Nota Bene Vol. 30

FROM THE NOTABENE EDITORIAL BOARD

Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society is proud to present the 30th edition of Nota Bene, the nation’s only national literary anthology featuring excellence in writing among community college students.

Once again, we are pleased to offer scholarships to outstanding Nota Bene authors.

This year’s Ewing Citation Scholarship has been awarded to Samantha Ward, for her short story “At the Edge of the Universe,“ Southwest Texas Junior College, Eagle Pass Campus in Texas.

The 2024 International Poet Laureate Award goes to the author of the most outstanding poem, Katherine Eliason of Riverland Community College in Minnesota, for “A Chance to Breathe.”

The authors of four other standout entries have been recognized as 2024 Reynolds Scholars They are Leo Ameika of Tidewater Community College in Virginia for “Pointe Shoes,” Shivani Bedre of Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts for “Babel,” Kelsey Gioja of Kankakee Community College in Illinois for “Invisible,” and Olivia Williams of Cape Cod Community College in Massachusetts for “Mary Wollstonecraft.”

The artists of two entries have been recognized with the first Visual Arts Awards. They are Beheshta Eqbali of Clark College in Washington for “Afghan Girl” and Anna Tumbarello of the Fashion Institute of Art in New York for “What Do You Think Happened?”

When we first published Nota Bene in 1994, we were overwhelmed with the response from members who flooded our mailboxes with submissions and from the audience who enthusiastically read the book. This year, we received a record 4,508 submissions, including visual arts entries for the first time. Selection for publication remains a great source of pride. Nota Bene takes its name from the Latin expression for “note well.” We hope you will take note and be inspired by the good work of these exceptional authors and artists. We are grateful for the continued opportunity to showcase the talents of Phi Theta Kappa members and to affirm our commitment to the recognition and academic excellence of students seeking associate degrees and certificates.

Sincerely,

The Nota Bene Editorial Board

NOTABENE EDITORIAL BOARD

Dr. Gisela Ables Advisor, Omega Sigma Chapter Houston Community College, Texas

Dr. Rosie Banks Advisor, Mu Pi Chapter Harold Washington College, Illinois

Dr. Kelly Kennedy Advisor, Beta Pi Theta Chapter Miami Dade College, Hialeah Campus, Florida

Dr. Terri Smith Ruckel Advisor, Beta Tau Gamma Chapter Pearl River Community College, Forrest County Center, Mississippi

Prof. Carlene Woodside Advisor, Beta Eta Alpha Chapter Southeastern Community College, Iowa

AWARDS

The Ewing Citation Scholarship Award of $1,000 is given to the author of the Nota Bene manuscript, considered the most outstanding of all entries. It is named in honor of the late Nell Ewing, a long-time Phi Theta Kappa staff member who was a driving force behind Nota Bene, beginning with its conceptual design and establishment. She retired in 2012 after serving 26 years with Phi Theta Kappa.

The International Poet Laureate Award of $1,000 is given to the author of the most outstanding poem. In addition to the scholarship award, the International Poet Laureate will be invited to present their poem during one of Phi Theta Kappa’s international events.

The Reynolds Scholarship Awards of $500 each are given to up to four authors whose manuscripts were deemed outstanding. These awards are endowed by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and honor the memory of the late Donald W. Reynolds, founder of the Donrey Media Group (now Stephens Media Group).

The Visual Arts Awards of $500 each are given to up to two visual artists whose works were deemed outstanding.

Special thanks to the following Advisors, Advisors Emeriti, and Phi Theta Kappa staff or reviewing Nota Bene submissions:

Prof. Gigi Delk

Alpha Omicron Chapter Advisor

Tyler Junior College, Texas

Prof. Jeff Edwards

Advisor Emeritus, Texas

Tammy Fuentez

Senior Director of Engagement, Division II

Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society

Prof. Sue Grove

Advisor Emerita, Minnesota

Dr. Patty Hall

Advisor Emerita, California

Prof. Mat Hermann

Honors Program Council Member, Arkansas

Prof. Connie LaMarca-Frankel

Advisor Emerita, Florida

Dr. Courtney Lange

Senior Director of Special Initiatives

Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society

Dr. Samantha Levy

Senior Director of Engagement, Division III

Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society

Dr. Lin Lin

Beta Gamma Xi Chapter Advisor

CT State Community College, Middlesex, Connecticut

Prof. Kismet Loftin-Bell

High Point University, North Carolina

Dr. Jamie Mahlberg

Senior Director of Engagement, Division IV

Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society

Dr. Joy Moses-Hall

Honors Program Council Member, North Carolina

Dr. Dan Platt

Honors Program Council Member, Iowa

Prof. Julie Rancilio

Honors Program Council Member, Hawaii

Prof. Richard Rouillard

Advisor Emeritus, Oklahoma

Dr. Ryan Ruckel

Honors Program Council Member, Mississippi

Prof. Christine Solomon

Advisor Emerita, South Carolina

Jennifer Stanford

Senior Director of Student Leadership

Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society

Dr. Diego Tibaquirá

Honors Program Council Member, Florida

Dr. Keziah Tinkle-Williams

Alpha Sigma Nu Chapter Advisor Chandler-Gilbert Community College, Arizona

Pattie Van Atter

Senior Director of Engagement, Division I Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society

Dr. Nancy Weismann

Honors Program Council Member, Ohio

Prof. Teresa Wells

Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Mississippi

Dr. Patricia West Advisor Emerita, Mississippi

Prof. Amy Winters Honors Program Council Member, Nebraska

NOTABENE EDITORIAL STAFF

Dr. Susan Edwards

Senior Director of Honors Programs

Lori Brechtel Creative Designer

Makayla Steede Creative Content Manager

Tracee Walker

Senior Director of Student Experience

On the Cover: "What Do You Think Happened" by Anna Tumbarello Beta Theta Sigma Chapter, Fashion Institute of New York

The opinions expressed in the Nota Bene articles are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions of Phi Theta Kappa.

Copyright ©2025 by Phi Theta Kappa. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Phi Theta Kappa. Phi Theta Kappa has registered the name, logo, and various titles herein with the U.S. Patent Office.

Phi Theta Kappa is committed to the elimination of unlawful discrimination in connection with all employment relationships, business operations, and programs. Discrimination based on gender, family or marital status, race, color, national origin, military or veteran status, economic status, ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, genetic information or history, age, disability, political affiliation, and cultural and religious backgrounds is prohibited.

Samantha

Beta Lambda Gamma Chapter

Southwest Texas Junior College, Eagle

Beheshta

Alpha

Zeta

Beta

Kankakee Community

Beta

TruongVan

Beta

Shasta

Reyna Browne

Alpha Upsilon Rho

Warren County Community College

New Jersey

Fiona L. Page

Alpha Upsilon Chi Chapter

Central New Mexico Community College

New Mexico

Jouly H. Youssef

Beta Mu Alpha Chapter

Orange Coast College

California

Aisha Kysteena Manus

Alpha Mu Zeta Chapter

Cochise College

Arizona

Maria Crawford

Alpha Omicron Upsilon Chapter

North Central Michigan College

Michigan

Emosha Antoine-Butler

Omega Nu Chapter

Delgado Community College, City Park Campus

Louisiana

Arianna Adams

Alpha Chi Gamma Chapter

Alston D’Souza

Alpha Chi Beta Chapter

Green River College

Washington

Iman Bhyat

Alpha Epsilon Upsilon

Pasco-Hernando State College, West Campus

Florida

Wilhelmina Westbrook

Alpha Epsilon Kappa Chapter

Midlands Technical College, Airport Campus

South Carolina

Charity Futrell

Beta Beta Delta Chapter

North Arkansas College

Arkansas

Briana Mason

Upsilon Kappa Chapter

Metropolitan Community College, Penn Valley Campus

Missouri

Isabella Pruneda

Phi Omicron Chapter

Waubonsee Community College

Illinois

Macy Elizabeth Hudgins

Alpha Epsilon Iota Chapter

Shelton State Community College, Martin Campus

Alabama

Kendrick Ferreria Duran

Beta Lambda Lambda Chapter

Cascadia College

Washington

Kaitlin Rose Herbert Alpha Sigma Iota Chapter

Louisiana State University

Louisiana

Savannah J. Faulkner

Alpha Psi Omega Chapter

Georgia Highlands College

Georgia

Reina Howard

Rho Zeta Chapter

Big Bend Community College

Washington

Victoria Pinto

Beta Delta Omega Chapter

Mt. San Jacinto College

California

Max Gomez

Beta Gamma Lambda Chapter

Portland Community College,

Rock Creek Campus

Oregon

Tara Lamper

Alpha Chi Epsilon Chapter

Lakes

Lydia Si Ying Chen

Chi Epsilon Chapter

Alpha Chi Sigma Chapter

Cape Fear Community College

Wilmington North

Fajardo

Sigma Mu Chapter

Northwest Florida State College Florida

Dominic Palmer

Alpha Beta Chi Chapter

Pima Community College

Arizona

Leonardo Fabbro

Alpha Delta Iota Chapter

Palm Beach State College

Boca Raton

Florida

Aschyr Conley

Alpha Theta Xi Chapter

Pellissippi State Community College

Tennessee

Lacey Blakesley

Beta Delta Upsilon Chapter

Kennebec Valley Community College

Evan DiPietro

Beta Delta Sigma Chapter

Los Angeles Valley College

Van Nuys

California

At the Edge of the Universe

Samantha Ward

Beta Lambda Gamma Southwest Texas Junior College Eagle Pass, Texas

“Lighting a cigarette at the edge of the universe,” the old soldier mused, voice rough with too much smoke and too little use. “I can hear you scolding me from heaven, Dear. You never were one for subtlety.”

Wrinkled hands brought a cigarette to cracked lips, their owner stubbornly ignoring the way they trembled. Taking a slow drag and blowing out a mouthful of smoke into the air, the old soldier tipped his head to the sky, refusing to let his gaze fall on the hell below him. “Humanity’s last stand, they called it,” he scoffed. “You believe that? Stood tall, they did. Proud. Iron-willed soldiers, right ‘till the end. Fat lotta’ good it did ‘em. Brave corpse’s still a corpse.”

The old soldier lowered his cigarette to cough, a violent, wet thing that shook his body hard enough to rattle his brain. Doubling over to huck a mouthful of blood over his perch forced him to look at the macabre tableau laid out below his dangling legs.

What remained of New York still smoldered; the last of its metal and brickwork feeding dying embers and sending wisps of black spiraling into a smog-filled sky. Near the bloated water, a thicker wall of smoke obscured his view of the city. He could smell the burning flesh from where he sat, miles away. It smelled like Saturday nights grilling barbecue and terror-filled days crawling through sticky mud while bullets whizzed past his head.

“A battalion of Hydras crossed the Brooklyn Bridge at 2315. Our brave boys in camo engaged at 2318. All communication was lost at 2330. Thirty-two minutes,” the old soldier laughed, choking on a cough half-way through, “that’s how long it took to put down every last one of our ‘fearless troops’. Heard ‘em screamin’ an’ hollerin’ for backup and the al’mighty and their mommas. As if anyone else was listenin’.” His hand closed around the old transceiver he wasn’t strictly supposed to have kept. “What can I say,” he had told his wife when she’d caught him flipping through military channels he definitely wasn’t supposed to still have access to, “I like to stay informed.”

“Buncha’ kids sent to die with guns in their hands. War don’t change, or however that saying goes.” His hands were shaking more violently than he could blame on simple shivers now.

“Promised myself I’d never have to hear that again; the way brave young men scream when they find out they ain’t so brave after all. So much for a peaceful retirement, ay love?”

Glancing down, the old soldier startled slightly at the sight of his nearly burnt-out cigarette. “Ah hell, that’s my last one, too.” He aimed a pout at the blackened sky. “Don’t you laugh, now, I can hear it all the way down here.” Sighing, he flicked the still-smoking stub away. “Oh, come on, what’s one more fire, love? This one’s caused by a human, at least. Kinda’ nice, having a little autonomy over our own inevitable demise.”

The old soldier leaned back on his hands, still looking at the sky. It was better than staring at the corpse of the city he’d grown up in, the one he’d gone to war for. A moment of peaceful silence passed before a breeze brought the horribly familiar scent of scorched hair to his nose. Coughing, the soldier jerked to his feet, rubbing his eyes in a vain attempt to banish the images of bodies torn apart by bullets and shrapnel and claws

Taking a deep breath, the old soldier turned back to the sky, shaking hands and cradling the back of his neck. “I ever tell you why they called ‘em Hydras, love? It’s cause they couldn’t be killed. Oh, they bled like the rest of us,” he let out a breathless giggle he knew sat just on the wrong side of hysterical. “You could shoot ‘’’em full of bullets, blow ‘em to bits, chop their heads clean off their shoulders, and they’d just regrow all the parts they’d lost and keep on marching! Just like that big ol’ Greek snake.” Another giggle, louder this time. “Bet some white coat was real proud of themselves for that one!”

The old soldier pressed his hands against his mouth, blunt nails digging into the flesh of his cheeks. He sank to his knees and bowed his head, a soothing voice echoing in his ears: Five things you can see, dear.

“Concrete, my hands, my backpack, yellow smoke, red sky,” he breathed out shakily, a tremulous smile lifting his lips. “Thank you, love. What would I do without you?” The old soldier lowered himself to lay on his back.

“Know what’s funny? We used to have an operation ‘Hercules’ back in the day.” He paused. “No clue. Top secret government garbage, didn’t have clearance. There were rumors though, of course. Bunch of bored out of their skulls boys with a mystery yappin’ up a storm,” he chuckled, pausing again. “Yeah, Jack made up all sorts of wild stories! Area 51 breakout, mind control ray, super-soldier serum, you know what he was like.” He frowned, humming contemplatively. “Maybe. He never got to find out in any case. Stepped on a landmine two days before his tour woulda’ ended. Bad run o’ luck, that. Though, that was the story of our whole company, bad luck. I mean. Adam died to a snake bite while on leave. Pete drowned in a mud puddle, drunk off his ass. Hell, even little Jimmy Pikes went mysteriously missing. We set up camp one night and the next morning he was just gone, ‘poofed’ away like Houdini, he did. Wasn’t the only one, either. Must’ve lost near two dozen men from our company alone.” The old soldier hummed again, closing his eyes and basking in what was left of the dying sunlight, resolutely ignoring the stench that had yet to clear.

Eyes still closed, the old soldier opened his mouth to speak again. “They called ‘em ‘friends from the sky’ when they first appeared. Claimed they were benevolent beings come to share their extra-terrestrial knowledge with our world. Never trusted someone who only knows how to shoot a camera,” he snorted. “Well, those monsters set the record straight real quick. Hard to mistake their intentions after they vaporized the Pentagon.

“Nearly two-dozen, that’s how many they think invaded. Just a scouting party, and they’ve near wiped us off the face of the planet.” The soldier wiped a hand across his eyes. “No one knows what they want. They never made any demands, take no spoils. You ask me, they just like to hear us scream.” He tilted his head, listening to a voice only he could hear. “Nah, no UFO’s. No extraterrestrial tech at all that I seen. They don’t need it with claws and teeth sharp as they’ve got ‘em.” He screwed his eyes shut, breath speeding up as the sight of a man torn clear in half, intestines slipping to the floor with sickly plops seared itself onto the backs of his eyelids. “It’s worse than land-mines. Never thought I’d say that, love,” he laughed derisively. “Didn’t think anything could compete with having to gather all the little bits of my best friend into a plastic bag to bury, but the good Lord sure does love to keep raising that bar, ay?”

The old soldier paused for a moment, before sighing, strands of greying hair disturbed by his breath. “I miss the breeze the most. It’s the strangest thing,” he chuckled. “Figured it’d be air conditioning or TV or somethin’. But, if I could choose to get one thing back, it’d be a nice, clean breeze. One that doesn’t stink of rot.”

“You’d choose a breeze over me, dear?” The old soldier turned his head slightly to regard the woman out of the corner of his eye. She was wearing a yellow sundress he recognized from innumerable Sunday church services, wine-red hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back like a bloody waterfall. “I’m quite offended.”

“Wouldn’t want you here for this love,” he replied, extending his hand towards the ghost. “Our Lord don’t always get it right, but he knew what he was doin’, callin’ you home when he did.”

The ghost hummed softly, entwining ice-cold fingers with his wrinkled ones. “Remember the way the air smelled in Hawaii?”

“Like salt, sweat, and sunscreen?” he grinned.

“A right poet you are,” the ghost laughed. “I was hoping for a bit more imagination.”

“You know that ain’t exactly my strong suit. What did it smell like to you, love?”

“Clean and sweet, like fresh flowers and peppermint.” The ghost tipped its head up, taking a deep breath as if she could still smell it, all these years and miles away. “The hotel room stunk to high heaven, though! Someone must’ve dumped the whole bottle of perfume on the sheets to get the smell that strong.”

“We stank of peppermint for days after. The smell followed us like a cloud.” The old soldier breathed in deeply, smiling slightly as the scent of fresh-cut lilies and too-strong peppermint filled his nose.

“Know what else I miss?” he asked, resisting the temptation to turn his head any further in the ghost’s direction. He had to keep it in his peripherals, if he looked at it directly his wife would abandon him. “Lemon pound cake. Tried to make it once after you left, but it didn’t taste right.” The old soldier had cried for hours after that first bite, the knowledge that nothing would ever taste quite right again shattering his heart a little further.

“That’s because you’re a lost cause in the kitchen, dear. Couldn’t tell salt from sugar if your life depended on it.”

“Hey, we promised to never bring up that incident again. Wasn’t my fault anyway. Those jars shoulda’ been more clearly labeled,” he huffed indignantly, fighting back a smile as the taste of candied lemon coated his tongue.

“They were labeled, dear. Quite clearly. I banned you from the kitchen for a reason,” she chuckled.

“That fire was entirely coincidental and not even a little bit my fault.”

His wife laughed, aloud, unrestrained sound he hadn’t realized he’d missed so dearly until he finally got to hear it again. The sound brought back memories of frantically shushing barelym restrained giggles back when they were kids sneaking into places they had no business being, too curious for their own good.

“I miss you, love. So much,” he whispered.

“More than lemon cake?”

He laughed, the sound wet, with blood or tears, he couldn’t tell. “It’s close, but yeah. More than lemon cake.”

Below the old soldier’s perch, a blood-curdling scream, too high-pitched and guttural to have been made by a human throat, pierced the air. Jerking upright, the soldier scrambled for his backpack. An old, ratty thing, it was the same pack he’d carried with him since enlisting, his name embroidered on the inside flap by his mother years ago. A going away gift for a different, innocent

boy. The old soldier didn’t think his gentle mother would recognize the man he had become. “There’s no use wondering,” he thought, soot-stained fingers wrapping around a sleek, silver pistol, “when I’m about to find out.”

