Lincoln Land Review 2009 Edition

L I N C O L N   L A N D

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review

Lincoln Land Review

Lincoln Land Review is published once a year by:

Lincoln Land Press c/o Arts and Humanities Lincoln Land Community College P.O. Box 19256 5250 Shepherd Road Springfield, IL 62794-9256 lincolnlandreview@llcc.edu www.LincolnLandReview.org Printed in the United States

By MultiAd Inc. Copyright 2009 by Lincoln Land Review. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the consent of the publishers.

Attention Lincoln Land Community College Students: Submissions are welcome from Sept 1 to May 1. All submissions should be sent via email to lincolnlandreview@llcc.edu along with a formatted electronic copy of the essay and a submission form. Submission forms can be found in the Arts and Humanities office, Menard Hall 2249.

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Editor’s Page For the past thirty-eight years, Lincoln Land Community College has produced an annual magazine of student writing. The Harvester began in 1971, and from 1990 to 2008, Professor Gloria Kirby was the editor—and this magazine presented remarkable non-fiction academic writing. In 1998, Professor Paul Van Heuklom began a new publication to showcase the best works from his creative writing courses and the LLCC community at large. From 1998-2006, The Ruptured Seed met that need with distinguished and eclectic work. With the advent of new editors, the time was right for the start of a new publication—one that combined elements of the two so associated with Paul and Gloria. Thus, last fall, The Lincoln Land Review was born and we want to thank both Paul and Gloria for their years of hard work on behalf of supporting student writing at Lincoln Land.

As new faculty editors, we have chosen visual art and written work from students at Lincoln Land Community College who were enrolled in the full range of general studies courses the school offers: from developmental courses where students work on developing basic paragraph structure and organization skills to the transfer level “introductory” general studies courses in composition, literature, or humanities that degree-seeking students must take. Readers will note that we have combined the best of traditional academic writing—some typical research essays, others ethnography or personal essays—alongside student poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. While the styles and genres differ, the care and talent is consistent: The work we present is the best from our submissions, and we are grateful for the opportunity to share it.

We would like to give a special ‘Thank You’ to the following: The LLCC Press, for funding and support; David Laubersheimer, Dean of Arts and Humanities; Lynn Whalen, Executive Director of Public Relations and Marketing; Ryan Roberts, Professor/Librarian; Greg Walbert, Graphic Design Specialist; Paul Van Heuklom, Professor and former editor of The Ruptured Seed; Gloria Kirby, retiring Professor and The Harvester editor for eighteen years, and to all the faculty who support our students in their academic and creative journeys.

LLR Editors: Deborah Brothers John Paul Jaramillo Alison Stachera Eric Stachera Thom Whalen

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faculty editors

Barry N. Clair The Religion of American Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Academic Non-Fiction Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deborah Brothers Alison Stachera

Christi Minick Broadening the Educational Horizon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Poetry Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eric Stachera

Jessica Mullens Stresses in the Food Industry Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Creative Non-Fiction Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Paul Jaramillo Graphic Design Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Whalen Student Cover Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suzanne Traylor

Table of Contents

Kellee Wempen Terminal Illness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Julie Anderson Broke, but Not Broken. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Tonya White Saving Green: The Metrorail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

ACADemIC NONfICTION Lacey Maulding Country Roads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Kady Fairfield Inferno: An Early Revolution in Education. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Bradlee Kendle Feeling Sad for Happy: The Lowly Heir in Death of a Salesman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Rebecca O. Spavone Let the Secret Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

MaryJane Okolie Junk Food in Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Michael Viles Teacher Interview: Ms. Debbie Smith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 POeTry Tyson Manker Song of Ty's Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Jennifer Howell Is it Really Sweet and Right? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Yolanda Sykes YoYo's Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Sarah Davis The United States: Signing the Ottawa Landmine Treaty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

April Ulinski Fireflies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Reverie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 For Justin, 9.24.2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Nick Hager Perverseness of the Human Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Stacey Bacon It's All Fun and Games-as Long as Someone is Getting Hurt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

CreATIve NONfICTION

Darci Dixon Small Family Farms and the People Who Farm Them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

William Sherrer Barracks Rat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Sarah Davis The Silence of Women/The Power of Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

April Ulinski Open Letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

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Author Bios Anderson, Julie: Julie wrote “Broke, but not Broken” in a Com 098 course with Professor Alison Stachera. Julie lives in Springfield with her long-term boyfriend and three children. She has been at LLCC for one year pursuing a degree in Business Management.

Bacon, Stacey: Stacey has not yet declared her major but she hopes to be an English teacher or a writer. Her essay “It’s All Fun and Games—As Long as Someone is Getting Hurt” was written in Com 111 with Professor Eric Stachera.

Clair, Barry N.: Barry N. Clair has been taking classes at LLCC since 2005 to pursue a degree in Church Leadership with the eventual goal of a Master’s degree.

Pastor Clair and his wife Rosemarie have three children: Christian, 24; Emilee, 21; and Audra, 19. His essay, “The Religion of American Beauty,” was written for Professor Bill McCall’s Lit 114 (Film as Literature) course.

Davis, Sarah: Sarah has been taking classes at Lincoln Land since 2007 where she is an Elementary Education major. Her research paper “The United States: Signing the Ottawa Landmine Treaty” was written in Com 112 with Instructor Tiffany-Ann Elliott. Sarah’s essay “The Silence of Women/The Power of Men” was a response essay for Professor Deborah Brothers’ Women’s Literature (Lit 147) course. Sarah enjoys reading, dance, and photography.

Dixon, Darci: Darci’s ethnographic essay “Small Family Farms and the People Who Farm Them” was written for Com 111 with Professor Deborah Brothers. Darci lives in Athens with her parents and four siblings. She is currently pursuing an Associate’s degree in Education and plans to transfer to UIS to earn a Bachelor’s degree and, eventually, a graduate degree. She enjoys arts and crafts, sewing, reading, computers, and being in the great outdoors. fairfield, Kady: Kady majored in Secondary Education with a specialization in history both at LLCC and Augustana College. Her essay “The Inferno: An Early Revolution in Education” was developed for Professor Paul Van Heuklom’s Literary Masterpieces course, which Kady took after receiving her B.A. degree. Kady enjoys watching movies, visiting historic sites, walking her dog, and spending time with friends and family.

Hager, Nick: Nick wrote “Perverseness of the Human Mind” as part of Professor Marlene Emmons’ requirements for Com 112. Nick is a Computer Science major working on an Associate’s degree in science with an emphasis in Liberal Arts/Computer Science. He has been taking classes at LLCC since 2007 and enjoys cars, four-wheeling and kayaking.

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Howell, Jennifer: Jennifer Howell lives in Virden, but her hometown is Odin, IL. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends and is a waitress at the Star 66 Café in Springfield. Jennifer wrote “Is It Really Sweet and Right?” in Lit 110, Introduction to Poetry, with Professor Eric Stachera.

Kendle, Bradlee: “Feeling Sad for Happy” developed in Professor Theresa Kanoza’s Spring 2008 Introduction to Drama course (Lit 112) after Bradlee read Death of a Salesman. Bradlee attended LLCC before transferring to Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO. where he is majoring in English Education. manker, Tyson: Tyson Manker lives in Jacksonville, IL and attends LLCC’s Western Region Education Center where he is working on his Associate’s degree in Liberal Arts with an emphasis in Political Science. His interests include playing music, history, animals and the environment, government, and motorcycles. His poem “Song of Ty’s Self” was written for Professor George Vaughn’s LIT 211 class. maulding, Lacey: Lacey Maulding plans to teach high school English. She will soon transfer to Illinois State University, where she will continue her English Education degree. Lacey’s interests are politics and reading, and she currently lives with her parents, William and Cynthia Maulding. Lacey’s essay “Country Roads” was written in Com 111 with Professor Deborah Brothers. minick, Christi: Christi Minick lives in Springfield, and is currently working toward an Associate’s degree to pursue a career in physical therapy. She has been taking classes at LLCC for two years, and her essay “Broadening the Educational Horizon” was developed in Com 111 with Professor Eric Stachera. Christi enjoys running, swimming, art, music, traveling abroad and all aspects of medical science. mullens, Jessica: Jessica Mullens works at Steak and Shake and lives in Jacksonville, where she spends time with her husband Jeremy and her two children. She is working on a degree in Occupational Therapy and has attended Lincoln Land for two years. Jessica enjoys writing poetry in her spare time. Her essay “Stresses in the Food Industry Business” came from her Com 099 course with Instructor Ellen Stahr.

Okolie, Sr. maryJane: Originally from Nigeria, Sr. MaryJane Okolie now lives in Springfield, where she works at Brother James Court and hopes to become an R.N. She enjoys reading, singing and listening to music, riding her bike, and playing volleyball. She wrote her argumentative essay “Junk Food in Schools” in Professor Alison Stachera’s Spring 2008 Com 099 course.

Sherrer, William: William Sherrer is from Springfield and attended Mt. Pulaski High School. William plans to study literature in the future and enjoys reading, writing and martial arts. His essay “Barrack’s Rat” was written in Professor John Paul Jaramillo’s Lit 150 course.

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Spavone, rebecca O.: Rebecca Spavone lives in Springfield and has attended LLCC for the past two years. She is majoring in Accounting. Rebecca wrote “Let the Secret Out” for Com 112 with Instructor Tiffany-Ann Elliott. Rebecca enjoys being a part of her online writing group, playing card and board games, and eating BaskinRobbins ice cream. She is engaged to Shawn Windisch.

Sykes, yolanda: Yolanda Sykes lives in Jacksonville, IL and attends LLCC’s Western Region Education Center where she is working on her Associate’s degree in Liberal Arts with an emphasis in Business. After 25 years of marriage, she has three adult sons, one special needs child, and four grandchildren. Her poem “YoYo’s Song” was written for Professor George Vaughn’s LIT 211 class.

Ulinski, April: April Ulinski is from Springfield. She plans to acquire a BA in English or Psychology and teach at the college level. She enjoys writing, singing, and listening to the rain. Her essay “Open Letter” was written in Professor John Paul Jaramillo’s Lit 150 course, and the poems Fireflies, Reverie and For Justin 9.24.2007 were written for Professor Eric Stachera’s Lit 151. viles, michael: Michael Viles makes his home in Jacksonville. He attended Lincoln Land during the summer and fall of 2008 but recently transferred to MacMurray College in Jacksonville, where he is majoring in Special Education. Michael’s “Teacher Interview” was produced in Instructor Linda Chriswell’s Education 201 course.

Michael is married to Esther Villes, and they are parents to three (grown) children and grandparents to five. Michael’s interests include cooking, traveling, playing percussion instruments, and fostering animals for the Animal Protective League.

Wempen, Kellee: Kellee wrote “Terminal Illness” in Professor Gloria Kirby’s Com 099 course. Kellee is from Assumption, IL. She has been a student at LLCC since the summer of 2006 studying music, writing, sculpting, photography, and drawing.

While at Lincoln Land, she hopes to find a major that she loves that will lead to a career in the arts.

White, Tonya: Tonya White lives in Springfield and is a single mother of two who enjoys reading and spending time with family and friends. Her essay “Saving Green: The Metrorail” was written in Com 099 with Instructor Tiffany-Ann Elliott.

L I N C O L N L A N D

review A collection of visual and written work by students of Lincoln Land Community College.

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LACEY MAULDING

Country roads Midwesterners face a dilemma—to stay in comfortable but unrecognized anonymity or to seek the more beguiling glamour of fame and fortune elsewhere.

---David Radovich Standing on flat ground, you can see miles and miles. On a good clear day you may be able to see a couple towns, marked by their pride-painted water towers. Thing is, you can drive straight for hours on country roads, but you’re going nowhere fast. Lot of people out here never come to find how confining all the wide open space is, cause they’ve never tried to get out; they never knew anything else--never will.

Old mansion road Scanning the expanse of harvested cornfields on both sides of the narrow gravel road, there weren’t a lot of places to hide a caravan of old, beat-up, hand-medown cars. I followed the two ahead of me, two friends by my side. They pulled off where the old mansion used to be. Rumor had it that Al Capone used to hide there back in the 20’s. Wasn’t much now; it was burned down a couple decades past, leaving nothing but the ground below. There were a couple old silos still standing. They looked like skyscrapers against the mural of the setting sun, painted colors of a cowboy cliché. I pulled my lever into park behind the other cars.

It was the perfect time: the sun setting in a palate of colors in one direction and the moon and stars faint in the other; the light breeze blowing strands of blonde hair from my ponytail toward my face, sticking it to a drop of sweat on my brow. I hopped up on the tailgate of the back of my truck, swinging foot-by-foot over the bed that was housing a couple old paint cans and a blue blanket. I lay down, arms behind my head, feeling the breeze from the heavens sweep across my body, listening to Ryan Adams still storytelling in the cab.

I went down to Houston And I stopped in San Antone I passed up the station for the bus I was trying to find me something But I wasn't sure just what Man I ended up with pockets full of dust.

I could hear the others talking through the music, “One thing good about living in BFE, there ain’t any cops out on the country roads.” The colors quickly turned to deep, midnight blue, the only light coming from the stars and a lighter that was going around. The tall man motioned to me, “You want a hit?”

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I looked around. “Can’t you just be?”

He stared blankly back, didn’t understand. Neither did I. I heard a noise, like a train barreling, but more intense, louder, more sustained. It was approaching. I got scared and I ran. I ran yards and yards through the tough, cut-down stocks and dove behind the silos. I could see my breath escaping me in clouds, squatting behind the aluminum structure. I read somewhere how important it is not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong. But I cried, cried like the way it likes to rain.

I’m going to paraphrase Thoreau here. ‘Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness, give me truth.’ Out here, the truth is all around us, consuming us. Looking out at the landscape, you feel invincible. You can see everything. But what are you really looking at? You’re looking at an endless expanse of the big empty. You’re looking at corn, beans, old farmhouses, and silos full of nothing but grain. And nothing more.

Cemetery road I could feel the grey plush velvet interior of her ’87 Pontiac Grand Am brushing against my bare arms as we went over every little bump on Cemetery Road. The midsummer night air was whistling in through the window leak, hitting me right in the face, cooling me down from being packed into a two-door car with four others. I didn’t know where we were going; I just closed my eyes and soaked in the words of Johnny Cash that were flowing from the speakers behind my head. We drove, far into the dark night, nothing visible but stars and a full moon ahead. The car slowing and the sound of spitting gravel, opened my eyes to a sea of headstones, crooked and cracked from time--the same killer of those below. Immediately, I was overwhelmed with fear, not sure why, I didn’t believe in ghosts. All my friends quickly unbuckled their belts, opening the wide doors of the coupe and filing out.

“Aren’t you comin’?” he asked.

“I’ll wait here” I said quietly, picturing the reaper walking up to the window and knocking, scythe in hand.

“Ghosts can move through walls you know.”

I nodded.

The car door slammed, and I was left confined in the backseat, staring at the still glowing dome light that had attracted a few insects. The quiet sent chills up and down my spine, left goose-bumps on my arms and legs as evidence. Minutes passed, what seemed like an eternity.

They had been lost in the night. I wiggled my way into the driver’s seat, prepared to leave. I figured the spirits had taken them long by now. Slowly, I opened the door, evoking the lights once more and a dull ding, telling me to pull the keys from the ignition. Barefoot, I walked into the dark, my feet moistened by the wet dew on the grass.

I could hear them; I followed the dim light, the path of their lantern. Their shadows cast by a street light in the far off distance. I slipped, the cold concrete

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stone breaking my fall. I heard shrill screams and a stampede of flip- flops running from fifty yards, and then I saw: He was running in small circles, consumed by a black fog, swatting as if he were being attacked by a swarm of bees. I watched the dark mass envelope him in a force field.

We piled head first in the car. He came running in. I slammed the gas, spitting rocks at the memory of country ancestors, swinging the door shut as if I were blocking the tidal wave. We drove into the night with Johnny Cash still singing: Oh, bury me not and his voice failed there But we took no heed to his dying prayer In a shallow grave just six by three We buried him there on the lone prairie.

“We’re not the impassioned South, not the establishment East, not the romanticized West. We seem to fall between, an absence that stays the rest of the country” (Radavich 186). It’s funny how a West Coast to Midwest convert can so quickly recognize the unrecognized. California native David Radavich writes about Midwestern anonymity in his essay “Midwestern Dramas.” How is it that everyone who isn’t from the Midwest realizes that often we are a land barren to all opportunity? We settle, too far deep in mediocrity to fight our way out. It’s like throwing punches underwater.

mudd road Mudd Road is the closest we’ve ever come to a Roller Coaster. Just rev it up and gun it, you’ll go shooting down the hill, crying for mercy. We went for it and ramped it, shooting over the other side, the car bouncing like a skipping stone on the Sangamon River three times before it killed.

There always was something going on at Mudd Road, a party of sorts, but that last night I ever saw it, the skies rained down tears. There were trucks lined up and down the narrow hill, pulled over to the sides, kids all over as if we were tailgating at a football game. It was pouring down warm rain on that sticky night, sobering up our red cups. In a small town where everyone knows everyone and everyone knows the preacher, it sure is easy to get caught up in drama. Standing in my rain soaked denim jacket, my hair curled from the moisture, among other warm, wet bodies witnessing a fight as good as any action film. Two young girls livid and raging over some dull farmer’s son.

One was on top of the other, holding her neck and bashing her head into the broken-up asphalt; the blood poured out, was washed away by the rain and barely visible in her strawberry hair. Bystanders hooted and hollered. I turned away and sloshed back to my truck, head down, tears falling into collective puddles in potholes. I sat, hands on the steering wheel, rain beating against the windows. The stream can’t contain such withering rain, the clouds crack and growl, like a kettle singing its tortured song, crying out ‘I am, I am’ over and over again.

I didn’t even know that girl.

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Now all that’s left is blood stained asphalt, invisible to the night.

These small towns so intimate, so close-knit, trick you into thinking that you’re somebody, into thinking that this simple life ain’t so bad after all. Cause 20 years down the road when you see your old high school valedictorian who was planning on medical school pushing a pull-start lawn mower in front of an old trailer, little kids running around a sprinkler, you’re reminded. Reminded that standing on a water tower on a hot summer night, all that wide open space-- you’re staring at it: your nowhere future.

mechanicsburg road Leaves that had turned from green to gold, gold to brown, were now falling in with the sunshine through my sunroof as I drove along the back roads that ran from Rochester to Mechanicsburg to Buffalo to the town of the river. It was October and my sister and I were just making our way back home from the town veterinarian, our two puppies in the backseat, playing in the leaves like small children.

She said, “I love country roads. They’re so beautiful. No place else has this.”

The song on the local radio station played an anthem to our future, “You’ve got wires going in/you’ve got wires coming out of your skin/you’ve got tears making tracks/you’ve got tears that are scared of the facts/running down corridors through automatic doors/got to get to you/got to see this through.”

I approached the infamous intersection just down from Devil’s Hole, where every year good country folk die. A giant hill lies on both sides of the asphalt intersection ringed by corn and an old farmhouse with chipped white paint. I looked left. Then I looked right. I began to pull out as I turned my head back to the left and faced an old Mack semi-truck full of grain barreling along at 70 mph. I tried my best to get out of the way, as did the volunteer firefighter manning the truck, but he got me square in the driver’s side door, scraping all the way down the car and ripping off the rear end, spinning us in what seemed like a million circles.

I awoke to my sister screams, her beating on my door, trying to get me out.

I couldn’t see much past the blood coming out of my eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, but I could tell there wasn’t going to be any getting out my door. It had thinned and formed against my body, pinning me against the center console. The glass of all eight windows of my Volvo was in my hands. The car was rolling into an irrigation ditch. I pressed on the brakes but those weren’t much help considering the whole backside was missing and all. My sister, chasing the scared-shitless dogs through the beans got a scratch on her knee. I slicked my hair back with the blood on my face and hands. I never felt so alone as I did, riding in that old ambulance with strangers.

They told me: “It ain’t so bad.” “ It is!” I shouted. I was wearing brown socks with a black blouse. “Now I know why Momma said always to look your best when you’re leavin’ the house.”

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In a land so wide and far, freedom seems past approachable; a deceiving facade. But once you try to walk out those front gates the lights shine down on you like you’re on prison break from Alcatraz. I’m the one between the bars and lost forever now. If I do make it out I’ll be free with a history. If you were here, spinning in circles, the sun beating down on your shoulders, would you see then, what I see now?

WORKS CITED Adams, Ryan. “Oh My Sweet Carolina.” Heartbreaker. Bloodshot Records, 2000.

Cash, Johnny. “Oh Bury Me Not.” American Recordings, 2002.

Radavich, David. “Midwestern Dramas”. In The Middle of The Middle West.

Ed. Beckey Bradway. Bloomington: U of Indiana P, 2003. 185 -190.

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K A D Y FA I R F I E L D

Inferno: An early revolution in education The author Bill Beattie writes that “the aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves.” Beattie refers to the facilitator method of education. Teachers today are taught to use this model. Instead of the archaic lecturing approach, new teachers have learned that classroom instruction should evolve into a discussion-based format. Educators are instructed to no longer tell students what they need to know, but supply students the necessary tools in order to help students form their own opinions. Unfortunately, this style of instruction has not yet made it into the classrooms across America. Although it is considered innovative in today’s classrooms, it is by no means original. In fact, in The Inferno Virgil led Dante through the depths of hell using the facilitator method. Dante learned through discussion with Virgil and by his example. Through this relationship, the concept of arête has been broadened to include the virtue of listening to one’s elders. If today’s society can learn from the example of the relationship between Dante and Virgil, our education system will progress for the better.

The relationship between Dante and Virgil is that of a teacher and his student. Virgil does not act simply as a guide; he interacts on an intellectual level with Dante instead of just leading him to the destination. Virgil is Dante’s teacher on this journey. Virgil questions Dante throughout this tour of hell in order to make sure that Dante is progressing. In fact, Dante expects to learn from Virgil from the very first canto as noted when Dante tells Virgil “You are my teacher” (I. 85).

