Paddlefish 2019

Mount marty college

PADDLEFISH 2019 — STUDENT LITERARY AND ART JOURNAL —

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Editor Jim Reese Associate Editor Dana DeWitt Review Editor Jamie Sullivan Copy Editor Dana DeWitt Arts Editor David Kahle Editorial Assistant Lauren Lehmkuhl Cover Art Chantel Brende, Koi Fish Pond Book Design & Layout Lauren Lehmkuhl Advisory Board S. Cynthia Binder Dana DeWitt S. Marielle Frigge Jamie Sullivan

Copyright Š 2019 by Paddlefish All poems and prose are used with permission of the authors, and they retain all rights to their work published herein.

Except for brief quotations in reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system,without prior written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law.

The views expressed in Paddlefish are not necessarily those of Mount Marty College.

Paddlefish Snagging good literature one line at a time.

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Paddlefish 2019

­— student literary and art journal —

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Table of Contents

Shiann Hansen • MASH for Lullaby [Winner of the 2019 Sister Eileen Neville Award for poetry] Dain Whitmire • The Effects of Multiple Sclerosis on a Young Family [Winner of the 2019 Father Jack Garvey Award for nonfiction] Jessica Warnke • Lullabies of the Stars [Winner of the 2019 Eugene Brinkmeyer Award for fiction] Jason Heron • Benedict the Gardener Lauren Arens • Lilly Joseph Brinkman • Acts of Love • To My 17 Year Old Self McKenna Cooley • Big Fleshy Deal Isabella Diaz-Short • My Miracle Caitlin Dirks • Tuesdays Madeline Ford • Beauty From Within • Darkness Stephanie Faulhaber • Oui/Ja: An Agreement with the Spirits Katie Hamil • Drowning in Shipwrecked Waters • On Creativity Shiann Hansen • Aim for the Knees • Cold Eggs & Burnt Toast Miranda Henglefelt • Deafening Silence Zachery Hough • Going Down • Shorts in December in South Dakota Aimee Huntley 4

Table of Contents

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• For Sonja Holy Eagle the Creator • ARACHNE • Turf • Pragma • Meals on Wheels Megan James • Water Droplets Julie Lauck • The Belief Struggle: Spirits and Science Morgan Polak • A Step Inside Prison Walls Kim Schneider • Can’t Save Me Nicholas Wixon • Sacred Text and Incurring Debts • Meth and Metallica Bede Art Gallery: Student Art Book Reviews Kaito Sukeyasu • The Invisible Game Katie Hamil • Lost Connections Shiann Hansen • The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One Samantha Kasowski • Miracle in the Mundane: Poems, Prompts and Inspiration to Unlock Your Creativity and Unfiltered Joy • From Wentworth to the Western Front: The World War One Odyssey of Private John Warns Aimee Huntley • The Spring Girls: a Modern-day Retelling of Little Women • The Hate You Give Joseph Brinkman • Big Potential Nicholas Wixon • Ritualist Zach Hough • Ritualist McKenna Cooley • Educated

130 Contributors 5

MASH for a Lullaby

by Shiann Hansen

Winner of the 2019 Sister Eileen Neville Award for poetry

Any baby that he holds, like a reflex, he starts to hum the same old tune.

No words, just a melody.

As the baby cuddles into his broad shoulder, a dribble of drool falls onto my dad’s shirt.

The baby’s eyes close as she falls asleep to the rocking and the humming.

It’s the only lullaby he knows.

None of us knew the words.

It was a theme song for a show about war.

Characters were trying to make it through, their only armor humor and lightheartedness in a place where darkness thrives.

An anthem for the viewers-a show that made them laugh.

An anthem for my family-a family always laughing.

We find joy in the smallest things and whistling while we work to make the work go faster.

Smiling to a stranger and gathering around the kitchen table to share our stories as if the kitchen is a stage 6

and we are all standup comedians.

A show that never took itself too seriously except for the episodes when it did.

People died.

Children died.

He never sang the words.

He never knew them.

Perhaps it’s best to be oblivious to that fact that he was singing to us: Through early morning fog I see visions of the things to be the pains that are withheld for me I realize, and I can see that suicide is painless it brings on many changes I can take or leave it if I please That game of life is hard to play.

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The Effects of Multiple Sclerosis on a Young Family

by Dain Whitmire

Winner of the 2019 Father Jack Garvey Award for nonfiction

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oday, my mom called me asking to help her unload bottles of water she’s collecting to give to flood victims in Niobrara, Nebraska. I of course went to help her, and as I sat in the dim lighting of her realtors office, we began to recall back to 2006 when she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and out poured her story, soulfully filled with pain and fear.

“November 1st, 2006,” she told me, “I was working at Sesdac with people who suffered from disabilities. When I was walking down the hall, I managed to stumble on my feet tripping up against the wall. At the time I thought nothing of it other than ‘Damn, I’m really a klutz today’. I went on working and just kept tripping. I was actually beginning to become frustrated with myself. Later on I was typing and my right hand couldn’t keep up with my left. I would type, hit the backspace a couple times, continue typing and repeat. At this point, I began to get nervous, so I told one of my co-workers what was going on. She told me to go talk to our boss and tell her that I needed to go to the doctor, so I did.”

By now, I could see the horrible memories this conversation was bringing back to her. It was all so blurry to me, considering that I was only six years old at the time. I had always been curious exactly how my mom found out she had MS. I stood there listening carefully, not wanting to miss a single word. I knew these words she struggled to get from her mouth would be a precious moment worth remembering.

She continued, “I went to the doctor and he suspected one of three things: lyme disease, MS, or some other disease that only affected Native Americans. I thought to myself, ‘Well I’m not Native American so it can’t be that. MS doesn’t run in our family so it can’t be that either. I must have lyme disease’. I was almost positive I had lyme disease, yet the doctor scheduled me an appointment to see a neurologist. I concluded my visit there, and called Don to take me home, explaining everything I thought that I had known, tears streaming down my face. When I walked out of there, the entire right side of my body was locked up. My arm was curled 8

up tightly to my chest. My leg was straight and I had to swing it out in order to walk”. I listened and observed as she visually showed me exactly what she meant. Walking as if she was dragging a twenty pound bowling ball behind her, arm tied to her chest. I was anticipating her to fall every step she took, yet she was able to swing her leg back in front of her, catching her balance like a kickstand on a bike.

“That night when we got home,” she continued, “I was trying to make supper. I had a bag of vegetables that needed to be opened and without fail, my hand wouldn’t grip the bag. I got a scissors to try and cut the bag open, but I couldn’t control my fingers. Don saw me struggling and offered to help and I immediately yelled out of frustration ‘I got it!’” She continued to fumble with the bag until eventually, out of pure frustration and disappointment in herself, threw the vegetables at my dad and said, “Here!

You do it!” as she rushed away at an attempt to hide the tears falling from her face.

“Even though I thought I knew what I had, I took the doctors order to go see a neurologist two days later, my 26th birthday”. After the visit with the neurologist, they told my mom that she did not have lyme disease, but rather Multiple Sclerosis. They sent her back to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to get an MRI just to be sure. Everything checked out. My mom’s suffering was caused by MS. I can very faintly remember times when she refused to walk up the stairs to her bedroom, and would either have to be carried up or sleep in the spare bedroom downstairs. I could hear her holler from the bathroom for my dad. With no motor skills, she was having trouble with normal everyday activities. At the time, I had no idea what was happening or why my mom was having trouble completing tasks she did every day. I was scared, confused, and did not know how to help.

After her initial aggravation, she had one exacerbation every year after that. This usually happened during the winter and my mom swears to this day that it was the cold weather affecting her. We moved to Arizona in December of 2011, the same time she also began a new medication.

During the summer of 2016 we decided to move back to small town Nebraska so we could be closer to family. We have spent three full winters in the midwest and her medication must be working because although she still experiences symptoms in day-to-day life, she has not experienced any major exacerbations since 2011! It is now 2019, and we are all doing well.

Her real estate job is doing fine, and she still manages to chase after the kiddos, also known as my siblings, every once in awhile. Even though it can be difficult for her to jump, run or sometimes even walk, she manages to get her work done and make sure all the kids are where they need to be.

I would like to believe that there is way more to life than money and 9

power, however it makes a guy wonder if life could be easier with more money? I never really knew exactly how much my parents have had to pay for all her doctors visits and medication, all I know is that we never really had a whole lot of spending money. Despite this lack of monetary wealth, they somehow always managed to give me what I needed. I attended a private school, was involved in four different sports throughout my high school career and God knows how much I eat. Not to mention my three younger siblings who my parents also had to look after and provide for. It astonishes me the accomplishments they have made and I will never be able to repay them for the wonderful opportunities they have given me.

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Lullabies of the Stars

by Jessica Warnke

Winner of the 2019 Eugene Brinkmeyer Award for fiction

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Anna, Mom passed away last night.” “Okay.” The word comes out like breathing, a sigh of air with a message that comes from my core, where a ball of tangled feelings and memories lie. A thousand words pelt my mind in an overwhelming wave that swirls into of a whirlpool of feelings that have no name; that you can only describe by sitting down with a cup of coffee and spend an afternoon weaving in and out with vague ideas that graze the basic concept of what’s burning in your soul.

“Okay,” I say again. “I’m coming home.” ________________________________________ It’s funny thinking about how much things change when you leave home.

You leave and then it’s so easy to forget about family. They just get pushed out of your mind, and if you try really hard, you can almost make it seem like they’re leaving you rather than the other way around. You forget that things change.

When you’re planning a funeral, it isn’t really a good time to talk about how much things have changed. It’s more like being on autopilot, waking up in the morning and pressing the on button so the day can take you down the track to each stop.

And then it’s over. It’s done.

A handful of dirt later and I’m getting back into the car, ready to leave.

Ready to go back to my daily routine, forgetting about the change that just happened.

My brother slides into the seat beside me, stiff and uncomfortable. He didn’t cry during the funeral. We both knew this had been coming for more than a year. He had already shed his tears for the slow death of our mother months ago, and that’s the way it goes with Michael. He’s always been the one to get it done early. Prepare for it early on so when disaster hits, you’re not a reckless, emotional mess. He puts too much stress on himself when he doesn’t need to but at least he faces the problem.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I tell him after the car pulls away from the curb and a few beats of silence are heavy between us.

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“Tomorrow?” It’s a question, but not really. It’s one he knows the answer to; one he only asks in the slimmest hope that my answer will be different.

“I need to be at the airport at four. I have an early flight,” I say tersely.

He sucks in a tight breath, holding it for a few seconds as if he’s giving me a few seconds to change my mind. It’s like he’s waiting for me to say, “Just joking, I want to spend another night in the house my mother died in.”

“I haven’t talked to you in almost three months,” he says, his words soft. “I haven’t seen you in over a year. You didn’t even come back for Christmas.”

“I was busy.” The excuse tastes like brine on my tongue and it dries my throat out like it. It’s only a band-aid to cover up an inexcusable choice, one that, at this point, I’m still firm in.

He frowns deeply but nothing else is said between us about the matter.

Still some sense inside me from the past makes me want that frown to go away.

“I’ll be back next week to help clean out the house,” I offer. “But I need to get things done at work. This isn’t exactly a vacation, you know?”

“Anna.” His voice is strained. “Our mother died. Don’t you think it deserves some time off to get things settled? To think about things?”

I can feel my lips pursing in annoyance. “I did take time off. I’ve been home for almost a week. And I’ll be here part of next week.”

“That’s not-” He huffs in agitation. “You don’t get it.”

A surprising surge of anger zaps through me and I have a sudden urge to shrug it off, just to make Michael angry but I don’t. Instead I determine that this is the end of our conversation and turn away from him to face the window.

I say nothing else and Michael follows my example. ________________________________________ It’s a little past four by the time we get back to the house, the rumble of unpaved, gravel road underneath the tires. It’s still summer so the sun will be high for quite a while. The day is hot and I can see the heat waves coming off the blue hood of the car as we pull into the driveway, parking in the front of the house. The gravel crunches underneath my feet as I open the door and step out of the car. I glance down at the pasty, white, dusty rocks that have settled, my eye catching the faintest hint of something shining and gold in the late afternoon sun.

I bend down to inspect the abnormality in the almost pristine, white rock. The tips of my fingers graze over the surface of the smooth gold hue, 12

not dusty like the rest of the rock. I take it into my hand, straightening, bringing it to my face and moving it around in my hand.

It’s pyrite. Foolsgold. A fake imitation of something so precious. I glance quickly down the road and the memory of my mother and me walking down the path to retrieve the mail, eyes slowly moving back and forth over the rock in search of something that had no significant value in life. In those days foolsgold had more value to us than any precious metal mined in the earth.

On a whim, I pocket the rock, my fingers brushing over the surface of it once before letting the weight settle in my pocket. I turn to follow Michael up to the house, as he’s already walking up the porch steps. I pick up the pace and meet him at the door, standing back as he puts his key in and unlocks the door. He pushes the door open holds the screen door back, letting me walk inside first.

The house is eerily quiet and far too cold for the summer heat. The light in the room doesn’t seem to reach all the corners even with all the sunlight streaming in from the dusty windows. Mom had always complained about how she could never get the dust out of everything.

Michael comes in behind me and I glance up at him as I sit on the bench by the door to pull off my shoes.

“I’m going to get packed,” I tell him. “Then I’ll start on dinner.”

“I could do dinner,” Michael offers.

I nod. “If you want to.”

“Yeah.” He nods back.

I nod again. “Okay.”

I avoid his eyes as I turn to go down the hall towards the guest room. ________________________________________ It doesn’t take much time for me to pack. I can smell the scent of spaghetti wafting down the hall by the time my suitcase is zipped and ready to go on the bed. I exit the guest room and wander down the hall to the kitchen.

Michael is still in there, filling two glasses with lemonade. I look around the dining room, confused as to where the food is. It smells like something was cooked in the kitchen, but I don’t know where the source went. I look at Michael, bewildered. “Where’s dinner?”

He has a half smile, looking rueful. “Outside. It’s a nice day. Thought we could get out of the house and eat on the porch.”

I hold back a frown. We hadn’t done that as a family since before I left. I 13

hold a stoic expression and nod. “Alright.”

I follow him out to the front porch, where the food and plates are set on the old, picnic table with faded, flaking paint. I take a seat across from him, keeping quiet as he dishes some spaghetti and sauce onto my plate.

Our meal together is quiet outside of common conversation and tense as most of our meals have been this past week. I avoid Michael’s glances and ignore any questions that could become something more.

We finish rather quickly, the minimal talk giving us more than enough time to complete the meal. I set my silverware on my plate and am about to stand before Michael springs a question on me.

“Want to go for a walk?” he asks suddenly. “I can take the dishes in and then we can go.”

“Michael,” I start. “We should start packing mom’s things up.”

“No,” he’s says firmly, face going dark. “Not yet. One more night let’s just leave things where they’re at. Let’s take a walk.”

I don’t say anything, but he takes my empty plate and glass anyway, stacking them on his own and grabbing the spaghetti pot with his other hand. “I’ll be back in two seconds.”

I sigh, resigning myself to the fact that I’m not going to get Michael out of my hair. He quickly goes inside, the screen door slamming behind him.

I hear the dishes hitting the sink rather hard, something my brother was always yelled at for when we were growing up and never grew out of.

Suddenly, he comes back outside and looks at me expectantly. I sigh again and stand up, maneuvering myself away from the bench. I follow Michael as he begins walking down the driveway towards the road. I catch up in a few strides and begin walking side by side with him.

The crickets are chirping in the field over and the birds are singing in the trees lining the fence. The sun has started to set but there is still plenty of light left, warming both of us as we walk. We walk for almost thirty minutes before there is anything said.

“You should have been here,” he says plainly.

I don’t respond. I don’t even look at him.

“I know how you were with Mom, but she did everything she could for us. She loved you,” he says. “She’d always ask for you, wondering where you’d gone. The worst thing was she’d just keep asking and asking because she couldn’t remember anymore. She wanted to fix things Anna, I know she did, and you pushed that aside even when you knew she was dying.”

“She didn’t want to fix things,” I spit back, my voice tense with anger. I can play this game. I’d been playing it for over a year.

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“Yes, she did,” he tells me, exasperated. “She’d been trying for years even before she got sick and every time you’d avoid her. Why didn’t you try to fix it? Why didn’t you come back?”

“Everything was always about me fixing it,” I tell him forcefully. “Fixing Mom’s stupid mistakes and covering her back, picking up the pieces where she slacked off.”

“Anna,” he says. “Mom worked hard to take care of us.”

“I took care of you!” I yell. “I did everything Mom couldn’t! I worked my way through high school so we wouldn’t have to move, not to mention I didn’t even think about going to college until I was sure there was enough money in the bank so Mom could stay on top of things while I was gone.”

All that’s left after my words are silence. Michael doesn’t say anything because we both know that what I’m saying is true. I had been as much of a provider for our family for most of our childhood as our mom was, sometimes maybe even more.

I look to the field, my eyes avoiding Michael. The silence is thick between us, like the static in the air before lightning strikes. He takes a deep breath and leans, resting his elbows against the fence.

“Remember when we used to go camping?” Michael asks suddenly.

“What?” I ask, honestly bewildered.

“Well, I guess it wasn’t real camping,” Michael amends. “But Mom would set up a tent in the back field during the summer on clear nights. Usually we’d end up running inside in the middle of the night anyway, but it was always fun to be outside and stay up late watching the stars.”

“That was a long time ago,” I say. “We were kids.”

“Let’s go camping,” he says.

“Michael-” “One time,” he pleads. “One time just act like you want to be a family again and I’ll stop asking. Please.”

Something wrenches in my gut at the way he says it along with an unwanted wave of guilt. This is ridiculous. It drives me insane how hopeful he is sometimes. I think that’s what drove me away from him and Mom so much. I can’t stand it how he goes on and acts like if everyone says they’re sorry things will be solved. It’s not that simple.

One more time though. One more time I’ll have to play along with the game then I’ll be done. No more begging to come home. No more prodding conversations. I can get through it one more time.

“One time,” I tell him. “Then I’m done.”

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________________________________________ The sun is barely visible by the time Michael and I leave to pitch the tent in the field out back behind the house. At least the grass has been cut recently so hiking up the hill isn’t too much of a hassle. We won’t have to worry as much about the ticks and I grabbed the bug spray before we left so the mosquitos won’t be a big problem either.

We pitch the tent together, doing it with ease after years of our childhood practicing. The only thing missing is the laughter. And Mom. We brought sleeping bags that probably won’t be unrolled anytime tonight. We had never managed to stay out a whole night when we were younger, so I didn’t expect it to be any different now.

Michael spreads a blanket out as the sun finally disappears. The sky is soon filled with glorious stars, as if God took a brush of white paint and flicked it over a black canvas. For Him it probably was that easy.

I comply with Michael’s plans and lay down on the blanket beside him. I grunt as something pokes me in the rear as I try to lie straight. Perturbed, I pat the ground where I lay, scanning with my flashlight, trying to see what caused the discomfort. I’m confused as I can’t seem to find anything.

Then I remember the rock I picked up from the driveway. I quickly reach back into my pocket and hold the rock in my hand. Michael looks at it, eyebrows knitting together curiously.

“Where’d you get that?” he asks.

“Found it on the driveway,” I tell him.

“You and Mom used to do that all the time,” he says. “Look for foolsgold.

The jar of it is still hiding in one of Mom’s china cabinets.”

“She kept that stuff?”

He nods. “She kept a lot of things. Our art projects, old report cards, old clothes. And those books you used to read to me every night when I was a kid.”

“Think that’s mom you’re thinking about,” I say absently.

He shakes his head vigorously. “No, I remember. It was you. You’d always put me to bed when Mom was working the late shifts and you would always read to me. Sometimes she would come home in time to hear the end of the story and she would stand in the doorway and listen.”

“You remember a lot,” I say dryly. One more annoying trait about my brother.

“I remember Mom asked too much from you,” Michael continues quietly.

“She put too much on you and it wasn’t fair.”

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I don’t say anything. I don’t want to say anything.

“I know that’s why you left,” Michael says. “It wasn’t wrong to. You needed some space.”

“All I wanted was to do something I wanted,” I interrupt. “I didn’t want to have to worry about anyone. I spent most of my adolescent years watching out for you. I just wanted something for me. I wanted to be selfish for once.”

“That didn’t mean you didn’t have to come back,” he says. “There were times Mom needed you. There were times I needed you.”

I don’t say it but there were times I needed him. There were times I needed both of them, but I told myself it was easier just to forget about them. I don’t think I ever convinced myself I was right.

“I get it,” he says quietly. “I might have done the same.”

I shake my head. “No, you wouldn’t have. You’re not me.”

He snorts. “Well, that’s definitely true.”

I roll my eyes in annoyance, pausing to gather myself. I take in a shaky breath and sit up.

“You know what mom said the last time I talked to her?” I start.

Michael’s eyes turned to me, curiosity and concern springing up in his gaze. He patiently waits as I try to muster the courage and emotional restraint to continue.

“She said she missed us singing together the most. She missed us sitting outside at night and singing lullabies with the stars.” I tell him. I pause with a deep, shuddering breath. “She said the stars were singing her to sleep. She had no idea what she was talking about. She was completely crazy. It was like she wasn’t even there anymore.”

“She wasn’t crazy Anna,” he whispers. “She was sick.”

“I know!” I shout. “I know. She was sick and I should have been there, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t-” The words stop in my throat and I squeeze my eyes shut and turn away as if that will stop the tears from coming.

“I know,” is all Michael says, but it’s all he needs to say.

“I should’ve helped you,” I blurt out. “She was my mother too and I left you to take care of her. I’m so sorry.”

He pulls me in for a light hug. “I know.”

“She told me she was sorry,” I tell him. “That’s the last thing she always said before she hung up the phone. Every single phone call she would say 17

that until she couldn’t even talk anymore.”

“She was Anna,” he tells me. “She really was.”

“I know.” I rub my eyes. “I should have listened.”

The stars twinkle quietly over us, but I don’t let their silence fool me.

I know their song sings more vibrantly than any human voice. Their tremulous voices are so inconceivably beautiful that the human ear can’t even perceive the faintest harmony. Even so, I strain to hear the lullabies that sung my mother to sleep.

I smile sadly at the twinkling lights then at my brother. “I think I’m done camping for the night.”

Michael gives me a smile back. “Me too. Let’s go back home.” ________________________________________

Instead of an alarm clock, it’s the morning light that wakes me.

Sunlight streams through the dusty windows and the light seems to touch every corner of the room. It’s warming and bright, bringing with it the new day. I yawn widely, taking my time to stumble out of bed, not even looking twice at the luggage bag sitting next to the door on the wood floor before I meander out into the hallway.

