Ghost Bible issue one est. in Lancaster, PA
Edited by Audrey Lee ghostbible.tumblr.com ghostbible1@gmail.com Twitter: @ghost_bible Send mail, your own zines, and candy wrappers to Audrey Lee #1610 P.O. Box 3220 Lancaster, PA 17604
ghost bible is a zine for the bodiless & the faithless & the searching for these things. we are based in the lovely small city of lancaster, pennsylvania & celebrate our local writers, artists, musicians, photographers, thinkers, & everyone in between. we focus on the independent, the marginalized, the intersectional, & the understated. this is our first issue. we’d like to thank our contributors from across the world, our readers in coffee shops & stores & bedrooms in lancaster and beyond, & local businesses that stock us in their walls.
Grix Grix (they/them) is an award-winning, Pushcart-nominated writer and visual artist in Wilmington, Delaware. Their work focuses on disability, gender, trauma, and systems from a neurodiverse perspective. Their work is published internationally in numerous journals and anthologies. Grix has two collections: Systems Askew (2019), and Forsythia, which is forthcoming. Grix is the Founder and EIC for Human/Kind Journal and Human/Kind Press, and an Associate Editor at both Sonic Boom and Yavanika Press. They are more of a cats, dogs, and unicorns person than a people person. Twitter: @metagrix Website: metagrix.com
On the Subject of Being (A Mythical Creature)
I’m making tea on a lazy day and feeling like this narwhal on my Trader Joe’s Candy Cane Green Tea container. Three ornaments are hung from its tusk like the three genders people try to box me in: he, she, and was-one-and-is-now-the-other. But my gender is more like an intersection of the many ingredients that comprise this tea: the fresh peppermint that bites if you get too close, the astringent orange peel you’re not quite sure you like, and the vanilla beans that win you over—all in a sea of fervent green tea. Like the narwhal, I understand there is confusion about my state of being. I am viewed differently in a variety of settings and even within my own head from day to day, hour to hour. When I feel strong, I stand dominant with my arctic ice pick ready to take on anyone who questions me. Other times, I sulk into the cerulean depths of my fear and overwhelm. And yet others, I make myself visible yet offer no explanation nor seek validation for merely existing.
Sarah Lilius Sarah Lilius is the author of four chapbooks, including GIRL (dancing girl press, 2017), and Thirsty Bones (Blood Pudding Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in the Denver Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, Entropy, and Fourteen Hills. She lives in Virginia with her husband and sons. Her website is s arahlilius.com.
Church Bones
At church we pass around our bones. How absurd to hold a femur, still bloody, in your hands while finding Jesus across pages of the Bible, bloody fingerprints in the corners. The church says bones are better than money. I heard Nancy has a cracked rib, Alice has osteoporosis. Ace fell down stairs last night, broke two. May we pray. Buddy limps to his pew without help. His arms are flaps of skin without a humerus, left and right. The bones, hard in my hands make me think I might leave the church,
full of bones, determined.Â
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Haunting Me
He’s dead as an answer. The wood paneling of his basement repeats without a sound. Memory gaps like the space underneath a short bridge. I was once so young. Now I can’t remember how to do up shoelaces. My fingers break like a story taking hold in the nighttime. Everything has a face, a thin body that moves on the stairs behind me effortlessly. Shadows are structures of ease and rainwater. The delicate sound of red and brown leaves, my scream covered by a hand as the colors hit cold pavement outside the window. I don’t get away but I try. His pale skin testifies and wins the prize. Later and always, a grand horse
trots from the barn. That farm is where I live now. The grass doesn’t grow back where it should. A starving horse keeps my mind on agony, on what’s broken. But the sturdy fence, a perfect rectangle, no gate, splinters on my body, stays sturdy like a man, in all kinds of weather it’s what never falls down.
Juliet Cook Juliet Cook's poetry has appeared in a multitude of magazines. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, including "From One Ruined Human to Another" (Cringe-Worthy Poets Collective/Dark Particle, 2018) "DARK PURPLE INTERSECTIONS (inside my Black Doll Head Irises)" (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 9, 2019) and "Another Set of Ripped-Out Bloody Pigtails" (The Poet's Haven, 2019). She has another chapbook, "The Rabbits with Red Eyes" forthcoming from Ethel Zine & Micro-Press. Cook's first full-length poetry book, “Horrific Confection", was published by BlazeVOX. Her most recent full-length poetry book, "Malformed Confetti" was published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2018.