In order to be considered a teacher who facilitates, one must first lead by example. Facilitators must show students what is expected of them. They must model the behavior that students will use in the future. Throughout The Inferno, Virgil models the behavior that he expects Dante to mimic. For example, Virgil stated, “I will be first and you come after” (IV. 15). Virgil takes the lead in the descent on several occasions in The Inferno because this territory is new to Dante.

In addition, Dante learns from the questioning tactics that Virgil uses to speak with the inhabitants of hell. Virgil’s questions of these spirits are straight to the point, but somewhat polite. When Virgil questioned Pier he asked him to tell his story “may it please” (XIII. 87) Pier to do so. By the second half of The Inferno, Dante is conducting his own questioning of the spirits, and uses the same respectful tactics that Virgil had by “beg[ging]” (XXVII. 55) the spirits to reveal themselves.

Once Dante has proved to Virgil that he has learned from his example, Virgil begins to fade out. This is evidenced by the thirty-second canto when “Virgil has not spoken [for] an entire canto” (602).

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The other component of being a facilitator is to encourage your students.

Facilitators give students the necessary schema to understand the new situations and then leave them to experience it for themselves. Being encouraging is vital because students are on their own. They must learn from experience through trial and error. In this stage of the learning process, teachers take the back seat—they are there only to provide support. Later in Dante’s Inferno, Virgil fades out but is still present to help Dante. When Dante begins to grasp the information of this journey, Virgil “listened with a look of such contentment” (XIX. 122) and “caught [Dante] in his arms” (XIX. 124). Encouragement also encompasses advancing the student toward forming his own conclusions. Virgil asked Dante a fundamental facilitator question—“What are your thoughts?” (V.111). Instead of commenting on the situation, Virgil asked Dante to assess the circumstances. Virgil continues to nudge Dante toward the formation of his own judgments by encouraging him to “push your self a little bit harder” (XXXI. 27). Virgil refused to answer Dante’s question because Dante has the ability to answer it for himself.

Can the reader be certain that this method of education works for Dante?

The text of The Inferno provided numerous examples that audiences can look to.

One of the greatest pleasures for a teacher is to have a student have an “A-Ha!” moment. An “A-Ha!” moment is when a student makes a connection and the information he has gathered now makes sense. Dante has two “A-Ha!” moments at the conclusion of this text. The first is when Dante compared his realization to “the mist . . . lifting” (XXXI. 34). The second culmination of Dante’s education comes when he kicks Bocca “hard in the face” (XXXII. 78). Instead of being afraid of these spirits, Dante has learned to stand up for himself.

In Dante’s Inferno, the concept of arête has again changed. Achilles’ experience in The Iliad shaped the definition to mean exuding excellence in a certain manly virtue that people regarded highly at the time, such as skill on the battlefield. Aeneas expanded the definition to include exuding excellence on the battlefield and in the arena of diplomacy. Dante’s encounters in The Inferno have again broadened the idea of arête—this time to include the virtue of listening to one’s elders. Achilles had Odysseus as a mentor, and Aeneas chose King Evander as a confidant. But only through The Inferno do we see the importance of listening to someone with greater wisdom and experience. Dante is able to venture into the depths of hell and is benefitted by two things—Virgil agreed to guide him, and Dante learned from the teachings of Virgil.

Educational philosophy needs to take notes from The Inferno. Students today are bored in the classrooms because they are spoon-fed information. Teachers stand behind podiums and rattle off names, dates, and facts. Standardized tests are not challenging because students do not have to synthesize the information—they only have to regurgitate it by filling in a bubble. If more teachers were like Virgil, i.e. they were able to lead by example and encourage their students, classrooms would transform into exciting learning environments. Furthermore,

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instead of using standardized tests, teachers should use essay tests in order to gauge their students’ intellectual growth. Essay tests allow students to show what they have learned in their own words, as opposed to pigeonholing their thoughts into a bubble.

In The Inferno, Dante learned how to think, not what to think. He synthesized the information he took in and came to his own conclusions. Virgil facilitated Dante on this intellectual journey by leading by example and encouraging Dante along the way. This interaction expanded the definition of arête to include the virtue of listening to one’s elders. The unique relationship between Dante and Virgil should be examined and adopted by educational leaders so that our students can enjoy the challenge of acquiring knowledge and using that knowledge to form their own opinions.

WORK CITED Dante, Alighieri. The Inferno. Trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander.

New York: Anchor Books, 2002.

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BRADLEE KENDLE

feeling Sad for Happy: The Lowly Heir in Death of a Salesman In Death of a Salesman (1949), Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller takes us to the frontlines of a desperate family chasing the American Dream. Written in the midst of the Cold War, a time where the United States was going through an identity crisis as a world power, many on the home-front struggled with their fading belief in the premise that hard work would lead to success, as Miller illustrates in this play. In Death of a Salesman, the false promise of American prosperity inevitably sends the Loman patriarch Willy to his grave, where his internally vexed youngest son Happy is doomed to follow.

Though Willy prefers the affections of his once-promising oldest son Biff, Willy and Happy are actually more alike. Willy’s infidelity with “The Woman” and Happy’s numerous sexual conquests display the flawed moral judgment that the two share. Both doggedly chase the same American Dream, the belief that they can work hard and be rewarded with prosperity and happiness. They both retain an altered illusion of their own success: Willy is the self-proclaimed “New England Man” and Happy, off the clock, claims the title “Assistant Buyer,” when he is actually one of two assistants to the assistant buyer. On the surface, Happy is a difficult character to empathize with. He does not develop or grow throughout the play, has poor moral judgment, and appears to be incapable of self-inspection. However, an in-depth look at Happy’s character reveals that, perhaps owing to his beleaguered vulnerability, he may be the easiest character with whom to empathize.

The moment that first urges us to care about Happy comes early in Act I during Willy’s first daydream. Willy has come home from a long business trip, his boys anxiously awaiting his arrival. Amid the excitement, poor Happy is on his back pedaling his feet and vying for his father’s attention. We can imagine Happy running hard towards something with childlike innocence but getting nowhere.

Eager to please his father, he calls out “I’m losing weight, you notice, Pop?” (354).

All Happy wants is acknowledgement or some encouragement thrown his way; instead, he gets set aside by his father’s remark that “jumping rope is good too.”

Even as a grown man, Happy yearns to impress and please his father, as we see in Act II when Happy desperately declares, “I’m getting married, Pop, don’t forget it.

I’m changing everything. I’m gonna run that department store before the year is up” (350). Willy does not even seem to hear Happy’s anguish and makes no effort to respond.

While Happy tries determinedly for a little recognition of his own, his older brother Bill seems to be the star everywhere he goes. His coach has recently named him captain of his high school’s football team, and crowds of girls follow him between classes. Biff gets similar accolades at home. Willy lives vicariously

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through his eldest son, basking with him in his glory, leaving no room for Happy and his endeavors. Willy has invested his hope for the American Dream into the wrong son, Biff, though, ironically, Happy is the heir to his values. Yet it is no wonder that Happy too idolizes his star of a brother. In this same reverie Biff declares to Willy that he will break through for a touchdown, just for him. Happy responds, almost pleadingly, “You’re supposed to pass” (356). Happy’s seemingly off-thecuff response is noteworthy for its powerful subtext. In passing the ball, Biff would be sharing the limelight with someone else, something that, as it seems to Happy, Biff is incapable of doing. Happy has lived in the shadow of his brother all of his life, yet never once has he shared the spotlight. Happy has instead adapted to living in the shadows, a close admirer of people who shine. All that Happy really wants is that for once his brother passes him the ball. After Willy promises that the boys can come along with him on a business trip in the summer, Happy offers to carry his bags. Likewise, before Biff’s big football game on Ebbet’s field, Happy insists that he, not Bernard, carry his helmet. Happy has found his niche as a follower: just as he carries Willy’s bags and Biff’s helmet, Happy carries the burden of those close to yet excluded from the spotlight.

Once we fully empathize with Happy for being the second son in the shadow of his accomplished brother, it is easier to understand his illicit rendezvous with his bosses’ girlfriends. Is it all just a game of self-gratification to Happy, or does it go a bit deeper? In his sexual prowess, Happy has come into his own and found an arena where he beats the competition. Happy explains his lechery when he tells Biff about his latest conquest, the fiancé of superior: I don’t know what gets into me, maybe I just have an over-developed sense of competition or something, but I went and ruined her…. You know how honest I am, but it’s like this girl, see. I hate myself for it. Because I don’t want the girl, and, still, I take it and—I love it! (351) Happy realizes his promiscuity is morally wrong but cannot help himself.

Furthermore, his use of the term “ruin” provides a helpful clue to the subtext.

Happy sees executives living the life he yearns for. They are not working as hard as he is for the American Dream. They are unworthy, so Happy takes something away from them which he feels is not rightfully theirs. He ruins or destroys something they cherish to diminish their undeserved success. Although Happy resents the executives he works for, jealousy is not his only motive. Happy is lashing out at the promise of America in general. As a skilled athlete, he is, after all, able to “out box and out lift anybody in the company” (349). He is the better, harder, and smarter worker, and according to the American Dream, he should be reaping what he sews. Therefore, Happy has found a substitute, an attainable version of the American success story in the form of sexual conquest. Yes, his moral judgment is flawed, but we are able to understand his grievances.

Throughout the play, we see Happy struggle as our hopeless romantic, making it even easier to empathize with him. In Act I Happy reveals to Biff how he is far from content working for the merchandise manager, and Biff proposes that

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Happy to go West with him and buy a ranch. Happy replies with fervor: “That’s what I dream about, Biff…See, Biff, everybody around me is so false that I’m constantly lowering my ideals…If I were around you…” (350). Happy speculates that if he were to escape to the West with his brother where the two would do hard, honest work out in the elements, he would find gratification. But we know his commitment to the plan is doomed when we hear him idolize the merchandise manager: When he walks into the store the waves part in front of him. That’s fifty-two thousand dollars a year coming through the revolving door…I gotta show some of those pompous, self-important executives over there that Hap Loman can make the grade. I want to walk into the store the way he walks in. Then I’ll go with you, Biff. We’ll be together yet, I swear. (352) Our romantic character is a hopeless one, and we know that if he waits until he “shows them all” or until he is “number-one man,” he will wait his entire life and die a failure like his father.

Happy further establishes himself as dreamer in the Requiem. At Willy’s graveside while Biff announces his resolve to give up on the fantasy of finding success and gratification in business, Happy pledges, “I’m not licked that easily. I’m staying right in this city, and I’m gonna beat this racket!” (428). At this point, we can imagine these words being etched on a tombstone that looks much like Willy’s.

With his last line, we see our romantic is as doomed as his father was: I’m gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain.

He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have—to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I’m gonna win it for him.

(428) His declaration not to leave with his brother but rather to stay and win it for his father should not come as a surprise. Happy just wants to find his peace and to be able to finally say, “I did it for you, Pop, did you notice? I came out number-one man!”

WORK CITED Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Drama: A Pocket Anthology. Ed. R. S. Gwynn.

Pearson/Longman: Penguin Academics, 2006. 340–429.

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REBECCA O. SPAVONE

Let the Secret Out Imagine your secret. It doesn’t have to be dark, it doesn’t have to be deep, it just has to be true and never told before. Now take that secret and design a postcard around it. The artwork can be anything you want. It can be a photo, a collage, a drawing, any image you have found or created, it can be plain words on a colorful background. Create a postcard and put your secret on it. All you need to do is let your secret go. That is what Frank Warren wants you do to. He doesn’t want to know your name or anything else about you—he just wants your secret. Why not?

That idea of putting your secret on a postcard and letting it go it just as easy as it sounds and there’s no need to worry what others will think about you because no one will ever know. That is the draw to PostSecret—the anonymity that provides a safe place where secrets can be aired and healed within the community.

In 2004 PostSecret started off as an art installation for a five-week art event called Artomatic in Washington, D.C. The mastermind behind the idea was one Frank Warren, a small business owner from Germantown, Maryland. His idea was simply this: get people to anonymously share their secrets on a postcard. In order to do this Frank printed out 3,000 blank postcards and spread them about his community, asking for them to be returned anonymously with a secret. A surprising number of people were willing to do just that and the exhibit was a hit. Following the success of his art exhibit, the PostSecret website was launched on January 1, 2005—turning what started out as an art installation into a growingly popular website of secrets that has shared over 2,500 original postcards in the last three years. The number would perhaps be even higher but for two factors. The first factor being that the site—postsecret.com—is only updated once a week on Sundays.

The other factor being that not all secrets sent to Frank make it onto the website.

Even so, the PostSecret website has become vastly popular and has won a number of Weblog awards that include the 2006 and 2007 Weblogs of the Year.

Now, not only does the website have a large number of viewers anxiously awaiting the new weekly secrets, but there is also a PostSecret community with a forum where members can talk about their various views and feelings about the postcards that have been displayed as well as discuss their own secrets with others. In addition there is a place provided within the PostSecret community area wherein video secrets can be uploaded and shared, though fewer have taken this route. With the increased fame of PostSecret frank has gone on to publish four PostSecret books containing postcards from both those previously shared with the public on his website and those not yet seen by other. PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives was the first book to be printed in December of 2005. It was followed by My Secret: A PostSecret Book, The Secret Lives of Men and Women, and A Lifetime of Secrets: A PostSecret Book in October 2006, January 2007 and October 2007 respectively. What’s more, Frank Warren continues to partici-

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pate in further displays of PostSecret art installations in various locations on top of traveling to a range of colleges to head PostSecret events that are held on the campuses of the schools. (A list of these events can often be found on the PostSecret main page.) Several other PostSecret websites have been created, with the authorization of Frank, to cater to other non-English languages. These include a French, German and Spanish version.

It seems a number of people want to share their secrets with the world and not only those who send in their secrets to Frank. Since the publication of Frank’s PostSecret books there are those who a driven to create a postcard containing a personal secret and rather than mailing it to Frank they will hide it within the pages of the PostSecret books that are for sale, giving the buyer and added bonus with their purchase. Comments about such finding by those buyers can be found from time to time on the website or in the website’s forum. There have even been incidents wherein the finder of the stashed-away secret will then mail it in to Frank who might then publish it on the site. It is amazing thing to consider: a secret— something usually kept—given out and through that action not only freeing the giver of the secret but sometimes those who take it in as well.

The anonymous nature of sharing secrets, like the one provided by PostSecret, is important to those unburdening themselves. Secrets are harder to let go of when there is a fear that upon revealing a secret the revealer will be personally recognized and held accountable for it. Therefore, through the freedom of being anonymous, it is easier to tell a secret and with that telling lift the burden of a secret. And through the shedding of secrets, peace can be found.

The idea of sharing secrets without retribution isn’t a new one created by Frank Warren—though, perchance, he has perfected it. For ages the Catholic Church and various other houses of religion have held the practice of confession.

Perhaps it is not always the confession of long held secrets, but secrets can be the same as any of the seven deadly sins—lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy or pride. Those who go to confession do so to have a weight lifted from them and to receive absolution for their guilt. In confession a secret anonymously on PostSecret it is easier to feel less guilty about that secret.

What’s more, religious structures are not the only outlet for purging secrets.

Many processes for recovery—either from narcotics, alcohol, gambling, sex or various other vices—involve partaking in group therapy or one-on-one sessions with a counselor. During sessions patients are encouraged to discuss their addiction in addition to the life that led them into addiction and then into recovery. At time it is the dark secrets from the past, kept inside, that started one down the path of destruction. Through the shedding and understanding of personal secrets one can hopefully remain on the road to recovery rather than letting those dark truths from the past drag one down again. One common saying passed through Alcoholics Anonymous, a well known twelve-step program, is “You’re only as sick as your darkest secrets.” Letting a secret out puts it into the light and takes away the power of darkness surrounding it.

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Furthermore, since this is America, the sharing of secrets in a ‘protected’ environment has become a profitable venture for those listening—though it can be costly for the sharing party. People are known to spend large amounts of money just to be able to tell their secrets to a paid professional such as a therapist or psychologist. An act that is protected by the law so that the information provided to the professional cannot be used against the patient. This limits the worry of getting in trouble from one’s actions but does not take away the fear of being judged.

One of the strongest reasons people won’t share their secrets is due to the fear of being judged. Gaining acceptance from peers is a powerful force in society.

Why would someone divulge a secret if they feared it would cause others to disapprove of them or turn away? The PostSecret community allows for the sharing of secrets, free of recognition and accountability, to those who send in their secrets to Frank. By sharing a secret, not only is one released from that secret—there is too the chance they can release another with that secret as well. The world’s population is denser than ever, yet we are a society that feels more isolated as individuals than ever before.

This feeling of isolation can be considered to be even truer for those going through high school. I have seen several emails and postcards displayed on the PostSecret website since I started checking it that dealt with a PostSecret inspired project at a school. At some schools the projects were welcomed openly and created a sense of unity within the school. In other schools it was found that the materials provided by the students were not deemed ‘appropriate’ by those who were in charge. But what does that say about the students who share their secrets? More so, what does that say to them? It says to them that the things they feel are inappropriate and isolates them further, which is the exact opposite of the intensions behind PostSecret.

Who can feel alone in the world after seeing someone else out there has the same secret they do and understands completely how it feels? How freeing must it be to hold something inside for so long, afraid of how others will take it, only to hear those feared thoughts voiced by another? And in return, if a secret that has been shared ends up comforting another, wouldn’t the very nature of that secret then change into something not as dark as it was before?

For the April 20th, 2008 update of the PostSecret website a postcard was put up that did just that. It was a plain postcard, a regular one that would be sent by a traveling friend or family member, but on the back it carried not cheerful greetings—but a secret. The secret read, “I don’t have a closer relationship with my father because of child molestation and incest on TV and in movies.” (See Figure 1. TV 20 Apr. PostSecret.com Figure 1). It was later that same day that an anonymous email with the subject line, “’Father Molestation on TV’ Secret” was posted in response to that postcard:

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I read a book when I was very young that dealt with father molestation. From that point on, I was so terrified of the idea that my dad could do that. It ended up controlling my relationship with him. He died 8 years ago and guilt still haunts me to this day. I wish I could have been closer to him. I cried for the first time in years when I saw this postcard. I want to thank the person who sent it…it is my secret, too. I have never been strong enough to tell anyone about it. (Weblog comment) I have even experienced this myself. Two years past, for Christmas, I went to purchase the first PostSecret book as a gift for a friend who lives out of town. I had spoken with her before, knowing that she wanted the book and knowing further that her boyfriend wasn’t likely getting it for her. It was the perfect gift. Upon purchasing the book it remained in my possession until I was able to visit her a week or so later. While I had the book, I read it—of course. While flipping through the pages and taking in the secrets those pages held I was suddenly startled to find myself staring directly at my darkest secret in print. At first I was uncomfortable being confronted with it as I habitually became when I thought of it on my own, but after sometime my feeling changed. This wasn’t just my secret anymore.

It was a secret I shared with another. With this knowledge, the secret I have doesn’t bother me as much as it once did. I am freer for knowing it is someone else’s burden too and even though I remain unwilling to share it aloud, it doesn’t shadow over me as it once had.

Despite the testimony of my feeling, there has been no scientific proof found through the study of the keeping and disclosure of secrets that would point towards the effect keeping secrets might have on the human mind or body. In a study done by several members of the psychology community with finding published in the Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, there was found to be few negative effects from keeping secrets unless they were severe and no known positive effects for disclosing a secret to another (Aldert Vrij 56). A similar study was conducted by Anita E. Kelly and Jonathan J. Yip of the University of Note Dame’s Psychology Department. Their findings, published in the Journal of Personality, ran the same lines as those mentioned before. Though they state at the beginning of their article that despite Freud’s earlier theory that secrecy could affect one physically and mentally, studies have only just recently started to delve into the area of secrets and the effects they may or may not have on the human body and mind (1349).

In the face of a lack of scientific data, however, I believe that there is a connection between keeping secrets to ourselves and the health of our minds, if not our bodies. If the keeping of a secret had no effect on the keeper, there would never be a need—nor, more so, an urge—to tell someone else a secret. It is through this personal level of revealing ourselves that we make ourselves known better to the world that surrounds us. And through the discovering of secrets from others that shows us that we are not so different from those who live in the world around us.

Frank Warren is repeatedly referred to as the “Most Trusted Stranger in

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America.” On any given day that mail comes in he received 100-200 postcards containing the secrets of others. In expressing his view in a live interview that was published in The Washington Post, Warren says: I like to think that, by seeing the hidden burdens others carry, it makes our own a little lighter. My experience has also been that, by sharing intimate private views into other people’s lives, I have more understanding and compassion for strangers…and myself (Warren).

The PostSecret website does what no other site before it has done. It takes our secrets without question and without judgment. It gives us the secrets of others so that we may smile or frown beside them. It takes a world that is slowly failing apart as people become more concerned for themselves and it shows us that through unburdening ourselves and sharing with each other we can truly heal within a community of our shared secrets.

WORKS CITED Aldert Vrij, Joan M., et al. “Characteristics of secrets and the frequency, reasons and effects of secret keeping and disclosure.” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 12.1 (Jan. 2002): 56-70. Academic Search Premier.

EBSCO. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 22 Apr. 2008 http://search.ebscohost.com.

Kelly, Anita E., and Jonathan J. Yip. “Is Keeping a Secret or Being a Secretive Person Linked to Psychological Symptoms?” Journal of Personality 74.5 (Oct. 2006): 1349-1370. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 22 Apr. 2008 http://search.ebscohost.com.TV. PostSecret.com 20 Apr. 2008 http://postsecret.com.

Warren, Frank. “PostSecret Live.” Washington Post, The (n.d.) Newspaper Source.

EBSCO. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 21 Mar. 2008 http://search.ebscohost.com.

Weblog comment. “’Father Molestation on TV’ Secret” 20 Apr. 2008.

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JENNIFER HOWELL

Is it really Sweet and right?

After reading Wilfred Owen's poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" one realizes the irony the author wanted to capture with the title. Literally translated, the title means, “It is sweet and right.” Clearly one can realize after reading the poem that war is really the opposite of that. In fact, the poem depicts quite an unpleasant war scene.

By using imagery and figures of speech, Owen shows the reader just how perilous and despicable war truly is.

