LARGE 3 BDRM. at 119 E Liberty. 
All three rooms have sky light. 
Washer and dryer, central air. Heart 
of Ann Arbor, 7 min. walk to UM. 
One year lease. Avail 
able NOW. 
$2400 per month, $800 per person 
(room for three people). No park 
ing. 
Please call 734‑769‑8555.

2 & 4 Bedroom Apartments
$1400‑$2800 plus utilities.
Tenants pay electric to DTE
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3
w/ 24 hour notice required
1015 Packard
734‑996‑1991

5 & 6 Bedroom Apartments
1014 Vaughn
$3000 ‑ $3600 plus utilities
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3
w/ 24 hour notice required
734‑996‑1991

 ARBOR PROPERTIES 
Award‑Winning Rentals in 
Kerrytown 
 Central Campus, 
Old West Side, Burns Park. 
Now Renting for 2018. 
734‑649‑8637 | www.arborprops.com 

FALL 2018 HOUSES
# Beds Location Rent
 5 1016 S. Forest $3600
 4 827 Brookwood $2900
 4 852 Brookwood $2900
 4 1210 Cambridge $2900
Tenants pay all utilities.
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3 
w/ 24 hr notice required
734‑996‑1991

TWO BDRM APT. 325 E Liberty 
good location for two people. Apt 
above Per 
sian House 5 min. walk to 
UM. Free heat, washer/dryer, shared 
internet. Available NOW. One year 
lease. $1600 per month. 734‑769‑8555 
or 734—662‑0805.

FOR RENT
SERVICES

STUDENT SUMMER STORAGE 
Specials‑ Indoor, Clean, Safe and 
closest to Campus. Reserve online 
at annar 
borstorage.com or call 
734‑663‑0690 to 
day as spaces are 
filling fast!

HELP WANTED

P/T COMPUTER PROGRAM-
MER with strong math background 
and familiar 
ity with MATLAB 
required. Experience with C++ 
desirable. Individual will need to 
gain knowledge of immunology. 
Salary commensurate w/ exp. 
Contact: Dr Stephanie Evans: 
evansst@umich.edu

WORK ON MACKINAC 
Island This Summer – 
Make lifelong friends. 
The Island House Hotel and Ryba’s 
Fudge Shops are seeking help in all 
areas: Front Desk, Bell Staff, Wait 
Staff, Sales Clerks, Kitchen, Baristas. 
Dorm Housing, bonus, and discount‑
ed meals.
(906) 847‑7196. 
www.theislandhouse.com

SUMMER EMPLOYMENT

ACROSS
1 Jay-Z output
6 Reach great
heights
10 Attempt
14 White house?
15 Fair
16 Bear in the
heavens
17 Carnivores
19 Invite abbr.
20 Job application
fig.
21 Hang around
22 “National Velvet”
sister
24 Appliance
needed for a hot
bath
26 Got the ball
rolling?
30 Smooth-talking
31 “60 Minutes”
regular
32 Improvised jazz
part
34 Element
Prometheus stole
from Olympus
38 Latvia and
Lithuania, once
41 Harbinger of
spring
42 “Beetle Bailey”
dog
43 1990s-2000s
skating champ
Slutskaya
44 Davenport’s place
46 1974 hit with
Spanish lyrics
47 2015 NFL
controversy
involving air
pressure
52 Italy’s __ Coast
53 Like arf and
meow
54 Hallucinogenic
letters
57 “Pleeease?”
58 It consists of a
couple of
couples ... and,
when divided
differently, a hint
to something
hidden in 17-,
24-, 38- and 
47-Across
61 Writer Shere
62 Avant-garde
63 Font flourish
64 “Regrettably ... ”

65 Grasps
66 Like horror films

DOWN
1 What “nothin’ but
net” shots don’t
touch
2 Periods
3 Not leave things
to chance
4 Foldable bed
5 Succeeds
6 Tuned to
7 Daisy variety
8 Car ad abbr.
9 Botanical source
of vitamin C
10 Commuter’s cost
11 “Have a taste”
12 In harmony
13 Kiddie lit elephant
18 Somewhat
23 __ Taco
25 Lover of
Shakespeare?
26 Sibilant “Yo!”
27 Its motto is
“Industry”
28 “Cheerio!”
29 Jittery condition
32 Curriculum __:
résumé
33 Brief writer,
briefly

35 Words before
and after “what”
36 Dollars for
quarters
37 Biblical twin
39 Good times for
beachcombing
40 Indefatigable
45 Lummox
46 Lat. shortener
47 Russian country
house
48 Online message

49 Crush rival
50 Overcharge but
good
51 Chain known for
roast beef
54 Actress __ Flynn
Boyle
55 Show signs of 
life
56 Stand up to
59 Laudatory poem
60 Usual Hanukkah
mo.

By Bruce Haight
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/12/18

04/12/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Thursday, April 12, 2018

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

HAPPY
THURSDAY
ENJOY THE CROSSWORD

Classifieds

Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

This past Thursday, I attended 

a performance of the School of 
Music, Theater & Dance’s “Angels 
in America” written by Tony 
Kushner. It was an incredibly 
intense experience. While I am 
still not sure what the play was 
trying to convey, I am sure that it 
is an important message.