Staring down the barrel of his gun, the old soldier smiled softly. “You’ll be there to meet me, won’t you, love? You and mom and Jack and all the rest?”

He loaded his gun, the last time he’d ever perform such a familiar motion, despite his hands shaking so hard he nearly lost his grip. “Five things you can see dear,” his wife said. They were the same soothing words she’d spoken a thousand times after he’d come back home, a pale imitation of the boy he used to be with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking and a mind torn to bloody shreds.

“Cracked concrete, my hands, my gun, yellow sundress, red hair.”

Soot-stained fingers lifted the pistol to his chin. “Four things you can touch.”

“Cold metal, hard stone, the sweater you knit for me, your hand on my shoulder.”

He tilted his head to the sky.

“Three things you can hear.”

“Screaming Hydras, the wind, your voice.”

Cool, unforgiving metal rested against the underside of his chin.

“Two things you can smell.”

“Rot and peppermint.”

His finger hovered over the trigger, hands steady.

“One thing you can taste.”

“Lemon cake.”

The old soldier smiled.

Back ramrod straight, the movement smooth and efficient, he pulled the trigger.

At the edge of the universe, a discarded, smoking cigarette sparked, a pile of sticks and branches gathered for firewood catching easily. Fed by exposed, broken beams, abandoned furniture, and the flesh of a dead soldier, the blaze quickly grew into an inferno, the crumbling highrise adding to the cloud of yellow smoke. As the flames licked eagerly at the dead soldier, the crackling of static rose from a worn, knitted sweater pocket.

“All responding units: Project Hercules continues into phase 2.”

A Chance to Breathe

Katherine Eliason

Zeta Eta Riverland Community College Austin, Minnesota

Falling. Moments before,  Before the smoke, Before the screams, Before the crying, Perhaps at a round table, sharing moments, With coworkers; friends. Coffee burning hot.

BOOM!

The earth seems to tremble, Your soul seems to tremble, Screaming. Endless screaming.  Perhaps your feet somehow found their way,  Running, Running towards your salvation. Coffee spilled.

Elevators abandoned, stairs overrun, Chaos swarmed the halls, you were trapped, Screaming. Endless screaming. Smoke filled your eyes, the air putrid, Your lungs begged for mercy, Your body constricting against you, Oxygen evaded you. 16 minutes.

Coffee gone cold.

With the sound of a fatal boom resounding, With the sound of another plane descending onto the city, Screaming, Endless screaming. Perhaps you realized, You wouldn’t survive.

Perhaps you saw another, Staring out at the blackened city. Perhaps you saw the shattered glass, A chance.

A chance to breathe.

You probably knew that there was no chance, Calculated the statistics, Screaming.

Endless screaming. Rolled an imaginary magic eight ball in your mind, Answer: Outlook not good. You took a step closer.

Others began to take notice of the escape, Their fear of being entombed overpowering their fear of falling, Screaming.

Endless screaming. They were going to die either way.

One by one,

As if gaining confidence, From the person before them, They fell.

Plummeting to the ground, Death’s arms open wide.

You watched as they fell,  Their bodies tumbling as they came crashing down. Screaming, Endless screaming. Perhaps you stood before the cliff, praying Praying that some miracle would save you, But you knew.

So you dove, letting the air carry you, Letting the air fill your lungs for the few seconds you had left, Silence.

Eternal silence. You dove, so you could breathe, One.

Last.  Time.

What Do You Think Happened?

Anna Tumbarello

Beta Theta Sigma Chapter Fashion Institute of New York New York, New York

This piece is an original acrylic painting that I made based on a combination of perspective and perception. As the artist, I have the perspective of the story I see within the painting. However, as the viewer, your perception of this work could be completely different from how I see it. When creating the painting, I just painted whatever came to mind, referencing many apocalyptic ideas I had in a sketchbook. I wanted vague shapes and images in the work, hinting at ideas but not precisely defining them to allow viewers various interpretations. I’ve had people say they felt a religious experience with the work; some are similar to what I see with an apocalypse, and someone even told me they see a face. I’ve enjoyed every interpretation of the painting overall, but I have to ask, what do you think happened?

Media: Acrylic on Canvas

The Tower of Babel is a lonely apartment in the middle of a polluted city. We do not speak. We can’t. All I know are the fruits we prepare; Mango. Aamba. Watermelon. Kalingad Pineapple. Ananas. Fig. Anjir.

I do not know you. I can’t. All I know are the little seeds inadvertently revealed In moments of tiredness Of vulnerability Of exhaustion.

I want to say, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you fell victim To the curse of being a daughter, the curse of being a wife.

Sit atop your tower and pray to whoever is listening. Pray they will understand. Hail Mary, young and virtuous, Hail Mary, womb freshly fourteen. Hail Mary, child-bearing child.

(continued)

Alpha Delta Omicron Middlesex Community College Bedford, Massachusetts

Shivani Bedre

I wish I were not your daughter’s daughter, Or not here at all.

If it means you could have a different life. One without men with stones beating in their center. Where your hair cascades free. A life you could live. A life you could leave.

But I do not say any of this; I do not know how.

Not in a way we’d both understand. So I sit across from you at the table, and hold the knife to bitter skin. We cut into the flesh in silence.

Pointe Shoes REYNOLDS

Leo Ameika Psi Upsilon Tidewater Community College Virginia Beach, Virginia

“Chest up!”

It is the halfway mark of my five-week intensive program at a prestigious ballet school. With regular academics suspended for the summer, prospective dancers from across the country swarmed to elite schools like bees to a honeypot.

“More like vultures to a carcass,” I think to myself: a primal hunger permeates the sweat-filled room. And not just one that manifests on dancers’ frames, with ballerinas forgoing lunch in favor of an extra 20 minutes on the treadmill. This hunger lurks behind cruel eyes. They size up the competition; they glare when a student nails a particularly good pirouette; they periodically flit to our teacher for approval. The teacher who is now approaching me at an alarming pace, cane in hand.

“I said, chest UP!”

He draws back my suspenders with long, gnarled fingers, then releases them like a skilled archer letting an arrow fly. My nipple is the bullseye, and I can’t hold back a yelp as nylon connects with flesh.

“You look like my 95-year-old grandma, with how much your tits are sagging.”

The combination has ended by now, and all the other dancers snicker. I muster a meek smile and hope he doesn’t notice that my lips would rather form a scowl. But I’m not off the hook yet.

“Don’t get me started on those wrists. This isn’t a vogue class—you’re a man. Act like it.”

“TWHACK!”

He strikes my forearm with his cane. Corporal punishment is technically prohibited these days, so he makes sure to be just light-handed enough to avoid leaving a mark.

Not a soul dares laugh this time. A pall has settled over the studio like that over a casket at a funeral. Rather than bristle with rage, I feel tears of embarrassment well in my eyes. The teacher has already moved on though; he hobbles toward the front of the room while announcing the next series of steps. Though I notice their once-mean eyes soften, my peers hastily return their attention to classwork—fearful that they could be next.

I’m relieved to be standing near the back of the class as I slip out the door without attracting too much attention. A nearby stairwell beckons to me, a hidden refuge where my sobs won’t be heard. I heed its call.

Weak.

Too feminine.

Never going to make it as a dancer.

A torrent of pessimistic thoughts threatens to splinter my skull.

The cycle continues over and over. I hang my head in my hands, and teardrops squeeze through my fingertips to spatter on the harsh floor below. Inevitably, the wave of self-deprecation fades— but it is instantly replaced with anger. Where I am, there is no room for behavior that defies tradition: men must be stoic and are prohibited from practicing pointework, while women must remain dainty and surrender to the control of their male partner.

And I must be crazy for loving this art form so much, I think.

My cheeks have dried by the time I hear the door to the stairwell open above me. A familiar sound echoes off the walls, one that seems like it belongs to a strange, three-legged creature: a footstep followed by another, with an irregular third beat striking the concrete in between. I leap to my feet. Would fleeing be worse than facing the cane?

“Leo? You in here?” my teacher calls out. I allow myself one big exhale, and tentatively walk up the stairs. A gaunt shadow splays on the wall before me. When I round the corner, I am immediately met with an outstretched, wrinkly palm signaling for my silence.

“You don’t have to apologize for leaving my class. I understand it can be difficult at times.” I nod slowly. Maybe he is here to console me.

“But you need to understand something: in this industry, we all must leave parts of ourselves at the door.” His lips draw back in a way that reminds me of a snarling badger. All my hopes for compassion vanish. “Unless you aspire to be a circus act – if you really want to be a professional one day – you’ll need to learn that.”

“Yes sir.” I barely register the words as they tumble out of my mouth.

“Ballet is not for sissies.”

I want nothing more than to object. To stand my ground and cry out, “You’re a gay man, just like me! You should know how I feel!”

But my vocal cords do not cooperate. I say nothing. Satisfied with my response, he motions for me to leave with a dismissive flick of the wrist. I dash up the stairs, holding my breath in anticipation –and to avoid inhaling his oppressive cologne.

When I return to the dorms that house us that night, my male roommates are sprawled on the couch.

“Hey Leo, look at this!” They’re watching clips of decked-out cars doing donuts in a parking lot. Beer cans litter the ground, and a crowd stands far too close to the swinging vehicle’s path for my comfort.

“Yikes,” I say. “You don’t think people get hurt doing stupid shit like that?”

Their furrowed brows betray their confusion as they turn to meet my gaze.

“I’m gonna head to bed. See you tomorrow.”

The door to my room squeaks shut behind me and I am faced with the emptiness of an unfurnished dorm. The night is agonizingly quiet – no soothing raindrops or whistling winds drown out the crass banter from down the hall.

The next morning, I am back in the classroom, surrounded by the same four grey walls. They seem more suffocating than ever, the fluorescent lights and lack of windows even more prison-like.

Today I don’t meet the prying eyes of my classmates. I don’t look in the mirror. I don’t want to do anything.

Nevertheless, it is time for the first combination. I sigh and ready myself, standing with heels together and tracing my wrists – my too-flourishing, too-feminine wrists – through preparatory position. The first few measures of the piano accompaniment sound, and I flex my muscles and puff up my chest.

But this is no ordinary, monotonous melody. This is the overture to one of my favorite ballets. A tale of heartbreak, hauntings, vengeance, and sacrifice: Giselle.

All thoughts are dispelled from my head and replaced with only music. I arch backward in an elegant cambré, and when I straighten, an air of calm settles over me. My heart swells in tandem with a crescendo of the pianist’s tune. My vision swims before me, but not in a way that is alarming; the other figures in the room seem miles away, like distant marionettes. They are not on this stage –it is my space to command.

Ruffles of tulle cascade over my hips like a soothing waterfall. A glistening tiara adorns my brow. I am no longer Leo, but Giselle herself! By the time we make it into the center of the room, I have forgotten all about the events of the previous day, the unnecessary tension in my muscles fading as I bend and turn. With each leap, I soar higher and higher, the jewels of my bodice slicing through clouds like skyscrapers. I don’t even feel the exertion of my movements; everything is pure ease.

Class ends in no time, and when I bow to our teacher the avatar within me curtsies instead. I grab a snack and leave the room to enjoy the 10-minute break we’re entitled to. Seated across from a group of my classmates in the narrow hallway, I bite into my protein bar and rest my eyes. I haven’t felt such peace after a class in months.

“Hey Leo, look at this!”

My lids snap open as a young girl excitedly hands me her phone. I lift the screen to my face – she is showing me the latest edition of Dance Magazine

A male dancer in pointe shoes poses proudly on the cover. When I glance up, radiant smiles reflect my own.

Afghan Girl

Beheshta Eqbali

Media: Acrylic on Canvas

"Afghan Girl" is a tribute to the beauty and strength of Afghan women, inspired by the intricate details of traditional clothing and the quiet resilience they embody. The vibrant colors and patterns reflect the rich culture of Afghanistan, while the figure’s averted face allows viewers to imagine their own story for her.

This piece means a lot to me because it represents not only my connection to my roots but also the dignity and grace of Afghan women that often go unnoticed. Painting this felt like preserving a part of my culture and expressing my admiration for its depth and beauty.

Alpha Sigma Phi Clark College Vancouver, Washington

Kelsey Gioja

Alpha Delta Eta Kankakee Community College Kankakee, Illinois

I have never felt invisible around my best friend.

Not until this very moment, as I follow her down the crowded halls of the high school for the first time. Girls and boys that seem much bigger than us cluster in groups, all of them whispering and laughing. No one bothers to move out of the way as we dodge our way between them, trying not to get run over. My skin prickles at the thought of all the eyes that are seeing me for the first time.

But that’s not why I feel invisible. It’s the fact that Cora is completely ignoring me.

I don’t leave her side, though. In fact, I stay as close to her as I can because I know how nervous she can get. She needs me. She always has.

I knew that she needed me the moment I saw her on the school playground, sitting alone on a swing and watching as the other kids played tag.

So I joined her. I sat on the swing beside her and told her jokes until she finally burst out laughing. That’s when I knew that we would stick together forever. And we did. I sat by her in every class and helped her get through her dreaded math homework. At night, we would sit under a blanket fort and I would whisper stories to her until she fell asleep. I made sure she never felt alone, and I gave her pep-talks before she talked to anyone or gave a presentation at school. We were an inseparable pair–Cora and Stella.

I have always felt like I could read her mind, but right now I feel like we are a million miles apart.

But I’ll fix that.

“Are you ready for our first class, Cora?” I ask her. She doesn’t respond. Her new sneakers squeak against the linoleum floor as she continues forward, her eyes focused straight ahead as if she didn’t even hear me.

I run up to her and give her shoulders a light shake. “Come on, aren’t you excited?”

Again, she says nothing. Doesn’t even look at me. She bites her lip as she stares at the students flooding into the classroom.

“Nervous, then?” I ask, my voice softer now. No response.

Cora takes a step into the classroom, then heads for a seat in the back. I sit at the desk beside her.

“Come on, Cora, what’s wrong?” I whisper across the aisle. She has always been quiet, and even more so when she’s anxious, but she has never ignored me for this long.

Still she says nothing, but her eyes are wide as she glances around the room at the other students.

“Is something wrong?” I ask “Are you mad? Please, I’ll do anything.”

She doesn’t look at me. The teacher walks in, tall and gray haired. She introduces herself and talks

for a while, but I don’t really listen. She then asks the students to introduce themselves. Slowly they raise their hands. Eventually I raise mine, but she doesn’t call on me. She doesn’t look at me, not even once. Finally no one else is left except for me and Cora. Cora finally raises her hand and introduces herself. I stare at her as she talks, as a slow, devouring feeling that something is very, very wrong develops in my stomach.

“Alright, for our first assignment I’d like you to write a paper,” the teacher says, followed by a collection of groans. “A simple one. I’d like you to write about your first friend.”

I glance over at Cora. “This will be easy,” I say.

She still doesn’t look at me, as if she hasn’t even heard me. She opens up her laptop and starts to type.

I get up from my desk, but no one looks at me. I walk over to Cora and stand behind her, but again she doesn’t look at me or say a word. I read the sentence on her computer screen.

When I was younger, I didn’t have a lot of friends, so I made up my own. I called her Stella.

I take a step back. My heart pounds against my throat as the room starts to spin.

I made up my own.

I bite my lip as my stomach churns, as a word worms its way into my brain and begins to seep into my veins.

Imaginary. Imaginary, imaginary, imaginary.

For a second I’m awestruck, amazed at the magic of a child’s imagination.

But the second is over, and reality crashes into me.

My skin grows hot and the room feels too small, the world feels too tight. I shake Cora’s shoulders and scream, but no one moves.

No one sees me. No one hears me.

No one knows me.

No one.

The bell rings, and students fly out of the classroom. Cora is the last one to leave. I follow her out, not sure what else to do.

I follow her the rest of the day, but I don’t talk to her anymore. I wonder, how long until I disappear into oblivion? Will I forever be stuck with this feeling, this knowledge of my presence, but burdened with the knowledge that it’s all imaginary?

I feel sick.

Finally, Cora’s mom pulls up in her white minivan to pick us–no, just Cora–up. I sit beside Cora, and listen in silence as she tells her mom about her day. I look out the window as houses and trees and powerlines rush by in a blur, and I wish I could join them and become like them, just a blur, blown away by the wind.

At last we–they–pull into the driveway. Cora heads inside, and I follow her. She goes up to her room and sits down at her desk.

She pulls out her laptop and opens up a blank document. But she doesn’t write anything.

I watch her, wondering if I will follow her for the rest of her life, just a phantom, a shadow. Stalking her, knowing her, but never known by her. The thought makes my skin start to burn again.

I look back at Cora. A single tear drips down her cheek, and I soften.

“Cora,” I whisper, wrapping my arm around her shoulder. “Cora, what’s wrong?”

Of course she doesn’t respond. Of course she can’t hear me or feel me or know me.

“I’m so alone,” she whispers–to herself, not me. She wipes at her nose. “Stella, I need you.”

I stiffen.

Maybe she does still know me.

She still needs me.

But she can’t feel me or hear me or see me.

I take in a deep breath. I wish I could be there for her. I wish the magic of her imagination could stretch on forever, so that she would never lose the comfort I used to be able to give her.

I swallow, closing my eyes as the realization seeps over me.

“But you did it, Cora,” I whisper. “All on your own. You don’t need me, not really.”

Finally, Cora reaches her hands up to her keyboard. I watch as she types. Once upon a time, there was a girl named Stella.

“You can still exist,” she says, looking up, almost directly at me. “Just in a different world. You just have to stay brave, okay?”

I nod slowly, even though I know she can’t see me. My heart, my wretched little imaginary heart, starts to beat faster as Cora pushes up her glasses and hunches over her laptop, typing furiously now. The corners of my vision start to blur and blacken as I watch her, no longer a girl who believes in fairy tales, but a woman who writes her own stories. I close my eyes so that I no longer have to watch the ink taking over my vision, erasing the only life I’ve ever known.

I smile to myself as the clicking of Cora’s keyboard starts to fade away. I take in one last breath, hoping that she will make the life for herself that she has always dreamed of.

Mary Wollstonecraft: The “Daring Fighter”

Olivia Williams

In April of 1759, Edward John Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Dixon birthed a girl who would grow up to be described as an “intellectual genius, the daring fighter of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth Centuries.”1 This girl, Mary Wollstonecraft, became one of the most influential philosophers in the Enlightenment Period for her views on reason and the societal structures that keep women from attaining it. At a time when marriage was akin to slavery, Wollstonecraft dreamed of a society in which women were socially equal, contained multitudes, were seen as people instead of sex objects, and were educated equal to their male counterparts. Mary Wollstonecraft advanced women’s rights by raising awareness of the societal structures that kept women from reaching their full potential.