To describe how terrible war is, Owen begins the poem with some gruesome imagery and descriptions of the warring soldiers. In the first stanza of the poem, the soldiers are immediately described as being "bent double, like old beggars under sacks" (1). The simile gives the reader an image of a soldier being bent over like a beggar who is burdened by weariness and who has a lot to carry on his shoulders, quite a pathetic scene. A soldier would normally be described as being strong and powerful, but not in this poem. Owen continues with the imagery by referring to the soldiers as "knock kneed" (2) and "coughing like hags" (2). These images show the reader that the soldiers can barely walk; they are hobbling along weakly. Also, the word "hag" is almost always used when describing something evil; by using the simile "coughing like hags" (2), Owen has created the image of a cough that is so bad that the soldiers can barely even breathe and could very well die because of it. The soldiers are not in good shape, but they are leaving this hellish place: "Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs / And towards our distant rest began to trudge" (3-4). The lines here show the reader that they are leaving this dreadful place, but they still have a long road ahead of them. They are weary and worn out, hence the use of the word "trudge" to describe how they are setting off on their journey. The word almost makes one think that they do not want to leave; maybe, after all that they have been through, they would rather stay and meet their fate. The men “marched asleep” (5), some without boots, “but limped on, blood shod”(6). They are so tired and injured that they barely have the physical strength to leave this place, yet they are going to try. Owen describes the men as "lame" (6), "blind" (6), "Drunk with fatigue; even to the hoots / Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind"(6-8). The soldiers are stumbling around as they are trying to leave because they are so worn out. All of these images are far from the glorious images one expects to see when reading of soldiers who have battled in war. The soldiers do not even seem to care that poison gas shells are being shot behind them. This could imply that they do not care about their lives anymore. They are not even worried if they are shot. Throughout the first stanza, Owen uses imagery and figures of speech, like similes, to describe these soldiers in an undignified manner. He wants to show in every way possible that war is not glorious.

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To continue to demoralize the event of war, the second stanza describes the environment the soldiers have been enduring: one of chemical warfare. In the first line of stanza two: "Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling" (9), the word ecstasy is used to describe the trancelike state the soldiers are in because they are so tired and worn out. They are "fumbling" because they are so tired that they can barely function. The enemy is gassing them and they struggle to get their gas masks on in time. The speaker hears someone yelling out and "flound'ring like a man in fire or lime" (12). The other soldier is stumbling around, panicking because the gas is getting him, and he is going to die. "Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light / As under a green sea, I saw him drowning" (13-14) is imagery that calls to mind that they are surrounded by a cloud of poisonous gas and no one can see. The green light is like the water of the sea, and the man is going to die like he is drowning in air that is as thick as water. The speaker can see that the man is stuck in the gas cloud, but what can he do without risking his own life? The imagery in this stanza gives the reader a visual picture in his or her mind about the ghastly environment the soldiers are in. They are in a war and people are trying to kill them, and sometimes those people succeed. War causes death; death is hardly glorious.

The imagery in the short third stanza shows that the horrors of this war still haunt the speaker long after the war has ended. The third stanza may be short, but it is not short on imagery: "In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning" (15-16). The speaker cannot escape what has happened here. It comes back to haunt him in his dreams. "[H]elpless sight" shows the reader that the speaker feels like there was nothing that he could have done to save this man. Line sixteen gives graphic imagery of the man dying.

The reader gets the image of a man who is dying because he is choking on poison gas. The word "guttering," when used as an adjective, could signify that the man is at his lowest possible point in life; it can also mean vulgar, which the scene certainly is. But, most vividly, the word brings to mind a certain sound that is heard when one is choking and spitting up, an auditory image that is hard to escape.

Even though this is the shortest stanza, Owen still manages to fill it with imagery.

Without these two lines, the reader would not realize that war not only haunts a soldier while he is warring, but also comes back in nightmares to haunt him for the rest of his life.

The last stanza of this poem is the speaker's plea to never give children a false impression about the true horrors of war. The sudden use of the word "you" in the poem here indicates that now the speaker is addressing someone rather than just remembering the tragic events of his past. The lines “If in some smothering dreams you too could pace / behind the wagon that we flung him in" (1718) show that the speaker wants this person to picture the horror he had to witness. The dreams are "smothering" which could mean that they make him feel like he is dying himself just by remembering how his lost soldier smothered in the poison gas. The use of the word "flung" implies that they did not care that the man

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died; they were so tired and used to this happening that it meant nothing to them to have to throw another dead body in the wagon; it was almost routine. The speaker describes seeing "white eyes writhing in his face, / His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin" (19-20). The image of "writhing" eyes gives the reader the sense that the man is in extreme pain and does not want to die, but in the next line, the simile comparing his face to the devil's face shows that the man is tired of going through this hell; he would rather die than continue to endure this. The words "If you could hear" (21) are used as imagery. These words urge the reader to imagine the sound of "gargling from froth-corrupted lungs" (22). That is a vile image that conjures up an evil image of the death that is taking over this man. The simile "[o]bscene as cancer" (23) relates this event to something that might be a little more close to home for some readers, as cancer is quite common and horrific.

The word "innocent" in line twenty four shows that Owen felt like these soldiers should not have had to die in this way; they were innocent, just doing what they were supposed to do for their country. Why did they have to be punished like this?

The lines 25-28 sum up the theme of this poem well: My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. (43) He is saying, don't make war seem so great and glorious to these children who want to be noticed. By leaving "Pro patria mori" as the last line of the poem, Owen emphasizes what war is: dying. It is an old, terrible lie that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. In this stanza Owen is pleading to someone, anyone, to tell the children the real "glory" of war.

Owen knew the true horrors of being in war. This poem is a clear reminder of the horror and haunting of war that live on long after a war's end. By using imagery and figures of speech, Owen shouts his theme loud and clear, war is anything but glorious, war is perilous and despicable, and children should not be urged to engage in such a battle for glory.

WORKS CITED Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce et Decorum Est.” An Introduction to Poetry. Ed.X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. New York: Longman, 2007. 42-43.

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SARAH DAVIS

The United States: Signing the Ottawa Landmine Treaty Ochola was born in 1998 to central Cambodian farmers; she is the fourth of seven children. The family has a small rice farm that provides food and money to buy what they cannot grow. Ochola walks to school every day with her older brothers and plays soccer at lunch with the other children at the school. Seeing Ochola playing with the other children one would never guess that she is any different than any other child her age, but she is. Four years ago she was walking to school with her brothers when she stepped on a landmine planted in one of the fields around the school, today she uses a prosthetic and crutches. Ochola is a happy fun loving ten year old who loves to go to school and play with her friends. Ochola is like hundreds of other children living in Cambodia and around the world who must deal with the effects of a landmine ravaged country. After the long civil war Cambodia's civilians were left to deal with what the armies left behind, millions of landmines.

Today Cambodia has one of the highest concentrations of landmines in the world.

Landmines are often called "flowers of death” as they are designed to maim rather than kill (Oransky 788). Each year landmines leave thousands of people like Ochola handicapped and, more times than not, unable to get the proper care they need to live a productive life. Non-government organizations and countries around the world are trying to put a stop to the use of landmines.

Landmines have been maiming and killing people since the middle of the 18th century but did not become a widely used weapon until the start of World War I (Hutchison 326-327). There are two main types of landmines: anti-personnel (APLs) and anti-tank (ATLs). APLs are generally small in nature and made to disable humans. To explode an APL, only a small amount of pressure, as little as 3 ounces, has to be applied to the mine. Because APLs need little pressure to activate, most civilian deaths and physical injuries are caused by APLs. An ATL on the other hand is made to destroy vehicles and needs at least twenty pounds to cause an explosion. Both types of mines are considered to be "dumb" mines because they are indiscriminate, not caring whom they hurt. Some mines are made so that when they explode they send metal or ceramic fragments into the air. Other mines resemble toys or are brightly colored which make children more susceptible to them.

Landmines are extremely cheap to make, costing as little as US$3, which is why they were so popular during war (McDonald 23). To date there are 80 to 100 million landmines in the ground in over 90 countries (Hutchison 327).

Landmines have killed and maimed more civilians than nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons combined (Willerman 103). In 2006 alone, over 5,751 civilians died from landmine related deaths. There are 437,000 landmine survivors

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living in the world today, 80% are civilians and 25% of those are children, all with similar stories to Ochola (Oransky 788). Not only do APLs harm a person physically, they also have a negative psychological effect on people, which is one reason why countries like the United States have used them during war. APLs are one of the most feared hazards of war. As one American World War II infantryman stated, "against landmines [there is no defense]. The only defense [is to not] move at all" (Gaulin 213). Soldiers dread walking through a field or the jungle for fear of stepping on an APL. APLs not only put fear into the minds of soldiers, but also into the minds of the civilians who must live in the country after the war. When refugees are finally allowed to return home, some would rather stay in the camp where they have less of a chance of stepping on an APL. Humans are not the only ones who are affected by landmines. Landmines also cause damage to the environment, including animals. Some people might ask what are a few animals compared to the loss of thousands of humans, but many countries that are affected by landmines are also impoverished third world countries that rely on their animals for food and transportation and on the land for farming. In Angola, for example, one American doctor working as a volunteer at a local hospital saw a herd of cows blown up by landmines while crossing the road.

The loss of these cows meant that the family who owned them had lost a source of food and income (Nachon 194).

Landmines also cause farmers to lose their fields out of fear that they are infested with APLs. The decomposition or corrosion of a landmine can also cause leaking of toxic heavy metals such as mercury and lead into the soil. This decomposition makes the soil unfertile, and farmers have a hard time getting plants to grow in soil that contains heavy metals. These heavy metals can also pollute the groundwater especially if the mines are placed near wells and other sources of drinking water (Nachon 194). Countries with large national parks that rely on wildlife tourism to bring money into the country are seeing a drop in the number of tourists visiting the parks. This drop is due to the presence of landmines and the very real threat of being injured by one (Nachon 197).

By the early 1990s a number of humanitarian groups in the United States and Germany were becoming more alarmed by the wide spread use of landmines and the number of people who were dying or being injured by them. These groups, including the Human Rights Watch, Medico International, and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, formed the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). By 1997 the ICBL along with eighty-nine countries, had created the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, or Transferring Anti-personnel Mines and on Their Destruction or what is more commonly referred to as the Ottawa Landmine Treaty (Hutchison 236).

The Ottawa Landmine Treaty became international law on March 1, 1999.

The treaty forbids the use, production, stockpiling, or transferring of APLs. The treaty allows ATLs equipped with an anti-handling device, so they cannot be

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changed into APLs. State Parties, countries who have ratified the treaty, are required to destroy stockpiles of mines within four years of signing the treaty. Mines that are in the ground already must be removed within ten years of the signing of the treaty. The treaty also mandates increased assistance for aiding victims. The treaty allows State Parties to keep or transfer APLs only for training in mine detection, clearance, and removal. The treaty also allows mines to be transferred, in order to be destroyed. To date 155 countries have signed and ratified the Ottawa Landmine Treaty and thirty-five countries have not signed or ratified the treaty including the United States (Hutchison 231-232).

Some critics of the United States' decision not to sign the Ottawa Landmine Treaty have asked the question of why the loss of an innocent human life is not enough reason for the United States to sign the treaty. Supporters of the United States' decision say the government has a few problems with what is covered in the treaty. Lincoln Bloomfield, the US assistant secretary of state for political military affairs, backed up this reason by stating at a 2004 press briefing that "the Ottawa Convention offers no protection for innocent civilians in post-conflict areas from the harm caused by persistent anti-vehicle landmines" (Oransky 788). As has stated earlier, most innocent civilian deaths and physical injuries are caused

by APLs and not ATLs. Opponents of the United States' position on the treaty have pointed out that banning APLs is better than not doing anything at all.

One of the provisions in the Ottawa Landmine Treaty is that all APLs in the ground must be removed within ten years of signing the treaty. To do this, countries must participate in demining. Deminers use two different methods, mechanical and detection dogs. Mechanical demining involves the use of metal detectors. Metal detectors cause many "false alarms" because the metal detector picks up every piece of mental. This process is very time consuming because the deminer must treat each piece of metal as if it were a landmine, following all the safety precautions (King 144). Mine-detection dogs are more reliable than metal detectors, but they too have their downfalls. Breeding and training mine detection dogs is expensive, costing as much as US$25,000 per dog. Similar to people, mine detection dogs can make mistakes. So more often than not, a deminer using a metal detector must go back over the land to make sure the dogs did not miss anything ("Mine" 19).

Another problem facing deminers is the fact that not all minefields are written down or clearly marked on a map. Supporters of the United States' stance on the Ottawa Landmine Treaty maintain that this problem is not one that the United States must worry about because all of their minefield locations have been recorded. Reports written by commanders after Operation Desert Storm say otherwise. In these reports, the commanders state that some APLs went unrecorded and some minefields were not marked on maps (Ohe 233). Mines can also be washed away from their original location by heavy rains or the natural shifting of rivers. Not knowing where exactly the minefields are makes the deminers' job even harder because they have little to no information on the whereabouts of the landmines (King 144).

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Because of the physical danger, the equipment, and the amount of time that must be spent mine detection is an expensive process. Mine detection can cost up to $1,000 per landmine (Fraser 42). Supporters of the United States' position of not signing the treaty have stated that even though they have not signed, the U.S. is one of the biggest spenders in the mine detection efforts. The United States spends almost $100 million a year for demining in over thirty different countries.

This money helped many countries around the world demine 140 square kilometers of land and destroy over 200,000 APLs in 2006 ("Major"). Supporters and critics alike say that this is a good start, but 200,000 APLs will not even puncture a small hole in the number of APLs that are still active in the world. By some estimates the process of demining every APL that is currently in the ground could take up to 400 years and cost millions and millions of dollars. This estimate does not include the number of APLs that Non-State Parties including the United States are continuing to use ("Mine" 19). People wanting to question the United States' position on the treaty might ask themselves, "Does it really make sense that the United States is spending millions of dollars on demining when they will not condemn their use and are one of thirteen countries that still produce them?"

Some also feel that the United States is causing the Ottawa Landmine Treaty to stall because they will not sign the treaty. The United States has been called a world super power since before World War II. Other countries either look to the United States as a leader or as something that they need protection from. Russia is one of the thirty-five countries that has not signed the treaty. One reason that the Russian government gives is that Russia needs protection from the United States.

If the United States is using APLs, then Russia feels safer if it has the same weapon to use against the United States (Chamberlain and Long 87). Maybe if the United States would sign the treaty, other countries would feel better about signing too.

The United States not signing the Ottawa Landmine Treaty is also causing problems within the United Nation (UN) and NATO, specifically during joint military operations between countries that have signed the treaty and the United States. Joint military operations are usually peace-keeper operations under NATO and the UN. The treaty does not give any guidelines for joint operations with nonsigners. That decision is left up to the individual country to decide. France and Germany are two countries that have chosen not to take part in any operations with any country that has not signed the treaty. Great Britain on the other hand has taken a more lenient approach and has participated in joint operations with countries that have not signed the treaty (Chamberlain and Long 91-93). Richard A. Matthew and Ted Gaulin, writers of "Time to Sign the Mine Ban Treaty," state that the United States is putting "unnecessary stress on structures such as NATO and the United Nations. . . [at a] time when the U.S. security agenda, centered on terrorism, Iraq, and North Korea, desperately needs the support" of the countries within NATO and the UN (70).

Thus far, the reasons that have been discussed are the reasons why the United States should sign the Ottawa Landmine Treaty. The main justification the

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United States government gives for not signing the treaty is the need to defend South Korea. Most estimates state that there are about one million landmines along the South Korean border ("The Korea"). There are four reasons that are given why APLs are a benefit in the defense of South Korea. The first reason given is that APLs are used as a force multiplier against the larger North Korean army. North Korea has the third largest army in the world, one million soldiers on active duty and five million are in reserves (Gaulin 214).

If a prediction were made on who would win based solely on troop size, the North Koreans would overpower the United States and South Korean forces. The United States and South Korean forces combined do not even equal a fourth of the North Korean force. But armies do not only rely on how many troops they have; the equipment that they possess is just as or more important than the amount of soldiers either side has. This equipment advantage is how the United States and South Korea would over power the North Koreans. A majority, about 60%, of North Korea's air force consists of outdated fighter planes from the 1950s to the mid 1970s (Ohe 228). The United States, on the other hand, has modem F-16s and AHls (Cobra). Concerning, artillery the North Koreans may have the advantage in numbers but not in ability. North Korea's artillery is just as outdated as their fighter planes. North Korea's arsenal would not be able to stand up against the United States' self-propelled howitzers and multiple-launch rocket systems (Matthew and Gaulin 71). Also the threat of a North Korea missile strike would be severely reduced by the new developments in the PATRIOT missile system (Ohe 229).

Proponents of APLs in South Korea say that APLs are the best defenses an army has in the mountainous regions of both North and South Korea. This is not necessarily true. The United States has acquired advanced target acquisition for its fighter planes, which allows pilots to see farther distances and warn the army on the ground of enemy movement in areas that are less visible from the ground, such as in the mountains. The United States and South Korea also have highly mobile tanks that can maneuver over relatively steep inclines (Ohe 229). U.S officials also claim that APLs give the United States and South Korean forces an advanced warning of an attack by North Korea. According to the officials, the explosions of the APLs as the North Koreans advance across the mine fields would let the United States and South Korea know whether the North Koreans were crossing the border. However, with today's advances in technology, the United States and South Korean forces should not have to rely on APLs to tell them that North Korea is crossing the border. The intelligence-gathering planes, satellite surveillance of North Korea, and pilotless aerial reconnaissance drones (remote-controlled intelligence aircraft) should be more than sufficient to gather intelligence about North Korean forces (Ohe 229). According to one specialist this technology would remove the North Korean's element of surprise by warning the United States and South Korean forces of any large scale movement of weapons or troops by the North Koreans long before an attack came (Matthew and Gaulin 71).

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Another reason that U.S. officials give for not signing the treaty is that APLs slow down the North Korean forces and give the United States and South Korea time to mobilize for an attack. As stated above, United States intelligence systems should give the forces enough warning of any North Korean movement. The economic situation in North Korea has also helped to tilt the scale in favor of the United States and South Korea. Periods of inclement growing weather in addition to North Korean economic and political isolation has led to a food and fuel shortage among the entire nation, not just the army (Matthew and Gaulin 71). These poor conditions have been linked to 2.5 million deaths of both North Korean civilians and soldiers and have severely weakened the North Korean army, preventing the army from doing any large-scale training exercises. As a result, North Korea has become the largest recipient of United States humanitarian aid in Asia (Ohe 228). Indeed, some experts express that if North Korea had not received humanitarian aid over the last decade the country would have collapsed (Matthew and Gaulin 71).

According to Brookings Institute military analyst, Michael O'Hanlon, the United States government's use of the situation with North Korea as their main reason for not signing the Ottawa Landmine Treaty is disingenuous. O'Hanlon recently reviewed the situation between North and South Korea and has come to the conclusion that "the combined U.S. and South Korean forces not only could defend South Korea without reinforcements but could stop a North Korean advance well north of Seoul" (Matthew and Gaulin 72). While it is known that the South Korean capital is located within fifty miles of the border and potentially at risk for being attacked, several former United States commanders in South Korea wrote a letter to President Bush in 2001 making it clear that "APLs are not in any way critical or decisive in maintaining [the capital's] security" (Matthew and Gaulin 72).

Nevertheless, the U.S. government maintains that because of the situation with North Korea the government cannot sign the Ottawa Landmine Treaty. Instead, in 1998 President Bill Clinton created the "Demining 2010" program that President Bush continues to follow (McDonald 30). The program makes clear that the United States will only use APLs that are easily detectable through the use of metal detectors and will work on perfecting a "smart mine" (Hutchison 332). There are several problems with this part of the program, however, as has been explained earlier, even mines that can be easily detected take time to demine once they have been found.

Moreover, because the majority of victims of APLs are civilians, to make this idea effective would require every civilian, who might potentially come in contact with a landmine, to carry a metal detector. Only in this way could the civilian avoid stepping on an APL. Clearly, such an idea is not only ineffective but it would also cost billions of dollars to equip millions of people with metal detectors.

A "smart mine" is a self-destructive, thinking APL that the United States would like to start using in place of a regular APL. According to reports of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which does the research on "smart mines," the mines will deactivate within a certain time period, lasting not

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more than five years after the conflict is over. Because these mines are self-destructive scientists, say "smart mines" "smart mines" will not pose a threat to civilians after the conflict is over (Hutchison 332). Most "smart mines" are put into place by being dropped out of an airplane, and their position is never recorded. The theory behind not recording the location of the "smart mines" is based on the fact that the mines will self-destruct, but this is not necessarily true. Other reports done by humanitarian groups such as the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL), reveal that some "smart mines" do not deactivate properly and cause the same problems as APLs because they can only be deactivated by a person (Oransky 788).

The second part of the "Demining 2010" program provides that the United States will end the use of all regular APLs by 2010 and replace them with "smart mines." Although United States officials believe that the United States cannot give up the use of APLs, they are convinced that "smart mines" are a safer alternative because they are self-destructive. In making this claim, the United States is brushing aside the fact that "smart mines" still cannot tell the difference between a civilian and a soldier. For this reason the Ottawa Landmine Treaty does not condone the use of the mine ("United"). By using "smart mines," the United States is not helping solve the immediate problem, that civilians are the majority of the victims of APLs. "Smart mines" are only helping to eliminate the dangerous process of demining, which is only part of the problem with APLs. As her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan states, "Landmines [are] one of the greatest public health hazards of our time-a modern, man-made epidemic" (Fak 179). Because landmines are a "man-made epidemic" (Fak 179), the responsibility of ending their use, falls on the shoulders of concerned individuals. In the eleven years since the Ottawa Landmine Treaty was first signed, many steps have been taken toward the creation of a mine-free world. Because of the treaty, 155 countries have chosen not to use APLs; hundreds of thousands of APLs have been destroyed; and the number of deaths due to landmines has decreased. Unfortunately, the United States is not one of the 155 countries that have signed the treaty, but continues to support the efforts of a mine-free world in its own way.