Animals
She wants to prove she can remove her pet fish from its confined cage, but its cage is filled with water. Her carpet is dry. Her pet falls from her fingers and hits the ground. Dusty shag rug covers it up and invades its breathing. Tiny bones break. A giant vacuum hides the remnants of this small destruction. Of course it is nothing compared to all the species being burned alive in their natural habitats. None of them ever lived inside her home though so why should it matter to her? She thinks she’ll be dead before the fire finds her.
Pat Richerson Pat Richerson is an erstwhile sailor, a reluctant Kansan who longs to return to where c’e la luna mezzo mare. He studies English and writes. His work can be found in Mangrove Journal and the University of Kansas’s Kiosk Magazine.
I want to live
This is an erasure of the transcript of a video available here:
no wonder if tomorrow never comes on the backside of the dark & if the black sky never gives itself away to the icy pallor a crack along the seam of heaven-- imagine me surprised when we never meet again & hungry sparrows carry me a million miles away away & away no wonder if we shuffle into creaking pews & sat together we are more alone than anyone thought possible. say then that the moments you pulled me at the wrist to guide me
were good were enough come flooding back to me come back to me. how will anyone believe I was here?
Tianna G. Hansen
Tianna G. Hansen has always been a poet at heart, though she has studied fiction and dabbled in creative nonfiction. In human form she runs Rhythm & Bones Press, giving space to those with trauma to be turned to art. Find more of her work at creativetianna.com or follow her and her wolf writings on Twitter: @tiannag92.
crescent
I feel tonight’s crescent blossoming in the crevices of my bones, song of my marrow burning loud & cold like steel lighting a silent night on fire. my heart dredged beneath dark tides brimming deeper with its ache. I hide in a shroud of smothered desire. no longer wishing to surface over clouded waters, I drown these shifting skins until my reflection gazing back ripples into a thousand shards of who I am. the way Hecate smuggles the heavens from each night I will steal from you the lifeblood in your veins. I worship every part of myself: broken & beaten pieces, the wholeness within. move onward at reckless pace seeking infinite ignition of my soul. moon waxes above & I wane, racing along forest paths, howl burning hot
in my throat, eyes wild with wanting.
Jeanna Paden Jeanna Paden (she/her) is a freelance health and wellness writer and copywriter. Her work has been published by Foothill: A Journal of Poetry, Her Culture, Pulp Poets Press, and others. Connect with her at PadenFreelancing.com or on Twitter: @HalfwayToItBlog.
2am
I hear you brown— eyelids collapse under street lights. No words a brown pull sidewalk chill, 2am. You twist up my stomach the way the earth bends the colors of water in crevices at our feet. Cold skin you don’t speak but I listen still, bewitched. I hear you brown your warm breath evaporates in the wind, caressing visions, as close as rain in the crooks of my body.
Opryland after Aaron West
I’m walking on stilts in the bookstore chaos as a motion as a background drum beat only I can hear, the intercom crackles I expect someone to tell me I’m in the way again stop and go conversations, half acquaintances stand in the back and shuffle peg feet swivel neck where am I allowed to be click-clack the stilts underfoot, look up don’t look anyone in the face look in the periphery I am a periphery person if I get high enough maybe I’ll turn into a bat maybe I’ll vomit black and my skin will stain
Sarah Summerson Sarah Summerson (she/her) is a poet hailing from small-town central Pennsylvania. Her work has been featured in a variety of publications including Confluence Magazine, OTHER Magazine, Tilde, Weaving the Terrain, and peculiar. She is also a winner of the Academy of American Poets College Poetry Prize and a Pushcart Prize Nominee. You can follow her on Twitter @SarahSummersun for all the tidbits that couldn't find a home in a poem.