The whole house seems to have something alive about it. I can’t explain it. There’s something different. Mom’s gone and nothing seems to really have changed, but the house feels more like home than it has for the past week.

I slowly walk to the kitchen, the smell of strongly brewed coffee perking my interest. I see Michael sitting at the kitchen table a cup of coffee in his hand and an empty cereal bowl in front of him. The old boards creak underneath my feet as I enter the kitchen and Michael’s thoughtful gaze snaps to my direction. He stares at me in surprise, mouth agape. “You missed your flight.”

“Yeah.” I smile. “It’s okay.”

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Benedict the Gardener

by Jason Heron Some thoughts on the risk of liberal arts education I. Gardening

I

am a failed gardener. The three gardens I have planted have each been an embarrassment. You would think I would be good at it, because I have worked in the gardens of the people who formed me. My parents were flower gardeners for many years. Their front and back yards were crowded with blossoms during the growing season.

Throughout my teenage years, the lawn shrank until, quite unfairly, after I left for college, there was no grass left to mow anymore. Flowers were everywhere.

My in-laws were vegetable gardeners in Maine. Their parents were vegetable gardeners before them. So I still taste the fruits of the New England gardening traditions. All summer, we eat raspberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, a variety of chards, and squashes come autumn. And now I live in Yankton. My good friend down the street plants a garden that not only turns out delicious produce, but is pleasing to visit. It’s surrounded by a variety of flowers that grow tall and shoo away insects. You can sit next to it all summer and stare at it. I’ve done it.

But my first garden seemed to rot even as it grew. My second garden was overcome with grass and weeds. My third garden wasn’t even my own. My wife planted it. And she had a lot more luck than I did. But still, half of the produce was either stolen by our rabbit brethren or ruined by some pox on the tomato crop. And we planted the wrong kale. It was bitter and tough and so ugly it looked angry. We’ll try again next year.

Whether beautiful or ugly, bountiful or unproductive, gardening remains a mysterious and attractive practice. Magic sets it apart from other types of human food production. Our production of meat is ugly, smelly, violent, and so, kept hidden from most consumers. And our method of obtaining this meat has no magic in it. There’s nothing mysterious about shooting a bolt into a mammal’s head, bleeding it, butchering it, cooking it, and then eating it. But consider the gardener’s strange responsibilities: treating soil, choosing seeds, protecting from weeds, vermin, and insects, irrigating, 19

training, pruning, and harvesting. This series of practices is strange and beautiful enough. The gardener’s attention to her garden makes her more like a mother than someone waiting, without patience, for vegetables. The gardener has more in common with the farmer raising the cow and her calves, and even with the the cow growing her calf in her womb, than she does with anyone on the kill floor.

Then there is everything that is out of the gardener’s control. Along with all of her maternal care, she must leave the major work to the soil, water, sun, and most especially, the seed. Whereas the slaughtering, butchering, and selling of meat takes place under bright lights reflecting off of shining implements, the most important aspects of gardening take place in the dark, hidden in the soil where the garden mother’s prayerful wager is placed with great anticipation. A great deal of the garden’s development is hidden from human sight, not because it is horrific, but because it escapes human perception. No animal possesses the patience to watch a tomato grow and ripen. No human can remain in one place long enough to pluck up each weed as it breaks ground. The gardener sows and tends, but much of her work is best described in terms of faith and hope. And when you meet a talented gardener, you learn love is involved too.

The gardener, as I have described her, is a person whose art requires attention to very specific realities: the pH of the soil, the regional viability of this or that vegetable, whether the maple tree over there will let in or keep out the right amount of sunlight, and on and on to things far greater and more specific than anything a failed gardener like me can think or imagine.

The gardener is committed to a certain amount of stability, unless she has neighbors and friends who are willing to tend her garden all summer for her. But then, whose garden would it be? And anyway, a gardener willing to pass off her gardening responsibilities all summer isn’t likely to keep her friends for long. And her neighbors will stop answering the door.

The gardener also practices a strange sort of hospitality. Think of it.

Unless she prepares the place for the seeds, finds the seeds, invites them into the dirt, and meets their needs (however simple those needs are) then those plants and their produce will never exist. The abundance and nourishment of a garden exist because a gardener decides to prepare for and meet the needs of her seeds. And the plant gladly offers its fruit back to its gardener. Plants that blossom and bear fruit aren’t jealous of their blossoms or fruits. The plants blossom and bear fruit because those gifts are the entire meaning of their lives. This is not an overstatement.

All you have to do is raise one tomato plant to understand that it’s true.

Tomato plants can’t stop giving. They’re prodigal with their tomatoes, dropping ripe ones on the ground to make room for more. So generosity is paid with generosity. The act of the gardener’s attention and hospitality 20

is repaid with the bounty of the garden. It’s a marvelous exchange that involves no violence. And death comes for the plants when it is supposed to come: in their old age, as autumn approaches and they can feel in their joints the change in the weather. Everything slows down. They gladly fall into the gardener’s hands as she pulls them finally out of the dirt and puts them to death with their brothers. They become dirt for their children to grow in.

II. Benedict

Most of us at Benedictine schools know a few things about St. Benedict.

He lived and died a long time ago. He founded a community that still exists today. He wrote a very short book that guides that community in its way of life. The members of that community pray a lot, never have sex, don’t own very much stuff, and do a lot of work and reading. Some of the members of that community start schools. And we all work at one of them.

Apparently, if you want to work at one, you need to think and care about community, the awareness of God, hospitality, lifelong learning, and other interesting things that seem a little bit hard to practice. But notice that in that little list of things we know about St. Benedict, it was easy to stop talking about Benedict. For most of us, it’s hard to pay attention to him for very long.

To understand more about Benedict’s importance and to understand why I would begin this essay with some questionable thoughts on gardening, we need to understand the world Benedict was leaving behind and the one he was helping to form. If we understand those two things better, we will understand why we would call Benedict a gardener and what that title might mean for us at Benedictine schools, sponsored by the religious who try to carry the gift of Benedict’s way of life into our own time.

It’s true Benedict lived a long time ago. He saw the end of the Roman Empire. But even that is virtually meaningless to most of us. Lots of empires have ended. Ours will eventually. They all will at the end of all things, when the Lord comes to judge the living and the dead. But the fall of Rome is important in this story because it created a new soil in which any number of things could have been planted by any number of gardeners. We have jobs at Benedictine schools because Benedict did the sowing. He found his world in serious ruin. The legal system of Rome, the reliability of its communication routes, the order the empire imposed on everyone, the educational system, the trade system – all of this was disintegrating.

When I speak with my students in South Dakota about Benedict’s life, we spend time imagining things that are more readily recognizable to modern people like us. Imagine Washington DC is invaded and destroyed.

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And so are Manhattan, Atlanta, Chicago, and LA. We turn to Minneapolis or Omaha for direction on how to keep public schools open, how to keep interstates maintained, how to manage regional electrical, water, and gas utilities without government oversight. And we learn that Minneapolis has been overrun by Canadians. And everyone simply left Omaha and went back to doing whatever it is Nebraskans do. So we call Pierre. No answer.

We’re sending text messages to the mayor’s office in Sioux Falls and our phones stop working. We go to the post office and realize the postal employees have all somehow traded in their pensions for luxury campers.

Most of them are at the lake. Some of them are tearing around on CRP land in their weird postal trucks. So we’re left with the local mayor and a few community leaders. Then we hear a terrible shouting and crashing.

We smell smoke. The Iowans are coming. A great line of combines obscures the horizon. They’re finally here to punish South Dakotans for calling them Idiots Out Wandering Around for so many years. We are at war with the next state over, and there is no national guard to stop us.

Meanwhile, the garbage is piling up, no one is working the dam, delivery trucks have stopped coming to the grocery stores, and we’re all at home with our kids, because the schools are shut down. The teachers are all at the lake with the postal employees.

This is funny to think about. We love movies and television shows about life after major disasters or ecological collapse or zombie invasions. A few years ago, there was a show called, Revolution. The concept was simple: what would happen if electricity stopped working? I never saw an episode.

But I think everyone was terrified and in danger. In other words, we have some of the resources we need to imagine what it may have felt like for the people in Benedict’s time. I don’t want to overdo it, but order was disintegrating. Life was becoming more violent. The things that make life civilized for us – education, trade, communication, law courts, military and police-enforced order, food supply lines, basic utilities – all these things were disappearing, or changing beyond recognition, or being taken over by criminals. The former citizens of Rome in Benedict’s time found they could no longer count on life’s being civilized. The Rome they relied on had existed for over 1,000 years. It was not a perfect place. Many bad things happened in Rome. But it was a place where the growth of human culture was possible. And now the beauty of the garden of Rome was being torn up – not because someone was getting ready to replant it and grow another, better garden. No. The garden of Rome was being torn up by peoples who just wanted to watch it all burn. The Romans called these peoples barbarians. And they’re still with us today, I think.

So what was Benedict to do? He had tried to escape the city of Rome for the country, because he wanted to live on his own, say his prayers, and fast from sexual pleasure and inordinate attachment to food and 22

possessions. He wanted to become more like our Lord, Jesus Christ.

But as he did this, he gained a reputation for holiness, for stability, for wisdom, for self-control, for an orderly way of life. Think of how attractive he must have seemed to some people. When things fall apart, there are always those who take advantage of the chaos and try to benefit from the destruction. But there are also those who search for a higher way.

These others took a risk and joined Benedict in his improbable venture.

He wrote a book for them. They started to live by it together. If you’ve read Benedict’s little book, then you know he says a lot about structure, authority, patience with those who are uncivilized, uneducated, and unable to live well in community. He also says a lot about how to work well, how to handle conflict between members of a community, how to make difficult decisions for the greater good of the community. In a world torn apart, Benedict began the slow work of restoration. He didn’t want his followers to wander through all the chaos. So, he told them to pick a place and stay in it. He didn’t want his followers to remain illiterate and ignorant of sacred scripture or the great heritage of Roman and Greek philosophy and literature. So, he told them to teach people how to read, to copy books down before the barbarians could burn them all. He didn’t want his followers to sit idly by while the world disintegrated. So, he told them to work, to make things and raise food. And he didn’t want his followers to lose faith in the goodness of this world, given to us by our loving Creator.

So, above all, he told them to pray and worship as though their lives depended on it. And that’s really what Benedict thought. Our lives depend first and last on this: to pray and worship the living God who has given us this world as a garden, not to destroy, but to cultivate.

So Benedict didn’t roll into town with a five-year plan to rebuild the Roman senate. He didn’t gather his posse and take Rome back from the barbarians. There was no committee meeting to decide what the future would look like if the committee could just plan hard enough. Instead, Benedict planted a few things and tended to them. His little book is like a seed packet filled with a slow garden rich in variety. That seed packet only wants people who are patient and humble enough to stay in one place and do the hard work of keeping an eye on things as they unfold and blossom.

In the 19th century, John Henry Newman wrote an essay on the mission of Benedict and described the scene this way: The new world which [Benedict] helped to create was a growth rather than a structure. Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing, and building; and other silent men, men not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, trying their eyes, and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully deciphered and copied and re-copied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one that “contended or cried out,” or drew attention to what was going on; 23

but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning, and a city.

Roads and bridges connected it with other abbeys and cities, which had similarly grown up […].

And when other evil forces would tear things down, burn the churches and colleges and libraries and monasteries, Benedict’s followers would just begin again. As Newman puts it, Benedictines do this restoration work “without grudging, so promptly, cheerfully, tranquilly.” Newman says the Benedictines are “like the flowers and shrubs and fruit trees which they reared, and which, when ill-treated, do not take vengeance, or remember evil, but give forth fresh branches, leaves, or blossoms.” In fact, Newman says that after the Benedictines have been ill-treated by evil forces, the fresh branches and leaves and blossoms are even greater and richer because they were torn up and burned in the first place. Like a hardy tomato plant, the Benedictine way of life is fertile and generous.

As Rome fell, Europe became like a garden after a tornado or a fire or a flood. And after the destruction seemed complete, Benedict stepped out with a few followers and a short book and began to clear things away that were no longer useful. Then they set things in order and began again, planting seeds though they had no way of knowing how things would turn out. Benedict is the gardener of Europe because many of those seeds he planted would become what we now think of as European civilization, rich with churches and monasteries, towns and cities that could supply and support each other rather than fight to the death, libraries filled with old and precious knowledge, and of course, schools – especially schools capable of teaching that empires rise and fall, barbarians invade and pillage, but the love and authority of the Lord is everlasting.

III. Benedictine Schools

It may be clearer now why I began with gardening and why I think a talk on Benedict as a gardener is relevant for us at Benedictine schools.

In many ways, we are continuing the work of gardening. We could say this in a number of useful ways. Perhaps the students are the seeds, and we are planting them in the soil of a liberal arts education. This education exists in part because some Benedictines saved a lot of books even though the barbarians thought those books were worth burning. And this education exists because some Benedictines built schools even though the barbarians had been happy in their illiteracy for a long while before the Benedictines showed up. It’s our job – every one of us – to do what we can to tend to the students’ development down in the dark, mysterious soil of the liberal arts. We don’t know what will happen. But it’s our job to work with all the patience and hospitality and attention of a gardener.

Or perhaps the liberal arts tradition itself is the seed, and we are planting it over and over again in the soil of our students. Some soil is 24

fertile, and the seed sprouts almost the moment it hits the ground. Some soil seems to lie fallow for three semesters and then suddenly becomes fully engaged in growth. Some soil seems too resistant to receive the seed at all. It’s often hard to say for an inexperienced gardener like me. And of course, some soil is simply asleep in the back row, slumped down in a place where there isn’t enough light for the seed to do its work. In any of these cases, we must be patient as the buds of historical, theological, philosophical, scientific, and practical reasoning start to break through the soil here and there. We have a reasonable faith that someday, there will be fruit.

Or perhaps better yet, the seed is the Benedictine approach to both the liberal arts tradition and the student. The world is always full of evil forces threatening our efforts to live civil lives in service of the Lord of all creation. No time in history is free of barbarians who think what we’re doing is inefficient and backwards and who burn everything down after they’ve taken what they want. This is true on large scales and on small scales. In our current context, it is not the easiest thing to be a small, Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts school. Many forces stand in our way.

And in our current context, it is not easy to be a young student. Many of us will never know the barbarians our students have overcome to get to where they are. And so, the seed might be the Benedictine approach to education, stewarded with patience and handed on to all of us even when we don’t know exactly what to do with it.

Every single person at a Benedictine school is offered this seed, but it costs something. This seed is sometimes rejected by those who have certain academic credentials, because those credentials can make this seed seem ridiculous. This seed is sometimes rejected by those who are blessed with charisma and a natural popularity, because to them this seed can seem too small and quiet. This seed is sometimes rejected by those who are skilled with their hands, because this seed can seem impractical and inefficient. And this seed is sometimes rejected by those who are in charge, because this seed can seem to threaten power.

But there is a certain type of person who is willing to pay everything for this seed. To this sort of person, this seed seems to be the only thing in the world. I’m thinking of the one who has a heart like a child’s. Why a child? Because a child is someone who has no trouble recognizing and admitting that he needs others. A child’s heart is open and ready. A child’s heart is filled with wonder at the smallest and the largest things. A child’s heart is impatient with lies and pretensions and all the things grown-ups do to make themselves seem more important than they really are. A child’s heart is trained like a laser on things that are true and good and beautiful.

Don’t get me wrong. Children are, in many ways, jerks. What I want to say about a child’s heart doesn’t mean children are angels.

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But children, despite all their failures and selfishness and bad tempers and filthiness, are excited about so many things: pieces of metal junk found in the road, Venus rising above the sun in the early morning, the next book their parents are going to read to them, new songs, polished stones, packages of cheap crayons, the possibility of getting a pet, skipping vegetables at supper, costume jewelry, learning about why everything has to die, gravity’s pull on everything, the moonwalk, water, finding that piece of metal junk under a bed a month later. A child’s heart is willing to plant a big garden even though Wal-Mart and Hy-Vee sell all the vegetables we could ever eat and no one has the time to garden anyway. A child’s heart is willing to border that garden with flowers so that the garden is good to look at while it’s doing its work. A child’s heart can pay very close attention to very important things for a very long time. And children build things.

They build improbable things out of scotch tape and toilet paper tubes and paint stirrers. Children find themselves in a place they can’t leave, and they set to work making it beautiful and productive and fun. In a way, children are natural civilizers: they’re hungry for truth and goodness and beauty, and they’ll use whatever’s at hand to get more truth and goodness and beauty.

It’s possible to keep a child’s heart even into your old age. It’s advisable, really. I think that’s why even though the Benedictines are older than Rome ever was, we’re still able to do as Benedict taught. Benedictines remain open-hearted and serious about all sorts of gardening wherever they are. Benedictines keep looking after seeds and buds and blossoms that everyone else doesn’t have time for anymore. That’s also why a lot of us keep coming back to the task of running a college. From a certain economic and political perspective, colleges such as those sponsored by Benedictines are pointless, backwards, counterproductive. You don’t need musicals and art classes and poetry to become a successful earner out on the market. You don’t need philosophy or moral theology to be a nurse anesthetist. You don’t need to learn about history if all the “adults” in your life keep ignoring the fact that it’s possible to stop repeating mistakes.

I can hear a stern parent’s voice: you don’t need all this scotch tape and these toilet paper tubes and crayons! I can hear a busy shopper’s voice: you don’t need all these flowers and vegetables. They’ve got it all at the store! I can even hear the vegetable gardeners laughing at the flower gardeners: “Ha! Flowers. Can’t eat flowers! What’s the point?”

But for those of us interested in cultivating the Benedictine seed in this strange garden, it’s possible to see things differently. We know a liberal arts education is serious business. But we know it’s also child’s play in a garden: loving attention paid to what a lot of people think is pointless or hopeless. Benedictines are perhaps especially good at this sort of work.

And one of the reasons they’re good at it is because a long time ago, a few people stepped out of a cave with a little book and said, “I think all the Iowans are gone. Let’s get to work.”

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Lilly

by Lauren Arens

27

Acts of Love

by Joseph Brinkman

I

can’t help thinking of my parents. They are the definition of love.

How on earth could two God-centered people raise a family of 10, on basically one paycheck? Mom used to be a second grade Catholic school teacher in Omaha before we moved up to Jackson, MN where dad started his own accounting firm with a buddy from college.

Mom said in an email after I sent the first draft to her that “my only regret in life is having to work after you were born… I couldn’t convince Dad before I signed my contract.” Mom decided to be a stay at home mom because she loved us so much and hated the idea of another woman raising her kids. I also found it truly touching that my dad supported this. It’s really cool to try to fathom how much my dad really cared for his children. I mean, he was the only one bringing in some sort of income.

How he provided for our family is an example of dedication and love.

Now my dad could’ve gotten upset that his wife didn’t have a job, and they weren’t bringing in much money, but he didn’t. He worked late hours almost all the time but found time to coach all of our sports. Late hours didn’t mean that he would work until eight or nine at night, it would be three or four in the morning sometimes during tax season. I wonder what drove him, what kept him working so diligently behind the mounds of tax returns piled up around his desk like leaves in the fall. The only insight I have from my dad on this is what he told me as I got older, “I didn’t like the idea of another woman raising my kids”.

Moving to Jackson was probably the best move my parents ever made, after not listening to the doctors. My parents had two miscarriages before me and were told by numerous doctors that they were not going to be able to have children. I can’t image how hard it was for them to hear this, considering both of them wanted to have kids, and a large family. But my parents kept their hearts and eyes focused on heaven and continued to pray. I am the oldest of eight kids now. “I’m still in awe that God would entrust all of you to me… a dream I dreamed as a little girl and most all my life.”

But when I was the only one, newborn in the hospital, I imagine the love that God brought to them through me. From the perspective of an infant, 28

I would see their faces lit up like a child’s on their birthday, radiating the rays of the sun. I see my dad’s left arm around my mother, who is wrapped in the hospital gown holding me in her left arm, the fingers of her right hand gliding over my tiny fingers, staring at me as tears flowed out of the corners of their eyes. With every tear that broke free from their face, another unspoken thank you to God. Every touch to my head, signifying that I am real, that my parents did have a child, that they created a miracle. Not only have I pictured this being the case with me, but with the other seven of my siblings. I cannot wait to have these feelings someday if I am so blessed. During my baptismal celebration, Fr. Gass the priest that was baptizing me, called me a “miracle child” and tears welled from both my parents’ eyes. It wasn’t always this way though. The struggle did not end with me being born.

There was another miscarriage in the middle of the older kids, and a set of lost twins before Ava and Sam, the current twins were born. I was old enough to remember this one, and all I can remember is how sad mom was. She would lay in her bed it seemed like all the time. It was no longer tears of thank you’s in a hospital bed, but tears that dripped off her face screaming why from her bed at home. Lying in her bed, a wreck from not bringing into this world the child she loved so dearly that she had never met, cast a dark shadow. There were no sunny days it seemed like. If mom is sad, the house seems to be sad, if mom is happy, the house is the same.

But this time it was different. It wasn’t sad. There was something else. A darkness that I have never been a part of. A darkness that could not be broken by her kids’ smiles. All of us, me especially, were lost for what to do next. How do I make mom happy I thought to myself as I walked about the toy littered floors of the house. I could scratch her back, she loved that. My mom used to scratch my back as I would fall asleep when I was younger, and then as I became a toddler I would scratch hers and we would take turns. Even this was different. Mom’s hand felt like it was being held back, like there was some sort of resistance band connected to her arm. This was an emptiness I never felt from her. But I can’t imagine the pain that was holding her back. This pain I hope I never have to encounter in my life. However, I have the perfect person to turn to if need be. “It was hard to hang on to faith at times… losing little ones, but I will see them again with open arms.” Mom said. I imagine this is what kept her going: her ability someday to kneel just inside the gates of heaven with tears streaming down her face, arms outstretched as her miscarried children run into her arms. Mom will find her “heaven in heaven” until God decides to call her earthly children back home.

There was no reason for her to get out of bed, but for some reason she was always able to rise. My mother embodies it doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, but the number of times you get back up.

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She knew exactly when and where all of her kids had to be every single day. She does not forget. To this day she still has all of our schedules memorized. She kept on loving all of us as if she hadn’t lost two more children. My dad did not know all of our schedules at all, he just liked to act like he did, at least until mom would correct him.

God blessed my parents with eight children. “To be honest, I was hoping for ten… but not your Dad” mom said. Surprise, surprise, Dad didn’t want ten freaks running around. Freaks, the name my dad probably wished to give us all at birth since that is what he calls us, that and free-loaders.

Even though dad tells us all the time that he would’ve rather stopped after two or three so we could have more money, none of us actually believe him.