The U.S. government feels that APLs are too important to their military operations not to use them. However, the U.S. government is either forgetting or pushing aside the fact that victims of APLs are mostly civilians and that APLs are no longer needed in defense because of technological advances made over the last few decades. As a citizen of the United States, I ask each and every one of you to ask yourself if relying on APLs for the protection of the military, when newer technologies are available is more important than the high cost of civilian life.

As citizens of a democratic nation we have the right to make our voices heard.

Because President Bush and the United States senate will not act on their own, our job is to convince them, via our votes and through support for organizations such as the ICBL, which fight against the use of APLS, that we will not tolerate the use of such murderous weapons.

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WORKS CITED Chamberlain, Paul and David Long. "Europe and the Ottawa Treaty: Compliance with Exceptions and Loopholes." Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War's Hidden Legacy. Matthew, Richard A., Bryan McDonald, and Kenneth R. Rutherford eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 81-96.

Fak, Glenna L. "The Victim Assistance Provision of the Mine Ban Treaty."

Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War's Hidden Legacy. Matthew, Richard A., Bryan McDonald, and Kenneth R. Rutherford eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 179-190.

Fraser, Leah. "Evaluating the Impacts of the Ottawa Treaty." Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War's Hidden Legacy. Matthew, Richard A., Bryan McDonald, and Kenneth R. Rutherford eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 3547.

Gaulin, Ted. "A Necessary Evil?: Reexamining the Military Utility of Antipersonnel Landmines." Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War's Hidden Legacy. Matthew, Richard A., Bryan McDonald, and Kenneth R. Rutherford eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 209-223.

Hutchison, Kay Bailey. Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers. New York:HarperCollins, 2007.

King, Colin. "Demining: Enhancing the Process." Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War's Hidden Legacy. Matthew, Richard A., Bryan McDonald, and Kenneth R. Rutherford eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 139-147.

"The Korea Situation (sidebar)." Issues & Controversies on File 21 Nov. 1997.

Issues & Controversies. Facts on File News Services. 13 Mar. 2008 http://www.2facts.com "Major Findings." LM Report 2007 9 (2007) 17 March 2008. http://www.icbl.org/lm/2007/usa.html.

Matthew, Richard A., and Ted Gaulin. "Time to Sign the Mine Ban Treaty." Science & Technology 19.3 (2003): 69-73 Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost.

Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, Illinois. 5 March 2008. https://http://ebscohost.com/.

McDonald, Bryan. "The Global Landmine Crisis in the 1990s." Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War's Hidden Legacy. Matthew, Richard A., Bryan McDonald, and Kenneth R. Rutherford eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 21-33.

"Mine Weeders." Foreign Policy 136 (2003): 18-19 Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield,Illinois. 5 March 2008. http s://http: //searchebscohost.com/login.

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Nachon, Torres Claudio. "The Environmental Impacts of Landmines." Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War's Hidden Legacy.

Matthew, Richard A., Bryan McDonald, and Kenneth R. Rutherford eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 191-207.

Ohe, Antonio J. "Are Landmines Still Needed to Defend South Korea?: A Mine Use Case Study." Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War's Hidden Legacy. Matthew, Richard A., Bryan McDonald, and Kenneth R. Rutherford eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 225235.

Oransky, Ivan. "USA Won't Sign Landmine Treaty." The Lancet 363 (2004): 788 Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, Illinois. 5 March 2008 http://www.thelancet.com.

"United States of America." LM Report 2007 9 (2007) 17 March 2008 http://www.icbl.org/lm/2007/usa.html.

Willerman, Raquel. "Victim Assistance: Landmine Survivors' Perspectives."

Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War's Hidden Legacy. Matthew, Richard A., Bryan McDonald, and Kenneth R. Rutherford eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 103-114.

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NICK HAGER

Perverseness of the Human mind “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing,” says the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” (Poe 705). The narrators of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” are unnamed throughout the story. By not knowing who they are or much about their past, Poe makes the reader delve deep into their minds. The reader’s lack of knowledge about the narrator gives the reader better understanding of why and how the narrator justifies his evil actions. The reader can better understand what altered both of the narrators’ ways of thinking. The strong recurring motifs in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Cask of Amontillado” reveal Poe’s belief that perverseness lies in everyone and can manifest itself at any provocation.

Both of the unnamed narrators are sure to tell the reader many times that they are not mad or insane. The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” states six separate times throughout the story that he is not mad. In the opening paragraph, the narrator says, “but why will you say that I am mad” and “[h]ow, then, am I mad?”

(705). The narrator of “The Black Cat” also states that he is not mad many times and in the opening paragraph when he says, “[y]et, mad am I not” (223). Before the narrators even tell the story, they want the reader to know that they are normal, sane human beings. The narrators’ assertions that they are not mad many times can make the reader skeptical whether or not the narrator is actually sane or actually mad. But, the perverse actions of these two narrators make it easy to believe that they are insane.

Poe relates the unnamed narrators by having them, very briefly, state that they have a disease. The narrators’ perverseness was caused by an alteration to their minds, which could have been caused by the diseases each narrator possessed. “The disease has sharpened my senses” (705) says the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart.” “For my disease grew on me—for what disease is like Alcohol,” (224) says the narrator of “The Black Cat.” Both of the narrators in the stories have some sort of a disease that has changed or altered them. The narrator’s disease of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is unknown to the reader, but the disease the narrator of “The Black Cat” is clear. He possesses the disease of alcoholism which gives good reason to believe that he has altered his sane way of thinking especially when the narrator states, “during which my general temperament and character— through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance—had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse” (224). The narrator of “The Black Cat” knows he has a problem, “the Fiend Intemperance,” that alters his normal way of thinking but still tries to say he is a completely sane person.

The narrators tried to comfort themselves about their perverseness by justifying why they had murdered. It is easy to see the narrator in “The Tell-

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Tale Heart” rationalize why he wants to kill the old man when he says, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!” (705). The narrator has talked himself into rejecting what sane people believe to be right and just.

The narrator (Montresor) in “The Cask of Amontillado” justifies killing Fortunato because he wronged Montresor and his family. Montresor wanted to get revenge on Fortunato because of the insult he projected at Montresor. This is shown when Montresor says, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge” (699).

Montresors’ provocation that manifested was his desire to get revenge on Fortunato which is how Montresor justified killing him. In “The Black Cat,” the narrator tries to justify killing the first cat by fixing a wrong with a wrong. One night when the narrator was intoxicated, he cut out the cat’s eye. He believed that the only way to fix his bad deed was to hang the cat. He did this when he was not intoxicated showing that his mad mind was not only caused when he was intoxicated. His altered, perverse mind while he was intoxicated ended up shifting his mind to evil while he is in a normal state. He also hung the cat just for the sake of committing a sin which shows that his perception of right and wrong is being changed. This is shown when he says, “[w]ho has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not?” (225).

Also, the two narrators’ sanity could be put in question when looking at the recurring motif of love and hate. They both have love for the person or animal that they end up killing, but that love turns to hate. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator states his love to the old man by saying, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult” (705). The narrator then goes on to show that he hates the old man’s eye and it is not the old man that vexes the narrator. It is easy to see the hatred he possesses for that eye when he says: I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees – very gradually – I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever. (705) His extreme hatred for the old man’s eye overtook him and made him hate the once loved old man.

The narrator of “The Black Cat” has many instances where love progresses to hate. The narrator loved animals ever since he was a child. It is simple to see that the narrator loved his first cat when he says, “Pluto—this was the cat’s name—was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house” (224). This love eventually turned to hatred and disgust because the narrator’s alcoholism was altering him. The second occurrence of love and hate in “The Black Cat” comes about when the narrator acquires a second cat. The narrator quickly grows fond of this new cat and very

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shortly after seeing it he knew that cat was what he was in search of. But, this new found love quickly turns to hate. This is shown when the narrator says: For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but—I know not how or why it was—its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. (226) The narrator’s hatred is not just at animals but also towards his wife. This change happens very drastically and a point when the narrator is very angry.

When the narrator was walking down the stairs into his cellar, the cat tripped him which, as he states, “exasperated me into madness” (228). The narrator then grabs an axe and swings it at the cat, but his wife stops him. In doing this, the wife was challenging him so he picked up the axe and in a “rage more than demoniacal” he killed his wife (228). Both of the narrators’ minds are being corrupted causing their perverse feelings. The provocation of the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” was the old man’s eye. The provocations in “The Black Cat” were the narrator’s disease, and the cat tripping him causing his mind to slip into perverseness. The provocations that manifested both the narrators’ actions altered their minds making them reject what is right or wrong.

The narrators also feel guilty about their murders and wrong doings. After the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” buries the old man’s body beneath the floor boards, he sets himself over the body and has the policemen sit around him. After awhile, he believes he can start to hear the old man’s heart beating. He believes it is his over acuteness of senses that, which he says does not make him insane, makes him hear the beating of the old man’s heart. This sound kept getting louder and louder until he ended up confessing to the police. His guilty conscience got the best of him and he could not take it anymore. In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor feels some guilt for killing Fortunato. His guilt had turned to an obsession for his murder. Montresor had been obsessed after the murder for about fifty years. This is shown when Montresor says, “[a]gainst the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them” (704). The narrator of “The Black Cat” feels guilty after he took out the eye of his first cat. He then thought the only way to fix the mistake was to kill the cat. That then led the narrator to feel more guilt about his perverse actions. He also feels guilty after killing his wife, but this guilt did not last as long because the cat was missing. This is shown when, that night after he killed his wife, he says, “and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!” (229). He also says, “The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little” (229). This lack of guilt shows that the narrator’s perverseness has gotten worse. It seems like he is getting used to murder which also shows that his state of mind is near, or in, insanity. Although the narrators feel guilty, or at least some guilt from their perverse actions, they are resisting discipline which shows their lack of knowing when they have gone too far.

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The narrators become arrogant about their murders. The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” hides the old man’s body under the floor boards. The police come to question the narrator about a loud shriek heard and the location of the old man. The narrator calmly talks to them, then sets chairs around in the room where the old man’s body was buried. He sets his chair right on top of planks hiding the old man. In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor is arrogant right before his murder takes place and not after. He is giving clues about what will happen to Fortunato, but Fortunato does not pick up on them. This is shown many times throughout the story. A few examples are when Montresor says, “[t]he vaults are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre,” (700) and “we will go back; your health is precious” (701) and when Montresor talks about his family’s crest and motto. The narrator of “The Black Cat” is also very arrogant about his murder. Police come to his house many times wanting to know where his wife was. He takes them through his house multiple times, but on the third or fourth time that the police go into the cellar, he becomes even more arrogant. He says, “By the bye, gentlemen, this—this is a very well constructed house,” and “I may say an excellently well constructed house. These walls—are you going, gentlemen?—these walls are solidly put together” (230). He then gets caught up in what he was saying and hits the wall with his cane where his wife was buried behind it. The three narrators’ arrogance leads them back to their perverseness and to do the opposite of what is normally expected of people. Also, by the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” being arrogant, they end up getting themselves caught.

Dr. Theodore H. Kellogg states, “Much direct light is thrown on the nature of insanity by tracing the close connection between sane and insane phases of the mind” (141). He talks about how people can go through stages of sanity and insanity. People are not always either sane or insane but can go back and forth between them. Some people can go back and forth between being sane and insane, but eventually their minds will stay longer on the insane phase. The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is, in my opinion, almost past the point of going back to sanity.

His disease has pushed him completely to the insane side. The narrator of “The Black Cat” is easily seen as progressing through the stages. He starts out sane, then slips into insanity when he hurts and kills his first cat. He then goes back to sanity in the time between his first and second cat. When he gets his second cat, he starts to slip back to insanity and ends up killing his wife. The narrator’s mind of “The Cask of Amontillado” goes to the insane phase when he murders Fortunato.

But, after the murder, it seems that he goes back to the sane side and stays there for the rest of his life.

“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Cask of Amontillado” show that perverseness can happen to anyone if the proper provocations occur. The three narrators’ obsessions throughout the stories caused them to slip in and out of sanity which had great consequences. If the narrators’ provocations did not manifest themselves, then their perverseness would have been greatly reduced,

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or even never happened. The narrator of “The Black Cat” said exactly Poe’s message when he said: “[y]et I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man” (225).

WORKS CITED Kellogg, Theodore H. "Sane Prototypes of Insane Mental Processes." The Journal of Abnormal Psychology 3 1908: 141-147. PsycArticles. EBSCOhost. Lincoln Land Community College, Springfield, IL. 28 Apr. 2008<http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=5&hid=106&sid=9ecb8de0-6524-4613-9b28d2f67e6009e3%40sessionmgr109> Poe, Edgar A. "The Black Cat." Complete Tales and Poems. New York: Vintage, 1975. 223-30.

---. "The Cask of Amontillado." The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters.

Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. 699-704.

---. "The Tell-Tale Heart." The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. 705-708.

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STACEY BACON

It's All fun and Games-as Long as Someone is Getting Hurt Crouched behind a crumbled wall, he peers down the scope of his rifle. He holds his breath to steady the weapon. Just as he pulls the trigger to send a bullet veering into his enemy, he drops the rifle and writhes on the ground. He doesn't get back up. The garner throws down the controller as he watches the replay of another player sneaking up and slashing him with a knife. This is the reaction of a frustrated garner playing Call of Duty 4. But other than fun and frustration, what radiates from video games? Violence is embedded in the storyline, game play, and even the emotions of the garners themselves as they play. Therein lays the message. Most of today's video games broadcast a dangerous message of violence.

The message apparently begins and ends in the storyline. Many of the video games today promote violence. For instance, in Ubisoft's hit, Assassin 's Creed, the entire focus of the game is on committing murders during the period of the Crusades. It's not like all problems can be solved by skipping through a field of daisies to sit down and talk things out, but violence is the answer to the problems of the characters in many games: Mario wants to save Princess Peach, but he has to defeat Bowser to win. Even in a game like Burnout Paradise, in several challenges of the racing game, the object may be to plow as many other racers off the road as possible. In "showtime" mode, the player's car begins to "hop" as it crashes along the road. What's the object of this particular feature? The object is to hit as many "innocent bystander" cars as possible and cause the most accidents and damage before the car falls flat. And then there's the oh-so-debated Grand Theft Auto. In this series, a player is usually a drug dealer out to kill anyone who might infringe upon profit, or the boss's profit. Ranging from killing other mob bosses to shooting hookers, this game has violence painted all over it. When a player tries to steal a car off the street and the driver resists-the player can actually kick him and throw him out of the car. The game has changed since its original release.

In the newest installment, a player can now shatter windows to steal locked vehicles. In the first several games, the game wouldn't allow gamers to steal a locked car. Not only is violence part of the object of the game, gamers can earn rewards and Xbox "achievements" by performing certain actions. For example, in Call of Duty 4, a player can earn an achievement called "Four of a Kind" by killing four enemies in a row with headshots. This "achievement" scores 20 "gamer points".

So not only is violence embedded in the storyline, players are rewarded for those skillfully executed acts of violence. You'll see as you're running down an old woman on your motorcycle-that it's all part of playing the game.

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In the actual game play, violence seems to echo from the act itself. In an Xbox 360 game called Darkness, after players have killed an enemy, they have the option to allow a creature to eat the heart of the corpse. It has no regenerative health effect other than energy. It's just there for the seemingly morbid "entertainment.â&#x20AC;? During game play, the graphic component of some games are horrendously violent. In Darkness, the game gets very graphic as the creature eats the heart. Since the game is a first person shooter, meaning the player takes on the perspective of the character, he or she has a "front row seat" as the creature eats the heart of corpses, watching the creature burrow into the chest and rip the organ from the body. In Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Vegas, as soon as players shoot enemies, bright red blood splatters on the wall and floor behind them. Even if the enemy has only been shot in the leg, blood still seems to unrealistically splatter. But violence couldn't just occur without a weapon.

The weapons in these games are the tools to the violence. In Assassin 's Creed, players are given 3 weapons-a concealed blade, sword, and throwing knives.

Some games take it further. In Dead Rising, a zombie thriller game, the characters use ordinary items, and some unordinary, to protect themselves from the zombies. This includes baseball bats, golf clubs, records, cooking oil, saws, and guns, just to name a few. The game practically includes an arsenal to choose from. Players can find a scythe and use it to behead an approaching zombie.

But in the game, the developers felt the need to make a show out of it. Rather than just attacking with the scythe, the scythe is brought up behind the neck of the zombie, pulled forward to cut, and then the player actually uses his foot to push the zombie back as the scythe is pulled through the neck. How much of this is necessary? It makes people wonder what this type of game play may do to the players, mentally.

As gamers are playing these games, the emotions they feel while they interact throughout the game literally scream violence. When a gamer is trying to complete a level, but dies, he or she feels frustrated. The gamer may not know how to actually overcome the obstacle, but sometimes the knowledge of "how to beat the level" can make it even more frustrating. Some garners try over and over until they can beat it, while others just throw down the controller and holler at the TV for being "cheap" or "cheating.â&#x20AC;? However, when games gather together, sometimes the effects of win or lose can take its toll.

At LAN (Local Area Network) parties I've been to, everyone hooks their consoles together to play against each other. But in doing so, the garners get rough with each other. There's a lot of yelling, cursing, and hostility to the people they normally call their friends. They blame each other for cheating or looking at another player's screen. In their minds, the normal "it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt" turns into "it's all fun and games, as long as someone's getting hurt.â&#x20AC;? For example, at one LAN party I attended, the guys had all just purchased the newly released Halo 3. They all hooked up their Xboxes and began playing together. By the time I arrived, it was obvious who was winning

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by the shouts of victory. It was also obvious who was losing as they sat glaring at the TV screen and cursing at teammates for mistakes. I had been hopeful to play, but they were all so engrossed with slaying each other and showing off that I was forced to sit and only watch as the battles raged. At another LAN party, the friends got so angry at each other, there were a few of them that quit talking for a week. They didn't begin speaking again until they realized how silly it was to get so angry over a game. So days after the heat of the game, the garners realized how silly the quarrel was--at least until the LAN party that next weekend.

From the storylines, the game play, and the gamer's emotions violence tends to rear its ugly head. Additionally, violence in games increases with each generation. Earlier games like Frogger and Pacman did not have the violent content within the game that Assassin 's Creed, Dead Rising, or Halo have today. How much more violent will they get? Until some changes can be made within the industry, for now, most of today's video games broadcast a message of violence.

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Melanie Edmondson

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Chris Spangler

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Sally Prewitt

Michael Vincent

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Kathy Apple

Bridget Davis

Callie Parr

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Alexis Wernsing

Joel Hunter

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Aleesha Pruitt

Ryan Griffith

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Shannon Allison

Cynthia Allison

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Maggie Michaels

JT Elliot

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DARCI DIXON

Small family farms and the People Who farm Them Introduction This is an ethnographic study conducted on a small family farm approximately 10 miles north of Athens, Illinois. The Primrose Farm, which is run by the Primm family, currently plants and harvests nearly 500 acres of corn and beans. Completely family owned and operated, three generations work together to keep this small farm in the family and to keep the farming tradition alive. I will examine farming as a way of life, and look at the culture of farming in the Midwest.

Having been born and raised in Central Illinois, I am no stranger to the sights and smells of the farming community. Those of us who live in this region are surrounded by fields of crops and cattle on a daily basis-- whether we farm or not.

For me, there is nothing exciting or different to look at on the Primrose Farm. An old, white farmhouse surrounded by a large garden, a machine shed which stores the tractors and combines, a shop where mechanical work is done, and rows and rows of corn and beans make up this 500 acre farm. Dave and Betty still live in the old farmhouse. Less than a mile away lives their son, Mike, and two of his sons, Morgan and Nate.

The Primm family is very similar to most other farm families in the area.

Betty is very much the traditional farm wife. She grew up on a farm as a young girl, and married a farmer. She has spent her life raising six children and also taking care of her grandchildren. She cooks meals for the whole family on a regular basis, especially during planting and harvesting time, and tends to her garden during her spare time. Most of the time, she seems to be the glue that holds the family together. Dave has also lived on a farm his whole life. After his dad died when Dave was only nineteen-years-old, he had to take over the family business. He farmed, not only the Primrose farm, but also helped on other family farms in the area. The other boys have always farmed, but in addition to farming they also have, or plan on having, full-time jobs outside of the farm. Mike works as a coalminer in a nearby town, and Morgan is a mechanic for Caterpillar. Nate is still in high school, but also works at a local business.

There are very few farmers in the Midwest that make their living from farming, alone. Most farmers, nowadays, need to take on an off-farm job According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Census defines a farm as “any establishment which produced and sold, or normally would have produced and sold, $1,000 or more of agricultural products during the year,” and, by that definition, there are just over 2.1 million farms in the United States (Ag 101). How-

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ever, only 1 in 4 of those 2.1 million farms produces gross revenues in excess of $50,000. Therefore, the number of farmers making a living solely on their farms is small.

Today, there are not many young people going into farming. The average age of farmers is 55.3 years old (The Issues). Out of Betty and Dave’s six children, Mike was the only one who decided to live on the farm and continue the tradition.

Of Mike’s children, Morgan and Nate are the only two, out of five, that hold interest in farming. Morgan has aspirations of one day moving into his grandparents’ old farmhouse and taking over the family business. He hopes that one day he can raise swine, cattle, and chickens, in addition to the crops that they already harvest. He would, ultimately, like to farm full-time.

The Primm family is up by 5:00 A.M. most mornings—getting to work as early as possible. They all go their separate ways for the day, but, after work, Dave, Mike, Morgan, and Nate are all over at “the shop” working on tractors, trucks, and machinery. They don’t call it a day until late at night.

Hard work is a fundamental value in farming. Just watching these boys work in the shop is exhausting. They move around the shop very efficiently, and rarely take a break—as that would waste time. Sometimes they are working on separate projects, and other times they work together on a single project. The shop’s concrete floor is covered in dirt, oil, and a substance called “Oil-Dri,” which soaks up spills. Every wall is lined with shelves, cabinets, and toolboxes that store the many nuts, bolts, nails, and tools required to keep the farm running. A large, red combine, a tractor, and several trucks are currently in the shop being worked on. The Primms are fortunate to have a heated shop, which makes working in the cold weather more enjoyable. Morgan moves quickly from one of the trucks to the cabinet—collecting the variety of tools necessary to complete the job at hand.