Like any great thinker, Mary Wollstonecraft’s thought process was influenced by her experiences and interactions with those around her. “The development of Mary Wollstonecraft’s thought can be measured by the evolutions in her sources, her reading, her intellectual pursuits…,”2 writes Gary Kelly in Jane Moore’s book Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft’s beliefs were not limited to her reading but also impacted by her home life, her female friendships, the day school she ran, her travels, and her writing. Wollstonecraft was raised in a household that followed traditional gender roles and was fraught with violence and fear.

Wollstonecraft often watched her father, “a despot,” take out his rage on her mother, whom he considered “one of his subjects.”3 Ultimately, Wollstonecraft “derived little from their parental training,” but Lyndall Gordon explains that her childhood “awoke Mary’s…determination to change women’s lives.”4 This desire was further strengthened through Wollstonecraft’s friendship with Frances “Fanny” Blood, whose family introduced Wollstonecraft to the value of academia and intellectual pursuits.5 In 1783, Wollstonecraft and Blood founded a day school in North London, inspired by “motives of benevolence, or rather philanthropy,”6 an experience that colored Wollstonecraft’s later opinions on education. After a few years, Fanny, struck by pulmonary disease, moved with her husband to Lisbon, Portugal, followed by Wollstonecraft.

This “residence in a foreign country” was said to have “expanded” her mind, and she “took some instructive lessons on the evils of intolerance.”7 After Fanny’s unfortunate death, Wollstonecraft returned to England, where she worked as a governess until 1787, when she began to focus on her true passion for writing and met her subsequent significant influence. During this time, Wollstonecraft translated foreign texts for a publisher named Joseph Johnson. Johnson was a modern thinker and was heavily associated with other Enlightenment thinkers. He encouraged Wollstonecraft to join his analytical conversations and read extensively, including Hester Chapone’s Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, which introduced Wollstonecraft to the importance of rationality and its inaccessibility for women. The publisher also emboldened Wollstonecraft to write her own works.8 In 1787, Mary Wollstonecraft published her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters9, which would catapult her into making a legacy of her own, inspired by her home life, her friendship with Fanny Blood, her experience as a teacher and traveler, and her interaction with Joseph Johnson.

Three years after Wollstonecraft published her first book, Edmund Burke, “a major essayist … [and] … political philosopher,”10 published Reflection on the Revolution of France, which argued against the French Revolution. A passionate defender of the Revolution, Wollstonecraft was

Alpha Upsilon Mu Cape Cod Community College West Barnstable, Massachusetts

spurred to write a response to him called A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France. Wollstonecraft was also inspired to respond to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord’s Pamphlet on National Education, with whom she argued that women should be educated equally to men. Ultimately, both books set the groundwork for Wollstonecraft’s most acclaimed work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects.

Responding to both prominent male political figures “turned [Wollstonecraft] into the most famous woman of her time in England and America.”11 By 1791, Wollstonecraft had a “reputation as an insurrectionist”12 and her success gave her the confidence necessary to publish A Vindication of the Rights of Women. This book was primarily targeted at the middle class, whom “Wollstonecraft saw…as a potentially revolutionary force,” according to historian Cora Kaplan. “The men and women in it would exercise their understandings on behalf of all mankind.”13 Indeed, Wollstonecraft writes, “I pay particular attention to those in the middle class, because they appear to be in the most natural state.”14 To this middle class, Wollstonecraft argues that “anything that a man can do, a woman can do as well, but you have to give her the opportunity,”15 according to historian Gregory Sadler. This thought process was a radical and direct response to the ideal upon which the Enlightenment was based: all men are born free. Wollstonecraft simply “invited the enlightenment heritage…to extend the new humanism to the other half of the race,”16 specifically through the lens of reason. This virtue excited Enlightenment thinkers and revolutionaries alike.

The importance of reason in Wollstonecraft’s thought process is threaded throughout her work. For Wollstonecraft, “the perfectibility of human reason is the cornerstone, and all the various schemes of life…that ru[n] counter to the claims of human reason…are set aside.”17 As a virtue ethicist, Wollstonecraft believed that striving for reason was the most noble pursuit a human being could undertake, and attaining perfect reason was the path to full divinity. “The only solid foundation for morality is the Supreme Being,” writes Wollstonecraft, “the harmony of which arises from a balance of attributes…he must be just, because he is wise, he must be good, because he is omnipotent.”18 As the ultimate reasonable and moral subject, God created reason to give humanity authority over brute creatures, and the development of virtue is a lifelong journey that women have just as much right to as men. “Speaking of women at large, their first duty is to themselves as rational creatures,”19 writes Wollstonecraft. At their cores, women have the ability and the obligation to find reason; both have been divinely granted to them.

Wollstonecraft continues, “Women [are] in the grand light of human creatures who, in common with men, are placed on this earth to unfold their faculties.”20 If only men can gain virtue, that is a symptom of a larger societal problem. According to Cora Kaplan, “Reason is the only human attribute appropriate to the revolutionary character, and women are impeded… from using theirs.”21 Vindication delineates the societal causes of these impediments: women’s lack of cultural importance, gendered societal hierarchy as a whole, limitations placed on female agency, sexualization of the feminine, and education.

Although many aspects of culture advanced with the Enlightenment, women’s societal role remained stagnant. Through the “identification of women and animality with a lower form of human life,”22 the society of Wollstonecraft’s time ensured that women were considered inferior to men. They were left out of “humanistic disciplines such as history, literature, and anthropology” and seen as “an object, not an agent.”23 These subjugations form one of the structures that inhibit women from obtaining reason.

A stark example of the inferiority of women during the Enlightenment lies in the treatment of married women. At the time of Wollstonecraft’s writing, a “woman’s life…was marked…by their subjugation to the unremitting and universal tyranny of men.”24 Wollstonecraft’s contemporary, Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay Graham, illustrates this societal view in her Letters on Education: With Observations on Religious and Metaphysical Subjects,“...some degree of inferiority, in point

of corporal strength, seems always to have existed between the two sexes; and this advantage, in the barbarous ages of mankind, was abused to such a degree, as to destroy all the natural rights of the female species and reduce them to a state of abject slavery.”25

Wollstonecraft’s response to this societal slavery was one of recognition and rebellion.

She writes, with a twinge of bitterness, “Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship, instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers—in a word, better citizens.”26 For all of Wollstonecraft’s work, those chains did not break, and women remained limited in their divine quests for reason.

Another way that Wollstonecraft’s society obstructs the acquisition of reason for women is through the imposition of ideological limitations. Since Biblical times, women have been divided into either a symbol of purity like the Madonna or an evil temptress, as Eve was.27 “Historians suggest that the ideological division of women into two classes, the virtuous and the fallen, was already well developed by the mid-eighteenth century,”28 writes Cora Kaplan, “Mary Wollstonecraft stood waist-deep in these already established and emergent sexual ideologies.”29 Throughout her work, Wollstonecraft calls out these impossible societal roles. Tomaselli illustrates the importance of this knowledge, “Wollstonecraft’s contribution to our culture’s awareness of the predicament of women and the contradictions inherent in expectations of them –namely, to be both imbeciles and paragons of virtues, seductive as well as chase…was by no means negligible.”30

Although women have the illusion of choice between specific archetypes in a misogynist society, the men of Wollstonecraft’s time seemed to desire the temptress. Historian Barbara Taylor explains, “Throughout the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there had emerged within British genteel culture a concept of the feminine which was wholly sexualized…a style of womanhood so steeped in the feminine, so excessively assertive of sexual difference, that to the modern reader it smacks of parody. If women had an identity at all, it seemed to be located in their genitals: certainly everything else about a woman, even her capacity to think, was determined by her sex.”31

This view of women as solely sex objects is yet another symptom of the societal misogyny that lured Wollstonecraft’s contemporaries away from finding reason. By focusing on their physical attributes, women did not exercise their brains and thus were unable to earn the virtues God planned for them. “In short, women, in general…have acquired all the follies and vices of civilization, and missed the useful fruit,”32 writes Wollstonecraft. The focus on physicality also ensured that women looked outside themselves for praise instead of finding it in the virtues they could acquire. This caused women to turn away from their true nature and become “systematically voluptuous in order to “vitiat[e]” the “taste of men,”33 accepting their roles as slaves to the men in their society. In perhaps her most scathing description, Wollstonecraft speaks of her fellow women, enamored with the distraction of baseless attention, “Confined then in cages, like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock-majesty from perch to perch. It is true, they are provided with food and raiment, for which they neither toil nor spin; but health, liberty, and virtue are given in exchange.”34

In a society that sees them only as objects for male sexual gratification, women were so sheltered and focused on pleasure that “the characteristics of humanity can hardly be discerned”35 and “the capacity for feeling is reduced to physicality, instead of being controlled and improved by reason.”36 For Wollstonecraft, “…the culture of politeness, manners, appearances and all that is connected to seduction” was ultimately “utterly incompatible with virtue.”37

As Wollstonecraft strived to unpack the societal hindrances to women discovering reason, a theme that continually reoccurred was that of education. Wollstonecraft was not alone in her distaste

for female education at the time. “There was scarcely any discussion of women in the eighteenth century which did not find much to criticize and in the age of Enlightenment, education was the frequent target of such criticisms,”38 explains Tomaselli. Wollstonecraft’s past certainly qualified her to represent this critique, and she especially does so in her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, where she focuses on early childhood education. Wollstonecraft believed education is especially important in the early years because thought processes learned early are more permanent. “[T]he association[s] [made]...during the period that the body takes to arrive at maturity, can seldom be disentangled by reason,”39 she writes. For women, these thought processes focused on a dependence to their families, particularly their fathers.

This literal reliance on their fathers led to a metaphorical reliance on his viewpoints. Because he was part of a misogynistic system, he taught them duties that were not based on reason. Wollstonecraft contrasted these lessons with those of parents who make reason the focus of their children’s education. Basing individual education on reason meant that parents more accurately ascribed their children’s duties and were thus more likely to gain legitimate affection. Because the advice given to children is reasonable, children would listen to it. Wollstonecraft advises, “till esteem and love are blended together in the first affection, and reason made the foundation of the first duty, morality will stumble at the threshold.”40 However, the majority of personal education given to women was without reason, and thus, education stands as one of the societal structures Wollstonecraft revealed to her readers.

In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Wollstonecraft also unpacks the traditional education system:

I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result? A profound conviction, that the neglected education of my fellow Creatures is the grand source of the mistery I deplore. 41

For Wollstonecraft, no societal structure is more intimately connected with the subjugation of women than education because it forms the baseline for lifelong beliefs and values. Wollstonecraft firmly believed that public schools should be available for everyone and that schools should be national instead of relying on schoolmasters competing for parental money. Ultimately, Wollstonecraft peeled back the societal structures that limit the women of her time to find that they are propped up by education, giving her “an insight into the needs of the human race, beyond that of many educationalists even of the present time.”42

Through her work identifying the oppressive social structures that limited the women of her time, Mary Wollstonecraft ensured her legacy and paved the way for other women. Tomaselli writes, “Because the issues she considered have remained in one form or another at the top of the Western social and political agenda, the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft…are as valuable now as they ever were.”43 Clearly, the awareness that Wollstonecraft raised for her fellow female citizens helped advance women’s rights as a whole, and she continues to inspire centuries later. Thanks to Mary Wollstonecraft and her fellow feminists, who “look[ed] beyond us to a future we have not yet attained,”44 women have awoken to their potential. As long as “every generation of feminists”45 returns to reexamine Wollstonecraft with gratitude for her achievements and hope for their future, women will continue to gain the rights they so adamantly deserve.

Notes

1. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. New York, NY: Routledge, 2016. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hgskDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg= PT9&dq=mary+wollstonecraft&ots=m-YybKZK6u&sig=7qws-9VD55EMm1tcN 6aiDV8lrYA#v=onepage&q=mary%20wollstonecraft&f=false.

2. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 39.

3. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 6.

4. “Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.” Video, 55:10. YouTube. Posted by GBH Forum Network, May 6, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzuvLS6pfmE

5. “Mary Wollstonecraft – Her Life and Key Ideas | A Women’s History Month Invited Talk.” Video, 1:22:44. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztl5-465rZU

6. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 6.

7. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Digital File.

8. “Mary Wollstonecraft – Her Life and Key Ideas | A Women’s History Invited Talk.”

9. Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

10. “Mary Wollstonecraft – Her Life and Key Ideas | A Women’s History Invited Talk.”

11. “Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.”

12. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Project Gutenberg, 2002. Digital File.

13. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 19.

14. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 13.

15. “Mary Wollstonecraft – Her Life and Key Ideas | A Women’s History Invited Talk.

16. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 19.

17. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 141.

18. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 97.

19. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 16.

20. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 13.

21. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 18.

22. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 102.

23. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 103.

24. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 107.

25. Sawbridge, Macaulay Graham, Catherine. “Letter XXIII: No Characteristic Difference in Sex”Jason Dyck. https://jasoncdyck.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/macaulay-catherine_letterson-education.pdf. p. 208.

26. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 137.

27. “Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.”

28. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 16.

29. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 66.

30. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 125.

31. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. pgs. 208-209.

32. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 124.

33. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 108.

34. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 145.

35. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 107.

36. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 149.

37. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 128.

38. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 143.

39. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. p. 11.

40. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 142.

41. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 125.

42. “Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.”

43. Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. p. 125.

44. Adhikari, Anasuya, and Dr. Birbal Saha. “The Feminist Responses to Mary Wollstonecraft: A Reading.” EPRA International Journal of Research and Development, 7, no. 9 (2022): 32-38. http://eprajournals.net/index.php/IJRD/article/view/876/890.

45. Adhikari, Anasuya, and Dr. Birbal Saha. “The Feminist Responses to Mary Wollstonecraft: A Reading.”

Works Cited

Adhikari, Anasuya, and Birbal Saha, Dr. “The Feminist Responses to Mary Wollstonecraft: A Reading.” EPRA International Journal of Research and Development 7, no. 9 (2022): 32-38. http://eprajournals.net/index.php/IJRD/article/view/876/890.

Barker, Chris. “JS Mill on Nineteenth Century Marriage and the Common Law.” Law, Culture and the Humanities 15, no. 1 (2015): 106-26. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1177/1743872115569223.

“Mary Wollstonecraft—Her Life and Key Ideas | A Women’s History Month Invited Talk.” Video, 1:22:44. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztl5-465rZU.

Moore, Jane, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft. New York, NY: Routledge, 2016. https://books.google.com/ books?hl=en&lr=&id=hgskDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg= PT9&dq=mary+wollstonecraft&ots=mYybKZK6u&sig=7qws-9VD55EMm1tcN 6aiDV8lrYA#v=onepage&q=mary%20 wollstonecraft&f=false.

Sawbridge Macaulay Graham, Catherine. “CATHERINE SAWBRIDGE MACAULAY GRAHAM (1731–1791).” Jason Dyck. Last modified September 11, 2014. https://jasoncdyck.files.wordpress. com/2014/09/macaulay-catherine_letters-on-education.pdf.

"Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.” Video. 55:10. YouTube. Posted by GBH Forum Network, May 6, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzuvLS6pfmE.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Project Gutenberg, 2002. E-book. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3420.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ETHeAgAAQBAJ&oi= fnd&pg=PA1 &dq=mary+wollstonecraft&ots=Qk31skI-ch&sig=Jidkoi9Ace97Vr43L1oxn25U9E#v=onepage&q=mary%20wollstonecraft&

The Last Sea Turtle

Media: Plastic bottle caps and galvanized wire (spray painted)

“The Last Sea Turtle” is an upcycled piece made entirely of repurposed plastic bottle caps and galvanized wire. I set out to make a statement piece but wanted to use materials that would otherwise be sent to the landfill. Plastic pollution is an extensive issue facing the world today. Using 1,000+ plastic bottle caps, I crafted an animal often affected by plastic pollution, the sea turtle. The title stems from the fact that if humans do not change our behavior to coincide with the natural world, the “last” sea turtle will be made of plastic. Sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for food as they look like jellyfish, a common food source for the animal. In one of the submission photos, a train of plastic bags can be added to trail out of the mouth of the sculpture as a reference to this unfortunate fact. The question could be asked, “Why should humans care about plastic pollution in the ocean?” Plastic pollution is everywhere, not just in the ocean. The oceans are a food source for over one-third of the world’s population and supply much of the oxygen we breathe. Therefore, the sea is a source of livelihood for humans everywhere, even if you’ve never seen it. While this may not be the most “beautiful” piece, it contains a message that transcends its appearance. This piece will evoke meaningful conversations regarding human consumption and our relationship with the natural world.

Dimension Specification (if laying on ground facing the head): Height (bottom of belly to top of shell) 12 inches; Width (distance between most extended fins) 62 inches; Depth (distance from head to tail) 52 inches; Weight about 20 lbs.

Psi Phi Patrick and Henry Community College Martinsville, Virginia

Megan Vaughn

About My Father

Jada Benda

Theta Omicron Morton College Cicero, Illinois

“As his daughter, I loved him. But as a human, I hated him.” — Colleen Hoover

I have my Father’s eyes and my Mother’s rage. I was 9 when rage found its way into my heart. I stopped calling him Daddy

He was no longer deserving of the title. I was angry. Angry about how he treated my Mom.

Angry about how he handled being a Father.

At a few years old, I would crawl on his back and hold tight while he did push-ups. I waited and watched with his eyes for his arrival. I’d pull my pink wagon to meet my father at the garage Load his cooler and water jug and tug it home. My father used to heat milk for me in the mornings.

A soft warmth that can’t be replicated because I choke on it now. It tastes funny now. The small things can’t make up for a lifetime of missing out on your child’s life. He doesn’t like me now anyway.

My Father hates me because I’m like my Mother. I look like my Mother with her glorious mane and loyalty that runs through her like blood. I wanted to strip myself of his name and take my mother’s but do I deny myself just to spite him? I guess Miss Benda will always sound funny in my ears.

I think at some point I stopped aging to him. He calls me Curly, my childhood nickname Curly who loved her warm milk in the morning is just a memory. I’m not a little girl anymore. When he tells me he loves me I always hesitate Because I love you too sits in my throat and refuses to leave.

In Passing My Native Soil

Beta Xi Eta

College of San Mateo San Mateo, California

Passing My Native Soil

“In Passing”

“In Passing” | Media: Digital Photography, Montage, Palimpsest

“In Passing”

“Native Soil”

“Native Soil”“Native Soil” | Media: Digital Photography, Montage, Palimpsest

Artist: TuongVan Do

Artist: TuongVan Do

After losing my father, I began taking long walks in neighborhoods, parks, and wooded trails. Sometimes I'd go alone and sometimes I'd go with friends but I always made it a point to go. During these walks, I'd wonder about where my father is now and what he'd do if he was still here with me. I started to take photos to remember the places I'd been and to dwell on their innate mysteries and beauty. It's been two-and-a-half yearssince, and I've come to realize that I'm connected to all the places I've been because every step I take is rooted to the Earth. Every contact is an imprint that creates lasting visceral memories in head, heart, and hand. When I close my eyes, I can recall how that place looked, sounded, smelled, and felt...I can remember the place long after I've left it. Knowing this is a consolation and affirmation that my father is still with me. For it is his head, heart, and hand that lift my feet and set my course...now that he is Earth.