Symptom: I reread The Island of Dr. Moreau
London is a heavy year and all the poems I write become medicine cabinets I root through counting the ways I am now a stranger to myself: I drug myself with antihistamines in my stupor, send vials of pig’s blood to foreign presidents I learn how to make decadent cocktails out of smog, I sleep with a sprig of sage under my tongue
Symptom: horticulture of the body
daffodils bloom from my sternum they commune with my shoulders gossiping into the hollows of my collar bones such mouthy flowers, I have trouble stifling their sprouting sick of their discourse I research how to make a sound proof room of my chest I try binding, try the strappy muzzle of a bandeau try brandishing them on street corners to shy them into silence but they only grow bolder they bat their eyelash filaments at passerby they speak in vowels boaty oooohhs and uuuuuhs like from the toothless mouth of a Marseillais their catcalls clumsy like babies’ first words cooed and shapeless I begin carrying clippers on bad days a last-ditch effort at subduing the outspoken bulbs but even their trimmings hiss at me
Stuart Buck Stuart Buck is a visual artist and award winning poet from North Wales, UK. His third collection of poetry, 'Portrait of a Man on Fire' is due for release Nov 2020 on Rhythm n Bones Press. His art can be found in many journals, both in print and online. Twitter: @stuartmbuck
Knife Angel (digital photo manipulation)
Edward Lee Edward Lee's (he/him) poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. His debut poetry collection "Playing Poohsticks On Ha'Penny Bridge" was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Lewis Milne, Orson Carroll, Blinded Architect, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at edwardmlee.wordpress.com.
WARMTH
I would rather go cold than burn words, says the man living in his cave, alone, save for the words at his fingertips, and the worlds in his head, some his, most born from the minds of others; his nights are cold, but when sleep comes, as it sometimes does, his dreams are warm, his dreams are warm, and full of lives worth dying for.
To Climb Into the Cold Night (digital image)
No, Not This Night ( digital image)
H.E. Grahame H.E. Grahame (she/they) is a writer, poet with work featured in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Variety Pack, Call Me {Brackets}, Brave Voices, Z Publishing House’s Emerging Poets and Writers series, and SLCC Folio, and student at the University of Utah studying Writing and Rhetoric and Gender Studies. She works as a Writing Consultant/Tutor and Publications Coordinator for Salt Lake Community College. She enjoys cooking, travel, photography, music, and words. Website: www.HEGrahame.weebly.com
One Moment
One smile to start rapport. One laugh. One grin. across tables of dim dinner discourse A pizza and coke. Bowling and songs. Within moments we were on a soulmate-crash-course. One note to start a song. One chant. One cheer. Across a mob of grand guitar glimmer Drumbeats and bass. Passion and dance. Unclear when we became more than migrant shimmer. One shift to start a dance. One skip. One stride. Across splashes of star-speckled skyline Hillsides and gin. Waltzing and words. Inside knowing always that our lives would entwine From one moment. One love. One breath. One friend. To one million moments without an end
Jeremy Mauser Jeremy Mauser is a sophomore at Franklin & Marshall College and is pursuing an undergraduate degree in English-Creative Writing & Spanish. His writing can also be found in boy-band and Reviewing Shakespeare. You can find Jeremy on Instagram (@jamauser13) or Twitter (@JeremyMauser).
Summer Nights, Winter Nights We tried to make love in the swimming pool. As our movements disturbed the stillness of the water, I thought of all which I sought to reacquire. I thought of gentle kisses under a moonlight colored by snow, of frozen fingers interlocking with unquenchable intensity, of icy tears freezing halfway down your cheek. Underwater, I opened my eyes when I began to thirst for air and thought you good for dead - your closed eyes glowed with serenity and your lips, slightly parted, welcomed the incoming water. But I didn’t stop. I continued thrusting, hoping to reincarnate those winter nights. Our skin, wrinkled from our exposure to the tantalizing water, melded into one and refused to break apart. I didn’t stop. But you placed your warm fingers on my ribcage and I knew that you were finished. We swam back to the still heat of the night air and treaded water, our eyes locked, mouths below the surface. As I waited for you to speak, your wintergreen irises made me think of recent summer nights: our loveless kisses, our lonely hands, our dry faces. A tear formed in the corner of my eye and I went back under, swimming to the bottom of the pool, hoping to lose the tear in the darkest depths.
Linda M. Crate Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Northwestern Pennsylvanian writer whose works have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print. She is the author of six poetry chapbooks, the latest of which is: More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018).
the moon won’t answer your prayers i only need moonlight was born near midnight on a hot summers day, i can always burn away any nightmare with my light; you stood no chance against me— thought you were the only monster, let alone the only one who could transform? i don’t hate being the bearer of the bad news that you were wrong, big surprise there; you mistook me for someone you could devour but i am the one that bites in this kingdom— your bloodied steaks repulsed me, but what could you expect from a werewolf? go ahead and howl at the moon, she is my mother and she won’t answer any of your prayers.