Nate is busy cutting a metal piece from the tractor nearby. The noise in the shop is almost overwhelming. I learned that it is not a good idea to try to spark up a conversation while they are working in the shop. It is a very important thing for them to get projects done as quickly as possible.

Being a small family farm, they are currently working with very old equipment because the price of new equipment is so high (Morgan tells me the price of a new tractor can be over $100,000 and the price of a small combine over $250,000). This is not uncommon for a small family farm, but it does make for a lot more work. Equipment, such as combines and tractors, need to be in working condition when it is time to get the job done. Corn and beans require precise times for planting and harvesting, and not having working equipment can slow the process down. With old equipment, breakdowns and problems often times occur at the least opportune moments. This is why it is important to be able to fix them, and fix them fast.

Of course, working long hours of hard labor takes its toll on the body. Working with heavy equipment is dangerous and labor intensive. Earlier in the year, Mike had hurt his back while working on some of the machinery and was unable

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to put in the long hours. A little while back, he had to have knee surgery because of the daily wear and tear on his body. At the young age of twenty-one, Morgan is already having problems with his knees.

The American Farm Bureau Federation classifies small farms as those who have sales less than $250,000. These farms are being lost to development every day, while corporate-owned farms have increased by more than 46 percent between 1974 and 2002 (Ag 101). In a poll issued by the American Farm Bureau Federation, when members were asked about the overall condition of their rural towns, 32 percent said they were “withering slowly,” and another 20 percent said they were “hanging by a thread” (Motavalli). With corporate-owned farms increasing, and the number of small family farms dwindling, it is hard for small farmers to compete. The low income, intense labor, and the impact on one’s health make farming a less than desirable career. However, the tradition of farming and the values of hard work and family cohesion are enough for some people to continue the work of the family members before them. For the Primm family, the tradition will continue.

WORKS CITED “Ag 101: Demographics.” United States Environmental Protection Agency 11 Sept.

2007. 30 Nov 2008 http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/demographics.html.

Motavalli, Jim, and Christina Zarrella. "MEET THE FARM BUREAU." E - The Environmental Magazine 15.2 (Mar. 2004): 14-19. Academic Search Premier.

EBSCO. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 30 Nov. 2008 https://login.er.llcc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=12289771&site=ehost-live.

Primm, Morgan. Personal interview. 14 Nov. 2008. “The Issues: Family Farms.”

Sustainable Table. 30 Nov. 2008 http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/familyfarms/

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SARAH DAVIS

The Silence of Women/ The Power of men When one discusses feminist literary works in conjunction with silence, most often silence is referred to as being literally suppressed or symbolically ignored. The silencing of women has also been traditionally associated with giving power to men. The Lovely Bones and Lucky by Alice Sebold and Trifles by Susan Glaspell bring to light both types of silence and how that silence gives power to men.

One way to view the image of silence is the act of being suppressed by someone or something. In The Lovely Bones, Mr. Harvey “[grows] tired of hearing [Susie] plead” (13) for him not to hurt her anymore, so Mr. Harvey silences Susie with the closest object to him, her hat. In order to make sure she cannot talk of what he has done, Mr. Harvey kills Susie, thinking he has silenced her forever. Mr. Harvey’s drive to silence Susie comes from his need to control others and his surroundings. This is even more evident when he only wants to hear Susie say, “I love you” when he asks her to “tell me you love me… he [says]” (15). This interaction shows that all Mr. Harvey wants is the control and the pleasure he gets from having that control.

By “cover[ing] [her] mouth with his left [hand]” (5) Alice’s rapist, in Sebold’s memoir Lucky, also keeps her quiet by silencing her through suppression. Instead of growing tired of her pleading, like in The Lovely Bones, Alice’s rapist does not want her to cry for help. In addition to using his hand to silence Alice, her rapist uses the power of the words “shut up” (7). The closest her rapist comes to silencing Alice for good is “wrapping his hands around [her] neck and…squeeze[ing]” (6) to the point where she loses consciousness for a second. Like Mr. Harvey, Alice’s rapist is looking for power though control over another person. Her rapist only wants Alice to speak when he tells her to and only about ideas that give him more power, such as how “he [is] strong… powerful...[and] a good man” (11). Just hearing these words, even if they are spoken out of fear, allows Alice’s rapist to feel all-powerful.

Silenced by suppression can also be seen as exclusion, as is the case in the play Trifles. The important people in a murder investigation on the side of the prosecution are the sheriff, the county attorney and any witnesses. In this case, all three are “men in middle life” (981) except for the attorney who is bit younger. During the investigation, the attorney asks Mrs. Hale if she and Mrs. Wright, the accused, are friends. Mrs. Hale goes on to answer his question, but when he feels she is not giving him any relevant information he stops her and says “I’d like to talk more of that a little later. I want to get the lay of things upstairs now” (984). The attorney never comes back to talk with her, believing that what she has to say is irrelevant to his case. Because Mrs. Hale is only at the house to help gather clothes for Mrs. Wright, she has no input in what should be deemed important. She is, therefore, excluded from the rest of the conversations among the men, thus giving all the power of the investigation to the men involved.

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As portrayed in Trifles, women during the late 1800’s were also more formally silenced by exclusion from jury duty. Through this exclusion, women could not voice their opinions in court and the jury lost a women’s view of the situation. Also having all male jurors in this trial would give men considerable power over the fate of Mrs. Wright. By suppressing women’s opinions through exclusion, men at that time, including the three men in Trifles, were keeping the power of voice to themselves. They feel that as men, they are the only ones who can make the correct decisions concerning the law.

Because “death [is] something that happen[s] all the time” (33) Lindsay, in The Lovely Bones, wants to ignore the fact that Susie is dead and would rather pretend that her death means nothing. By doing so, she becomes a self-silencer. Lindsay deals with the death of her sister by retreating inside herself. When her family or her teachers try to engage her in a conversation “she [does] not respond” (32). Lindsay does not want to deal with her pain and her feelings, so she tries to convince herself that “[she] is fine” (33). By not allowing herself to grieve, be angry or feel any emotion at all, she is giving in to what Mr. Harvey wants. Mr. Harvey gains power through control over people and his surroundings. By killing Susie, Mr. Harvey disrupts the life of her family and those people who are close to her. Because he causes the disruption, the disrupted are in his control. If Lindsay were to let go and let herself feel the emotions and move on, she would be relinquishing Mr. Harvey’s control and taking away his power.

As in The Lovely Bones, silence by being ignored is also found in Lucky. As Alice is being taken out to the ambulance, the policeman “[takes] control” and tells the crowd to “get out of the way . . . this girl’s just been raped” (16). In a matter of a few words, Alice goes from being a faceless stranger to becoming “that girl” (16), the one that everyone will remember because she was raped. Intentionally or unintentionally the policeman groups her together with all other rape victims and in that minute she loses her own identity and becomes one more statistic. Her own voice has been silenced and replaced with the voice of a collective group of women: rape victims. The control the officer is trying to gain over the situation is his way of asserting his power over Alice. The policeman does not take into consideration that even though she is a victim, she is not powerless; she still has the right to be heard. His need for control and power over the situation should not outweigh the needs of the victim.

The silencing of women is oftentimes caused by being suppressed, excluded and ignored by men in society. By silencing women, men are asserting their power over who is deemed to be the weaker sex. This power is gained through control and the feeling of being superior to women. The feelings of being powerful and superior to women only increase the more a woman is silenced.

WORKS CITED Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. Eds. Gilbert and Gubar. NY: W.W. Norton, 1996. 1350-1360.

Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 2002.

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BARRY N. CLAIR

The religion of American Beauty In February of 1844, Karl Marx wrote, "Religion is…the opium of the people" (Marx, par. 4). In 1999, screenwriter Alan Ball proposes that opium (marijuana) is the religion of the people. Aside from that minor juxtaposition, Ball and director Sam Mendes prove quite literally that Marx was correct when he wrote, "Man makes religion, religion does not make man" (par. 3). Close examination of the Academy Award winning film American Beauty reveals the covertly encoded matrix of a comprehensive religious system.

In his book Cults and New Faiths, John Butterworth outlines several themes or concepts that are common to the religious systems of the world. These include God (transcendent being), man (humankind), evil (sin), revelation (sacred teachings), how to live (religious activities) and the future (eschatology) (62, 63). Using Butterworth's concepts as a guide, one can see all of these themes addressed in the characters, plot, symbolism and cinematography of the film American Beauty.

Using terms like "theological treatise" (Deacy 67), and "parable" (66), in an article written for the Journal of Contemporary Religion, Christopher Deacy states, "American Beauty is open to a fertile religious reading" (61). Any discussion of religion must first begin with the concept of a transcendent being. In American Beauty God is not a person but rather a universal truth or ultimate reality that is embodied in the messianic character of Ricky Fitts. The pivotal scene of the film is where Ricky is showing Jane the most beautiful thing he's ever filmed. It is a plastic bag floating and being carried along in the swirling wind. Explaining this existential experience, he describes God this way, "That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid…ever" (American). The ultimate truth, the universal reality, the God of American Beauty then is the beautiful, peaceful essence behind things.

Although not God, Ricky is the embodiment of enlightenment. He is the benevolent force incarnate, or a type of Christ. Angela hints at this when she asks Jane why he dresses like a Bible salesman. Pointing to his role as the prophet, Vincent Hausmann calls him, "the film's favored seer" (136). Throughout the film he is the catalyst through which the dynamic characters of Lester and Jane evolve and against which the static characters of Carolyn and Colonel Fitts collide. In his review of the film, Gary Hentzi points to Ricky's mystical presence calling him an "uncannily cool-headed and clearsighted young man" and a "fantasy figure" (49). Instead of a perverted voyeur who films his neighbor's private lives for his own pleasure, Ricky is revealed as a God-like character who is hidden yet omnisciently watching over Lester and Jane recording their lives for some future purpose. At an appointed time, he dramatically reveals himself to them in unique fashion. He makes himself known to Jane one evening by pulling an overhead cord bathing him in light as he stands with camera in hand recording her re-

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turn home. At the low point of Lester's internal conflict while at his wife's work party, Lester looks up to see Ricky standing in front of him, with his all-knowing gaze. Ricky asks, "Do you party? Do you get high?" (American). From these points on, the character arcs of Lester and Jane begin to change radically. It's as if their encounter with Ricky initiates a sort of spiritual awakening, a born again experience that grows at each episode with their spiritual guide. After Ricky confronts his boss and quits his job as a waiter, Lester remarks, "I think you just became my personal hero" (American).

If Christianity teaches that since the sin of Eden, humanity exists in a fallen state (New International Version, Romans 3:23), American Beauty teaches that humanity exists imprisoned in a materialistic state. Shirley Law spots this theme cinematically presented early on in the film. She describes the reflection of Lester's face on his computer screen that contains blue data pillars like jail bars through which he sees the world (126). Judith A. Spector and Katherine V. Tsiopos Wills in their journal article conclude, "Ultimately, American Beauty is an exploration of the limits of consumerism and the aesthetics of materialism" (295). Lester laments his captivity by exclaiming, "Let's just all sell our souls and work for Satan 'cause it's more convenient that way" (American).

With regard to its doctrine of evil, American Beauty presents itself as amoral.

It does so by implicitly and explicitly violating even the most liberal of social mores and taboos without assigning judgment or negative consequences. For instance, when confronted with Carolyn's adultery, Lester responds by saying, "Honey, it's okay. I want you to be happy" (American). A discussion about Lester's pot smoking and its example to their child is put on the same level as Carolyn's greed. The blackmailing of Lester's boss for $60,000 is seen as a legitimate way to escape the prison of a joyless job. Graphically depicted masturbation (two instances) is referred to as the highlight of the day. When caught in the act, instead of producing shame in Lester, it creates an opportunity to confront his wife resulting in satisfaction.

The aforementioned abuses of moderate social norms however, are mild when compared with the extreme cases that are portrayed. Kathleen Row Karlyn, in Cinema Journal begins her indictment thus, "American Beauty creates a hero with a unique sensitivity that authorizes his transgressions" (78). She then goes on to cite instances of implied incest between father and daughter (70). Karlyn also points to the character of Ricky who, "romanticizes the stalking of women" (81). Hausmann reads father-son incest between Ricky and the Colonel in the subtext of the film (124,125).

Casey McKittrick implies the presence of pedophilia by saying, "much of the film's mise-en-scène is devoted to his fantasy of 'getting' the adolescent girl" (5,6). By taking an amoral stance toward evil, Mendes and Ball are propagating their belief that social and moral evil are man-made shackles that inhibit true enlightenment, that salvation comes by letting go of the material world with its appetites and desires and resting in the beauty behind what is seen. This belief is spoken through the character of Lester as he achieves his state of enlightenment, after finally throwing off the illusion of evil around and in him, in response to Angela's question he states, "I'm great. I'm great!" (American).

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How then does this film reveal its God to us? The answer is found in the two nearly identical statements made by Lester and Ricky. In his prophetic utterance, Ricky states, "Video's a poor excuse, I know, but it helps me remember. I need to remember.

Sometimes there's so much…beauty…in the world I feel like I can't take it. And my heart…is just going to…cave in" (American). Lester echoes with his postmortem declaration, "it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax and stop trying to hold on to it" (American). Divine revelation then comes through the enlightenment that follows material or physical death. It is achieved when the material is transcended by the spiritual.

And by what religious activity should it be worshipped? The film Re-Animator is referenced twice in American Beauty and serves as an apt symbol. It is first mentioned when Lester is rediscovering the effects of smoking marijuana and is next mentioned by Lester to Ricky masking his request to buy some pot. The symbolism is strong; the peaceful, mellow high of marijuana is a conduit through which one can come in contact with the alternate reality behind the material universe. In a manner of speaking, it re-animates.

Eschatology in American Beauty is nothing more than simple fatalism. It is verbalized in the words of Angela who says, "everything that was meant to happen, does… eventually" (American). To underscore this philosophy, instead of resolving itself in a happy ending, the plot of the film climaxes in irony. As his midlife crisis and pedophiliac obsession is dissolved into parental concern, after his epiphany at which he utters his triumphal statement, "I'm great!" (American), at the dawning moment he gazes again into a picture of familial happiness, Lester is shot dead in the back of the head. It's as if the authors are telling the audience that they cannot control anything. Life happens. Just deal with it. The future is beyond anyone's control.

Having fleshed out and decoded the theological matrix of American Beauty, one can hear in Lester's final postmortem words a reiteration of the existential universal fatalism of its religious system, "I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry. You will someday." (American). What remains is the obvious question, is this religion worthy of anyone's belief?

WORKS CITED American Beauty. Dir. Sam Mendes. DreamWorks SKG, 1999.

Butterworth, John. Cults and New Faiths: A Book of Beliefs. Cook: Elgin, Illinois, 1981.

Deacy, Christopher. "Integration and Rebirth through Confrontation: Fight Club and American Beauty as Contemporary Religious Parables." Journal of Contemporary Religion 17.1 (Jan. 2002): 61-73. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 29 November 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com.er.llcc.edu:2048/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a ph&AN=5780801&site=ehost-live.

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Hausmann, Vincent. "Envisioning the (W)hole World "Behind Things": Denying Otherness in American Beauty." Camera Obscura 19.55 (Jan. 2004): 112149. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 29 November 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com.er.llcc.edu:2048/login.aspx?direct =true&db=aph&AN=13020580&site=ehost-live>.

Hentzi, Gary. "American Beauty" Film Quarterly 54.2 (Winter, 2000-2001): 46-50. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00151386%28200024%2F200124%2954 %3A2%3C46%3AAB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7.

Karlyn, Kathleen Rowe. "Too Close for Comfort": American Beauty and the Incest Motif. Cinema Journal 44.1 (Fall 2004): 69-93. Academic Search Premier.

EBSCO. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 29 November 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com.er.llcc.edu:2048/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=15824856&site=ehost-live.

Law, Shirley. "looking Closer: Structure, Style and Narrative in American Beauty."

Screen Education (2006): 123-129. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 30 November 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=22334 653&site=ehost-live.

Marx, Karl. "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right."

Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. February, 1844. Marxist Internet Archive.

4 Dec. 2007. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm.

McKittrick, Casey. "'I Laughed and cringed at the same time': Shaping Pedophilic Discourse around American Beauty and Happiness." Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television (Spring 2001): 3. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 30 November 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=7437 477&site=ehost-live.

Spector, Judith A., and Katherine V. Tsiopos Wills. "The Aesthetics of Materialism in Alan Ball's American Beauty." Midwest Quarterly 48.2 (Winter 2007): 279-296. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 29 November 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com.er.llcc.edu:2048/login.aspx?direct=true&db =aph&AN=23779227&site=ehost-live.

The Holy Bible, New International Version.

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CHRISTI MINICK

Broadening the educational Horizon An array of voices can be heard with tones of determination. “Grab the abdominal instrument tray!” “Notify the anesthesia team!” “Open the surgical pack!” The patient is on the table in critical condition. The surgeon enters the room and the surgical assistant hands him a gown, gloves his hands, and helps cover the patient with sterile drapes. “Scalpel,” the surgeon states with confidence. The assistant proceeds to pass the scalpel and the surgery progresses. This scene is a simulated situation that took place in the skills laboratory at Capital Area School of Surgical Technology (CASST) in central Illinois. CASST is a vocational school that educates and equips individuals to assist in various surgical procedures, preparing them for a respectable job in the healthcare profession.

Vocational education can be defined as educational training that provides practical experience in a particular occupational field. Typically, programs are approximately two years long. In the past, vocational schools have been viewed as places for students who are not “smart enough” to go to college where they might achieve the necessary skills to earn a certificate and obtain an adequate job. However, over the last several years, there has been a focused effort in raising academic standards and transforming vocational programs into a more appealing alternative to college. Charles Murray is an American Enterprise Institute scholar who discusses this topic in his essay, “What’s Wrong with Vocational School?” In his essay, Murray expresses his belief that only a small minority of people is intelligent enough to attend college and questions why vocational schools are not presented or encouraged to those who may be “lacking the intellectual skill” that college requires. He states, “[unqualified students] are in college to improve their chances of making a good living. What they really need is vocational training” (Murray 1).

Though vocational education is becoming a more prevalent option in today’s society, intellectual skill level should not pre-determine whether students are better suited for success in vocational schools rather than college settings.

A college education is not the best option for some individuals; however, everyone should have the freedom to choose his or her own course and style of study. Each person is born with a unique design and purpose. His or her desires and intellectual capabilities vary from others. Diversity is the element that makes our world interesting. Imagine how boring life would be if we all possessed the same skills, desires, and intelligence and followed the same path. In his essay, Murray says that, “People who go to college are not better or worse people than anyone else; they are merely different in certain interests and abilities” (3). Some individuals may be perfectly capable of completing a college degree yet do not

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posses the desire. While others may not be blessed with an outstanding intelligence level, their determination and focus enable them to succeed in higher education. I was discussing this subject with a co-worker several months ago. At the time, her son had recently graduated from high school. Like most mothers, she expressed hope that he would seek further education. She was confident that he was intelligent and would succeed in a college setting. Despite his lack of interest, she strongly encouraged him to apply for admission into several schools. He succumbed to his mother’s wishes and was accepted into Illinois State University.

After spending a good portion of his first semester at ISU, he quickly determined college was not for him. Though performing well in his classes, he possessed no interest in anything related to the college experience. Upon returning home, he enrolled in a vocational program with a focus in welding. My co-worker has recently shared that he is “enjoying the vocational experience and the hands-on aspect seems to be a better fit for him.”

Vocational education provides an alternative to four-year colleges or universities and should be encouraged for individuals other than just “those lacking intellectual skills.” In his article entitled, “Rocket Scientist or Auto Mechanic? The Distinction Is Blurring,” Scott Sturgis takes a look at who is enrolling in vocational schools. He shares the view of Dean Ulrich who teaches at the Gibson Technical Center, a vocational school in Reeds Spring, Missouri. Mr. Ulrich says high school counselors are to blame for enrollment in vocational schools consisting of only those students who are not college bound. He states, “Counselors often told students, if your grades are not good enough for college, go to vocational school. It’s disappointing because I don’t get the highly intelligent individuals that can understand electrical flow and computer diagnostics well to get in there and make the big money” (2). Many of these counselors do not mention the possibilities that accompany the vocational experience. My high school guidance counselor was not in favor of promoting vocational training to students unless she believed they were incapable of achieving higher education. After expressing interest in attending the vocational program at CASST (mentioned above), she was not supportive of the idea. She claimed that I was “smarter and more capable than what CASST had to offer.” She encouraged me to apply to various colleges in addition to the vocational program.

However, I was accepted into CASST in the fall of 2005 and decided it was the best option for my financial, educational, and career goals at that time. It was an elevenmonth program that provided a focused and intentional course, teaching only the pertinent information to our field of study. The condensed time frame allowed us to establish careers in a short amount of time. As a result, I was able to obtain a fulltime, well-paid position with benefits by the age of nineteen, while many of my peers were just beginning their sophomore year of college unsure of what degree to pursue. Vocational programs provide a strong base for education and an opportunity for financial security. Together, these factors allow students to use vocational education as a stepping-stone as they may still be considering which direction they ultimately want to take in life.

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Many are still not supporters of vocational education due to the stigma associated with it. Often, these individuals believe that college is the only way to achieve a “real” education in order to obtain a decent career. Society has conditioned students to look at college as the natural step upon graduation from high school. Throughout my senior year of high school, nearly everyone I engaged in conversation with would inquire, “So, which colleges have you applied to?” or “What are you looking to major in?” Nearly all of my peers expressed similar experiences. Whether friends, family, co-workers, or acquaintances, the assumption was that we would pursue a college-level education. Vocational education was never voiced as an option. In her article, “Plumbing, then Political Science Mass.

Vocational Schools Steering Students to College,” Maria Sacchetti writes about a young man named “Jonathon” who attended a vocational school in Massachusetts with a focus in plumbing. Sacchetti quotes Jonathon as saying, “I had people who told me, ‘Oh, don’t go to a vocational school...You’re ruining your life’” (1). Sacchetti writes that Jonathon, however, disregarded the negative comments and claimed he “made the best choice possible” (1).

Despite lacking support from a number of individuals in society, vocational education is rapidly becoming a more attractive option among today’s students.