However, I’m sure these family reunions are going to be quite the party.

We have all been instructed that we are one, big, happy, loving family and are not allowed to get hotel rooms over the holidays. I don’t even have a bed at the house right now, but I can guarantee you mom and dad will find a way to make it work, they always have.

I will forever be grateful that my mother decided to be a stay at home mom but knowing that is what she wanted makes it sit even better with me. “But I know both sides…. And to choose my children over working was always my heart… was always my love! It was and always will be my “Heaven on Earth””. Mom ended her email response to me with “The gifts you have all been is more than I could ever imagine… God has so much in store for all of you... the best is yet to come!”

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To My 17 Year Old Self

by Joseph Brinkman

B

e grateful. Live in the moment. But most of all, take time for yourself. Yes, it’s important to put others first, but helping someone can’t become a reality until you’ve done it on your own.

And it is actually something people do. It is like the oxygen masks on an airplane. Put your own mask on first, that way you are able to breathe and help others. You might not believe me, but from where you are now, it is a whole new world and seeing it through this lens is so much better. The sun is brighter, the world is greener, and people radiate joy. The sooner the better on this one. It’s going to be difficult. You have a tough journey ahead. A journey that may require you to make some tough decisions. A journey that will challenge who your real friends are. A journey that will help you grow so much. Remember, the grass is not greener on the other side, because most of the time there is no other side, its only greener where you water it.

It is going to be as uncomfortable as walking into the weight room the summer before your senior year. Showing up with Tanner Menke there, how did you even do it anyway? I mean come on, he is going to be the best quarterback to come through Jackson. He is your typical jock quarterback.

Tall, built, good looking dude, and has an absolute cannon of an arm.

He is going to break all of the JCC passing records this season at some point. Two years older than you, but he seemed like a professional. A professional he wasn’t. He was one of your buddies at bible camp when you were younger. A picture of you two on the stage sporting football gear proves it true. Tanner was asked by your mom if he would like to be a crew leader as soon as he was old enough. He responded with, “As long as I have Joe in my group I’ll do it.” From a football stand point he taught you what he could. Footwork on rollouts, different angles of throwing the ball, and when to hit certain reads meant a great deal. However, it didn’t mean as much as Tanner single handedly picking you to throw with before every practice and game. During the summer he would text, wondering if you would want to go throw a couple hours. Red, hurting and blistered hands never stopped you though. It was an opportunity to learn and get better.

It is going to be as difficult as memorizing and then learning the everexpanding playbook. I know the “noise” in your head is saying, “He’s never going to be good enough to play quarterback. He’s too small. He can’t throw a ball well anyway.” This is what your teammate’s father’s said. You took those comments into account as opposed to, “You’ve prepared for this the best you can. You have done what was expected of you and more.

You’re The Protégé.” I’ll bet these inspirational lines are as foggy as the storm ridden sky on that Fourth of July morning, but it doesn’t have to be 31

that way.

Everything you need to change all of this, is already inside you, you need to dig deeper. You should see what came out of your work. I’ll give you a glimpse. You accepted being uncomfortable in the weight room, embraced the ever-expanding playbook, and turned it into a learning curve. Taking the snap from under center, 1-2-3-4-5 your back foot plants as you hit your five step drop. With the pocket closing in around you, you step up to avoid a couple of the big boys, and see Ryan streaking down the right sideline. Loading your body like the crow-hop from back in the days of baseball and slinging your arm forward the ball launched into the night sky, disappearing above the camera shot. The ball traveled 67 yards in the air on that pass, you counted as you watched the film the next night. It dropped right in Ryan’s arms like he was going to hold a child. “The best pass I’ve seen at the high school level, especially in that situation” your strength coach told you after the play. Boom, there is a positive right there.

Why didn’t you take it and run with it? How come you didn’t let a positive reaction stick in your head?

A matte black serrated blade dug deeply into your side, twisted by your own hand clenched tightly on the wooden handle each time you let “noise” in. Blood slowly dripping out over time, continuing to flow if this persists.

This is what happens when all you do is try to prove others wrong. Why would you want to put yourself through that? Doing it for others does you no good. Emptiness is what fills you. Yes, that is possible. Emptiness to the point you want to escape and be away from everything. If you’re going to say this doesn’t sound like you, you’re right. It’s not. But it is what is going to happen if you continue walking this path. This path is nothing but gravel, broken glass and trash littered about as you walk barefooted, failing to recognize your feet are covered in blood. A trail of red footprints you leave behind trying to please the people in the trees. There is another path, but it’s not the one society is going to tell you to take. Take the road less traveled, the one your friends refuse to join you on.

But are they really your friends? I mean your dad did tell you that you find your best friends in college, the people you will stay in contact with the rest of your life. Would your friends really tell you that you are worthless because you don’t get drunk with them every weekend? Or when you do hangout with them, you just get beat down. Like the time you went wakeboarding for the first time. Failing the first few times, as water rushed past your face and you surface only to negative comments being slung by your friends. Keep doing it, just to prove them wrong. There it is again, for other people. Gliding atop the water like a rock skimming the surface you cut in and out of the wake, only to fall and be laughed at. Why does their opinion matter? They’ve refused to even try. Would it really kill you to get rid of your so-called best friends that basically asked, “Why do 32

you care about your family so much?” when you turned down going to a party that was bound to be busted. How could they even ask that?

This road less traveled isn’t going to be pot hole free, but at least your values and ideals will be protected. It’s not going to be the popular road, that’s for sure, but I can tell you it is the one you want to take, and take it now, not later. You might lose friends and won’t be contacted to hangout or go places. But does that really matter? Is that really more important than embracing the role of the oldest in the family? Is it more important than setting the example to your younger siblings that drinking in high school is not only illegal, but not smart? Is it really worth letting your little brother question which path he should go down when you are off at college? Yes it is more important, and do not question it.

You can start by switching your lock-screen. I can see it now. The black background with white block lettering centered on the screen from top to bottom, “Do it for the people who want to see you fail.” It sounds like a great quote and your backlash to this is understandable, but switch it now.

That lock-screen, your real life matte black serrated blade. Do it before it settles into your subconscious and starts to eat you away. I spent too long with that as my background and I do not want you to go through that like I did. It’s not fun, and it sure is not rewarding. The only thing it really results in is you looking at your phone and saying, “I did it for (name of person) who wanted to see me fail.” That and a feeling of emptiness. Instead you could be saying to yourself that you gave it all you had and you came out on top. That in turn is only going to reinforce behaviors that are going to make you a better person. You did it for you, and not someone who doesn’t really care. You will create a greater connection with yourself. One that I waited too long to foster.

Do things for yourself, but understand there are limitations. There is a certain way to go about this. Doing everything for yourself without gratitude is a tightrope you don’t want to walk. It is not the kind of tightrope with a net underneath either. This tightrope is stretched above a waterfall, above jagged rocks cutting water as it falls to its death. Why take the chance of doing this without gratitude? How can you be happy without giving thanks where it is due? I mean someone had to give you all the talents and abilities to do what you’re doing. Thank your parents every chance you get, don’t depress it. I know you are the oldest and sometimes you feel forgotten about, but you are still their son. You are still the oldest of eight children in your family, and the one your siblings look to. You are your parent’s miracle child.

That also means following the example your parents put before you.

Especially your father. The way you treat a woman is one of the most important lessons he teaches you. When he grabs the back of your halffolded collar in mass at a young age to let the girls go in front of you to 33

communion, you go along diligently. When he give you the death glare for not speaking to a woman correctly, you listen. When he tells you to treat girls your age with the respect they deserve, and the same way you treat the women in your family, you do not argue. When there is a woman around chivalry is still alive and the door should be opened for her. Do not act like your friends do, or that you are too cool to do any of this. Your father raised you and eight children after he was told him and his wife would not have kids. He is your greatest living example. St. Joseph and St. Sebastian are going to be two key people you are going to want pray to every night. My friends make fun of me still that I am deciding to be a virgin until I get married, so if you decide to do the same consider it a struggle. But also consider it a strength and how important you feel it is to only give of yourself to one person. Look up the song Remember the Name by Fort Minor. It is a little old, but listen to its words. Here is an excerpt of a piece of writing I did that talks about the comparison of dad to the song.

10% luck to make the hook shot. 20% skill and 80% what takes place in an area that is six inches wide. 15% concentrated power of will to stay concentrated and willing during tough times. 5% pleasure to only be seen

by God, no one else. 50% pain, something that will always exist in life and 100% reason to never forget what I have been taught by my father.

Remember the Name is more than a pump up song to me, it is the story of your dad.

“Joe, do whatever you have to do to live in the moment and take everything as it comes, stop thinking years into the future about something that has no meaning now. You are going to look back and think to yourself, wow I missed all of that because I was too worried about something that didn’t even matter. Stop saying you’ll do it tomorrow. The reality is, you won’t. I made that mistake and have lost a lot of time and energy because of this.” Quick little bit of advice on something like this, if it takes less than ten minutes to do, do it now. Most of the things you are thinking about putting off only take that much time anyway. Say “I love you” to your family members after seeing them in person or getting off the phone. You never know when your life could be taken. Wouldn’t you want your last words to be “I love you?” Let me tell you about a time where this almost happened to me.

Senior year of college, it was Thursday, September 13. It was day one of a two day Invitational. Little did I know that day one could have been my last day. Waking up early I got ready and went through my normal routine before driving down to the bus. I hopped on the bus just like any other morning and through my headphones in as we left Yankton to head to Orange City to play at Landsmeer Golf Club. It is one of my favorite places to play on our schedule. This could be because I broke the school record 34

here the first time shooting 69 during the spring season months earlier.

Showing up to the course I went through my routine like normal. Tied my golf shoes and sat in the bus with my music, visualizing every hole and the shots that I would like to hit throughout the course of the day. Putting my headphones away I said to myself, let’s do this.

My club swept through the dew soaked grass flinging blades of it along with mud into the air in front of me. It was windy and knock-down shots were going to be the play around the course today. Heading to the first tee, I saw mom walk in the left door of the clubhouse. I waited for her and walked with her to the first tee. After a short, meaningless conversation with DWU’s golf coach and he slapped me on the butt as we chased down our first hole tee shots. I finished the day with a tap-in birdie, after missing the eagle putt just low on the last hole. I heard my dad’s voice in my head say, “Never an eagle or birdie putt on the low side.” Little did I realize, this may have been the last time I played the game I loved so much, as I turned my hat backwards walking to the clubhouse. It could’ve been the last time for a lot of things, including hugging mom and telling her I loved her.

We got on the bus and headed off to Pizza Ranch. Our coach had to turn around and get the Concordia team because they couldn’t find their key. A bus problem, foreshadowing? Maybe. On the road home that night I sat in the same place I always do on the bus. There are three rows of two seats on each side of the bus that we take to our tournaments. I sat in the back left of the bus if you get on and are looking down the nave of the bus. On the inside seat I sat studying for a test that I was supposed to take when I got back. I kept dozing off every once in a while and Ty would yell at me to wake up and study. All of a sudden, I felt Logan slam on the brakes of the vehicle. Looking up I saw a car in our lane. I remember thinking to myself that we were going to crash. I braced myself the same way I would if I was going to hit someone during a football drill. Leaning into the seat in front of me with my right shoulder and hearing the sound of the two vehicles colliding head on is a sound I never want to hear again. The next thing I knew I was falling out of the air and landed in the middle of the bus a couple feet from where I was sitting. Logan’s blood-curling scream was the first thing I heard. I jumped out the back of the bus and tried to get the door open. It didn’t move. I tried to pull the door off; didn’t move.

I made eye contact with one of my teammates inside the bus and pointed at Logan. His face covered with splats of blood and oozing down his nose meant business with the thumbs up I got from him. I ran around to the back of the bus. Sully handed Logan to me and I helped her to the side of the road. I tried the best I could to help Logan control her breathing and was successful until she looked at the bus. I ran back to the bus and helped another gentleman lay the kid that hit us down on the road. I have never seen a leg so messed up in my entire life. If you take a Twizzler and mangled and twisted it up, that is what this leg looked like. After this I 35

ran over to the group of people watching and asked if they would pray for everyone that was involved in the accident. If you’re wondering, I was not hurt. I don’t know how that was possible considering the situation. A cut on the back of my polo, which also cut into my skin and resulted in a scar that is about a half an inch long is what I came away with, besides bumps and bruises all over my body. I jumped back on the bus to see if I could find my phone and call my parents and girlfriend. Entering the bus, I was stepping over shoes, golf clubs, golf bags, and textbooks as I found my shoes and finally my phone. I called my mom who was on her way home from the tournament, driving the opposite way thank goodness. She didn’t pick up, and neither did my dad. Grace picked up the first time I called her and I just let her know that I was ok in case she heard something else. My parents finally picked up their phones and I felt a sweep of relief over my body as I heard my parent’s voice for the first time.

Paramedics started to show up and we started being evaluated. Ty and I were put in the same ambulance and rushed to the hospital. Even though we were not hurt, we were admitted for safety precautions. Laying in that hospital bed was a new experience for me. I have been blessed to this point that I have never had to have surgery, except stitches in my right thumb because I was being a dumb little kid. But that is another story for a different time. I closed my eyes holding my necklace between my fingers, trying to catch my thoughts. Running my fingertips across my Jesus pieces I just thanked God for letting me be alive.

Yes of course, thoughts entered my head about how my golf clubs were doing. I mean how couldn’t they? I spent so much time with them.

They were my babies. After my checkups with the nurse and being told everything was good, you bet I flipped on ESPN to watch football. Better than studying for a personal finance test let me tell you. My phone was blowing up this whole time and responding to texts was pretty difficult considering I was still shaking from the crash. Having President Marc Long, along with the basketball coach’s show up to the hospital shows how much their students mean to them. I wasn’t injured and I still don’t understand why. I battled with this for some time but am slowly starting to get over it finally after five months. Maybe I wasn’t injured so I could help Logan out, or to help the other guy get laid down on the pavement. I will never understand why I was not hurt, but that is not for me to question.

Everything happens for a reason.

To reveal a little bit more information, our golf bus was hit head on, on a bridge by a small SUV that was traveling around 61 mph who was trying to get back into his lane. Our bus was traveling at 32 mph thanks to Logan’s quick thinking to slam on the brakes. She in essence saved all of our lives that day. Looking back on the pictures and the memories, I am extremely thankful I am still here. Though day two was non-existent 36

due to broken clubs, bodies, and a bus, I am happy to be alive. My life has changed since that day, and for the better. I struggled for a little while with some survivor’s guilt about why I wasn’t hurt, but I am here. I take every day as they come and live life as full as I can. It’s like my college basketball coach once told me, “You are one of the most positive people I know, you always find the good in everything.” I am now starting to find the positive in everything, especially situations where it seems like everything is negative.

So please take from this story that your life could end in an instant. Love the people around you and do not let others control your life. It was given to you by God to live, not just to survive. Living is flourishing in what you do, not living life under the radar and just getting by. If that was the case, nothing interesting would ever happen, and finding the positives would be that much harder in a negative society. Take everything as it comes and roll with the punches that life is going to throw your way.

You should see all the products of your blood, sweat, tears, resistance, and a road less traveled. You should see the path you are on now. Bloody footprints are nowhere to be found, just the impressions of the soles of your favorite shoes. No one is hiding in the trees now, those shadows have become your friends and are walking with you in stride. Just a little secret, you finally let people in. Before you let people in, there was this mansion.

You built a mansion inside your head, with a basement door dead bolted shut. Each room containing thoughts and dreams that you are afraid of pulling off the shelf like books because you are afraid of what others are going to say. I beg you not do this to yourself. Dusting these rooms and revealing what you want and desire is a lot tougher now. Do it now, don’t let the world tell you what to do. A basement dead bolted shut because you are emotionally scared to let someone walk down those steps, even though all the other rooms are open. Fear showed up one day and I decided to let him in. I decided to embrace this and see if I could grow from him. He must’ve stayed and got comfortable in one of the rooms. In order to let him leave I would have to open the doors to this mansion. Just like NF said, “Is that me or the fear talking, I don’t know anymore.” I’ve grown tremendously from fear and advise you to do the same. Find out what you can do with your family by your side and your God looking over you from above. Even though the basement door is still the last place you want people to see, you finally let the dead bolt open and a couple people walk down those stairs. Even though there are still places in the basement that are yet to see the light of day, all things come in time.

Everything you need to change all of this is already inside you, you need to dig deeper. Pull the books off the shelf in the mansion of your mind.

Attack things with a positive outlook and what you might learn from it. Go all in, or not at all. At the end of the day you know where you lie in the eyes 37

of God. As your head sinks slowly into the pillow, your brain swirling with thoughts and emotions, you still fall asleep praying.

Your mom is going to hate this next idea, but looking back I would’ve gotten it out of high school, not leaving college. Get a tattoo, and get one of the word that means so much to you…. Blessed. It’s common, but who cares about common when something so simple means so much to you. It means a lot when that is the first word that comes to your head when you are asked to describe your life in one word.

38

Big Fleshy Deal

by McKenna Cooley

W

hen I was four-years-old, I began my movie obsession. I was old enough to understand what was happening in the plots and started to know what movies I liked and what ones I didn’t. When I found a movie I did like, I clung to it like it was going to disappear from our extensive movie collection.

My parents could always tell which were my favorites based on how many times each day I asked to watch it. I would watch The Sound of Music, four times a day, at least. Just on constant repeat. The only breaks I had from it was when they had to rewind the VHS tape.

This obsession has carried over throughout my life. I can quote the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies word for word, in my sleep. I turn them on for background noise when I’m doing homework or cleaning, and won’t even realize I’m speaking along with it unless someone tells me.

I also get into moods where I can only watch one of my favorites over and over, because I can’t focus on anything else. For instance, the Transformers are constant rewatch movies. Only the first and second though, anything after that is a disgrace. I’m sorry Michael Bay, but it’s the truth, you should’ve stopped after two.

One of the movies I’ve always loved is Casper. I thought Casper was the funniest guy. At one point during the movie he says, “big fleshy deal,” which I thought was so funny as a four-year-old. I would run around the house saying it, even though my parents didn’t think I knew what it meant.

Flash forward to my Senior year of high school, I had it in my head that I was going to go to this huge university back home. That is until I found Mount Marty, everyone I talked to was so welcoming and obviously cared far more about me and what I wanted, than the people at the ten-blocklong university.

Everytime I met someone from the Mount, they already knew my name and that I was interested in archery. It was a weird experience for me coming from a high school and an area that was so huge that absolutely no one knew who I was or that I shot archery competitively. Then at Mount Marty it seemed like everyone already knew me and they were 39

excited to have me.

I was confused by this notion, by being taken notice of, I talked to my parents about it after my visit to the college. My dad said it was because I’m a “super-star,” and they wanted me at Mount Marty very badly.

So he started calling me “a big deal” because of all the attention I got. It was something he would say everytime I shot a tournament and did well.

I watched Casper on a whim one day and was reminded of my favorite line, “big fleshy deal.” I told my parents that I wasn’t just a “big deal,” I was a “big fleshy deal,” as a joke, but they thought it was fitting. It then became my new archery nickname.

I’ve embraced the name, I even have it branded on my bow case that travels with me when I go to tournaments. It’s permanently stuck to my bow case among tournament stickers and bow brands, so everyone will know I am exactly what Casper said, “A Big Fleshy Deal.”

40

My Miracle

by Isabella Diaz

I

n every inch of her four foot body, Courtney Sue didn’t think she was different— she was—but that didn’t matter. She looked at herself in that mirror everyday telling herself, “I am beautiful”. Her sweet gestures were always referenced to cartoon shows like Tom & Jerry or that one show with the yellow bird with the big blue, dazzling eyes. I never understood as a child, why Courtney Sue dressed in little clothes like me, why she never grew, or why she and I practically shared the same exact shoe size.

Courtney Sue was thirty-three. I was seven. She was like a compass floating in every direction; her mind of musing, it seemed as if everything was rainbows and sunshine in her dark world. I mean, how could she even be okay with knowing she had this disease infecting every inch of her 68 pound body? Progeria was no fear to her. In fact, I think the Progeria feared her strong soul. Her inner being was so, so beautiful. From every angle, there she was smiling as if her life was perfect. Don’t get me wrong it was, in her way. I’ve been left puzzled with my own life compared to hers, if I even deserve to be happy. How selfish of me to be happy, thinking my life is great when Courtney Sue isn’t supposed to live past thirteen, but somehow she was on the edge of surviving thirty-three.

I was the tallest one back in the second grade. I was so proud of that because everyone at my school thought I was the coolest, and legitimately looked up to me. I look back now and reflect how in reality the moment was too bittersweet, but what about Courtney Sue? For the seven year old I was and for everything that I’d do, it’s always lead me back to contemplate on my quirky friend, Courtney Sue. She never got to go to college, she was never married, nor did she ever get to live a normal life. I couldn’t bear to think of this with my seven year old mind, playing on the playground with all my friends, practicing for the school plays, and running into the free open fields of fun. I’d have to say life was great as a seven year old, but I had to remember that her’s wasn’t.

Her only connection to living life were those oxygen tubes and carrying a red sparkly backpack with approximate amounts of oxygen tanks.

Sometimes, she needed to get up to get a new tank. It was normal for her, 41

but not normal for me, but I went along with it. I see her flimsy hands with the cut creases as her body aged with wrinkles, but her eagerness was vigorous.

As I mentioned before, being twenty six year apart, yet the same exact height—that all never mattered. She was what they called fun sized, I guess you could say, and full of love. I can’t forget her favorite color was any pink and purple sunset. Yeah—she enjoyed those.

You’re like an angel that makes me want to cry, Courtney Sue. As I am sitting here in my pink and purple Hawaiian dress, with sunset prints, you’re favorite—in honor of you. I showed up on Sunday, January 21, 2018 but a tear I couldn’t find. You showed me how to live youthful and optimistic and to die humble and happy. I beg you to remain blissful in heaven because I know that’s where you’ll be.

You left probably hundreds of stuffed animals with little notes on the tags of ‘em. Each and every person attending your lovely service was there in celebration of you, but somehow when you weren’t there with us, you were the one celebrating us. You managed to make us smile with that stuffed animal; I’ll keep mine forever and that’s a promise, Courtney Sue. My orange fish friend is in my arms every night and it gives me the sense of just one last time that I can hug you. My note says “Just Keep Swimming,” like Dory says, in your favorite movie, Nemo and I am well

42

Tuesdays

by Caitlin Dirks I can’t sleep Until I brush my teeth, Or read that book Whose essay is due next week, Or close my curtainsThe sun is glinting through the window pane, Or turn on the fan, Or buy new toothpaste.

But, I don’t have the money.

I toss and turn.