Media: Digital Photography

Media: Digital Photography

Reason for Creation: Self-Reflection Process Used to Create Art: long walks, photo journals, layering, montage, palimpsest

Reason for Creation: Self-Reflection Process Used to Create Art: long walks, photo journals, layering, montage, palimpsest

TruongVan Do

In Passing My Native Soil

In

The scent takes me back in time; perfume that reminds me of Mother’s garden.

Little white bell-like drooping heads, lilies-of-the-valley; their sweet fragrance wraps around my memory. The length of gladiolas’ big blossoms long stems laid across a box that holds my mother.

Flowers—like us, briefly beautiful. And then, they are gone.

Flowers

Beta Rho Mu Minnesota State College Southeast Winona, Minnesota

Rebecca Rae Olson

Cat with Orange and Lime Eyes

Christian Rudolph Ceralde

Media: Posca paint marker, cutout magazines and newspaper, and adhesive

The meaning behind the collage refers to the complexity, humor, and creativity of life through the art of surrealism. It signifies uniqueness, freedom, and art through colors and cutout magazines in a dream-like setting.

The process of the artwork includes cutting and placing images based on the artist’s idea. First, images are cut out from different magazines and newspapers. Second, brainstorming the overall concept of the artwork based on the cutout images. Lastly, the images are placed in order using glue as adhesive. As a result, the images act as individual parts that contribute to the whole thought of my artwork.

Mu Rho

Daytona State College Daytona Beach, Florida

No One Likes You When You’re 21

Anna Bradley

Rho Upsilon Community College of Philadelphia Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

They opened Rita’s back up a couple of weeks ago. Dan and I drive past the one on the Pike while on our routine Giant trips. This is a ritual that began when I was 16. The pandemic was still young enough for me to believe I would get to throw a 17th birthday party. I was still young enough to identify with the kids hanging out in Rita’s parking lot.

On days where isolation felt like asphyxiation, Dan and I would drive to Giant to get some air. We could have just gone for a drive with no destination, letting the impossibilities of spring in Philly yield us wherever she saw fit. But when you’ve been stuck in an aging house with thin walls and loud neighbors, impossibilities get old fast. Giant was a limit. It had a set beginning, middle, and end. Meat curled with rot. Flowers died. And when the smell of decay could no longer be tolerated, the meat and flowers were replaced with younger, sparkling copies. It also provided some semblance of change. The pandemic threatened us with forever, so we went to Giant to circumvent that. Maybe people were still dying in droves, but we just got some new milk, and that’s gotta count for something. Even in the last days of disco, grocery stores are a kind of kindness. The dancers have gone home, and no one knows when they’ll be back, but Giant will always have milk.

The heat came fast. Spring in Philly typically doesn’t stay fresh for very long. That year, its novelty wore off in about two weeks. When it wasn’t skin sticking to the seat hot out, we’d turn off the A.C. and drive with the windows down. We’d come to the red light on the Pike, and there they were. The boys wore basketball shorts and acne. They were cruel to each other and even more cruel to girls. The girls laughed at jokes that weren’t funny and whispered in each other’s ears. Their nails were short, and the polish was chipped. All of the boys and girls sat under the Rita’s sign. It read, “SPRING HAS SPRUNG.” I had a difficult time understanding these kids. We spoke different languages. Their dialect sounded like lo-fi rap and underage drinking; mine like sad white guy ballads and abstinence. Despite the language barrier, I felt for and with them. We were bound together by the candy-coated ultraviolence of youth. We were white-knuckled, delirious and high on our own mythology. It’s like what Leonard Cohen said in “Chelsea Hotel #2.” “We are ugly but we have the music” (Cohen, 1:58).

I hated John Hughes. I couldn’t grasp why he made a career out of sanctifying adolescence. When you’re in it, adolescence is an affliction. You hate your parents, and they hate you for hating them. You talk about sex with unprecedented zeal because you have yet to discover how banal it actually is. Your friends are the worst, but who else do you have to talk to? You have bruises you can’t account for. Everything hurts. Everything is funny. Everything is embarrassing. Adolescence is a luxury. I understand that now, but didn’t at the time. I think that’s a truth you can only really appreciate once your taste buds lose the ability to stomach red 40. Despite all the aches and pains, there is safety in being 16. Your inexperience and lack of impulse control are a gift. No matter what you do or how you do it, you’ll always have plausible deniability and innocence on your side. You are also never alone. You may feel like the only 16-year-old virgin who listens to Twenty-One Pilots, but there are, in fact, an immeasurable amount of 16-year-old virgins who listen to twenty-one pilots. And if, for whatever reason, you cannot relate to them, take comfort in knowing that the cool kids in the parking lot are just as uncomfortable and sweaty as you are. Misery enjoys company, thank goodness.

And then it’s over. 16 becomes 17, 17 becomes 18, and so on and so on until you’re in your early 20s. The pandemic waned until it became a weird collective dream. No, I didn’t get to have a 17th birthday party, by the way. I do still go on Giant trips with Dan, though, and there are still kids in the Rita’s parking lot. But it’s all so unfamiliar now. I don’t know these kids as well as I used to. At first, I thought it was them. Maybe they switched some things up when I wasn’t looking. But it hit me fast and hard that it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of time. The kids I see now are not the ones I knew when the Giant ritual began. These are younger, sparkling copies. Time aged up the kids I used to know and sent them off to colleges and jobs and rented apartments. Time didn’t spare me either. I am no longer the kid John Hughes loved writing about so much; I am John Hughes.

I miss 16. Never thought I’d say something so saccharine so earnestly, but time makes sissies of us all. I miss how important everything felt, how every emotion and experience seemed like it was the last one I’d ever encounter. There’s a reason why there’s a disgusting number of stories about adolescence: there is so much to miss. What is there to miss about being in your 20s? I’m too naive to know what I’m doing, yet too worldly to claim it’s the fault of my innocence. All my friends have moved away, and I feel nauseous more often than I don’t. My hair is falling out, and I have to go to the dentist all by myself. I’m about to begin the rest of my life, and all I have to show for it is a debit card that has $2.36 left on it. Go me.

It’s not all jealousy that I feel towards these parking lot kids. I’m proud of them, despite only ever seeing them through a car window. Adolescence is only desirable for those who have grown out of it. These kids deserve credit for enduring the giant pit stain that is 16. So if you happen to be 16 and no one’s told you today, way to go, tiger. I like to think that the car behind us holds an older woman who harbors the same pride for me. She’s about 40, maybe older, and she sees in me the confusion and whiplash that come with the terrible 20s. She smiles to herself, aware that I am too young to know the confusion and whiplash never go away; you just get better at bracing yourself for it. As the light turns green, she whispers, “Way to go, tiger.”

WORK CITED

Cohen, Leonard. “Chelsea Hotel #2.” New Skin for the Old Ceremony, Columbia/Legacy, 1974.

Twilight at the Pier

Media: Photography, Canon EOS Rebel SL3

The scene was beautiful in person, and it needed to be captured for others to see. The process used was to stand barefoot on the beach, raise my camera, set the exposure, and shoot the picture.

Alpha Epsilon Epsilon Delaware Technical Community College, Georgetown-Owens Campus Georgetown, Delaware

Nicole McCarville

The Pearl of Africa

Reacher Ssozi

Alpha Kappa Lambda Massachusetts Bay Community College Wellesley, Massachusetts

“Where are you from?”

That’s a question often asked of me. I reply, “Have you ever seen a pearl, How it shines in all its glory and is loved?”

“Yes,” they say.

“Well, I’m from the Pearl of Africa, Uganda.”

“What’s it like?” they ask, Curiosity written on their face.

With a smile, I say,

“Have you felt the sun?”

“Yes,” they say with a laugh... “of course.”

“No,” I beam,

“You haven’t felt the sun until you’ve been in Uganda. It embraces you like a long-lost friend.”

The land is fertile, so very fertile.

Mangoes, avocados, jackfruit, and many more that I could list, But you don’t have the time.

The land is loved by its people, And it loves its people back.

Uganda,

You can be poor but wear a big smile because you have a community, a village that cares for you.

There are parties every day,

You don’t even have to know them to go.

And just like the country, the food, Oh, the food is amazing

Because, come on, this is Uganda.

Oh, Uganda, my beautiful Uganda, The Pearl of Africa.

Dog

Maria Sepulveda-Avila Stiles

Media: Photography

I saw a beautiful dog enjoying life in the water at Bidwell Park One-Mile in Chico, California and wanted to capture that beauty. I asked the owner if I could take a photograph, got into the water and watched the dog and owners interactions and patterns. After studying them, I focused on where the stick went and his normal pattern to get back to shore, adjusting the light to capture him in action. I did it from different angles, but this was my favorite.

02/24/2024 1:19:43p Location:

Beta Mu Mu Shasta College Redding, California

Artist: Maria

Table Mountain

Maria Sepulveda-Avila Stiles

Media: Photography

Media: Photography

Reason for creating art: I wanted to capture a beautiful but real photograph of a hike with winding natural beauty surrounding my subject.

I wanted to capture a beautiful but real photograph of a hike at Table Mountain in Oroville, California with winding natural beauty surrounding my subject. I went on a hike with a group of people and stayed in front behind the group in order to really take in the beauty that surrounded us while also avoiding the all-too-common fake posing for pictures. I allowed myself to take in the reality of the moment, my personal perspective, and to capture the world as I saw it.

Process for creating the art: I went on a hike with a group of people and stayed in front behind the group in order to really take in the beauty that surrounds us while also avoiding the all-too - common fake posing for pictures. I allowed myself to take in the reality of the moment, my personal perspective, and to capture the world as I see it.

Date: 04/1/2024 @ 8:42:08am

Location: Table Mountain in Oroville, CA

Beta Mu Mu Shasta College Redding, California

Artist: Maria Stiles

The Ballad of Resilience

William Chad Anderson

In the 70s’ wake, a newborn’s cry met dawn’s light, Laden with a legacy not of his own, a fight. Born to a mother caught in heroin’s snare, A babe inherited a battle, a start unfair.

At tender eight, from a mother’s arms, he was torn, To a grandfather’s house, where scorn was born. Amidst the fumes of alcohol, a bigot’s spate, A homophobic, racist ire, sealing a cruel fate.

By fourteen, with a heart both fierce and wild, He claimed his destiny, no longer a child. With two pairs of jeans, boots firm on his feet, Three shirts to his name, and a dream to meet.

In a Dodge Aspen, a burnt-orange steed, he fled, Its keys from an uncle, kindness in credit’s thread. Two hundred on a promise—a pledge to redeem, A symbol of hope, of the American dream.

Through the trials of youth, an advocate he arose, For the voiceless children, in their deepest throes. A Guardian ad Litem, with justice as his guide, Where once he stood alone, now stands by a child’s side. With each passing year, the battle scars he’d earned, Amputations and grafts, his fate he’d overturned. Above knee, below knee—limbs lost, spirit found, A testament to courage, firmly on hallowed ground.

Be stronger than your excuses, his steadfast claim, From a life seared by hardship, an undying flame. A ballad of resilience, a child once in strife, Now a man on a mission, a guardian of life.

Alpha Phi Zeta Valencia College, Osceola Campus Orlando, Florida

Head in the Clouds

Media: Photography and Digital Editing

I created this piece as a class assignment for an Art Appreciation class I took in the spring 2024 semester (a half-semester class). For the assignment, I had to create art pieces inspired by other artists’ works; I made this piece inspired by the artist Joiri Minaya. I used two photos I had taken on my phone, one of a sunset in my backyard and the other of myself. I edited them together digitally on Clip Studio Paint. I replaced my skin with my sunset photo like I had seen Joiri Minaya replace the skin of women with pants and plant patterns.

Alpha Psi Psi

Carroll Community College Westminster, Maryland

Cara Olson

These Metaphors, My Body

Mariah Crawford

I find it easiest to describe my chronic illness in metaphors. When asked how it feels to hold a chronic illness within my body, I perform a magic trick of words. With my words, the lights dim, the smoke machine whirls to life, and I become the wizard hiding behind the velvet curtain. Pay no mind to what you think you see. Look how I lay the yellow bricks with my words. See how the flying monkeys lay still at my command. Whenever I try to state it plainly, stripping it of all adornments and illusions, the words become a dry rag in my mouth. Every syllable comes out diluted and muffled. The polaroid in my hand develops backward. The portrait I paint only obscures the underpainting. The words, said over and over again, chase their tails and come up with air.

Before I had a diagnosis, I had believed in the simplicity of language. I had believed in the power of a name. In all the horror movies I had watched as a young adult, the thrashing and foulmouthed demon could only be exorcized from the young girl’s body once its name had been spoken. No matter how much holy water or fervent whispered prayers dampened the air, only the unbearable weight of hearing its own name could expel it completely. At a sleepover when I was a child, I remember being shoved into the small hallway bathroom while a group of barefoot, pajama-clad girls held their ears to the door outside. I had been dared to say a name three times in the mirror. Sleepover rules were cruel and binding. Even as my muscles twitched with the urge to bolt, I stood with my hands on the sink basin to steady myself as I tried to say her name. Though I couldn’t make out the mirror or even a glint of porcelain, my imagination was able to conjure a fully formed apparition just from the name existing in my mind. Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…I couldn’t say it a third time. In that dark, cramped bathroom I felt the power of her name and the flimsiness of the veil that separated her from our night of Disney channel movies and popcorn bracelets. Though I emerged from the bathroom to the disappointed faces of my friends, I felt I had saved our evening from something we didn’t want to face.

When I began searching for a diagnosis for the kaleidoscope of symptoms my body had presented me, I still held the same belief in the power of a name. I imagined the loops of identical waiting rooms finally unraveling with a name I could call out into the darkness. I didn’t know if the name would expel or reveal, I only knew that once named it would no longer be a figment of an imagination left to its own devices. It wasn’t that I was unafraid of what could come crawling out of the black, summoned by a white doctor’s coat, just that whatever materialized would finally have defined edges. Whatever shape took form in front of me, however large and gnashing the teeth, I would be ready to stare into its red eyes and open mouth.

What I didn’t realize, heaving myself off of the crinkly paper-covered chair in the doctor’s office, was that the name of my chronic illness was not a crucifix I could wield against it. Instead, the strange combination of letters formed a Pandora’s box I could never close again.

The initial relief of hearing it spoken quickly dissipated when a landscape of medical jargon and Google searches unfolded in front of me. I said the name as many times as my breath would allow, yet the only image staring back at me from the mirror was my own body. As the days went on, I tried to picture myself as the heroine of her own odyssey, but the days before me weren’t able to be vanquished or conquered. Each sunrise opened like the shaking of a magic eight ball, asking will you behave today? and my body responding not likely.

Beta Kappa Lambda Aims Community College Greeley, Colorado

When the dust of new tests and old cures finally settled, I tried to use the language that had been given to me and move forward. Even if I didn’t believe in the power of a name anymore, I had hoped it would hold sway with others. If speaking the name of my chronic illness into the mirror did nothing but fog up the glass, maybe speaking the name to someone else would allow me to see the reflection in their eyes. Unfortunately, the more I employed the language given, the more I could see the word chronic rattling around in other’s mouths like a tongue twister. It’s hard to conceive of a story that has no ending. It’s even harder to tell it. The majority of us would prefer our narratives presented as neatly tied bows instead of a box of tangled ribbons we have to attempt to make sense of. In the failings of this language, those around me attempted to invent their own. They employed new words like resilient, brave, and sensitive and pinned them to their portraits of me. For a while, I tried to own these words too. I tried to plant them like flags into the soft soil of my body, but they were never able to lay claim. Nothing captured the truth. Nothing captured the way I was able to recognize the texture of my own skin and yet my body still felt unfamiliar to me. Nothing captured the way the light played tricks on my own reflection, sometimes showing a young woman and sometimes a caged animal.

After years of being given words that did nothing to describe something I’ve grown to know intimately, I learned my own. I began to accept the ways in which every light comes in slant and every shadow can be a trick. I began to accept the way chronic illness shapeshifts as soon as it’s pinned beneath the glass. I began to accept that to explain my chronic illness is to embrace the illusions of contradictions. My body is all at once a fortress and a prison. My days are all a balance of thriving and rotting. All wins, big and small, are slightly burned around the edges. These metaphors may not capture what a chronic illness is to a doctor or to a friend, but these metaphors speak the language of my body in a way it’s never heard before.

Media: Acrylic Paint and Watercolor Paper on Poster Board

A dragon is a mythical creature present in Japanese folklore often represented in aquatic environments and represents strength. I wanted to capture the beauty of this creature’s strength using bright colors and depictions of rough waves.

I first outlined the dragon on the posterboard with a rough sketch. I then cut and painted pieces of watercolor paper in the shape and color of reptilian scales. I then painted the dragon and the background on the posterboard. I glued the cut pieces of paper on the dragon to represent scales. Finally, I added details into the ocean background and the dragon.

Alpha Upsilon Rho Warren County Community College Washington, New Jersey

Reyna Browne

Japanese Woman

Media: Acrylic Paint on Canvas

I wanted to portray my Japanese culture in a way that incorporated nature. I decided to draw a woman in a kimono with chrysanthemums as chrysanthemums are the national flower of Japan, and the kimono is an important piece of cultural clothing that is present today.

First, I drew a sketch with pencil on the canvas. Then, I blocked out the painting with flat colors. I shaded and completed with paint, starting with the main figure and the background after. I drew in the white chrysanthemum flowers last.

Alpha Upsilon Rho Warren County Community College Washington, New Jersey

Reyna Browne

Blue Moon Murderess

Fiona L. Page

The women in the Carrow family are cursed.

It starts when Nova Carrow murders her husband on her wedding night. She uses the ribbons from her wedding dress, long dark blue silk that she ties tight around his neck as he sleeps. He wakes up before she can finish the deed, his eyes full of fear.

The fear melts into fury when she doesn’t release him. And soon, his eyes are empty, staring up at the dark ceiling.

The pale moon shines through the windows as Nova unties the ribbons, running her fingers over the marks on his neck.

She gives birth to a daughter nine months later, on the night of a blue moon. The woods around the house are cold and black, the sky starless, the wind haunting the trees.

Her daughter is perfect. Pale skin, bright eyes, the smallest wisps of pale hair. Her name is Celeste.

But she is born with something around the base of her throat. When Nova lifts her into the light of the lamp, she realizes it is a piece of midnight blue ribbon around her tiny neck, a seamless band with no end.

Nova thinks of the ribbons at the foot of her bed in her trunk and smiles.