Peter Schworm, a writer on staff for The Boston Globe, evaluates the increase in enrollment at vocational schools in his article, “Technically Speaking—Demand Is Strong for a Modern Vocational Education.” He says, “Vocational officials say today’s students—with support from their parents—are increasingly eager to acquire realworld skills and get an early start on a potential career, particularly given skyrocketing college costs” (1). In addition to financial savings and early career establishment, he states, “Vocational schools are offering a wider slate of attractive career programs, outfitting workshops with the latest equipment to simulate job sites. They are raising the standards” (1). Higher standards in vocational schools are gaining attention at a national level as well. Programs and funding are being evaluated. In his article, “Vocational Needs Addressed; Bush Also Eyes Modernizing Job-Training Program,” Joseph Curl informs readers of President Bush’s latest view on vocational education along with his plan for additional funding and more advanced testing procedures. He quotes Mr. Bush as saying, “When kids are coming out of a vocational training program, they’re going to need to do more than just what’s taught at the vocational training level…they’re going to need to be able to think. And we can’t let kids go through without raising the standards and raising the bar” (1). If Bush’s plan is carried out, the appeal for vocational education will continue to grow and enrollment is likely to increase as well.

Despite the increasing alternatives for young people today, education is easily taken for granted in our society. College is often viewed as “the next step” after graduation from high school and not as an opportunity for personal growth and development. Society places a strong emphasis on achieving a college degree in order for individuals to have opportunities for successful careers. This mindset, however, does not accommodate those individuals who have no desire to attend

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college or whose minds are not wired for that type of education. Should a mother of six urge all of her children to become concert pianists despite their diverse interests and talents? Or should a car salesman attempt to sell the same make and model of car to every individual or family without considering their specific situation? In turn, should society push all students to become college graduates no matter what their abilities and desires may be? Whether college, vocational program, or some other form of education, each is a different type of schooling that may appeal to a different learning style. Every individual should have the opportunity to choose his or her course of education without a stigma attached or added pressure from society.

WORKS CITED Curl, Joseph. “Vocational Needs Addressed; Bush Also Eyes Modernizing Job-training Program.” The Washington Post 7 Apr. 2004, sec. Nation: A03.

Academic. LexisNexis. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 20 Nov. 2008 http://www.lexisnexis.com.

Murray, Charles. “What’s Wrong with Vocational School?” The Contemporary Reader. Ed.Gary Goshgarian. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2008: 445-447.

Sacchetti, Maria. “Plumbing, Then Political Science Mass. Vocational Schools Steering Students to College.” The Boston Globe 21 Jan. 2007, third ed., sec.

Metro: A1. Academic. Lexis Nexis. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 20 Nov. 2008 http://www.lexisnexis.com.

Schworm, Peter. “Technically Speaking—Demand Is Strong for a Modern Vocational Education.” The Boston Globe 13 May 2007, third ed., sec.

South: 1. Academic. LexisNexis. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 20 Nov. 2008 http://www.lexisnexis.com.

Sturgis, Scott. “Rocket Scientist or Auto Mechanic? The Distinction Is Blurring.” The NewYork Times 10 June 2007, final ed., sec. 12: 14. Academic.

Lexis Nexis. Lincoln Land Community College Library, Springfield, IL. 20 Nov. 2008 http://www.lexisnexis.com.

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JESSICA MULLENS

Stresses in the food Industry Business In my twelve years of being involved in the food industry business, I have learned that I need to have a strong tolerance to the daily stress that it entails-- to, as the saying goes, “take it with a grain of salt.” I finally understand what that saying means. There are so many days where my printer never ceases to stop developing orders. On a daily basis, I am unwillingly involved in the drama of an undesired soap opera between my co-workers. Furthermore, I have come to believe that some customers are driven out of bed, intentionally, to make everyone they come in contact with have a horrible day. Almost every minute of the day, I catch myself singing, “Mama said there will be days like this/Days like this my mama said,” from the old Mo-Town group, the Shirelles. Although I love my job, the daily stress of being consumed by orders, the constant drama between co-workers, and the erratic behavior of the customers has me questioning myself on why I still do this type of work.

I begin my day with pure dread as I hear my printer typing words on the papers above me. Chills run up and down my spine. I reluctantly reach for each ticket. My arms have to be forced into action. As I begin to hang the kaleidoscopes of orders in my window, a hard, ever-growing lump begins to form in the back of my throat. Watching the customers stampede in like cattle freezes my entire body with doom. I start to set up each plate for its allotted destination. Within this time, I become hypnotized by words of lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, and onions. I chant the words over and over again in my mind until I am dizzy. I hear the printer ring through my mind-numbing trance. I find myself praying for the evil thing to break down. By this point, the food tickets are nothing but a blur of vegetable jargon. My mind drifts off to a foreign land filled with dancing vegetables and lifesized bottles of condiments skipping down the streets. I hopelessly scan the room for the nearest exit sign. I take a deep breath, regain my composure, and move on to the next ticket.

Then I have the unwanted tension that seems to be in all work environments. Day after day, my work place becomes a daytime drama rerun. I am forced to deal with constant bickering between the co-workers about the he said/she said parts of life. They make the workplace a more hostile environment for everyone. There are some people who were made to handle this kind of environment; however, there are those who were not. Some hold their heads high and are respectful to the job they are assigned. Others are boastful and seem to be filled with nothing but hot air. They cause tension so thick it could be cut with a knife.

Endlessly they complain about their job and the task at hand. One co-worker loves

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to say, “That is not my job,” every time he is asked to carry up plates or to sweep the floor. “Is that in my job title?” Another person asked. I laugh at the excuses they come up with sometimes.

In dealing with the public, I come across an array of people. Even though I try to keep my distance and steer clear of the cash registers, I still, somehow, get sucked into dealing with them. If it is not the younger generation being loud and obnoxious, then it is the older generation chiming in on the fun, as if they were twenty again. The teenagers can be boastful and sarcastic, but when it comes down to the older customers carefully clipping coupons and demanding senior discounts, I am not sure which one is worse. The older generation performs psychological tactics that seem to push all of my sensory buttons at once.

They ask, “What do I have to buy in order to get this coupon?”

I hate to tell them, bluntly, just read the silly piece of paper. Before I know it, they are smirking as if they had won the mind game. Yet, when I scan their beloved coupon, they come to the realization they have only saved fifty cents. At that moment, all whimsical thoughts melt from their face. They become raging volcanoes, spitting forth conspiracy theories, about how I am to blame for their misfortune.

The amount of stress I have at my work place would make some people duck and cover. Yet, I am gaining a newly found respect for the eerie sound of the printer, and the ongoing theatrics of my co-workers never ceases to amaze me.

The different faces of the customers I meet day to day make my life content, no matter the cost. I will continue to enjoy my job for many years to come and shall see what tomorrow holds in its promising sunrise for my beloved customers and myself.

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KELLEE WEMPEN

Terminal Illness Have you ever been to a place that just made you sick? It was mid afternoon on a rainy Monday. I was waiting to board the four o’clock plane to New York. I chose to spend my wait time in a quiet little coffee shop inside the loaded and strenuous airport. I was only about thirty frog leaps away from the overly crowded number 12 terminal. As I sat with my steaming and freshly brewed coffee, I could feel the warmth and tranquility of the heated, dark, liquid sitting between my cracked and weary hands. In my worried and stressed mind, all I could think about was the confusing and hectic workplace waiting for me. The dusty, neglected, bronze-colored table in front of me seemed to reach out and whisper that this silent and non busy coffee shop hasn’t seen any of the outgoing, airport visitors in a long and saddened time. There was a dense, putrid aroma to this forgotten place that filled my unknowing nostrils and seemed to make me want to run to the nearest bathroom.

This nasty coffee shop was a sad and frightening place to spend my hour of wait.

My initial impression of this unforgettable place was not a good one. The rustic and faded artwork that was hanging all around me on the well-aged walls had dulled down and did not have the same brilliance and majesty that they once had. I followed the ghastly, nicked, stone walls up to the haunted and pale gray ceiling. Intricate and fascinating cobwebs filled every deep, shadow-bound nook and cranny. A withered and silent woman sat at another dusty and worn table near me. She appeared to be a hostile and bold woman with hunched, vicious, and immense shoulders, almost like a man-eating tiger ready to strike at the chime of a distant bell. Her stringy, ragged, amber hair hung down over her mangy, greasy, coarse clothing. Alongside her sat a hunter green and gray soot-covered bag. Her ripped and splintered shoes showed her weak and rigid feet inside them. I looked up and noticed her blazing, emerald eyes looking right back at me. She slowly rose up from her shaky, antique chair and strolled over to my smaller and more tarnished table. She leaned down to my petrified and sweaty face and spoke directly to me.

“Do you have a problem?” I was completely bewildered by her menacing, and violent manner.

“I . . . I . . . was . . . just,” but before I could get another quivering word out, she quickly whipped around and jolted out of the broken and weathered door.

A young and very loud couple walked in, only adding to the already upsetting and sickening atmosphere. They sat in a halfway clean and looming booth.

They sat and giggled back and forth for what seemed like forever, and then the young man arose and walked to the counter to order. He was about six feet tall and had short golden brown hair. His partner was a little shorter and more petite.

She was most likely a few years younger than he and a little wilder. She had light,

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sandy colored hair that flowed down to her narrow shoulders, and half-way down her slender back. She waited patiently for him to return. I caught a glimpse of her eyes looking straight at me and then turn away with a look of disgust. That got me to thinking how sickening this ghastly place was and how it had grown on me.

I hunched over my now frigid and half drank coffee, and felt awkward. I appeared almost as a silhouette against the forgotten and deserted walls that formed this god-forsaken place. I looked up and the pale, slender, female body before me was terrified to be in my ghostly presence. She motioned to her companion and quickly escaped the terrible fate that had come to me.

As they walked out of the half-opened door, I walked steadily up to the rusty and cracked counter to find an old and tired looking man who seemed to tie into the whole sickening feel of this place. The bewildered and crippled cashier looked me up and down as if making sure I was worthy to be in his presence. The elderly man limped up to the register and asked me what I wanted. He was a very menacing looking man with only about four yellow mustard colored teeth. His grimy brown hair looked as if it hadn’t been washed in weeks. He was wearing a torn light blue colored shirt and his short royal blue pants were also torn. When I replied, “nothing,” he gave me a look of doubt and turned around and walked back to his blackened, corner hiding place. I turned around and stalked to the door.

As I threw away my coffee cup, I turned around to take one more look at this disgusting place: the filthy walls coated with nasty film from the past years; the rustic paintings hanging on the saddened and old walls; the intricate cobwebs that seemed to form perfectly in all corners of this small space; the violent and mysterious people who seemed to almost live here; and the overwhelming and nauseating stench and presence that haunted this undiscovered place. I walked out the antique door and a sense of tranquility hit me. I was back out in my normal and undisturbed environment in the airport. All the sickening and scared feelings were gone and I was free of the unwanted fears of the coffee shop in front of the number 12 terminal that would take me to my safe and welcoming workplace in New York.

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JULIE ANDERSON

Broke, but Not Broken My life-style has changed dramatically from being able to pay my bills on time, to worrying about if I will be able to keep my house. I lost my ability to work at my job in February of 2001. I lost the best job ever from catching the flu that year. I used to work in the Records Department for Horace Mann as a Microfilmer. The nasty upper respiratory flu that was going around town had placed many in the hospital and killed others. It did not help that I already have McArdle’s disease, a form of Muscular Dystrophy, and the flu can kill people with Muscular Dystrophy.

I am lucky to have had my quick thinking eleven-year-old daughter, Ariel, at home when I started to throw up blood. Ariel helped save me physically, but she could not save me from what I was about to go through after I recovered. There are many negative effects of not having money after I lost my job.

The first negative effect of not having money was not being able to pay all of my bills. At this time, I was only receiving disability from my place of work, but this would last for only about six months. My full time pay was $900.00 a month; plus, I was receiving child support for Ariel, and that was only $150.00 a month.

The disability amount was only half of what I was making a month when I was working full time. My mobile home payment then was $365.00 a month. This did not include the lot rent that I also had to pay, which was $245.00 a month. I was worried more about putting food on the table for the children than paying the lot rent and mobile home payments. I turned to the last resource that was left for me to buy food; my credit cards. I had only three at the time, and two were Visa Premier Cards and one was a Discover card. Oh, how I hated to use these. At first, the Discover card was paid on time, but when I charged more on the card, my payment for the card went up. This was a minimum of $33.00 a month for my Discover card. The two Visa cards were both over the limit on the charges, and they were billing me $42.00 each. Since all of the cards were now behind, I had electric and the gas bills to pay as well, and they were behind, too. The electric bill was at a $250.00 minimum, and the gas bill was now over $300.00. I asked myself how I was ever going to get this caught up. I would spend over half the day just talking to the credit card companies on the phone about when I would have the money for them. Of course, they did not want any excuses about why I did not have the money; they just wanted their money. I would not have to worry about talking with the nasty rude people at the credit card companies any longer because my phone was shut off.

The next negative effect that would occur is my relationship with my boyfriend, Paul, would come to an end. While I was temporarily on disability, my boyfriend, Paul, was getting frustrated with me for being out of work, and on disability. Paul did not understand my disability at the time. He was more concerned

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about me losing my job. We would get into plenty of arguments about why I could not get back to work. He would get so upset with me for staying home. I would explain to him time after time that I needed to rest, and if I did not allow my body time to heal the right way, I would just end up right back in the hospital again. I guess he could not handle the stress of the whole problem that he and I were facing with him paying the majority of the bills, and me with only half a paycheck coming into the house to help pay the rest. Paul told me he was leaving. What could be next?

By now, the third negative effect was depression. I just wanted to sleep all the time. I was not eating, and my kids were unhappy that I was in a bad mood all the time. I did not want to clean my house. All I could think about was how I lost my job, my boyfriend, and now I was going to have to start the steps to file bankruptcy. I thought about ending my life, thinking that my kids would be better off without a grumpy mom walking around, yelling all the time and crying. I did not care what people thought about what I looked like. I was so angry with myself for getting sick. Though I did not realize it at the time, it was not my fault I got sick.

My depression was so bad; I knew I had to see a therapist. I spent a year just trying to get over being depressed. I went to see my old doctor at Vine Street Clinic, Dr. Alexander, and he and I had plenty of visits together over the next year.

If I had not caught the flu that year, I would not have realized how much more there is to life besides a job, the house I used to own, and how bad my relationship was already with Paul. After Paul moved out from my house, he had moved in with his ex-wife, Carol. The bankruptcy that I had filed was finished in the court system. I was officially bankrupt. The job I had was great, but it was also very stressful. I wanted to do something more than sit, and microfilm documents until I retired, so I was glad they had let me go from Horace Mann. It helped me to plan for a better future. I wanted my kids to see their mom in a more of a positive way. After the bankruptcy, I found a house that was for sale contract for deed. Pat Rotherham saw that I needed a break. I thank god every day that Pat was able to help me out. It took me three years to get my credit back. I was able to get a loan for the house, so finally I had a home that was mine. Paul was still in my life. He had been seeing me, and the kids on and off for seven long years. Just a few months ago, he moved back in with me and the kids. Things are looking so good that I decided to go back to college to finish what I had started twenty years ago. My life as I can say for now is wonderful. All I can say is “bring it on.” I am more than ready to face life without money; happiness is far more important for me.

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TONYA WHITE

Saving Green: The metrorail In 2006, my daughter, Angela, and I visited Washington DC. Our hotel was two blocks from a metro station, and every sight that we visited was conveniently located within a short walking distance to and from a metro station. On our way to the Metro station one morning, we were almost clipped by a driver who was oblivious to the world around her as she sped on through the red light, nearly hitting us and several other pedestrians in the cross walk. With the roads becoming more congested and dangerous and with the cost of gas continuing to rise, implementing more metrorail systems in urban areas would serve as a more economic and convenient option to driving; not only would it help to save money, but it would also help to save the environment.

In these tough economic times, everyone is doing everything he or she can to continuously cut back on expenses, and this will continue to become a more dire need the further our country slides into a recession. One way to drastically save money would be by using a metro rail system. Compared to the cost-efficient option that using a metro rail system offers to the cost of driving, the cost of driving an automobile is staggering. Although the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority received much opposition when the board approved an increase in subway fares and parking fees, the costs fail to compare to the ever increasing fees associated with driving a car. As of July 2008, gasoline in the Washington D.C. area was $4.18 a gallon. Then, factor in the cost of parking, which according to bestparking.com is anywhere from $80 -$205 a month. The price of car insurance, which varies depending on the age and driving record of the owner, and the type of vehicle owned, could set a driver back another $100 dollars a month. Finally, there are things like routine maintenance and the dreaded breakdown. One can easily see how riding the Metrorail can save money, even with the potential increases in fees. The Metrorail fares range from $1.35 to $4.50. The Metrorail fare is not fixed, but varies depending upon the distance traveled and the time of day.

When my daughter and I visited D.C, we purchased two of the 7 day fast passes, for $39 each, which are valid for seven consecutive days of unlimited Metrorail trips, and the fees never vary from a Farecard machine. While the prices associated with driving continue to sky-rocket, the Metro offers a substantially cost-efficient alternative.

The Metrorail system is not only cost-effective, but riding the Metro anywhere is also unbelievably convenient; finding a station has been made almost effortless. For example, in Washington D.C., a commuter should look for the tall brown columns with the large “M” identifying the station entrances, and then look for the color stripes on the column showing which lines the station offers. Waiting for the train is easy and comfortable because both the trains and the stations are

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air-conditioned. Another convenience is that finding the right train is a cinch.

There are signs in the station that tell riders which train platform to use for any destination and there are electronic signs with flashing lights that signal the train’s arrival. There are also electronic signs telling the estimated arrival time of each train arriving at that platform. In 2006, my daughter and I flew out to Washington D.C. for seven days. We went to the Metro station and purchased our passes right after checking into our hotel. Although we were both a little intimidated by the Metro, my daughter walked right up to the platform, looked at the sign, and figured it out almost instantly. We both agreed it was our favorite part of D.C. and wanted to have one here at home in Springfield.

Additionally, the wait time isn’t very long because the trains are fast and frequent, especially during peak hours. The average wait time during rush periods is 6 minutes, the midday average is 12 minutes, and the evening average is 20 minutes. The WMATA website states that “The trains can reach a maximum speed of 85 MPH, but rarely exceed 75 MPH.” Because of its ability to reach such quick speeds, this makes traveling via the Metro extremely expedient, compared to the time one would spend commuting via an automobile. For example, the estimated traveling time from 7400 Wisconsin Ave. Bethesda, Md to 1501 Rhode Island Ave. Washington, DC is 21 minutes according to MapQuest; however, as I searched various other websites and blogs, I found more realistic travel times ranging from 45 minutes to an hour. When I searched WMATA’s website, they offered an estimated time of 25 minutes. The trains start running at 5 a.m. weekdays, 7 a.m. weekends and close at midnight Sunday–Thursday, and remain open until 3 a.m. Friday and Saturday nights. The Metrorail is so easy, comfortable, and fast, that its conveniences alone should be enough to hook passengers into becoming supporters of the system.

The Metrorail is both economic and convenient, but the greatest asset the Metro offers is that it’s environmentally friendly. When I came back home to Springfield after my vacation in Washington D.C., I was so excited to ‘save the environment’ that I went out and bought a bicycle and rode it to work for about two weeks, and then the novelty had worn off and I went back to the practicality of driving everywhere. By using mass transit, we can all work together to save our environment. In ‘What Mass Transit Saves’ the author says: On average, riding mass transit instead of driving cuts hydrocarbon emissions that produce smog by 90 percent: carbon monoxide by over 75 percent: and nitrogen oxides by 15-75 percent, depending on the mode of travel. The American Lung Association estimates the national health care bill for air pollution-related illness is $40 billion a year, while crop losses due to ozone and other pollutants have been estimated at $1.3 billion a year.

The Metrorail will help save our environment by contributing to the reduction of congestion and carbon emissions from too many cars on the road. On

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Thursday, October 18, 2007 the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance published a notice “that this summer, only one code red day was recorded for the poor air quality in regards to the ozone and pollution. With 3.5 million registered vehicles in the DC area, this is a great accomplishment. In the 1980s, the Washington region averaged 17 Code Red days per year. In the 1990s, that number dropped to six per year. Since 2000, the average has been less than three per year.” Because of increased interest in the Metro system, fewer cars are being driven causing air pollution to decrease. We only have one Earth, and riding the Metro will help us to preserve our environment.

I do have to admit that there are some problems with the Metro: trains overrunning stations, colliding with parked trains, or derailing; overcrowding; and the occasional flooded control room or electrical fire. These problems, however, are rare compared to those one encounters while driving an automobile. In contrast, according to car-accidents.com, “There were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the United States in 2005,” and there is approximately “one death every 13 minutes” due to car accidents. On the other hand, according to the Transportation Accidents, Deaths, and Injuries website, there have been only 5,554 people that have died on the Metrorail system, proving that the Metro is safer.

Some people might argue that since the Metro costs billions of dollars to build and operate, and it took around thirty-two years to build, it is only economical to the people who ride it. I believe that with the cost of fuel continuing to sky rocket, we must do something to lessen our dependency on fuel. Once the initial investment has been paid for, then the fees associated with operating such a beneficial system would become an affordable, suitable, green, alternative for commuters.

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MARYJANE OKOLIE

Junk food in Schools Healthy diets include food that consists of all the necessary nutrients that the body needs for its growth such as protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and oil. These are necessary for the maintenance of the body. People eat healthy food in order to live long, to stay healthy, and to be happy. However, it is surprising that junk food is provided by many middle schools to their students in Springfield, Illinois. In the schools’ cafeterias and vending machines, junk foods such as salty potato and corn chips, candy bars, apple pies, chicken nuggets, and corndogs are available to students. Schools should not provide students with junk food because of the problems of contradicting what students learn in the class, non-ethical profits, and negative physical effects.