J. MacBain-Stephens J. MacBain-Stephens lives in the Midwest and is the author of four full length poetry collections: "Your Best Asset is a White Lace Dress," (Yellow Chair Press, 2016) "The Messenger is Already Dead," (Stalking Horse Press, 2017,) “We’re Going to Need a Higher Fence,” tied for first place in the 2017 Lit Fest Book Competition, and “The Vitamix and the Murder of Crows,” is recently out from Apocalypse Party. Work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Recent work can be seen at or is forthcoming from The Pinch, Black Lawrence Press, Quiddity, Prelude, Cleaver, Yalobusha Review, Zone 3, and Grist.
#12 Meteorite (composition varies SiO2 vs. Fe2O3(T) + MgO) on the back of your motorcycle thought to be descended from heaven I see the moon actually falling from the sky and the smells change from wildflowers, to factory, to creek my hands grip your waist so tight I cannot write later open new levels in me your fingers a new horizon feel busy but graze my bare knee checking in which is rare but found anywhere my awareness is safe like
the remains of a large planet I close my mouth to keep bugs out Breathe through my nose until back at the camper I pretend I am not scared to live
#13 Hematite (Fe2O3)
the half light
on my face speaks
above my mind grounding
c ome to the here
the unrest but trying to get out
my edges turn red trail easily struck
dug out of the world
moss near my feet
the now
shatters
the fears in my pocket
or the opposite
hide magic the glimpse of back packs by falling rocks
the cliff
stay too long fading up the
moving towards feet
Note: the words in italics in these poems are taken from Essential Guide to Crystals by Simon and Sue Lilly, 2006, 2010, and 2018. published by Watkins Media Limited. United Kingdom.
Jonny Black Jonny Black resides in Riverside, California. As a child she was kept awake at night by poltergeist activity, later discovering that her family has a history of clairvoyance. These experiences have encouraged her to explore the impossible, fantastical, and the supernatural in her work. She can be found on Instagram @jonnyblackwrites.
DREAM DEATH
a collapsed lung and all that blood a fire. a fire. a fire. your sacred heart. the sky creaks and groans under its own weight as you wait for the day it finally collapses on top of you. some deaths are not tragedies. you are coming home and i will be in the morning. i will be in the morning. i will Be in the morning.
Entry Number One, Journal One: “ANOTHER SUN”
another sun rises over the dust. behind the haze honey thick and dark the skyline continues to rot I told you a story I half remember. the air stings the lungs burns the skin if we let it. like the silent hives we once watched the flies pick at melt the wax with their thin tongues and stomach acid soft enough to swallow. One, two three thousand steps above and between our necks we’ve traveled in lines in songs that never ended. You gave me your shirt. There was milk left on the counter to spoil
in that one house THIS IS WHAT WE GOT WE ALL BURN HERE YOU SAID WE GOTTA GET USED TO IT TIL IT BURNS GOOD. my chest fills a chunk of air Hey I’ll tell you a story I half remember
Jennifer Martelli Jennifer Martelli is the author of My T arantella (Bordighera Press), awarded an Honorable Mention from the Italian-American Studies Association, selected as a 2019 “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and named as a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Her chapbook, A fter Bird was the winner of the Grey Book Press open reading, 2016. Her work has appeared in V erse Daily, T he DMQ Review, The Sonora Review, and Iron Horse Review (winner, Photo Finish contest). Jennifer Martelli is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She is co-poetry editor for M om Egg Review and co-curates the Italian-American Writers Series at I AM Books in Boston.
Dear Quicksand,
When I was young-young with no breasts yet, I believed you were far more insidious, a real problem in the sixties: the sidewalk in front of my house might soften, become liquid under a hot-top crust and I’d sink, chalk in one hand, jacks in the other, crying to no one, or maybe just that cat, warm on the stone steps, or maybe those invisible worms dangling by their own silk spit from branches of the new maples. In a month, the worms would sprout gray moth wings and flock like angels to the screen door under the square porch light. Someone would miss me by then, I hoped, my little girl body curled and encased airless, soundless. I heard you crushed what you took in, like a cruel knotted boa, tightening around a narrow ribcage with each exhale. Someone said you’re tricky, sly—you looked dry or you hid under shallow puddles, maybe you looked like mud. Why do they call you quick when in all the Movies of the Week you starred in, you sucked a whole deer, a grown man, took them slow and smooth, until all that was left was a hat on your bubbling surface? But—you missed this, being unimportant as I grew older and replaced by other fears—as it turned out, the ground did open, but not the way you did, not like a soft spot on a peach, a bruise. No. The ground cracked open loud and fast, a sinkhole, a fissure. I fell in. It was hard. I echoed from the bottom.
