Dear Reader,
Beginnings are exciting, alluring: they offer the opportunity for one to start fresh. We create new life within ourselves with a new beginning, a new dawn, with the promise of a new horizon on the way. As the first issue of the year, this is a beginning for all of us. Some of us on this campus are just acclimating to the grandeur of Pikes Peak for the first time, having left all we’ve known in pursuit of creating a better self on this campus. Some of us are returning for our last beginning on this campus, having already spent years navigating this elevation and these mountains. None of us know exactly where this beginning will take us.
But breakfast is one beginning that we can count on: whether you walk out of your house spooning grits into your mouth on an early Monday morning or lazily crawl out of your bed on a Saturday afternoon, the first meal of the day is an offering. Breakfast can be a new beginning for all of us, every day, and this issue seeks to remind us that beginnings can be found anywhere. Callie Zucker’s “Okeechobee is No Place to be Beautiful” ruminates on love and beginnings, where vulnerability is found in early mornings, in “that predawn period that threatens daytime.” (18) Emma Olsen’s “Serving All People?” and Kat Snoddy’s “Impeccably Painted and Politically Tepid” both meditate on how Denver’s restaurant and street art scenes are transforming the area, reflecting on how these changes are offering new beginnings for some at the expense of others (32 and 8, respectively). Hannah G. Peak’s “Small Town Chronicles” takes readers through Phillipsburg County, Kansas, where people and community are celebrated year-long in the Third Street Bakery and beginnings manifest themselves in the tradition of old (22). Ben Greenly heatedly and satirically addresses breakfast and new beginnings in “I Hate Breakfast,” where his abhorrence of the most important meal of the day speaks to his transition into this new beginning of college (12).
Whether you wake with the rising of the sun or roll out of bed when it’s already high in the sky, the decisions you make and the food you fuel yourself with set you up for the day ahead. The sun has set on Block 1 of this year, and regardless of whether it was your first First Block or your last First Block, the decisions you made, the relationships you developed, and the skills you honed have put you on course for the rest of the year.
Here at CC, we have accustomed ourselves to constant beginnings: every three and a half weeks we begin a new class, with a new professor and a set of new faces. When the block ends, we begin Block Break, which offers an opportunity to reset for the next beginning—but weeks turn into blocks which turn into semesters and years and one day, we arrive at the breakfast table before the first day of the last Block 1. It is August, and Pikes Peak is bare above the treeline. Maybe you make eggs and bacon and toast in your kitchen an hour before class, or maybe you’re eating a bag of dry cereal outside the classroom door, but either way the decisions you make for yourself this year will bring you where you’re supposed to go.
Cipher is excited to be on the journey with you.
Megan and the rest of the Cipher