To begin with, providing junk food to students is contrary to what they learn in school. Schools should practice what they teach. For example, teachers teach students about being healthy. They teach them how to behave well in the class or on the play ground. They also teach them how to relate well with their fellow students: do not fight, do not curse, or do not hit your neighbor. Then why is it that students are not being encouraged to eat healthy diets? Why is it that schools’ cafeterias and vending machines are stuffed with junk food like candy bars, corndogs, salty potato chips, and doughnuts, thereby making it difficult for students to practice what they are being taught in the class? For instance, just imagine this story of Pauline, my friend, about one of her saddest experiences. She said, “My daughter Laura, who is in seventh grade, gradually refuses the food I prepare in the house and will rather request other food like Mexican fries, cheese burgers, chicken nuggets, or Pepsi. My daughter will tell me that she is used to eating them in the school. And many times I find it difficult to convince her to eat freshly prepared food like spaghetti and meatballs, macaroni and cheese, baked chicken breast and fresh orange juice.” Supporters of junk food may say that providing junk food like apple pies, candy bars, and Mountain Dew is easy because they are already prepared. In fact, this should not be an excuse; instead schools should make it their priority to show good examples to students. Good education must encourage good examples. And if schools sell food, they can provide students with healthy fresh fruits such as mangoes, bananas, oranges, apples, and pears, which are more nourishing than junk foods. For example, a child can make a nutritious snack with mangoes, bananas, pears, apples, or cantaloupe. In other words, schools should not provide junk food to students.

Moreover, the problem of non-ethical profits gained from vending machines puts students’ health at stake. Some schools that provide students with junk food may say that they need profits from the vending machines to raise money in order to maintain their schools such as refurbishing the library or repainting the school

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buildings. There is no doubt about these needs, but schools should not raise money at the expense of students’ lives. For instance, in One World Café at Riverton Middle School, a child’s meal from the school’s vending machines could be a candy bar, a bag of salty potato chips, doughnuts, and a Pepsi. Again, in this school’s cafeteria a typical lunch menu could be a cheeseburger or mini corndogs and a can of Mountain Dew. Are these meals a healthy diet? Obviously, no, because such meals are high in fatty acids and sodium, which are not good for the body, especially for the bodies of tender, growing children. Schools should not exchange students’ health for money. There are other ways of raising money: schools can raise money by giving students raffle tickets to sell, and schools can also organize luncheon dinners in which parents and friends are invited to participate in schools’ fund raising.

Therefore, vending machines should be eliminated in schools, and schools’ cafeterias should not be stuffed with junk food.

Finally, the worst problem of providing junk food to students is the negative physical effects. Junk food does more harm than good because it causes many health problems like high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, cancer, malnutrition, and heart attacks. Giving children junk food means exposing them to one or more of these problems, and, of course, it also means not caring for the well-being of the students. For instance, a child who usually eats salty foods like French fries, pretzels, corn and potato chips, and drinks high sodium soda like Coca Cola is likely to develop high blood pressure. And if a child has an undiagnosed heart problem, eating salty foods can cause him or her to have a heart attack or even die. In addition, a child can become obese or develop diabetes by eating sugary and fatty food like candy bars, apple pies, cherry pies, doughnuts, Hostess snacks, chicken nuggets, Zingers, and high sodium drinks like Mountain Dew or Root Beer. Supporters of junk food may say that providing this food to students is a means of giving them their basic needs. Sane people can agree, however, that junk food is not the best way to meet students’ need for food. Schools, for example, can employ capable workers who will prepare quality and nourishing food for students such as lasagna, baked fish, nicely prepared vegetable salads, fresh cantaloupes, pears, tomatoes, peaches, oranges, or grape juice. Under no conditions should schools provide junk food to students because of the risk of health problems.

What will schools gain by providing junk food to students if students’ health is at a stake? What do we expect by risking the health of the future hope of this country? What is the major cause of premature death? And what is the common cause of an increase in health problems such as diabetes, obesity, heart problems, and even cancer? Definitely, one of the major answers to these questions is junk food. If schools continue to provide junk food to students then it will also lead to an increase in early development of health problems like cancer, diabetes, heart problems, and obesity. There will be an increase in the death rate of young people.

Junk food should be banned in schools and parents should stop enrolling their children in schools that provide junk food to students.

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MICHAEL VILES

Teacher Interview: ms. Debbie Smith Ms. Debbie Smith is currently a special education teacher at Jacksonville High School. She is in her mid-fifties and has been teaching full-time for almost twenty-six years. Her original inspiration to follow this professional path came from a book she read while in middle school. The book told the story of a teacher who had a classroom full of students with physical handicaps. Apparently, at the time when Ms. Smith read this book, such students were not viewed or accepted by the schools or society as they are today. She remembers the different social, political, and educational issues the book addressed from the perspective of both the teacher and the students. She knew then and there that she wanted to be someone who effected changes in the education of students who had a less than opportune chance.

There were several things Ms. Smith did not fully anticipate when embarking upon her career. She didn’t expect the overabundance of paperwork, lack of resources, or the insufficient time to prepare lesson plans. Her challenges also included how to deal with the dysfunctional behaviors of her students. She soon discovered that many of these behaviors were initiated by the personal strife they brought with them to the classroom. As she describes it, “I was torn between acting like Hitler and Little Miss Mary Sunshine.” Eventually, by more thoroughly assessing each student’s personal situation, she concluded that issues with trust and other similar emotional stresses were the source of defensive behaviors that interfered with learning. As she began to understand these sources of the students’ behaviors, Ms. Smith hit upon techniques for dealing with the conduct in her classroom. She ascertained that the concept of differentiation and its appropriate application was to be her incessant challenge.

Thankfully Ms. Smith reaps sufficient rewards from her profession to offset the significant challenges. She is still quite delighted when she sees the proverbial “learning light bulb” go on over her students’ heads. She is compelled to continue teaching when she finds a student learning independently or finally finding her or his own motivation to learn. The payoff for her longevity is also when a former student returns for a visit and shares tales of successes that are at least partially due to her passion for education.

Ms. Smith attributes her more refined approach to teaching to her application of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. She continues to implement an ongoing assessment of her student’s personal needs and is persistent in her quest to fulfill them. This is especially true in her endeavor to assure every student that someone honestly cares about them and their education. She feels this assurance is the key

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to building a bond with them that bridges the gap between their personal needs and their educational goals. She finds this invaluable because experience has shown her that behavior management is what depletes her energy the most. The only activity that rivals the energy depletion of dealing with behaviors would be her omnipresent pile of paperwork.

Her motivation for teaching now is simple and has remained consistent throughout her career. She loves her students and she loves to teach. Ms. Smith is obviously in her chosen profession for the intrinsic rewards. The only other benefit she pointed to was that since her position requires an inordinate amount of problem solving it also serves to keep her mind alive and kicking. She still has the spark that was lit by that book she read back in middle school. She still feels the need to be a catalyst of change. Looking back over her last twenty-six years of teaching the only revision she would have made is to have not delayed getting her Master’s Degree for over twenty years. She feels it would have been more valuable to have attained that goal and the knowledge it imparted earlier in her career.

Ms. Smith managed to combine a somewhat sarcastic smile with a slight chuckle when asked what wisdom she would convey to “teachers in training.” It was apparent that there was not ample time for her to divulge all of the prospective pitfalls and misconceptions she has experienced. However, she was never discouraging in her tone while speaking of teaching, just realistic. Her love for her profession clearly surpassed any pessimistic perspectives she may have encountered along the way. She did point out that she considered being healthy enough to withstand the strain is important. But she was also quick to explain that if teachers genuinely appreciates the craft of teaching, then they will find themselves continuously recharged by their efforts. Finally, when asked what technique she employs to avoid letting her students throw her off balance she remarked, “Oh, they can still throw me off balance, I just try not to ever let them know it.”

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TYSON MANKER

Song of Ty's Self Born clean of slate, with big blue eyes, My heart's first beats seemed improvised.

No one to tell, no one could say, The deepest roots of my dismay.

A trek from fields that stretch for miles, To shores once staged as battle grounds, To East then West around our globe, Despair yet hope abounds.

What have you done before me?

Were you blind not to see?

My sight is better in a cave Than yours, we can agree.

What defines a human?

Besides the flesh and bone.

Besides the cars, the jewels, the clothes, Besides the fancy home.

To some it might seem obvious, For those whom time forgot, You make your own solutions, You find your own weak spot.

Lincoln Land Review

The skin that wraps around my bones Is nearly paper thin, Against a bomb or gun or blade However can I win?

I did.

The hate that still flows freely From sea to shining sea, Will not obstruct my viewpoints; Things are not what they seem.

When we leave this gift of Earth And leave our form behind, It's not the soul we stand to lose, Or thoughts inside our mind.

You only have a single shot, To better help this place, Our history will recall, All we do and say.

We have to count our blessings, We have to blaze the trail, For those who live in time to come, We can, and must avail.

There is no room for hate, All we need is love, Yet both of these emotions, Are sent from up above.

For those who cannot speak or help Themselves in any way, For those who swim the oceans deep, For those who've gone away, For those who grow on hillsides, For those who fight for life, For those who can't escape the pain, And those lives filled with strife.

Friends are those who share Stark similarities, I find more in common, With plants and birds and trees.

I hear you brother, sister, mother, father, and my friend, There are us who remember, who fight until the end.

I might have never met you, seen your bark, your fur, your scales, But I surely understand you, and imagine all your tales.

The balance of my mind and soul, Is always on the surge.

Against those things which man hath made.

My body I must purge.

Death is but a part of life, As much as everyday, If I can pass my thoughts along, I know we'll be ok.

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YOLANDA SYKES

yoyo'sâ&#x20AC;&#x2C6;Song I am a living, breathing, contradiction.

Penniless yet rich in spirit.

Middle aged yet young or old depending on your point of reference.

Thick but beautiful.

Quiet yet boisterous.

Shy yet bold.

Serious not somber.

Playful but strict.

Fearful not scared.

Comedic yet inciteful.

I am an oxymoron.

I believe that a woman should be able to do anything a man can and that no one should tell her she can't.

I also believe that men as a race should stand up and take care of the woman in their lives.

OXYMORON I BELIEVE: The government should provide programs that benefit the poorest of its population.

I do not believe in socialism.

A woman's body is her own and She, with good counsel from close loved ones, should make life and death decisions about her body.

I am pro-choice yet I am adamantly against abortion.

Government should have no control in that decision making process.

I AM AN OXYMORON. It is a pastor's right, no it is his/her obligation, to speak out on issues that his/her parishioners face.

The pulpit is not the place to present his /her personal politics. OXYMORON. I believe in a strong criminal justice system.

The justice system is unjust.

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Racial profiling. Wealthy criminals that can afford private attorneys. Unjust!

OXYMORON. I once heard a poet began his poem with the line: She walks in beauty like the night...â&#x20AC;?

Well now the she is me.

I do not walk in beauty like the night.

I tread headstrong into the path of adversity, Determined to make my way through What seems like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, ever vigilant that I, by my actions, my thoughts, my determination, that I alone control my fate.

Breasts.Large full voluptuous external appendix that rose and fell with each breath. Breasts. They provided nourishment to my infant's body, Comforted to my broken heart During my teen years, and consoled me through lots of tears.

It was these same full voluptuous breasts that enabled her choir robe to drape ever so neatly about her full frame.

It was those same breasts that brought much attention, wanted and unwanted to her cleavage.

Those Breasts. Those Breasts. THOSED DAMNED BREASTS!!!

That harbored a deep dark deadly secret.

Those cursed breasts that kept a festering disease that ravaged the life, literally, out Of my greatest comfort, confidant, and friend.

Those breasts are why I now support anything adorned with pink ribbons, In the hope that some day my song will not be your song.

That my sorrow will not be your sorrow.

Upon the departure from this place the matriarch of my existence, The minister, the man of God, in charge of nurturing our eternal souls while we weary travelers are on our journey upon this earth, uttered these conjoined phrases as he eulogized the woman that bore me.

EVANGELIST GLORIA JEAN WILLIAMS, yes that was the name given to this strong willed, independent single mother.

"She is like a bottle of aged Scotch. You must acquire a taste for it/her, but once you do, you find yourself searching for it, for the comfort it/she can bring you." "Evangelist Williams possessed that quality and her departure means that we shall forever miss the comfort she brought".

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Fortunately for me, fortunate or unfortunate for all others, she passed on her qualities, her beliefs, and to some degree, her personality and strength to me.

The last born, the first to see the light.

Young, single, gifted, and black soon gave way to married, tired, overworked, impoverished and dependent.

But after four decades of succumbing to "fear", Fear of trying because of fear of failing, Fear of the financial constraints that has bound my family for generations, Fear of going from a being big fish in a little pond to becoming a little fish in a big pond-hell, an ocean.

Fear gave way to survival. Surviving a heart attack at forty, and a stroke at will give you that sensibility that there is no obstacle great enough to stop you from reaching, reaching, always reaching.

To utilize the gifts given from above.

The gift of having the opportunity to dream dreams.

Dreaming of expanding my world to be more vital than just being a good mother, a loyal and supportive wife.

Being a dreamer grants me the ability to fight the poverty that has engulfed my life thus far.

Being a dreamer allows me to visualize a world in which my thoughts and actions matter and influence not just those that come into direct contact with me daily, but the world around me and thereby the universe.

My desires, my dream, is making the world a better place for the descendents of my labor (my three sons), to be able to hold their heads up high and speak in a strong clear voice at the top of their lungs, to proudly declare that they are the descendents of YOLANDA E. SYKES. A woman who refused to accept the point of her entry into this world as her station in life.

A woman who was willing to challenge heredity and socialism and strive to be Anything, Everything she chose to be.

I am not just the descendent of former slaves, l am a Queen.

I am the Queen in my castle, which means I am a Queen in this world, which henceforth must be recognized.

Therefore, I am a Queen of the universe.

If this is the legacy that I shall leave behind, then the measure of my success will be That my living, my life, will not have been vain.

Lincoln Land Review

APRIL ULINSKI

fireflies Fireflies blink on and off in the dusk.

The grass is sweet.

My cat, my night-maniac, is leaping at them, her tail wild.

She misses the first six times But not the seventh.

APRIL ULINSKI

reverie Damp black earth On my clean shoulders: I watch the stars spin closer.

Deep night blooms – My favorite fragrance.

APRIL ULINSKI

for Justin, 9.24.2007 Deep and boundless as the sea, You turn from me.

And draw me closer still.

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WILLIAM SHERRER

Barracks rat At about five pm on a Friday afternoon in April, five other Marines and I piled out of a small white shuttle van onto the street in front of a red brick building. Planted in the grass, just next to a flag pole, was a red wooden sign with yellow lettering that marked the structure as the Alpha company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marines office.

We unloaded all of our luggage off the van and straightened our dress uniforms, in which we were required to report. Upon entering the office, I presented myself to my commanding officer. I had known what I would say since boot camp, where I had been programmed with the knowledge of proper procedures when reporting to a new duty station. Like a robot, such actions had been hardwired into my behavior, and when I snapped to attention in front of the Lieutenant's desk, my CPU went into autopilot.

“Private First Class Sherrer, reporting as ordered sir!”

“At ease” he said. His words hardly meaning what they implied. My body snapped to another preprogrammed position that simply allowed my hands to go behind my back, and my feet to part shoulder width. My eyes however, still looked blindly ahead at the inspiring Marine Corps motivational poster on the wall behind him, unable to take any measure of the man in detail, as I heard him turn the pages of my military jacket.

“Machine Gunner huh?”

“Yes Sir!” I responded. My mind possessed by the singular thought only to speak when spoken too.

“Hell yeah Marine!” He said excitedly “Belt-fed weapons get my dick hard!

I'm putting you in Weapons Platoon, good to go?” He asked as if I had a choice, but my programming would not allow me to analyze any options, other than agreement.

After reporting was over, we were issued keys to our rooms at HP185, the address of our barracks. Then we were given over to a Lance Corporal Simmons, and told he would take us over to the barracks and see that we were settled in.

Simmons was a tall and slender Marine of Italian descent, with dark hair and deep set eyes. Back outside of the office, Simmons put the six of us in formation, and we began marching.

“All right gents,” Simmons began. “Its after seventeen hundred hours, so the company is off work. You'll get all your gear issued to you Monday morning. But for now, I just want to get you over to your rooms, get you your linen for your racks, and get you out of my fucking hair so I can drink a beer.”

We rounded the corner of the company office and marched across an open grass quad toward a large, brick, three story building. All three levels of the structure had external doors for the individual rooms, with a sidewalk outside, and rail-

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ing on the upper floors. There were also external stairwells on the ends, and a hallway bisecting each floor in the center. It was laid out, like one of those highway motels where you pull your car up right outside the room, except instead of there being a parking lot, there was only the grass from the quad.

At the time, most of the doors were open, and a few Marines could be seen standing outside on the various floors. When we came into sight, we could hear one of the Marines immediately begin to yell out something indecipherable. It reminded me of a wolf howling; a call given to signal feeding time to the rest of the pack, when a few unwitting doe stumble into their hunting grounds. Out of what seemed like every door Marines came out, with a beer in hand, to lean on the railing of the upper floors, and stand around on the bottom floor. The noise of yelling and whistling began to rise as we marched closer.

“Hey! Wait till I'm out of the way!” Simmons yelled, as a half full beer bottle crashed on the sidewalk in front of us, thrown from one of the upper levels. We soon realized that these were not calls of welcome, and I suddenly felt akin to a new prison inmate, asking myself what terrible crime I had committed to land myself in this place.

“Fresh meat boys! Fresh Fuckin meat!” came one call from somewhere above as we came to a halt at the center of the building. Once we stopped, we were told to put all of our luggage in a pile.

“You.” Simmons said, pointing a finger in my direction. I didn't want to get on his bad side, so I was quick to step forward and reply.

“Private First Class Sherrer, Lance Corporal.”

Simmons stared at me a moment before his face contorted.

“I don't give a shit what your name is. Guard the bags while the rest of us get the linen.”

“Aye, Lance Corporal!” I yelled, and went to parade rest in front of the luggage. They disappeared inside the barracks leaving me standing alone with all the yelling and whistling. At the time I couldn't have known how lost I looked, how clueless to the situation. A Marines uniform is like an open book; you can tell some of where he has been and what he's done by his ribbons, badges and stripes.

My uniform was bare, devoid of any decoration, save my one stripe of rank (known as mosquito wings), and my marksmanship badge identifying me as a Rifle Expert.

I was new, and everyone could see it. Soon enough, a stocky, Hispanic Marine in a t-shirt and shorts came walking past. He was looking at me when he stopped suddenly.

“What the fuck you looking at?” he asked. I stared straight forward and didn't respond, so he pressed. “What, do you know me? Do I owe you money or something?”

I glanced at him once, unsure of his rank or what to say..

“There you go again!” he said. “Why do you keep eyeball fucking me?”

“I think he wants to fuck you, Sergeant.” An unseen voice responded from the second floor.

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“Is that it? You want to fuck me?” he asked.

I'd played this game many times before over the last six months. These were the kind of questions that superiors were good at asking me when they wanted to fuck me up. Questions that exploited the fact that I had been trained to respond quickly, and correctly. But when I was unable to formulate a correct response, it caused me to hesitate. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, the phrase “DOES NOT COMPUTE” ran in an endless loop; as if trying to determine the solution to a stalemate in a game of Tic Tac Toe, unable to calculate that there is no right answer.

But in light of the growling sergeant standing front of me, I was forced I'd settle on the answer with the highest probability of success.

“No” “Oh, so you don't think I'm handsome? What you trying to say asshole, that I'm ugly?”

“No” I repeated, trying to buy time for my mind to compute whether or not trying to fuck the sergeant would be the right answer.

“NO WHAT, MOTHERFUCKER?” he yelled now, approaching me as if to get in my face.

“No Sergeant. I do not want to fuck you.”

He stopped short then, and laughed.

“Oh, OK. I thought you were a fag. Have a good night then.” And he turned to walk away, smiling widely at a few chuckling observers.

“You too, Sergeant.” I said, with a sigh of relief that physically deflated me, and let out some of the hot air from my overheated brain. Soon afterwards, Simmons appeared with the other five, all carrying the linen.

“You all right, puddin?” He asked, handing me my sheets and blanket.

Instantly regaining my composure, I answered, “Yes, Lance Corporal.”

He laughed. “Listen boys, these guys are gonna fuck with your head. Happens to all the boots, and you ain't no different. These guys are gonna play games with you, and man, they got games like Milton fucking Bradly.”

Learning how to play the games was essential, because living life in a Fleet Marine Force barracks, is Darwinism at its best. If I could learn the tricks, and pull my own weight, I'd have nothing to worry about. No one was going to pull it for me. The Marine Corps has an unofficial mantra that says, “Improvise, adapt, and overcome.” By that way of thinking, if I did fail to adapt, then I would fail in my mission. My mission was survival, pure and simple. Survival instinct was that one little thing that finally helped me get past my naiveté. I had to stop and remind myself that I had a mind of my own. Adapting to a situation is a thinking mans game. One that could only be played by remembering that I was a man with my own thoughts and opinions, not just a mindless creation of the Marine Corps. I had joined the Corps to do something hard and find out what I was made of, but I had no intention of losing myself to them. After this was all over, I vowed I would

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still be me, and not what they'd try to make me. So I broke away from the automatic responses I had learned in boot camp, because they hindered me in the fleet.

I stopped trying to see every situation as black and white, and began looking for the shades of gray. It turned out that the best way for me to adapt, was to stand apart as my own man. Placing myself on the outside looking in, I found myself better able to decide where I fit into every situation. Instead of choosing the trained responses that the average Marine would have to the same situations.

Being a dumb boot was getting me nowhere. So I decided not to be a dumb boot, instead I would be a smart man.

It was easy to blame the boot when something went wrong, after all, I was new and didn't know any better. A new guy gets his ass chewed just the same, and one of the things I seemed to consistently get in trouble for, was missing gear.

I would constantly “lose” things. The items ranged in size, and in severity of punishment. Anything from a small canteen, to some real magical David Copperfield shit that happened with my Pack one time. Needless to say, after awhile, I started to wise up to the fact that, perhaps, I wasn't so forgetful with my gear. I was reminded of a scene from the movie Full Metal Jacket. In the scene, the character Private Gomer Pyle is in Marine Corps boot camp. After violating a rule, he is being punished by his drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: “Jesus H Christ. Private Pyle, why is your footlocker unlocked?”