Toxic Shock Duplex
Last night my ghost period came to visit. She dragged the white string from the sky’s cervix. What I hold onto will drag me for certain. My fearful life was knotted like a pearly helix. I’ve lived my life in fear of not existing. I found an old box of Easy Glide Pearl Tampax. The glide was easy, but the white bloomed toxic. Long ago, I found the cure for disappearing. To not disappear, to be found, almost killed me. Today I walked under the pink magnolia trees. But the pink lasts less than a day on the old magnolia — the leaves fall pearly and slick to the cracked sidewalk. I’m shocked when people leave or when they walk back. The ghost meant only to last a night. Period.
“On the night of the full moon in September, families come together...and they eat round food”
Mary Ruefle I hear Blondie’s “The Tide is High.” I hear someone asking to eat moon cakes frosted half chocolate, half white to fit in a palm. A billow of sweet pot smoke blows from the crack in the window of my old house and hovers over the ripe sleeping pinks of the Japanese cherry tree. Now, it floats out front, to the Andromeda bush, its white lantern flowers: tiny air blown masks. This is as far as I can go. Our old neighbor, the man from Palermo with the accent still, says he saw a wolf, or a dog about to turn. He went to get his gun. He won’t come back out or if he does I’ll be inside, deep back in the hall closet, up on a chair. I forgot to take down the half empty box for the blood, black handled shears rusted open, my sister’s gold glove,
a tortoise shell bowl with backless pearl studs. Everything happened at once and for all time.
Michael Igoe
Michael Igoe: Chicago, now Boston. He has numerous works online and print, recently in cabinetofheed.com, Spare Change, and Avalanches In Poetry. He was the National Library Of Poetry Editors Choice 1997. His website is poetryinmotion416254859.wordpress.com, his Twitter is @MichaelIgoe5. He enjoys urban realism, surrealism, and the night.
False Prophet
His reign comes to power, when he parts from a duo. He’s seen as handsome, sheltered by eaves shriveled in nooks. Gladhands gallery visitors lonesome at work adheres to bold lies in a forest of logic. A crook who makes passage with the clack of turnstiles thin kisses in detention. He wears his favorite shirt he won at an auction, plastered with pale bluebirds. You know he must adore it.
Cindy Veach Cindy Veach is the author of H er Kind ( CavanKerry Press, forthcoming) and G loved Against Blood ( CavanKerry Press), named a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a ‘Must Read’ by The Massachusetts Center for the Book. Her poems have appeared in the A cademy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Series, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, Diode and elsewhere. She received the 2019 Phillip Booth Poetry Prize and the 2018 Samuel Allen Washington Prize. Cindy is co-poetry editor of Mom Egg Review. Website: cindyveach.com
Dear Moon
You appear halved tonight— darkness your camouflage, chameleon, cover up— and when he says I was only half there I look up to you hanging in the skylight— Even eclipsed, half full, halfway you are not a fraction. Nothing is ever missing. You are not a part, a slice, hangnail, sliver, morsel, crescent, quarter, waning, or half-hearted. You are sum, whole, all there—
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Declared a Saint Before a Huge Crowd at the Vatican
Samia Shahid, Strangled, 2016 Today there is a new saint and I am strangled. With my scarf wound round and round I am strangled. My father tricked me into coming back to Punjab— I wear my blue scarf home to Punjab and am strangled. Some say she doesn’t deserve sainthood because she Helped the dying die. Yet, I deserve to be strangled? My father feigned illness so I’d return. Here I am, Father, in my beautiful scarf about to be strangled. My ex-husband raped me for marrying another. Father, For marrying for love I am raped and strangled. How can there be a saint without a God Almighty? I prayed to him, came to him only to be strangled.
Max Sano Max Sano is an intended environmental studies and government major with a minor in Arabic, passionate in sustainability, politics and diversity. He has been involved in F&M organizations such as IMPACT and Phi Kappa Psi, as well as research with Prof. Eric Hirsch in the Environmental Migration Lab. In terms of off-campus activities, he is a national correspondent for Planet Forward- an environmental storytelling and media group- and a freelance writer for the Urban Resilience Project, which focuses on domestic stories regarding environmental justice, conservation, public policy and green activism. Max loves to meet new people, practice martial arts and hike when the opportunity arises.