As soon as I got home from 

the play, I set out trying to find 
different 
interpretations 
of 

the play online. The dominant 
theme, as I learned, was the idea 
of 
community 
and 

the 
groupings 
that 

separate members of 
a larger community. 
This interpretation is 
backed by Kushner’s 
assertion 
that 
“the 

question I am trying 
to ask is how broad is a 
community’s embrace. 
How wide does it 
reach?” He claims the 
work focuses on the 
boundaries 
between 

communities 
and 

identities in American 
culture, 
particularly 

during the Reagan years.

To me, however, this thematic 

concept is wholly inadequate in 
describing the significance and 
meaning of the play. This concept 
is the driving force behind the 
play, the lifeblood of its plot. But 
it does not explain the questions 
that the play raises or the 
messages that it delivers about 
contemporary culture. At no point 
did I find myself questioning the 
breadth of a community’s reach or 
the intersection and limitations of 
these communities. If anything, 
the contraction of communities 
occurring throughout the play was 
predictable from the beginning, 
the 
boundaries 
between 

communities already having been 
clearly defined by the audience’s 
preconceptions. 
The 
divisions 

based on race, ethnicity and sexual 
orientation, for example, conform 
neatly to what one would expect of 
society during the Reagan years.

What then, I asked myself, was 

the meaning of the play? This was 
four days after I had attended the 
performance. I had been thinking 
about the play almost constantly in 
that time, and yet I was no closer 
to reaching an answer to this 
question than I had been when I 
left the theater. If anything, I found 
myself moving farther and farther 
away from a coherent answer. 
I had rejected political themes 
(too restrictive to the Reagan 
years); I rejected racial, ethnic and 
cultural themes (too narrow to 
fully encompass the religious and 
political allusions in the play); and 
I rejected religious themes (too 
infrequent and inconsequential 
to the plot as a whole). I had only 
been able to reject themes that I 
knew were incorrect. I was yet 
to find an answer that I found 
convincing: an understanding of 
the play that would finally allow 
me to stop thinking about it.

To this end, I was reminded of 

one of my favorite plays, Samuel 
Beckett’s monumental “Waiting 
for Godot.” This work, and the 
enigma surrounding the work, 
has always fascinated me. On 
the surface, the play is incredibly 
simple, almost laughably so. The 
dialogue can be prohibitively 
confusing when one first hears it 
— the rapid, illogical conversations 
easier to reject as meaningless 
than to accept as holding some 
meaning. It is not uncommon 
to hear laughter when one first 
witnesses the work, the bizarre 
nature of the dialogue provoking 
an immediate, though perhaps 
uninformed, response.

The more that one begins to 

analyze and pull apart “Waiting 
for Godot,” the more that the 
various intersecting ideas and 
interpretations of the work begin 
to venture out from below this 
seemingly 
humorous 
surface. 

On 
Wikipedia, 
interpretations 

of the work fall under many 
categories: 
Freudian, 
Jungian, 

existential, 
ethical, 
Christian, 

autobiographical and even sexual. 
Each one of these interpretations 
capture some aspects of the 
play but none have ever been 

universally 
accepted 
as 
a 

primary, or most correct and all-
encompassing interpretation.

I first analyzed the piece in 

my high school A.P. Literature 
class. Given the level of this class, 
we chose to use the religious 
interpretation 
of 
the 
work. 

Godot’s name was taken as proof 
of the God-like symbolism of this 
character. We spoke about the 
loss of faith in the interwar and 
post-World-War 
generations, 

trying to connect Godot’s absence 

throughout the play 
with 
the 
questions 

being 
raised 
about 

God and the role of 
God in 20th-century 
Europe.

While 
this 

interpretation suited 
the class quite well, it 
never quite satisfied 
my 
understanding 

of the play. Beckett 
himself was reported 
to 
have 
explained 

that the play is “all 
symbiosis.” 
Ignoring 

the questions of the 

authenticity that surround this 
quote, I have always found the 
very idea of symbiosis as the 
focus of the play to be unhelpful 
and unsatisfying. How can an 
entire play be about symbiosis? 
Is symbiosis not a basic aspect of 
the human condition? What can 
be gained from understanding 
the play as revolving around 
symbiosis?

As I have continued to analyze 

these two complex works of 
theater, I have slowly begun to 
understand that their complex, 
illusory 
meanings 
are 
what 

make them so engaging. In all 
my conversations about “Angels 
in America” I have never once 
found myself holding the same 
understanding of the play that I 
did before. And whenever I chose 

to revisit “Waiting for Godot” 
I find new thematic ideas and 
cultural references that lead me in 
different interpretive directions.

Fully 
understanding 
a 

magnificent 
piece 
of 
art 
is 

impossible. 
One 
cannot 
help 

but 
see 
one’s 
ever-changing 

perspectives 
and 
experiences 

reflected in art. One cannot help 
but see in art what one wants to 
find, the various interpretations 
of the piece slowly drifting 
to the surface of one’s own 
interpretation.