Private Gomer Pyle: “Sir, I don't know, sir.”

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: “Private Pyle, if there is one thing in this world that I hate, it is an unlocked footlocker! You know that don't you?”

Private Gomer Pyle: “Sir, yes, sir.”

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: “If it wasn't for shitheads like you, there wouldn't be any thievery in this world, would there?”

The implications of this scene, spelled out two clear choices for me. I could either one; stop being such a fuck up, and maintain my gear. Two; I could keep fucking up and become Gomer Pyle, and he dies in the movie.

I'm not trying to say that Marines are untrustworthy by saying all this.

Marines, in my experience, usually don't steal someone's personnel items out of greed. They steal other Marines issued gear, out of necessity. So I joined the club, and if, for some reason I was missing a piece of gear, I would have to figure out a way to come up with it, even if that meant stealing. And based off past experience, I wasn't alone in my criminal behavior. In fact, it seemed to be an accepted part of barracks life, even in the eyes of superiors, as long as they didn't know about it. I had been told by those in charge many times, “You're missing what? Well you better shit one.” or “ You'd better beg, borrow, or steal.”

Even though I became more cautious and started locking my things up, there were still many times over the years, when gear turned up missing, but I

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would always find a way to replace it. It hit me some years later, that this could be compared to the Spartans. When Spartan children were seven years old they were forced to enter into a rite of passage known as the Agoge. During that time, the children would be intentionally underfed, so that they would master the skills necessary to steal their food, thus becoming more adaptable warriors on the battlefield. And, of course, like the Marine Corps, if they were caught, they would be severely punished. In the end I was glad to have learned these lessons the hard way. It made me realize that I needed to wake up and stop being a robot. Because robots, for all their processing powers, can't reason out the unspoken rules that dictate much of ones life. These silent truths are read between the lines. Like the lines of a particular phrase said among Marines. “There's only ONE thief in the Marine Corps, the rest of us are just trying to get our shit back.”

I was what Marines call a “Barracks Rat.” A guy, who for one reason or another, didn't seem to get out of the barracks much. My personal reasons usually revolved around lack of money, or wanting to save money. I also had no vehicle, so while others made it a point to leave every weekend, I spent some weekends at the barracks. One time in particular, I was stuck at the barracks on Thanksgiving day of 2001. Some Marines can become highly depressed when they can't afford to make it home for the holidays, but I never felt that way. Although I was stuck in the Marine Corps, I never felt grounded there. Being in the Marines could make you feel rooted, but for me, it quietly whispered the promise of instability. It was the idea of never knowing where I could be from one day to the next. In that spirit, I wore the mask of a vagabond, and never felt the need to return home.

Not that I didn't receive the same temptations to return home as other's did. Like them, I'd often get letters from home. But unlike them, I hardly ever wrote back, and I never called. Over the years the letters became fewer in number, as if my family got tired of trying. I was fine with that though, because when I lived at home, I felt like I was a bad kid. That one crazy family member everyone calls the black sheep. But away in the Marines, I had become much more. I was a mystery. A son who was serving his country, and a family member who was spoken of with pride. Or, dare I say, “a hero?” Perhaps, I had developed an overly romantic idea about who I was, and became a legend in my own mind. Maybe I watched one too many Clint Eastwood movies growing up. Or, maybe, I was just always aloof. No matter what the reason, I never felt like I needed to see my family, to remind me that I loved them. After all, missing them could only breed weakness in me, at times, when I would have to be strong. Where the Marines could take me tomorrow, may very well be deadly, if I held onto illusions that I needed them to survive. Wherever I went, I would only rely on fellow Marines and myself, and no others could fill that void.

So while others gave into their urges to return home for Thanksgiving, I remained, and my friend Corporal Ferrel and I were going to make the best of it. We decided, we were going to stay at the barracks and make our own turkey. Have

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our own feast. There were a few other Marines stuck at the barracks as well, so we invited whomever we saw. First, we went down to the liquor store and bought ourselves a few big bottles of Wild Turkey. Also, because everyone wants a turkey leg on thanksgiving, we got a bunch of those little mini bar bottles of Wild Turkey to tape on the sides of the big bottles. After we got back to the barracks and gathered in my room to, “carve the turkeys”, we heard police and ambulance sirens outside. Everyone filed out the door and went around to the other side of the building to see what was going on. Across the quad, at the next barracks a Marine had hanged himself from the third floor balcony. When we got there, he was still hanging there, from a noose he'd made from his linen.

Farrel looked at me and said, “Guess someone really wanted to go home for thanksgiving.” I watched the Marine dangle there while the paramedics tried to get him down. My reaction, for an instant, strongly resembled that of a human being. I wanted to weep at the loss of a fallen comrade. I regretted not being able to foresee this horrible event and trying to talk him out of it, or maybe cheer him up. I wanted to call home and tell my family I loved them. But the moment was fleeting. As if trying to spare my human side the torment, the Marine took over. I saw him hang there, and took him for what he was. Gomer Pyle. A weak link, that may have gotten us all killed later.

“Better this way.” I had thought. Not because I wished him dead, even the Marine in me felt regret at the loss of a brother. But because this man had failed to ascend. He had not elevated himself above the illusions of need for his family.

He and I both lived in a world where weakness was a fatal flaw. So in order to survive, it had to be cut out like a cancer, before it spread to others. He'd never reached that next step and been “born again hard” as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman might say. As a result of his failure to be reborn, his weakness had overtaken him, and ended his life. The sad truth is, that in order to gain this identity I had to shed some of what I was. Like making a deal with the devil, I had to kill a part of myself that was fundamentally vital, in order to gain something else that I needed to survive. By the time I realized I had made that compromise, it had already happened a long time ago. Unwittingly, I had been torn apart, and reconstructed into something more sinister. I found myself unable to remember who I had been before this transformation. I tried to picture myself as a child. Carefree and full of hope, for what the world had in store. But the child couldn't look back at me. I imagine that if he could, he would not see me with admiration in his eyes. Only disgust for the abomination I'd force him to become someday. Perhaps it wasn't Gomer Pyle who failed in his ascent. Maybe it was me, who only succeeded in descending.

Field Day at the barracks happened every week on Thursday night. Everything would be pulled out of the room so that the floors could be swept and mopped. The furniture would all be dusted, and the bathroom washed until you couldn't find any soap scum or pubic hair. The rooms of the barracks would be

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made spotless in this weekly ritual, because before you could get off for the weekend, your room had to be inspected by the Company Gunnery Sergeant.

Gunnery Sergeant Bushway was probably the hardest man I have ever known. When I first met him I noticed he had a scar running from his left eye, down his cheek, and across his chin. Apparently, he had been the sole survivor of not one, but two helicopter crashes, and he had also seen combat in Mogadishu and Kuwait. His arms and hands were covered in tattoo's and his hair had taken a salt and pepper color as he got older. He was a very good leader, but you didn't want to get on his bad side. So of course, my roommate Corporal Gray and I made it a point to fuck with him whenever we could. Before one field day inspection we went to the Salvation Army and bought about $25 worth of cheap children's toys.

The toys ranged from Barbie dolls to Matchbox cars, which we took back to our room and threw all over the floor.

The next morning, we stood at attention near our racks, and awaited inspection. Gunny Bushway entered the room and immediately began to survey the chaos on our floor. His square jaw clenched firmly and he said nothing. He turned to me and his face was a death mask. His eyes seeming deeper in their sockets as they pierced me with what I believed to be uncontrollable rage. Those eyes drilled into me so hard that I believed hellfire would spew forth from them and consume me. Burning me eternally, as penance for this terrible blasphemy I had committed against this most sacred liturgy, that was field day. Just then, I swear I could actually feel the heat from it. A bead of sweat formed on my brow, and I began to formulate a plan to blame it all on my roommate.

“Too late” I thought “He's going to kill us both anyway.” I felt on the verge of panic. My thoughts racing. “Please god, don't let it end like this!”

Then, as he opened his mouth to speak condemning words, and vile curses, he broke into laughter “You motherfuckers. Pick up your toys!”

On any given weekend there was always a possibility you might see a few fights, enough tattoos to put the entire population of San Quentin Penitentiary to shame, or enough alcohol consumed to kill Ireland. But you would most certainly encounter something memorable during the weekend.

One Friday, I was sitting in my customary place, being my lawn chair out front of my open barracks room door. I was no more than three paces from my refrigerator (full of beer), and six paces from my stereo (which played my drinking songs). There I sat, grilling a steak on my miniature outdoor grill, when a blue eyed, blond haired girl with a very attractive figure approached. She was wearing a Papa John's uniform and carrying a pizza that was to be delivered to my neighbor, Corporal John Deluca.

John emerged from his room, wearing only boxer shorts and shower shoes.

His brown hair was cut short to regulation and he was built like a professional body builder with the words “Irish Pride” tattooed across his abdomen. He toted

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his wallet in one hand, a beer in the other, and when he spoke to the delivery girl, he revealed his thick Brooklyn accent.

John rifled though his wallet and produced a twenty dollar bill. After handing it over, he grinned and gave her a wink. “Keep the change girl. But if ya want a really big tip, I got one for ya.”

She responded with her middle finger, and I could only laugh as John began to yell rude remarks at her as she walked briskly away from us.

“Sure walk away ya little tease! You're just a dirty little....” I stopped listening as my thoughts trailed elsewhere. I had noticed three people come around the corner of the barracks, and they had began walking in our direction. It was one of the new Privates that had been assigned to Deluca's squad. He was accompanied by an older couple, most likely his parents. I thought of warning John to cease his rude remarks to the pizza girl, but the idea of watching this play out became irresistible to me. By the time the three of them reached us, Deluca was grabbing his groin and yelling his final remarks toward the girl as she got into her car.

“Good Evening Corporal” The Private said respectfully, forcing John to realize their presence and turn to regard them. The Private continued nervously, “I'd, um, like you to meet my parents Corporal, I've been telling them a lot about you.”

I suddenly lost my bearing and let out the audible beginning of a laugh, but regained my composure quickly enough not to interrupt.

John glanced over his shoulder at me and gave me the look of a Marine who had been pinned down by machine gun fire, and needed support to help pull his ass from the fire. I noted his glance, and refocused my attention on flipping my steak, leaving him on his own. The parents stood there in silent disbelief, jaws slightly ajar. They had the look of people who might knock on your door, and try to sell you a bible. Little did they know, they had just stepped into a situation that they couldn't understand. Their son was like a tour guide at the zoo, taking them to see all the wild animals in their cages, yet, never explaining to them that the animals would act well outside of normal acceptable behavior. Because they were in our world, no apology was forthcoming, because an apology is something you give when your actions had been inappropriate. At the barracks, “inappropriate”, wasn't even a word. By the time John turned back to them to meet their wide eyed gazes, he had adapted to their world. He met their horrified looks with Marine discipline and poise. Extending his hand with the utmost professionalism, he said “Sir, Ma'am. Its and honor. Can I get you a beer?”

In the spring of 2002 I was called over to the company office. When I arrived, I came to attention in front of the lieutenant's desk.

“Corporal Sherrer, reporting as ordered, sir.”

“At ease, Sherrer.” he stated, almost before I could even get to attention.

I let my arms hang loosely to my sides and shifted my weight to one foot, assuming a comfortable position as I let my eyes wander around the room. My

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eyes rested on the bullshit motivational poster behind him on the wall. “You need me for something sir?”

“Yeah Corporal, I got four new Marines from the School of infantry sitting out there. I put them in your platoon, so I need to get them their linen and make sure they find their rooms.”

“No problem sir, I'll make sure they don't get lost. Anything else boss?”

“No Sherrer, have a good one, your dismissed.” With that, I snapped back into the position of attention, held the pose for long enough to say “Good Afternoon sir”, and walked out to find the new Marines.

I assembled them outside in formation to march them over to the barracks.

They stood stiff and ridged. Their eyes gazing straight ahead, giving no indication of the thoughts behind them. They were a perfect portrait Marine discipline. I thought they reminded me of someone I had once known, and thankfully, forgotten. In the process of giving orders to these new robots, I was careful not to word anything in a way that did not compute. Before we began marching, I asked each of them his name, and they responded in turn.

“Private Chaplain, Corporal.”

“Private Healey, Corporal.”

“Private First Class Halal, Corporal.”

“Private Brown, Corporal.”

I nodded to each one of them and replied.

“I'm Corporal Sherrer, and I just wanted to take a second to warn you guys that once we get over there, everyone's going fuck with you. They're gonna play some games with you, and they got game's like Milton fuckin Bradley.”

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APRIL ULINSKI

Open Letter Dear Milena; I still remember that night at Amherst College when you danced for me. It was just us in the German House, except for four kids eating pizza and talking dirty in the next room.

Because I had missed your dance at the coffeehouse’s performance night, you brought out your portable CD player, put on some music with a primal, haunting quality to it, and danced to it in a way I had long dreamed I might dance.

You danced a legend of your own country; a legend that said in the oldest woods of Bulgaria lived the samodivi, women spirits who wore white shifts sewn with feathers, with their long black hair flying loose. They danced lost travelers more deeply lost, more deeply into their own kingdom, and then devoured them — or gave them a great gift, depending on their worth.

For the length of that dance, in your movements, but most of all in your face, was the samodiva’s promise of hidden richness, of longing fulfilled.

In that expression I recognized the core of my own writing. What I had seen in your face – when I, in a fit of boldness unusual to me, asked a stranger sitting alone at lunch if I might sit with her – was confirmed.

We created the kind of friendship in a day that usually takes years. When I left, we exchanged addresses and pressed hands, and I returned home to Illinois.

We haven’t seen each other since. But in those four years, you’ve been as much a part of life as my other friends, if not more. Letters, calls, emails; we’ve made such tenuous threads enough to support our high-wire walk to each other.

The last year I’ve slipped in correspondence – and your replies have slipped, too. It was a bad time for me to lose touch with yet another friend, so after one last tentative email that went unreplied, I, somehow relieved as well as disappointed, let you fall from my thoughts.

The other night, I picked up a long, shallow tin – the one with the swallow and the cottage on the lid – in which I keep old letters. Here was one addressed to Lady April Ulinski from a Duchess – here was a card from another friend “because everybody needs personal mail.” And here was an envelope with red and blue stripes along the edges that at first I didn’t recognize. In the upper left hand corner was the return address: Plovdiv, Bulgaria. It was one of yours, from the fall of my freshman year of college, and your senior year; except you had taken the semester off to return to your country.

First out of the envelope was a page from a magazine, carefully torn out, folded into thirds, and folded again at the edge to fit inside the envelope. Covering the page was a photograph of a massive flock of flamingos, taken hundreds of feet above the dark waters they waded in, leaving me only able to make out the general

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shape of their bodies – in some places, not even that much. They huddled so close together that they were just one mass of petal pink above the absolutely black water.

Then and now, there is something about the picture that evokes – not necessarily a wonder – but an openness from me. Because you sent them, I look at them closer, trying to see in them what you wished me to see – perhaps something that reminded you of me.

We were walking back to your dorm – if the handsome, Colonial Revival-style German House could be called by such a sterile name – from the coffeehouse. Dusk was just beginning to settle, and as we continued to talk upon whatever subject our fancies found, the conversation turned to my favorite topic of that time, and now.

“I wish people would look closer to find the beauty in things,” I said, wistfully, watching the sky darken around me, and breathing in the crisp, almost winey, fall air. “People seem so intelligent here, but it’s like they’ve let all their ambition and everything they think get in the way of what they could see.”

“College students are like that,” you replied in your softly accented voice, your short, dark hair swinging as you walked. “But people in Bulgaria are, too.

There are so many beautiful places in it, but my city was so grey. Color happened very rarely.”

I still believed that the only magical places left in the world were on the Eurasian continent, and when I thought of those countries, I only saw perfect idyll, so I was surprised to hear of the bleakness of a lot of Bulgarian life. But you taught me that beauty and bleakness exist side by side, and sometimes even in the same space. And for that, I thank you. your friend, April Milena believes in several different forms of beauty, and one summer she sent me a photo of herself from a day trip. In the photo, she stares out from an alcove between two rocky ledges just wide and deep enough for her to crouch in. A small waterfall leaps down the rocks to the side. Her bare shoulders are nut-brown from the sun, and her wide-set eyes seem even more like the infinite eyes of a monk beneath the bare stubble of black hair on her scalp. She had shaved her head.

It was an idea she had nurtured for a while, she told me. She sent me her thoughts behind her “bold baldness” in an email to me.

“I’ve been struggling with appearance since my early teenage years. I got myself into a mess or two, an unwanted pregnancy, some pain for myself and other people... I want to yell out against the world that encourages this madness in girls and women. For some reason being bald is unacceptable for women in our society, which made me want to do it even more. The lack of hair gives some sharpness to the way I look and feel, an edge. It pushes me out of my comfort zone and makes me learn new ways of dealing with situations.”

Ever since then, I’ve been thinking more deeply about what female beauty

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means. And I can tell you another thing – Milena is beautiful bald. But it isn’t just because of the way she looks.

Her hair has grown out now into a curly bob, but for a while she reminded me of her room in the German House, at Amherst. It was a stark place, but not sterile. Her mattress was on the floor in the corner, with a small dresser to one side, and two shelves on the wall crowded with boxes of tea and crackers. That was all.

The walls were bare, and the light was low – but there was a beauty there, too. Like a nun’s cell, it testified to her devotion for creating sufficiency within herself.

“My first year here,” she said, sitting Indian-style on her mattress, “It was my first year in the U.S., as well. I covered my walls with photos of my mother, especially of when she was my age. She came to the U.S. when she was young, as I have, and looking at them gave me strength. It was a hard year – but since then, I’ve found such space within myself.”

That was the way we talked to each other – unreservedly. When we called each other, we talked quietly, and when we had nothing to say, we were silent, and sat there listening to what the other person wasn’t saying. It was about that time in my life that I decided the most valuable friends are the ones who don’t mind – even enjoy – just sitting with you in silence, instead of seeing awkwardness in it, a space to fill with more words.

Whenever we hung up, I would say "bye" in just a breath of a voice, and she would say "bye" in just a breath of a voice, as if saying it any louder, or using any longer of a word, might break something fragile.

I felt like I did break that fragile something in the spring of 2007.

Milena’s birthday is on the 16th of February. That year, it was her last semester at Amherst. She would be graduating in May, going out into the world to see what she could do with a double degree in dance and psychology. Although I had never sent her a birthday gift before, I wanted to this year. But the wish was vague, and caught up in the stress of classes and midterm papers, I let the days pass.

One day, after an hour spent chugging away half-heartedly on a paper analyzing “The Turn of the Screw,” I decided to freshen up with a bit of window-shopping. The annual craft fair was taking place on the first floor of the student center that day, so I wandered over there and browsed through anklets, intricate German paper-cuttings, jewelry made with uncut gems, and dream catchers, hand-crafted from materials gathered in the woods.

The man at the booth – a Native American man, dressed in a button-up plaid shirt and a baseball cap, pointed out a smaller, pink, frothy concoction of a dream catcher. Fuzzy, princess-pink feathers hung down from it.

“I saw a girl when I made that one. Do you think it’s yours?”

Well, not really – I wasn’t that kind of girl. I went for one that was nearly a perfect circle, yet bent, so that it did not lay flat on the table. It was beautiful – the entire thing looked like it had grown into a dreamcatcher, and the man had merely plucked it off of a tree, like some strange fruit. I spun a bead on one of the cords

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with my thumb. This one would catch the right sort of dreams for me.

“How much is this one?”

Back at my apartment, I tried different places to hang it up. But no matter where I put it, whenever I looked at it, I could only think of how much I had spent on it, and all the little trifles I had been buying that semester that were adding up.

Every time I looked – there was the money I shouldn’t be spending. Hardly the creative inspiration I wanted it to be.

Later that day, my friend Erica was picking me up to take me to the post office. I had a letter to Milena and a form I wanted to mail, and she had errands to run on that side of town. I remembered Milena’s birthday, and my earlier wish: that dreamcatcher really did have Milena written all over it. (Except on the parts where FISCAL GUILT was written in large letters.)

The box I purchased at the post office was a tight fit – I tucked some tissue paper around it, and hoped it was sturdy enough to survive the postal service without better padding. The letter went on top, and the box went to Amherst, Massachusetts.

For the rest of our ride, I felt vaguely uneasy. When we headed back to my apartment, I told Erica what I had done.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said. “It’s really common. People re-gift all the time.”

I decided she was right. I stopped worrying.

A few weeks later, when I reached into my mailbox, I felt something to delight any college student’s soul – a letter. I pulled it out, and confirmed what I suspected. It wasn’t a bill. It was a letter from Milena. A fat one, too – there was some object in it that made it bulge in the back.

When I opened it up, I found two bracelets, tightly woven of red and white yarn. In her letter, she explained them. They were part of a Bulgarian spring tradition. You make a wish when you tie them to your wrist, and at the first blooming tree you see, you take them off and tie them to the tree.

Also in the letter were her thrilled thanks for the gift. “What an enjoyable bundle of you-ness!” she wrote, and added “a long hug and a couple of joyous hops.”

I was gratified – I had been right! – but also embarrassed. It felt like I had violated some unspoken agreement of our friendship, like the one where we spoke to each other so softly on the phone, or like the one where we agreed to think of each other at 10 am every day for a few weeks. She had given me so much, and as a gift I had given her something I didn’t want.

I still haven’t told her about it. In fact, I haven’t emailed her much since then.

It is a different kind of silence from the ones we have shared on the phone. This silence is not full, but empty. Neither do I open myself with this silence – I am closed, instead.

But Milena understands this struggle, the struggle between the good si-

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lences and the bad ones. Tonight, I think I’m going to curl up on my couch with silence and a blank sheet of paper. Or perhaps I’ll play the music that Milena danced to when I first met her, the Song of the Samodivi, with the low drone and the searing vocals. In the silence between the music, I will find a way to join that dance of friendship again. I will dance a letter for her, my pen across the paper, telling her of bleakness and beauty. In fact, I think I will start like this: Dear Milena, I still remember that night at Amherst College when you danced for me.

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