5 Tips to be a Volunteer or Activism Coordinator on Your College Campus
When my college experience began, all of these responsibilities and expectations and consequences and guidelines were really challenging to balance; to peer through all of the noise and find ways to do something you are passionate about on campus seemed impossible. After my first year at school, however, I had some clues about how I can do environmental and community activism work while also being a full-time student. 1.) Assess what your college is already doing. I was disappointed in my college’s lack of focus on what I perceived as sustainability or environmental ethics, in both the administration and the student body, that I did not even look at what it was doing. Upon further research, I learned that the Franklin & Marshall College Sustainability Master Plan was established in 2015 after several years of deliberation and drafting between the administration, faculty and students—a product of collaboration between multiple constituencies working towards common objectives. Nonetheless, I began pursuing other avenues to influence sustainability on campus. This includes collaboration with local CSA farms, including Homefields, Inc (see picture below) where students can volunteer some of their time each week in exchange for a farm share. Passionate about sustainable agriculture, waste management, energy consumption/use, upcycling, or another eco-topic? Find an ally- be it faculty or administration staff- to be both a soundboard for your ideas and a support mechanism to get matters moving.
2.) Communication is key. Communication can go a long way in trying to plan events or start new initiatives on campus. While keeping up with numerous contacts is not my strong suit, it has pushed me to have better organization, time management and transparency with both my peers and superiors. Many environmental groups and organizations love the free help and are often open to volunteers. Perhaps that volunteer work can turn into an internship? A job? The former was the case for me with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and Citizens’ Climate Lobby (Lancaster), where I became a project intern and social media coordinator, respectively. Did you do a community service event with an environmental group? Introduce yourself to that group’s representative, ask for a meeting to brainstorm and share your vision for environmental ethics or sustainability on and off your campus Who knows? Their projects or partner organizations may be working towards the same end. 3.) Expand the scope of what “environment” means to you. The environment is traditionally viewed as a single issue, which is inherently misrepresentative of what it should be. As Jim Sandoe of CCL Lancaster put it in that workshop, the only way to pass legislation like the Green New Deal or the Carbon Fee and Dividend Act, there needs to be a coalition of organizations pushing for change. Climate change, pollution, and lack of access to healthy food or clean water are environmental issues that disproportionately affect communities of color and working class neighborhoods. When planning events on campus or looking for collaboration from off-campus organizations, do not limit yourself to just conservation or sustainability. In order to holistically solve systemic issues and institutional failings, we as a society need to focus on environmental justice and how policy
can change behavior and restore faith to all groups, placing emphasis on marginalized, working-class and minority communities. talk to the members and/or leadership of an organization that is not environmental-centric, and discuss ways that it can be run sustainably or if particular goals/events align with environmental agendas. You don’t have to be green to be green, if you know what I mean. 4.) Collaboration, not isolation. You may be surprised by the volume and intensity of environmental organizations in your community. At least, I know I was. Lancaster City is a town of around 60,000 people, not including college students and commuters. Yet, I have been able to coordinate with multiple groups and their initiatives, including the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and their Riparian Rangers program, which is a volunteer-led group that monitors the health of riparian buffers throughout the county. There is a hunger for finding solutions to big issues like climate change at Franklin and Marshall College, just like there may be at your school as well, and all it takes is one person to begin a culture shift if there isn’t. Mention your name, your interests and why you want to work with that organization, and that is usually enough to spark a new dialogue. 5.) Get off campus! When I was a freshman, there were few organized volunteer events or activities that my college would provide for students. I found this all-the-more troubling when I began reaching out to numerous environmental groups in the area who were ecstatic that F&M students were interested in green activism, such as tree planting or invasive species removal. While it is important to educate students and provide workshops on campus, nothing is more important than immersion and community service. Getting off campus offers the educational experience for students while assisting environmental and conservation NGOs
with their own initiatives, which usually lack the manpower. Support local green organizations by inviting them to campus to showcase their products, services and background in the green economy. Talk to a local florist about showcasing/selling their greenery in your dormitory. Talk to your local congressperson or government about what their stances are on issues you care about or ways to get your student body involved.
Jaime Aelavanthara Jaime Aelavanthara currently teaches as an Assistant Professor in Art in Photography and Foundations at the University of Tampa. She received her BFA from the University of Mississippi in Imaging Arts and her MFA in Photography from Louisiana Tech University. Her work has been shown nationally and abroad in venues such as the Center for Fine Art Photography, The SOHO Photo Gallery in New York, The New Orleans Photo Alliance, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
La Llorana ( tea-stained cyanotype)
Swarm ( tea-stained cyanotype)
Rebirth ( tea-stained cyanotype)
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