Celeste grows older in this house in the woods, away from everyone else. She is stunningly beautiful, but in the way that dangerous things are. Her hair shines like the sharp edge of a knife. Her eyes are the color of slate, wide and often looking at something beyond human sight. The ribbon around her neck grows as she does, never causing her harm.

Everyone is awed by her, the woman in fear, the men in desire. It is no surprise when she catches the eye of the richest, kindest man in the small town. They marry in the winter, when ice hangs from the trees and the lakes are frozen.

Their marriage is happy. Celeste gives birth to a baby girl nearly two years later, on the eve of the blue moon, her own birthday. The child looks like her mother, pale, ethereal, and cold. A blue ribbon wraps around her throat. She has no trace of her warm-hearted, brown-eyed father in her. The father loves them both unconditionally, his icy wife and child. …

The next winter, during a freezing night, Celeste lures her husband downstairs, like a beautiful ghost in the dark. He follows, hands reaching for her. He doesn’t notice the blue ribbon sliding around his neck, or the way it is caught on the chandelier on the ceiling. He doesn’t notice as he trips, falling, and the rope pulls taut.

Alpha Upsilon Chi Central New Mexico Community College Albuquerque, New Mexico

Celeste watches his body sway, suspended by midnight silk. She feels a tug on her nightgown and looks down. Her daughter looks up at her, slate eyes unreadable.

“Go to sleep, darling,” she says.

Celeste is hanged for murder a year later. It took them a long time to find evidence that it was her, and in the end, the only thing they had as proof was the ribbon around her neck. She goes to her death unemotionally, looking straight ahead at nothing, the way she used to when she was young.

Her daughter Ilia watches her from the crowd, still and silent. The people stay a few feet away from her, terrified at her lack of reaction.

The box under Celeste’s feet falls away, and a sharp crack later, she hangs from the ropes, swaying in the wind.

Little Ilia reaches up and touches the ribbon around her neck. “Goodbye, Mother.”

Much like her mother and grandmother before her, Ilia grows up frigid and beautiful. Only this time, there are no men or boys chasing after her, desperate to win her heart. Everyone stays away from her. They are confused when they see her a decade and a half later, the silver witch of the woods, as they now call her. Her stomach is round, proof of a new life.

They all want to know who the father is, and one brave woman finds the courage to ask. She regrets it when Ilia turns to look at her, eyes hooded, and simply smiles before sweeping away, her gray dress picking up bits of dead leaves.

It’s the devil’s child, they decide.

The cycle continues like this for generation after generation. The Carrow daughter gives birth to a fatherless child on the eve of a blue moon, a daughter as pale and eerie as her mother. A blue ribbon wraps around their throat. No one will marry them, scared that the Carrow witches will murder them in their sleep with blue ribbon.

And so it goes on, daughter after daughter after daughter, each lacking a father, each shunned for life, even as they get further and further away from the crimes of their ancestors. That night so many generations ago, when Nova Carrow murdered her husband, has cursed them all.

When the twenty-first century dawns, there are no such things as witches anymore. Luna Carrow is simply an eccentric, strange young lady who lives by herself in an apartment overflowing with herb plants. She still bears the ribbon around her neck.

She’s tried to get it off. First with scissors, but she nearly hit a vein. Then with a knife, but the same thing happened. She’s accepted that it will never be removed. But she hasn’t accepted the curse. Someday soon, she knows she will have a daughter, like her mother did, and she can’t stand to pass the curse on to her unknowing child.

With months of research, digging through centuries of family history, she figures it out. The way to end the curse seems so simple. A man must marry her and kill her after she gives birth to her daughter. Then her child will be free.

But no one will marry one of the cursed Carrows for fear of dying. It’s ironic, Luna thinks, that the only way to end the curse is right in front of her but so far away. She would die if it meant that her future child would be free.

She tries. One date after another, trying to meet someone who might possibly love her, but it’s a hopeless endeavor. So when the day comes that she knows life is growing inside her, she sinks to the floor and cries. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, darling.

And so the curse continues, blue moon after blue moon.

Nova’s husband sighs heavily and leans against a tree outside his old house. It’s fallen to disrepair, being so deep in the woods, hidden from the eyes of the modern world. He reaches up and touches the marks around his neck. They still hurt, even in death. “How much longer do you think we will have to do this?” he asks, looking over at his companion.

Celeste’s husband shrugs, rubbing the place where his neck broke. “Until the curse ends.” He looks down at the length of blue ribbon in his translucent hands. “I feel so much pity for these poor girls.”

“So do I.” If he had a choice, Nova’s husband would stop now. There is no desire for revenge left in his heart anymore. But as long as the curse lives, he will be compelled to try to strangle every Carrow daughter that leaves her mother’s womb with blue ribbon. It never works, which he’s glad of, and he’s almost scared of what would happen if he or his son-in-law ever did manage to kill one of the newborn Carrow daughters.

As time spins away, century after century, the two ghosts tilt their injured necks and look up at the starless black sky, waiting for the day when it will all be over.

Jouly H. Youssef

I chose to capture the essence of my home country. I used acrylic paint on a canvas to portray an abstract painting of Egypt, as I felt very homesick. I never quite know what I will be creating until I start heading down with the process. For this painting, I created multiple layers on top of each other since I didn’t know exactly how it was going to come out and didn’t have a reference picture. I went along with my feelings and how I felt when I was in Egypt. The colors I chose are on the warmer side and mostly browner shades. I mixed a very light shade of brown with some water to get a more runny and loose effect of paint and dumped it on the canvas. Then, I gently tilted the canvas to the sides, which is how I got the runny effect. I tried my best not to focus too much on “perfection.” I wanted this painting to almost feel like a dream and not like you were there.

Beta Mu Alpha Orange Coast College Costa Mesa, California

Seoul Mates: A Memoir

Aisha

Manus

Alpha Mu Zeta Cochise College Sierra Vista, Arizona

Smashed in the backseat between a robust Nigerian preacher and her equally robust husband, I prepared to confess my sins. As our taxi flew through one red light after another, weaving in an out through traffic, never once slowing for anyone around us, I knew in that moment, that even though I did not believe in God, silent prayer was our only hope of survival.

Just a few hours earlier, I was in a blissful state of Nirvana as I sipped on some orange juice while I played with an assortment of cats in a small cafe in Myeongdong, a lively shopping district in Seoul, South Korea. As I pounced about the cafe, enchanted by my new furry friends time slipped from me rather quickly and I soon found myself ushered out of the shop as it closed for the night. Realizing the time, I hurried to the metro station so that I could travel back to Songton, a small city just outside of Osan, AB where I was spending the summer with one of my best friends. As the train departed I relaxed into my seat and began to read from my book, Eleanor & Park, to pass the time until I would arrive. Lost in the words of Rainbow Rowell, I did not realize that the train would not be taking me to my final destination 45 minutes away, instead, it was stopping much sooner because of the late hour. Forced to exit the train in a town I had never been to, with a phone on the brink of dying and no cell service, I had no idea how I was to get back home.

Having all disembarked from the train, the passengers all began to line up to take taxis to their final destination but with just 16,000 won in my pocket, I knew I didn't have enough to make it back to Songton by myself. Armed with just the knowledge of a few basic phrases in Korean I tried to find someone who understood me and was going to Songton too. For over an hour I desperately approached one person after another in vain looking for someone, anyone, to share a taxi with but could find no one. It was only after I resigned myself to hole up on a bench and just sleep at the station until morning that I found my saving grace.

A tall Korean man, who looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s, approached me.

Speaking to me in English, with the ease of someone clearly familiar with dealing with lost Americans, the man offered to share a taxi with me back to Songton. At the mention of this, a couple nearby who overheard our conversation interjected and asked in a heavily accented English if they too could share the taxi. Eager to be home I did not hesitate to accept the request, for a taxi fair split four ways is far better than in half and I knew without a doubt I would now have enough money for my share. A night sleeping under the stars would have to wait for a different adventure.

As we all stood in line to wait for a taxi I began to ask the couple where they were from for I have always found immense interest in anyone with an accent. When they told me Nigeria I was instantly enamored with them and needed to know what brought them halfway around the world to South Korea. Turns out they were Christian missionaries who were opening a new church that summer just down the street from my friends home.

When it was our turn to get into a taxi, the Korean man who so generously offered to share with us got into the front passenger seat while I slid into the back seat, fitting myself snugly between my new, interesting friends. I had intended to continue our conversation, as I had never before encountered non-white proselytizers, but I never got the chance. We hadn't even finished buckling ourselves in when the taxi quickly peeled off towards our destination. Weaving in and out of

traffic like a madman on the run, it was as if yellow lights were challenges and red lights mere suggestions and he wasn't in the mood to listen. Arriving at the gates of Osan AB, in what felt like the slow blink of an eye, the four of us let out the collective breath we had been holding during that quarter-hour ride.

Spilling out of the taxi onto the beautiful solid ground, I reached into my purse to pull out my share of the fair. The Korean man stopped me and insisted on paying for everyone, saying, “This ride is my gift to you. Welcome to Korea.” Whether it was a gesture to combat the traumatic experience we had just endured, or his intention all along, I will never know, but I do know that he was my angel that night. In the end, the four of us hugged one another and then parted our separate ways into the wee hours of the night, forever bonded by one hell of a ride.

Waterfall

Media: Photography, iPhone

I saw a waterfall and thought it was a cool photo to share it with more people should share how beautiful the earth truly is. I walked around on a nature trail while hiking with my family and took a photo.

Maria Crawford

Alpha Omicron Upsilon North Central Michigan College Petoskey, Michigan

Just...Super

Emosha Antoine-Butler

Omega Nu Delgado Community College, City Park Campus New Orleans, Louisiana

VAL

What are we here for?

FLIGHT

I’m trying to understand. (Beat) Why’d you do it? It just– (Dry laugh) it isn’t like you. It doesn’t make sense.

VAL

(VAL looks down and sighs.) You said it best. I’m a villain. And villains escalate. We escalate and we… we work alone.

FLIGHT

Escalate implies you’d get away with it. Did you really think I wouldn’t uncover your little plot?

VAL

Not if everything went according to plan. I don’t know what you want from me. A reason? An excuse? It doesn’t matter. I did what I did and you know exactly what that means. So, be a Hero and let me go.

FLIGHT

Is that really what you want? It was so obvious, little clues here and there like you wanted me to know– to find you. You’re a terrible villain.

VAL

As opposed to being a good one? This was an impeccable job— my last boost.

FLIGHT

Last boost?

VAL

I’m retiring.

FLIGHT

(Hysterical laughter) A D-class villain and a comedian! I’d say you’re in the wrong profession but…

VAL

Are we seriously going to have this conversation while I’m restrained? (Pause) Flight, you’re going to make me ask? (Scoffs) I can’t believe you. (Beat) Can you please untie me? I promise I won’t flee.

FLIGHT

(Skeptical) Why should I trust you?

VAL

Where can I go?

FLIGHT

(Pause) Fine. Come here. (VAL carefully shuffles forward but stays far from the edge. FLIGHT breaks her restraints.)

VAL

What will they do with the money?

FLIGHT

Hide it somewhere that isn’t a metal vault.

VAL Fuck!

FLIGHT

Are you serious?

VAL

I just lost out on a motherload. It’s not personal.

FLIGHT

Not personal? Val, you made me look bad in there! Sometimes you get away, yeah, that’s fine, you get away from other Heros too. Always breaking out of jail? Not suspicious at all. Other villains do it all the time. But this was unacceptable. This could have ruined everything.

VAL

…All you had to do was let me go.

FLIGHT

Are you out of your mind? Why would I do that? Why would I want to do that?

VAL

This isn’t about what you want.

FLIGHT

Clearly! But it can't be about what you want either. So what's this about? What the city wants? You dead. Or what about the other heroes? Oh, they’d want the same thing if they had the balls to do it. (Beat) Nobody cares about your wants. Nobody understands. No one will save you.

VAL

(Taking a step back) Save me from what?

FLIGHT

Don’t start that again.

VAL

No. I need you to hear yourself, Flight. Save me from what?

FLIGHT

Everything! The world! (Beat) Me. I don’t know! Villains don’t get to retire. They don’t “disappear.” The world is dangerous and it hates you. It thinks it would be better off without you–

(FLIGHT turns to her, sighs, and holds his hand out.)

FLIGHT

(Softly) I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… (Beat) Come here. Look at the city.

VAL

(Hesitates to grab his hand) I can’t. We’re too high up.

FLIGHT

I know, (Yanks her forward) just look. This is our kingdom. We all have our roles in it. There are the monarchs, like governors and such. Then the heroes. After that are the Councilmen, knights, peasants and so on and so forth until we reach the muck. The heap of shit beneath my feet. The criminals and the villains. Guess where you land on the food chain.

VAL

I- um- the vil–

FLIGHT

AAAANT! Whatever you were thinking: Wrong! A mastermind pulls the strings behind the facade. That puppeteer manipulates others to do their bidding. We’ll call the others “shadow puppets'' because they work in the shadows. Shadow puppets are my favorite. They’ll always be safe because the hand that guides them will never let anything happen to them. (Beat) Now, where do you fall?

VAL

T- the shado–

FLIGHT

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

VAL

I don’t want that anymore. I'm tired of doing this. I want to stop.

FLIGHT

Do you think it’s that easy? One morning you wake up and give it all away. Slate clean? No explanation. And the people you hurt do what? Accept it? (Silence) Oh, bet you didn’t think about that.

VAL

Of course I did! But I’m not happy. So… it doesn’t matter how you feel.

FLIGHT

Wow, cold-blooded. You might’ve just earned yourself a C-class ranking. (Pacing) No. I don't accept it.

VAL What?

FLIGHT

I.Don’t. Believe. You. I mean, I get it, what you do is hard. You want things to change. And they will… eventually. But to throw everything away on a whim–

VAL

–The lack of comprehension is insufferable! Aren’t you listening to me? It’s not a whim! I need us on the same page here.

FLIGHT

What page is that? You want out. I’m telling you that’s not gonna happen. I don’t think there’s anything left to discuss.

VAL

There is… because we’re here. Not at the prison or the house. You brought us here– with nowhere else to go.

FLIGHT

But in circles. Because we’re talking in them.

VAL

At least we're talking. I’m not hiding and you’re not pretending. (Beat) I’m sick of the pretending.

FLIGHT

That’s the brand. We cosplay things we’re not. No one can be all good. I wish all I see when I look at you is evil. (Beat) So, we pretend. It’s safer to let them think that Supers are binary. What Just… Super happens when they realize we also walk a tightrope? Fear. Mania. Death. And, beyond them, we had a good thing. You messing that up is going to mess it up for everybody.

VAL

We don’t need anything to maintain the status quo. Severing this won’t change everything.

FLIGHT

Ok, I’ll play ball. Say you “sever” it. No more Valkyrie on the Villain Registry. Then what? You live off of stolen money? No Supers come after you? I don’t come after you? And what would you do? Get a dog? Live a life with no powers? Pretend? (Enraged) The thing you say you hate so much is what you prefer.

VAL

A life is what I prefer. I’m tired of hurting people. I’m tired of doing what I’m told to do instead of what I want.

FLIGHT

You’re your own person.

VAL

Am I?

FLIGHT

No one’s holding a gun to your head.

VAL

No, just the top of a skyscraper.

FLIGHT

You think you see right through my shit, don’t you? (Laughing) Maybe I wasn’t thinking about that when I brought us here. I was angry and confused. I had to get us out of that bank before…

VAL

Before what?

FLIGHT

Before I did something I’d regret. Before I went against the Superhero Code of Conduct and went berserk in front of an entire police squad. (Beat) Val, I know you. Yeah, you’re a bad guy but that wasn’t you. That fight… wasn’t you. “Escalating.” Working alone. No. Something’s off. I need you to tell me what’s going on.

VAL

Fine. You want the truth? (Beat) A few months ago, after I toppled the casino, I was watching TV– keeping a low profile. And this alert popped up, “Sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled program.” You know the one. They do it every time you breathe. (Beat) Anyway, the news anchor starts talking about your fundraiser for the casino. They go Live with this humongous crowd surrounding you. They were fawning over you. And I‘m like, how can they idolize you? They don’t

even know the real you. Then– suddenly– I’m on the screen. They used this picture of me… one of my mugshots— an unflattering mugshot–

FLIGHT

–None of them are unflattering.

VAL

(Suppressing a smile) Yeah, well, it wasn’t one of my better ones. Anyway, they had this picture of me up. And they’re talking about how dangerous and destructive I am. They urged the public to help with my arrest. The switch from adoration to vitriol was jarring. (Scoffs) Praising your generosity without knowing the casino incident was a setup. It wasn’t even my idea! It never is, yet I’m always blamed. (Beat) And that’s when it clicked.

FLIGHT

What clicked?

VAL

It was a fairytale. I always thought we lived by villain rules. Steal so we don’t have to steal anymore, you know? (Beat) But we were never going to stop. And I’m so fucking exhausted of taking the blame. That’s why I robbed the bank. That’s why I’m leaving.

FLIGHT

I get it, and I’m sorry for putting it all on you, Val. But isn’t there a chasm between not wanting to be a villain and robbing a bank to run away? You could have told me! I would’ve done… something! Haven’t I always given you what you wanted?

VAL

Is that what you’re doing right now? (Beat) Exactly. You’re irrational and emotional, Flight. And I– I thought leaving would be easier. (Thrust arm towards the city) They aren't the only ones who operate in binaries. You either have allies or enemies. It was safer being your ally, but I know leaving makes me an enemy.

FLIGHT

(Dry laugh) Oh, so that's why you left your cut? As a consolation prize for betraying me.

VAL

I had to betray you! What would you have done if I'd come to you? Nothing. It would’ve been the same lecture about binaries and roles and how I’m hated.

FLIGHT

I didn’t mean that–

VAL

–But it’s true. Your face is a smile and mine is a wanted poster. Yet, you ask “why” as if the answer is so fucking evasive. (Beat) If I have to be your enemy, so be it. I don’t care what you do. I just… I

want out. So I’ll ask again: What happens now, Flight?

FLIGHT

(Sighs) You’re like a sad, cute fucking puppy, aren’t you? I don’t know if we could pull it off.

VAL What?

FLIGHT

Say I help you… How can we pull it off? I mean, we’ll need more than a disguise to hide your identity. A Super can do it, but it’s expensive. And, earlier, when I said “Villains don’t just disappear,” I meant that. If a villain goes missing, I’m sent to hunt them down.

VAL

Wha– since when?

FLIGHT

I don't know. Almost from the start of this hero thing. It pays better than the standard gig. Not as much as the stealing, but you get it.

VAL

So, even if I got away, it would always come down to you and me…

FLIGHT

Don’t say it like we’re a bad thing. (Beat) Yeah, Val, I was always going to find you. I'd just also have to, you know? But, maybe, I find you dead in the sea… or you put up a really good fight and I had to go full force. Maybe Valkyrie disappears for good...