Though I still do not fully 

understand Kushner’s “Angels 
in America,” I am confident that 
I need not understand it to fully 
comprehend its beauty. Though 
I am no closer to understanding 
“Angels in America” than I 
was when I first witnessed the 
work, it is the constant journey 
to understand art, and not my 
theoretical final interpretation, 
that gives it beauty. Beauty can be 
found in confusion and confusion 
in beauty. It is the road through 
confusion to finding this beauty 
that gives art its value, and the 
ever-receding end of this road that 
gives art its timelessness and its 
intrigue.

Beauty of ‘Angels 
in America’ lies 
in the confusion 

COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN

SAMMY 
SUSSMAN

TV REVIEW
‘Vice’ explores juvenile justice in 
a moving sixth season premiere

The real tragedy of juvenile 

incarceration is that it robs 
children of everything we hold 
dear about youth: all of the 
innocence, all of the freedom 
to dream, all of the joy. Early in 
“Raised in the System,” the first 
episode of the sixth season of the 
gritty HBO newsmagazine series 
“Vice,” an incarcerated young 
man named Jabar says of the first 
time he was locked up, “I was 15 
years old. Five years before that, 
I was believing in Santa Claus.” 
It’s both a haunting remark and a 
recurring theme throughout this 
sophisticated, revelatory look at 
the juvenile justice system.

Vice Media’s documentaries 

have cultivated a bit of a 
reputation for sending white 
Brooklynites 
with 
unkempt 

hair to romp around dangerous 
locales, searching for the likes 
of Somali warlords and black-
market kidney brokers. It’s a style 
that’s grating at best, ignorant at 
worst and, more often than not, 
does a disservice to the subject 
being covered.

But 
“Vice” 
has 
an 

outstanding host in Michael 
K. 
Williams 
(“The 
Wire”), 

whose worldview is rooted not 
in 2010s Williamsburg, but in 
1980s East Flatbush. Williams 
speaks candidly about his own 
upbringing, marked by drugs and 
violence, and about his personal 
interactions with the system. His 
nephew Dominic, who appears 
in the episode, was sentenced to 
25 years in prison as a teenager. 
It lends him an instant kind of 
credibility — rather than being 
sustained 
by 
some 
perverse 

sense of adventure, “Raised in 
the System” feels motivated by 
Williams’s 
earnest 
curiosity 

about the institutions that have 

shaped the lives of his family and 
community members.

The charm and affability that 

made him so enjoyable to watch 
as Omar Little on “The Wire” 

is on full display here. Williams 
is an exceptional interviewer 
who is able to quickly establish 
a rapport with each of his 
subjects — whether they be a 
distinguished researcher or a 
seventh grader in Newark.

The U.S. has one of the 

highest incarceration rates in 
the world, and, lately, there has 
been plenty of excellent media 
exploring the policy decisions 
that have got us to this point. 
Ava DuVernay’s (“Selma”) eye-
opening Netflix documentary 
“13th” dutifully chronicles the 

history of incarceration from 
the era of slavery to the modern 
prison-industrial 
complex. 

Journalist Nell Bernstein’s book 
“Burning Down the House” tells 
the story of the cultural and legal 
origins of juvenile justice. In the 
opening minutes of “Raised in 
the System,” we see some brief, 
damning news clips from the 
’80s and ’90s — a Newt Gingrich 
soundbite 
is 
immediately 

followed by Hillary Clinton’s 
infamous 
“superpredator” 

remarks, 
reminding 
us 
that 

there’s an equal opportunity 
blame here. But other than that, 
the documentary doesn’t spend 
too much time on history.

Instead, 
“Raised 
in 
the 

System” 
focuses 
on 
where 

we are now and how people 
and communities are fighting 
to solve this problem. The 
documentary takes us around 
the country to visit various 
mentoring 
organizations 
and 

anti-recidivism programs trying 
to 
end 
the 
school-to-prison 

pipeline. These all certainly 

make for compelling subjects, 
but “Raised in the System” 
reaches its emotional heights 
when Williams speaks with 
people who have been locked up 
since youth — the incarcerated 
people we meet all show keen 
emotional 
intelligence 
and 

genuine remorse.

“Part of me’s glad I’m locked 

up, because I got my shit together 
while doing my years,” says 
16-year-old prisoner Danielle. 
“But it don’t take 30 years for you 
to get your shit together.”

And though the episode ends 

on a somewhat hopeful note, it’s 
a decidedly bittersweet one that 
leaves us with some lingering 
questions: Why do we choose to 
criminalize adolescence? Why 
does our society withhold the 
privilege of screwing up from 
Black youth? How much potential 
have we sentenced to waste 
away behind bars? What have 
we done? The issue at hand is a 
daunting, generational problem, 
and Williams has treated it with 
needed urgency and gravity.

MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN

Daily Arts Writer

HBO

“Vice”

Season Six Premiere

HBO

Fridays @ 7:30 p.m.

Though I still 

do not fully 

understand 

Kushner’s “Angels 

in America,” I 

am confident 

that I need not 

understand it to 

fully comprehend 

its beauty

6 —Thursday, April 12, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