I turn on ‘Classical Music to Fall asleep to’ and then I realize I still haven’t written the paper due last month.

And that I haven’t heard from you in even longer.

What will happen if I move on?

How do I move on?

I lay in bed.

When do I get paid?

I still need toothpaste, And shampoo, And contacts, And something to eat43

Things only money can buy.

You see, I’d ask for help except you told me you don’t love meThat you don’t accept me.

Why do you want to change me?

You say I will never amount to anything.

Why am I not enough?

Why can’t you see me?

I really need to sleep

But what if my alarm doesn’t go off?

Or my volume isn’t high enough?

God it’s hot in here

Is the fan still on? Or

Am I going crazy?

Do I need to see my doctor again?

Would you support me this time if I do?

I should make an appointment once I wake upIf I ever fall asleep.

Do you think I am crazy?

What if I were? But

What if I’m not?

I want to call you And ask

“Can you finally see me?”

“Do you finally understand me?”

But I don’t.

Because I am afraid of the answer.

And I don’t think I can sleep until you see me.

Until then, I open the curtains to a darkened sky.

44

I turn off the fan And my music Before putting on my glasses And then my uniform.

Turns out the my volume was set high enough because My alarm goes off as My stomach growls, and I cannot decide which is louder.

It’s 9:30 P.M. Time to go to work.

45

Beauty From Within

by Madeline Ford

S

he is like the ocean as the sun is setting. Her beauty is indescribable like all the different colors radiating throughout the sky. I can’t help, but stare. Wondering how someone extremely beautiful looks so heartbroken.

She is like the ocean at the deepest parts. It’s still a mystery. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom of the ocean. Nobody can discover what is at the bottom of her heart and at the bottom of her soul. I can’t help, but stare. Wondering how someone extremely beautiful has been torn apart.

She is like the ocean while waiting to spot the beauty from within. It’s like finding the sand dollars that finally washed along the shore. I can’t help, but stare: waiting to spot that internal beauty she’s been hiding for too long.

Her eyes started to water and I finally look away; noticing that internal beauty is sometimes created from pain.

46

Darkness

by Madeline Ford I’m stuck.

I can’t seem to escape.

Sinking in quicksand.

Darkness surrounds me.

Closing in around me.

Run. Run. Run. But it follows along.

My worst enemy - Me. I can’t seem to escape.

My thoughts attack, Like gunshots to the brain.

They say they understand.

They don’t.

They don’t know.

How can they understand?

I don’t even understand.

My own worst enemy - Me. If I understood, I’d make it go away for good.

47

Oui/Ja: An Agreement with the Spirits

by Stephanie Faulhaber

I

believe in many things. I believe in God, Jesus, and angels—to name a few—, but my mom has always told me, “If you believe in God, angels, and heaven, you have to believe in the Devil, demons, and hell too”.

The Curse of the Ouija Board by the anonymous writer takes this belief of mine and puts it into question. Do I really believe in spirits and things of this nature? The answer is yes, yes, I do.

Since coming to Mount Marty, I have taken a significant number of classes, one being Introduction to Christianity with Professor Rutten. One day in class, the topic of the Ouija board came up, and he asked us if we believed it’s power was real or not. My mom is just like the grandmother in the essay and has always told me to stay away from them, because they are the “Devil’s work”—as the essay also points out. Professor Rutten, in his comments verified that what I believed that day to be true.

He didn’t tell us some creepy story or anything like that. Instead, he opened our eyes to what the word “ouija” actually means. If you split the Ouija apart into “oui” and “ja”, it translates to yes, yes. “Oui” in French means yes. “Ja” in German also means yes. Therefore, by playing with Ouija boards you are telling the spirits “yes, yes come into my life”. By playing this “game”, you are giving the spirits control of your life.

People always have a hard time believing in the unknown without science to back it up. Take God for example. Many people struggle to believe in a higher being having power over them, ultimately, because they are scared. No one wants to feel like a pawn in the game of life, but by believing in God or spirits, that’s what it may seem like. The history of the word Ouija brings at least a little science to people who feel like this— which may give some clarity. I personally have never experienced a spirit or demon, but I do believe I’ve had multiple encounters with God. If you believe in one, you have to believe in the other. This is evident in multiple cultures around the world such as: the good and the bad, yin and yang, Superman and Kryptonite, God and the Devil, one cannot exist without the other. So, why do we choose to ignore the idea that spirits could also be real? I think it’s because we are afraid. Then I think, 48

“Why should we be afraid if we are willingly inviting them into our lives”.

Then I remember that I was eighteen before I found out what the word Ouija meant. People in general have a habit of doing things they don’t understand and have no clue about, which includes dabbling in the supernatural. Maybe if people knew the history of this word they would be more cautious to play the board or perhaps they wouldn’t. The real question though is would you? Ouija—yes, yes.

49

Drowning in Shipwrecked Waters

by Katie Hamil Chapter 1

M

y gaze whips back and forth from my empty hand to the shards of glass, sharp and exposed, lying on my bedroom floor. My mind replays the angered throw in slow motion, the gold handled mirror turning over and over, slicing perfectly through the air, as if it were made to fly. Almost as soon as it began, it was over. The sickening crunch feels oddly like my own situation: destined to shatter into a million pieces.

Instead of cleaning up the mess as I know I should, I leave it. Throwing away the beautifully broken mirror would feel too much like tossing out a piece of myself. Perhaps the mirror will give me a sense of solidarity in this lonely time. Both of us are used, unwanted, unfixable and forgotten pieces of this historical home.

I walk towards where the mirror’s now bent frame lay, careful to avoid stepping on any shards with my bare feet. Staring into one of the reflective fragments, I can just make out my freckled nose and top lip. I raise my hand and my unpainted nails come into view. Slowly, I trace my too thin upper lip with my index finger. I know I should wear makeup so I’m more presentable, but it just seems deceptive to me. Put on my best face for the world and have some guy fall for my beautiful appearance, only to realize the ugliness under the mask and in my heart.

Part of me wishes I had never damaged the mirror. It was reckless and stupid. It probably had historic and monetary value. But for once I wanted something in this house to be the opposite of perfect and pristine.

I wanted something to be like me.

Shutting the door with a little more force than necessary, I leave my room and go down the massive wrap-around staircase. It is as elegant as everything else in this inn. Ornate, nautical designs swirl through the wood like waves on a beach. A mermaid with beautiful long hair merges with cloudy skies, stormy seas, and ship-wrecked vessels. I let my fingers trail over the intricate patterns, like I used to do as a little girl. The wood that once felt smooth and glossy underneath my careful touch now feels a 50

tad grimy. I pull my fingers back and a layer of bleak dust coats them. My grandfather would be disappointed. He was a man used to order and took great pride in the upkeep of the inn. Staring at the mermaid’s gray, grimecovered hair I’m taken back to a different time and place.

Isabel Age 9 “Make sure to polish those grooves well now, Isabel.” Holding a rag and a can of Pledge, my response was to spray the mermaid square in the face. Eat lemon foam! I scrubbed the staircase until it shined — and in fifteen minutes flat no less. I was used to Saturday morning chores and the playtime that followed.

“Grandpa, Grandpa, is this good enough?”

Pausing his own work on the section of staircase a short distance away, Grandpa walked over and bent down so he was eye level with me and the work I’d just finished. He looked over the area I’d cleaned with an exaggerated seriousness before he turned back to me. His blue eyes were full of life and sparkled with mischief. Although he was nearly sixty, he rarely showed his age. Maybe it was his personality. Playful and childlike by nature, Grandpa’s gray hair and old man glasses never kept him from his next adventure.

“What do you think Grandpa? Is it good enough?”

Putting a hand under his chin, he asked me thoughtfully, “Do mermaids have gray hair?”

Giggling, I responded, “Mermaids aren’t real.”

“You wouldn’t say such things if you had seen one,” the serious expression on his face caught my attention.

“You’ve seen a mermaid?”

“I’m looking right at one, aren’t I?” Gesturing towards the mermaid with the ash-colored hair, he finally cracked a smile.

“I thought you meant a real mermaid.”

“Well, you’re the one who said mermaids weren’t real. Your words, not mine.”

Still holding a polishing rag, my Grandpa stared deep into the carved mermaid’s eyes. Clearly, he was caught up in a memory that only he could see. Taking advantage of his trance-like state, I headed towards the storage room of the inn, setting the Pledge and rag down on the bottom of the staircase as I grabbed my jump rope and sidewalk chalk.

I began to turn the brass doorknob that led to the outdoor freedoms of sandboxes and hopscotch. Despite Grandpa’s best efforts, it always squeaked. The faster it turned the louder it screeched, so I turned the 51

shining knob very slowly. Letting only the softest of noises escape, I was almost out the door and into the summertime sunshine.

“You’ll look just like her one day.”

I stopped dead in my tracks.

“I’m gonna look like who?”

“Your grandmother.”

“Okay. Can I go play now?”

Taking his non-response as a yes, I looked over my shoulder one last time and saw him gently, almost tenderly wiping a months’ worth of gray from the mermaid’s hair. In one swipe she was restored to her youthful beauty.

52

On Creativity

by Katie Hamil

C

reativity is an elusive concept that has many facets. It is stressed as an important quality to have in both children and adults but thinking creatively dwindles with age. This is because our educational system is not conducive to nurturing creative minds. By the time we graduate from high school, we have been deprived of many of the conditions we need to live and work in new and innovate ways.

Before I can answer whether I think creativity is stressed more in children than in adults, I think creativity needs to be defined. There are many terms describing what creativity is. Some are scientific in nature, while others are whimsical and thought provoking, creative in and of themselves. After a long search on the internet, scrolling through Farnworth’s compilation of interesting but non-concrete definitions like: “giving the world something it didn’t know it was missing” and “one part inspiration, one part motivation,” I knew finding an exact quote which explained creativity in the way I think it should be explained would be hard to come by. That is why I want to use my own definition.

In my opinion, creativity is taking information that is already in front of you and using it in a way that you have never seen it used before; piecing together the known in a unique way to bring about a solution to a problem. For example, one summer I saw on Pinterest an image of large wooden Scrabble tiles meant for backyard summer parties. But I knew I wouldn’t have the money or the tools to make the exact blueprint of the tiles. Thinking about what I could do instead, had the wheels in my brain turning. As it turned out, I cut five by five inch squares out of poster board and laminated the poster board with contact paper that looked like wood.

Then I used black electrical tape to spell out the letters on the tiles. They worked just as well as the wooden tiles and I managed to save a lot of money and time.

My creativity has followed me from childhood into adulthood. I was often told as a child “you’re so creative” and I am still told that today. I often hear these words from someone who believes they are not creative.

It does seem that less people in adulthood think they have the ability to be creative. It’s possible that creativity is stressed less, but personally I don’t really think that is the case. I still hear lots of adults stressing the importance of creative problem solving. I also have been praised for my creativity and seen others praised for their creativity.

It seems to me that people are saying that creativity is a desirable quality at this point in my life as much as they did when I was five. The 53

problem is the way society is set up. It’s hard to foster creativity when the “educational system, …designed during the Industrial Revolution over 200 years ago, train[ed] us to be good workers and follow instructions” (Naiman). As soon as we start school, the freedom to think outside the box is often replaced by a strict, predetermined procedural way of completing tasks. Everything from tying shoelaces to math problems to writing sentences is taught in a specific way that, as students, we are expected to follow. I even remember being scolded in Kindergarten because I didn’t follow the exact directions on how to make a willow tree with construction paper in art! While many times there is certainly a way to do a task most efficiently, reprimanding a student for coming up with a different way to accomplish the same goal is wrong. As long as safety is maintained for everyone involved and the task gets completed, who really cares how it is done? This is a creativity killer and it happens quite often in our school system.

There is a study that was done by George Land that helps illuminate the problem we have on our hands. Originally used by NASA, this study was longitudinal, meaning the same test was given to the same children at different points in their lives. The test measures the ability to come up with innovative ways of solving problems. The results are as follows: ninety-eight percent of the five-year-olds were found to be creative. Thirty percent of ten-year-olds tested were creative. And only twelve percent of fifteen-year-olds studied were creative at that moment in their lives. This study backs up the idea that the education system could be part of the problem. Granted this is simply a correlation, not necessarily a causation.

The results of the study are alarming enough that the reasons why children lose their ability to generate creative thinking as they age should be investigated.

In a TED talk presented by Sir Ken Robinson, he contends that schools are a part of the problem, stating “many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized.” The school system tends to push students into a certain direction, rather than letting them explore what they are truly good at. He argues that there needs to be drastic educational reform to tailor school experience not only to the high academic achievers — those who I would call book smart —but also to students with other types of intelligence, particularly those pursuing creative and artistic endeavors.

Another theory as to why kids have higher instances of creativity is because most adults are afraid to make mistakes. In his TED talk Robinson puts it well when he says: “You’ll never come up with anything original -- if you’re not prepared to be wrong.” Whether it is embarrassment, pride, or something else that makes adults fear being 54

wrong, what Robinson states is true. According to James Clear on “How to Unlock Your Hidden Creative Genius,” one of the five core steps to being creative is submitting the idea to criticism and feedback. The only way to get feedback is if you can take the step and put it out there for others to see.

The third of Clear’s steps is being able to step away from the problem.

This is important because of the pace of the world we live in. In today’s America, how fast a task can be completed is valued as much as or more than the quality of the job done. In our go-go-go lives there isn’t always time allotted for taking a timeout to do something else that is not related to the task at hand. This is also a problem that contributes to less creativity in schools and the workplace. The way the world works setting us up for future failure. If we continue on our same path, pushing creativity aside for more practical matters, there won’t be new innovations or technology. The world would be a pretty bleak place.

Overall, creativity is means different things to different people, but is generally understood as piecing together the known in a unique way to bring about a new solution to a problem. Creativity is still being stressed to adults and children alike and is alive and well in some people. But the foundation on which our society runs—the education system and work place—is killing creativity.

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Aim for the Knees

by Shiann Hansen

“

They could still find her!” I told my brother. We were discussing the disappearance of Molly Tibbetts. My dad’s obsession with Law and Order taught us the odds of finding her went down after 48 hours. It had been two weeks. Despite my Law and Order knowledge, I was optimistic they would find her. My brother was sure they wouldn’t.

“Dakota, if it was me you would keep looking, right?” I said. My brother looked at me and replied, “Shiann, if you were ever kidnapped, there is no chance of you surviving.”

I didn’t need him to point it out to me. My entire life my brother has been tackling me to the ground at the most inconvenient times. As a kid, knowing I was defenseless, I would yell for my parents. Eventually one would come over and yell at him to leave me alone. He would get up and walk away proud that he was able to tackle his little sister as if it was a true testament to his strength. Once when I was seven, my brother pinned me to the ground, and I screamed for my mom like I always did. My dad came around the corner and I was relieved. This time was different though. This time his scolding was aimed at me. “Shiann, you can’t spend the rest of your life screaming every time you get stuck.” Fourteen years later, my brother still tackles me to the ground. And still, fourteen years later, the best I can do is scream.

Molly’s family somehow got her face on every news station and twitter feed. She was a girl in her early twenties who went missing in in Iowa.

It wasn’t a big city, but rather a small town. It was eerie. This was a town the size of my own—a place that I always considered safe and friendly.

As result, I didn’t want to go anywhere alone. I made sure to always lock my car door and check the backseat. As I drove down gravel roads in the dark, I would recite every prayer that I knew. It was like a horror movie where you want to close your eyes. I was waiting for the bad people who had infiltrated my little towns to walk out from the corn, stop my car, and take me captive. I became hyper aware of every face I saw and suddenly didn’t want to trust anyone. No one knew a single detail about her disappearance. One minute she was Snapchatting her boyfriend, and the next her face was plastered on semis driving down the interstate.

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In the meantime, other kids were still disappearing, and they were getting none of the attention. Why her case made such waves, I don’t know. In light of it, people took to Facebook to share every and any story.

My mother, who believes everything that she sees on Facebook, was becoming spooked too. Though she kept her, “I’m sure it will all be fine” mindset, she kept telling me all the stories she was reading. One post said that a man was arrested after following around a woman and her kids in Walmart. When they looked at his phone, there were messages saying, “do you want the mom too?” And my mother was drowning in all the news, unable to decipher a false story from a real one. Suddenly everyone was quick to share how unsafe our towns were. All these things we normally slipped under the rug when talking about our town, were now coming into the light. And I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance.

My brother got up from where he was perched on the arm of the couch and said, “Follow me.” We walked into the kitchen where he proceeded to make himself one of his vodka pink lemonades—you know, a real man’s drink. “I’m going to teach you self-defense.” He got into a position as if he was ready to punch me. “If someone comes at you from the front, what do you do?” He said as his hand reached out and tapped my face. I whined as I took a step away and started dancing from foot to foot with my hands in front of me. He took a step closer and tapped my face again. I pushed his arm away and continued to dance around the kitchen hopping from foot to foot like a snake ready to pounce. “No, that’s good. Maybe if you do that, they’ll just get scared and run away,” he said in tone that made it clear it would not save my life.

“Here, take your foot and firmly place it on the outside of my knee.” In slow motion his right arm went past my face. When this happened, his body turned slightly, opening the right side of his body to me. He lifted my foot and placed it on the outside of his knee cap. “Then, you use the momentum of my punch to your advantage. Grab my wrist and pull it past you. At the same time, put pressure to my knee from the outside, so it caves in and dislocates.” In slow motion I did as I was told and applied a slight pressure to my brother’s knee while pulling his arm past my face.

He ripped his arm out of my grasp as his knee buckled. “Don’t actually do it! I don’t want to dislocate my knee tonight!” He said taking a step away from me and taking another sip of his drink. “Okay, now do it again, BUT don’t actually push my knee in please.”

That’s how we spent the next hour. After the knee smashing, we moved to being strangled from the back. He taught me to tuck my chin down into my chest. “This way, if they try to strangle you, they will have to break your chin first” he told me. That sounded painful. “I don’t want them to break my chin too! What if I just use my hands to block it?” I said, sneaking my hands between my brother’s constricting arm and my neck. I felt my 57

brother sigh. “Shiann, it’s going to be harder for them to break your chin than to get through your hands,” he said probably glad he had made the drink before we started.

By the end I was starting to feel confident. Once Self Defense 101 with Professor Dakota—who has zero credentials when it comes to selfdefense—was over, we sat in the living room. Both of us were drinking pink drinks now and talking about some “street smarts” we learned from comedian John Mulaney. We were laughing at the jokes. My brother was unphased by the training, meanwhile I was still trying to catch my breath in between laughs. “Dakota, I’m still scared. Do you think I could actually survive now?” I asked my brother. My mother sat in her recliner by me, choosing to stay out of the conversation. My brother answered me, “Honestly, they are just looking for an easy target. If you scream, act strong and put up a fight, then they will probably move on. And trust me, if you use the move I just taught you…” I interrupted him and asked, “It will dislocate their knee so I can run away?” My brother corrected me, “No, it’ll permanently fuck up his entire leg. They will have torn ligaments. He won’t be able to chase after you and possibly will never walk again.” I felt myself fill with pride as my brother retreated to his bedroom.

“Did you hear that mom? I think I could actually take on an attacker!”

She looked up from her Facebook feed for just a second to say, “Well I hope you never have to.” I hope I never have to either, but at least I felt like I could. I texted my friends telling them what I learned. I couldn’t wait to go back to college and teach them so that they would be prepared too. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. My brother emerged around the corner with his phone in hand. He looked up from the screen, “So, just in case, I just bought you a taser and pepper spray off Amazon. You’re welcome.”

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Cold Eggs and Burnt Toast

by Shiann Hansen My mother carries over the food.

She hands the bacon, eggs and bread to the person on her left.

It goes around our full table, everyone grabbing their fill.

The plate reaches the head of the table again.

I watch her.

Among all the runny eggs, she picks the one whose yoke is broken.

From the pile of toast, she picks the one with the black edges.

From the bacon she grabs the one cooked too long.

She jumps up to fetch forgotten things from the fridge and checks on the cinnamons roles that are still baking.

Then she double checks to make sure everyone has everything they need.

By the time she sits down again, the rest of us have eaten half our food, and her meal is cold.

She passes the food around for a second time before taking a bite of her hard work.

Then she looks up at her family and she smiles.

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Deafening Silence

by Miranda Henglefelt Silence

the privilege of persecuting

is defined as

my every thought and action

the absence of sound.

in the lonely hours of the night.

What we think is

The only thing

complete silence

that stops them

never is.

is something to drown out

There is always

the overwhelming loudness

something in the background,

of silence.

making noise we learn to tune out.

I always have noise.

A fan or a radio.

Anything to drown out the silence.

Because in the silence my thoughts don’t stop.

The what ifs.

The why didn’t you’s.

The why did you do that’s.

They race through my mind on a never-ending loop, competing for which has 60

Going Down

by Zachery Hough

T

here was a year in my childhood that the snow would not stop falling. Two feet, then five, then nine. I could almost climb to the roof of my house on a drift that covered the windows. But as any eight year old will tell you, that’s just awesome. You can’t go sledding without snow. You can’t build seven foot tall snow men without snow, and you most certainly can’t fall off something high and not get hurt on the landing like you can with snow.

So, on the wintery day, when the snow was piled higher than the list of closed schools and roads, me and my sister, Ciara, craved to hunt down the best sledding places we could find as fast as we could and sled as recklessly as we could till we couldn’t feel our feet or our ears.

So, from the South-Eastern pasture to the drifts made by Grandpa as he tried to plow an easy way to get around the farm, we sledded on every inclined surface we could find. Rough or smooth, there were none we didn’t dare to go on. Feeling the high of the rush and the numbness of the cold, the feeling of invincibility circulated our blood.

Yet how we came to the conclusion that sledding down a narrow path of snow on the hay bales was a “good idea” I will never know. We went up the back end of the hay so that the snow on the front was undisturbed and smooth for the first going. Hoisting up the green and purple plastic circles as we scaled the story high stack, we braved the winds that threatened to make us fall off till we go to the top. Grinning from numb cheek to equally numb cheek, I volunteered to go first. I was heavier, if only just, which mean I would smooth out the ride down for my younger sister.

Ciara grudgingly agreed, I even convinced her to give me a bit of a push so that we could have an extra little space before the ride down. What we didn’t anticipate though, was the curvature of the sled and the effect of gravity on it. With nothing to my left or right but a fall to the three feet of snow below, she pushed me, and as if the fates had ordained it, the sled went to the right and fell off the stacks.

