Finches

When Lena was on the staff of Oberlin College’s alternative campus newspaper, the Grape, she helped the editor buy a number of finches for an art project. She was put in charge of the finches because she was a girl, and therefore a caretaker. She kept the finches in the bathroom but they got loose. Lena turned to a dark corner of her psyche and called upon her experiences as an Audubon volunteer to hunt the birds down and coax them away from their freedom. She gathered the birds by hand. As she held them, they flapped their wings furiously in her hands. She compared it to a surgeon holding a beating heart in his hands – although she really didn’t know what it felt like because she was a non-surgeon. She recovered the finches and got them back in their cages.

Oberlin College

Lena had...