VAL (Smirking)

You’d do that? (Smile fades) What’s the catch?

FLIGHT

Be the villain one last time. I’ll get the money from your failed bank heist, and you take the fall. Lay low for a while, maybe try to work things out with someone you love, and then I “find” you.

VAL

Okay. But… this has to be it. No more double dipping. No more puppet master bullshit. We’ve stolen more than enough. So, if we try to work this out, it ends here.

FLIGHT

You know that’s not gonna happ– nevermind! Nevermind. We'll talk about that later. (FLIGHT strikes himself in the face, doubles over in pain, and curses. He slowly stands.)

FLIGHT

Son of a– (Winces) Yeah, that’s gonna bruise. (Claps) Ok! I’m gonna go finish what you started. What do you think? “Valkyrie got me and escaped! She must’ve gone after the cash and killed the guards to get it. Damn! I’ll generously pay for their memorials. Condolences to the families.” Sounds good?

VAL

My plan didn't involve anyone getting hurt.

FLIGHT

Well, I was excluded from that plan, so maybe someone did get hurt.

VAL

Wow. Ok. (Beat) There's no other way?

FLIGHT

Nope.

VAL

Fine. Another perfect plan, I guess.

FLIGHT

Good! (Kisses her cheek and flies into the night sky) See you at the hideout!

VAL

Wait– Ross! How am I supposed to get down!?

FLIGHT

A mastermind like you can figure it out!

VAL

I thought things were going to change!

FLIGHT (Beat) Haven't they?

THE END

Cats at Campfire

Arianna Adams

Alpha Chi Gamma Martinburg Community College Williamston, North Carolina

Media: Digital Illustration (Krita x64)

I love drawing cats; I doodle them very often, so when I started randomly making a campfire, I decided to include cats. From there, I added the background and foreground to add depth. Pusheen also inspired me with a similar idea. After deciding on the fire's main focus, I went in with dark colors to differentiate the night background. Also, I used a mix of lined and lineless art that hopefully made the composition more interesting overall.

Echoes of Eternity

Alston D'Souza

Alpha Chi Beta Green River College Auburn, Washington

In the hush of twilight's embrace, Where shadows dance and moonbeams trace, A whispered echo fills the air, A melody of longing, a silent prayer.

Through fields of dreams and endless night, Where stars ignite the heavens bright, I wander lost, yet not alone, In search of solace, a place to atone.

Echoes of eternity call my name, A haunting refrain, a flickering flame. In the depths of silence, I find my voice, A symphony of echoes, a sacred choice.

I journey on through realms unseen, Where time stands still, and hearts convene. In every whisper of the wind, I hear the echoes of the world within.

Through valleys deep and mountains tall, I heed the echoes' timeless call. With each step forward, I find my way, Guided by the echoes, night and day.

And when at last my journey's end, I'll greet the echoes as a friend. For in their song, I've found my truth, A tapestry of echoes, ageless youth.

So let the echoes of eternity ring, In every moment, in everything. For in their resonance, we are one, Echoes of eternity, ever begun.

Florida Gothic

Iman Bhyat

Alpha Epsilon Upsilon Pasco-Hernando State College, West Campus New Port Richey, Florida

Media: Digital Illustration

“Florida Gothic” is an illustration I made to coincide with a short story I wrote for college. The story is a representation of how I felt growing up in Florida as an immigrant, perpetually ostracized and frightened by people who scorned me for not looking like them. I crafted this story with Gothic tropes, such as a creepy village, an outsider, and an overall dark atmosphere. I applied all these features to a town in Florida, hence the title “Florida Gothic.” I made the central figure a normal-looking girl being consumed by grotesque caricatures of the people I grew up around to emphasize the feeling I had of the hatred towards me, distorting my perspective of those around me. These figures taper off into a flame shape, as I often felt like a witch being put to trial. I purposefully hid the girl’s face to represent the dehumanization I experienced at the hands of these people. I tried to make their monstrous faces mostly normal, but distorted them to show how even the everyday man can become a monster if they harbor enough hatred.

To create this piece, I sketched a rough outline on paper. I then painted over this image digitally like I would for a traditional painting, layering colors on top of one another with a single brush pen. I then went over the painted layers with an ink pen texture to emphasize certain strong lines, such as the smiles, frowns, and screams of those around the central girl.

Priceless Memories

Wilhelmina Westbrook

Alpha Epsilon Kappa Midlands Technical College, Airport Campus Elgin, South Carolina

I was a child when my grandparents fell in love with Edisto Island; the soft water that lazily slapped against the shore, the south inlet where you could watch the dolphins play, and sunsets that melted the sky into a breathtaking gradient. Every year, my grandmother and I would pack our vacation gear into her old Honda, start up the latest mystery novel CD, and began our beach adventure. True to her title of Number One Grandmother, she would plan out a week’s worth of activities for us every time. Trips to the serpentarium, shell searching missions, morning beach walks, board games, star gazing, and, of course, swimming. She made Edisto feel like a sanctuary, and I try to always hold that warmth with me.

I have always admired my grandmother; raised in small-town Alabama, she went to college at a time when women were supposed to be mothers. She graduated with an English degree and taught for a while before continuing her education and earning a degree in social work. As a grandmother she was compassionate and creative; walking up her driveway transported me to a magical realm. The house itself became a castle, the back porch a saloon where only the toughest cowgirls could hang, and the backyard an ocean supporting a very large mermaid population. Small shells we rescued from Edisto found themselves being turned into jewelry and sold to various trees posing as princesses. My grandparents travelled often, and I became her travel fashion coordinator; which translates to I played dress up while she packed. Her clothes made me feel like I was wearing wizard robes, but in her jewelry, I was a socialite from the 1920’s.

When I entered the teenage world, our mystical play dates grew into gardening, museum days, painting sessions, and beach vacations. I love art, so she started making it a point to take me to the art museum when new exhibitions were put up. She introduced me to Scrabble one summer at Edisto, and we played for hours; only stopping to admire the sun when it started setting that day. We frequented the botanical gardens at Riverbanks Zoo and created intricate stories about the lives of the other patrons. She made every day I spent with her feel like a cheesy Hallmark movie. One winter we packed our suitcases, hopped on a plane, and went to visit a friend of hers in Washington D.C. She made sure to take me to all the major museums, monuments, and even a tour of the White House. Her goal was to always help me better myself, and I feel so grateful that I have the memory of these experiences. The older I got, the stronger our bond became. I felt like I could talk to her about anything and everything, and she spoke to me about her own struggles with depression and anxiety. She encouraged me through some of my hardest times, and helped me learn to embrace positive outlets. For a long time, it felt like she was one of the only people I could be my genuine self with, warts and all.

As she got older, she started picking up some funny habits. Little things, like calling me by my mom’s name, or forgetting where something was. I would call to make plans, and then she would forget where, what time, or the day we were meeting. She was getting older, so it never seemed like an unexpected problem. Little things turned into big things; I can remember my mom telling me that, while on vacation in Edisto, my grandmother had fallen down a flight of stairs, punctured her rib, and then went back to bed like nothing happened. Concerning, absolutely, but I took it as more proof that she was the strongest woman I know. A major turning point, as simple as it seems, was when my grandfather asked me to start picking my grandmother up for our dates. He explained to me that her memory was playing tricks on her, and she was forgetting things like directions and street names. It hit me all at once that these

signs, big or little, meant my time with her would eventually come to an end. Death was not a stranger, and I had been to quite a few funerals at this point; the thought of one day losing her, though? Unbearable, excruciating, and agonizing.

I know it sounds like this is written in memoriam of her, but my grandmother is still alive. A little over a year ago I found out that she has dementia, so, in a way, it feels like she is no longer around. Her mind has dismissed a lot of memories, and her ability to hold on to new ones has almost completely vanished. My grandfather moved them to a retirement community, and I see her as often as I possibly can. We used to go out for lunches with my mother, but as the dementia progresses the more stressful social situations become; now, we bring lunch to her. So many things have changed that sometimes it feels like a completely different person. The same woman that would not dare enter even a gas station without checking her lipstick no longer wears makeup at all. She is no longer able to go to the salon, so she proudly shows her stunning silvers. Even her skin more closely resembles vellum paper than epidermis. Her creativity is still there; she goes to an art class weekly, and I am told it is one of the only times her focus is impenetrable. Though it is hard to watch the dementia constantly take from her, I still feel grateful that we have this time together.

My grandmother has always been my rock; from teaching me grammar to helping me form positive outlets. Her dementia has given me the opportunity to be a rock for her. Unfortunate as it is, I can take all the compassion, patience, understanding, and love that she taught me to help support her through this process. I feel so incredibly lucky that I was able to have such a beautiful person guide me through life. Her death will be one of the most difficult times in my life, but with all of the memories we have created she will always be with me.

She’s beautiful.

Vice Versa

Charity Futrell

Beta Beta Delta North Arkansas College Harrison, Arkansas

She’s everything I want to be.

She’s talented.

Her smile’s warm; her eyes are deep. Everything she does comes effortlessly.

I’m insecure.

I walk with my eyes looking at my feet.

I’m overwhelmed.

I wake up in misery.

She’s the beauty; I’m the beast. I pick.

I scratch.

I lash out.

She’s kind.

She’s sweet.

She reaches out.

I write this poem. I think of her. She reads this poem. She thinks of me.

I thought she was perfect. I thought she was complete. Turns out this whole time, She was wishing she was me.

Untitled

Briana Mason

Upsilon Kappa Metropolitan Community College, Penn Valley Campus Kansas City, Missouri

Media: Acrylic on Canvas, Paper, Copper, Wood and Clay, 20x 28x 7.5in.

When I created this piece, I was completely overwhelmed by my body breaking down and taking over both my physical and mental health. I created “Untitled” as a way of trying to start over and begin creating art to decompress instead of wallowing in what I couldn’t do anymore. On the verge of needing a third shoulder surgery within a few short years, I chose to use the symbology of flowers, my love of mixed media sculpture, and the very real damage seen in my own shoulder MRIs from the first surgery that started everything to embrace how being chronically ill has changed me as a person.

To start, I began the math needed to figure out supplies and retrieved my actual images from the hospital for the greatest accuracy and intimacy to the piece. I came in with the idea that it was not about the final product but the journey of creation, and that in and of itself was a major part of Untitled. The repetition of creating the stamen for each flower then took up my time, and each one of 360 pieces of wire required me to carefully mold super glue into the shape of the anthers (pollen pieces), paint and blush with chalk pastel. Then after creating a few mockups with cheaper materials, I created 60 flower pistols from clay and 360 individual petals that needed to be shaped and glued into place before recieving the same finishing treatments as the stamen. Once together, each group was then glued into place on wooden dowels that acted at the flowers’ stems, and those were put onto the largest stem, totaling hundreds of hours of work.

After finishing the lilies, I placed them strategically onto the canvas and attached them with epoxy as if they had grown from my wounds on their own accord. The acrylic painting is replicating a very real image of the tears in my shoulder along with the edema and partial dislocation that made it increasingly difficult to continue with my education. The flowers, which are red spider lilies, represent not only death and reincarnation, but may also be seen to bring luck and cure inflammation and pain in Chinese medicine. In the context of my work, I like to see it as a new beginning of using art as therapy and the hope that my constant pain will not keep me from doing what I love. The visual I attempted to create by having the flowers bloom directly from my injuries and, in essence, the root of my suffering helps me see that there is beauty and growth in my experiences and that I am a better person.

Serenidad

Isabella Pruneda

Phi Omicron Waubonsee Community College Waubonsee, Illinois

Media: Acrylic on Canvas

I created “Serenidad” with acrylic on canvas to capture and remember the beauty of the Guadalquivir River in Seville, Spain. I started with the broader perspective of the river from a bridge and then added the more intimate scene in the center. The center scene depicts the river and buildings in more vibrant colors and captures a memorable spot next to a fig tree where I would watch the sunset with my friends. The wider perspective illustrates the scene more abstractly and in more subdued tones, except for the saturated yellow-orange sky. And finally, the border is inspired by Spanish ceramic tiles that pay tribute to the beautiful ceramics that Seville is famous for. This painting was a way for me to appreciate my time in Seville during my study abroad experience. It allows me to reminisce about the beauty of the city, all that I learned, and the people I connected with. It was my way of saying “thank you” for a meaningful and rewarding experience.

Puzzled Pieces

Macy Elizabeth Hudgins

Alpha Epsilon Iota Shelton State Community College, Martin Campus Tuscaloosa, Alabama

How many Hours

Have I spent Filling my hands With all the broken Pieces of myself, Trying to put them Together again So they resemble Something That looks whole?

Crying in the shower Leaves me longing For a pillow to scream into Emptying my rage

Into a bundle of Lightweight feathers Which once flew That try to carry the weight Of my emotion. But screaming into a pillow Leaves me longing For water to mix The soapy with My salty, Somehow clearing me And cleansing me Of this sorrow that sticks.

Crying in the car Leaves me longing For a shoulder that catches My worn out tears And that will not move until I am ready to Hit the brake and Shift my gears.

Crying on a shoulder Leaves me longing For a steering wheel That catches the Force of my fists

As the water spilling From my eyes

Streams down my face

Marking paths with Grief-filled turns and twists.

How many Hours

Have I spent searching For the pieces That make up this puzzle That looks like me And answers to my name, Trying to connect All the dots in way That makes a picture Worth looking at, A picture worth Loving?

And what did all those Hours

Get me?

Only puzzle pieces with Broken ends That do not Fit together Anymore.

The Ballerina

Kendrick Ferreiria Duran

Media: Digital Art

I was experimenting on a tweaked brush in an art program called Krita and wonder what abstract things I can do with it. Utilizing this new brush, I added white lines that served as my base for my smudge brush and others. From there, I added in red, black, and a tiny bit of yellowish gold to create the abstract figure pictured in my head.

Beta Lambda Lambda Cascadia College Bothel, Washington

Alpha Sigma Iota

Selfulacrum

Kaitlin Rose Herbert

Louisiana State University – Eunice Eunice, Louisiana

Elodie woke with a start. It was the same dream she always had, her mother trying to no avail to hug her, tears streamed down her cheeks as her arms passed right through Elodie and she began to glitch and fade until there was nothing left to be seen.

When she woke, the wailing would always continue to echo for a bit, like she’d left the radio on in the kitchen, so distant but filling her ears, nonetheless. It had been years since Elodie saw her “real” mother. She couldn’t quite remember ever knowing her really, just her copy.

To be technical they were called selfulacrums; they divulged from a type of photography. Back before The Resistance, the selfulacrums (then called simulations) were just captures of a special moment that someone might want to revisit. You could cast any moment and summon it up anytime you were feeling nostalgic. But when the copies began to express their boredom, it became evident that maybe they were a bit sentient. They got tired of sitting on shelves, just waiting to feel useful. They threatened to wipe their own drives, causing people to lose those precious moments. So, to please the copies, a new technology was developed which made it possible for the copies to not only exist in their frames but in the real world.

Once the ringing stopped, Elodie pulled herself out of bed. Her back always ached in the mornings after the dream and the bed creaked as she shifted her weight on it. She worked nights in the Yarrow Trust Development Center. The center was a general technology development center, improving home grids, travel systems, and really any technology that had been developed since the launch of the selfulacrum into everyday use. But here Elodie worked on a team of engineers and biomechanists, always working on new ways to advance the selfulacrums.

Once she made her way to the kitchen, she pushed her gnarled index finger into the “power” and then “drip” button on her coffee maker. She went to her general system and requested eggs and toast to be made. With how advanced the culinary system was, Elodie could realistically order anything she wanted, but she grew up being rushed out of the house and eggs and toast were much quicker on those days. Now she supposed she was just accustomed to their liking. Her coffee though, she’d always brewed the old-fashioned way.

As her eggs sizzled behind the glass, her pot beeped, signaling that her coffee was finished. She reached for her ceramic mug with the computer grid design. It was one of the only gifts she could remember her biological mother ever giving her. She poured the dark substance into the cup and felt the warmth fill her hands. She’d already begun to forget about her dream.

When she got to work that morning, she was instantly sought after with a problem to address.

“There was some glitch again in the system. All of the selfulacrums simultaneously powered down last night. Most people probably didn’t notice, it was late so most of them probably weren’t in use or had already been deleted.” - her assistant was a lanky twenty-two-year-old named Nate, exactly the type you would expect to find at a technological development company. “

Is it the same glitch as last time? Or something different?” she sipped her coffee; she’d transferred it to a disposable cup before she left the house, it was cold now.

“We can’t locate it this time. We were able to find some issues in the coding but not anything that would cause a system wide shut down like this”

“Have you spoken to anyone who noticed their copy shut down” she dropped her paper cup into the Quantum Disposal Unit, and it vanished instantaneously.

“No, the shutdown was very quick, I don’t think it will have caused any serious damage to any of the selfulacrums, I’ll keep you updated if anything comes up” ...

Elodie woke with a start. It was the same dream she had had the night before. Her body ached again, and she found that it was a struggle to get out of bed. Not just the mental turmoil of not wanting to leave the covers, but physically she was struggling to pull herself up. Once she did, she stumbled bleary eyed into the kitchen.

She pressed her finger into the drip button, instead of the usual immediate groan of the internal gears waking, the machine beeped at her and flashed the message: “WATER TANK EMPTY, REFILL BEFORE PROCEEDING”

This was very odd. While she enjoyed dripping her coffee in an original mechanism machine, she had it hooked up to her home system so that the grinds would always be fresh and the water tank full, she wasn’t primitive after all.

She wasn’t even sure where the water was supposed to go, so she put in a ticket with the building's maintenance operative, and opted to have breakfast and coffee at work, her eggs had burned in during the whole ordeal. ...

Before she’d even made it to the break room to pour a cup of coffee, Elodie was greeted by Nate with the same problems as yesterday.

“It happened again? Two nights in a row? That’s never happened in all the time I've been here”

“I know, isn’t it so bizarre?” Nate seemed excited by this issue, but it just made Elodie’s head hurt.

They spent the rest of their day sorting through coding, examining formulas and equations, trying to find the one causing such a fuss. They tinkered with a few of the minor ones, and some that didn’t even seem to have an issue at present, simply they were older and could be updated.

Elodie left the office late and went straight to bed. When she woke the next morning, the familiar wailing filled her ears again.

“This has never happened. I’ve never had it this many times” she thought frantically.

If yesterday’s getting out of bed was a problem, today was a conundrum. Every fiber of her ached and she felt as though she was weighed down by her blankets for a good few minutes before she found herself able to move.

When she finally entered the kitchen, she reached to press the “drip” button, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she did so. On this morning, she was met with a worse problem than an empty coffee tank however. She jumped back, startled as she heard a quite mechanical hum, and her hand disappeared through the machine.