I may have given a small yelp as I suddenly felt gravity take me in its cruel grip. You would think that the cold is the most evil thing in winter, 61

but no, it’s gravity. Thoughts fled before the air flowing by me. And then, CRUNCH THUMP! I groaned as I opened my eyes, not knowing when I closed them. The pain I felt, piercing the very cold and numbness that convinced me that I would be fine in its grasp. Gasping, lungs stiff and flat, I lay there, looking up at the blue sky. There was no thoughts that passed through my mind at that moment, only pain, cold, and panic. In a normal setting, had I jumped from the hay bales down to the many feet of snow below, I’d have been fine. Hardly would have even hurt so long as I kept my feet together.

However, I didn’t just land on the snow, I hit the sleigh beneath me. The sleigh had evened out the force of my landing to the snow around me, this meant that the resistance of the snow stopped my momentum that much faster. Turning a gentle impact into a jarring stop of momentum.

Ciara looked down at me, astonishment and worry flickering on her face as she asked, “You okay?”

I didn’t really answer, more like groan to let her know I was alive. Once the air started to come back into my lungs, I slowly leaned up. My body felt pain shoot through it and I winced. My tail bone felt like I had crushed it and the rest of my spine felt bruised. I groan out an “ow” and used the sled to balance my body as I got out of it and onto two feet. It hurt to stand, but I managed as Ciara came and helped me up onto my feet.

She picked up the sled and handed it to me. I used it as a cane until the pain faded, but by unspoken agreement, we were done for the day. I limped as Ciara walked beside me, checking to see if I was okay every ten feet. Once inside, Ciara spent no time at all of informing our mother of what happened on the hay bales. I chuckle at her perspective and chipped in a few things. Like any mother though, she asked me if I learned anything and, so, like any self-righteous eight year old, I looked her dead in the eyes, gathering all the sarcasm my tiny body could contain, and told her no, not a thing.

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Shorts in December in South Dakota

by Zachery Hough “It’s freezing out here!”

“Where’s your pants man?”

“Do you even know what month it is?”

“There’s these things called clothes, hear of them?

“Get a coat on!”

“It’s like negative degrees out here!”

“You’re not even wearing socks?”

“You know it’s snowing right?”

“I’m cold just looking at you.”

“Your braver than me dude.”

“I dare you to jump into that snow!”

“Do you think its July?”

“You’re insane!”

“It’s only twenty.”

“Pansies.”

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For Sonja Holy Eagle the Creator

by Aimee Huntley My drum is as round as the moon.

Clothed in brindled buffalo rawhide.

Bathed in South Dakota snow water.

Its sturdy frame, a wooden hoop, shorn from a silvered maple.

Sinew thongs weave flesh into form.

Deosil, like the hands on a clock.

Tradition laced through the face.

A dancing circle, like beams from the sun.

Blessed for good purpose.

It brings celebration: for those that play it. for those that sing to it. for those that hear it.

All are healed.

The animal that gave its life, will live again through my music.

Drumming the heartbeat of Mother Earth and Soul.

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ARACHNE

by Aimee Huntley I hatched four children.

Three of them have been diagnosed with something in the spectrum.

But who knows about that one child‌ Perhaps that one just slipped under the fence, scurried over grade school walls, or crept low in the shadows.

When something is unnatural we always want someone to blame, an answer to the unknowable.

Should I blame my husband?

He who can’t stand last minute menu changes or the sound of wind chimes.

Should I blame my mother?

Who was left-handed, clinically depressed.

Or my brother that was born crossed-eyed, dyslexic and croup ridden?

Should I blame the doctors?

Those countless, synthetic vaccinations.

Venom driven deep into sinless skin.

Should I blame myself?

Because I am their mother, a spinner of prickly yarns?

I hatched these spiderlings.

This I will not deny.

Unwanted by most.

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But splendidly lovely and beneficial nonetheless.

I proclaim them my finest art.

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Turf

by Aimee Huntley The second cutting of spring.

Grass so ardent and lush, from the recent May rains and disintegrated fauna, buried under winter drifts.

My eleven year old struggles in mismatched, threadbare, gym shoes; laces unstrung like his patience.

He pushes it forward a foot at a time.

Thick clippings coat the blades and choke the motor again.

The boy groans and shoves the resisting beast to patio concrete.

Rocks the machine roughly, until the offending turf is freed.

Yanks on the starter cord until it roars.

Spewing the grass, like chew tobacco gone bad.

He finally finds the rhythm, tunes into the whirl of exhaustion, just before the whine of demise.

He deftly tilts mower skyward, each time it threatens extinction.

Spraying verde confetti shards like streamers, and baby grasshoppers due in July.

I have my own garden chores to do.

Weeds to pull, flora to plant, window wells to empty.

But find myself transfixed, unable to move, from the battle before me.

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I want to watch as the freshly hewn labyrinth is created.

Geometrically square spirals, inevitably leading to the core.

I want to watch the transformation from morass to manicured order.

I want to hold my son and praise him, like a hero, for conquering a task I didn’t want to do myself.

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Pragma

by Aimee Huntley No bended knee marriage proposal.

No roses when our first three children were born.

Signs the anniversary Hallmark with just his name.

Won’t visit family in hospitals.

Didn’t come to watch me read my poems before a crowd.

Doesn’t like plays or book clubs.

Grumps about the prices of concerts and airplane tickets.

He buys me tampons when I need them.

Makes me breakfast every Monday that he’s off work.

He shovels the snow from our driveway and fixes the appliances and cars.

He leaves me alone when he senses I need privacy.

Cried on the couch the night before he left for, a six month tour in Qatar.

Birthdays, graduations and holidays missed.

Our children changing without him while he’s in a desert country he never wanted to go to.

With shitty internet service.

There’s a rhythm between us.

I always fall back just enough for him to open every door.

I am the Yin to his Yang.

The kindness to his curse.

The color in contrast to his GI blues and bland fatigues.

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The home where he returns after the hero’s journey ends.

He’s recently started buying me orchids from Wal-Mart.

Tries hard not to yell at the kids so much.

Puts truffles in my Christmas stocking.

Says “sweet dreams” every night.

My husband isn’t romantic but he does love deeply.

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Meals on Wheels

by Aimee Huntley A lonely tilapia fillet, clump of instant potato and a spoonful of green beans.

Plastic crates holding paper sacks of cartoned milk, bologna and processed cheese sandwiches.

A brownie for grace.

Signs outside unlocked doors.

“Please don’t let fluffy out” “Come on in, leave the food on the counter.”

“Wipe your feet before entering.”

No signs meant, ring the door bell and wait.

Ring it again and wait.

Knock and wait. Knock again. Wait.

Ear pressed against warped doors.

Straining to hear a sign of life.

A faint sound like a creaking tree branch in the wind.

Or the slow muffled thud of slippers slowly treading carpet.

Feeling dread at the thought of not giving a meal to someone who needed it, simply because I was too impatient.

Freezing outside in South Dakota Siberia.

Smiling people showing paint by numbers, crocheted afghans, jigsaw puzzles missing pieces.

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Offering hard butterscotch candy and mints.

Grouchy people hangry because I arrived later than the person the day before.

Interrupting the infomercial.

My four year old helper.

Hated the meals smell, thought they looked gross.

He promised to bring me one meal every week when I’m old.

It wouldn’t be liver and onions.

My hero.

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Water Droplets

by Megan James

A

s I cry myself to sleep, covering my face in my weighted blanket to hide the sound of my sobs, I think, why does anxiety and depression have to overtake every aspect of my life? It completely drains the self-confidence that an individual once had, the ambition to take on the day, and set goals for your life ahead. Mental illnesses lead to missing special events, self-harm, being angry about the smallest problems, the list goes on. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety roughly a year ago; I have seen multiple counselors, tried numerous medications, and had some of the worst days of my life, including in the spring of 2018, right before the best date of my high school career: graduation, right?

Society created a stigma for mental illness: horrific, crazy, atrocious. If an individual has depression, they are considered pessimistic and bad. If an individual has anxiety, the stigma attached to it includes characteristics such as uptight or uneasy. Having bipolar disorder, a person may be deemed as fake or a phony. The lack of knowledge related to mental illnesses create perceptions that these disabilities do not actually affect an individual’s life, or they are not even real. People are ashamed to get help, go to a family physician or a psychiatrist to find a medication that can stabilize your illness, to find a counselor that fits the needs of your daily life and goals. With more education concerning this topic, the society could change its view.

I was driving home from my ex-boyfriend’s house; as he walked me out to my car, I was sobbing and telling him that it would not be safe for me to leave. He told me that it was time to go. I turned off his road and drove to the secluded parking lot that was my “safe place” before having enough courage to drive the ten minutes home. Leaving the lot, I pulled into Bozied’s; I didn’t know where I was going, or if I wanted to live another day. As I filled my car with gasoline, my head was filled with cloudy thoughts of running away, suicide, and never returning home.

I drove to my house and slowly passed my driveway, looking at what I thought would be the last time I would see it. I did not say bye to my parents, my sister, or my dog. I was so hopeless and numb I could not even 73

think of what any of my family members, friends, or peers would think if I was gone. As I passed the safe place, I once thought I could rely on, the houses and trees I rode my bike past as a child, I replayed childhood memories through my head and multiple opportunities I had experienced over the last eighteen years. Although I was thinking of these events, I still had no hope. I was devastated and wanting nothing more than to live but wanted the pain to be over.

Educating the community on mental health would improve numerous problems. People not suffering from mental illness do not understand its impact on everyday life. Waking up in the mornings and struggling to get out of bed, not eating because of the stress of work or school, accepting ourselves and the illnesses that take over us. I know that individuals who do not have mental health issues would struggle to understand what people who do have these issues go through, but why is it so wrong to talk about depression? People are embarrassed, shameful, and guilty for having these chemical imbalances that they cannot even change.

I stopped at the start of the interstate bridge, scared out of my mind.

It was pouring rain and almost 12:30 in the morning. As I was about to get out of my car, my phone started to ring. It was my friend, let’s call him Drew. He was calling to just talk and did not even realize he had just saved my life. Calling me in that moment, gave me that spark of hope that saved me from jumping off that bridge, graduating high school, pursuing my dream of being a nurse, and becoming a mom or wife.

You never know what someone is going through: depression, anxiety, OCD, substance abuse. Being familiarized with the signs and symptoms of different disorders would give the freedom to people who are hiding under their mask of shame, to the individuals who are scared to show their true feelings and what they want out of life, and the human beings that are not yet diagnosed with an illness, but will soon realize that it is okay to reach out for help.

After having that significant moment of aspiration, I was able to slowly get myself out of bed, go to class, finish my homework, graduate high school. I found a job and worked close to forty hours per week, stayed busy and was ready for my next adventure; so, I packed up my clothes and moved to Yankton. I had the privilege and opportunities to get help and change my life around. This is what society needs to realize, more people need aid than we think.

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The Belief Struggle: Spirits and Science

by Julie Lauck

T

he essay, “the Curse of the Ouija Board”, can certainly be put in the thriller category. I struggle to validate my beliefs because there is a significant science-based element to my belief system.

I love science (nursing major) particularly the study of the human body and how literally everything function and organ in the body is connected to keep us living. The evidence is concrete and makes sense. However, other parts of my persona have a distinct spiritual foundation and I believe in medical miracles and spirits.

My parents have shared stories of messing around with Ouija boards in their youth and seemed to believe them to be a farce. I think I would require a personal encounter with one to really form a solid opinion. In regards to spirits and premonition, I am most certainly a believer. Early this spring my husband and I lost a classmate to a tragic carbon monoxide accident. Our class got together the week of his funeral to support each other in our grief. A few of us were going through old year books and we came across a photo of our classmate from homecoming week (probably costume day) portraying someone dressed as the grim reaper standing next to our classmate. He wasn’t smiling and the look on his face was chilling. The caption reads “Justin poses for a picture before the Grim Reaper takes him away”. What are the odds? His longtime girlfriend showed me one of her memories on Facebook that popped up from a few years ago. It was one of those cony quizzes that gives you the initials of your guardian angel; of course, it was Justin’s initials and she had tagged him in it years ago. Eerily it reappeared the night before his wake.

I may not fully believe in the supernatural powers of the Ouija board however I’ve felt enough premonition-type feelings over the past year to confirm my belief in spirits. I have also attached a photo taken from our family picture session at the Old Sheldon Church ruins near Beaufort, SC. It provides a gorgeous background for photos, but we were told by locals that they believe there is heavy spirit activity in and around the church, especially after dark (there are graves surrounding it). When our photographer released the images to us, we had to do a double-take. Can you spot the “presence” behind us?

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A Step Inside Prison Walls

by Morgan Polak

I

n the northern part of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, stands an old stone building on top of a hill overlooking the Big Sioux River. I clearly remember driving by this building when I was younger, but never fully understood what it was other than my parents telling me, “You never want to end up there.” The barred windows, chipped red bricks, and barbed wire fences were frightening, allowing me to reassure them that I never wanted to go their either. Little did I know, second semester of my senior year of high school, I was going to be able to step foot in that frightening, old building.

As I grew older, I learned that the brick building I often drove by with my family was the South Dakota State Penitentiary, the facility where the state incarcerates murderers, sex offenders, and other dangerous criminals. I never cared or knew much about prisoners or the State Penitentiary, located right there in my hometown, because I came from a loving and secure home. Although, there are many fascinating prison movies my dad and I would watch, such as Shawshank Redemption and Cool Hand Luke, that peaked an interest in knowing if the movies’ portrayals of prisons were accurate.

It was difficult not to be nervous as my small group of high school students and three teachers walked up the steps of the brick building early one morning to be greeted by the warden of the prison. It was a cool, spring morning, yet that did not stop me from sweating from nerves.

My group had to proceed through many security checks before entering where the men were held. They then gave each of us emergency buzzers in case we felt threatened or in danger. With it being an all men’s prison, it was not uncommon to hear a few catcalls or be looked up and down as we walked by the inmates. The guard said we were probably the first girls they had seen in months. It was truly mind boggling as we casually walked side by side the imprisoned men because I often wondered what they were in for and their life stories. It was also an eye-opening experience touring the prisoners’ workplaces as they produced road signs, license plates, and Braille books. Even exploring the inside of their cells was interesting because it allowed us to personally experience what it felt 77

like to be in the tight room the men had to go back to every night and call home.

At times it felt as if we were treating the inmates as if they were animals at a zoo, observing their every move. One comment that still sticks with me from the visit was said by a teacher that went on this trip every year.

She stated, “Don’t let them (inmates) scare you. We have more power over them because we, unlike them, have the freedom to just walk out of here in three hours.” This statement struck me; although it did make sense, it felt harsh. While it is easy to be intimidated by the inmates, most of them are just regular men who have families like us, but made poor decisions.

This does not make us better than them because we have all made mistakes. Even though there should be consequences for poor choices, my views about inmates have changed over the year as my knowledge about the criminal justice system has grown.

What comes to mind when I hear the world “inmate” is a potentially dangerous person in an orange jumpsuit. Inmates get a bad rap in our society, whether they are threatening or not. This was the realization I made this past year: not all criminals are dangerous. If the inmate is not dangerous, then there could be better ways to handle them than to lock them up in a cell for years. According to the South Dakota Department of Corrections, 32.53 percent of the crimes of South Dakota inmates were drug crimes (“Breakdown of Crimes of South Dakota Inmates,” 2019).

With this being said, many of the men committing these crimes are nonviolent. While there needs to be consequences for illegal actions, throwing the men in prison is one of the least beneficial ways for our society to handle these types of crimes. Requiring the felon to be under house arrest and attend a rehabilitation center to talk about, and get help with, their drug issues is far more valuable.

Imprisoning a man does not only impact his life, but also that of his family. What comes to mind when I hear “family member of an inmate” is a now broken home that is trying to make it through with one less paycheck and children being raised by a single parent or even none at all.

If a man committed a non-violent drug crime, he should be able to stay with his family and help provide for them. With this being said, he would still be disciplined for his actions and have to attend rehab to take care of the drug problems. This would create less broken homes in society and help the man deal with issues rather than sitting in prison and not getting the help he needs.

Not housing the felons would also help the economy because it is expensive to operate a state prison. According to the Federal Register, the average cost of incarcerating an inmate is $36,299.25 (Prisons Bureau, 2019). This money is then coming from taxes that common folk pay. If incarceration is necessary, providing an education for the inmates while 78

they are in prison would benefit society and help them adapt to the real world once they are discharged. Releasing uneducated inmates back into society is almost like putting a homeless man on the street. Earning an education or getting a job is a difficult process by itself, not to mention the additional challenges that an inmate faces. Leaving with a GED or even an associate’s degree can make all the difference in providing opportunities after prison.

Despite laws and law enforcement efforts, there will always be crime and prisoners in the world. It was not until I was educated about the justice system that I came to the realization that prisoners are not all bad people, but rather men caught making poor decisions. What society can change is the way we deal with these convicts. We can either put them in prison cells to just look at the four walls, or we can help them personally improve to be contributing members of society upon release.

Work Cited “Breakdown of Crimes of South Dakota Inmates.” Department

of Corrections. 12 Feb. 2019. https://doc.sd.gov/documents/

AdultCrimeBreakdownJanuary2019.pdf. Accessed 22 Feb. 2019.

Prisons Bureau. “Annual Determination of Average Cost of Incarceration.”

Federal Register. 30 Apr. 2018. https://www.federalregister.gov/

documents/2018/04/30/2018-09062/annual-determination-of-

average-cost-of-incarceration. Accessed 22 Feb. 2019.

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Can’t Save Me

by Kimberly Schneider

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ou can’t save me. My soul left me a long time ago. It got in the car, drove away and didn’t come back. The same thing that I’ve tried to do many times, but for some reason I always come back. I come back to the same broken place that nobody knows how to fix. My dad has always been a handyman, but not even he has been able to fix this. There’s not a wrench that can tighten the bolts that hold me together. There isn’t a hammer that will pound the loose nails back into my wooden heart to keep it inside my chest. My heart isn’t the kind of wood that is beautiful like when you cut up a cedar tree and see the deep red markings fused together with the brown. My heart has been hollowed out by all the bugs you could imagine. My wood is rotting from the inside out. Then I found you. You gave me a little hope that you could get my heart to start growing again, but you can’t save me.

You can’t save me because I am the bugs. I am the termites that eat away the inside of my heart. Telling me you can help, only makes me hungry. I don’t know that it’s possible to save a person from themself. No one has been able to prove it to me. No one has stuck around long enough to do so. Maybe you will prove me wrong, but how long will it take in order for that to happen? How long until it’s too late? How long until there’s no more wood left for me to eat?

It’s not your job. It’s not your job to save me or to make my soul better.

That’s too much pressure. Especially with no reward at the end. I would hate for you to be able to fix everything for me, and then I wouldn’t be able to do the same for you. Even though you can’t save me, you’re still my hero.

I’m not fixed or healed or better, but you’ve tried to help me. You’ve put in some sort of effort that tells me that you aren’t like the other people who pass by with nothing to say, not even a smile to give.

I think we all have termites inside, but maybe I just want to feel like there are other people who know what I feel. I even try to write out my feelings, but I could never say the right words in the right way to get you to understand my inner demons. They’re more horrifying than the typical red demons with horns. My demons look like bottles of alcohol and late night drives hoping for the worst.

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I’m sick. The medicine bottle says “Take one tablet by mouth every day.”

One isn’t enough. I need it all to stop and I don’t know if I have four to six weeks to “really see if it is working to fix the chemical imbalance in my brain” Sometimes I wonder if I just take them all at once if it will make it stop. I know I won’t be sick anymore. Peacefully asleep I’d lay there.

No more demons, no more fake smiles to get through the day, no more worries for you.

They tell me this isn’t contagious, so I don’t know why you’re all keeping your distance. Maybe it’s me that’s distancing myself from all of you.

Distancing so that I don’t get a sense of false hope that maybe one of you could be the cure, or hope that one of you will reach out and grab one arm as the other reaches for the bottle. Wishful thinking.

“It’s all just in my head” that’s what a lot of people think. They’re right it is all in my head. That’s the problem though. I get inside my head and it’s too dark and easy to get lost. It’s hard to find a way out, and so I do anything to escape. Full bottles become empty. Burning half a tank of gas trying to snap myself back to reality.

I’m starting to realize though, that this is my reality. My days are filled with lies of “I’m okay” and “nothing is wrong, I’m just tired.” Sometimes I’m able to convince myself that nothing is wrong and that I am tired, but I don’t tell myself that I’m tired because I was up until three in the morning wondering where my purpose went, only to find out it’s probably long gone in the car with my soul. I’m trying to be happy for them though, they got out when they could. Before it got really bad and they couldn’t break away.

Too bad I wasn’t invited. Too bad I was too late.

It’s a crazy concept that the only thing in life that is permanent, is death.

It can be comforting sometimes though knowing that there’s something that’s stable and actually forever. Marriage either ends in divorce or death.

Parents either live being parents until they die, or they end up burying their children. Tell me one thing that’s permanent in life other than death, and I can promise you I won’t have to fight this anymore. All the thoughts will go away, the demons will disappear, and I’ll be myself again. Please just tell me.

But you can’t. You can’t tell me something that isn’t true. You can’t save me. Maybe God can. Maybe He can just turn all of this around if I could just have that mustard seed sized faith. A mustard seed is a mountain compared to a grain of sand. Maybe someday I’ll get to that mustard seed and I’ll be okay, but until then, how can I convince myself that it’ll be worth it in the end and that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? What if I’m sick of being made stronger?

My soul came back to me today, it brought my purpose back with it too.

It came back in the form of a best friend. You my dear friend understand.

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You’ve felt the rim of the bottles. You know the dark abyss that dwells in my mind. You have this internal GPS that guides you through my mind and soul. You know it as if it were your own. I guess when you find someone who’s shared that kind of pain, your souls just naturally cling to each other.

You told me something permanent enough, and that is that you’re never letting go, you’re not gonna leave me, you love me. I know it is because when you said you’d go through all that pain again just to take mine away, it became real. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anybody, and I know you wouldn’t either, but you love me that much. Others have said they wished they could take my pain away, but it never meant much knowing that they couldn’t grasp how deep that pain goes. My friend, you do understand and that’s the difference between life and death.

The fight is getting easier every day. You’re a full moon as I wander through a pitch black night. It’s not over, but the demons aren’t as loud when I’m laughing with you. My wooden heart has planted roots and I think some of them sprouted within your heart.

I can’t promise you a happy ending to this story, but I can promise that I won’t have anything to do with the ending like I thought I would.

You can’t save me, but having you makes me want to breathe through another day. You can’t save me, but having you, I hope for more tomorrows. You can’t save me, but you can love me deeper than most. You can love purely, and I think that’s all I ever needed.

