers, we hope you enjoy this batch of articles!

-Catherine Horner '22