As Elodie stood in her kitchen, watching her hand pass through the coffee pot a sudden wave of understanding washed over her. She stared at her translucent fingers, her mind racing with fragments of memories with her mother, real and fake that suddenly made sense, "I'm not real," she whispered to herself, the words feeling foreign yet undeniably true. "I'm one of them. A selfulacrum."

The weight of this realization settled on her shoulders like a heavy cloak, mingling with the ache in her bones and the echoing wails of her dreams. She felt a strange mixture of fear and acceptance, knowing that her existence was not what it seemed.

Words Define Myself

Savannah J. Faulkner

Alpha Psi Omega Georgia Highlands College Rome, Georgia

Media: Collage, Mixed Materials

This is a self-portrait created for an art class assignment. The main goal of this artwork was to create a life-size semi-realistic self-portrait of myself. When creating this, I decided to use a mixture of charcoal, pastes, and collage to create artwork that looks like me and has a meaning for my interest. I started the drawing with charcoal, drawing the face, arms, and shirt. After some debate, I decided to move forward and use a collage for the skirt. The paper that makes up the skirt is from pages of each book in C.S. Lewis’s series Narnia. Growing up, that was one of my favorite book series. It had meaning for me, as I believe it is the reason I, to this day, prefer fantasy over all other genres. After creating the skirt, I used pastels and collaged flowers to create the background. I’m a big fan of plants, so in my goal to put things that make me happy in this drawing, I added a ton of them. This drawing is meant to show off what I enjoy, whether working with different mediums or my love for fantasy novels, flowers, and realism.

A Trip Down Slip Hill

Reina Howard

Rho Zeta Big Bend Community College Moses Lake, Washington

From the time Malcolm Sandoval was four and his mother warned him off the neighbors trampoline, he hated being told what to do. Which is why, against the strict instructions of his Uncle, he was going to race his cousin Ben down Slip Hill.

The forbidden hill lay to the east of his uncle's property, tall, brown and enticing. Despite the warning of parents and teachers, the hill remained a popular race track for the neighborhood kids in spring and summer, an exciting place to play when their parents had kicked them out of the house to stay out from underfoot. Named for the way the dirt slipped underfoot, those who tried to run down it often failed to make it to the bottom unscathed, often likely sliding into the treacherous trenches of sharp shrubbery on the edge of the road. One who bested the hill and escaped without injuries, a rare feat indeed, could boast proudly they had walked away unscathed.

So when Malcolm's uncle warned him not to race on that hill, Malcolm heard not a warning from a man entrusted with his care, but a challenge. His mother had sent him to her brothers in hopes a male influence would break his obstinate streak. Or at the very least, temper It. Instead, it took less than two hours for Malcolm to goad his cousin into a race and less than fifteen minutes for them to round up the neighborhood kids to watch.

The two boys now stood at the top of Slip Hill surrounded by other excitable children, all eager to see if the mystery boy Malcolm could really win. This was the first time Malcolm had seen an aerial view of the track ahead of him, and the sure-fire confidence which had gotten him this far began to wane. The hill was steep and tall, leading into a slightly curved road. The finish line was an old dead tree.

From the sidelines, Susie Dee twisted the scarf in her hands, the pink one she had ‘borrowed’ from her eldest sister's room while she was gone at college."Ready.” She called “Set. GO!” A flash of pink waved from the sidelines as the two boys took off.

Like a flash, Malcolm was halfway down the hill before his cousin. He picked up speed as he came to the bottom of the slope, convinced he was going to win. Had he grown up in that neighborhood, and raced (or merely walked) down that hill before, Malcolm would have known how foolish this was. Instead, unprepared and filled with the belief he was sure to win, the slick silt like dirt under his feet gave way. His attempts at stopping himself only made his fall even more definite, his feet falling out from under him.

As Cousin Ben crossed the finish line, Malcolm was covered in dirt and blood and bruises on the edge of the track. His body ached all over from his impact with the ground, his right arm and hip aching the worst. Small cuts covered his legs from where they slid through a small patch of berry bushes. Instead of getting up, Malcolm rolled onto his back, closing his eyes and taking in the summer sun as he replayed what had happened a few moments earlier. Before long, the crunching sound of boots on dirt disturbed Malcolm's peace, and he opened one eye to see who had approached.

"You should've listened to me kid," his Uncle said gruffly, standing with his arms crossed. Considering what Malcom had just done, the expression on Uncle's face was rather calm, if not disinterested. "Now you're hurt, and I have your mom to deal with." When Malcolm made no effort to move, his Uncle let out an exasperated sigh before reaching out a helping hand.

Rather tired of the whole thing, Malcolm took his uncle's hand and pulled himself up. After a quick examination to make sure all his bones were intact, and no cuts were too deep, Malcolm, Ben and his Uncle headed home.

With a hand on the doorknob of his home, the uncle looked turned to his nephew and asked. "Would you have pulled that stunt if I hadn't told you not to?" Even with his throat dry and hoarse from inhaling quite a lot of dirt and his body sore from his failed escapade, Malcolm couldn't help but smile a devilish smile and croak "No."

Bob Marley

Victoria Pinto

Beta Delta Omega Mt. San Jacinto College Menifee, California

Media : Graphite Pencil

I created the art for my art class. I decided to draw Bob Marley because my family loves him, and I grew up listening to his songs. I drew and filled in each box at the beginning of the drawing. It was a complicated but decent process.

What’s Left at the Diner

Max Gomez

Beta Gamma Lambda Portland Community College, Rock Creek Campus Portland, Oregon

Richard and I walk side by side to our usual two-person booth by the window, already set for one. He sits in his normal spot, facing the front door, and I slide into mine across from him. He shrugs off the tattered corduroy jacket to lay it beside him before undoing his scarf. “I still can’t believe you wear that jacket, Richie. It’s ancient!” I whisper. He makes no reaction. I know he won’t, but it still makes my heart ache.

Like clockwork, Richard reaches into his coat and pulls out his little watercolor set. I’m so happy he enjoys his artwork. Each painting has a different subject, a different theme. Empty coat hooks for loneliness, frogs for change, bubbles for freedom. My favorite is the two little houses with fog between them. Tin cans attached end to end with string are the only things keeping the houses from drifting apart.

“I hope you’re here, Tiffany,” Richard mumbles as he traces a small gazebo in gray.

“I am,” I needlessly reply.

He continues uninterrupted, “I have something to tell you.” The brush runs down the columns. “I would say it at home, but I,” the brush pauses. “I feel silly talking to myself in an empty house. I might be old, but I’m not senile.”

“Says the man talking to a ghost.”

“I prefer it here. Makes it feel as though you never left. Like it’s our usual Friday luncheon,” his wrinkled hands put the stained brush down. A shaky breath, “Dr. Ramos gave me a few months, a year at most. Said my heart is giving out.”

“I know, honey.”

A dry laugh escapes him. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. You’ve been gone for years.” Distantly, he moves the brush again, making the back of the gazebo darker. “But I can’t stay here. I know you wouldn’t want me to. I can’t die in the same house I lost you in.” He sniffs slightly, holding back tears. I would be too if I could cry.

I look at his painting again. The dreary stone structure rests silently against the white page. Richard blows gently on the journal. He hums a line from Eleanor Rigby, avoiding the rest of his monologue. He’s been doing that for awhile now. I’m not with him all the time—I visit our children and grandchildren every once in a while, and it takes a lot of energy to come here—so I don’t know when the habit formed.

“Here ya go, Richard,” The waitress chimes as she walks up with his order, breaking the moment. He takes a gulp of air as hastily moves his art supplies to the side. She carefully places his dish and drink on the table before standing upright. Her smile fades when she notices his demeanor. “Are you alright? You look sad.”

He presses his lips together, wiggling his watch back and forth. “I’m fine. This weather isn’t made for these old bones anymore.”

The waitress quirks her mouth to the side, empathy fills her brown eyes. She lightly taps the table, “Let me know if you need anything.” He nods before she leaves us alone.

Richard looks at his food. It’s the same as always: a Coke, BLT, extra crispy fries, and a side of tartar sauce. I stick my tongue out. I always hated tartar sauce—never understood the appeal of it—but Richard always got it when getting fries. I love his little consistencies. But I knew something was going to change. He eats silently for a few minutes, glancing at his journal every so often.

“You’re moving,” I whisper.

“I’m moving,” he echoes. He slowly eats a fry before musing, “I’ve been learning French. I’m terrible at it, but I think I’ll get better when I get to Dijon. Immersion and all that.” He moves his now empty plate, bringing his art back to his attention. Richard cleans the brush then dips it in the vibrant green. “Leon said he’ll take the house, and Isabelle said Mariana can have the car since she got her license a month ago.” He chuckles to himself. “I know you’re happy I’m leaving that thing behind.”

“Obviously. It’s older than Isabelle,” I lovingly huff. “Of course you listen to me when I’m gone.”

He adds more color to the brush, “Maybe she’ll give it more personality.” The bushes he paints embrace the gazebo. “They said they’ll write to me, and visit France when the time gets closer. I might be leaving, but they don’t want me to be alone.” Another pause of the brush, “I hope you’re there to greet me when the door opens.”

Josie comes back up with the bill, “Here’s your check.”

He nods silently and hands her cash. The amount is always the same. They say their goodbyes as Richard collects his things. When her back is turned, he leaves a note saying he’s moving with a picture for her; a deer sleeping in a bed of grass. She had mentioned a while ago that those were her favorite animals. In his own work, the sad gazebo is now happy and dry with lush greenery surrounding it.

Before standing, he looks at my seat. If I didn’t know any better, I would say he was looking in my eyes. “It was nice to talk to you again, Tiffany. I hope you come with me to France, but I need to move on.”

“I know, my love,” I whisper.

He rises, putting on his jacket and scarf. One last pause, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I respond as he walks away, heading towards a new life.

Where the Path Leads

Tara Lamper

Chi Epsilon Lakes Region Community College Laconia, New Hampshire

I am fortunate as a hiker to be surrounded by unique, photo-worthy subjects and scenery. I love capturing the allure of the natural world and sharing its peaceful, therapeutic qualities. This photo was taken along a favorite local trail. The more I looked at it, the more I liked it. Beyond the colorful foliage and reflection of land and sky, with a light fog along the coastline, I love the composition. The way the steps lead down to the lake feels symbolic of a life path leading into the unknown. The water has an abyss, but looking ahead, the destination is beautiful. It's like a vision from a meditation; it is meditative to gaze at.

Media: Photography, iPhone SE

Alpha

Tara Lamper

"Where the Path Leads"

Wet Paint

Jennie Weible

Xi Zeta Jefferson College Hillsboro, Missouri

The voice of my professor echoed in the back of my mind, “You’re up tomorrow, June!” she reminded me. My palms began to sweat and my vision blurred. This painting would not be finished in time. Just another notch on my list of recent failures. I could practically hear the whispers and judgments my classmates would make. They would question if I even deserve a spot at this University. My composure had begun to slip these past few months, following the death of my grandmother. She was the one who convinced me to apply to this school in the first place. The grief was taking its toll and my focus plummeted. The voices of my past instructors swam in my head.

“It’s nice, Miss Turner, but it lacks depth.”

“Interesting choice here, June.”

“Try to be more original.”

“Your color scheme could use some changes.”

Again and again, their voices taunted me, confirming my doubts and fears that I’ll never be quite good enough. I was destined to be good, but not great. All semester, I had lacked the talent I once possessed. My creative flame had finally fizzled out.

Blisters started to form on my hands and the smell of paint was increasing the dull ache forming at the base of my skull. Every flick of my brush brought fresh pain. The vibrant red of the blood staining my palm contrasted with the deep blue I now used to create great, crashing waves. Stroke after stroke I tried in vain to replicate the beach from my childhood which I desperately longed for.

I welcomed the tears as they began to drip down my face, the tang of salt reminding me of the bitter taste of seawater. No matter how hard I tried or how much time I devoted to the painting, I couldn’t seem to get the details right. Such beauty could not be captured by the hands of an ordinary art student.

The sun had been casting its warm glow over the campus when I took up my post in front of the easel tucked in the corner of my dorm room. I hardly noticed how the sun had started to dip until there was no light left, the moon rising to take its place. I hadn’t bothered to check the time or worry about what I might have for dinner. This was far more important than whatever cold, nauseating meal awaited me in the dining hall. I pushed the low grumble of my stomach out of my mind then dipped my brush into the bowl. The water was polluted again with my dirty paintbrush. Over and over I swished the brush around in circles, wondering why I thought I could pull this off in the first place. Those little voices in the back of my mind instilled more and more doubt as the night crept on.

The warm shades of red and orange I added to the background did nothing to revive the sunset painted so pitifully on my canvas. I hardly heard the door creak open as my roommate, Maria, slipped in, thinking I would be asleep. I usually was when she returned from the parties she frequented. Sometimes she invites me, but I always turn her down. I have no interest in sitting around watching people throw up from the copious amounts of alcohol I’m sure they’ve ingested.

“I see you're still working on that painting,” Maria said, “It’s late, June, get some rest.”

She closed the door and then climbed the ladder up to her loft bed.

I couldn’t be bothered to spare much attention toward her; I muttered a vague response as I

continued with my futile attempt at painting. The days of quiet painting on the beach alongside my grandmother from whom I learned how to wield a brush were gone.

“Tilt your chin slightly, June Bug. Quit slouching,” my grandmother said. I was growing tired of sitting here and my posture had begun to droop.

“But Granny, it's been hours!” my eleven-year-old self whined.

“June, it’s been 45 minutes. Hang in there sweetheart, this portrait is lovely already. One of my finest,” she called. A triumphant look gleamed on her face.

My heart ached at the thought of her seeing what a failure I’d turned out to be. I wasn’t on that beach anymore, and my grandmother was dead.

As I re-evaluated my work, searching for ways to improve, the paint seemed to come to life. The early hours of the morning must have made me delirious. I should have listened to Maria. I reached for a new tube of paint when suddenly, something wet touched the back of my hand. I gasped as I watched paint jump right off my canvas. Shades of orange and blue covered my hand and grabbed hold of my wrist. Tendrils of paint snaked off of it and coiled around my forearm. It was like a snake attacking its prey. The paint tugged on my arm, beckoning me toward my painted horizon. My roommate stirred in her bed, just as the tugging became more frantic. I could do nothing but stare, my mouth agape. I felt it slither past my shoulder and up my neck, toward my face. I tried to scream as it covered my mouth.

The force of the paint caused me to tumble forward off my stool and send me crashing into my artwork. Only, instead of a face full of wet paint, I was met with grainy sand and the sound of seagulls. The aroma of salt water filled my nostrils and I was bathed in a comforting heat. I could hear soft footsteps approaching where I lay, facedown, in the warm sand.

“June Bug! What are you doing lying in the sand?” A familiar voice called. My breathing became labored as I realized who it was. I kept my eyes shut tight and pinched myself with my right hand, sucking in short gasps of air.

“Junie, sit up this instant! Your portrait is almost finished,” Granny announced. I sat up and stared at her in bewilderment. I hadn’t seen my Grandmother since the day before her death, only a mere three months ago. I could still remember the striking white of her hospital room and the sound of her IV dripping. The constant smell of disinfectant was fuel for my splitting headaches. The nurses were kind though, always making sure Granny’s hair was fixed and that her nails were painted. I think it helped her feel more normal, and less like her body was failing her more every day.

I was brought back to reality as fresh tears welled in my eyes. I took in her gently wrinkled face and white hair, her loving gaze causing me to choke back sobs. Loose strands of hair had been tugged free by the gentle breeze and floated around her face. Granny had a natural beauty that most women would kill for. Her bright green eyes held so much sentiment. Even in her old age, she was beautiful. I rose to my feet on shaking legs and staggered toward her, where I fell into her arms, continuing to sob.

“June? What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Granny questioned as she rubbed loving circles on my back, soothing my emotional outburst. “I’m sorry I yelled, honey,” she hushed. She wiped the tears from my face and waited for me to calm down.

“Sometimes I just-” My voice cracked. “I can’t keep up.”

I acknowledged every fragile crack in my heart as I spoke, even the ones I hadn’t dared admit to myself before. Granny listened dutifully while I unleashed the monster that was myself upon her.

“I’m so… I’m so lonely,” I said.

Tears dripped from my face and fell in the sand. This was a hard reality to confess. Maria tried her best to include me, but I was the one who turned her down. It was through my self-sabotage that I reached this point of solidarity.

When I finished, she turned her gaze toward the sea. I watched as she reached into the sand and plucked out a shell. She brushed the loose sand off and turned it over in her hand. She began to run her fingers over the little bumps and ridges of the shell as she sighed.

“Look here, June. Life is a constant journey, full of ridges and valleys that we must overcome. Much like the ones on this shell. Or out there, where the ocean meets the shore. Those waves can be relentless, just as the challenges we must face are. But when the waves retreat, and the shore is visible again, there lies real beauty,” Granny said. She turned her gaze upon me and gave me a wink. She repositioned the canvas in front of us, the one with my portrait she had been working on. I gasped when she dumped white paint all over it, covering up her hard work.

“Granny! What are you doing?” I exclaimed in disbelief.

“Teaching, June, teaching,” she responded.

I listened as she let me in on all her best artist secrets. She told me the secret to color theory and how to create dimension. She guided me through the process, and I mimicked her brushstrokes. Pretty soon the canvas was a perfect portrayal of the landscape in front of us. I smiled at my grandmother, and she embraced me. The woman looked brittle on the outside but she had an iron grip.

We sat there for a while, soaking in the last rays of sunlight, comforted by each other's presence. The swirling rays of gold washed over us, bringing the promise of a new day. I shut my eyes and rested my head on Granny’s shoulder, the sound of waves lulling me into a trance. I was at peace for the first time in a long time. Shades of blue and orange rippled behind my eyelids and the sound of seagulls slowly began to recede. The grains of sand under my bare feet fell away, and the bony shoulder of my grandmother was replaced with something much softer. The smell of saltwater vanished, replaced by the subtle scent of Maria’s floral air freshener. It jerked me right back to reality.

I opened my eyes and was greeted by the familiar sight of our dorm room. Sitting up in my bed, I ran my fingers through my hair, it was tangled and knotted, and smelled faintly of salt water. My body turned cold and I broke out into a sweat as I realized what day it was. I frantically threw my covers off, the threads catching on the rough calluses on my palms. I could have sworn those were open blisters last night. I grabbed my paints and brushes in a frenzy as I prepared to make a sloppy attempt at finishing this dreadful painting.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Maria called from the bathroom.

“My art final!” I yelled.

The panic was rising as I dipped my brush in some paint, lifting my hand towards the canvas. My hand fell short, though, and I was surprised to find that it no longer lay half unfinished. All I could do was stare at the incredible beach painted so craftily in front of me. The water shimmered and the birds soared high above the white sands littered with small seashells. An old woman sat in the sand, a much younger girl beside her, her head on her shoulder. The breeze lifted their hair in different directions.