Bottles don’t look as beautiful anymore. I’d rather look at your dry cracked hands as they gently embrace my brokenness, or your eyes that reveal the depths of your soul, or your bright white smile that lights up the darkness of my mind. Instead of grabbing just one arm you grabbed both, looked me in the eye, and gave me purpose to keep going. Maybe those demons aren’t so bad after all. Without them, I don’t think I ever would have connected the puzzle pieces of our souls together. Maybe hell is on the pathway to heaven.

I don’t know a whole lot on the spectrum of wisdom and knowledge, but I do know that I will be so pissed if I wake up sometime and this was all just a dream. You have made all of this worth it. Every sleepless night, every failed attempt, every amount of pain that is yet to come, all of it is worth it knowing that without it, I wouldn’t have you. People who say they’d look for me if I went missing got some work to do because you did come looking for me when some didn’t even know I was gone.

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Sacred Text and Incurring Debts

by Nicholas Wixon

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acred items typically have to be attached to some element of spiritualism. However, the word “sacred” is often times used loosely to label things we find important. What I find sacred changes pretty frequently. About a year ago, my MCAT books were sacred.

They were my ticket to the occupation and the life I always dreamed I would have. Every day when I finished my homework, I would sit down for another few hours to study for the hardest test I would ever take as an undergrad student. I remember the absolute frustration I experienced on a daily basis as a lot of the questions are designed for you to get wrong.

It’s hard to explain, but basically the MCAT tries to punish you for being a good test taker. They make the right answer seem wrong at surface analysis, and so you have to slow down and think through every single problem. Even though you must go slow, there is still a time limit and I was always crunched towards the end of every section.

Once summer arrived, I took my first practice test. I was devastated when I received a score that wouldn’t land me in any medical school. In that moment, my books were no longer just sacred, they were the holy grail. I spent 8-10 hours a day for the next month cramming for my big test. My mental health was faltering during this time period. I wasn’t getting much sleep at night, I wasn’t eating, and I didn’t take any time to relax during the day. I didn’t work, because I didn’t have time, and my serious relationship experienced extreme turmoil. I didn’t take care of myself hygiene wise, and I’m sure my mom was struck with terror whenever she would find time to come see me.

I felt like the test raped me. I walked out of the test center with mental bruises. It was the most intellectually challenging thing I’ve ever done.

My brain was so fried from the seven hours of testing that I couldn’t even find my way back home. I ended up going the opposite direction and had to GPS my way. When I parked in my driveway, I was swept with relief.

For the first time in 6 months, I didn’t have anything to worry about or study for. I had to wait another month to see how I did, and the stress was enormous. I had my friend read my score to me because I couldn’t look at it. I reached my exact goal, and I couldn’t have been prouder of myself.

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They definitely test your mental strength and your wallet when you’re trying to become a doctor. After the test you have to fill out a ridiculously in-depth application with 19 essays. I then spent 500 dollars to send it to the schools of my choosing. If the school determines you’re competent enough to apply, they make you send in a second application. Their secondary applications usually have anywhere between 5-20 essays, and each cost about 100 bucks to submit. When it was all said and done, I spent 1700 dollars on just applying to schools. One of them asked me drop $120 on a secondary application but rejected me immediately after I submitted the online form. They essentially stole from a poor college kid.

Luckily, I got the notice for an interview from my top choice, so it wasn’t all in vain.

I remember how nervous I was as I slicked my eyebrows down in the review mirror before my first interview. I was wearing a brand-new navyblue suit, with a white undershirt and a maroon tie. I had been told by a board member that they take note of your political status, and so he recommended I wear conservative colors. I chose maroon because my father said I looked like Donald Trump when I tried on the red tie. The night before my interview I took a sheet of sand paper to the new shoes I would be wearing. I was also told they take note of your shoes. If they’re new, they think you’re posing as someone you’re not.

My first interview started out pleasant. We chatted back and forth about football, before I was struck with the question: “What role models in your life motivated you to pursue medicine?” What I wanted to say was, “My mother, she’s an occupational therapist and she was the first person to truly expose me to healthcare” but what I really said was “My mother, she’s an occupational therap…” before the lady attacked me. “So what you’re telling me is that you want to be an OT?” From that point on she played devil’s advocate with me for the remainder of the 50-minute interview. Everything I said was either wrong or not good enough.

She grilled me until I couldn’t formulate responses to her questions anymore. Finally, her face loosened up and she smiled, “Well that’s all I have for you, it was a pleasure meeting you and I hope you have a wonderful day!” This sudden change in tone threw me off. I was so frustrated and pissed off at her that I didn’t know what to say. I felt my cheeks twitch as I forced a smile, “You too.” I replied through my teeth. I was drenched in sweat, and I had knots in my stomach as I left. The worst part was, I still had another interview.

The second one wasn’t nearly as awful. I wasn’t drilled with impossible questions, and the interviewer didn’t play devil’s advocate. He was very respectful, and we only talked about medicine for a few minutes of the interview. The rest of the time we were chatting about videogames, drone racing, and sports. I felt like I left a great impression, and it alleviated 84

some of the stress my first interview had caused. He firmly shook my hand, and right before I loosened my grip he said, “The next time you’re here, the entire building will be remodeled.” For the next 2 months I looked into this statement to help me relax. I took it as a hint that I would be getting in, because why else would I be back in the school’s medical simulation building? I remember lying in bed, replaying his words in my head, trying to crack his code. Whenever I felt discouraged, I just remembered what he said. Whether he meant anything by it or not, it helped me survive the two month wait.

I found out I was accepted on a Thursday afternoon. I was sitting in the tutor center, but no one had come in for help. I was alone. The email was cryptic and told me that my acceptance status would be revealed by the letter I would receive in the mail. However, there was an additional document attached to the email. The first sentence on the document read: “Congratulations again on being accepted to the Sanford School of Medicine.” I exploded with happiness. I looked around for someone to share my news with, but everyone was gone. I ran down the hallway and exited the building to call my mother. She immediately burst into tears, and I couldn’t understand what she said. Her cries brought tears to my eyes as well.

I wanted scream from the top of a mountain, but I also wanted to be modest. I didn’t want someone to think I’m a cocky prick, and so I slowly told the news to others. I wanted to talk about my journey with everyone, but most didn’t understand how difficult the process truly was. They would say, “I knew you would get in” and I know this is a form of flattery, but students who are qualified get rejected all the time. I got rejected from 7/8 schools I applied to. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, 849,678 applications were sent out by 52,777 students to medical schools in 2018. On average, that’s roughly 16 applications a student. I only sent out 8 and it broke my bank, I can’t imagine doubling the cost. Of the 52,777 only 21,622 matriculated. This means that only 41% of prospective students find a school to attend. People can take the hardest courses, strive for A’s, build their resume’s with volunteering and shadowing, study for the MCAT, score well, spend thousands of dollars and hours of time on applications, go through rigorous interviews, and still not get in. I was lucky.

After word of my acceptance had gotten out, I had people who I hadn’t heard from in years sending their congratulations; this included my exgirlfriend. She had distanced herself from me, and constantly made it clear that she was doing well. She paraded a new man across her social media whenever she could; solely to get under my skin. When she had heard I got accepted, the parades stopped. I went to a party to celebrate, and she was there, waiting for me at the door. She had chopped off 85

most of her long hair and her outfit was one I had purchased. It baffled me, that someone whom I had been intimate with for so long, who was wearing items I remember picking out, could feel like a stranger. When she spoke, it was as if no time had passed, but 6 months had gone by. I recognized her mannerisms, the rhythm to which she spoke, and I could almost predict what she was going to say at any giving moment. Despite all of this, I didn’t know who she was anymore. She grabbed my hand and pulled me aside from everyone else. It pained me to look into her eyes, so I averted mine. She whispered, “We should give us another shot” as if it was a secret. Her breath warmed my ear.

I’m sure my blank stare was not comforting. I didn’t know what to say. On one hand, I had missed her, and I was alone. She knew I hadn’t moved on, and she took advantage of that. She calculated this assault like a mathematician. She came to town, went to my hangout spot, and waited till I arrived. She had what she was going to say, she was ready. I had the disadvantage of being caught off guard. My silence didn’t hinder her advances. She wrapped herself around me like a snake chocking its prey. Not sure of what to say to the question, I mumbled, “we’ll see.” She responded with a flirty laugh as she continued to choke the will out of me.

I told my mom of this incident, “All that woman wants is your money” she responded. “Actually, that’s what most women want from you right now. Stay away until you meet someone who isn’t reaching for cash.”

My mom was acting like I had just signed a record deal, but she has been right in almost every instance of my life. It also made sense.

Coincidentally, she decides she misses me and wants back in my life immediately after I get accepted to medical school. I can’t just pick on her though as she wasn’t the only girl who suddenly acknowledged that I existed.

I didn’t listen to my mother though. I had a date the other day. I’ve been googling things to help me tell if she’s “paper chasing.” The suggestion that stuck with me the most was: “pretend like you’ve gone broke.” Well I am broke, and so I couldn’t do that, but it gave me an idea for my own test. Maybe in a few dates I’ll say I got kicked out of medical school due to some formality and see if she decides to stick around.

People have been reaching out to my parents as well. They have been receiving congratulatory cards in the mail from people they don’t even know. One stranger even gave my mom a hug in public.

Other pre-medical students have been coming to me for advice. I often tell them how I studied for my MCAT, what I did in preparation for my interviews, and where I did my research. The truth is, I had no idea what I was doing as I was going through the process. I just winged it. I didn’t listen to the advice other medical students gave me, and I didn’t even have 86

someone peer review my essays. I didn’t discover some algorithm to get into medical school. I just was myself. My one piece of advice for anyone reading this essay is to take the suggestions from your peers and convert it to work for you. No clear path exists for any profession, and aim to stick out rather than blend in.

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Meth and Metallica

by Nicholas Wixon

I

used to live next to a meth dealer. Nothing quite tickles my fancy like waking up to the pungent smell of propane or falling asleep to the raging guitar solos of Metallica. Through the walls I could hear him screaming the lyrics to his favorite songs, and the phone calls he would have with his “clientele.” I should have avoided this living situation when I had the chance, but when we went on a tour of this beat-up 1930’s styled apartment we were sold on the cheap rent. We met our wall neighbor, Kelly, on the back porch that day. He greeted my roommate, Cody, and I with a rotting grin as we approached. He was dressed to compete in the crack head Olympics, with his long blonde hair pulled back in a pony tail and his skin-tight biker suit. He had his helmet dangling from the arm of his lawn chair. “ssssss..ssoo yer ta new neighbors eh?” he questioned. He struggled to produce words, and his eyes anxiously bolted back and forth.

He clearly was on something way stronger than alcohol, and his BO hung in my nose well after I left.

I was underwhelmed by the tour. We entered in through the back porch, walked through the kitchen into the one bedroom. As we walked, I noticed the many stains in the classroom-esque carpet. The walls were a yellowish white which was accented by the chipped tan cabinets. There was a lingering cigarette smell, as if the previous owner had chain smoked in the tiny space. There was one closet that connected to the bathroom, and much of the previous owner’s things were still on the racks and hangers.

The toilet barely flushed when I tried it that day, and the sink let out a little dribble of water when turned on full blast. We didn’t know it then, but the drain to the shower was so clogged that a gallon of Drain-O didn’t even do the trick. When I showered, I would have to step in the cold grainy water from the previous washing I had the night before. There were so many warning signs, and yet we inked the lease and were stuck in that shit hole for the entire summer.

As I said earlier, there was only one bedroom and really nothing else. We decided to turn the bedroom into our living space, and the back porch was my sleeping quarters. I piled up some futon mattresses from home in the corner, while Cody bought an air mattress and blew it up every night in the

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living room. The apartment only had one small window AC, and so it was constantly hotter than Satan’s balls inside. We tried to rig a series of fans to distribute the air from the AC unit evenly but had minimal success.

We decided to have a house warming party after we got all moved in on the last day of school. We invited over a group of friends and had a few drinks. We were loud and obnoxious, but we didn’t care. Who was going to call the cops? The meth dealer? Not a chance. When the girls decided to call it a night, us guys went out on the back porch to puff our cheap cigars.

We were in the middle of a conversation when Kelly stumbled out onto the porch. He was wearing the same biker tights he wore when we first met him, minus the top. His long hair dangled down to his slightly visible butt crack. With no shirt on, his drug use was evident by his impressive lack of body fat. I could see the outline of every rib and crevice on his indented chest. His heartbeat could even be seen through his paper skin. “wwwwawawawhat’s up guys?” he stuttered. “Want a beer?” Cody asked with hospitality. “Oh shit yeah!” Kelly exclaimed. Cody reached down into his case of Busch Light and tossed him a can. Of course, Kelly didn’t catch it. He fumbled around trying to pick the can up for a few seconds before finally figuring out how his hands worked. When he finally cracked the top, he had to fight the stream of foam before reaching the liquid. Kelly downed the beer in under a minute and tossed the can into our back yard.

He flicked his long hair back, reached into the crevice of his biker tights and pulled out a band to put his hair into a pony tail. He put it in the front, so his hair hung over his face like a unicorn horn.

Kelly’s phone began to ring, and he struggled to find it, even though I could see its’ glow in the thigh of his biker tights. He rushed into his apartment to search for the ringing phone before returning with it in his hand. Now, I’m not a drug dealer, but I think the first rule should be to not answer phone calls with your clients on speaker. “You got the stuff?” the mysterious person echoed. Kelly leaned in towards his phone, but before he answered he took a glance at us through his hair. He studied us with an uncomfortable level of intensity before replying, “Yyayya man you know I’ve always got it.”

Kelly hung up the phone and dashed inside. When he returned, he had a Louis Vuitton purse over his shoulder. He was no longer talkative, he ignored our presence as he waited for his customer. After only a few minutes, another rough looking guy rolled up on his bike. His hair was greased and filled with dandruff. His oily skin was covered in black heads and lesions. When he opened his mouth to speak, he flashed his matching rotten chompers. We all watched in shock as Kelly reached into his purse, grabbed a little plastic baggy, and exchanged it for his client’s money in one smooth handshake motion. The mysterious man hopped off the porch and rode away on his bike. Kelly opened his backdoor and threw his purse inside before he turned and asked, “Gotta nother beer?”

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Bede Art Gallery Mount Marty College Student Artwork

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Koi Fish Pond Chatel Brende

Resilient Lifestyle Louis Burdmayr 91

Up, Up, and Away!

Karissa Chamley

Dream Chaser Caitlin Dirks 92

Bruce the Bear Cole Fiegen

Spring Flowers & Showers Carly Granum 93

Bike Picture Miranda Henglefelt

Beautiful Beginnings Paige Kanaly 94

Summer Night Ali Kuca

Untitled Maura Lysne 95

Marvin Jeremiah Mauch

Sunset Palm Tree Perla Graciela Michel 96

The Never Ending Windmill Bianca Minor

Self Love Karla Montano 97

The Cable Flower Callee Olmer

Moon Dancer Gretchen Scoblic 98

Tree Pose Marisa Stucky

Jack Emily Vermum 99

Under The Sea Chase Vieck

Nebraska Meadow Seth Wiebelhaus 100

Book Reviews

101

The Invisible Game by Zoltan Andrejkovics

by Kaito Sukeyasu

S

ports holds the potential to be something magical. Since the very first Olympics in Greece, sports have helped people stay together, stay connected, and even stay motivated during times of crisis. What gravitates people towards sports is extraordinary feats being done by elite athletes. 500-foot home runs, 360 dunks, and one-handed touchdown catches are things the average person only dreams about doing – or at least tries in their backyard. People such as Mike Trout, LeBron James, and Odell Beckham Jr. are top celebrities because they are some of the greatest players in their respective sports. Andrejkovics centers his novel around the idea that electronic sports (esports) athletes or “professional gamers” are no different from traditional sports athletes.

Athletes spend countless hours working on their craft. Lifting, watching game tape, practicing drills, all are endured for the sake of being the best player that you could possibly be. A baseball player with his swing, a basketball player with their free throws, and a football player with their running routes are all just the tip the iceberg when it comes to athletes and their dedication to improving. But what about esports athletes?

Andrejkovics shows that these gamers spend just as much time honing their own skills as any other athlete would. Lifting takes the form of yoga and other exercises, with the intent of improving durability instead of strength, game tape involves watching past matches to see what strategies can be used, and drills are often practice sessions or “mock battles” while playing their respective video game.

Just like how a pitcher is susceptible to arm tendinitis, or a dunker to a knee contusion, esports athletes also put their health at risk when it comes to playing the game they love. Highlighted by the novel’s in-book interview with professional Overwatch gamer, Lane “Surefour” Roberts, physical health is said to be at risk in the life of an esports athlete. Roberts describes his past and current experiences as “an unhealthy lifestyle” where the diet mainly consists of instant noodles, snack foods, and soda.

Roberts continues on by saying that an average esports athlete can go “weeks” without stepping outside, when staying a team-shared house or apartment, spending “ten to twelve hours a day, regardless of what game” that they are a professional in. In addition to the hermit-style life that they live with their teammates, esports athletes are also extremely susceptible to carpal tunnel as well as sleep disorders. Like a quarterback with a broken pinky finger, even the smallest injury can greatly affect an esports athlete.

The mental health aspect of professional sports has been in the spotlight 102

the past few years. With more athletes including NBA-star Kevin Love and worldwide celebrity Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson speaking out, the awareness of mental illness has never been greater than it is now. In the same manner as mental illness would affect a professional baseball player, basketball player, or football player, esports athletes are vulnerable as well.

In the novel, an interview of another professional Overwatch player, Jay “sinatraa” Won is mentioned, discussing his own battles with depression while training to become a professional esports athlete and finding solace in seeing other professional athletes being in a similar situation and finding ways to combat it.

For a vast majority of the novel, Andrejkovics proves that esports athletes are just like other sports athletes, with the only difference being the sport they play. However, for one chapter, Andrejkovics discusses how esports is different from baseball, basketball, football, or any other sport.

The life span of an esports athlete is shorter than that of any other sport.

A baseball player’s prime can be over ten years, the NBA’s best player right now is turning 35-years-old this season, there is a player in the NFL over 45 years old. For esports, 27 years-old is considered almost too old to play. The need for quick reaction times and fast reflexes is as important as knowing how to skate in hockey. Esports athletes cannot become true professionals until the age of 18. Andrejkovics stresses the short span of an esports athlete by comparing it to the career span of a NASCAR driver, joking that “an esports athlete could have a full career, have a child, see them grow into their own esports athlete” before a NASCAR driver retires.

Teammates are constantly communicating – regardless of what video game – during games. Whether it is informing teammates of the enemies’ location, asking for help, or telling everyone what the game plan, communication is key in esports. However, with esports now being a worldwide phenomenon, the language barrier has become a big issue.

Seoul, South Korea is the capital of esports, and with a vast majority of talented players from South Korea, players of other countries, such as the U.S. and France, struggle to communicate. With most Korean players struggling to learn to English, and vice versa for Americans and French, teams are often compromised. Teams often recruit all-Korean rosters with less talent than mixed rosters because of the language barrier.

Overall, Andrejkovics makes his point known that esports athletes deserve to be recognized as regular athletes. Andrejkovics opinion is that there is no difference “being a soccer star compared an esports star” when it comes to the work, dedication, and risk being put in.

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Lost Connections by Johann Hari

by Katie Hamil

I

didn’t know what to think when the book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions was recommended to me. I, like much of the population, suffer from depression and anxiety. I am definitely skeptical of books like this. With all the experiences of mental illness I bring to the table and everything I have been told by doctors, why would I listen to anything Johann Hari, an investigative reporter, had to say? It was with this closed off attitude that I started to read the book.

The introduction is a personal account of a time Hari got sick. While on an assignment in Vietnam he is poisoned by an apple he eats.

During his stay in a hospital a doctor tells him: “You need your nausea.

It is a message. It will tell us what is wrong with you.” (Hari 4). It is this fundamental principle that the book is built on. It is the idea that depression and anxiety are symptoms of a larger problem that we need to get to the bottom of and that throwing antidepressants at the problem isn’t getting to the root cause.

I begrudgingly agreed that he might be on to something. What if depression wasn’t the illness, but simply a symptom. I was intrigued, so I continued to read. After about fifty pages, I found myself conflicted. The book was not what I was expecting. I really wanted to go in and pick it apart. But then I realized he’s not arguing for people to suddenly stop all medications, or that antidepressants can’t be useful in some situations.

What he is really doing with this book, is trying to get people to think outside the box and to point out some issues that don’t make sense that we, as a society, should be looking more deeply into. Once I realized this, I found myself enjoying his thought-provoking writing.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section divulges information about how the average consumer has been misled into thinking that antidepressants should be the go-to, long-term solution for depression. In reality, Big Pharma has far too much control over the research studies that prove the usefulness of the drugs. I really couldn’t deny that a 100-billion-dollar industry is going to have some sway. Hari argues, based on some of the research scientists have done, that antidepressants, for most people, are not going to have as nearly as great of an impact as seemingly minor changes, such as getting better sleep. He also states that anti-depressants are rarely helpful for longer periods of time. This fact is of particular interest to me considering that most of the medications I am on have had very few large-scale, long-term studies, which is kind of scary considering these medications chemically alter the 104

way our brain functions.

Hari doesn’t delve nearly as much into more extreme cases of mental illness such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc. or the antipsychotics and mood stabilizers used to treat them. His main focus is on SSRI’s or Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. Drugs such as Paxil and Prozac fall into this category and are used primarily in the treatment of depression. I have been on a couple SSRI’s before and they didn’t sit well with me. But there are other medications I wouldn’t trade the world for because they allow me to function in society. Granted the medications I am on are not SSRI’s and probably fall outside the scope of research Hari did. To assume that Hari is bashing all medicines would be erroneous.

The second section of the book is about the reasons that Hari believes we become disconnected and hence feel the pain of depression and anxiety. He lists nine reasons including: disconnection from meaningful work, disconnection from other people, disconnection from meaningful values, disconnection from childhood trauma, disconnection from status and respect, disconnection from the natural world, disconnection from a hopeful future, the real role of genetics, and the real role of brain changes. Hari mentions that these are by no means the only ways people can be disconnected. One of the main arguments I saw as I scrolled through the negative reviews on Goodreads (which were far less than the positive reviews, by the way), was from people who said they had all the connections listed above, but who were still unhappy. I think it is important to understand that Hari wasn’t giving a complete list of every possible connection to be had. He picked the ones he saw repeatedly that formed patterns and tried to break these down so that they were grouped together. So to say, “why am I depressed? I have all nine of these connections” is again faulty thinking.

