6. Harbor Seals 2026

  Week 4: Talking Trees  Growing up as a Disney addicted child, I saw many repeating patterns in tropes and types of characters in every show. Popular girl, nerd, weird boy, weird girl, sassy girl, jock guy, emo girl, emo guy–the list goes on. Each type of character always had a far too similar situation going on. It makes sense why–these producers are trying to entertain kids.  Often, the weird and alienated characters always seemed to have unusual pets and talk to them. (I love you Ravi Ross ). But this cannot be any further from the truth. My backyard is the most social place for me. Let me illustrate. The summer before third grade was pretty traumatizing. I’ll save you the story and instead summarize the highlights. One hot summery day, I was to go to the pool with my siblings and cousins, when a terrible thing had happened in my house before my eight year-old eyes–terrible enough to get men with badges involved. Everyone dealt with their own rough emotions differentl...

Growing up, I always saw my mom cooking in the kitchen. My dad was always doing his office work in his room, and my sister would always be in her room. My mom had always asked me to keep her company while doing my homework, which I didn’t mind. I barely had any homework anyways. Whenever I took a sniff of the air, I would be hit with this amazing smell. No way a simple dish smelled so good, just after adding a few spices too.  Interested in what exactly it was, I would ask my mom to help, but her directions were always so vague, like “a little bit of this,” or “add a spoonful of that.” But it was hard to distinguish what exactly “a spoonful” was when there would be 10 spoons to choose from, each with a very distinct size.  So I just eyeballed it, and nearly every single time, my mother would just look at what I put, then at me and just have a face that said, “Seriously?”  But she was never mad. She would just continue and 30 minutes later the food somehow tasted even bett...

April 18th, 2018 Dear Diary,  Today in the car, I was speaking to my mom about what I aspire to be when I get older. I told her that my dream is to become a Supreme Court Justice—like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I want to follow in the footsteps of RBG, as she is the coolest person ever. I recently learned about the way she redesigned standard judicial robes to add a decorative collar: a jabot. She wore them alongside Sandra Day O’Connor and actually had a different kind for whether she agreed with or dissented from the Supreme Court’s rulings. Honestly, I do not find those robes cute at all, so hopefully I can wear them with as much style as she does.  May 15th, 2018 Dear Diary,  Today is my 8th birthday! Sadly today is a Tuesday, so I have to go to school—though I cannot wait for my birthday party this Saturday with all of my friends. My cousin gifted me a book today called You Can’t Spell Truth Without Ruth by Mary Zaia. The book is a collection of many quotes from Ruth Bade...

We’ve all had phases at some point in our lives, whether it be playing games like Minecraft and Genshin Impact, reading, or writing books for fun. As for me, while I’ve had all of these phases, there is one particular phase that has become essential to my identity: music.  Music is what brings me joy and motivates me to work, to study, and to be productive while I’m stuck in the depths of schoolwork. However, music is also more than that; it is the root of some of my strongest friendships. Last year around this time, I began listening to music from SEVENTEEN, a K-pop group. This was honestly pretty significant for me because I had stopped listening to K-pop for around three years. While I enjoyed their music, I don’t think I would’ve gotten as into them as I did if it wasn’t for my friend. After finding out that she liked SEVENTEEN, I became much more interested in the group itself.  At that time, I had known her for a year, but we were more of class friends than close friends...

  Hey Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl here.  Spotted: A, drowning in her own history. Or, should we call it like it is? A hoarder with a secret stash. Hidden notes from elementary school, photobooth strips from middle school, and every card she’s ever received. You can call it sentimental. Your mom calls it a dumpster. But, behind an unseemly exterior lies a paper trail of who you used to be and who you are today. On the Upper East Side, the past is just waiting for someone to dig it up. So, let’s dig in, shall we? No one holds on to a photo booth strip or old birthday card because we love clutter. We keep them to cherish the happy memories we’ve made. Or because we’re too afraid to part with a tangible link to those memories in a world where gossip spreads like wildfire… I should know. Without the drawer of remembrances, we fear our past selves will disappear—our first friendship fallouts or playground melodrama. But memories aren't all that we hoard. There’s a dark side to o...

You. Are. A. Larp. There is no other way around it. If you are reading this guide, there is only one possible outcome: You! Are! A! Larp! That is the first step in mastering the way of the “larp,” admitting that you are one.  What exactly is a “larp” though? And how do you become one?  The word “larp” originally meant “Live Action Roleplay,” a hobby amongst the gaming community where people would dress up in costumes and act out fictional scenes. In more recent years, this definition has been twisted into an insult, a way to call someone a “poser” of sorts. The word has been used to ostracize someone—to omit them from a piece of media. But with the omission of such a large number of people, the community of larps has grown to become an identity; to larp is to speak of the knowledge that you only know (which is none, that is why you larp.) That is what it means to larp. Without further ado, let’s larp.  Step number two in larping: Never fully read the material...

  Dear Paris, Oh Paris. It feels almost absurd to write about a place I have never been too, yet somehow, I feel as if I have known you for decades. For years, I have gathered little fragments of you through TV shows, books and stories, piecing them together until you no longer felt like a distant city.  Perhaps it all started when I watched Miraculous Ladybug and Chatnoir for the very first time. Through a screen, I watched Parisian streets shimmer beneath the city lights and surrender to the embrace of the starry night, while the Eiffel Tower stood illuminated against the darkness.  Then came a little Thea Stilton book about you, I reread those pages until I could almost feel the smooth cobblestones beneath my fingers. Somewhere along the way, my fascination deepened. I found myself tied to your triumphs and heartbreaks – cheering wildly when France won the 2018 World Cup, from that day on, and defending you whenever anyone dared say something against you. When you los...