Letter from the editors

Dear Readers,

Tonight, as production ended, we had a sign of the 2012 apocalypse. In a few months we will graduate into a world that pop culture (and the Mayans, supposedly) have set to end in few more. Of course we should not believe such nonsense, though we did spend the Christmas break of fourth grade surrounded by neighbors hoarding bottled water and aunts stocking medicines, believing that the year 2000 would also bring the end of the world. But the sun rose and we celebrated the birthdays that brought our ages into the double digits. The locusts never arrived.

More than a decade later (though we are not actually concerned that the world will end this Dec. 21) ice caps are melting, tsunamis are swallowing coastlines and when we took you to the Outer Banks last issue, we saw the flatness of the land to the sea. Even more jarring, one of us just spent her first snow-less December in Michigan. And as we put these last pages together, we experienced something that further unnerved us. Just as Michigan Christmases are white, Personal Checks in Krzyzewskiville are cold. Our necks are scarved, our legs doubly insulated in leggings and jeans and we sip whisky out of flasks to keep our teeth from chattering. We spent this afternoon in sundresses and drank lemonade at dinner. An hour ago, we danced to reggae in light sweaters as the temperature came down from 78. We hope the planet will still exist in December, but until then, let’s consider the issues near to us today. In this Towerview we see Duke students fight against a North Carolina constitutional change that will ban gay marriage. We learn about the lives of the state’s migrant farm workers and about that of a Duke instructor who was a protest musician in apartheid South Africa.

Your Editors,