The last section of the book discusses solutions for the disconnect we feel in our lives. I thought this was the weakest section of the book. It relied on generalizations and almost unmanageable feats, some of which included a universal basic income and cooperative structured businesses and organizations. While there were some good ideas, such as relying on a sense of community, talking through childhood trauma with a trusted person, and meditation, most of the reconnections would require a total remaking of our political, social, and economic system. Hari, I realize, is trying to spark social change. This is evident with his story about Andrew Sullivan, a man with AIDS who wrote the first book proposing gay marriage to reduce the shame and stigma for the gay community.

Hari explains that never in a million years would this radical idea become a reality, but it did. His point is that if enough people band together and speak out, maybe change will occur faster than we think.

Overall, I was surprised by how invested I got into Johann Hari’s Lost 105

Connections. There is something powerful about finishing a book and liking it when I thought I was going to hate it. It means it was a book that had the power to challenge my beliefs and allowed me a fresh perspective on an issue I thought I knew a lot about. I would recommend this book to anyone, but I think it’s important to note what Hari was and was not trying to accomplish when he wrote it.

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The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One by Amanda Lovelace

by Shiann Hansen

I

t’s not your typical fairytale. A prince doesn’t save the princess. There isn’t an evil queen and there is no dragon. The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One by Amanda Lovelace isn’t your typical fairytale. In a fairytale, the witch is the bad lady who destroys lives. But this collection of women empowerment poems shows us that life isn’t a fairytale. This is the second book in the Women are Some Kind of Magic Series. The first book in the series is titled The Princess Saves Herself in this One. In her first book, princesses are the females going through difficult situations.

In the end, they save themselves. In The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One, Lovelace uses “witch” as synonymous with “bitch.” In this book, the witches are all those women that have been called a bitch for not acting the way they are supposed to. All the women who have stood up for themselves even when others wanted them to stay repressed. In this book, the witch doesn’t burn. The witch is made of fire and has decided it’s time to stand up for herself. These poems aren’t a fairy tale. These poems are the future. They are healing and strength.

The poems that Amanda Lovelace has written are a kaleidoscope of the things we say, the things we try to hide, and the things that others try to make us believe. Her poems are empowering for any woman who reads them. They get to the issues that others don’t want to talk about. Lovelace brings them into the light and demands that they be addressed.

The book has five different chapters that explain the story of the poems: “The Trial,” “The Burning,” “The Firestorm,” “The Ashes,” and “The Dragonhearts.” The range of what is covered within the sections includes eating disorders, rape and breaking the preconceived notions of how women should behave and act. The journey through the book is one of defiance and independence. There are several themes that reoccur throughout the book. One is the series of poems called “Lessons in Fire.”

They provide the storyline that is carried out throughout the book.

“The First Lesson in Fire” talks about “the match-boys” and the power they think they have. These are the men that try to destroy women, especially when they do not behave the way men expect. These men refer to the women as witches and try to burn them. In the section titled “The Burning,” we get “The Second Lesson in Fire,” This is a poem explaining that the only reason the men have to burn these women, is because they are women. It tells about the men tying them to a tree to burn. Then in the third chapter, “Firestorm,” there is a poem “The Third Lesson in Fire.”

This poem describes the smoke as it rises to the women to burn them.

Instead the smoke stops and explains to them that it would never allow 107

the match-boys to use it to kill the women. The witches turn the fire back on the match-boys.

Then finally in “The Last Lesson in Fire,” in the Chapter titled “The Ashes,” we see that the witches won and have passed their spark onto the rest of the females. Then “The Epilogue in Fire” tells us that though the smoke cleared the hills for a while, we must stand together to keep them clear of the match-boys—people who have tried to suppress us.

The entire book is filled with poems lifting women up in whatever form they may need it. Lovelace includes poems that encourage women to write poetry and share their story. She encourages them to love themselves, though she acknowledges it will take a while to do. She provides healing for her reader and encourages strength. Last year my friend had given me the first book of the series and I loved it. This year when Christmas came around, she gave me this book. When I read the first one, I didn’t mark any of the poems and I regretted it afterward because I couldn’t go back to the ones that I connected with. When I read this book, I said I would only put a tab on my favorite poems. By the time I was done, the book was full of blue tabs. My favorite of all of them, though I liked many, was a poem called, “From the Grimoire of the Green Witch.” It talks about rooting for yourself. It states that when we don’t root for ourselves, we are cutting down our own tree. She encourages us to find our place to bloom.

We are the ones that are being burnt, but this isn’t your typical fairytale.

We aren’t the bad guys. Instead, in this story, the witches are females that are being repressed for their differences. We aren’t the damsel in distress.

Instead, we are the witches with a fire inside that fuels them. A fire that Lovelace uses against those who are trying to start us on fire. There are beautiful poems on strength and self-love. Poems of healing. Poems that let the reader know that they will be okay. It gives hope to a future of healing and self-acceptance. There is so much power and truth inside the words of Lovelace that will help so many people find their fire and their voice. We are writing the story now, and we are going to write it our way.

And we can save ourselves.

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Miracle in the Mundane: Poems, Prompts and Inspiration to Unlock Your Creativty and Unfiltered Joy by Tyler Knott Gregson

by Samantha Kasowski “So much beauty lives right beyond your inability to go looking; stop waiting for it to show up on your doorstep, and go invite it in. Seek. Just seek, and never, ever stop.”

- Tyler Knott Gregson, page 186

E

very morning, I turn over, open my phone and check my favorite social media apps, just to see if anyone has changed or posted anything different from the night before. One constant that I always can count on is the beautiful words typed on random scraps of paper by the Instagram handle @tylerknott.

Tyler Knott Gregson: Insta-famous, world sensation poet, writer and photographer with three books published, two books filled with his trademark Typewriter series poems and one filled with haikus on love.

Each of these books has inspired their readers as well as graced us with beautiful words about love, life, happiness and romance.

His fourth book, Miracle in the Mundane: Poems, Prompts and Inspiration to Unlock Your Creativity and Unfiltered Joy, is of a different variety. Instead of poetry, he provides us with daily prompts, challenges and poem examples to further spark our creativity, inspire us daily, and bring about our mindfulness. Each chapter is a different prompt, with an introduction, a challenge and a section titled “beyond” where Tyler Knott Gregson gives some exit advice regarding the prompt and challenge.

There are forty challenges, enough for forty days of creative writing. Not only are the challenges about writing, they also challenge you in other avenues like drawing and photography.

When I first saw that Tyler Knott Gregson had a new book out, I was ecstatic. I have purchased his previous books and often turn to them when I need inspiration or just want to read beautiful and romantic poetry. I have several pages earmarked with my favorite poems and have even framed a few that I find so inspiring so I can look at them everyday. When I look at them I am reminded of the uniqueness of life as well as the power of words.

When the book arrived, I expected the normal format of photocopies of Tyler Knott Gregson’s Typewriter poems or haikus, like what you see in any other book of poetry. When I opened Miracle in the Mundane: Poems, Prompts and Inspiration to Unlock Your Creativity and Unfiltered Joy, I 109

was pleasantly surprised to find more paragraphs instead of poems. The longer I read the book, the more I was pulled into Tyler Knott Gregson’s creative mind.

He gave more insight into his life than what he was able to show from his Instagram, Twitter, and website. He talked about how he was on the spectrum as well as other details about his relationship with his fiancee, Sarah.

In the introduction, Tyler Knott Gregson writes his mission statement for the book: “Know this: I am on your team, I’ve always been, and I wish for you what I wish for myself. To live an honest, simple life, filled with creativity, joy compassion, and a deeper, richer appreciation for the world around us. It’s a beautiful place. I just want to help you see it.” (page 12). The main goal of this book is to open the reader’s eyes and mind to hopefully see the world in a different, more optimistic light. The world is a beautiful place and Tyler Knott Gregson presents a way for those who read it to view it through a different perspective.

One of the challenges that I started doing every day was the Notice Everything Challenge. Tyler Knott Gregson challenges you to instead of writing, photograph the things that you think are mundane and then study them in detail. I have started this challenge and it is very hard to notice and remember to take pictures of things that are mundane but when I do remember to take the pictures it changes the outlook of my day. Once you start to notice everything and photograph them religiously, then he asks you to go beyond and immerse yourself in the frozen picture, then write about it.

The other challenge that I enjoyed was in the Juxtaposition section of the book. Tyler Knott Gregson challenges his readers to grab a notebook, a writing utensil, and a picture taking device of your choosing and head out on an adventure to find two things that are completely opposite but manage to coexist together in harmony and either photograph, write about, or photograph and write about what you have seen. It can be an old can with wildflowers growing out of it, a young child and their grandfather, a gravestone and flowers. All sorts of things that are completely opposite but manage to create some form of harmony and beauty with the two things side by side.

The last challenge that I enjoyed was also very therapeutic. This challenge deals with regret versus pride, which also happens to be the title of the chapter. The challenge asks for you to sit down and make two columns. On the left, write five to ten regrets, anything from big life regrets like not kissing the boy to forgetting to call your sister back the day before, and on the right write things your proud of accomplishing, like getting a 4.0. When you’re finished with your lists, sit and think about how 110

you got to those decisions and which list was harder to finish. For me, this challenge really bared the truth of some things that I had buried, regrets that I hadn’t known that I had.

Tyler Knott Gregson has inspired many with his creative mind and his use of social media has spread this creativity to millions of followers.

With the publication of Miracle in the Mundane: Poems, Prompts and Inspiration to Unlock Your Creativity and Unfiltered Joy, Tyler Knott Gregson brings us deeper into his psyche and mind; he unlocks the door to his success and provides a roadmap for us to find the creative beast inside ourselves and unlock our creative ability as well. For anyone who is looking to “get more creative” this book is for you but will impact you in a million more ways.

“Repeat this mantra

over, and again,

until it sings when you are silent,

it breathes when you

are breathless:

I can do anything

I can do anything

I can do anything

I

can do

anything.”

- Tyler Knott Gregson, page 20

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From Wentworth to the Western Front: The World War One Odyssey of Private John Warns by Rich Lofthus

by Samantha Kasowski

I

had the amazing opportunity to read the first book published my esteemed professor, Dr. Rich Lofthus. I have had the distinct opportunity of learning from this brilliant man for the past four years and I was so ecstatic to be reading a book written by someone I not only respect but admire for his knowledge.

The book follows the story of one Private John Warns of Wentworth, South Dakota. John Warns was drafted into the army and served with the Eighty-ninth Division on the Western Front during the first World War as well as during the army occupation of Germany. The book showcases many of the letters sent back and forth between John and the rest of his family that remained stateside.

John Warns was the grandson of a German immigrant. Both sides of his family were deeply connected with Germany and their German roots.

However, when war was declared on Germany, many German immigrants cut ties and remained loyal to only the United States.

The most interesting part of this book is the letters. It is interesting, especially as a History major to see the actual letters sent back and forth from a soldier who served on the Western Front as well as those who remained in the states. It showcases not only the soldier’s point of view on the war and the military history that goes with it, but it shows how war affected the civilian population who made sacrifices themselves.

John Warn’s favorite person to write with seems to be his sister Anna Warns, whom he often addressed as “Tommy” in the letters. These letters provide insight into the war effort and also provide us with some information on what was happening in Wentworth. Anna often talked of the propaganda that they were exposed to.

Another aspect of the book that I find pleasing as a reader is the supplemental material. Dr. Lofthus manages to interweave other historical narratives, letters, and such in order to place what is happening with John Warn’s life and service into the historical context. He references President Woodrow Wilson several times in the text and uses a wide variety of primary sources to help explain and place the story of Private John Warns in the historical timeline.

As stated in the foreword, Dr. Lofthus worked hard to maintain the integrity of the letters, often leaving the original spelling which may or may not have been very grammatically accurate. This not only made it interesting to read but also played a role in showing us the different 112

formalities of writing the letter ( John’s were more informal while others were formally written). The juxtaposition of letters from John Warns to other letter authors in the book was certainly interesting.

My favorite chapter of the book was by far the chapter on the Western Front. Insight into the behind the scenes of a soldier’s surroundings and mind as he experiences war has for a long time been an interest of mine. John was a part of the Eighty-ninth division, which was one of the first divisions to be sent to the Western Front. They were there as backup and support for the British and French armies until the American Expeditionary Forces, or the main American Army, was ready to join them on the front.

John was often very vague in his letters, not really mentioning his various hospital stays and other aspects of the war, which is where Dr. Loftus interjects what he believes happened during John’s time in the service. There are a few mentions of hospital stays, one of which was from an encounter with poisonous mustard gas. This gas affected five hundred and fifty-six men and forty-two men and officers were killed when they were exposed to the gas.

The book follows and provides insight into the occupation of Germany that John was a part of and closes with the return of John to South Dakota.

The last chapter of the book additionally goes into the relationship between John Warn and the Kaiser family that he met while he was in Germany. He reached out to them sometime in 1947. This is interesting to read because it provides a primary documentation of how post World War II Germany suffered. His correspondent, Anna Kaiser, expressed joy and excitement and thanks John for his parcels that he sends with various things needed to survive.

Dr. Lofthus presents the story of Private John Warren in an easy to read manner that is not only easy to follow but does a fantastic job of educating its reader. It is short, only ninety four pages but it covers all the necessary material and leaves the reader satisfied at the end. I would recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more about not only World War One and the Western Front but about the United States, especially here in good old South Dakota. I applaud Dr. Lofthus and those surrounding him for creating a great read and for providing us with an excellent work of nonfiction.

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The Spring Girls: a Modern-day Retelling of Little Women by Anna Todd

by Aimee Huntley The Spring Girls versus the March Women

A

nna Todd’s 2018 novel, The Spring Girls: a Modern-day Retelling of Little Women, was my book club’s choice for the month of March. As is clear from in the title, the story is a revised version of the 1868 Alcott classic. While their last names are changed, the sisters still share the same first names as the original: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. The mother in the original, Marmie, was modernized to Meredith, while the father’s: is Army Lieutenant, Frank Spring. In Little Women the father, Mr. March was actually a chaplain in the Union army.

Todd got an unlikely start as a published author. She began a regular hobby of writing fan-fiction on a social media website called Wattpad.

This website allows community members to read and write stories. It has become a growing service that operates for free and operates as both a multi-platform app and an offline service. People can read Wattpad stories and material without having an actual account, but cannot comment, etc… There are also opportunities for people to make money by allowing advertisements to be included at intervals in their online work.

Todd wrote a chapter a day for over a year and soon had an incredible online following. She was actually contacted by a representive from Wattpad, and they helped her get taken on by Simon and Schuster Publishing. Her online book soon became the After series trilogy and was then adapted into a movie which is due for release April 12, 2019. While there have been many critics that feel the After series is just a college-age variation of Fifty Shades of Grey with 150% more angst, I hadn’t heard of the author previous to reading Spring Girls and wanted to see if it had anything in common with her earlier books. While there are a few sexually explicit scenes in Spring Girls, it’s pretty much the main stream, vanilla variety. There’s nothing to shock most teenage-adult readers, even though gratuitous sex in media isn’t appreciated by everyone.

Both books are consistent in their same timeless themes of love, war, class, coming of age, and family. In Todd’s modern version the elder three sisters and Meredith take turns being first person narrator for the chapters, while Alcott doesn’t employ this technique. In the original, we also have a broader timeline involved, with all the girls eventually getting married. In Spring Girls, in seems at most a couple of years total chronicled, and none of them are married at the end, despite Meg’s chaotic romances. Todd begins by encouragingly dedicating her book: 114

“To all of the ‘little women’ out there who are trying to figure out just what it means to be a woman; I’m here for you, and so are your many sisters.”

The book begins similarly to the Alcott version, in the women sharing a comparatively poor Christmas, with only the small trinkets each are able to squirrel away as gifts. Their father is away with the military and has been away for some time. In both books the sisters keep the same roles with Meg being the oldest and acting as the second hand for their mother. Jo is the tomboy, rebel- writer with a free spirit. Beth is the artistic piano player, housebound with agoraphobia, and acts as the family cook and maid. Amy is the youngest and naturally the most ego-centric and self-obsessed/spoiled. All of the women heavily rely on each other to get through their father’s deployment and maintaining grace during difficult financial times.

There are other common characters found in both novels besides the central family. The character Laurie Laurence (a guy) and his wealthy Grandfather, Mr. Laurence, and John Brooke also figure prominently in Spring Girls. Both books feature love interests which keep the same names also. Jo struggles with her feelings for Laurie, feeling a deep bond of friendship but is uncomfortable with the idea of a romantic relationship.

In contrast, Meg is conflicted in her choice of John Brook for a husband and whether she should marry for stability and social status, or love and excitement.

Some key events besides the Christmas scene, are kept in Todd’s adaptation that are very similar to the original. A bit of Meg’s hair gets burned during Jo’s attempt to style it. Meg goes to a fancy party where she feels out of place, and is kept company by Laurie, in both books. Amy does unkind acts to her sisters that seem practically inexcusable, and both fathers come home early from the war due to serious injuries.

Key differences in subject matter that have come along with the changing times and acceptance of prior social stigmas which are included in Spring Girls, are topics of: interracial relationships, homosexuality, bullying, alcoholism, and pornography. In Little Women the most scandalous thing John Brooke does, is to steal one of Meg’s gloves, because he has a crush on her. In Spring Girls, Meg allows a boyfriend to take cell phone pictures of her nude. They then they go viral on the internet when the couple breaks up, and continue to haunt her wherever she goes.

In Spring Girls, Beth discovers she may be bisexual or lesbian. In Little Women, Beth remains chaste and pure throughout. Meg is also a very much sexualized woman with lots of prior experience with men, in comparison to the Alcott version where all the women retain their 115

virginity until marriage. Meg’s second love choice comes from a wealthy African-American family. All of these scenarios would have been shameful and viewed as heinous during Alcott’s time.

At the conclusion of the book I felt disappointed, because it seemed as if the book was rushed through at the end, and that there were so many unanswered questions about what happens to the family. Perhaps the author wanted to leave room for the development of a sequel, but if Todd was to remain somewhat true to the integrity of Alcott’s characters, she would’ve taken care to make certain at least some of them had solid resolutions for the reader. I would recommend this book to someone interested in an example of how a classic story can be contemporized, but I would warn the reader of some inevitable dissatisfaction.

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The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas

by Aimee Huntley

T

his 2017 New York Times bestseller has been labelled as “The Black Lives Matter” novel. The author originally wrote the story for her college senior project for her creative writing degree at Belhaven University in Jackson, MS. The assignment was originally only supposed to be a short story, but Thomas couldn’t cut any of her characters or subplots out, and it eventually developed into an award winning young adult fiction novel.

This is Thomas’ first novel and it has been adapted into a movie as well.

The title was inspired by one of Thomas’ favorite rap artists, the deceased Tupac Shakur. Tupac had a large tattoo on his abdomen that said “Thug Life”. In an interview Tupac explained the deeper meaning behind the words. While most people probably took the meaning literally, for Tupac it was an acronym for “The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody.” He was talking about how what society feeds youth affects everyone.

The story written years before the Black Lives Matter movement was an emotional response to the killing of twenty-two year old, Oscar Grant, by an Oakland police officer in 2009. While unjust black deaths had been happening for decades, this was especially shocking because it was taped by a bystander on their cell phone. There was actual proof of what transpired. At the time, Thomas was in an upper class, mostly white school, where she heard many of her classmates saying that Grant deserved to die and she felt a deep rage about the injustice. The following deaths of other young black youth further fueled Thomas’ writing. Thomas herself witnessed a gang shooting as a child while playing at a park, first hand. Thomas made sure to include many other tragic victims by name at the end of the book. She also has her protagonist, Starr, post the disfigured picture of Emmett Till’s body on her blog much to the disapproval of classmates in the book.

The novel tells the story of a sixteen-year-old girl, named Starr Carter.

Starr witnesses her close childhood friend, Khalil, shot in front of her during a routine police stop. The novel chronicles her struggles with finding her voice and getting justice for her friend, while fearing the retribution from a local drug dealer, unwanted judgement from society, and teen pressures. In addition to the shooting aftermath, the book highlights the relationships of her family, her white boyfriend, classmates, and the inner city community including gang activity. The conflict of being a minority from an inner city and going to a privileged school in an upper class neighborhood while simultaneously adjusting to being a different person in each is also detailed. Starr calls this code switching in the book, 117

and describes how she talks, dresses, and acts differently when at school versus at home. This is another aspect Thomas experienced herself in Jackson. Many of Starr’s experiences are relatable to all people of all ages, an aspect common to well received novels.

An interesting parallel is found in Starr’s parents: Lisa a professional registered nurse, and her father, Maverick, a previous drug dealer and gang member. Maverick turned his life around after serving jail time for selling drugs and now owns a small local grocery store. He is a strong father figure and instructs his children on how to thrive as black people and break stereotypes. While Lisa keeps pushing to move her family out of the ghetto to a better area, Maverick insists on staying to help the people in their poor neighborhood despite regular run-ins with his former drug partner, King. King’s interactions with the Carter family are further complicated when he moves in with Lesha, the mother of Seven. Seven was fathered by Maverick in a short liaison with Lesha and is ten months older than Starr. Seven spends a lot of time with the Carters and also attends school with Starr at Williamson Prep.

The unconventional family dynamics between the Carters and King’s family is aptly depicted. Seven’s mother doesn’t show up for his high school graduation, but barges in at his birthday party at the Carter’s.

At Kahlil’s funeral Seven is pressured to move from his seat with the Carter family to his mother and King’s at the back of the church. While desperately wanting to be like his father, Maverick, Seven also feels deeply protective of his half siblings that are King’s children with his mother and live in a dangerous drug/gang environment.

Another key relationship that is modeled is that of Starr and her boyfriend, Chris. Chris is a classmate at Williamson and comes from a wealthy family. While Starr loves him deeply she’s hesitant to introduce him to her father and include him in her life in Garden Heights, fearing misunderstanding from both sides. This ambivalence is aptly stated by Starr: “Being two different people is so exhausting. I’ve taught myself to speak with two different voices and only say certain things around certain people. I’ve mastered it. As much as I say I don’t have to choose which Starr I am with Chris, maybe without realizing it, I have to an extent. Part of me feels like I can’t exist around people like him.”

The book realistically describes life in Starr’s home town, Garden Heights. All the streets are named after some type of flora. Another nod to Tupak, based on a poem he wrote called “The Rose That Grew from Concrete.” Thomas states it was a metaphor she wanted to continue to “describe young people who grow up in difficult circumstances but manage to survive and thrive.” Garden Heights represents the concrete 118

garden that the Carters and their neighbors live in. Local small businesses such as Lewis’s Barbershop, Beautiful-U Salon, and Rueben’s Barbeque are included with details about their owners. This is important because when a riot and arson break out later in the book, these people rally around the Carter family and look out for each other. A feature that Thomas includes in her book is an actual map of the town for readers.