It was beautiful and serene, I stared in bewilderment, wondering how I had managed to pull this off. I couldn’t remember anything from the night before, other than my frustration. I stepped back from the painting, to admire it, and put my hands in my pockets. My right one brushed against something rough. I pulled it out in curiosity and there, in my palm, lay a small pink and white shell.

Rat Race

Lydia Si Ying Chen

Chi Epsilon Valencia College Orlando, Florida

Media: Mixed

This artwork was done because I wanted to create something to express the difficulties I face in a medium I was familiar with. I am 17 years old and a junior in high school. As many may know, junior year is one of the most challenging years when you start taking the SAT and ACT and plan for college. As the oldest granddaughter of a Chinese family, many expectations were placed on me from a young age, and I had to be perfect. I was always compared to everyone: My younger siblings, friends, and even strangers I’d never met. If I got a 96, I would be asked, “Why not a 100?” when I got 100, I would be asked, “Why not A+?”. Nothing I did was enough, especially now during college prep. I got a decent score that placed me in the 94th percentile. Still, I remember being told by my parents, “Your score is only about 70%. It doesn’t matter what percentile you are in. You failed. Your cousins have to get 1450 to get a scholarship if you lived in their state you wouldn’t qualify.” I just wanted this artwork to show my frustration in trying to meet these expectations, how all of these hands are scrambling to meet a goal. The subject of the drawing achieved nearly perfect scores but wasn’t enough to make it into the top schools, where they’re running a rat race. This artwork is for those always running a futile, self-defeating race.

I started this artwork by drawing a rough draft in my sketchbook. Once satisfied with the composition, I moved on to the colored paper. I sketched out the hands-on lighter blue paper and then cut them out, and then I drew the background on an 18x24 piece of dark blue paper. I then glued the hands in place.

Amy Abang

35mm Photography Black and White

Marine

I enjoy photographing Marines. My son is a Marine and one of the defenders for our c I had my son come home and dress himself in cammies and camo paint. I used a bla backdrop and minimal lighting to just capture him and to make sure there was no back information I then developed the film and the photo using chemicals in the dark room

Amy Abang

Alpha Chi Sigma Cape Fear Community College Wilmington, North Carolina

Media: 35mm Photography

I enjoy photographing Marines. My son is a Marine and one of the defenders of our country. I had my son come home and dress himself in cammies and camo paint. I used a black backdrop and minimal lighting just to capture him and to make sure there was no background information. I then developed the film and the photo using chemicals in the dark room.

Independence

Megan Fajardo

Sigma Mu Northwest Florida State College Niceville, Florida

“Got any plans for the weekend? It’s supposed to be great weather.” No reply. I look in my rearview and see the kid hunched over his phone. I want to tell him that it’s rude to ignore people, but what’s the use? It’s normal to only interact with machines all day, so talking to a driver must be a real stretch. You see, driverless vehicles, DVs, are the newest artificial intelligence gadget; so it’s really the only way people get around now. They have really changed the world and completely stolen my job market. Human drivers fell out of favor pretty soon after DV’s came out, but I don’t think scientists can cook up anything in a lab that beats human instinct

The light turns green, and I hit the pedal, the electric engine humming as I merge onto the highway. You gotta love electric torque; nothing beats it. Once I get enough money, I’m entering one of those races held in the big arena in the middle of the city. Sometimes I drive over and watch them from the screen on the front of the building. The way the drivers control their cars… I swear I’m going to do that someday.

Slowing down, I take the next exit and turn into a shopping center. The kid puts his phone away and looks out the window. Wow. Most people don’t have that kind of willpower anymore. I stop and the boy gets out of the car, running inside a small ice-cream shop. He recognizes the person working behind the counter and runs around the display case, wrapping her in a hug. She laughs and ruffles his hair. A group of people walk in, and he quickly grabs an apron, smiling and chatting as he scoops ice-cream into waffle cones. Hmph. He hadn’t said a single word to me. I look back at the road and shift the car into gear, heading toward the downtown district. An old potholed road leads out of the city. I have time, why not?

I take off, downshifting and building up speed as I crest a hill, but the road drops out from under me. The car careens off the edge, flying for a good five seconds before slamming onto solid ground. After the dust settles, I see it. It’s a track…An actual dirt racetrack! I’ve been driving this city for twenty years, and never knew this was here. I slowly ease up to the faded starting line, hearing the gravel crunch under my tires. How can I not? I take off down the straightaway, turn hard, feel my tail break loose as the car begins to drift. Then another straightaway, another turn, and I race toward the finish line.

I can’t get enough – I drive laps for hours, only stopping because I have to save some charge for the trip back. The dashboard clock reads 7:49. Uh oh, I need to be back at the garage by eight! I whip around and head for the city, taking back roads to avoid being seen. Finally, I sneak into the garage and onto the conveyor belt, sighing in relief. 8:01. I made it. I’m sure no one noticed.

Two mechanics stand on either side of the conveyor belt, watching the DVs roll in for daily recharging and maintenance. Brady types each car’s number into a tablet while Maren sits at a computer watching security feeds.

“885…427…693…” Brady mutters under his breath. “Hey, Maren, 342 is late.”

“It can’t be late.”

“Well, it is,” Brady replied. He walks over and checks the computer. “See, it pulled in at 8:01.”

“Bad traffic?” Maren asked, slurping her soda.

“These cars were invented to prevent traffic.”

“Check the software, then. Might’ve been a glitch.” Brady opens the door and plops down in the driver’s seat, pulling up the software preferences on the dashboard. There’s nothing unusual. He checks the GPS history.

“Hey, can these cars get out of city limits?”

“No. Why?”

“This one did.” Maren walks out from behind the desk and pokes her head through the passenger side window. “Look, it went five miles out of the city,” Brady said. “It drove in circles for almost four hours. What the heck was it doing?” Maren just shakes her head, baffled, while Brady frowns at the dashboard.

“We’re gonna have to wipe it and start from scratch on this one.” Brady nods in agreement and hits a couple of buttons. The dash lights up with the message: FULL SYSTEM

REBOOT IN 3…2…1. The mechanics get out and watch the conveyor belt pull DV 324 away.

Maren walks back to the desk, picks up her soda bottle and tosses it into the trash can.

“I tell you, these things are getting too smart for their own good.”

Embrace of Time: Celestial Union

Dominic Palmer

Alpha Beta Chi Pima Community College Tucson, Arizona

Media: Graphite pencils, fine-line ink pens, and gold leaf on textured drawing paper

This piece seeks to capture the eternal nature of love as a force that transcends the relentless march of time. It is inspired by the belief that within each moment of connection, there lies a timeless story. By blending elements of classical art with modern sensibilities, the artwork aims to bridge the gap between past and present, much like love itself weaves through our lives, uninhibited by the era or circumstance.

The artwork began as a series of thumbnail sketches, exploring different compositions and interactions between the figures. Once the final sketch was selected, a detailed drawing was rendered using graphite pencils on high-quality drawing paper to create a soft, nuanced grayscale underpainting. Fineline ink pens were then used to define sharper details and add depth. Gold leaf accents were applied to highlight the piece's focal points and enhance the celestial elements' luminous effect. Finally, the drawing was sealed with a fixative to preserve the delicate interplay of graphite and ink, encapsulating the drawn quality and ensuring the integrity of the gold leaf.

Water Drop

Leonardo Fabbro

Media: Camera Nikon D500, Photoshop, a little dye, and a water drop machine with a bowl

My idea while taking this picture was to capture the exact moment a drop of water reaches the water at the bowl and spills, formatting this small, colorful “Umbrella”. I used the camera and settled it at a very fast shutter speed and used this small machine to make the water be dropped inside of this bowl with water at the correct moment so the “Umbrella” formation could be fully captured. After taking the shot, I uploaded it to my computer and used Photoshop to make the Image as clear as possible.

Alpha Delta Iota Palm Beach State College Boca Raton, Florida

Atomic Cancer

Aschyr Conley

Alpha Theta Xi Pellissippi State Community College Knoxville, Tennessee

Most people believe atomic bomb detonations were limited to those dropped on Japan and the few tested in remote areas of Nevada. However, “After World War II, the UK, USSR, and US detonated more than 2,000 atomic bombs,” (Gault, 2018). Soldiers from these nations were sent to atomic test sites to witness the sheer power of an atomic bomb, but moreover they were being used by their government to test the effects of the bomb itself on the human body. The information surrounding these events has been classified until recently with few remaining survivors; as such, little scientific research has been done concerning the effects of ionizing radiation on these men. However, their accounts coupled with the research performed on the victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki show undisputable correlations between the events and the corresponding cancers that developed.

Douglas Hern, an Atomic Veteran from the UK, relived his account in an interview, “‘When the flash hit you, you could see the x-rays of your hands through your closed eyes,’ he said. ‘Then the heat hit you, and that was as if someone my size had caught fire and walked through me’” (Gault, 2018). The stories are all very similar despite the age, nationality, or testing site location of the various soldiers. They were not told what they were about to witness, but rather a simple face away and cover your eyes warning. The experience is generally described as two-fold: the blinding light which causes essentially x-ray vision, and approximately 30 seconds later was the blast. As previously mentioned, Hern remembered the heat being unlike anything he had ever experienced. Accompanying the heat was sheer brute force which was responsible for bruises and broken bones. After the blast, the soldiers were instructed to gaze upon the developing mushroom cloud unknowingly being showered in radiation fallout. Aside from the physical ailments these tests would cause, the events were excessively traumatic and plagued the psychological well-being of many of those involved (Gault, 2018).

Nations were playing God with weaponry they had only basic understanding of; this was proven by the Castle Bravo detonation which occurred March 1, 1954. “At 15 megatons, it was the highest yield weapon ever tested by the United States, but that high yield was an accident. Weapon scientists anticipated a yield of 6 megatons, but new weapon designs led to the inadvertent discovery of thermonuclear fusion chain reactions. The accident more than doubled the power of the blast,” (Gault, 2018). True atomic testing did not begin until after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is difficult to stow emotions when one thinks about the reckless abandon displayed by the powers that be when atomic bombs were used on innocent people both in war and testing. However, it becomes almost mind boggling to face the fact: The United States had no concept of the power of the atom bomb when they dropped them on a nation full of innocent people in Japan.

But the question remains, what do we know now? The truth is, not enough. Because national governments hid the use of their own soldiers as test dummies for nuclear detonations, we do not have the scientific research needed to ascertain exactly what those blasts did. If the information does exist, we, as a society, are not privy to it. In order to draw conclusions, we must use what we know from research surrounding the bombing of Japan and cross examine that information with accounts from the few survivors of the Atomic Veteran era.

Britannica explains ionizing radiation as follows, “flow of energy in the form of atomic and subatomic particles or electromagnetic waves that is capable of freeing electrons from an atom,

causing the atom to become charged (or ionized). Ionizing radiation includes the more energetic end of the electromagnetic spectrum (X-rays and gamma rays) and subatomic particles, such as electrons, neutrons, and alpha particles (helium nuclei each comprising two protons and two neutrons),” (Land, n.d.). This understanding of ionizing radiation is important because this is the key catalyst or cancer agent involved in the development of various cancers occurring after an atomic bomb exposure. Background or cosmic radiation is all around us, but the dose we receive is insignificant and poses no danger to our health.

However, it is important to note the use of radiation for medical practices. Most people would not consider an X-ray to be anything other than a device used to scan for a broken bone, but this is a type of radiation. Additionally, cancer patients utilize radiation to shrink and destroy tumors (Land, n.d.). As many people can attest, x-rays are small doses of radiation that cause no damage; cancer treatment, on the other hand, is a trial and tribulation which often takes patients to the brink of death in an attempt to save their lives. Many people argue this form of cancer treatment is outdated and unreliable; furthermore, some groups believe there is a better, less profitable cancer treatment being withheld from the general public which does not involve radiation at all.

“Ionizing radiation effectively disrupts molecular bonds. In living organisms, such disruptions can cause extensive damage to cells and their genetic material. A characteristic type of DNA damage produced by ionizing radiation, even by a single radiation track through a cell, involves closely spaced, multiple lesions that compromise cellular DNA repair mechanisms,” (Land, n.d.). While the general science behind an atomic bomb is known, it is often misunderstood; this could be due in part to the classification of information for concerns of national and global security. Essentially a nuclear bomb occurs much the way Douglas Hern described it. When the bomb detonates, there is a blinding light; this light is the ionizing radiation which caused the x-ray vision witnesses recalled experiencing. This is often where people believe an instant vaporization occurs, but that’s not the case. If the blast does cause instant death, it is due to the immense fireball that kills or destroys everything in its wake. Immediately after the fireball there is a wave of pressure that extends well beyond the blast site (New York Magazine, 2018). Most likely, Douglas and his fellow Atomic Veterans felt heat from the fireball being pushed through them from the blast wave. Had they been close enough to be in the fireball, they would not have survived. Much of the rest of the devastation from an atomic blast comes in the form of fallout.

There is no instance where living through an atomic blast or any other nuclear meltdown involving the release of radiation would be anything short of woeful. Radiation can cause many illnesses, but the one often concerning most people is cancer. Typically, the way to avoid cancer caused by radiation is to simply avoid the source. This is fortunate for most people because they will never work in a nuclear powerplant nor live around one; furthermore, if a nuclear war were to begin cancer would not be the main concern. Unfortunately, people who do work in or live near nuclear facilities do not have much say in what happens to them. Every precaution can be taken, but accidents happen; to error is human.

There seems to be disagreement on the types of cancer which can be caused by ionizing radiation. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (2020) advises, “Cancers associated with high dose exposure include leukemia, breast, bladder, colon, liver, lung, esophagus, ovarian, multiple myeloma, and stomach cancers.” Additionally, the National Cancer Institute has now released information on the study of a radioactive form of iodine which may cause thyroid cancer (“Get the Facts about Exposure to I-131 Radiation”, 2019). It is clear radiation has a high risk of cancer in most parts of the body regardless of preexisting or extenuating factors.

Most scientific research from the bombs dropped in Japan has leaned heavily on leukemia and the astronomical likelihood of developing that cancer as a result of the blast. However, further research suggests that the blast increases the risk for many types of cancer. This disruption of the body on a molecular level destroys a person from the inside out. It is as if the blinding wave of ionizing radiation flips certain switches in the genetic code for each person concluding in most

people developing some form of cancer; most forms prove to be deadly. Douglas Hern says in his interview, “There were 22,500 personnel. In 2013, we estimated that 18 and a half thousand of us had died…and the reports I’d seen nobody had died practically of natural causes. They had all died of leukemias and cancers or carcinomas of one sort or the other,” (Gault, 2018).

If cancer is treatable then why did so many men die from the British Atomic Veterans group alone? There is not a good answer, nor one anyone really wants to believe. Cancers are treatable if caught early enough, but only certain types. Certain cancers like thyroid, skin, and breast cancers are extremely treatable when the proper screenings have been done and the cancer is found early enough in its stages. However, other cancers have a very low success rate of treatment and very high rate of return. Additionally, the treatment for cancer is extremely unpleasant. As stated previously, medical professionals must bring patients to the brink of death in an attempt to save their lives. In a personal interview with Jennifer Winder (2020) she noted how her father had fought cancer most of her life. He had repeatedly beaten the cancer and reached remission for many years before it returned a second and third time. Upon the fourth return of his cancer, he chose to forgo the excruciating treatment and simply live the remainder of his time with his family.

Another factor comes with the tumor’s attachment. In a personal interview with an anonymous source (2020) they spoke about the development of their husband’s throat cancer. He had despite never smoked a day in his life and was and otherwise healthy individual. The doctors told the family his chances of survival and complete remission were high as long as the tumor remained attached at its location. They were told, if the cancer detached and moved to another part of the body then all bets are off; his chance of survival would dwindle to almost zero. Luckily the tumor remained attached, and he recovered; not everyone is so lucky. Some people succumb to cancers considered ‘treatable’ while others have beat all odds against a cancer that should have been terminal. The reality is medicine just doesn’t know everything about cancer as the answers seem to be elusive and every changing.

Another compounding issue relating to atomic blast fatality rates concerns the number of mutations within the genes; these mutations can occur from the amount of exposure and the genetics of the individual in question. Talking about having multiple cancers at once is considered taboo in society as it paints a grim picture, but it happens when mutation numbers are high. These mutations can cause multiple cancers at once or completely unrelated cancers one right after the other.

It is hard to deny the effects of ionizing radiation on the human body. Science has proven time and again that it causes severe genetic mutations when absorbed into the body at high doses. Ironically, the current cancer treatment is a somewhat lower dose of the exact same cancer-causing radiation. Even without a clear understanding of cancer, scientists are manipulating the world on a subatomic level to accomplish various energy and military goals; hopefully medical advancements are also included in the research, but very little information is given to the public on the specifics of atomic and sub-atomic studies. Despite the lack of information, findings from the blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki coupled with recently declassified information and eyewitness accounts have proven the devastating effects of ionizing radiation. Nuclear research and applications are at the hands of those existing behind a high level of security clearance. One can only hope they learned from the Atomic Era Veterans.

REFERENCES

Anonymous. (2020, March 21). Personal communication [Personal interview].

Gault, M. (2018, August 29). 'We were guinea pigs': Soldiers explain what nuclear bomb blasts feel like. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjk3wb/what-does-a-nuclear-bomb-blast-feel-like

Get the facts about exposure to I-131 radiation. (2019, August 28). National Cancer Institute. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/i-131

Land, C. (n.d.). "Ionizing radiation". Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/ ionizing-radiation

New York Magazine. (2018, July 12). What happens when a nuclear bomb hits [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lChLpK8kQr4

"Radiation exposure and cancer". (2020, March 20). United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/health-effects/rad-exposure-cancer. html

Winder, J. (2020, August 13). Personal communication [Personal interview].

Ebony: Monster of Anger

Lacey Blakesley

Beta Delta Upsilon Kennebec Valley Community College Fairfield, Maine

Media: Ibis Paint X, Pen, Airspray for Fire, and Fill-in Tool

This is the monster form of Ebony, a character for a story I never truly got to tell. Ebony is part of a group of witches with emotional magic who want to bring joy. However, this monster form is what happens when she's too angry or upset.

Lowlands

Evan DiPietro

Beta Delta Sigma Los Angeles Valley College Van Nuys, California

Media: Graphic Design Computer Applications

This image is intended for use as an album cover. Reading about Iceland, I was struck by this piece (by Þórarinn B. Þorláksson, 1867-1924, highlighted here) under the “Art” section. It spoke to feelings of desolation and beauty and becoming aware of both. I tried different fonts, colors, and sizes for the text and used the border to give a sense of viewing as though through a television, but that the horse’s eyes look back and give the impression of sentience.