She labeled the place of Khalil’s shooting “Where it happened.” Thomas also includes explanations for the characters’ names and the special significance of KKK: King, Khalil, and Kenya.

I first saw this book in Mount Marty’s library as a new purchase. The title definitely caught my attention, but I thought it sounded negative and when I read the brief book description, I decided it would be a downer and I wouldn’t read it. But then it came across my path again with my book club. While I wasn’t enthusiastic at first, I quickly became immersed in the story. While I didn’t think I would relate to the cultural differences in this story, me living in Yankton, South Dakota - I was completely wrong.

This is specifically why I appreciate the book so much. If I can’t get my children to read this book, I will at least make sure they see the movie.

This book changed the way I think about people in general. It taught me how riots happen, what looting looks like, why it’s both so important and hard to be courageous.

Angie Thomas wanted this book to be an inspiration for youth. She wanted to show strong black fathers, loving, unconventional families, interracial relationships, the realities of gangs, and the possibilities for everyone. This book was a teaching manual for those who never heard of Emmet Till, or any of the other victims. It taught about the ten point program of the Black Panthers. It affected me personally about why we should care when people we don’t know, from places we’ll never go, are killed. Mamie Till-Mobley aptly said, “Two months ago I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good, job. I had a son. When something happened to the Negroes in the South I said, ‘That’s their business, not mine.’ Now I know how wrong I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.” This book helped RE-sensitize me to events in the news. It taught me once again, not to judge a book by its cover.

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Big Potential by Shawn Achor

by Joseph Brinkman

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ig Potential by Shawn Achor is one of the best books I have ever opened up and read. I read it in such a short time period.

If I remember correctly I read the book in just a couple days.

This was done within days of classes, lifting, golf practice and other involvements. It was one of those books that was so good you did not want to put it down. Dr. Reese gave me this book and said, “I figured it would be one that you would like to read.” He was not wrong. Because of this book, I have now gained a greater interest in positive psychology and what it is all about.

Shawn Achor is an author, but is very well known for speaking about positive psychology and the advantages of it. He also wrote a book called the Happiness Advantage, which is based on seven principles of positive psychology. Big Potential took a little bit of a different approach.

You know how the world tells us that if we want something we better go do it on our own. That if we want to get better at something, to do it by ourselves. The world also says that people will drag you down if you do this and that. It’s not all about our own skills and abilities. Shawn debunks all of this in Big Potential. He talks about how we cannot go through life by ourselves. He talks about how the greatest advantage comes from having close knit relationships with people that we love and connections to those around us. He talks about how we can use the world around us to become our best self. You can only go so far on your own; someone else is able to help us reach the heights we truly want to reach.

Throughout the course of the entire book it looks as if there are random lines that are highlighted for no reason. However, they are not highlighted for no reason at all. There is a purpose behind each one that is highlighted. I believe Shawn is trying to give us something simple and effective to take away from the readings. All of the highlighted sentences could be formed and made into a book of sayings for positive psychology. I have actually thought about going through and writing each one down. Not only would I use Big Potential but other books where I have written down motivational, inspiriting or faith quotes. With all of these I would form a huge collection and use a different one each day. It would be a quote of the day kind of thing with a new one each day. I would do this instead of trying to create my own every morning.

Because people do not know what to do, they do nothing instead of doing something, even if it is small. It makes sense to be 1% better today than you were the day before. You grow much more than if you were to do nothing. I have placed a lot of importance on positivity since the day of the 120

bus crash with the golf team, and in doing so I noticed something: there is so much negativity it’s unreal.

Sometimes it is hard to recognize how much negativity is around us, but when you step outside of situations ask yourself what it revolves around. There is always so much gossip and trash talk about people it is disgusting. Turn on the news, you will find negativity. Positivity is like the blue moon; once in a while. I would bet it would be easier to name the players with the most drug and behavior problems than it would to name the players that do the most for the communities where they live. It is sad honestly. You don’t really notice it if you are on the inside, but that bus crash put me outside of this.

I am now trying to do all I can to make sure I focus on the positive things around me, and not always dwelling on the negatives. This book is doing exactly that. I am not trying to avoid people because I feel them being negative. I am learning how to connect with people on a positive note, and because of that fostering a positive environment for everyone to grow. Does it work all the time? Absolutely not, but at least the situation is being provided. When we are brave enough to expand power to others, suddenly we find that a huge weight is lifted off our shoulders, increasing our power to lift even heavier loads. This is a line in the book that is highlighted at the end of a chapter titled “Expand your Power”.

Shawn says in the book that “it is not always about survival of the fittest, but survival of the best fit.” I have never heard of this comment before and now that I know it and have reflected on it, it is definitely true. I mean look at some of the people in your life. There may have been times where you don’t get a job, or an internship and thought they were in the wrong the whole time. That is until you receive a job, or internship that you don’t think could get any better. Sometimes we might not get something that is the biggest and the best, but the thing that is just perfect for us.

Shawn Achor actually did a TED talk on the importance of positive psychology and how to reprogram your brain in 21 days. Don’t think it would be hard? Try it. You have to write down three things you are grateful for each day and then journal for a paragraph or two about a positive experience that happened in the last 24 hours. There a couple more things under that list as well, but those are the major components.

Big Potential has increased my desire to read more books about positive psychology and how I can make not only myself a better person, but others around me as well. I am pursuing a career in sport psychology where I will be working with athletes both in groups and individually. Knowing and understanding the importance of positive psychology I can implement it into the mental training that I will do with the athletes. I look forward to reading more of Shawn Achor’s books such as The Happiness Advantage.

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I encourage everyone to pick up this book and see what you can discover about yourself. If you think you have it all figured out and there is nothing to discover I challenge you to go into this book with an open mind and see what kind of person you become when you shut the back cover.

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The Outsider by Stephen King

by Nicolas Wixon

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tephen King has a dazzling reputation for writing supernatural horror novels. Titles such as IT and The Shining have given him the identity of a horror writer. However, there is another side to King’s works. He also excels at writing crime-fighting thrillers and horrors without the supernatural aspect. King combines all of these writing styles into one of his latest novels, The Outsider.

The Outsider takes place during present times in a small Oklahoma town. Forensic evidence from a gruesome murder of a young boy frames the town hero, Terry Maitland. The police arrest him in front of the crowd as Terry is coaching little league baseball game. Ralph Anderson, the lead investigator, is certain his case is “iron-clad” until Terry’s fool-proof alibi is discovered. Both sides of the argument have a perfect case, a rock on one side and a hard place on the other. The mystery seems like it can’t be solved, until Ralph Anderson meets Holly Gibney. She has appeared as an investigator in several other novels by King, but the one I remember most was Mr. Mercedes. With her help, Ralph expands his search beyond Terry Maitland, and discovers a gut-wrenching, can’t be true, supernatural reality which only Stephen King can explain.

I have read many of King’s novels, from The Shining to Gerald’s Game, and everything in between. I have to say The Outsider combines King’s writing styles in a way that I have never seen him do before. It gave me the realistic police drama/thriller that was similar to Mr. Mercedes (even includes one of the characters) as well as the monstrous killer that horrifyingly can’t be caught, similar to IT. King includes chapters that are solely police documentation from various interviews of eyewitnesses, as well as statements given from the forensic science unit and the medical examiner. These chapters are written in a type-writer-esque font, which made it easy to distinguish between what is currently going on and what has been documented in the investigation so far. Although the type-writer font is unrealistic, as there is no way someone took these notes on a type-writer in the setting of the story, the overall benefit of the font change outweighs the realistic issue. Also, the police documentation chapters put you in the investigator’s shoes. I constantly wondered what I would do if I was in Ralph’s place. He has the man who matches the forensic evidence, and he has eyewitness accounts placing him at the right time and place for the murder. These chapters also slowed down the story and built suspense between normal sections.

Character development in this novel is nothing short of perfect.

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King brings character’s to life by giving little clues of their personality throughout the flow of the story. Every now and then he’ll give a thought in one character’s head about another. This one thought always succeeds at giving the reader the full dynamic of their relationship. The best dynamic King revealed was between Ralph Anderson and his wife, Jeannie. As a single man, if I was writing this story, I would’ve made Jeannie a flat character, but King actually does the opposite. He gives us insight into their marriage and develops Jeannie into a fundamental character in the story. King gives us Jeannie’s short thoughts, which reveal what people think during a relationship but never say to their significant other. She also tries to give Ralph advice, and ideas of what to do after Terry’s alibi clears. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but she indirectly is responsible for solving the mystery.

King did a great job of keeping me on edge throughout the story. I was worried that too much was revealed in the synopsis on the back cover of the book. I wish it hadn’t told me that Terry Maitland had an alibi in advance. I would’ve preferred that to have been a surprise when I read the story. However, in the grand scheme of things, there are so many twists and turns that this isn’t that big of a bombshell.

What I enjoyed most about the novel was the eerie feeling it imposed throughout the entire piece. From the start, I could sense something was wrong. Partially, because the synopsis set it up that way, but mostly it was due to how real the story seemed. King made an unrealistic story believable by developing his characters thoroughly. Each piece of dialogue was well crafted and read like a normal conversation. The town immediately turned on Terry Maitland, and completely ignored the “Innocent until proven guilty” motto. This hit home the hardest for me, as I grew up in a small town, and I know how one rumor can ruin an individual’s reputation. Gossip spreads quickly, and soon an untrue story can make you untouchable.

This is one of my favorite books I’ve read from Stephen King so far.

I can’t say it’s his best of all time because every single book of his is a masterpiece. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys crime, horror, or thriller fiction. If you’re a King fan, you definitely won’t be disappointed with this one.

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Ritualist by Dakota Krout

by Zach Hough

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f your love MMORPGs (or Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games for all you casuals) this book series is the one for you. Dakota Krout establishes a fun and interesting world within the game that will make us jealous that we’re all still stuck here in reality. I only have one main complaint about the whole thing and that is the beginning chapters are a pain to get through. The main character is good, the side characters entertaining, while the plot will make even the task of killing evil bunnies feel interesting. I personally can’t wait until games like these come out one day as the fun within them will never end.

The story itself centers on the main character named Joe, yes not very interesting name, but bear with it. However, we don’t start by meeting Joe in the first chapter. No, we meet Elon Musk. Apparently, Elon found something quite interesting during an oil spill that involves what I believe is a fictional company name as I doubt they’d allow the use of their name like this. After all, who would admit to firing Elon Musk? It’s not really clear as to what Elon found, just that it was the thing he used to make the game much later in the future. The next chapter, completely shifts the setting and characters to where Joe is. To summarize the next few chapters, Joe’s a medic in the US army, Joe’s helicopter goes up, Joe’s helicopter goes down…..in flames, Joe survives, his wife divorces him because he’s now paralyzed from the neck down. Yes, clearly the cheeriest story so far.

From here, Joe is now a paralyzed veteran, who was divorced and lives with his mother who had just recently won the lottery, by some miracle of God (a.k.a. the writer just being nice to his character). Fun few chapters there. Thankfully, it levels off a bit as Joe is invited to play a game. (Pause for effect) While not as screwed up as Jigsaw’s version of a game, Musk clearly took a few pages out of it. If you have a low constitution (ha!) this book may not be for you in total. Simply put, the game is a VRMMORPG (or a Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game for anybody that can’t read a string of capital letters). For all you anime fans out there, think Sword Art Online combined with Goblin Slayer.

For everyone else, go look at World of Warcraft and imagine that in first person, with realistic graphics and effects and pain. Yeah, some of the players actually feel the pain of being ripped open in brutal fashion.

The game in essence is brutal-istically awesome. In a small way, it’s kind of screwed up. Like Norse mythology levels of messed the hell up. But it’s what makes this world that Krout created interesting. The players have to make their own way in the game and everything they do has an effect and 125

a consequence. For instance, the players massacred a large number of the evil bunnies around the starting city, but didn’t collect them afterwards.

So the bunnies turned into evil zombie bunnies and went around creating more zombies from the regular bunnies. The foxes that eat the bunnies became “starved” and did extra damage to players as the foxes couldn’t eat the zombie bunnies. If the players stayed out of the city at night, they would be attacked by the nighttime version of the evil bunnies and their zombie counterparts. These enemies were a lot stronger though and happened to be called mutated bear bunny zombies. I might have laughed a bit too hard when I saw that.

Oh, and since I mentioned Sword Art Online, Joe can no longer leave the game as he signed a waiver that more or less said that his body would be destroyed and his consciousness put into the game, possibly permanently, but it is revealed that there might be a way for him to return to the real world. But until then, he is kind of like a respawning NPC. Rather cool when you think about it. He lives and breathes in a virtual reality.

From here, Joe makes friends, joins a guild, and uses his powers to royally tick the system off as he accidentally breaks the rules a few times.

This causes the main A.I running the game to pay a bit extra attention to him, which is exactly the opposite of what his patron deity (he’s a ritualist that is favored by a god and hides his class as it is ill favored by the NPCs) told him to do. After receiving the class ‘jumpomaner’ his messages from the system starts to be very snarky and it’s quite funny.

In conclusion, this is all you really need to know. Go read it for yourself!

Seriously, this is a good book. I’ve already read its sequel and I’m onto the side story of book three which is absolutely hilarious. Its beginning isn’t the best, but it is good once you get past that.

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Educated by Sara Westover

by McKenna Cooley

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ara Westover, a name that until 2018, was virtually unknown to the general reading community. She is an up-and-coming author that has become synonymous with Jeannette Walls, the author of The Glass Castle, and someone who is being recognized by prominent people like Bill Gates and Michelle and Barack Obama. As well as receiving the Audie Award for Autobiography/Memoir in 2019 and the Goodreads Choice Awards Best Memoir and Autobiography in 2018.

Westover is a first time Memoirist, Educated being her debut book. She writes of the trials and tribulations of her childhood. Tara is the youngest of seven children who were raised to believe that the end of the world was coming, and they had to be prepared.

Her father was a survivalist who believed the government was out to get them because they didn’t want anything to do with government assistance.

They didn’t believe in doctors, so even when her family was in two terrible car crashes, they still refused to see them, instead turning to herbalism as a way of healing themselves from broken bones and black eyes. Even when her brother had cracked his head one too many times, they still believed that God would provide and save him if that’s what he wished to do.

They had guns buried all over their property to defend themselves, and Tara slept with her “head for the hills” bag in her bed for years believing that one day they would have to flee from the government. They stockpiled food in their basement believing the world would shut down one day, and they would be the only ones prepared. They kept stacks of gold pieces in their basement because in this new world the current American currency would not matter.

But most of all, the government wanted to get them because they didn’t allow their children to attend school to get an education. Westover’s parents believed that schools would corrupt their minds to Socialist ideals and turn them against their beliefs. None of their children had any sort of proper schooling besides knowing how to read because they taught themselves or understanding how to add and subtract numbers.

Westover talks about the struggles of living that kind of life compared to what the rest of the world did. Her mother was an illegal midwife, relying only on herbs to help her save mothers and babies. A dangerous profession because of how many things could go wrong, the lives she held in her hands. She would only take mothers to the hospital if she could do nothing else, and would have to pretend that she was just a friend, not a 127

midwife. Her father was a junkyard diver and construction worker, who would drag his sons out everyday, until they had left; then he would drag his youngest daughter.

Westover was the strange girl from the mountain, who didn’t have any friends outside of their family because those kids weren’t getting ready for the end of the world. She started working at only ten because she wanted her own money to stockpile like her brothers.

Imagine not even knowing your exact date of birth because you were born at home, no hospitals, they are government institutions. You have no birth certificate, you have no identity. Your parents didn’t even remember your date of birth, sometime at the end of August. No one could ever agree what day it was.

Eventually she would want more from her life than becoming a wife, mother, and most likely her mother’s replacement midwife in Idaho and the surrounding areas. She would teach herself enough grammar, mathematics, and science to take the ACT and pass with a 28.

One of the more moving scenes in the book for me was in middle. Tara had been out making her own money and saving it to take the ACT. She wanted to have a high enough score to apply to and eventually go to school at Brigham Young University. Her father, being the man he was, didn’t like her plan, her call for independence. He believed the woman’s place was in the home. He came home one day demanding that she use some of that money that she had been saving to help pay the bills.

She gave him a third of what she had saved. Then he started demanding that she was old enough that if she wanted to live in their house, even while two of her older brothers still lived there also, she would have to pay rent. He would not support sending her to school, and told her to get out; if she wanted to be corrupted so badly she could live on her own. She walked away from him thinking that she was going to have to find a way to live outside of her parents home on her own, with only 2/3rds of her small savings to her name.

Her mother came to talk to her, justifying and subduing all the hurt that her husband had caused, as she always did. She said that Tara was old enough to be helping with the bills because she was 20 now. Tara was only 16 when her mother said this to her. Of course her mother had no idea because she didn’t bother to keep track of her children’s ages.

This memoir is absolutely riveting; I could not put it down. The story, as unbelievable as it sounds, is true. Tara wrote it with the help of three of her brothers, who she is still in contact with; in contrast to the rest of the family who she has separated herself from. The amount of emotional, psychological, and physical abuse Tara went through is humbling.

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In the end, it was education that saved Tara from becoming what her family always thought she would be. It was the education that she gained, a both a PhD from Cambridge University and personal growth away from her family, that helped her in her struggle for “self-invention.” I will end with her last words of the book, which is one of my favorite parts of the book: “They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity.

Betrayal. I call it an education” (page 488).

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Contributors

Alphabetical Order by Last Name

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Joseph Brinkman is a senior at Mount Marty College, majoring in Psychology, and he is also playing golf for the Lancers. He is blessed with being the oldest of eight children from small town Jackson, MN and enjoys being outdoors as much as possible. Faith, family, friends, academics and athletics are the five main aspects of his life. This is Joe’s fourth year of being published in the Paddlefish journal. In the fall Joe will be pursuing a Master’s degree in Sport and Exercise Psychology at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

McKenna Cooley is a sophomore English major with a History minor at Mount Marty from Henderson, Nevada.

She is involved with the Mount Marty Varsity Archery team, with three National Championships under her belt.

She has been previously published in Paddlefish and the Yankton Federal Prison’s journal 4 P.M. Count.

Bella Diaz-Short is a freshman attending Mount Marty College and serves as an athlete and an academic, in hopes to fulfill her dreams of becoming a nurse one day. She grew up under the city lights of San Diego exploring her way from shore to shore surfing, petal to the metal racing motorsports, and her passion for soccer. Not many may know, but Bella gets a kick out of writing and it is something she holds valuable and she will forever indulge it.

Caitlin Dirks is a freshman Nursing student at Mount Marty from Lincoln, NE. She is a part of the Lancer Volleyball team and enjoys coaching volleyball as well.

Other things Caitlin enjoys include reading, writing, photography, and horseback riding. She is excited to continue her college journey and see where her education will take her.

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Madeline Ford is a junior at Mount Marty College, majoring in human services with minors in psychology, sociology, and special education. She is from Byron, MN. Her faith and love for people have greatly impacted her life.

Stephanie Marie Faulhaber is a sophomore nursing student at Mount Marty College. She is from Wessington Springs, SD, and this is the first time her work has ever been publicly published. In her spare time she enjoys singing, dancing, and spending as much time by the river as possible.

Katelyn Hamil is a senior at Mount Marty College and will graduate with an English degree in May. Besides writing, Katelyn likes to read, create art, participate in community service events, hang out with friends, and play board games. She has been previously published in Paddlefish.

Shiann Hansen is the youngest of five kids to grow up in small town Alton, Iowa. She is a sophomore working toward her double major in English and Secondary Education along with a minor in Theater. At Mount Marty she has been a part of theater productions, clubs, and the MMC marketing staff. This will be her second time having her work published.

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Miranda Henglefelt is a junior at Mount Marty College from Alexandria, South Dakota. She is majoring in English and Secondary Education with a minor in history. In her free time, she enjoys reading and photography. This is her second year as a contributor to Paddlefish.

Zachary Hough is a twenty-three year old college student born in Chamberlain, South Dakota. He’s in his senior year, with an English degree within reach. His work can be seen in a previous Paddlefish and he is currently working on writing his own stories and fictions with the ultimate hope of one day helping others write their own as an editor. Always willing to help others out with their work, he’s been accruing experience and lessons from other writers and his own mistakes for years to prepare for things outside of the classroom.

Aimee Huntley is happily employed at Mount Marty College Library, and is diligently stalking a BA in English.

When not crafting oneiric poesy behind the lilac hedge on her front porch, she can be found battling crabgrass in the garden. She is the flawsome, mother bear of four, and lives with her gruntled family in Yankton, South Dakota.

She is a regular contributor to the HerVoice Magazine in the Yankton Press and Dakotan Newspaper, and has been previously published in Paddlefish and 4PM Count Journal.

Megan James is a freshman Nursing student at Mount Marty College. She is also part of the volleyball and dance team. This is her first published work.

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Jason Heron teaches theology at Mount Marty College.

He lives in Yankton, SD with his wife, Hannah, their children, and his mother-in-law.

Sammy Kasowski is a senior history education major at Mount Marty College.

Julie Lauck is a senior at Mount Marty College pursuing a degree in Nursing. Upon graduation she will work at a critical access hospital in Osmond, NE. She is a Nebraska native. In her spare time she likes to bake, read, cheer on the Huskers and travel with her husband and two children.

Morgan Polak is a freshman nursing student at Mount Marty College. She was born and raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This is her first publication.

Kim Schneider is a Religious Studies major and Spanish minor from O’Neill, Nebraska. She enjoys various outdoors activities. Kim loves playing with her niece and doing volunteer work. Writing is something that helps her destress on rough days, but it also gives her something to look back and see how far she has come as a person. Kim hopes that with her degree she can help a wide variety of people grow into who they long to become.

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Kaito Sukeyasu is a junior at Mount Marty College and is a double major in Business Management and English Writing. He came from Las Vegas, NV to further his education and play college baseball. His career goal is to one day be a front office executive for a Major League Baseball team.

Jessica Warnke is a Freshman pursuing degrees in both Psychology and Religious studies. When she has the time she likes to write, draw, and read. She wishes to publish a novel sometime in the future.

Dain Whitmire is a freshman at Mount Marty College majoring in nursing. Dain is also a part of the baseball team as well as the Catholic Leadership team. He is the oldest of four children in his family and enjoys being outdoors and listening to music in his free time.

Nicholas Jay Wixon is a Senior Pre-Professional Studies major with an English Minor and a track/cross country athlete here at Mount Marty College. Paddlefish published Nick’s work in 2016 and 2017 with his stories My Dysfunctional American Family, Late Night Sex, and Amputate. After graduation, he will attend the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine, and he would like to remind everyone that global warming is real, the earth isn’t flat, and vaccines don’t cause autism.

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Paddlefish Snagging good literature one line at a time.

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